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Linda Lyon: The Fight to Save Public Education and Democracy in Arizona

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2017 //
10

Linda Lyon is a retired Air Force colonel and President-Elect of the Arizona School Boards Association.

She writes here about the forces massing against the parents and educators who oppose vouchers. Betsy DeVos’s organization American Federation for Children has jumped into the campaign, smearing Arizona’s Teacher of the Year. What a disgrace! DeVos vs. democracy.


During the last legislative session in Arizona, lawmakers approved a full expansion of vouchers to all 1.1 million Arizona students against very vocal opposition. In response, Save Our Schools Arizona conducted a grassroots petition drive with over 2,500 volunteers collecting over 111K signatures to get the issue on next year’s ballot.

To fight back, privatization proponents have recently ramped up their “take no prisoners” war on public education in Arizona with attacks on Arizona’s 2016 Teacher of the Year, Christine Marsh. According to The Arizona Republic, the American Federation for Children (AFC), (“dark money” group previously led by Betsy Devos), recently “unleashed robocalls” in the Phoenix area targeting Marsh. In a related effort, a Republican state legislator, Rep. David Livingston, R-Glendale, also filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Isela Blanc, D-Tempe, accusing her of disorderly conduct.

What is the egregious violation these women are accused of? According to voucher proponents, (during the drive to gain petition signatures for an anti-voucher referendum), both circulated petitions without a box at the top of the petition checked. The box, according to state law, is required to be checked prior to petitions being circulated, to reflect whether the circulator is a volunteer or paid petition gatherer. In Livingston’s complaint and in AFC’s robocall, Blanc and Marsh respectively, are accused of “falsifying petition sheets” by marking the boxes after the signatures were collected.

I understand the law is the law, but I’ve circulated many petitions and I can tell you that not one signatory has ever given a damn about whether that little box was checked. They don’t care who is circulating the petition, just that it is legitimate and for a cause they care about. The “box” in question likely matters to someone, but certainly not to the voting public.

Yet, AFC chose to reach into Arizona to demand Marsh “come clean on who altered” her petition. “I’m calling from the American Federation for Children with an alert about an election scandal in this district,” the call said. “Christine Marsh, candidate for state Senate, circulated a petition sheet which was later falsified and filed with the Arizona Secretary of State, a felony. Christine Marsh won’t say whether it was she or someone else who broke the law by tampering with the document. Christine needs to come forward with the truth. Christine, stop hiding behind the 5th amendment and come clean.”

Always one to cut right to the heart of the matter, Marsh told The Republic “she was ‘incredulous’ that an out-of-state special-interest group was spending money in her race 15 months before the election.”

I personally know Christine Marsh, am very proud to have had her representing our state, and understand why AFC and the pro-privatization lobby is threatened by her. Christine has taught English Language Arts for almost a quarter century and she still thinks she has the best job in the world. She is passionate about her students’ success and is a great example of the type of excellent teachers we have in our public district schools. She doesn’t do it for the money, but because she absolutely loves the students. She is also a vocal advocate for her students and public education and is not afraid to speak out to combat injustices. She is now running for the AZ Legislature (a job that will pay even less than she makes as a teacher), because she knows that is the only way she’ll have a chance at affecting real change.

Categories Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization

Ohio: Charter School Sponsor Gets Reprieve Even Though Its Charters Are Rated F

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2017 //
8

Thanks to Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy for alerting me to this shocking and disgusting story.

A charter school sponsor, the Ohio Council of Community Schools, is responsible for 50 charter schools. It was exempted from any accountability because it split from its partner, the University of Toledo.

“The council and the university have been partners for 15 years in sponsoring – creating and overseeing charter schools – after the state decided to let more organizations beyond the Ohio Department of Education sponsor schools. While the university was the official legal sponsor, it created the council as a non-profit to do all the oversight work.

“The relationship has been a controversial one, drawing accusations over the years of favoritism and nepotism. See below for more on those concerns.

“Most recently, the state rated the two as “ineffective” as a charter sponsor last fall after their 50 schools landed an academic rating of zero – the equivalent of an F – as a group. Those schools include 11 in Cleveland.

“If student test scores did not improve by the end of this school year, the partners would have been booted out of the sponsorship business.

“Not anymore.

“By splitting from the university, the Council moves on with a clean slate and the poor results will be assigned to the university.”

No results. No accountability. State money wasted. Children’s education harmed.

Who are the criminals in state government who permit this fraud to continue.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Privatization

Here is a Good Reason to Buy Samuel Abrams’ “Education and the Commercial Mindset”

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2017 //
8

Samuel Abrams is director of the Teachers College, Columbia University, Center on the Study of Privatization of Education. He wrote a wonderful book called “Education and the Commercial Mindset.” Most of the book is focused on the haplessness and failure of the for-profit Edison Project, which became Edison Schools, which became EdisonLearning, and which lost money, a lot of money. Abrams’ book represents deep scholarship into the consistent failures of for-profit education.

I reviewed it in the <em>New York Review of Bookss, along with Mercedes Schneider’s superb “School Choice.”

Barron’s just posted a negative review of the Abrams’ book by a reviewer who has made a career of besmirching public schools, teachers, and unions. He hates them all, so of course, he hates Abrams’ elegant expose of the profit motive in education. The reviewer is a polemicist, not a scholar, so he probably didn’t understand the book.

I don’t subscribe to Barron’s so I can’t post the review. You probably don’t subscribe either. I wish I could quote it but I can’t. I know it is hostile to Abrams’ scholarly work because the title of the review is “Slurring Charter Schools: A skewed defense of our failing public schools, and a hit job on Harvard Business School.”

But I know a great deal about the reviewer, Bob Bowdon.

Bowdon wrote and produced a “documentary” called “The Cartel,” in which he compared the teachers’ union in New Jersey to the Mafia. He is a familiar figure on far-right TV shows, where he bashes teachers and public schools.

Read his Wikipedia entry, where it says:

Bowdon directed The Cartel, a 2009 documentary film about corruption in American public education that was distributed by Warner Brothers.[1] The film views the current state of public schools in the U.S. as a “national disaster for the workforce of the future.” Bowdon notes that the U.S., by many measures, “spends more on education than any country in the world,” and chooses to concentrate principally on his own state, New Jersey, which spends more per student on public education than any other state, but where average standardized-test scores in public schools are very low. In an effort to explain where all the money allocated to public education is going, Bowdon portrays a union-dominated institutional culture in which bureaucracies are overstaffed by highly paid administrators, expenditures on school-construction projects are unsupervised and out of control, corruption and patronage are rampant, incompetent teachers cannot be fired, and excellent teachers cannot be rewarded. As a solution to the problem, Bowdon proposes school choice and charter schools.[3]

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who watched The Cartel twice, has praised it as an influence on his own ideas about school reform.[4][5]

When my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education” was published in 2010, I was invited to be interviewed by Judge Napolitano. I learned when I got there that I was going to debate Bob Bowdon. Judge Napolitano was on Bowdon’s side, and he said snidely, “would you allow any child of yours to attend a public school?” I vowed never again to appear on any show on FOX, as my experience left me feeling deeply outraged by their hostility to the views I had formed over 40 years of study. Bowdon knew nothing whatever about education, nothing whatever about teaching. All he knew was that privatization was good, public schools bad.

It is an ugly experience to get into the ring with someone who literally doesn’t know what he is talking about but is sure of his opinions.

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

A New Orleans Parent Warns Houstonians to Beware the Elite “Saviors”

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2017 //
19

Ashana Bigard is a native of New Orleans and a parent. This is her warning to the parents and other citizens of Houston.

She writes:

“My prayers are with you, Texas. My memories are with you too. The day after Katrina hit New Orleans, my family and I made the 17 hour car ride to Houston. The people of Texas welcomed us, opening their homes and helping us out with clothing, even financial assistance. As a native New Orleanian, I wish that I could do the same for you now. But what’s happened in my city and to its schools serves as a cautionary tale to residents of Houston. Reeling from the disaster, our communities were scattered like the four winds. I returned from Houston, many of us did, but the New Orleans we left doesn’t belong to us anymore.

“Rents have quadrupled as gentrification remakes whole neighborhoods, pushing out long-time residents. Nearly half of the children here now live in poverty, and job security is worse, salaries lower. The sense that we’re doing worse than before Katrina is borne out in the data: Black New Orleanians have 18% less wealththan we did in 2005.

“My prayers are with you, Texas. But my warnings are too.

“1. Be wary of elites with big plans. Even as Katrina’s waters were receding, a handful of local elites were making plans for taking over the city’s schools. In the years following the storm, more than $76 billion came to the city of New Orleans. Yet the native population is poorer than we were before Katrina; we have 18% less wealth than we did in 2005. It became obvious early on that the money for New Orleans wasn’t making it into the hands of native New Orleanians. Huge sums of money demand oversight, accountability, and, most importantly, a vision for how exactly investment will help the people who need it most. All parts of your community must be allowed to participate fully in the rebuilding of their own city.

“2. Trauma can’t be “disciplined” out of kids A hurricane is a deeply traumatic experience for children and trauma cannot simply be “disciplined” out of kids. New Orleans is now full of schools with “college prep” in their names, but their strict rules, harsh discipline and fixation on a culture of compliance have more in common with prison than with college. The “new” and “innovative” approach to educating kids that swept through our city after Katrina seems to start from the assumption that what children need to be successful is to be treated like adult criminals. We’ve had multiple incidents of children as young as five being handcuffed in schools, even arrested. Students who can’t afford the uniforms that are now mandatory at virtually every school in New Orleans are suspended, often for long periods of time. As an advocate for children in the schools, I’m regularly reminded that our post-Katrina schools in New Orleans intersect with the criminal justice system starting in the earliest grades, and ensnaring parents too. Louisiana, after all, that incarcerates a higher percentage of its residents than any other state. I wonder why that is?

“3. Don’t let your teachers get swept away Three months after Katrina, 7,500 school employees, including 4,000 teachers, were fired. Many of them had lost their homes to the hurricane. New Orleans lost the core of its Black middle class, and our schools lost adults who were connected to the city and its culture. What happens when all of your teachers are fired? You have a teacher shortage. New Orleans now imports its teachers: recent college grads from programs like Teach for America, who are entrusted with our kids’ development after receiving less training than what we require from workers at a nail salon.

“4. Your culture isn’t a liability to be overcome Beware of people who see your culture as a liability. The culture and soul of our city is music, arts and drama. Yet the people who came to “fix” New Orleans viewed the city and its culture as the source of our problems that they had to help us overcome. That mean schools without art, music or drama, in a city whose culture draws people from all over the world. Think about that. Without arts in the schools where will the next generation of performers come from? The arts are also an important way for kids to deal with trauma in a city that’s seen so much of it. Our kids desperately needed art, music and drama—yours will too.”

But that’s not all she writes. Read it all. Share the wisdom.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization

Alan Singer: Do Test Scores Really Measure Success?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2017 //
19

Alan Singer is not impressed with the sensational test scores posted by Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy.

“On its website, Success Academy reported “For the ninth consecutive year, Success Academy Charter Schools have scored among the highest-performing schools in New York State,” claiming that “students with disabilities and English Language Learners at Success Academy schools not only surpassed their peers statewide, but also outperformed students without disabilities and native English speakers, respectively, across New York.”

“But a closer look at a successful Success school shows how selective recruitment and pressure to leave “cooks the books.” According to the website Inside Schools, Success Cobble Hill of “got to go” fame, with 469 students grades K-5, has 10% of its students with registered disabilities and 5% who are English Language Learners, compared to 16% of students citywide with registered disabilities and 14% who are ELL. Students with disabilities and ELL are also very broad categories. For teaching and testing, there is a big difference between a middle-class student who has a 504 designation for mild attention deficit syndrome and needs additional time to complete tests and assignments, and a disruptive student with severe emotional issues or a student with serious learning difficulties. ELL students range through four categories from new arrivals who speak no English and may never have attended school in their home country to children who are very literate in their first language and are rapidly mastering English. An accurate comparison of schools requires knowing who the students are that attend the schools.”

The real damage done by Success Academy is that it “succeeds” by playing a game that many educators believe is inherently meaningless and harmful to real learning.

As Singer writes:

“It may just be that success at Success demonstrates the illegitimacy of the entire national high-stakes testing regime. Before celebrating Success Academy test scores and granting the network waivers to hire uncertified teachers, New York State education officials should investigate how the schools operate. If they do magic, they deserve credit. If it is a smoke and mirrors show that produces test scores through selective recruitment and the intimidation of children and families, it should be shut down.”

I would put a different spin on the conclusion.

Whether or not the scores are valid misses the point. Education cannot be measured by standardized tests. Standardized tests corrupt education. Getting the right answer is less important than asking the right question. What matters more than scores? The four C’s. Character. Citizenship. Creativity. Compassion.

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

Mercedes Schneider: Students, Faculty, and Alumni at Michigan State Protest DeVos as Speaker at Research Center Her Family Paid For!

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2017 //
31

Mercedes Schneider reports on a developing story at Michigan State University.

Students, faculty, and alumni are signing a petition protesting the invitation to Betsy DeVos as keynote speaker at the opening of a research center that her family paid $10 million for. If their petition is ignored, expect a protest. DeVos is the most unpopular member of Trump’s abysmal cabinet. It’s hard to say if she’s the most incompetent, because there’s always Scott Pruitt, Jeff Sessions, Rick Perry, Ryan Zinke, Mick Mulvaney, Tom Price, and so many others.

She writes:

“MSU PhD student, Sarah Kelly, has started a petition imploring MSU President Lou Anna Simon and MSU College of Human Medicine Dean, Norman Beauchamp, to rescind the invitation.

“The text of the petition, which appears to have been drafted on August 31, 2017– and which appears to rapidly be gaining signatures– is as follows:

“To:

“Dr. Lou Anna Simon, President, Michigan State University

“Dr. Norman Beauchamp, Dean, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine

“We, the faculty, students, staff and alumni of Michigan State University, and other interested citizens, sincerely request that you rescind the invitation to Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary in the Trump Administration, to speak at the grand opening of the MSU Grand Rapids Research Center (GRRC) on September 20, 2017.

“Secretary DeVos’ past activities have included:

· Lobbying for the privatization of the US public education system under the guise of “school choice.”

· Support for political candidates in Michigan who worked to implement her privatization plans and in the process, have slashed millions from the public education budget.

“As Education Secretary, Secretary DeVos:

· Recommends a $9 billion cut in federal education funding, including cuts to higher education, training and after-school programs.

· Supports cutting financial aid to low-income college students making it easier for private loan servicers to prey on Michigan families. The MSU College of Human Medicine already has some of the highest per student debt in the nation.

· Rolled back regulations on for-profit colleges and has made it easier for low performing for-profit colleges to defraud students.

· Refuses to limit federal education funding for schools who actively discriminate against LGBTQ students.

“The undersigned believe that Secretary DeVos’ agenda is diametrically opposed to the education and inclusion mission of Michigan State University. While her father-in-law’s gift in support of the GRRC is welcomed and appreciated, giving Secretary DeVos an MSU-sponsored platform to speak sends a message to the public, alumni, faculty, staff, students and their families, that the compromising of MSU’s standards can be easily purchased.

“Further, the undersigned are very concerned that planned protests of Mrs. DeVos’ visit will disrupt the GRRC Ribbon Cutting and distract media focus away from the celebration of MSU’s newest state-of-the-art research facility in Grand Rapids.”

Congratulations to the intelligent, courageous and appropriately outraged members of the MSU community!

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Education Reform, Michigan, Privatization

Peter Greene: Get Your Barf Bag Ready for September 8, When Mrs. Jobs Reveals How to Fix Education

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2017 //
40

Peter Greene has a timely warning for us. Laurene Powell Jobs has lined up multiple TV channels and a star-studded cast to tell the world how she is fixing education. Her group is called the Emerson Collective. She hired Arne Duncan to advise her, despite the fact that he wasted $5 billion of federal funds (taxpayer money) on a failed effort to “reform” public schools by privatizing them, closing them, firing teachers and principals, and making standardized tests the purpose of education.

Peter notes that no working educator helped Mrs. Jobs formulate her plans. What do teachers know about education?

He writes:

“Brace yourselves. It’s time for a star-studded ed erformstravaganza.

“Another wave of PR dropped yesterday, touting a four-network, celebrity-packed, media event, proudly trumpeted everywhere from Variety to USA Today. On September 8, a huge line-up (including Tom Hanks, Yo-Yo Ma, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Hudson and (sorry) Common) will present “an hour-long live television special about reinventing American high schools….

“The XQ Institute is an offspring of the Emerson Collective, a Palo Alto-based do-gooding group founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. The organization is dedicated to removing barriers to opportunity so people can live to their full potential in order to develop and execute innovative solutions that will spur change and promote equality. They were one of the first groups to hire Arne Duncan after his Ed Secretary stint (do not miss his hardcore street pic here). Oh, and they just bought controlling interest in the Atlantic which, for reasons we’ll get to, is kind of a bummer.

“Jobs was always a philanthropic power player, and she’s logged time in the ed reform biz with NewSchools Venture Fund (We raise contributions from donors and use it to find, fund and support teams of educators and education entrepreneurs who are reimagining public education), but as the widow of Apple Empresario Steve Jobs, she has a huge mountain of money to work with. She is, in fact, the fourth richest woman in the world. And she has decided she would like to fix education.

“Jobs has said, “We want to make high schools back into the great equalizers they were meant to be.”

“To do that, she launched XQ Institute, which launched a big competition– XQ: The Super School Project.

“The Super School Project is an open call to reimagine and design the next American high school. In towns and cities far and wide, teams will unite and take on this important work of our time: rethinking and building schools that deeply prepare our students for the rigorous challenges of college, jobs, and life…

“Jobs doesn’t use many of the dog whistles or talking points of reformsters, except for one that she really loves:

“Jobs told the NYT, “The system was created for the work force we needed 100 years ago. Things are not working the way we want it to be working.”

“In USA Today: The XQ Institute aims to “rethink” American public high schools, which, it maintains, have remained virtually unchanged for a century while the world has transformed dramatically.

“Schools haven’t changed in 100 years” is the dead horse Jobs rides in on, a criticism that only makes sense if you don’t know what schools were actually like in 1917, and if you haven’t actually visited one in the last century….

“I also note that in all the publicity for the event that I’ve now read, there is no mention of other sponsors, so while I don’t have proof, I’m pushed to conclude that Laurene Powell Jobs just busted out her checkbook and bought a full hour of Friday night primetime television on four networks.

“What can we expect. Well, music and comedy and documentaries are billed. And we’re talking about a SuperSchool live, so presumably we won’t bother with any coverage of those dopey Clark Kent schlubby schools where the rest of us slog away. This special will just focus on Jobs’ own created reality.”

Don’t you wish that billionaire dilettantes would fix health care or save national parks or find some other pet hobby? When do they get tired of failing? Again and again and again…

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

My Response to Andrew Tobias about the “Success” of Success Academy

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2017 //
24

Andrew Tobias writes about the economy and politics. I recently subscribed to his blog. I received a post gushing about Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charters, swallowing every claim she makes, and I wrote back to him. He has many links, which I would have to add by hand, so include only Eva’s report.

Here is the exchange:

From Andrew Tobias:


SUCCESS!!!

Next week your kids or grandkids start school, but here is the report card for Success Academy charter schools — #1 in New York State.

With 46 schools and 15,500 students this year, the Success Academy network is now the size of the state’s 7th largest school district. On this year’s state exams, 95% of Success students passed math and 84% passed [English] — making Success #1 for student achievement in New York State.

As long-time readers of this page know, over and over (and over and over): the Success Academy methods work, are replicable, and are free for the taking by any teacher or principal or school board member who wants to give them a try.

Consider this: with an average household income of just $32,191 — versus $291,242 for the kids in Scarsdale and $129,375 for the kids in Chappaqua — and with just 9% of its kids white or Asian versus 86% in Scarsdale and 88% in Chappaqua — the Success Academy public school kids outperformed both the Chappaqua and the Scarsdale kids. Chappaqua and Scarsdale are outstanding school districts, deserving of high praise, ranked near the top in the state. But Success Academy kids did better.

And consider this: of all 2400 public elementary schools in New York State, Success had 14 of the top 30.

Citywide, just 29% of the kids of color (and 61% of the white kids) passed the English test — versus 83% of the kids of color at Success Academy schools. In math, the results were even a little more dramatic.

New York’s 46 Success Academy schools are non-profit, public schools. Students are selected by lottery — not aptitude. With the Success results well known throughout the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, almost every parent signs up for the lottery.

What Success Academy is accomplishing helps not just each student who succeeds (which is to say, almost all of them, and which would be important enough) but it also, thereby — and for all the generations that will follow — breaks the cycle of poverty and despair, of teenage pregnancy and crime, that so drag our society down.

What if all schools adopted variations of the Success methods — or any others that worked — so a lottery were not needed?

Imagine the impact on our nation’s future well-being if almost all her kids succeeded.

I wrote back:

Dear Andrew,

My friend Linda Gottlieb recommended your blog to me and I enjoy it.

However, I was shocked to read your praise for Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain this morning.

It is not replicable. It costs far more than real public schools. It “Succeeds” by attrition and exclusion.

Its schools do not “backfill,” meaning no new students are accepted after third grade, so every succeeding class gets smaller.

The chain does not accept students who don’t speak English or students with serious disabilities. Those students go to public schools.

It has the highest teacher turnover rate of any school in New York City, in some schools, 50-60% of the teachers leave every year. That doesn’t happen in good schools.

Eva M. has her own PAC and uses it to shower money on Cuomo and favored legislators.

Her board includes billionaires like Daniel Loeb, who also gives to the GOP Congress. She has a huge resource advantage over public schools in her neighborhood (http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-secrets-to-their-success.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FCqnJA+%28Jersey+Jazzman%29)

I have met with many SA teachers. They tell me they spend most of the year on test prep until the state tests are over. Yet despite these stellar test scores, the graduates of her eighth grade can’t manage to pass the entry exam for Stuyvesant or Bronx Science or the other exam schools. In the first two classes, not a single one passed the citywide exam for the selective high schools. In the third year, only two did. They didn’t prep for those tests.

Eva welcomed Ivanka and Paul Ryan to see her “miracle.” Dan Loeb, the chairman of her board, recently called the state’s top black legislator, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, worse than the KKK because of her opposition to charters. Meanwhile, Loeb supports the group of breakaway Democrats in the State Senate who keep the Republicans in control and able to block all progressive legislation. SUNY told Eva that if Loeb doesn’t step down, she won’t get any more charters.

How could public schools replicate what she does? Who would take the kids who have cerebral palsy? Who would take the kids who don’t speak English? Where would the kids go who are slow learners? Should we throw them all away, as she does?

The NAACP recently released a report critical of charters because of their exclusionary practices and refusal to be held accountable. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/07/26/naacp-report-charter-schools-not-a-substitute-for-traditional-public-schools-and-many-need-reform/?utm_term=.1e148b0796af

I suggest you do some research before you make such a misguided proposal. If you picked stocks like you pick schools, you would be bankrupt.

Diane Ravitch

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Beware, Houston! They Will Use the Hurricane to Try to Privatize Your Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2017 //
7

Mercedes Schneider is a native of Louisiana. She hopes that the corporate reformers don’t do to Houston’s public schools what they did to those in New Orleans.

Arne Duncan memorably and disgustingly said that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to the schools in New Orleans. Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people. It also made it possible to eliminate public education, which Arne celebrated. Most schools were taken over by charters. The union was crushed. All the teachers, mostly black, were fired. Charter chains and TFA took over.

In this post, Schneider warns Houstonians to defend their public schools against the privatizers. They will see Houston as a new opportunity. The predatory Walton Family Foundation has already targeted Houston for mass charter expansion.

Houston: Beware of a Post-Harvey Charter Conversion of Your Schools

As a graduate of the Houston public schools, I say “repel the barbarians at the gates of Houston.” Send the mercenaries and profiteers packing. Let the city heal. Don’t raid its public schools. Go away. Stop preying on the public sector. Vultures.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Carol Burris Deciphers a Study That Falsely Claims That Charters Benefit Nearby Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2017 //
22

I am reposting this because the original omitted the link to the article. I went to the car repair shop and the computer repair shop today, and wrote this post while paising in a coffee shop between repairs. Carol Burris’s article links to the original study, which has the ironic title “In Pursuit of the Common Good: The Spillover Effects of Charter Schools on Public School Studenys of New York City.” Ironic, since charter schools have nothing to do with the common good.

Recently, a study was released that made the absurd claim that public schools make academic gains when a charter opens close to them or is co-located in their building. To those of us who have seen co-located charters take away rooms previously used for the arts, dance, science, or resource rooms for students with disabilities, the finding seemed bizarre, as did the contention that draining away the best students from neighborhood public schools was a good thing for the losing school.

The rightwing DeVos-funded media eagerly reported this “finding,” without digging deeper. Why should they? It propagated a myth they wanted to believe.

The author of this highly politicized study is Sarah Cordes of Temple University.

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a former principal, is a highly skilled researcher. She reviewed Cordes’ findings and determined they were vastly overstated. Her review of Cordes’ study was peer-reviewed by some of the nation’s most distinguished researchers.

Burris writes:

“Cordes attempted to measure the effects of competition from a charter school on the achievement, attendance and grade retention of students in nearby New York City public schools. In addition, she sought to identify the cause of any effects she might find.”

She did not take into account the high levels of mobility among New York City public school students, especially the most disadvantaged.

But worse, her findings are statistically small as compared to other interventions:

“Upon completing her analysis, Cordes concludes that “the introduction of charter schools within one mile of a TPS increases the performance of TPS students on the order of 0.02 standard deviations (sds) in both math and English Language Arts (ELA).”

“To put that effect size in perspective, if you lower class size, you find the effect on achievement to be ten times greater (.20) than being enrolled in a school within one mile of charter school. Reading programs that focus on processing strategies have an effect size of nearly .60. And direct math instruction (effect size .61) with strong teacher feedback (effect size .75) has strong benefits for math achievement[2]. With a .02 effect size, the effect of being enrolled in a school located near a charter school is akin to increasing your height by standing on a few sheets of paper.”

Burris noted that what really mattered was money:

“Although it appears that Cordes found very small achievement gains in a public school if a charter is located within a half mile, that correlation does not tell us why those gains occurred. To answer that question, Cordes looked at an array of factors — demographics, school spending, and parent and teacher survey data about school culture and climate.

There was only ONE standout out factor that rose to the commonly accepted level of statistical significance — money.”

Burris concludes that journalists need to check other sources before believing “studies” and “reports” that make counter-intuitive claims:

“The bottom line is that Sarah Cordes found what every researcher before her found — “competition” from charters has little to no effect on student achievement in traditional public schools. It also found that when it comes to learning, money matters as evidenced by increased spending, especially in co-located schools.

“Most reporters generally lack advanced skills in research methods and statistics. They depend on abstracts and press releases, not having the expertise to look with a critical eye themselves. But it does not take a lot of expertise to see the problems with this particular study.”

Sarah Cordes’ “study” will serve the purposes of Trump and DeVos and others who are trying to destroy the common good. Surely, that was not her intention. Perhaps her dissertation advisors st New York University could have helped her develop a sounder statistical analysis. It seems obvious that the public schools that have been closed to make way for charters received no benefit at all–and they are not included in the study.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Funding, New York City, Privatization, Research
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