Archives for category: Privatization
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My Speech in New Mexico, with Jesse Hagopian as Interlocutor

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2018 //
11

If you have nothing better to do today or tonight, you might enjoy watching my presentation to a lively audience at the Lensic Center in Santa  Fe, where I spoke about the negative result of eight years of “reform” based on the Florida model.

Since I will soon turn 80 and am ending my lecture career to turn to writing a new book (my last, I assume), I didn’t hold back. The warmth of the audience unleashed me to say what was in my mind and in my heart about the fraud that is now called “reform” (but is really privatization).

New Mexico has the highest rate of child poverty (under the age of 5) in the nation at 36.2%,  five points higher than Mississippi, which is in second place. It also has one of the nation’s highest rates of adult poverty. But the education leaders in New Mexico thought they could cure poverty with testing and teacher evaluation. All of it failed. New Mexico, with all its beauty and splendor, has made no education progress during these past eight years of “reform.”

Jesse Hagopian, teacher and author at Garfield High School in Seattle, who led a strike against mandated standardized testing at that school, introduced me and joined in conversation after I spoke.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Mexico, Poverty, Privatization, Testing

SomeDAM Poet: Lewis Carroll on Reformers and Testing

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2018 //
22

 

Our very own blog poet has written a wonderful new poem.

“Jabbertalky” (after Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll, of course)

“Twas brillig, and the billionaires
Did lie and dissemble in the press
All flimsy were Deformer wares
And the charter rats did nest

“Beware the Jabbertalk my son!
The Cores that bite, the tests that catch!
Beware the Coleman bird, and shun
Felonius charters, natch!”

“He took his opt-out sword in hand:
Long time Deformer foe he sought —
So rested he by the Knowledge tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

”And, as in peaceful thought he stood,
The Jabbertalk, with eyes of flame,
Came bumbling through the teaching wood,
And burbled as it came!

“One, two! One, two! And through and through
The opt-out blade went snicker-snack!
He left test dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And, has thou slain the Jabbertalk?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.

“Twas brillig, and the billionaires
Did lie and dissemble in the press
All flimsy were Deformer wares
And the charter rats did nest”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Humor, Privatization, Testing

Indiana: Students Who Transfer from Public Schools to Charters Lose Ground Academically

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2018 //
24

 

Researchers at Indiana University reviewed state test scores and found that students who transferred from public schools to charter schools lost ground academically for the first few years. Eventually, if they remained in the charter school, they caught up to their public school peers, but nearly half transferred back to their public school. It may be, as in the case of voucher studies in I Diana, that the weakest students were likeliest to leave the charters.

”Researchers from the Indiana University School of Education-Indianapolis examined four years of English and math ISTEP scores for 1,609 Indiana elementary and middle school students who were in a traditional public school in 2011 and transferred to a charter school in 2012. The main findings were that students who transferred had lower math and English score gains during the first year or two in their new school than if they had stayed in a district school.

“The researchers were able to draw the conclusion by using a type of statistical analysis that enabled them to compare students’ actual score gains at the charter school to potential gains had they not transferred from a traditional school.

“But for the students who stayed in charter schools for three years or more, some of those gaps disappeared, and students caught up with where they would have been if they hadn’t transferred. Both of these results — the dip in score gains after transferring and the increase over time — are consistent with other studies, researchers said.

“Overall, these results indicate that the promise of charter schools as a vehicle for school improvement should be viewed with some skepticism,” said study co-author Gary R. Pike, a professor of education at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. “Our results suggest that charter school experience for most students does not measure up to expectations, at least for the first two years of enrollment.”

“The researchers also found that of the original number of students who transferred to a charter school in 2012, 47 percent returned to a traditional public school by 2016. Only about a third of students remained enrolled in charter schools long enough to see their scores catch back up. The study called the mobility “problematic,” and suggested other researchers look into it further.”

The study contradicts an earlier CREDO study of Indiana charters.

However, the researchers cautioned not to draw national generalizations from the study of one state.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Indiana, Privatization, Testing

Massachusetts: Charter Advocates Review Why They Lost State Referendum

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2018 //
11

 

A secret memo commissioned by the Walton Education Coalition sought to analyze why the well-funded charter advocates were beaten handily in a Massachusetts referendum in 2016 on expanding charter schools.

The memo says the opposition trusted teachers more than the governor. The opposition had a simple message: charters are funded at the expense of the local public schoools. The charter lobbyists thought they could threaten a referendum, and the legislature would cave and lift the charter cap to avoid a referendum. But the anti-charter forces refused to compromise and took it to the public.

Families for Excellent Schools, the hedge funders group, thought that the aggressive tactics they had used successfully in New York would work in Massachusetts. They didn’t, and FES was fined nearly half a million dollars for campaign finance violations (concealing the names of its donors) and banned from the Bay State for five years (FES disbanded soon afterwards).

What the analysis doesn’t acknowledge is that Massachusetts was a terrible choice to launch a charter campaign. On NAEP, it is the most successful state in the nation. It has a strong tradition of local control. Families are very attached to their town schools. Threaten the funding of the local public school, and you hit a hornets’ nest.

The pro-charter campaign was hurt too by the public recognition that it was fueled by out-of-state funding.

The opposition to charter expansion was well-organized and grassroots. The two national teachers unions spent millions, enough to stay competitive, but we’re outspent by the charter supporters by many more millions. Without their financial help (no dark money!), the charter industry would have owned the airwaves.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, led by Barbara Madeloni, organized teachers and collaborated with school committees to fight off the charter invasion. Almost every school committee in the state opposed Question 2.

Volunteers, parents, and activists turned out to defend public schools.

The only towns that voted to expand charters were affluent communities that expected they would never get a charter. Where charters already existed, the opposition ran strong because they knew there was less money for their town schools.

The defeat of Question 2 in Massachusetts was a very important milestone in the fight against privatization.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Massachusetts, Privatization, Resistance, Walton Foundation

Kentucky: Jefferson County School Board Fights to Prevent State Takeover

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2018 //
20

Kentucky education is in deep trouble due to the machinations and scheming of its newly elected Governor Matt Bevin. Bevin pushed through a charter bill but the Republican dominated legislature didn’t fund it. Then he engineered the ouster of the respected state superintendent Stephen Pruitt and installed a like-minded devotee of privatization.

Now, his goal is a state takeover of the state’s largest district, Jefferson County, which includes Louisville.  The school board is determined to resist the takeover, knowing that it is a cynical political ploy that will destroy local control and leads to damaging changes.

State takeovers historically have failed. The State Education Department is not stocked with experienced educators but with experienced clerks and administrators of government programs.

Parents, teachers, and local school boards have figured out that Governor Bevin means to do harm to the children and public schools of Kentucky.

Here’s wishing them success in repelling Bevin’s assault on Kentucky public schools.

Categories Accountability, Kentucky, Privatization

Does Puerto Rico Need “No Excuses” Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2018 //
51

The link in this post will take you to a discussion that took place in Puerto Rico about the introduction of “no excuses” charter schools. The government has announced that it is closing and privatizing hundreds of public schools. The embedded post was translated from Spanish to English. Sarah Cohodes, a professor at Teachers College in New York, advocates for such charters because of their strict discipline, which she admires. Critics object to such charters because of the strict discipline.

You can read the report here.

My own view, for what it is worth, is that “no excuses” charters were created for poor children and children of color. They are designed to civilize children. They are the educational equivalent of neocolonialism.

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Reform, Privatization, Puerto Rico

National Education Policy Center: What Is the Evidence for the Success of No-Excuses Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2018 //
36

 

Two researchers review a report recommending the widespread adoption of “no-excuses” methods and find the evidence inconclusive. 

A. Chris Torres of Michigan State University and Joann W. Golann of Vanderbilt University review a report on “Charter Schools and the Achievement Gap.”

They write:

“A recent report, ‘Charter Schools and the Achievement Gap,” finds that, though charter schools on average perform no better than traditional public schools, urban “no-excuses” charter schools—which often use intensive discipline to enforce order—demonstrate promising re- sults. It recommends that these schools and their practices be widely replicated within and outside of the charter school sector. We find three major flaws with this conclusion. First, the report’s recommendations are based solely on the academic success of these schools and fail to address the controversy over their use of harsh disciplinary methods. No-excuses dis- ciplinary practices can contribute to high rates of exclusionary discipline (e.g., suspensions that push students out of school) and may not support a broad definition of student success. Second, the recommendation that schools replicate no-excuses practices begs the question of what exactly should be replicated. It does not confront the lack of research identifying which school practices are effective for improving student achievement. Third, the report does not address many of the underlying factors that would allow no-excuses schools and their practices to successfully replicate, such as additional resources, committed teachers, and students and families willing and able to abide by these schools’ stringent practices. Thus, while the report is nuanced in its review of charter school impacts, it lacks this same care in drawing its conclusions—greatly decreasing the usefulness of the report.”

How many parents are eager to subject their children to harsh discipline?

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Research

Tom Ultican: Will Atlanta Be The Next New Orleans?

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2018 //
6

 

Tom Ultican is on a mission to document the tentacles of the Destroy Public Education movement.

In this post, he traces the career of Atlanta’s current superintendent, Maria Carstarphen, whose singular goal is to turn the school district into an all-charter district. She embraces not only charter schools, but TFA, Relay Graduate School of Education, school closures, and of course, is funded by the notorious Walton Family Foundation in her efforts to stamp out public schools.

Operating in a conservative state with a governor committed to privatization of public schools, she is in a friendly environment.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Toys “R” Us, Hedge Fund Managers, Charter Schools: Go Figure

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2018 //
25

 

When I read about the demise of Toys “R” Us in the New York Times, I was reminded of the business books I read to understand the corporate raiders who caused the collapse of many iconic American businesses. Michael Milken, junk bond king and founder of the online charter chain K12 Inc., bought control of undervalued businesses, broke them up into parts, kept the profitable parts, discarded the unprofitable parts, and loaded them up with debt. The investors made money but the company disappeared under a mountain of debt.

The reality is that Toys “R” Us, which announced on Thursday that it would shutter or sell all of its stores in the United States, never had much chance at a turnaround.

For over a decade, Toys “R” Us had been drowning in $5 billion of debt, which its private equity backers had saddled it with. With debt payments siphoning off cash every year, Toys “R” Us could not properly invest in its worn-out suburban stores or outdated website. Sales plummeted, as Amazon captured more children’s desires — and their parents’ wallets — for Star Wars Legos and Paw Patrol recycling trucks.

Toys “R” Us is the latest failure of financial engineering, albeit one that could portend a potentially more ominous outlook for private equity in the digital era.

Most buyouts tend to work the same way. A private equity firm takes over a troubled company with the goal of sprucing up the strategy, cutting costs and overhauling the business over three or five years. But they often load up a company with debt to pay for the deal, which can prove problematic if the profits do not perk up.

Once the vultures began to pick over the bones, the company was done for.

This is the model for corporate education reform. The reformers arrive with promises of “saving poor kids trapped in failing schools.”

Then they open privately managed schools that choose the  kids they want and exclude those they don’t want. Eventually the public school system teeters on the edge of financial collapse, but the reformers say it is not their fault. But it is. It is baked into their business model. Cut costs. Hire inexperienced teachers. Work them 60-70 hours a week to be sure they don’t hang around long enough to expect a pension or healthcare. Demand free space from the public schools. Or, buy your own real estate and pay yourself exorbitant rents. Spend more on administrative overhead than on instruction.

And don’t forget to say, “It’s for the kids! Kids First! Children First! Students First!”

It is summed up in a comment by a reader of the blog:

All choice options promoted by the DOE fail the “equal access” goal of its mission. Choice is often about selection of best and discarding of the weak, problematic, expensive and struggling. Choice has resulted in increased segregation. Choice is enhancing more separate and unequal treatment of students, not equal access.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

New Mexico: What I Said in Santa Fe

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2018 //
21

 

I was invited to speak in Santa Fe about the state of education by the Lannan Foundation. Jesse Hagopian, the great teacher activist and test critic from Garfield High School in Seattle, was the interlocutor, who arranged the invitation, introduced me, and led a discussion afterwards.

Here is a summary of the talk.

New Mexico is a purple state with a Republican Governor. The governor brought in Hanna Skandera, an associate of Jeb Bush, to lead the state education department. Skandera introduced every element of the corporate reform program. None of it worked. New Mexico vies with Mississippi and Louisiana for the lowest NAEP scores in the nation. It also has the highest child poverty rate in the nation, at 36%, worse than child poverty in Mississippi. But nothing was done to reduce poverty over the past decade. Instead of doing anything about poverty, medical care, or hunger,  Skandera and Governor Martinez pushed test-based teacher evaluation, charter schools, and school grades. The ultimate endorsement of the vaunted Florida model that Betsy DeVos applauds. The result? Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Mexico, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations
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