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Texas: Almost Every New Charter School Is Underenrolled

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2023 //
3

Edward McKinley of the Houston Chronicle reports that demand for charter school seats is lagging in Texas. Open the link to the article to see the enrollment predictions for the 18 new charters and their actual enrollment. The article is not behind a paywall.

Organizations that opened new charter schools in Texas over the last five years frequently overestimated the number of students they would enroll in their early years when making their pitch for state approval, according to a review of statewide data.

Of the 19 schools approved since 2017 that have opened, 18 fell short of their enrollment projections, and 14 were at least 20 percent lower than they estimated. In eight cases, enrollment was at least 60 percent less than the number projected.

In Harris County, for example, Legacy School of Sports Sciences said it planned to have about 1,850 students by this school year, while actual data shows its enrollment was 447. In Bexar County, Royal Public Schools planned for 672 students, while its enrollment was around 200.

Officials at both schools did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the last decade, the Legislature has smoothed the way for charter schools to quickly expand, giving more authority to the Texas Education Agency and taking it away from the state education board and from cities and towns.

From 2017 to 2021, the total number of charter school campuses exploded. Enrollment grew from about 273,000 students to more than 377,000.

But as charter school groups continue to push for more support from the state, the failures of new schools to hit enrollment projections undercuts the argument that there is massive demand.

Members of the state board have grumbled that charter applicants that come before them for approval are offering overly rosy visions of their future or even misleading the board entirely.

At the State Board of Education meeting last month considering the latest new charter school applicants, Member Aicha Davis, D-Dallas, asked why the board should approve a new set of schools when recent ones haven’t performed to their expectations.

“We’ve been approving charter schools every single year, even during COVID years, without really reviewing the success of the charters that we’ve approved,” Davis said in a phone interview. “Almost none of them are anywhere near capacity, so we’re consistently opening new schools even when the existing schools are having problems filling their classrooms.”

Charter school representatives said the projections are often flawed because they come before schools can secure facilities, a major challenge for charter networks that don’t receive state facility funding or local property taxes.

Charter proponents also pointed to the pandemic, during which enrollment at both public and private schools declined. Of late, many local traditional school districts have also fallen short of their enrollment projections.

Under state law, charter schools exist to augment the system of public school districts, which are required to serve every child.

But there’s a long-simmering tension between charters and districts because when a student transfers to a charter, their former district loses out on the associated funding, which averages to about $10,000 per student.

Challenges faced by charter schools

At least some charters treat the estimates more as ceilings than specific goals.

“The enrollment projections for charter applications become your legally binding ceiling,” said Ryan York, a chief executive of The Gathering Place, a technology-focused charter school that opened in San Antonio in 2020. His school’s enrollment projection fell flat by about 14 percent.

“From a process standpoint, there’s a severe penalty if you underestimate, and there’s no penalty if you overestimate,” York said. “You’re going to put a liberal estimate because you don’t want to end up where you have demand and you’re meeting the community’s needs but you aren’t able to meet those needs because you’ve boxed yourself in with the projection.”

According to the TEA, charters on their applications are required to present “realistic and/or justified demographic projections.”

After approval, the schools wait a year before opening, known as the “planning year,” where they acquire property, hire staff and start recruiting students. It’s true that the projections form a basis for a “ceiling,” but the actual enrollment cap isn’t set until this time.

Brian Whitley, spokesman for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association, said the projections included in the applications are “very preliminary.”

“Individual public charter schools don’t have a crystal ball,” he wrote in an email. “They know, when they apply, that demand exists in a community — but there are many factors and logistical hurdles that impact how much and how quickly they can grow.”

State Board of Education Member Tom Maynard, R-Florence, said the charter school applicants that come before the board are giving a sales pitch.

“They come in there and they’re probably being a little bit optimistic,” he said. “I think that moving forward that’s probably going to be something that we’re going to think about a little bit more. … The data analysis is going to have to probably get a little bit more sophisticated.”

In the last seven years, 39 of the 190 organizations that have applied to the TEA to open a new charter school have been approved, or 20 percent. In a key choke point in the process — and the only time when an elected body or official weighs in — the state board has the ability to veto those applicants. In all, 26 organizations received final approval, a rate of about 14 percent.

After schools receive approval, they don’t need to go back to the state board for permission to expand, even if it’s outside of their original locations within the state. After a new application and a review from TEA staff, the only requirement is a signoff from the TEA commissioner, who is appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott — an ardent supporter of charter schools and of using vouchers to subsidize private education.

Although only 18 new charter groups were approved between 2017 and 2021, the number of charter campuses increased during that time from 676 to 872.

‘Very different than what we’ve seen on paper’

Statewide, charter schools enroll a higher percentage of Hispanic or Latino students when compared with traditional public schools. However, based on the statewide data, most new charter schools significantly overestimated the percentages of their student bodies that would be Latino or Hispanic, suggesting many struggle to recruit those students.

Officials from several schools said there may be skepticism among some Latino communities to enroll in new charter schools, which have to work to overcome language barriers or mistrust relating to immigration status. SaJade Miller, superintendent of Rocketship Public Schools in Fort Worth, also suggested that the advocacy network within Black communities — including churches, community centers, groups like the NAACP and others — is more developed, which makes outreach to those students more straightforward.

According to the data, the new charter schools consistently enrolled slightly more Black students than they anticipated.

This year, the state board ultimately voted to approve four of the five charter applicants before them, including Heritage Classical Academy — which had been denied three times previously. The family of Heritage’s president had donated generously to flip several board seats, and the board is now friendlier to charter schools and “school choice” advocates who push for vouchers.

State board Members Maynard and Davis said their key consideration for new charter schools is whether they will offer something innovative that the existing school district does not. They said they’re concerned that schools are painting one picture when they try to win approval from the state — such as opening in one neighborhood instead of another — only to change the plan.

“When we are going through the process of an application and looking at everything, we’re coming from a perspective of what they say they can do,” Davis said. “Then once they open up, a lot of times it’s very different than what we’ve seen on paper.”

Acknowledging that tension, York, with The Gathering Place, said many schools struggle to find a campus when they first open. Enrollment is then often dependent on hyper-specific neighborhood factors, including the other schools nearby and ease of transportation.

It’s a Catch-22, he said: Schools often can’t secure a facility until they have been approved, but they also can’t get approved without a pitch that requires information about geographic details and specific goals.

Correction: A previous version misstated the number of students Legacy School of Sports Sciences projected to have enrolled by this school year. It was 1,850, not 1,450. The estimate was correct in the attached graphic.

Photo of Edward McKinley

Edward McKinley reports on Texas state government and politics from the Hearst Bureau in Austin for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. He can be reached at edward.mckinley@houstonchronicle.com.

He is a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and a 2020 graduate of Georgetown’s Master’s in American Government program. He previously reported for The Albany Times Union and the Kansas City Star newspapers, and he originally hails from the great state of Minnesota.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Deregulation, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Texas

Idaho: How to Destroy Public Schools and Grab the Money: Connect the Dots

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2023 //
16

Steve Berch is a member of the Idaho House of Representatives, one of only 11 Democrats in a body with 70 members. He is serving his third term. His analysis of the attack on public education in Idaho and other states is brilliantly cogent. He understands that privatization is all about the money. This article appeared in the nonprofit IdahoEdNews.org.

Berch describes the playbook of the privatization movement.

Berch writes:

Idaho will spend $2.3 billion on K-12 public education in 2024. There are powerful out-of-state forces who want to get their hands on that money. Some are driven by profit, others by political ideology, religious beliefs, or a combination of interests. They all share one common goal: shift your public schools dollars to the private sector. Here are some of the dots to connect in the “privatizing public education” playbook:

  1. Make public schools look worse than other school choices. The legislature does this by continually underfunding public education. Schools can’t meet parental expectations, accommodate growth, or hire/retain experienced teachers when salaries are not competitive and buildings are falling apart. Idaho has a backlog of over $1 billion in K-12 school building maintenance and we’re still at or near the bottom in per-student investment, even after having a $2.1 billion surplus and a recent budget increase. This makes other school choices look more attractive by comparison.
  2. Undermine confidence in public schools. Propaganda campaigns incite fear and anger against local schools. Parents are bombarded with false claims about porn in libraries, groomers in classrooms, and student indoctrination. Non-stop postings on social media perpetuate these inflammatory accusations. Self-proclaimed “think tanks” funded by third-parties produce official looking reports that create a false perception of legitimacy to these manufactured fears.
  1. Hide the facts. Legislative leaders tried to kill the Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) – which provides factual, in-depth, unbiased research and analysis to the legislature. The public wouldn’t know about the billion dollar backlog in school building maintenance if OPE didn’t exist. The OPE report that revealed this new information angered political leaders trying to tell a different story. Without facts, false narratives go unchallenged.
  2. Legislative intimidation. New laws are making classrooms a hostile workplace. This includes bills that threaten to sue educators, imprison librarians, fine school districts, muzzle teachers, and empower the Attorney General to aggressively prosecute the targets of these punitive laws. No wonder teachers are leaving Idaho.
  1. Promote “school choice” and “education freedom.” This is clever rhetoric, but it is meaningless since Idahoans already have a myriad of education choices – none of which are going away. It’s not about having choice, but rather having you pay for someone else’s choice. A recent in-depth investigationrevealed a vast network of powerful forces funneling money into Idaho to promote and sell their alternative education choices to the public.
  2. Kill public education with vouchers (deceptively called Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs). An attempt was made earlier this year to convert most of the $2.3 billion public education budget into checks sent to parents to spend however they want – without accountability. This would starve Idaho public schools into oblivion.

The 2023 bill tried to hit a home run and failed. However, the lobbyists behind privatizing public education will be back, fronted by their legislative allies. Expect to see legislation next year that allows public tax dollars to pay for private and religious school tuition in limited amounts and isolated situations.

This is fool’s gold – there is no room for compromise. If the legislature allows just a small amount of public tax dollars to be spent on tuition for any private school, your tax dollars must be made available to all types of private schools and religious schools. Once one bill passes, the flood gates open up to flow your public education dollars to the bottom line profits of private sector businesses.

Your public education tax dollars belong in your public schools, not in their pockets.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Education Industry, Funding, Idaho, Lies, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Bill Phillis: Ohio Republicans Transfer Powers of State Board of Education to Governor

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2023 //
2

William Phillis, a former deputy state commissioner of education in Ohio, has devoted his retirement to fighting against the privatization of the state’s public schools. He reports here on the GOP’s latest gambit:

HB33 strips the State Board of Education of its primary powers and duties, contrary to Article VI section 4 of the Ohio Constitution.

The transfer of the State Board of Education functions is unconstitutional. Additionally, the 135th General Assembly and Governor violated the single purpose clause (One-Subject) provision of the Ohio Constitution. Article II section 15(D) states, “No bill shall contain more than one subject, which shall be clearly stated in its title.” HB33 is a budget bill. The transfer of the primary duties of the State Board of Education to the Governor’s office is a policy matter unrelated to finance. This matter should immediately be challenged in Court.

If the “transfer” would be enacted as a separate bill (it was HB12 before being injected into HB33), it could be successfully challenged in Court. In 1953, the people of Ohio passed a constitutional amendment that transferred the Department of Education from the Governor’s office to the State Board of Education.

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VOUCHERS HURT OHIO

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

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Elections, Ohio, Privatization

Peter Greene: Oklahoma Superintendent Tries to Define “Woke,” But Can’t

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2023 //
86

Peter Greene discovered that Ryan Walters, the State Superintendent of Education in Oklahoma, attempted to define “Woke” on a far-right website. WOKE is one of those new terms of opprobrium, like “critical race theory,” that Republicans despise but can’t define. Peter eagerly read Walters’ effort to defund Woke, but came away disappointed. It seems that Woke is whatever you don’t like. You may have seen the stories recently about Walters insisting that the Tulsa race massacre of 2021 had nothing to do with skin color, although as the Daily Beast reported, “white mobs killed as many as 300 Black residents and burned some 1,600 homes and businesses in what was known as Black Wall Street.”

Peter Greene writes:

Oklahoma’s head education honcho decided to pop up in The Daily Caller (hyperpartisan and wide variation in reliability on the media bias chart) with his own take on the Big Question–what the heck does “woke” mean? (I’ll link here, because anyone who wants to should be able to check my work, but I don’t recommend clicking through).

Walters tries to lay out the premise and the problem:

Inherent to the nature of having a language is that the words within it have to mean something. If they do not, then they are just noises thrown into a conversation without any hope of leading it anywhere. And when the meaning is fuzzy, it becomes necessary to define the terms of discussion. To wit, the word “woke” has gained a lot of popularity among those of us who want to restore American education back to its foundations and reclaim it from the radical left.

I’m a retired English teacher and I generally avoid being That Guy, particularly since this blog contains roughly sixty gabillion examples of my typo issues, but if your whole premise is that you are all for precise language, maybe skip the “to wit” and remember that “restore back” is more clearly “restore.”

But he’s right. The term “woke” does often seem like mouth noises being thrown into conversations like tiny little bombs meant to scare audiences into running to the right. However, “restore American education back to its foundation” is doing a hell of empty noising as well. Which foundation is that? The foundation of Don’t Teach Black Folks How To Read? The foundation of Nobody Needs To Stay In School Past Eighth Grade? Anyone who wants to talk about a return to some Golden Age of US Education needs to get specific about A) when they think that was and B) what was so golden about it.

But since he doesn’t. Walters is also making mouth noises when he points the finger at “opponents of this movement.” If we don’t know what the movement is, we don’t know exactly what its opposition is, either. Just, you know, those wokes over there. But let’s press on:

Knowing that many such complaints are made in completely bad faith because they do not want us to succeed, it would still be beneficial to provide some clarity as to what it means and — in the process — illustrate both the current pitiful state of American education and what we as parents, educators, and citizens can do about it.

Personally, I find it beneficial to assume that people who disagree with me do so sincerely and in good faith until they convince me otherwise. And I believe that lots of folks out on the christianist nationalist right really do think they’re terribly oppressed and that they are surrounded by evil and/or stupid people Out To Get Them. It’s a stance that justifies a lot of crappy behavior (can probably make you think that it’s okay to commandeer government funds and sneakily redirect them to the Right People).

But I agree that it would be beneficial for someone in the Woke Panic crowd to explain what “woke” actually means. Will Walters be that person? Well….

In recent years, liberal elites from government officials to union bosses to big businesses have worked to co-opt concepts like justice and morality for their own agendas that are contrary to our founding principles and our way of life.

I don’t even know how one co-opts a concept like justice or morality, but maybe if he explains what agenda he’s talking about and how, exactly, they are contrary to founding principles or our way of life, whatever that is.

But he’s not going to do that. He’s going to follow that sentence with another that says the same thing with the same degree of vaguery, then point out that “naturally, this faction of individuals” is after schools to spread their “radical propaganda.” Still no definition of woke in sight. No–wait. This next start looks promising–

Put simply, “woke” education is the forced projection of inaccurately-held, anti-education values onto our students. Further, to go after wokeness in education means that we are going after the forced indoctrination of our students and our school systems as a whole.

Nope. That’s not helping, either. “Projection” is an odd choice–when I project an image onto a screen, the screen doesn’t change. There’s “projection” when I see in someone else what is really going on in me, which might have some application here (“I assume that everyone else also wants to indoctrinate students into one preferred way of seeing the world”) but that’s probably not what he has in mind. I have no idea how one “forces” projection. “Inaccurately-held” is also a puzzler. The values are accurate, but they’re being held the wrong way? What does this construction get us that a simple “inaccurate” would not? And does Walters really believe that schools are rife with people who are “anti-education,” because that makes me imagine teachers simply refusing to teach and giving nap time all day every day, except for pauses to explain to students that learning things is bad. I suspect “education” means something specific to him, and this piece (aimed at a hyperpartisan audience) does seem to assume a lot of “nudge nudge wink wink we real Americans know what this word really means” which would be fine if the whole premise was not that he was going to explain what certain words actually mean.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Fraud, Gender, History, Hoax, Hypocrisy, Oklahoma, Politics, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism

Ohio: Legislature Gives More Money to Students in Private Schools Than Those in Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2023 //
16

Stephen Dyer, former Ohio legislator, closely follows school funding in the state. After studying the latest budget, he realized that the Legislature was sending more money to private school students than to public school students. The Ohio legislature loves charters, Cybercharters, and vouchers. Apparently, the Republicans who dominate the Legislators don’t care about public schools. Nor do they care about accountability.

Dyer begins:

Look, I’m really excited that the Ohio General Assembly followed through on its promise to continue implementing the Fair School Funding Plan — the state’s second attempt at meeting its constitutional mandate to provide a thorough and efficient system of public schools for its 1.7 million students.

I mean, in nearly 2/3 of Ohio school districts, the state is already meeting or exceeding its promised funding amounts from two years ago. And while the lion’s share of the remaining shortage is felt in the state’s most needy districts (something I expressed concern about earlier this year), the fact that the state is actually starting to fulfill promises made to Ohio’s 1.7 million public school students is encouraging. Again, though, only if they finish the job, of course..

But the massive increase to private school tuition subsidies that accompanied the public school increase is a colossal turd in the punchbowl. How colossal?

Try this on for size:

Because the state increased the private school tuition subsidy to $8,407 per high school student, the state will now provide $210 more per student to parents whose kids are already in private schools than they will to public school students in Ohio’s urban core of Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo or Youngstown schools, which educate 173,000 students.

In fact, that $8,407 per pupil amount is greater than the per pupil state aid for nearly 8 in 10 Ohio students. A remarkable 1.13 million Ohio students will get less state aid than the parents of a private school student will receive next year.

Oh, and did I mention that not a penny of these tuition subsidies will be audited by a public entity? So we have no idea if the money is being spent educating kids or buying sweet rides for private school administrators. (Because that’s never happened in this state).

And the disparity is despite Ohio’s historic public school funding increase that occurred in this budget — again, a great accomplishment.

But man. This is crazy….

It would be one thing if vouchers (taxpayer provided private school tuition subsidies) provided better options for students. But study after study has demonstrated pretty clearly that even in urban districts, generally the public schools do better than the private schools — in Ohio, it’s almost in 9 of 10 instances that the public outperforms the private. Never mind that vouchers have also delayed critical investment in the educations of the 1.7 million Ohio public school students or added significantly to racial segregation.

Please open the link to read the rest of this shocking story.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Florida: Vouchers for All, Rich and Poor, Cut Public School Funding

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2023 //
32

Remember back in the day when vouchers were sold as a way to “save poor kids from failing schools”? Those days are over. The new Republican pitch is “universal vouchers,” vouchers for all, regardless of family income, regardless of whether the students ever attended public schools.

Florida is one of several Republican-led states that have passed universal vouchers. With the new money free-for-all, public schools are hiring marketing directors and communications staff to persuade students to enroll in public schools.

Katherine Kokal of the Palm Beach Post describes how public schools in Palm Beach have responded to the introduction of universal vouchers.

For first time, the Palm Beach County School District will actually need to start convincing parents to send their kids to public school.

That’s because Florida’s expanded school voucher program, which went into effect July 1, opens the door for parents of all incomes to use taxpayer money for tuition at private schools. That money is taken away from the student’s public school district at a cost of about $8,000 per student. In March, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that removed the previous income and enrollment limits on the program.

The program has left loads of uncertainty in the school district’s budget, but one thing remains clear to school leaders: Public schools need to better “market” themselves if they’re going to compete.

Superintendent Mike Burke announced an idea in the spring to market public schools to families weighing their options. The district launched a kindergarten registration campaign to get Palm Beach County’s youngest students in public school classrooms. Their thinking was that if students start in public school, they’re more likely to stay.

Among the first orders of business for the district’s new chief communications strategist will be expanding its marketing campaign to try to prove to parents considering vouchers that public schools are their best choice.

“I think we’re going to have to dedicate real resources to this beyond our website,” Burke said. “We’ve been competing with charter schools for 20 years. We’ve never competed with private schools.”

New voucher options arrive on Florida’s education scene at a time when public school districts are fighting pressure from fringe candidates, library book bans and new limitations on what teachers can talk about in the classroom.

Coupled with new obligations to pay millions for private school vouchers, some education experts say Florida is eroding its public education system altogether.

“It’s hard not to look at all of this and grieve,” said Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University. “Every school has a pitch. What’s different now, particularly in Florida, you’re going to see schools thinking very carefully about how to market themselves vis-à-vis the culture war stuff.”

Not all private schools in Palm Beach County are religious schools, and they’re also separate from charter schools, which are public schools run by private companies.

Palm Beach County is home to 161 private schools registered with the Florida Department of Education as of July 6. Of those schools, 44% are religiously affiliated.

And most accept vouchers.

While 109 private schools accept Family Empowerment Scholarships right now, Burke anticipates that number growing over the next several months.

“I think we’re going to see proliferation of small, ‘mom-and-pop’ private schools,” he said. “Private schools in a strip mall where people think they can turn a profit.”

Please open the link to finish reading the article.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Hoax, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Vouchers

Virginia: State Democratic Party Denounces Attacks on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2023 //
54

The Virginia Democratic Party took a strong and well-informed stand in opposition to attacks on public schools.

It issued the following statement:

The Democratic Party of Virginia

Condemns the Right-Wing, Dark Money-Funded, Republican Agenda to Dismantle Public Education, Divert Public Education Funding to Private Education Management, and

Eliminate Critical Thinking and Evidence-based Curricula from America’s Public Schools

Whereas, 

GOP leaders have for decades sought to dismantle public education by reducing public support to facilitate moving  public funds from public to for-profit schools. 

Rather than focusing explicitly on promoting privatization, the coordinated, right-wing, special-interest-bankrolled,  decades-long effort has established such schemes as the annual “National School Choice Week” event and deployed  “parent” groups such as “Moms for Liberty,” “Parents Defending Education” and the “Independent Women’s Forum”  to make it appear that there is wide opposition to public school policies. Their current tactics are to attack public  schools by opposing masking policies, remote learning, and evidence-based curricula; harassing school board  members, administrators, and staff; and threatening to burn books. “School choice” is rooted in efforts to keep  schools segregated by race, class, and disability. 

Truthout wrote, “’Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein predicted in March 2020 that COVID-19 presented an ideal  opportunity for ‘disaster capitalism,’ a tactic pushed by school privatizers in the wake of the last financial crisis. She  identified the global pandemic as a ‘shock,’ or disruptive event that global elites often use to introduce free-market  ‘solutions’ that redistribute wealth upwards.” Vindicating Klein’s prediction, since the pandemic, a Koch-funded  group produced an “Opportunity on Crisis” report listing numerous school privatization schemes. 

Education is a multibillion-dollar market, and the private sector is eager to get its hands on those dollars. Shrinking  public education also furthers the overarching Republican Party goal of drastically reducing the public sector overall.  Privatization also significantly undermines teacher unions, thereby reducing the voice and power of teachers to  affect the terms and conditions of their workplace. Unions are also a strong and active part of the Democratic base  and hobbling them hobbles their capacity to support Democrats. 

Corporate-focused extreme-right Republican leaders want to censor, control, and narrow the exposure of most  students to the broad knowledge base that would enable them to analyze, understand and accurately evaluate, and  manage the forces that affect their lives. They want to consign the masses of America’s children to for-profit,  unregulated, unaccredited, tax-funded “schools,” with large classes of inexperienced staff or digital platforms with  no teachers at all, designed to supply a less-educated, malleable citizenry and subservient labor pool. Meanwhile,  the children of the financial and corporate elite are to be taught a broad, rich curriculum in small classes led by  experienced teachers in exclusive private schools. 

Preparing people for democratic citizenship was a major reason for the creation of public schools. The Founding  Fathers maintained that the success of American democracy would depend on the competency of its citizens and  that preserving democracy would require an educated population that could understand political and social issues,  participate wisely in civic life, and resist tyrants. Early leaders proposed the creation of a more formal and unified  system of publicly funded schools. 

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced  that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.” Jefferson  further explained: “The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country,  for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our  population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries.” 

In the 1830s, Massachusetts legislator Horace Mann advocated for the creation of public schools that would be  universally available to all children, free of charge, and funded by the state. He emphasized that a public investment  in education would benefit the whole nation by preparing students to obtain jobs that will strengthen the nation’s  economic position and promote cohesion across social classes. Proponents later reasoned that public schools would  not serve as a unifying force if private schools drew off substantial numbers of students, resources, and parental  support from the most advantaged groups. To succeed, a system of common schooling would require children from  all social classes, and educating children from different religious, and European ethnic backgrounds in the same 

schools would also help them learn to get along. Despite its founding ideals, throughout the historical development  of early public education, there was discrimination against access for girls, children of color, new immigrants, minority religious groups, children with disabilities and others. However, the founding rationale has guided the  evolution of the public-school mission to promoting equity of access to all in the mid-20th century, addressing social  needs after WW II and ensuring that all students receive a high-quality education in the 21st century. 

The original reasons for public schools — preparing people for jobs and citizenship, unifying a diverse population,  and promoting equity–remain relevant and urgent today. The Republican agenda to dismantle public education will  reverse all of these. 

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is facilitating this ongoing right-wing scheme of school privatization and blocking  of evidenced-based curricula with his executive orders allowing parents to opt out of mask mandates in Virginia  schools, and ending “the use of divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in public education.” Meanwhile,  Virginia’s Democratic legislators are introducing and protecting legislation that supports and promotes public  schools with enriched and broad curricula to prepare students for citizenship and work in the 21st century. 

Most American parents, students, and teachers do not agree with this privatization and curricula-limiting scheme,  and many are standing up for schools that protect kids’ health, teach the truth, and promote equality for all. Our  democracy 

requires informed citizens. Public education enables its citizens to develop their full potential, which enables our  democracy to flourish. It enables individuals to learn and grow and creates a successful and prosperous society. 

Therefore, be it resolved that the Democratic Party of Virginia: 

1. Calls on local, state, and federal officials, within the purview of their offices and roles, to: 

a. Investigate, expose, and prosecute all individuals and groups who deploy intimidation tactics, threats of  violence and violence against school board members, administrators, teachers, and others; 

b. Initiate a public campaign, including forums, social and other media, etc., to highlight the historical  compact establishing universal primary and secondary public education as a necessity to prepare an  informed citizenry for their role in a democracy; illuminate the accomplishments of many decades of public  education and the benefit to our country’s democracy; and provide a platform for people, including doctors,  scientists, business leaders, and religious leaders, to relate their stories of the public school teachers who  were instrumental in their success; 

c. Increase funding and support for public schools and educator, administrator, and staff compensation;  and 

d. Introduce legislation and support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal  arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education. 

2. Commends Officials at all levels, including democratically elected school boards, who implement and parents  who support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal arts, science, technology,  engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education. 

3. Calls on grassroots activists and organizations to launch a campaign to expose the right-wing, special-interest funded, Republican agenda to dismantle public education, divert public education tax dollars to private management  of public schools, and to eliminate critical thinking and evidence-based curricula from America’s public schools. 

4. Calls on grassroots activists, organizations, community and faith groups, parents, and the public to support increased funding for public schools and educator, administrator, and staff compensation, and to support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Virginia, Vouchers

Arizona: Vouchers Might Bankrupt the State

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2023 //
45

Arizona is a typical voucher state. The program started small, then grew almost every year. Vouchers for the students with special needs, vouchers for the poor, vouchers for children of the military, on and on.

Parents and teachers put a referendum on the ballot in 2019, much to the consternation of the Koch machine; the public overwhelmingly rejected vouchers. The vote was 65-35 against vouchers.

The legislature, buoyed by money from DeVos and Koch, ignored the referendum and expanded vouchers to the ultimate. Now Arizona has a universal voucher program. Every student in the state, whatever their family income, can claim a voucher. But the state is now worrying whether the cost of vouchers will plunge Arizona into bankruptcy. The Staye Superintendent, a hard-right Republican, says there’s no problem.

Public school advocates predict that the voucher program will eventually cost $1 billion a year.

Currently, 75% of those who claimed vouchers never attended public school. They are the biggest drain on the budget.

Mary Jo Pitzl of the Arizona Republic writes:

Backers of Arizona’s universal school voucher program have widely touted it as a money saver for the state. But for most potential participants, the program adds to the state’s costs, a new analysis shows.

The finding comes as legislative budget officials reported a surprising and steep decline in tax collections in May, raising questions about whether the state can sustain the booming price of the voucher program in coming years.

The analysis from the Arizona Association of School Business Officials broke down the different categories of students eligible for the Empowerment Scholarship Account program and showed savings come only when charter school students transfer into the program.

In every other situation — whether the student comes from a public school district, a private school, a homeschool or micro school environment — there is an extra cost to taxpayers for the ESA voucher, the analysis shows. The costs can range from $425 if a student leaves a district public school to $7,148 if the student already attends a private school or home school.

The idea that vouchers save the state money is based on a law that makes each universal voucher worth 90% of what the state pays for a child in a public school, presumably resulting in a 10% savings. The more children who leave the public school system for a voucher, the theory goes, the greater the savings to the education budget.

But the 90% equation isn’t so simple. That percentage is pegged to what the state pays for students in public charter schools, which is higher than for students in public district schools. For example, the basic state aid for a K-8 student in a district public school is $6,339, while it’s $7,515 in the charter system.

At 90% of the charter rate, the average ESA scholarship for an elementary-aged student this past year was $6,764. That saves the state $751 for charter students, but it adds $325 in costs for the state for each public school student who moves to the voucher program.

For high school students, the figures are higher: A $1,380 savings to the budget if a charter student transfers, but a $543 loss per each student who leaves a district public school.

Charter schools account for a minority of students in Arizona’s public school system: 19% in the last school year, according to figures from the Arizona Department of Education.

Voucher expenses are markedly more if a student was never in the public school system, or if a student transfers from one of the two dozen public school districts that get no basic state education aid, such as the Scottsdale Unified School District or Cave Creek Unified School District, because they have wealthy property-tax bases.

In both those cases, the $6,764 for an elementary school voucher (or $7,532 for a high-school voucher) is drawn entirely from the state’s general fund, creating a new education expense…

In the ESA program’s first year, those in private schools or from home-schooling environments are widely believed to have fueled most of the program’s four-fold growth to more than 61,000 students. With the families of these students eligible for state aid when previously they were paying out of pocket, lawmakers had to allocate an extra $376 million from the general fund to cover the higher-than-expected growth of the universal voucher program in its inaugural year.

In late May, state schools superintendent Tom Horne released a report estimating enrollment would climb much higher, hitting 100,000 students by June 2024, at an overall cost of $900 million.

Most of that enrollment growth will come from the district public schools, he predicted at the May news conference, arguing it will save the state money because of the 90% formula….

As the universal voucher program enters its second year, supporters and critics alike are watching to see what enrollment trends emerge and how they will affect state spending….

Some see the state barreling toward a budget crisis, given the onset of the flat income tax, which caused state revenues to drop dramatically in May. Others are less concerned, noting the ESA program takes only a fraction of the state’s K-12 budget.

Lawmakers have repeatedly noted they are obligated by the Constitution to fund education. But if there isn’t enough money to do that and keep the rest of state government running, hard choices could lay ahead.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Vouchers

Pennsylvania: Governor Shapiro Agrees to Scuttle Vouchers in Budget

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2023 //
48

Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania announced that he would drop his support for vouchers in order to pass a state budget. Republicans who control the State Senate want vouchers. Democrats, with a slim majority in the House, are opposed to vouchers.

HARRISBURG — Gov. Josh Shapiro says he plans to scrap his push for private school vouchers in Pennsylvania’s state budget in order to close a deal with the commonwealth’s divided legislature five days after the deadline.

The Democrat issued a statement Wednesday acknowledging that talks had deadlocked over a $100 million voucher program, which he had supported and which state Senate Republicans passed as part of their budget proposal last week. Pennsylvania House Democratic leaders oppose vouchers and had refused to act on the Senate’s bill.

Shapiro’s solution, he said, was to promise state House Democrats that if they pass the Senate’s budget, he will then line-item veto the vouchers from the $45.5 billion spending plan.

“Our Commonwealth should not be plunged into a painful, protracted budget impasse while our communities wait for the help and resources this commonsense budget will deliver,” Shapiro said in a statement.

Spotlight PA had previously reported the existence of Shapiro’s plan to cut vouchers out of the budget deal.

In his statement, Shapiro said that over the weekend, state House Democrats requested a legal memo from his administration that confirmed that any voucher program passed as part of the budget could not be implemented without separate enabling legislation — legislation that House Democrats might be able to block.

“Knowing that the two chambers will not reach consensus at this time to enact [the voucher program], and unwilling to hold up our entire budget process over this issue, I will line-item veto the full $100 million appropriation and it will not be part of this budget bill,” Shapiro said.

In a letter to state Senate Republicans viewed by Spotlight PA, House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) wrote Wednesday that his chamber plans to take Shapiro at his word.

“With the Governor’s assurance that he neither has the legal authority nor intention to move forward with [vouchers] at this time, the House will consider [the Senate budget bill] on concurrence later today,” Bradford wrote.

The voucher program would fund private school scholarships for students in low-achieving public school districts.

The deal that included it, which passed the state Senate 29-21 on Friday, included key Democratic priorities like increased education funding, universal free school breakfast, and the commonwealth’s first-ever funding for public legal defense. However, Democrats viewed the vouchers as a poison pill.

When they passed their plan last week, state Senate GOP leaders made it clear that their support was contingent on vouchers being included, with Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) telling reporters that any plan that didn’t include vouchers would have to have “a different number.”

This new maneuver from Shapiro, assuming continued support from state House Democrats, would not require the proposed plan to go back to the Senate, thus circumventing Republicans there. Republican leaders did not immediately return a request for comment.

While Bradford has said House Democrats are on board with Shapiro’s plan, members of the caucus expressed doubts throughout the day Wednesday about any plan that would require them to approve a budget with vouchers and rely on the governor to then eliminate them.

“There’s not a lot of trust amongst [Democratic] members and the administration,” one House Democrat, who requested anonymity to discuss ongoing budget negotiations, told Spotlight PA.

Categories Democrats, Elections, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers

Tom Ultican: Chartered to Indoctrinate

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2023 //
15

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas likes to say that he supports vouchers because he wants “education, not indoctrination.” This is hilarious because most vouchers are used for religious schools, whose purpose is indoctrination. They certainly do not teach students to think critically, as that might refute their mission.

Tom Ultican read the recent report by the Network for Public Education about the growth of faith-infused charter schools. The report is called “A Sharp Right Turn.” If you want your child to learn critical thinking, these schools would be the wrong choice. Critical thinking means that you are encouraged to question what you are taught.

Ultican writes:

Carol Burris and team at Network for Public Education (NPE) just published, “A Sharp Turn Right” (STR). NPE President Diane Ravitch noted there are several problems associated with charter schools’ profiteering, high closure rates, no accountability…

“This new report, A Sharp Turn Right, exposes yet one more problem — the creation of a new breed of charter schools that are imbued with the ideas of right-wing Christian nationalism. These charter schools have become weapons of the Right as they seek to destroy democratically governed public schools while turning back the clock of education and social progress by a century.” (STR Pages 3 and 4)

STR focuses on two types of charter schools. One characterizes themselves as “classical academies” and the other touts “back to basics,”without noting they also employ the same “classical” curriculum. Both provide right-wing clues on their web-sites, alerting parents of alignment with Christian nationalism. Marketing is often red, white and blue, with pictures of the American founding fathers, and discussions on patriotism and virtue. Some schools include direct references to religion like Advantage Academy’s claim of educating students in a “faith-friendly environment…”

Using keyword searches, NPE identified 273 active charter schools fitting this description and noted they surely missed more. Nearly 30% of them were for-profit; about double the rate for the charter sector in general. Almost 50% of them have opened since Donald Trump was inaugurated president in 2017… (STR Page 7)

It identifies the largest charter school systems indoctrinating students with Christian nationalist ideology and discloses where they are operating. Discussing, in some depth, Hillsdale College with its Barney charter schools and the large number of new charter affiliates, the report asserts:

“What they all have in common is teaching Hillsdale’s prescriptive 1776 curriculum, which disparages the New Deal and affirmative action while downplaying the effects of slavery. Climate change is not mentioned in the science curriculum; sixth-grade studies include a single reference to global warming.” (STR Page 15)

The reality is today’s taxpayers are forced to pay for schools teaching a form of Christianity associated with white superiority; politically indoctrinating students with specific rightist orthodoxy. What happened to the principal of separation of church and state? This charter schools for indoctrination movement must be stopped before American democracy is sundered.

Ultican reviews the long-held belief in separation of church and state, and the Supreme Court’s decisions that balanced the Constitution’s protection of freedom of religion and its prohibition of any establishment of religion.

This balancing act was disrupted by Reagan’s appointment of Justice Antonin Scalia, who saw no reason to separate church and state. The appointment of Justice Clarence Thomas gave Scalia an ally. Scalia and Thomas believed that all religious activity is religious speech and therefore protected. We saw the most recent example of this reasoning in the Court’s decision holding that discrimination against gay people was acceptable if their very existence offended the religious beliefs of the service provider, since in this case she feared she might be expected to give he assent to their wedding. The Court called its license to discriminate a vindication of free speech rights.

Ultican concludes:

Time to wake up and smell the coffee; the modern Supreme Court is corrupt and needs reformation. Instead of deciding issues based on law and precedence, they create theories designed to support a political philosophy rather than showing fidelity to the constitution. This reflects a complete degradation of jurisprudence. The poorly formed decisions regularly undermine the rights and protections the founders bestowed on citizens; all while some Justices appear to be ethically compromised.

For the first time in American history, billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing to private religious schools. The STR report shines a light on charter schools with religious agendas. Even more disturbing, these new taxpayer funded privatized schools are literally indoctrination centers, teaching a depraved political ideology.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state
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