Archives for category: Privatization
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Arise, Patriots, and Save Our Nation’s Children from the Machine

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2017 //
7

Joanne Yatvin is now retired. She has been a teacher, principal, and superintendent, as well as President of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is a literacy specialist.

Allons Enfants de la Patrie

Arise Children of Our Country

During the last quarter of the 20th century powerful American politicians decided that human learning was a fixed process in which all healthy young people could and should acquire a specific body of knowledge, information, and skills over a fixed period of time. With that belief, the low scores of American students on international tests were a hard pill for politicians to swallow.

They concluded that those scores were the fault of our schools and their teachers, also parents who were shirking their responsibility to demand the best from their children. American students of all social backgrounds were growing up lazy, ignorant, and unprepared to be the competent adult workers, leaders, creators, and patriots they were meant to be.

Although there is no research evidence to confirm such beliefs about American students’ laziness or the ineffectiveness of our schools, public education has operated on those assumptions continually through the actions of Congress, the Department of Education, and state legislatures. Those bodies have also used public humiliation and punishment of students, teachers, school principals, unions and—indirectly—parents to prevent any resistance from gaining ground.

Thus far, all efforts to reverse the current concept of education and create a humane and reasonable foundation for our public schools have failed. Recently, we believed that the new federal law, ESSA, would return authority to states and their communities, but that belief was crushed by the Department of Education with its rejection of any state plans aimed to serve students’ needs and interests rather than raise test scores and improve graduation rates.

From my perspective, as the mother of four children who were public school students in far better times, and also as a teacher and school principal back then; there is only one possible solution. We must have a widespread public rebellion against the current system. Parents should refuse to have their children participate in high stakes testing and demand age-appropriate standards for all grades. Communities need to re-shape their public schools to fit the needs of their students; and state officials must fight any moves by the Federal government to punish schools for non-compliance.

We have wasted more than twenty years trying out the beliefs and programs ordered by powerful, but know-nothing politicians. For the sake of our children and our country we must take back public education and allow it to grow through wisdom and humanity.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Industry, Privatization, Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching

Gary Rubinstein: “I Taught at Houston’s XQ Super School” (A MUST READ!)

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2017 //
26

This is one of Gary Rubinstein’s best posts ever.

He watched Laurene Powell Jobs’ extravaganza about her efforts to redesign the American high school into XQ Super Schools. The one where she bought time on four networks.

The one where celebrities said again and again that high schools have not changed in 100 years; Gary does a good job of shredding that myth. Yes, high schools have changed in the past 100 years, but some things should never change and will be found in high schools all over the world.

He notes that the show has had no effect. It seems to have disappeared as soon as it was on the air.

But it didn’t disappear for him because he realized that he taught at one of the XQ Super Schools, a high school in Houston that allegedly was a failing school that was miraculously transformed.

Gary shows that it was not the nightmare school that the producers claimed it to be, nor has it had the miraculous transformation that the show now boasts about.

It was a good school when he was there, even though there was a gang population in the ninth grade.

What he discovers is that the school now has a charter school on campus, which apparently serves as a dumping ground for the kids who are not going to graduate. The regular school raised its statistics by pushing out the bad kids.

No miracle there!

But the school does have a really nice garden. That’s new. That’s good. Is that what caused the claimed spike in test scores? Not likely.

He writes:

One thing that this program definitely accomplished is product placement. It seems that one feature of innovative high schools is that students use a lot of laptops and it seems like most of those laptops are Apple products. While iPads were once considered to be something that was going to be a big part of education, the thing most schools are actually using are a type of laptop called a Chromebook, which is an inexpensive Google product. Since the kids in these schools are using Apple laptops, maybe one purpose of this show was to help with Apple’s competition with Google for the education market.

One thing we did not see a lot of in this was overt teacher bashing. I suppose this is why Randi Weingarten attended and tweeted about how wonderful a program this is. Now even though there wasn’t overt teacher bashing, there was some less direct bashing like the part where celebrities were asked what they wish they learned in high school. Based on their answers, the only conclusion is that their teachers must not have taught those things to them very well.

This program didn’t really seem to resonate with anybody and most people on both sides of the education reform wars have pretty much forgotten about it already. It was a colossal waste of money and shows that being rich doesn’t mean that you necessarily have the right to dictate education policy.

I think that it is not an accident that there was no mention of evil unions or miracle charter schools or school choice in this program. My sense is that reformers realize that most of the talking points from Waiting For Superman don’t work anymore. The public has wised up. They don’t believe as much that teacher’s unions are the problem or that charter schools are the solution. So this program is an attempt to get a new rationale that the public can believe and get behind whatever reforms the reformers want to try, which of course will be more union busting and charters and vouchers. So the new thing is that schools haven’t evolved much in the past 100 years and that’s a problem. All that matters is that the public believes there is some problem, whatever it is. It doesn’t need to be the unions, but it must be something so the 100 year thing will likely be repeated a lot of over the next decade as the new villain for them to save us from.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Houston, Innovation, Privatization

The Gulen Charter Schools: An Exhaustive Exposé

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2017 //
27

Lawyer Robert Amsterdam was hired by the Republic of Turkey to investigate the Gulen charter school movement in the United States.

The Turkish government is headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is engaged in political struggle with Fethullah Gulen. Gulen is a cleric who lives in seclusion in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. The Turkish government is Islamic, and Gulen is an Islamic cleric. I can’t say that I understand the political issues, but I do know that Erdogan is not a democratic leader, and there are no heroes here. After a recent failed coup attempt, Erdogan blamed Gulen and proceeded to repress civil liberties and jail thousands of suspected Gulenists.

Fethullah Gulen remains safely ensconced in his mountain retreat. He controls one of the biggest charter chains in the United States. It was surpassed in numbers recently by KIPP as the largest corporate charter chain.

American film maker Mark Hall recently produced a film about the Gulen schools. It is called “Killing Ed.” He tried to interview Gulen but was not admitted to the compound. He interviewed former Gulen teachers and they told him about kickbacks and other dubious practices that would not be tolerated in public schools.

The New York Times has reported on the Gulen practice of handing out big contracts to Turkish contractors, without choosing the low bidder. Similar practices triggered a state audit in Georgia. The FBI raided Gulen schools in the Midwest as part of an investigation of white-collar crime.

A couple of years ago, I was interviewed by Mr. Amsterdam. He told me he had uncovered gross violations of law and ethics by the Gulen schools. I told him that what bothers me about the Gulen schools is the idea that American public schools are controlled by foreign nationals. One of the central purposes of the American public school is to teach children their rights and responsibilities as citizens. How can that be outsourced to foreign nationals? As a thought experiment, I asked, how would Americans feel about their public schools being taken over by nationals of Russia? Chile? Cambodia? Are Americans so hapless and incompetent that we can’t manage our own public schools and staff them with American teachers? It is perfectly reasonable to hire foreign teachers, especially to teach their own language, but why should an American “public school” be turned over lock, stock, and barrel to a Turkish organization? It is not as if Turkey is one of the best performing nations in the world. It is not.

Amsterdam listened patiently but said his primary concern was massive corruption.

He has just published a very large book called “Empire of Deceit,” documenting the massive misuse of public funds for Gulen schools, the misuse of the H-1B visa program to import Turkish teachers, the practice of tithing to the Gulen organization, and the way that Gulen schools steer contracts to Turkish contractors. He has documented practices that would never be tolerated in public schools.

You can go to his website and find a list of all the Gulen schools in every state.

You can also download the book for free.

All of this is troublesome, but for me the most troublesome aspect is the idea of outsourcing public schools to foreign nationals, no matter which nation they represent. Public schools belong to the public, and they should not be outsourced or given to private corporations.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Citizenship, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Gulen Charter Schools, Privatization

Donald Cohen: Why Is Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital Investing in Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2017 //
35

Donald Cohen, executive director of “In the Public Interest,” an organization that fights privatization of public services, writes about the curious combination of people who poured serious money into the Massachusetts charter school battle last fall.

When the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance forced a pro-charter school political organization to reveal its donors, guess which words jumped off the page? Bain Capital.

Of the more than $15 million Families for Excellent Schools spent pushing last November’s controversial ballot initiative to increase the number of charter schools in Massachusetts, $1.4 million came from Bain investors, including Romney’s fellow cofounder Josh Bekenstein.

The initiative was voted down—parents, teachers, and residents mobilized to protect traditional public schools—but until now we had little proof that a shadowy gang of private investors and billionaires were leading the charge.

Donors included the owner of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, the billionaire hedge fund manager Seth Klarman, Alice Walton of the Walmart family fame, and even Massachusetts’s current chairman of Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the venture capitalist Paul Sagan.

So why does Bain and a handful of billionaires want more charter schools?

We really don’t know, at least yet. Like everything in finance, the tangled knots and paper trails are seemingly endless.

Maybe they’re just being nice and philanthropic, trying to help, as Romney himself once called them, “inner city kids.” But maybe they’re up to something else.

In our report on California’s charter schools, we dug into the $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars and subsidies spent in the past 15 years to help private groups lease, build, or buy school buildings. Due to a severe lack of regulation, some of this money has ended up in the pockets of investors and executives.

For example, two schools in Stockton, California, are renting space for three and half times the market rate from a company with business ties to the CEO of the charter operator that oversees them.

Los Angeles’s Alliance network of charter schools has received more than $110 million in federal and state taxpayer support for its facilities, which are not owned by the public, but are part of a growing empire of privately owned real estate now worth in excess of $200 million.

The bottom line is, there’s lots of taxpayer money sloshing around in an unregulated market, and few people know where it’s going.

For some well-meaning educators and parents, charter schools are about innovation and alternative learning. But for the investors and billionaires behind the growing charter school industry, they seem to be about something else altogether: private control of taxpayer money.

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

Gary Rubinstein: Tennessee ASD Schools Get Lowest Possible Growth Scores

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2017 //
22

Gary Rubinstein has been watching the trajectory of the much-ballyhooed Tennessee Achievement School District. It was the pinnacle of reform chutzpah. Give us the lowest scoring schools in the state, said the reformers, and we will turn them into high performing schools in only five years.The basic strategy is to turn public schools over to charter operators.

That’s what they said in 2012. Five years ago. Time’s up.

Gary writes here–with full acknowledgement that “growth scores” are “garbage,” that the ASD is lagging far behind. Why use “garbage” scores? Because that the reformers’ chosen metric. The state has not released the latest scores, but the growth scores are abysmal.

He writes:

“Six years ago, the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD) was created with the promise that within 5 years they would ‘catapult’ the schools in the bottom 5% to the top 25%. They would do this by either taking over schools or finding charter schools to take over those schools.

“Things were not looking good for the ASD four years into the experiment and then they got a reprieve in the 5th year when the state test results were nullified because of technical snafus.

“The spring 2017 test scores would settle the question about whether or not the ASD would be a success or a failure. But the test scores were not announced at the usual time, over the summer. Instead they released the high school scores a few weeks ago, which were awful for the ASD with less than 1% meeting the standard in math. A few days after that, the superintendent of the ASD, Malika Anderson, resigned after less than 2 years on the job. She had replaced ASD founder Chris Barbic, who resigned after 4 years.

“Well, the 3-8 Tennessee test scores still haven’t been released, but the other day the state released the ‘growth scores’ for the districts. Tennessee is actually the birthplace of the value added growth model and the version of it that they use is called TVAAS.

“The Achievement School District probably made a mistake in making their name something that would likely be on the top of an alphabetical list of scores. Looking at the chart from Chalkbeat Tennessee, it can be seen very clearly, that The ASD students, on average, did not ‘grow’ at least according to the magical TVAAS formula that they have so much confidence in.

“Looking at the individual school results from the state website, we see that 19 out of 29 schools in the ASD got a 1 on their overall growth for 2017. Among those schools was KIPP Memphis Prep.”

Gary will write again when the scores are released, but the prospects are not good for the schools in the ASD.

Meanwhile the ASD concept has been replicated in other states, modeled on the Tennessee ASD. I am not sure how many others have created their own ASD but North Carolina and Nevada are among them.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Tennessee, Testing

Eva Moskowitz to Chalkbeat: Buzz Off! We Are a Private Corporation, Not Public!

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
28

Chalkbeat thought that it would be interesting to gain access to the email correspondence of Success Academy Network to find out how they handled the Dan Loeb crisis. It’s reporter filed a Freedom of Information request. Dan Loeb is the billionaire who is chairman of the SA board who made a racist comment, writing that the leading African American legislator in the State Senate did more damage to black children than the KKK.

The SA Network refused to release any records because they are private, not public. Public records laws don’t apply to them, they said.

Thus, they are public only for getting money, but private when it’s time for accountability and transparency. Accountability and transparency, it turns out, are for the little people.

Chalkbeat writes:

“Success Academy Charter Schools, Inc. (SACS) is a private nonprofit organization that provides services to charter schools, but it is not itself a charter school or a government agency under FOIL,” wrote Success Academy lawyer Robert Dunn in response to an appeal of a Chalkbeat request for Moskowitz’s emails under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, which the network had denied. “Thus, it is not in and of itself subject to FOIL or required to have an appeal process.”

“In addition, Success officials said the emails would not need to be released because they qualify as internal communications that are exempt from the public-records law.

“The city’s most prominent charter school networks — including KIPP and Uncommon — have similar CMO structures, which appears to shield their leaders from at least some FOIL requests. While “the KIPP NYC public charter schools themselves are subject to the New York Freedom of Information Law,” KIPP spokesperson Steve Mancini said in an email, the “CMOs are not.”

“But some government-transparency advocates argue that the law is not so clear cut.

“Because CMOs are so heavily involved in the operation of public schools, it could be argued that the vast majority of their records are kept on behalf of public schools and should be public, said Bob Freeman, executive director of the Committee on Open Government and an expert on public-records laws.

“Even though nonprofits aren’t covered by FOIL, he said, “Everything you do for an entity that is subject to FOIL — everything you prepare, transmit, and receive — falls within the scope of FOIL.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Privatization

Ohio: The School That Produces the Most Dropouts Wants to Become a Dropout Recovery Center

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
9

I know this sounds ridiculous, but remember this is Ohio. In Ohio, the charter industry can get away with almost anything!

Stephen Dyer discovered a study completed in 2013 by researchers at Ohio State University finding that ECOT (the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) produces more dropouts than any other charter school in the state.

So, naturally, it makes sense (or no sense at all) for ECOT to apply to become a dropout recovery center.

Four years prior to the school’s application to be considered a dropout recovery school this summer, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow — the state’s oldest and largest online school — was found to be Ohio’s leading producer of high school dropouts while only recovering 1.5 percent of those dropouts.

In a 2013 report completed by Ohio State University’s Education Research Center, the authors concluded that between 2006-2010, ECOT produced 13,000 dropouts, or 21.5 percent of all dropouts in Ohio’s charter schools. In 2010 alone, ECOT had 2,908 dropouts — nearly double the number of the Cleveland Municipal School District’s 1,600. At the time, Cleveland had nearly double the students enrolled as ECOT had, according to the report.

Of its nearly 3,000 dropouts, only 75 returned. Quite a record.

And now the state is considering ECOT’s request to become a dropout recovery and prevention center.

What a farce!

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

What Do Failing Charter Schools Do? They Turn into Voucher Schools!

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
25

Annie Waldman, writing for ProPublica, examines the curious fate of failing charter schools.

Public schools that don’t get higher test scores are closed or turned over to charter operators.

But what happens to failing charter schools?

They turn into voucher schools!

“This past June, Florida’s top education agency delivered a failing grade to the Orange Park Performing Arts Academy in suburban Jacksonville for the second year in a row. It designated the charter school for kindergarten through fifth grade as the worst public school in Clay County, and one of the lowest performing in the state.

“Two-thirds of the academy’s students failed the state exams last year, and only a third of them were making any academic progress at all. The school had had four principals in three years, and teacher turnover was high, too.

“My fourth grader was learning stuff that my second grader was learning — it shouldn’t be that way,” said Tanya Bullard, who moved her three daughters from the arts academy this past summer to a traditional public school. “The school has completely failed me and my children.”

“The district terminated the academy’s charter contract. Surprisingly, Orange Park didn’t shut down — and even found a way to stay on the public dime. It reopened last month as a private school charging $5,000 a year, below the $5,886 maximum that low-income students receive to attend the school of their choice under a state voucher program. Academy officials expect all of its students to pay tuition with the publicly backed coupons.

“Reverend Alesia Ford-Burse, an African Methodist Episcopal pastor who founded the academy, told ProPublica that the school deserves a second chance, because families love its dance and art lessons, which they otherwise couldn’t afford. “Kids are saying, ‘F or not, we’re staying,’” she said.

“While it’s widely known that private schools convert to charter status to take advantage of public dollars, more schools are now heading in the opposite direction. As voucher programs across the country proliferate, shuttered charter schools, like the Orange Park Performing Arts Academy, have begun to privatize in order to stay open with state assistance.”

Why convert from charter school to voucher school?

Voucher schools are less likely to have any state supervision or accountability than charter schools. If the accountability bar is low for charters, it is almost invisible for voucher schools.

“As private schools, the ex-charters are less accountable both to the government and the public. It can be nearly impossible to find out how well some of them are performing. About half of the voucher and voucher-like programs in the country require academic assessments of their students, but few states publish the complete test results, or use that data to hold schools accountable.

“While most states have provisions for closing low-quality charter schools, few, if any, have the power to shut down low-performing voucher schools…

“The type of voucher program that rescues failed charter schools like Orange Park in Florida may soon be replicated nationwide. Visiting a religious school in Miami last April, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos praised the state’s approach as a possible model for a federal initiative.

“Typically, voucher programs are directly funded with taxpayer dollars. Florida’s largest program pursues a different strategy. Its “tax-credit scholarships” are backed by donations from corporations. They contribute to nonprofit organizations, which, in turn, distribute the money to the private schools. In exchange, the donors receive generous dollar-for-dollar tax credits from the state. This subsidy indirectly shifts hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the state’s coffers to private schools. More than 100,000 students whose families meet the income eligibility requirements have received the tax-credit coupons this year.

“Of the nearly 2,900 private schools in Florida, over 1,730 participated in the tax-credit voucher program during 2016-17, according to the most recent state Department of Education data. On average, each school received about $300,000 last year.

“While more than two-thirds of these schools are religious, the roundabout funding approach protects the vouchers against legal challenges that they violate the separation of church and state. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by the Florida Education Association, a teacher’s union, challenging the constitutionality of the voucher program.

“In an education budget proposal from May, DeVos detailed her voucher plans, pitching a $250 million plan to study and expand individual state initiatives. She has since suggested that the administration may also create a federal tax-credit voucher scheme through an impending tax overhaul.

“School choice advocates like DeVos have long contended that vouchers improve educational opportunities for low-income families. They reason that competition raises school quality, and that parents, given more options, will select the best school for their children.

“A growing body of research, though, casts doubt on this argument. It shows voucher-backed students may not be performing better than their public school counterparts, and may do worse.”

What has become clear is that the privatization movement is not about providing better education. Choice advocates no longer believe that they are saving “poor kids from failing public schools.” Typically the so-called “failing” public school is superior to the voucher school. It is about choice for the sake of choice. It is about distributing money to religious and for-profit groups, which creates a political base to sustain choice. It is about undermining public education.

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

Los Angeles County Investigates Enrollment of Catholic School Students in Online Academy

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2017 //
21

This is a new kind of charter school scandal. A virtual school enrolled students already enrolled in Catholic schools and claimed full state tuition. The virtual school gave the Catholic school cash and laptops. Meanwhile, the parents paid tuition to the Catholic school. In effect, the students attended two schools.

Bizarre new world of profit-taking.

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-lennox-virtual-academy-20170920-story.html

Categories Accountability, Catholic Schools, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Over Half a Million Views! YOU Did It!

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2017 //
56

Thanks to your efforts, the inaugural video about the fight to save public schools from privatization has reached over half a million viewers. In addition, it has been logged in by over a million Facebook feeds.

This is the video you shared. Please share it some more. We are aiming for one million views!

Our voices together have generated a mighty roar!

The public is waking up to the threat to their public schools.

They know that Betsy DeVos hates public schools and wants their children to go to charter schools, religious schools, cyber-charters—anything but a public school. She truly doesn’t understand the role of public schools in a democracy, nor does she have any ideas about how to improve them other than to eliminate them.

Together, we are sending her a message. The public schools belong to the public. They were paid for with tax dollars, and we are not giving them away, leasing them, or selling them off to entrepreneurs.

We will not tolerate this theft of public assets.

The public schools are a public responsibility, not a consumer good.

Categories Network for Public Education, Privatization, Supporting public schools
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