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Laura Chapman on Bill Gates’ Hubris, Ignorance, and Folly

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2017 //
54

A couple of days ago, Bill Gates said he has a new plan to reform education. As I pointed out in a post, Bill Gates is batting 0 for 3. He dropped $2 Billion into breaking up large high schools and turning them into small schools. He started in 2000, didn’t see a big jump in test scores, and backed out in 2008. Then, having decided that the answer to high test scores was to punish teachers whose student scores didn’t go up, he pushed value-added Assessment, partnering with Arne Duncan and Race to the Top. Thousands of educators were fired and many schools were closed based on Gates’s fancy. That lasted from 2008 until now, and it has been written into state law in many states, although it has distorted the purpose of education and created massive demoralization among teachers and a national teacher shortage. Then he funded the Common Core, in its entirety. It is his pedagogical Frankenstein, his personal belief that education should be completely standardized, from standards to curriculum to teacher education to teacher evaluation. Speaking to the National Board for Certified Teachers a few years ago, he praised standardization and talked about the beauty of standard electrical plugs. No matter where you live, you can plug in an appliance and it works! Clearly, that was his metaphor for education. What did he spend on the creation and promotion of the Common Core? No one knows for sure, but estimates range from $200 Million to $2 Billion.

There is one other massive Gates failure that I forgot to mention: inBloom. This was a $100million investment in data mining of students’ personally identifiable data. Several states and districts agreed to turn their data over to inBloom, which wipould use the data as its owners chose. Parents got wind of this and launched a campaign to stop in loom. Led by Leonie Haimson of New York and Rachel Stickland of Colorado, parents besieged their legislators, and one by one, the state’s and districts pulled out. InBloom collapsed.

We don’t know how much money Gates has poured into charter schools, but we imagine he must be disappointed that on average they don’t produce higher scores than the public schools he disdains. He bundled millions for a referendum in Washington State to allow charter schools, the fourth such referendum. Despite Gates’ swamping the election with money, the motion barely passed. Then the State’s highest court denied public funding to charter schools, declaring that they are not public schools because they are not governed by elected school boards. Gates and his friends tried to oust the Chief Judge when she ran for re-election, but she coasted to victory.

As you see, he is actually 0 for 5 in his determination to “reform” the nation’s public schools.

But he is not deterred by failure!

So what is the latest Gates’ idea?

Laura Chapman explains here:

“At the Meeting of the Council for Great City Schools October 19, 2017, Gates said:

“Today, I’d like to share what we have learned over the last 17 years and how those insights will change what we focus on over the next five years.”

“I think that Gates has learned very little about education in the last 17 years. He is still fixated on “the lagging performance” of our students on what he regards as “the key metrics of a quality education – math scores, English scores, international comparisons, and college completion.

“Gates wants his narrow definition of “quality education” to be accepted as if the proper doctrine for improving schools and also ensuring the “economic future and competitiveness of the United States.”

“Gates wants faster progress in raising test scores, and high school graduation rates. He seems to think that “constraints and other demands on state and local budget” actually justify his plans to “ increase high school graduation and college-readiness rates.”

“Gates takes credit for funding for the deeply flawed + Measures of Effective Teaching project (MET), claiming that it showed educators ”how to gather feedback from students on their engagement and classroom learning experiences . . . and about observing teachers at their craft, assessing their performance fairly, and providing actionable feedback.” The $64 million project in 2007 tried to make it legitimate for teachers to be judged by “multiple measures” including the discredited VAM, and dubious Danielson teacher observation protocol http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/01/review-MET-final-2013 Gates learned nothing from that micromanaging effort.

“Gates funded and promoted the Common Core. He says: “Teachers need better curricula and professional development aligned with the Common Core.”He remains committed to the ideas that “teacher evaluations and ratings” are useful ways “to improve instruction,” He thinks “data-driven continuous learning and evidence-based interventions,” will improve student achievement. This jargon is meaningless.

“Gates said: Overall, we expect to invest close to $1.7 billion in US public education over the next five years.“…“We anticipate that about 60 percent of this will eventually support the development of new curricula and networks of schools that work together to identify local problems and solutions . . . and use data to drive continuous improvement.

“Don’t be deceived by the “public education” comment. Gates wants to control public schools by dismantling their governance by and for the public. By “networks of schools” Gates means “innovation districts” where persons employed by private interests can control educational policy under the banner of “collaboration” or “partnership.”

“Gates offers several examples of networks. One is CORE, a so-called “partnership” of eight large urban school districts in California: Fresno, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Santa Ana,

“CORE stands for “California Office for Reform in Education CORE a non-governmental organization, based in San Francisco, funded by the Stuart Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation (Stephen Bechtel Fund); and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Here are some other things you should know about CORE.

“CORE was created in order to bypass the California State Board of Education and Race to the Top accountability, by marketing its new “School Quality Improvement Index.” This index includes social-emotional learning and school climate indicators in addition to California requirements—test scores, graduation rates, and the like.
Participating CORE Districts are bound to the terms of a memorandum of understanding, signed only by each district superintendent. This MOU specifies that the district will use: CORE-approved school improvement ratings based on existing and new indicators, a CORE-approved teacher and principal evaluation process with professional development plans, CORE-specific teacher and principal hiring and retention policies with cross-district sharing data—including results from teacher/student/parent surveys of school climate and student self-assessments of their social-emotional skills.

“The final rating for each school in a CORE district is a complex web of weightings and transformations of scores into performance and growth measures: 40% of the overall rating for school climate/social emotional indicators and 60% for academics.

“An autonomous “School Quality Oversight Panel” nullifies oversight of these districts by the State Board of Education. This “oversight” panel has CORE supporters recruited from The Association of California School Administrators, and California School Boards Association, California State PTA. The main monitors/promoters of this scheme are actually two panel members: Ed Trust West and the Policy Analysis for California Education. Bot of these organizations are sustained in large measure by private funding.

“Ed Trust West is funded by the Bloomberg Philanthropies, State Farm Companies, and these foundations: Bill & Melinda Gates, Joyce, Kresge, Lumina, Wallace Foundation, and the Walton Family. The Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) is based at Stanford University, with participation by the University of California – Berkeley, and the University of Southern California. PACE is a conduit for grants from USDE and from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation; Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund; S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation; Walter and Elise Haas Fund; and The Walter S. Johnson Foundation.

“School ratings developed by the CORE Districts flow directly to GreatSchools.org —a marketing site for schools and education products. GreatSchools.org is funded by the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations. Add the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, New Schools Venture Fund. and 15 other foundations.“GreatSchools.org in a non-profit in name only. GreatSchools.org sells data from all states and districts. For a fee, it will push users of the website to particular schools. Buyers of the data include Zillow and Scholastic.

“I think that the CORE District model illustrates how the private takeover of education is happening. Policy formation and favored school practices are being determined by the wealth and the peculiar visions non governmental groups with deep pockets. In the CORE Districts, this work is aided and abetted by superintendents who are eager for the money and the illusion of prestige that comes from permitting private funders to determine educational policies and practices.

“Gates’ speech to members of the Council of the Great City Schools also includes the example of Tennessee’s LIFT Education as a “network” that is worth replicating.

“LIFT Education enlists educators from 12 rural and urban districts across the state to promote the Common Core agenda and Teach for America practices. Participants in LIFT Education are convened by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education —SCORE. The SCORE website says participants in LIFT have spent the last year and a half collaborating on high-quality early literacy instruction, focusing on building knowledge and vocabulary by piloting knowledge-rich read-alouds in early grades.

“The LIFT/SCORE alliance provides a governance structure for insisting that teachers follow the Gates-funded Common Core. Teachers are given an instructional practice guide that is also a teacher evaluation rubric from Student Achievement Partner, authors of the Common Core. https://lifteducationtn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/LIFT-Instructional-Practice-Guide-K-5-Literacy.pdf

“This LIFT/SCORE non-governmental network is the result of private wealth channeled to superintendents who have outsourced the “coaching” and compliance monitoring for the Common Core literacy project to the Brooklyn-based The New Teachers Project (TNTP). In effect, TFA coaching and systems of data-gathering are present in all of the LIFT/SCORE districts.

“SCORE, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education has been funded since 2010 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so far $10,623,497 including multiple years for operating support. Add a 2012 grant to SCORE as sponsor of a Chiefs for Change Policy Forum for district leaders so they would be “ambassadors for education reform.” The bait for the LIFT/SCORE network thus came from Chiefs for Change–Jeb Bush’s baby, unfriendly to public education.

“Gates says: “Over the next several years, we will support about 30 of these networks (e.g.., CORE, LIFT) and will start initially with high needs schools and districts in 6 to 8 states. Each network will be backed by a team of education experts skilled in continuous improvement, coaching, and data collection and analysis.””

“Our goal is to work with the field to ensure that five years from now, teachers at every grade level in secondary schools have access to high-quality, aligned curriculum choices in English and math, as well as science curricula based on the Next Generation Science Standards.”

“What else is in the works from the many who would be king of American education?

“We expect that about 25 percent of our funding in the next five years will focus on big bets – innovations with the potential to change the trajectory of public education over the next 10 to 15 years.” What does Gates means by “big bets?” He expects to command the expertise and R&D to change the “trajectory” of education. He will fund translations of “developments in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics” in addition to “technology-enabled” approaches in education.

“There is money left for more.

“We anticipate that the final 15 percent of our funding in the next five years will go to the charter sector. We will continue to help high-performing charters expand to serve more students. But our emphasis will be on efforts that improve outcomes for special needs students — especially kids with mild-to-moderate learning and behavioral disabilities.”

“This proposal sounds like Gates wants to cherry pick the students with “mild to moderate learning and behavioral disabilities,” send them to Gates-funded charter schools to bring their scores up, then claim success where everyone else has failed. This same strategy is being used in “pay-for performance” preschools. Gates sounds like he expects to have a free-hand in ignoring the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Evidently he wants the “flexibility” to ignore IDEA that he believes to be present in charter schools.

“Bill Gates is still fixated on the idea that his money and clout can and will attract other foundations and private investors. He still holds on to the mistaken idea that “what works” in one community or state can be “scaled up,” and REPLICATED, elsewhere. He is ignorant of the history of education and efforts to replicate programs. He is trapped in an industrial one-size-fits-all model of education.

“Gates ends with this: “Our role is to serve as a catalyst of good ideas, driven by the same guiding principle we started with: all students – but especially low-income students and students of color – must have equal access to a great public education that prepares them for adulthood. We will not stop until this has been achieved, and we look forward to continued partnership with you in this work in the years to come.”

“Beware of billionaires who want to partner with you.

“Gates still seems to think that students, especially low income students, can and will be successful if they have “ equal access to a great public education.” He remains ignorant of the abundant research that shows schools alone are not responsible for, or solutions to, institutionalized segregation and poverty–the main causes of serious disadvantage among low-income students and students of color.

“Gates has grandiose plans. All are focused on privatizing education and selling that snake oil as if it is authentic support for public education.“

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, John King, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Ohio: Fordham Knocks Stephen Dyer for His Criticism of Charters; Dyer Strikes Back

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2017 //
14

Stephen Dyer is a Senior Fellow at Innovation Ohio and a former legislator. He has scrutinized state data exhaustively and reported that district schools outperform charter schools by every measure: test scores, graduation rates, achievement gaps. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute didn’t agree with his conclusions. Although it claims to be a think tank, it is in fact an advocacy group for school choice.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which is technically based in Dayton (where the late Mr. Fordham lived) is actually based in D.C., is an authorizer of charter schools in Ohio. Authorizers are paid a commission on every student who enrol in charter schools so it is a lucrative role. I was a board member at TBF and an original founder. I opposed the decision to become an authorizer because I thought that it conflicted with the role of a think tank, which should be free to critique or praise anyone without fear or favor. I was outvoted.

In this post, Stephen Dyer responds to TBF criticism.

He explains that every public school in Ohio receives less money so charters can be funded.

“According to the final state payment made to school districts from June, there were 1.7 million students in Ohio set to receive $7.95 billion in total state aid. That’s works out to $4,657 (I’m rounding here) for every student in local public school districts.

“Then come charter schools.

“According to the report, $898 million left school districts last year for charters (a district-by-district breakdown I received from the Ohio Department of Education puts that tally at $935 million, so there’s that). Leaving with that funding were 113,613 students.

“So, after losing the funding and students to charter schools, the remaining 1.59 million children in Ohio school districts were set to receive $7.05 billion in state revenue, or $4,425 each.

“That means that the charter deduction costs every kid in Ohio school districts, on average, $231.51.

“This is why I compare charter school performance with school district performance. Because charter schools affect every kid in a school district. Profoundly. How profoundly? Let’s look at Columbus.

“Prior to the charter school deduction, every kid in Columbus City Schools is set to receive $4,559 in state funding. However, once the $145.65 million and 18,541 students are transferred to charter schools, the remaining 53,532 students who attend Columbus City School buildings receive $3,418 per pupil. That is a difference of $1,141.62. So charter schools cost students who are in Columbus City Schools about 1/4 of their state revenue. That’s every student in Columbus, regardless of wealth, race, or disability, Jamie.

“Every.

“Single.

“Student.

“So if this profound a change in state funding is going to happen for the 75 percent of children who remain in Columbus City Schools, or the 93 percent of children who remain in Ohio’s local public school districts, we’d better be damn sure it’s worth it. Is it worth removing $1,141.62 from kids in the best performing school in Columbus so thousands of kids can go to ECOT, for example (ECOT is the largest recipient of charter school transfer funding from Columbus)?

“I would say that’s a big, “No.”

“Now my friends at Fordham often complain that charters don’t get local revenue. And while that’s true, I fail to see how that justifies removing millions of state dollars from kids in local school districts. If the legislature believes in school choice so strongly, then set aside $260 million or so to make up for the lack of local revenue.

“Stop taking it from the 1.59 million kids who aren’t in charters.“

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Ohio, Privatization

Nonprofit Quarterly: Corruption Scandal Rocks Los Angeles School Board and Charter Movement

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2017 //
18

Most of the time, scandals come and go and no one remembers them after a day or two. But sometimes scandals cause a seismic reaction. Think Harvey Weinstein. Powerful men have sexually assaulted women in their employ and hoping to be in their employ or just in their proximity for as long as anyone can remember. Despite a number of high profile scandals, the larger phenomenon is ignored. Many people assumed Trump’s gloating about his sexual assaults would doom his campaign but it didn’t. Bill O’Reilly had to leave FOX news, but that passed. The Harvey story has gotten more attention and more outrage than any of the others.

Could the Ref Rodriguez corruption scandal awaken the public to the systemic problem of giving public money to private corporations and individuals without regular oversight and accountability? Could this be the Big One that tarnishes the privatization movement?

Nonprofit Quarterly writes:
“Something is rotten in the world of Los Angeles school board politics.

“Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC) charter school network founder and L.A. Unified School District Board member (and, until recently, board president) Refugio Rodriguez faces three felony charges, 25 misdemeanor charges, and conflict-of-interest allegations for laundering money in his school board campaigns in 2014 and 2015. Charges were filed last month by the city’s ethics commission.

“It might seem unusual that a charter school founder (and recent employee) would head the school board for a major city’s public K-12 system, but this was no accident. Rodriguez was part of a slate, “one of four board members who came into power with the strong backing of charter school supporters and who now make up a majority of the seven-member body.” As Rachel Cohen writes for The Intercept, Rodriguez “was backed by the well-heeled charter school movement, which spent more than $2 million to help elect him. This past spring, education reform advocates won three more seats, giving the board a slim pro-charter majority for the first time ever. Rodriguez was then elected board president in July.” After the ethics charges were filed, Rodriguez stepped down as board president, but remains a school board member.

“Then this past Monday, the other shoe dropped and a second investigation was launched. As another Los Angeles Times article explains, “Officials at PUC Schools, a local charter school network, have filed a complaint with the state Fair Political Practices Commission.”

The filing alleges that Rodriguez, who co-founded PUC, ordered the transfer of about $265,000 from PUC to a nonprofit that appeared to be under his control. An additional $20,000 went to a private company in which he might have owned a stake.

““PUC”, according to the Los Angeles Times, “operates 17 schools in Los Angeles and one in Rochester, N.Y. It is a nonprofit that operates under its own board, with L.A. Unified authorizing its local schools individually.”

“Last Friday, PUC accepted the resignation of Rodriguez’s cousin “senior manager Elizabeth Tinajero Melendrez. In PUC records reviewed by the Times, Melendrez is listed as the person who requested eight of the checks Rodriguez authorized, adding up to nearly $188,000.”

“As NPQ has reported previously, conflicts of interest, or even the appearances of them, put the entire organization at risk of losing its credibility. Jacqueline Elliott, the cofounder of PUC, has distanced herself from the scandal in the media, perhaps hoping to maintain the reputation of the charter network with funders. (Elliott is not under any investigation.)

“A large and complicated web of money and influence has been woven under the feet of Los Angeles’ education leaders. Untangling it will certainly cost the district time and credibility, especially since, as noted above, the balance of the school board recently shifted toward charter school supporters, who strongly supported Rodriguez and who now occupy four of the seven board seats.“

NPQ ends hopefully on the note that “Big money and scandal are not, obviously, necessary or even frequent companions to large charter networks.“

As we have seen time and again, “big money” is indeed a necessary and frequent companion of large charter networks. Whether scandal follows depends on the extent to which there is public oversight of public money.

Given the fact that the charter industry controls the school board in Los Angeles, don’t expect LAUSD to clean its own house. Expect it to join the coverup, even if Ref is thrown off the island as a necessary sacrifice.

Will the public wake up to the waste of their tax dollars? Will this scandal be the one that ignites outrage? Should the public pay $1 Million a year for visas for Turkish teachers? Should the public pay charter CEOs over half s Million a year? Should the public pay for executives at virtual charters who collect millions a year in compensation? Should the public turn a blind eye to the millions from hedge fund managers and other financiers and rightwing foundations that want to privatize public education?

When the editorial boards of the nation’s most powerful newspapers—the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times— consistently defend private and unaccountable charters and support privatization, it makes you wonder how big a scandal is necessary before they wake up and defend the public interest? Do they know they are supporting the agenda of ALEC and Betsy DeVos? Do they care?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Deregulation, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein: The Collapse Of Tennessee’s Achievement School District

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2017 //
22

Gary Rubinstein has been tracking the progress—and the hubris—of the Tennessee Achievement School District. The ASD was created with millions drawn from Tennessee’s $500 Million Race to the Top Grant, the first in the nation. The basic idea was that the ASD would create a special district for the state’s lowest performing schools, turn them over to charter operators, and within precisely five years, these schools would be “catapulted”into the top 25% of the schools in the state.

The first cohort of six schools were in the bottom 5% of schools in the state.

“Two years into the five-year mission, the superintendent at the time, TFA alum Chris Barbic, declared in an interview that of the original six schools, two were on target to get to the top 25% in five years while one of the six schools, Brick Church Elementary, was on a trajectory to reach the goal after just four years.

“Three years into the five-year mission, the improvements that he had based these projections on did not continue and Barbic was saying that they underestimated how difficult this would be, even admitting that the ‘immigrant poverty’ he worked with as a charter school founder in Houston is very different than the ‘generational poverty’ he works with in Tennessee.

“Four years into the five-year mission, Barbic resigned from the ASD, citing among other things, his health as he had recently had a heart attack. He soon got hired by the John Arnold foundation to work on education issues for them.”

In the fifth year, the state testing system was messed up by technical glitches, so there were no scores. So the ASD got six years to work its magic.

Now the scores are out, Gary analyzed the results, and one thing is clear: the ASD was an abysmal failure.

Of the original 6 ASD schools, one is in the bottom 7%, the rest are still in the bottom 5% with two of them in the bottom 1%.

This is what is called a total and complete failure. It was not “for the kids.” It was for the ego-gratification of arrogant deformers.

Gary writes:

“There are actually other states considering starting their own ASDs, I just read that Mississippi is working on it. Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada already have them in the works. There was one in Michigan which folded and there is still the original one in New Orleans which continues to post awful test results.”

Most of the ASD schools were in Memphis. Jeannie Kaplan reported earlier today that author David Osborne was in Denver touting Memphis as a reform Success. Six out of six of the state’s lowest performing schools are still the state’s lowest performing schools. If this is success, what does failure look like?

The definition of a reformer today: Never look at evidence, never admit failure, never learn anything new, just keep pushing privatization, lower standards for teachers, and high-stakes testing. Fail, fail, fail, and do it again.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Memphis, Privatization, Race to the Top, Tennessee

Jeanne Kaplan on David Osborne’s Campaign for Privatization

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2017 //
20

If you are old enough, you may remember that David Osborne was the guru of privatization and competition during the Clinton administration. His message was that public servants are lazy and unaccountable and need to compete with private vendors. That competition will make government workers try harder and deliver better service.

That was more than 20 years ago, and apparently Osborne hasn’t learned anything new. Now he is hawking a book that advocates charterization of schools and districts.

Jeanne Kaplan, who served two terms on the Denver school boards, believes that the much-touted success story of Denver is a hoax. She first encountered Osborne’s inaccurate account of the Denver “miracle” last year, and she took it apart then.

A few days ago, she turned out to hear Osborne speak about his new book on the virtues of privatization, and she heard the same tired song. His visit to Denver was sponsored by the pro-privatization “The 74,” the Public Policy Institute, DFER Colorado, A+ Colorado, Gates, and other reformy groups. The room was half-full of reform types, almost all white.

Osborne pointed to D.C. (which has the largest achievement gaps in the nation), New Orleans (where ACT scores are in the cellar compared to the rest of the state, and charter schools are highly stratified by race and income), and Indianapolis as exemplars of “success.” He also praised Memphis, and when someone pointed out the failure of the Achievement School District (mostly Memphis), he simply denied it, having no facts in hand.

Osborne’s Message: All charters, alll the time.

Don’t let facts or reality or multiple scandals get in the way.

Jeanne said that Osborne had a book signing at Denver’s famous Tattered Cover bookshop that evening. Only about a dozen people showed up. Sad. But not very.

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

Laura Chapman on North Carolina’s “Innovation School District”

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2017 //
22

Laura Chapman writes:

This is the new “public policy.”

I see that the Oregon backers of Achievement For All Children in North Carolina paid state politicians for the right to substitute charter schools for low performing public schools in a new multi-count “Innovative School District.”

I looked at the website for the Achievement for All Children franchise (http://aac.school). I think the word franchise is correct because there is a one-size-fits all basic curriculum, with non-trivial online deliveryof content—a boon for cost cutting and really attractive to charters. What’s more, much of the curriculum is free or low cost, so reimbursements for managing schools and hiring paraprofessionals may well be where much of the public money goes.

I took some time to look at the curriculum, the partners, and the funders of this operation. North Carolina schools in this concocted “Innovative School District” will have tightly sequenced grade-by-grade lessons from a ready-to use curriculum. The curriculum has significant on-line components, and/or practice workbooks. These materials also offer teacher handholding materials–what to do, when, and how.

The main curriculum will be E. D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge® program with grade-by-grade mastery of content beginning in Kindergarten. This content is also organized to fit the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). In 2011, Hirsch endorsed the Common Core State Standards and changed the rhetoric of Core Knowledge® to accommodate the CCSS aims of college and career readiness. Substantial portions of the Core Knowledge program are now available on line and “aligned” with the CCSS.

The Hirsch’s Core Knowledge® program has tapped online services “for building Common Core-aligned reading and language arts skills.” One example is “Quill.”

Quill, is a two-tier service, one free, the other premium. The premium service requires a fee, but that fee can be waived for low-income schools. The Quill curriculum requires the application of grammar, writing and proofreading skills to Core Knowledge content (from Core Knowledge Language Arts® and Core Knowledge History and GeographyTM.). The online assignments, each about 10-15 minutes, are organized by the Common Core standards.

Quill gathers data on student performance in real time then steers each student into an improvement program. The premium program adds data gathering suitable for tracking progress on “national writing standards,” especially “sentence combining” for a logical presentation of ideas.

A second online program has been tapped for use in the Core Knowledge® program. It is free, and offered by ReadWorks.org. According to the ReadWorks website, the service offers “the largest, highest-quality library of curated nonfiction and literary articles in the country, along with reading comprehension and vocabulary lessons, formative assessments, and teacher guidance.”

ReadWorks is incorporating content from the Core Knowledge® program into their “Article-A-DayTM” feature—brief nonfiction texts intended to build students’ “background knowledge, vocabulary, and reading stamina.”
These ReadWorks services are paid for by private and corporate “partners” as well as the generosity of specific content providers.

Here are the private and corporate supporters of the content: Brooke Astor Fund for New York City Education; Frances L. & Edwin L. Cummings Memorial Fund; Cleveland H. Dodge Foundation; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Imagine K12; Amherst Foundation; William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust; NewSchools Venture Fund; Smith Richardson Foundation; Spotlight Fund; Tsunami Foundation – Anson and Debra Beard, Jr. and Family; and Travelers. The “partners” with Imagine K12; are venture capitalists as are those with NewSchools Venture Fund.

Readworks also has partners who integrate their content into the ReadWorks on-line program, especially the “Article-A-DayTM” feature. These content providers include: The American Museum of Natural History; Museum of Modern Art, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History; New York Historical Society and Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; New York Philharmonic; Audubon; Exploratorium; The Wall Street Journal; New York City Ballet; Civil War trust; Learning Ally (for students with dyslexia and visual impairments) and Wordsmyth. (dictionary, thesaurus)

Imagine K12 is of special interest. This is an “investment accelerator” for startups in the tech industry. Educators are enlisted to test and help promote the products through the Imagine K-12 network. Participants in the network–tech-loving educators–are eligible for special invitations to Silicon Valley to be in on and test products/services from the latest tech startups.

Since 2011, Imagine k12 has launched more than 75 apps, online programs and services. Many of these de-school education, and remove educators from decisions in favor of algorithms. The website lists 18 apps, services, products for classroom management, 19 for curriculum, 11 for feedback and assessment, 17 for student learning, 15 for school operations, and 14 for postsecondary education. (These categories are not mutually exclusive).

I conclude that the Innovation School District will be a profit-centered operation with little school-level control of decisions by educators My guess is that parents will have marginal engagement of the school staff unless that is accomplished with the aid of a mobile app. There is no doubt about this: The students will be sources of massive amounts of data for exploitation by venture capitalists.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, North Carolina, Privatization

Michigan: State Senate Steals Money from Public Schools and Gives It to State’s Failing Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2017 //
17

If ever you want evidence that Betsy DeVos bought and paid for the legislature in Michigan, consider the decision just made by the State Senate to take money approved by voters for their public schools and give it to charter schools. More than 80% of the state’s charters operate for profit. They get worse results than the state’s public schools. The state has minimal expectations or accountability for charter schools. Why are they getting more money?

“The Michigan Senate passed a controversial bill Wednesday that will allow charter schools in the state to collect revenues from enhancement millages levied by intermediate school districts.

“Republicans said the bill would treat all students — whether they attend traditional public schools or charter schools — fairly, but Democrats said the legislation was stealing money that voters approved for traditional public schools and shifting those funds to charter schools.

“I introduced this bill because there are 14,000 … students in Kent County that aren’t being treated fairly,” said Sen. David Hildenbrand, R-Lowell. “And there are 56,000 students in Wayne County that aren’t being treated fairly either.”

“But Sen. Curtis Hertel, D-East Lansing, said voters approved the millages with the knowledge that the money would go to traditional public schools in their county.

“This bill takes school funding, which is already stretched to the max in the state, and tries to stretch it even further,” he said. “This is corporate welfare. It’s stealing.”

“Enhancement millages can be used for just about anything by a school district, including lowering class sizes, hiring teachers, upgrading technology or purchasing materials.

“The Wayne County school districts could be hit the hardest if the legislation receives final passage because the county has more than 100 charter schools. The county approved a 10-year enhancement millage in 2016 that is raising $80 million annually that is split among the county’s 33 public school districts.

“Hildenbrand said his intent with the bill is that it won’t affect existing millages, only when a renewal or new millage comes up before voters. But in its analysis of the bill, the Senate Fiscal Agency concluded it would apply to existing millages, too.

“And Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, said the language in the bill is so vague that charter schools — some of them for-profit operators from out-of-state — could claim the funding.

“The language matters and it was ambiguous at best and at the very least it’s showing that we’re putting profits before educating all of our students,” Ananich said.”

Why fund failure?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Funding, Michigan, Privatization

Bill Phillis: Betsy DeVos Does Not Understand the Purpose of The Public Common School

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2017 //
54

Bill Phillis was Deputy Commissioner for the State of Ohio. He is now retired. He is a master of school finance and is a principled believer in public education, free and open to all. He founded the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy to track school finance and equitable practices. He has followed the theft of public money by charter frauds in Ohio for many years.

He writes here:

”

Betsy DeVos: School choice is a fundamental right

“The common school system in America was established as a public good, not a private consumable. The primary purpose of the system is to create and maintain a democratic society governed by public policies that promote an equitable social order. Horace Mann, the father of the great American common school said that education is the great equalizer of the conditions of men. He promoted public education as the balance wheel of social machinery.

“The constitutional provisions for education in nearly every state mandate and enable the establishment and maintenance of the common school system.

“Enactment of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) at the beginning of the 21st century was an affront to these state constitutional provisions. Congress, in defiance of the states’ responsibility for public education, in a frenzied effort to “fix” perceived problems in the system, passed NCLB. This legislation usurped the rights of states regarding education and local decision-making prerogatives. NCLB intruded into every classroom in America. The education community, being loyal soldiers, implemented the provisions knowing full well the mandates of the legislation were not in the best interest of students. NCLB has not improved student achievement and has diminished many critical educational opportunities. It, by design, has opened the choice-gate incredibly wide.

“In 2015, Congress modified NCLB with passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA.) But ESSA is of little help in repairing the damage caused by NCLB.

“Now comes Betsy DeVos. Education Secretary DeVos, in a major public address, recently stated there is no such thing as society. Further she said in the same address, it isn’t about school systems-it is about individual students, parents and families. In another address to the Brookings Institution, DeVos pronounced that school choice is a “fundamental right.” She seems to have no understanding of or appreciation for the purpose of the public school system.

“The school choice movement of this era is the antithesis of the common school movement of the 1800s. It challenges Ohio’s constitutional provision for a thorough and efficient system of common schools. Vouchers, tuition tax credits, education savings accounts, academic distress commissions (Youngstown Plan) and charter schools, all set aside the education provisions of the Ohio Constitution.

“School children have a constitutional right to participate in the Ohio common school system. Parents have a right to opt their children out of the common system but the state has no obligation to pay for their choice.

“DeVos may have a point that parents have a fundamental right to choose an alternative to the constitutionally-mandated common school; however, parents do not have the right to tax funds to pay for that choice.”

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://www.ohiocoalition.org

Ohio E & A, 100 S. 3rd Street, Columbus, OH 43215

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charters, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

The Curious Connection Between Paul Vallas and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, as Told by Dan Mihapolous and Mike Klonsky

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2017 //
5

Conservative Republican Bruce Rauner appointed Democrat Paul Vallas to run financially troubled Chicago State University, at a handsome salary of $200,000 a year.

Dan Mihalopoulos of the Chicago Sun-Times explains that Vallas and Rauner have a long history together.

Vallas is a Rahm Emanuel style Democrat who loves privatization. Vallas is not an educator. He is a numbers cruncher. After a stint as superintendent in Chicago, he was hired to take over fiscally troubled Philadelphia schools. He launched the biggest experiment in Philly ever tried in any city. It failed, but no matter. He went to New Orleans, where he had a free hand to privatize almost every school. He was hired to run the Bridgeport schools but had to leave Connecticut when critics argued that he lacked the credentials to be a superintendent in Connecticut and won in court. At one point, he ran with Governor Pat Quinn as his Lt. Gov., but they lost to Rauner.

Vallas tried to persuade private citizen Rauner to invest in his consulting business, but Rauner didn’t go for it.

“Vallas and Rauner go back years before that election, and Vallas once even offered Rauner a chance to invest in his education consulting company, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

“Nearly seven years ago — when Rauner wasn’t yet a politician, just a wealthy private investor with an interest in public education and a friend in the mayor’s office — Vallas corresponded with and met with him, offering to help create what he described as an “ambitious new school district” in Chicago.

“In three letters to Rauner in 2010 and 2011, Vallas offered to work with Rauner and city officials. Vallas said that school “buildings would be provided to the charters at no cost.”

“Concerning our potential partnership, I would welcome the opportunity to contract with you to assist with your school reform efforts in Chicago,” Vallas wrote to Rauner in February 2011, when Vallas was the top schools official in New Orleans.

“Vallas — who’d head the Chicago Public Schools under Mayor Richard M. Daley from 1995 until 2001 — also asked Rauner to invest in his education consulting company, the Vallas Group, according to copies of the correspondence obtained by the Sun-Times.

“You once told me that if I ever decided to launch a domestic education business, you would be willing to invest,” Vallas told Rauner. “Based on my research and years in the education field, I firmly believe this is a can’t miss.”

Mike Klonsky writes that Paul Vallas was one of the first people to see the entrepreneurial side of school reform.

He writes:

“Paul Vallas was never an educator, but he was a quick study. He learned from the start of his stint as Mayor Daley’s schools CEO in 1995, the power of government contracting and that there was good money to be made in the school reform business. He also came to believe that the future of school reform belonged not to the system’s bureaucrats, but to the outsider corporate reformers, wealthy, powerful, self-interested billionaires and outside consultants who they patronized.

“After Daley gave him the boot from Chicago and through a series of unremarkable stints as district school chiefs in Philly, New Orleans and Bridgeport, Vallas assembled a team of loyalists (mostly former Chicago school bureaucrats) and developed a strategy for injecting himself and his brand into struggling urban school districts, in order to do “the greater good”. The game plan involved using political clout to place his lieutenants into power in selected districts and in return, having them bring in the big-ticket Vallas Group to “reform” district schools from the top-down. It also included a heavy dose of replacing public schools with privately-run charters and weakening or completely eliminating union collective-bargaining agreements.

“It was a plan that included perks and kick-backs to district leaders as in the case of former Vallas partner Gary Solomon, who along with former Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, is now doing heavy prison time on fraud and corruption charges in the Chicago SUPES scandal.

“Byrd-Bennett worked as a consultant and lead teacher for The Supes Academy and worked as a consultant for Synesi Associates, the consulting company founded by Vallas and Solomon. Vallas not only hired Solomon and his companies when he worked in Philadelphia, but brought Solomon with him to New Orleans…

“Actually BBB’s “vision” was Gary Solomon’s vision and Solomon’s vision was Vallas’. Same dreams but different beds. Solomon’s consulting company advertised that it had “the exclusive rights to Paul Vallas’ model of education reform.” In Philadelphia, he marketed the consulting company as using the “Paul Vallas method of school reform.”

“In Chicago, Solomon used his former partner’s strategy of installing BBB as schools CEO and then kicking-back to her after she gave SUPES and $20M contract to do principal training.

“Solomon later said he used Vallas’ name without permission and it was a “mistake.”

“But Vallas had used a similar approach in Rockford, St. Louis, Philly, Rochester, Peoria and other districts and greased the wheels for the Synesi group. Synesi landed two no-bid contracts worth nearly $893,000 in New Orleans during Vallas’ time running the Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011.

“Vallas calls his involvement with Solomon in New Orleans a “non-story.” He also says, “New Orleans honored me with the key to the city, while those involved in CPS are about to be locked up.”

“He’s right and this says a lot about our justice system and media’s reluctance to make the connection.”

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Categories Accountability, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Los Angeles: Time for Ref Rodriguez to Resign from School Board

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2017 //
18

The Los Angeles Times published an article about reactions to LAUSD board member Ref Rodriguez’ Legal problems.

It is time for him to leave the board.

Resign.

Enough.

What a model for children.

If teachers were under indictment for multiple crimes, he or she would have to get out of the classroom. Now.

Please note that the president of the California Charter Schools Association issued a statement expressing his concern but does not call on him to resign. The charters in Los Angeles are asking for new rules to speed up their renewals, Free them to shape their own suspension policies, and protect them from burdensome accountability, so they must hang on to their majority. Prominently featured in the article is Caprice Young, CEO of the Turkish Gulen charter chain called Magnolia. Some of its charters were not renewed, and Magnolia is hoping to reverse that deci$ion. Young was previously president of the California Charter School Association before taking charge of the Imam Fetullah Gulen’s Magnolia Charter chain.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, Gulen Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Privatization
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