Archives for category: Privatization
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Center for American Progress: The Highly Negative Effects of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2018 //
48

 

The Center for American Progress published a useful review of voucher research, which concludes that going to a voucher school is equivalent to losing 1/3 of a year of schooling. Over the past year or so, I have posted the individual studies of vouchers as they appeared, and it is helpful to have them summarized in one place.

The authors of this research review—Ulrich Boser, Meg Bender, and Erin Roth—are senior analysts at CAP. They have done a good job in pulling together the many studies and analyzing the negative effects of vouchers on children. Researchers do not agree on the wisdom of converting test score gains or losses into “days of learning,” a strategy invented by researchers at CREDO, but the authors here use the device against the choice advocates who use it to bash public schools.

CAP is a puzzle to me. Throughout the Obama years, it was a safe haven and cheerleading squad for everything associated with the Obama administration, including the failed, odious, and ineffective Race to the Top.

As this carefully researched paper makes clear, CAP opposes vouchers. But where is CAP on charters? Is it still defending the Obama-Duncan line that school choice is good and traditional public schools are not? Is it willing to do the same research-based review of charters that it did of vouchers?

Does CAP still believe in school choice? Does it support half of the Trump-DeVos agenda? Or will it help return the Democratic Party to its roots by acknowledging the importance of strong public schools, democratically governed, subject to state and federal laws, doors open to all?

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democrats, Privatization, Race to the Top, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Why Cynthia Nixon Has a Chance to Beat Andrew Cuomo

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2018 //
44

 

This is a good article in the New York Daily News by Alyssa Katz, of the Daily News about Cynthia Nixon’s challenge to Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary in New York.

She says that Cynthia Nixon should not be written off.

Cuomo has raised $30 million, almost all of it from fat cats and Wall Street.

Nixon, unlike Cuomo, is a genuine progressive.

Cuomo has helped Republicans retain control of the State Senate, even though Democrats have a numerical majority. Cuomo has allied himself with a breakaway group of rightwing Democrats (the Independent Democratic Caucus), who side with the Republicans and keep the Republicans in power. At Cuomo’s last election, he persuaded the Working Families Party to endorse him by promising to help Democrats win back the Senate. The day after he won the WFP endorsement, he broke his promise. That is why the leader of the State Senate is a rightwing Republican, John Flanagan, who defeats every progressive measure.

Nixon promises to change Albany’s culture of corruption. One of Cuomo’s closest aides was recently convicted of taking bribes.

She is way ahead of Cuomo on education issues. She went to public school, and she sends her own children to public schools. She understands that the state has failed to fund the public schools in response to court orders. She knows that Cuomo does the bidding of the charter industry, who have given generously to Cuomo. She knows that Cuomo supports vouchers, in a blatant appeal to religious groups. She remembers that Cuomo promised to “break up the public education monopoly” by funding billionaire-backed charters.

Cynthia is intelligent, quick on her feet, and unafraid of Cuomo, who likes to bully people.

At Cuomo’s last Democratic primary four years ago, Zephyr Teachout won 34% of the vote, with no money or media exposure or  name recognition. She swept upstate New York. Now she is treasurer of Cynthia Nixon’s campaign.

If Nixon can win Teachout’s 34% by building on her New York City appeal, and add to it with the free media and name recognition that Teachout never had, Cuomo should worry.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, New York, Privatization, Vouchers

Arizona SOS Defeats Koch Brothers in Court!

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2018 //
6

 

Arizona SOS beat the Koch brothers and DeVos money in court!

Arizona SOS gathered enough signatures to force a referendum on the expansion of vouchers in the state, and the Koch brothers underwrote a legal effort to knock the referendum off the ballot. Democracy frightens them.

Today, the Arizona Supreme Court Rules that the referendum can go forward.

The vote would not kill the voucher program but block the Legislature’s efforts to expand it, thus siphoning more money from the public schools that enroll most students.

 

Categories Arizona, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

San Antonio: Carpe Diem Charter School Will Close in June

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2018 //
7

 

The Carpe Diem charter school in San Antonio announced that it was closing its doors in June. The charter chain relies heavily on “personalized learning” and “blended learning,” which means a lot of instruction takes place on computer screens. It failed to meet academic standards two years in a row and was not likely to improve in its third year.

Carpe Diem was part of the initial cohort of schools recruited by Choose to Succeed, a school choice campaign that sought to attract high-performing charter districts to San Antonio. While the other Choose to Succeed districts — KIPP San Antonio, BASIS, Great Hearts Academies, IDEA Public Schools and Rocketship Education — built campuses across the city, Carpe Diem floundered. Its enrollment hovered between 200 and 250 students at its single campus on the West Side.

Former Mayor Julian Castro embraced charter schools and promised to have a large proportion of the students in the city enrolled in them. He created the campaign that welcomed the big corporate charter chains to San Antonio. The new Mayor, Ron Nuremberg, is not hostile to charters but has emphasized that charters should be complements to high quality public schools, not replacements.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Choice Advocates: Test Scores Don’t Really Matter All That Much

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2018 //
31

 

Ever since the School Choice Movement got momentum in the early 1990s, its proponents have claimed that charters and vouchers would “save poor kids from failing schools.” Their metric, of course, was scores on standardized test scores, and they welcomed No Child Left Behind and its successor Race to the Top. They were certain that choice schools—free to select their students, free to kick out students, free from bureaucracy, free from unions, free to pay differential pay to teachers—would prove their value by generating sky-high test scores.

There are some charter schools that get high scores, but most don’t. Most studies find that some charters get high scores, some get the same scores as nearby schools, and some are far worse than the so-called “failing schools.”

Recent voucher studies have converged on the finding that students who use vouchers actually lose ground as compared to their peers who won a voucher but didn’t use it. The more optimistic say that the voucher students make up the lost ground in 3-4 years, but they don’t take into account the attrition of the weakest students from the voucher schools.

A new paper by three school choice advocates concludes that test scores are not the best measure of success (whoa! Who knew?). Other long-term impacts, they say, matter more, like graduation rates. Why are they moving the goal posts? Voucher programs show no academic gains, but they do show higher graduation rates, so that’s what really matters. There is a trick here, however. Every voucher program has a high rate of attrition, which pro-choice researchers ignore or downplay. The “higher graduation rates” in evaluations of voucher programs in Milwaukee and D.C. do not acknowledge the high number of kids who started ninth grade and didn’t make it to the end of twelfth grade.

Patrick Wolf of the Department of Educational Reform at the University of Arkansas (funded primarily by the Walton Family Foundation) conducted the official evaluations of both Milwaukee and the District of Columbia. In his initial report about Milwaukee, he wrote that the attrition rate was 75%, but decided that was an error and revised the attrition rate to 56%. Either number is huge. Huge and huger. 

The survivors had a higher graduation rate than the students in the Milwaukee Public Schools, which included the kids who dropped out of the voucher schools.

Wolf’s D.C. evaluation does not break out the attrition rate, but it is likely to be significant. William Mathis of the National Education Policy Center reviewed Wolf’s Congressionally mandated evaluation of the D.C. voucher program but could not determine with certainty how many students had dropped out before graduating, but it appears to be nearly three-quarters.

All of this is background to Secretary Betsy DeVos’ nonchalant response to the latest [2017] negative evaluation of the D.C voucher program.  She never expected vouchers to raise test scores, she says. And it doesn’t matter.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, High School Graduation, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Sacramento: Charter School Closes Abruptly, Leaving Students in the Lurch

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2018 //
24

 

Paramount Collegiate Academy in Sacramento, California, closed its doors in mid-February. Parents received notice on the same day that the school closed, leaving students to find another placement in mid-year.

The charter school had been turned down by the school district, turned down by the county board of education, but approved over their objections by the state board of education, which has never seen a charter it can’t approve.

Parents started showing up at San Juan Unified School District asking to enroll their children after they received a letter from the El Camino Avenue school announcing it would be closing that same day. The letter said the school board was initiating bankruptcy proceedings…

The letter said that the board voted to close the school in a special meeting because of financial problems caused by low enrollment and undisclosed issues with a new landlord.

Fortunately for the students, the public schools are available to take them back. They would have little chance of getting into another charter in mid-year.

California needs a governor who will appoint a state board of education that is not a doormat for charter operators.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article199107149.html#storylink=cpy

 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Privatization

Nancy Flanagan: Do Not Trust “Education Trust”

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2018 //
12

Earlier today, I posted an article criticizing Michigan’s floundering and unaccountable charter schools, based on a report by Education Trust Midwest. I have long known EdTrust as a DC-based organization heavily funded by the Gates Foundation as a cheerleader for high-stakes Testing as the remedy for low test scores of black and brown children. Last night, I saw a tweet that referenced the PIE Network, a collection of 70 corporate education reform groups spread across the nation, all committed to the testing and privatization network. There in Michigan was Education Trust Midwest. Check it and seee which groups in your state are part of this insidious network.

In a comment posted earlier on the blog, Nancy Flanagan, a veteran teacher and blogger, offers reasons not to trust EdTrust on the topic of charter schools.

She writes:

“I once was on the dias with Amber Arellano for a panel discussion on improving MI schools. The setting was an event for Oakland County school boards. Oakland County is Michigan’s richest county, and most of its public school districts are well-regarded, among the top-scoring districts in the state. The audience was elected school board members for these PUBLIC school districts, people who were presumably focused on improving the educational offerings and succcesses in the districts they represented.

“And what did Amber Arellano, Education Trust Midwest’s glamorous and charismatic CEO want to talk about? Charter schools and increasing choice. She framed her remarks by noting the number of failed charters in nearby Detroit. Left unsaid, but hanging in the air: Charters in Oakland County wouldn’t fail, because, well… let’s just say that the student populations would be different. Oakland County kids would benefit from an array of boutique charters for students’ individual passions and interests. Oakland County charters would be managed by innovative educators.

“That was her message. I was stunned. Wasn’t this audience dedicated to preserving public education?? Evidently not, as she was surrounded, after the program, by would-be innovators and entrepreneurs, wanting her advice on how to capitalize on MI’s charter laws.

“Her chief talking point is reflected in the report: You, too, can start a charter, but to sustain it, you must generate “good data.”

“This is the next logical step in Michigan’s utterly failed charter movement (driven by terrible legislation): First, we attract families to charters in areas (like Detroit) where public schools are in intense poverty and have been mismanaged by the state. The low-hanging fruit. Then, we go after the school districts that aren’t in trouble, while pointing fingers at the charters (and charter operators) who are taking on the most troubled kids. We can do better, we tell them.

“The purpose of this report is to spread the charter movement into solidly performing public districts who have thus far resisted the lure of the boutique charter, by once again contrasting (mostly white) children of privilege with children in struggling, underfunded schools in our poorest cities and rural areas.”

 

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

Mitchell Robinson: Why Schools Are Not Like Uber or Lyft, or, the Hoax of “Choice”

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2018 //
21

 

Betsy DeVos thinks that school choice is just swell. After all, she said, people should be able to choose schools the way they choose modes of transportation, like hailing an Uber or Lyft instead of a licensed taxi.

Mitchell Robinson explains why she is wrong. 

A professor of music education at Michigan State University, Robinson knows that school choice has not improved education in DeVos’s state. It has actually been a bust. Not only has it failed to improve education, it has played havoc with district budgets.

The point of choice is choice, with no discernible benefits other than investors.

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Failure, Funding, Michigan, Privatization, School Choice

Tom Ultican: Leader of “Destroy Public Education” Group in Indianapolis Will Go National

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2018 //
5

 

Tom Ultican shows how The Mind Trust has dutifully implemented the rightwing agenda in Indianapolis. Fattened with big contributions from far-right foundations, the Mind Trust has done  a thorough job of undermining public education in that city. Now its leader, David Harris, has decided to create yet another national corporate reform organization, having established his bona fides with the Walton Family Foundation and the Arnold Foundation. Walton loves charters and hates unions. Ex-Enron John Arnold loves charters and hates public sector pensions.

Republicans in the State Capitol must love David Harris. He cleverly uses his Democratic credentials to pursue the Trump-DeVos-Pence agenda of privatization.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Indiana, Indianapolis, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Teacher: My Nightmare Year in a Charter School

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2018 //
24

 

Florina Rodov taught in a charter school in Los Angeles for a year. In this article, she describes her experiences. 

It was an eye opening and nightmarish year.

She taught from 2005-2009 in a New York City public school,and got burned out by the testing, the paperwork, and the cultural contempt for teachers. She heard about the charters and was intrigued.

“On August 2, 2016, in sunny Los Angeles, I interviewed with the amiable principal of a charter school. A former teacher herself, she founded the school with an attorney friend to give middle and high school kids a college preparatory program that offered AP courses, sports, and the arts. The teachers at her school had a voice, she said, and the close rapport between students and staff made it feel “like a family.” I was inspired by her passion — and despite the fact that the school was moving for a third time in three years and had lost its co-founder and a few teachers (all of whom had resigned), I signed a non-union contract on the spot.

“But I soon realized there was a gulf between charter school hype and reality. Every day brought shocking and disturbing revelations: high attrition rates of students and teachers, dangerous working conditions, widespread suspensions, harassment of teachers, violations against students with disabilities, nepotism, and fraud. By the end of the school year, I vowed never to step foot in a charter school again, and to fight for the protection of public schools like never before.

”On August 15, my first day of work, I dashed into the school’s newest home, a crumbling building on the campus of a public middle school in South Los Angeles. Greeting my colleagues, who were coughing due to the dust in the air, I realized most of us were new. It wasn’t just several people who had quit over the summer, but more than half the faculty — 8 out of 15 teachers. Among the highly qualified new hires were a seasoned calculus teacher; an experienced sixth grade humanities teacher; a physics instructor who’d previously taught college; an actor turned biology teacher; and a young and exuberant special education teacher.

“When the old-timers trickled in, they told us there’d been attrition among the students, too: 202 of 270 hadn’t returned, and not all their seats had been filled. Because funding was tied to enrollment, the school was struggling financially.”

Working conditions were difficult. Everyone worked a 60-hour week. The SPED teacher had 48 students.

But that wasn’t all.

“The working conditions made it a test of endurance. The contract with the district that called for our school to get cleaned twice weekly wasn’t honored. The frazzled janitor only had time for us after he was done with the co-located middle school, which was almost never. I watched pieces of pepperoni decay on the stairs and globs of feces dry up on the bathroom wall over several weeks. During a lesson, my smart, sweet ninth graders were distracted by a roach striding across the floor, victoriously waving a cookie crumb in the air with its pincers. Needless to say, the lesson went to the insects.

“But the biggest threat was to our safety. We were in a gang-ridden, drug-infested area — but there was no security guard or emergency plan in place. And even without outside factors, it was quickly becoming a climate of terror inside the school, as well. When a senior grabbed a teacher’s ass, the principal didn’t expel him (she couldn’t afford to lose more students) — so he continued sexually harassing her, and it felt like there was nothing we could do to stop him…

”Last year, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos quipped that picking a school should be as easy as choosing Lyft, Uber, or a taxi. In California — the Wild West of the charter sector because of the schools that pop up indiscriminately — it is that easy. The result is chaos: Schools struggle to establish themselves, teachers quit, and kids bounce around from school to school at a head-spinning rate. One of my seventh graders had attended seven schools over the course of seven years…Due to this school-hopping culture, only 16 seniors remained of the 43 freshmen who had enrolled at our charter in 2013.”

There are no doubt good charters, bad charters, every kind of charter. What is the value of disrupting a nation’s public schools recklessly, without regard to quality or consequences?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Privatization
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