Archives for category: Privatization
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Colorado: “The Most Important School Board Race” in the Nation

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2017 //
3

Douglas County, Colorado, will have a crucial election this fall between its current board majority and challengers. Some say it is the most important school board race in the nation.

Douglas County is the most affluent school district in the state. Yet wealthy Coloradans have showered money on pro-privatization school board members and candidates. On the other side is a pro-public education slate.

The rightwing majority consists of four members on a board of seven. The majority created a voucher program. Its anti-teachers policies have led to a high rate of exodus by experienced teachers.

The Douglas County voucher program is currently under appeal in federal courts.

Two slates are competing in the race for school board.

The differences between them are stark if you read this perceptive article. One is tied to corporate reform/Republican circles, the other is actually pro-public school.

Categories Colorado, Education Industry, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Politico: Colorado Voucher Case Will Be Crucial in Fight Against Privatization of Public Funding

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2017 //
13

Politico reports this morning (open the link for many other links–and for an important story about an online for-profit “university’s” struggle to hold on to federal funding):

RESET ON COLORADO VOUCHER CASE STARTS THIS WEEK: A high-profile school voucher case that had made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court is in district court in Colorado this week after the high court justices kicked it back in light of their June ruling in a Missouri case that religious institutions cannot be excluded from state programs with a purely secular intent. The case, out of the Douglas County School District, represents school choice advocates’ next best shot at scrapping constitutional provisions in 39 states known as “Blaine Amendments” that prohibit public money from aiding religious organizations, including private schools.

– Last week, the Colorado Supreme Court, which had been ordered to take another look at the case, sent it back to the Denver district court. In 2015, the Colorado Supreme Court found that a voucher program in which the majority of participating students elected to attend a private, religious school was in conflict with the state’s bar on tax dollars going to religious groups. Attorneys for the taxpayer group challenging the voucher program said in a notice filed last week that they will contact the trial court judge’s chambers this week to start work on scheduling a status conference.

– The voucher program at the center of the case is also shaping up to be the central issue in a Douglas County school board race. Three of the board’s four pro-voucher incumbents are up for reelection this year, the Colorado Independent reports, and the race to fill those seats is already crowded with voucher opponents, including one of the plaintiffs in the court case. The state’s former Lt. Gov. Gail Schoettler, who lives in Douglas County, called the election “the most important school board election in the country,” the Independent reports. More on that here.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Privatization

Wendy Lecker: Real Reform Must Come from Within the District, Not by External Imposition

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2017 //
6

Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer who writes frequently about education issues.

In this article, published in the Stamford (Ct.) Advocate, Lecker describes the imposed reforms that breed resentment and failure, not better education.

Corporate reform has been a disaster. Its day of reckoning cannot be indefinitely postponed. The corporate reformers fail and fail and fail, and continue to push their failed ideas.

Connecticut is a state that experienced major corruption in the charter industry. It is also a state with excellent public schools. Why not use the depth of knowledge and experience to help the neediest districts instead of parceling students out to private management?

Lecker writes:

The State Board of Education’s recent rubber-stamping of Capital Prep Harbor charter school’s expansion in Bridgeport is yet another example of a common theme in education reform: trampling community will. Capital Prep, which opened in 2015 over the objection the Bridgeport’s Board of education and community members, does not reflect the community. The school serves no English Language Learners, though 15 percent of Bridgeport’s students are ELL. The school has a 37 percent out-of-school suspension rate, over twice the rate in Bridgeport’s public schools.

Bridgeport’s Board of Education unanimously opposed the school’s expansion. Bridgeport already must pay several million dollars annually to charters. As the superintendent testified, the expansion will drain an additional $200,000 from Bridgeport’s budget; money it cannot afford. Last year, owing to decreased state funding, Bridgeport had to fill a $16 million budget gap. The state board ignored Bridgeport’s needs.

As recent education reform failures demonstrate, robbing local districts of decision-making power over education policies is a recipe for disaster. By contrast, reforms that emanate from the school districts themselves have shown success.

The ultimate in top-down reform for struggling districts is state takeover. Two much-hyped state takeovers occurred in Tennessee — the Achievement School District (“ASD”), and Detroit — the Educational Achievement Authority (“EAA”). After years of consistent failure, both recently closed, returning control of schools to the districts.

ASD and EAA employed reform’s “greatest hits.” Outside managers were hired to run the districts. Charter schools proliferated. They used ill-trained Teach for America recruits.

EAA also employed “student-centered” “personalized” computer-based learning, which caused 10,000 struggling students to fall further behind academically.

Both “reform districts” were plagued with high teacher turnover, a major factor in their failures, and rampant financial mismanagement.

State takeover made things worse for students in the ASD and EAA. In 2015, only one fourth-grader in Detroit’s EAA passed the state math test. After years of EAA control, only three of the 15 EAA schools moved off the list of the lowest 5 percent in the state. In Tennessee, the results were similar, with the ASD’s charter schools performing the worst.

She continues:

At the same time, officials ignore the slow and steady progress made by districts that engage in home-grown educational improvement. Long Beach, California, and Union City, New Jersey, are good examples. Both districts are diverse and majority economically disadvantaged. Yet both have been able to sustain improvement by focusing on the unique needs and strengths of their communities…

In contrast to failed state takeovers, that leave children and communities behind in their wake, district-led improvement methods have staying power precisely because they use the needs of their children and communities as their starting point. It is a shame that Connecticut officials ignore our own local, well-informed voices.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Peter Greene: The Dirty Secret of the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2017 //
21

Peter Greene identifies the dirty secret of the charter industry. Two words. Real estate.

In Ohio, a charter lobbyist wrote the charter law for the state. When a charter operator insisted that he owned everything the charter bought with public money, the courts upheld him. It was in the law.

In Pennsylvania, charter schools own the property where the charter school is housed, and they charge rent. They charge rents above the market rate. The state doesn’t ask questions. The state doesn’t even notice that the charter operator owns the property and pays himself rent.

Greene offers a few examples from across the nation, and he didn’t even include Florida, where the charter scams are commonplace:

Carl Paladino, the notorious bad boy of the Buffalo school board, has made a mint in charter-related real estate deals. Not only does Paladino build the charters and lease them, but he builds the new apartment buildings near the shiny new school– a one-man gentrification operation. And he sits on the public school board, where he can vote to approve and support the growth of charters.

That’s not even the most astonishing sort of charter real estate scam. A 2015 report from the National Education Policy Center outlined what might be the worst. Take a public school building, built and paid for with public tax dollars. That building is purchased by a charter school, which is using public tax dollars. At the end of this, you’ve got a building that the public has paid for twice– but does not now own.

In February of this year, researchers Preston Green, Bruce Baker and Joseph Oluwole dropped the provocative notion that charter schools may be the new Enron. It’s a lot to take in, but Steven Rosenfeld pulled out five takeaways for Alternet, if you’d like a quicker look. But just some little factoids give you a taste. For instance, Imagine Schools take 40% of the money they collect from taxpayers and put that right back into lease agreements. In Los Angeles, owners of a private school leased room on their campus for a charter school that they were also involved in running– then jacked that rent up astronomically.

His article has links. Follow them. This is the most underreported story of the charter world: The big money is in the real estate, not necessarily the students.

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

Buying and Selling Charter Schools as Investment Properties: A Repellent Practice

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2017 //
8

A school should be the anchor of its community. It should be a place where children and families feel welcome, a place where they learn to work and engage with others who are different from themselves but share common concerns. A public school is a mainstay of our democracy, because for many people, it is the first place where they have a chance to learn and work with others to achieve their goals for their community.

But read this story, and what do you see? Two charter schools were sold to an eager investor.

Colliers International Education Services Group brokered the sale of two Florida charter schools totaling 134,000 square feet. ESJ Capital Partners and MG3 Developer Group sold the properties for $30.5 million to AEP Charter KCC II LLC and AEP Charter Renaissance LLC, entities affiliated with Portland-based Charter School Capital, according to public records.

The assets included in the transaction are the 105,002-square-foot Renaissance Charter School at University located at 8399 N. University Drive in Tamarac, Fla., and the 28,998-square-foot Kid’s Community College Southeast Riverview at 11515 and 11519 McMullen Road in Riverview, Fla. Charter School Capital’s facilities arm, American Education Properties, paid $22.3 million for the Renaissance property and $8.2 million for the Kid’s Community College asset.

SKILLED MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS

Renaissance Charter School at University opened in 2012 and will serve 1,426 students in the 2017-2018 school year. Managed by Charter Schools USA, the building was built in 1982 and underwent renovations in 2015. Kid’s Community College Southeast Riverview opened in 2003 and is slated to serve 397 students in the 2017-2018 school year. It is independently operated by Kid’s Community College, a charter management organization that manages a total of eight charter schools serving Pre-K through high school.

As part of the acquisition, Charter School Capital assumed the existing 20-year leases on both schools, which expire in 2032 and 2033, respectively. Charter schools have enjoyed rising popularity in the state since their inception in 1996. The deal is indicative of the continued interest in educational-based real estate.

“We enjoyed working once again with ESJ and MG3 to arrive at terms that will give the charter school operators the peace of mind that comes in knowing their facilities are securely theirs to operate for years to come,” said Stuart Ellis, president & CEO of Charter School Capital, in a prepared statement.

Todd Noel, executive vice president & national director of the Education Services Group based out of Phoenix, along with Achikam Yogev, senior vice president based in South Florida, represented the seller in the transaction. ESJ Capital Partners is the manager of ESJ Real Estate Fund LLC and focuses on investing in charter schools and medical office buildings. Charter School Capital provides growth capital and facilities financing services to charter schools.

GROWING INVESTOR INTEREST
“Because of the complexities, charter schools have traditionally sold individually and rarely as a portfolio, but the continued interest in this asset class has paved the way for more creative strategies and more complex deals being done on behalf of our clients,” stated Yogev, in prepared remarks.

This isn’t the first deal between ESJ Capital Partners and Charter School Capital. The Aventura-based investment advisor sold a portfolio of five Florida charter schools in November 2016 to Charter School Capital in a $72 million transaction.

No surprise, it happened in Florida, where charter schools open and close with unsurprising rapidity. They are not the anchor of their community. They are exemplars of commerce and consumerism.

My reaction on reading this story: revulsion. It is stories like this that persuades me that the very concept of charter schools is wrong, especially when they operate for-profit and when they are part of a corporate chain. They are not about education; they are not about learning; they are not about children; they are about money and profit.

Allowing the education of American children to be distorted by this greedy industry is a blight on American society.

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

Michigan: Governor Rick Snyder Accepts No Responsibility for His Failed School Reforms

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2017 //
12

A reader sent a letter signed by Governor Rick Snyder and the State Superintendent Brian Whiston lamenting the poor performance of Michigan’s schools on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Please note that the Governor makes no reference to the failure of the state’s obsession with school choice over the past 15 years.

Nor does he say anything about the proliferation of charters, most of which operate for-profit, and most of which perform worse than the public schools.

Nor does he acknowledge that the state’s education agenda is a wholly owned enterprise of the DeVos family.

Nor does he mention the disaster of the Educational Achievement Authority, into which the state of Michigan poured millions of dollars and overpaid administrators sent by the Broad Academy, only to see the EAA collapse in failure.

This is a politician who does not know the meaning of the word accountability. He is accountable for nothing and responsible for nothing. He should be held accountable not only for the Flint Water Crisis but for the dismantling of what was once a great public school system in the state of Michigan.

For shame, Governor Snyder.

Sad. Very sad.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Michigan, Privatization, School Choice

Ann Cronin: Thank You, NAACP, For Telling the Truth About the Harm Done by Charters

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2017 //
5

Ann Cronin, a retired teacher of English in Connecticut, writes about what charters were supposed to be and how they have failed to fulfill their original promise. Nowhere have they been more disappointing than in Connecticut, where the harsh “no excuses” model prevails. The charters in the Nutmeg State have won generous state funding, thanks to the campaign contributions to Democratic Governor Malloy by hedge fund managers and the OxyContin billionaire Sackler Family.

Cronin thanks the NAACP for speaking truth to power.

She writes:

“An English teacher friend of mine was a finalist for Connecticut Teacher of the Year in the mid 90’s. As one of the culminating steps in the selection process, the four finalists were assigned a topic little was known about at the time. They were instructed to research it and present their findings to an audience.

“The topic was charter schools.There were no charter schools in Connecticut at the time. My friend concluded that the worth of charter schools would depend on the answers to two questions:

“1) Will the innovations created at charter schools inform and improve the public schools that the vast majority of children and adolescents in the U.S. attend?

“2) Will charter schools be held accountable to address student needs as traditional public schools are required to do?

“Fast forward to 2017: We now have had charter schools in Connecticut for 21 years. The answers to my friend’s two questions came from the NAACP.”

The answer to number 1: NO.

The answer to number 2: Not yet.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Los Angeles: The Unprecedented Flood of Campaign Cash That Elected a Pro-Charter Majority to the School Board

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2017 //
20

Howard Blume in the Los Angeles Times describes the flood of campaign cash that managed to sink School Board President Steve Zimmer and another candidate and put a pro-charter majority in charge of the school board.

The billionaires pulled out all the stops to gain control of the board. Now the president of the LAUSD board is Ref Rodriguez, who launched a charter chain in LAUSD. Contrary to my first report, Rodriguez stepped down from the board of his charter chain (PUC). But his sympathies are clear.

A last-minute splurge of donations from billionaire Eli Broad and businessman Bill Bloomfield swept the pro-charter candidates to victory. More than $15 million was spent by both sides, the most ever spent on a school board election in American history.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings alone spent more than $7 million. The Waltons added a few shekels.

The billionaires strike again, intent on destroying public education and democracy, and opening even more privately managed, privately owned and nonunion charters.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Nonprofit Quarterly: Some Very Expensive Lessons for Billionaire School Reformers

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2017 //
34

I have found a sensible person writing about school “reform.” His name is Martin Levine and he writes for the Nonprofit Quarterly. Thus far, everything he has written shows a depth of common sense and wisdom that is utterly lacking among the “reformers,” especially the billionaire reformers. He must have gone to public school, unlike those user-wealthy philanthropists who have decided that they can remake American education to fit their own ideology (though never to provide urban kids the same quality of education that the philanthropists enjoyed as children). I see from his bio that he is a graduate of City College of New York, a public institution of higher education, so he is certainly a public school graduate.

Levine’s latest article ponders the failure of “reform” in Detroit. Poor Detroit has been a playground for the meddlesome and clueless rich. But Levine does not describe the collapse of the Education Achievement Authority or of Eli Broad’s failed interventions into Detroit education or DeVos’s endorsement of charters, both for-profit and nonprofit. That will wait for the next chronicler of Detroit’s fate.

Having the ability to invest billions is not enough to guarantee success. That’s one of the lessons a growing list of mega-donors and large foundations is learning from their efforts to transform and improve public education. In many cases, the initiatives they have launched have been more disruptive than effective. Missing from much of their work has been a recognition of the need to work with families and communities and a willingness to engage in the often-messy work of building success from the bottom up.

At the end of June, the multi-year, multimillion-dollar Excellent Schools Detroit announced it was quietly going out of business after seven years of trying to improve the schools of their home city. According to Bridge Michigan, “Excellent Schools Detroit began as a coalition to support the opening of good schools, the closure of underperformers and to grade the city’s traditional, charter and private schools to help inform parents…Excellent Schools Detroit received funding from numerous foundations, including Skillman, The Kresge Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the McGregor Fund.”

He goes on to briefly touch on the Reverse Midas touch of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Whatever they have touched in education has blown up. Unfortunately, they refuse to address the root causes of low performance. Until they do, they will continue to experience failure.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

St. Louis: Who Is Rex Sinquefield?

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2017 //
22

Rex Sinquefield is a self-made billionaire in St. Louis. He grew up poor, unlike most of today’s billionaires. He lived in an orphanage. Having pulled himself up from rags to riches, he thinks that everyone else should do the same. He has a passion for protecting his wealth, cutting public services, and reducing taxes. He has no compassion for those less fortunate than himself. None.

Here is what you need to know about him.

“Sinquefield is doing to Missouri what the Koch Brothers are doing to the entire country. For the Koch Brothers and Sinquefield, a lot of the action these days is not at the national but at the state level.

“By examining what Sinquefield is up to in Missouri, you get a sobering glimpse of how the wealthiest conservatives are conducting a low-profile campaign to destroy civil society.

“Sinquefield told The Wall Street Journal in 2012 that his two main interests are “rolling back taxes” and “rescuing education from teachers’ unions.”

“His anti-tax, anti-labor, and anti-public education views are common fare on the right. But what sets Sinquefield apart is the systematic way he has used his millions to try to push his private agenda down the throats of the citizens of Missouri.

“Our review of filings with the Missouri Ethics Commission shows that Sinquefield and his wife spent more than $28 million in disclosed donations in state elections since 2007, plus nearly $2 million more in disclosed donations in federal elections since 2006, for a total of at least $30 million.

“Sinquefield is, in fact, the biggest spender in Missouri politics.

“In 2013, Sinquefield spent more than $3.8 million on disclosed election-related spending, and that was a year without presidential or congressional elections. He gave nearly $1.8 million to Grow Missouri, $850,000 to the anti-union teachgreat.org, and another $750,000 to prop up the Missouri Club for Growth PAC.

“However, these amounts do not include whatever total he spent last year underwriting the Show-Me Institute, which he founded and which has reinforced some of the claims of his favorite political action committees. The total amount he spent on his lobbying arm, Pelopidas, in pushing his agenda last year will never be fully disclosed, as only limited information is available about direct lobbying expenditures. Similarly, the total amount he spent on the PR firm Slay & Associates, which works closely with him, also will not ever be disclosed. These are just a few of the tentacles of his operation to change Missouri laws and public opinion…”

Sinquefeld has lobbied to eliminate limits on campaign contributions and to eliminate state income taxes and property taxes. He has a special passion for eliminating teacher tenure, gutting teachers’ unions, and promoting vouchers.

“Nowhere are Sinquefield’s destructive intentions clearer than in his campaign against public education.

“I hope I don’t offend anyone,” Sinquefield said at a 2012 lecture caught on tape. “There was a published column by a man named Ralph Voss who was a former judge in Missouri,” Sinquefield continued, in response to a question about ending teacher tenure. “[Voss] said, ‘A long time ago, decades ago, the Ku Klux Klan got together and said how can we really hurt the African American children permanently? How can we ruin their lives? And what they designed was the public school system.’ ”

“Sinquefield’s historically inaccurate and inflammatory comments created a backlash from teachers, public school advocates, and African American leaders, who called it “a slap in the face of every educator who has worked tirelessly in a public school to improve the lives of Missouri’s children.”

“The statement would be easy to write off as buffoonery if it didn’t come from Sinquefield, who has poured millions from his personal fortune into efforts to privatize education in the state through voucher programs and attacks on teacher tenure.”

The jewel in his crown is the Show-Me Institute, a libertarian “think tank” that he funds to supply advocacy and research for his ideas.

Got the idea? A billionaire who hates the public sector.

Categories ALEC, Billionaires, Privatization
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