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When Jennifer Berkshire (AKA EduShyster) Met Lisa Alva, Candidate for LAUSD School Board

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
8

The election for the Los Angeles USD school board is Tuesday. Once again, the charter industry is trying to buy control of the school board. Once again, the charter billionaires are dumping obscene amounts of money into the races in different districts.

In District 2, Charter QueenPin Monica Garcia is facing tough competition from two strong opponents: parent Carl Petersen and teacher Lisa Alva. If Garcia does not get 51% of the vote, there will be a runoff.

The Network for Public Action Fund has endorsed both Petersen and Alva, hoping to force a runoff and ready to back Garcia’s opponent. Garcia has never seen a charter she didn’t love or a public school that she did.

Jennifer Berkshire (the writer formerly known as EduShyster) describes her meeting with Lisa Alva. Alva is interesting because she was deeply embedded in the reform movement and then had an “aha!” moment (much like my own). She realized that “reform” was not about the kids. She was a teacher and she is about the kids. Alva won the endorsement of the Los Angeles Times, which usually sides with charterites.

Berkshire writes:

In the endorsement that Alva scored from the LA Times, she’s described as espousing an “interesting mix of beliefs, including some that align with the school reform movement and others more in line with the positions of the teachers unions.” I’d put it a different way. Alva thinks teachers deserve to have more of a voice, in part to push back against misguided reform policies, like the botched experiment that played out at Roosevelt High School. In 2010, Roosevelt was broken up into seven small schools, each with its own principal and schedule, which created some, um, logistical challenges for a high school with thousands of students. “It was this microcosm of bad policy and bad decision making,” says Alva.

By 2013, five of Roosevelt’s small schools had been re-combined—the only way that the school could remain viable, said Marshall Tuck, then CEO of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which took over the school in 2008. “He basically said ‘I guess we made a mistake,’” recalls Alva. Tuck is long gone; he ran for state superintendent in California as the charter guy in 2014 and lost. He’s currently accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers here. As for Roosevelt High, well, let’s just say that the patient has yet to recover. The money to pay all of those new administrative salaries had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was classes, services for students and whole programs, like the one that trained students for careers in culinary arts. The small schools model was effective in making Roosevelt smaller; enrollment has plummeted since the Partnership assumed control of the school.

What makes Alva’s emergence as a thorn in the side of Tuck et al is that she was once an #edreform insider herself. She was a member of the Partnership’s Board of Directors, as well as a TeachPlus fellow, and a member of the teaching advisory board for Educators for Excellence, as well as Teachers for a New Unionism. She was, in other words, the reformer’s dream version of what a teacher should be: seeking out leadership opportunities and steadily improving herself in order to [insert aspirational goals here]. But Alva’s romance with the reform movement ended dramatically in 2013 over an incident that she recounted publicly here. In short, she was deeply disturbed by how quickly the alphabet-soup’s assembly of reform organizations in LA pivoted away from their self-proclaimed mission(s) to rally support for embattled superintendent John Deasy. Alva broke up with education reform, a decision she explained in a single, satisfying sentence: “The best place for an educator to protect and promote public education is the teachers union.”

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

ALERT: Save Kentucky’s Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
16

NPE Action urges you to write a letter to state senators in Kentucky. Please read about the harm that this bill will do to the public schools.

The bill now moves to the Kentucky state senate. Many, perhaps most, of the senators represent rural districts, where the public school is the heart of the community. They should oppose this law, as charters will take resources out of their public schools and harm the children of their community. Urban public schools will have larger classes and will have larger proportions of the students rejected by the charters, those whose needs are greatest.

As the bill is now written, it has many terrible features. Charter schools will not be required to have certified teachers. There is no limit on the number of charters that may open. The bill allows for-profit EMOs. There is no mention of how charters will be funded or how much funding they will receive. In other words, the bill will open the door to charter entrepreneurs to open shop in Kentucky and drain public funds to pay their investors.

The children of Kentucky will lose if this bill passes.

Citizens of Kentucky, I urge you to contact your state senator and urge him or her to save Kentucky’s community public schools.

Insist that every school be staffed with certified teachers. Keep out the profiteers.

Support the public schools that accept all children, not the schools that accept only the ones they want. Support the public schools that are legally required to enroll and provide services to children with disabilities. Do not authorize schools that choose their students and kick out the ones with low test scores.

A few years ago, I spoke to the Kentucky School Boards Association, and the walls were festooned with children’s artwork celebrating the public schools in every district.

Don’t betray the children or their public schools.

Stop privatization before it is too late. If this bill passes, the legislature will focus entirely on charter schools; legislative hearings will be packed with cute children wearing matching tee-shirts, pleading for more money for their sponsor. Public schools will be forgotten.

Don’t let it happen!

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Kentucky, Privatization, Resistance

Kentucky: We Don’t Want Charter Vultures in Our State!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
1

Gay Adelman of Save Our Schools Kentucky published the following letter to the editor in the Louisville Courier-Journal:

“Kentucky is one of only seven states that has managed to avoid jumping off the charter school cliff, so far. However, our state legislature is poised to pass a charter school bill this month. As a parent volunteer and staunch advocate for public schools, everyone keeps telling me I should “just deal with it.”

“If you knew what I knew about the real challenges our public schools face, some of the 100-plus other solutions we should try before opening our pocketbooks to outside interests, and the corruption and self-dealing going on behind this movement, you would not “just deal with it” either. You would fight until there was not an ounce of fight left, and then you would fight some more.

“Research shows that if Kentucky passes harmful charter school legislation this month, our already struggling schools and our most vulnerable students will suffer. Our democracy will suffer. All of the gains and momentum currently underway in our public schools will fall right off that cliff, as well.

“Charters are funded by our tax dollars meant for our public schools, but they are run by outside corporate interests and authorized by entities outside the purview of our democratically elected school board. By opening the door to charters, our already underfunded public schools will become destitute. They will end up serving the neediest of our population, begging for scraps, and exacerbating the extreme poverty, segregation and discrimination we already have in this city.

“Shameful agendas

“For some, charters are a dog whistle for those looking to resegregate schools, to discriminate against LGBTQ policies, to strip rights and services away from special needs students, and to bring religion into schools. Others see them as a way to isolate their children from students dealing with poverty, trauma and behavior issues.

“Paid pro-charter policymakers have been coming after our volunteers, attempting to convolute or discredit our concerns. Lawmakers, pushing out-of-touch education bills, have blocked their own constituents from commenting on their social media posts. Soccer moms, teachers and students are routinely ignored or bullied by grown men who often don’t even have experience (or kids) in the public school system.

“In actuality, Kentucky public schools are improving. But the oft-hailed idea that charters are a “lifeboat” implies that the system is sinking. Charter advocates would rather jump ship and save a few than plug the hole and save all. The charter lifeboats will only save those students whose parents know how to navigate the system (which are not the kids that charters purport to help) leaving the existing schools more broken than before.

“Charter schools are a slippery slope.

“Look at what’s happened in the 43 states, plus DC, where charter school operators have run amok. Like locusts, they ravage communities, taking their inexpensive-to-educate, high-performing students. Once they’ve locked their jaws onto our succulent recurring, AAA-rated tax dollars, they move on to their next most lucrative, vulnerable target. In a recent interview with Insider Louisville, House Bill 103’s sponsor Phil Moffett said,“The most likely areas that will see charter schools first are Owensboro, Bowling Green, as well as counties near Cincinnati, Lexington and Louisville.” They’re not even trying to hide it!

“Charter operators will find other ways to suck funds from our public schools, such as vouchers and online schools and multi-county “academies.” This leaves us, the taxpayers, to make up the funding difference and clean up the mess they leave behind.

“Charters don’t work, not even for “urban kids”

“Despite relentless propaganda and cherry-picked “research” financed by wealthy special interests, charter schools don’t produce better students. There is no statistically significant evidence that shows that charters improve outcomes for minority students. In fact, they have been known to hurt urban public schools, often preying on vulnerable, at-risk, low-advocacy students who are desperate for change. The NAACP, Black Lives Matter, and ACLU have recently spoken out against charter schools.

“Charters magnify the divide between the have’s and the have-not’s because students with involved parents – the ones who jump through hoops so their kid can attend a charter school – often outperform those who don’t, leaving the public schools in those communities worse off than before.

“Just look at Detroit. With the recent confirmation of the wholly unqualified, public education enemy, Betsy DeVos, to U.S. Secretary of Education, opposing charter school legislation in Kentucky has become more critical than ever. It may, in fact, be the only hope we still have and protecting our public schools from the devastation that has happened in districts like Detroit, where her failed policies have run rampant.

“Kentucky has been fortunate to be one of the few states to keep vulture charter operators at bay. Let’s not jump off the cliff just because everyone else did. Call your legislators at 800-372-7181 and tell them to #StopChartersInKY.”

Gay Adelmann is co-founder of a grassroots public education advocacy group called Save Our Schools Kentucky. She can be reached at moderator@saveourschoolsky.org.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Kentucky, Privatization, Resistance

Kentucky: House Passes Charter Bill, with Strong Limits

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
19

Now that Republicans control the Governorship and the Legislature in Kentucky, they finally got a billauthorizing privately run charters through the lower house of the legislature. Kentucky is one of the few states that does not allow charters, or has been until now. In the world of Republican politics, it is important not to be different. One must run with the crowd, even if they are running off a steep cliff. Republicans look enviously to their neighbor Tennessee, which has wasted millions of dollars on charters and performs well below Kentucky on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Why Kentucky wants to emulate a lower-performing state is anyone’s guess. Call them lemmings.

On Friday, the Kentucky House passed House Bill 520 after four hours of debate. The bill would legalize charter schools in the state of Kentucky.

Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run schools.

The bill was introduced in the General Assembly by Representative John Carney, a Republican from Campbellsville. While it does not set a cap on the number of schools, Carney said the state will likely start the program with three to five schools in areas that need them most.

The schools would be approved for five years and the reassessed and renewed for another five years or shut down.

“This should be a bipartisan matter. This is about our kids,” Carney said.

According to Hal Heiner, the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development’s Cabinet Secretary, students do not have proper support systems and that is causing schools to fail.

“We have to add to what we have to meet the needs of children” Hal Heiner, Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet Secretary said.”We need specialization.”

Heiner said a charter school, which had the ability to provide year-round education and three meals a day to students, can help underprivileged students.

Kentucky is one of seven states without charter school laws.

“Every dollar going to charter school is not going to a public school in that district.” Kentucky Education Association President Stephanie Winkler said. “This bill gives local school boards little room to maneuver.”

Even if a school board rejects an application, which the bill says it can’t do if the application is in order, an applicant can appeal to the state’s school board.

During the meeting, Rep. Phill Moffett (R – Jefferson) added a measure to give a mayor permission to accept a charter application as well.

“We’ve got to stop accepting this stuff and we need to work together to make sure we educate these children better,” Rep. Moffett, a longtime supporter of charter schools said.

Louisville pastor Milton Seymour said the bill helps end achievement gaps in low-end neighborhoods.

This is the civil rights movement of the 21st century,” Seymour said. “If we don’t do something for our children, then shame, shame, shame.”

Achievement gaps exist but charter schools are not the answer according to Winkler. Winkler continued her opposition to the bill by saying that all states with charter schools still have gaps.

“If charter schools were the answer to the student achievement gaps in this state, the professionals that trained to teach children would be advocating for them too,” Winkler said in an emotional speech.

While it is unfortunate to see Kentucky join the parade of failed school reforms by permitting privatization of public school funds, the one bright side is that the bill is very disappointing to corporate reformers. Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform, which has been touting privatization for many years, wrote up her criticism:

The lower house of the Kentucky legislature passed HB520 this afternoon, a bill which in all but isolated cases strengthens the hands of school districts to limit charter schooling in Kentucky.

Applicants wanting to open a charter school in the state will first have to get permission from the district, which experience shows is rarely given in the absence of a swift and binding appeal to the state board of education or multiple chartering authorizers.

While an amendment offered by Representative Phil Moffett adding the Mayors of Louisville and Lexington as authorizers improved the bill, other changes, including a provision barring charters from contracting with businesses to support and manage their schools, and barring online education, made it much worse.

The Kentucky Education Association president opposed even the dramatically scaled back version of the measure. As has been typical elsewhere, Kentucky school boards and superintendents have been lobbying hard against charter schools, and creating fear among rural legislators that charter schools would drain their school funding.

What? No for-profit management! No disastrous cyber charters! A few points of light in an otherwise dismal decision that will defund public schools in Kentucky and NOT help the kids who need excellent teachers and good public schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Kentucky, Privatization

Watch the Great Debate: Are Charter Schools Overrated?

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2017 //
12

This is a fun debate to watch, sponsored by Intelligence Squared.

The proposition: Are Charter Schools Overrated?

The debaters:

For the proposition: Julian Vasquez Heilig and Gary Miron. They argue that charter schools are overrated.

Against the proposition: Jeanne Allen and Gerard Robinson. They argue that charter schools are great.

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

DFER Launches Phony Phone Campaign in DC to Promote Common Core and High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2017 //
10

The hedge-fund manager group called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) is conducting an aggressive telephone campaign in D.C. to promote the Common Core and high-stakes standardized testing. The rhetoric is deceptive, as usual.

Jeffrey Anderson writes in the Washington City Paper:

“In a one-party city with a civic focus on education, an advocacy group like Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) sounds as wholesome as Mom and apple pie. Everyone in D.C. is a Democrat, right? Who isn’t in favor of education reform?

“Aided by such safe assumptions, the New York-based PAC recently injected itself into a complicated school debate when it employed phone banking that connected D.C. residents with their respective school board members.

“Residents around the city received calls on behalf of DFER to tell them that the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is proposing to “hold schools accountable not only for the academic achievement of students but also for the growth that students make on their achievement at whatever level they start out.”

“Sounds like a winner, right?

“The callers then offered to direct residents to their representative on the D.C. State Board of Education to “let them know you support this proposal.” They then asked, “May I put you through?”

“What the campaign does not tell citizens is that the proposal presents the school board with complex decisions in an ongoing policy debate that is central to a virtual culture war over public education reform in America.

“Nor does it disclose that Democrats for Education Reform is a PAC that raises money from corporations, foundations, and influential philanthropists to back political candidates who favor standardized testing and the Common Core standards—and apparently seeks to directly influence elected school board members on contentious policy issues.

***

“OSSE’s draft plan is based on the federal “Every Student Succeeds Act,” which requires states to create a new school accountability system beyond the standardized math and reading tests of “No Child Left Behind.” The idea of Every Student Succeeds is to provide states with flexibility to also measure performance in science, social science, art, and other indicators of school quality.

“Under the plan DFER is promoting, 80 percent of school accountability for elementary and middle schools is based on standardized tests in reading and math and a complex formula meant to determine student “growth.” (Most of the remainder is based on attendance and re-enrollment.) The accountability system not only rates schools relative to one another but also sets guidelines that will influence educational and administrative priorities.

“Proponents of the plan, such as DFER’s D.C. director Catharine Bellinger, believe that a school rating system should be based on single test scores that reflect performance on college and career-ready exams, such as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).”

Here is a safe bet: Not one member of the board of DFER sends their children to a school that is ranked by test scores or uses standardized tests to rank students.

Now that DeVos is leading the national movement for privatization, DFER can concentrate its energies on testing and ranking other people’s children.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Portland, Oregon: Leader from KIPP-TFA Runs for Portland Public School Board

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2017 //
5

In a hotly contested race, a former principal of a KIPP charter school is running for a seat on the Portland, Oregon, school board. The website of the candidate, Jamila Singleton Munson, does not mention her role in the KIPP corporate chain or the fact that she was chief of staff for Teach for America. Apparently she is still employed by TFA. TFA has a branch–Leaders for Educational Equity–that encourages and funds its personnel to run for office, as part of its plan to dominate state and local school boards.

Munson’s resume demonstrates she’s part of the country’s education-reform movement that generally supports school choice and charter schools as well as the use of test scores to measure acceptability for schools. Teachers unions generally oppose those approaches.

Steve Buel dropped out of the race. Rita Moore is the pro-public school candidate.

http://www.mooreforschools.com

Will Portland elect a public school advocate or an advocate for privatization of its public schools?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools, Oregon, Privatization, Teach for America

Peter Dreier: Who Are the Plutocrats Trying to Oust Steve Zimmer?

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2017 //
6

Peter Dreier describes the full assault on Steve Zimmer by the plutocrats. They want control of the Los Angeles school district, and he is in their way. What is their goal? Privatization and profit.

Some of America’s most powerful corporate plutocrats want to take over the Los Angeles school system and Steve Zimmer, a former teacher and feisty school board member, is in their way. So they’ve hired Nick Melvoin to get rid of him. No, he’s not a hired assassin like the kind on The Sopranos. He’s a lawyer who the billionaires picked to defeat Zimmer.

As a result, the race for the District 4 seat — which stretches from the Westside to the West San Fernando Valley — is ground zero in this battle over the corporate take-over of public education. The outcome of next Tuesday’s (March 7) election has national implications in terms of the billionaires’ battle to reconstruct public education in the corporate mold.

The corporate big-wigs are part of an effort that they and the media misleadingly call “school reform.” What they’re really after is not “reform” (improving our schools for the sake of students) but “privatization” (business control of public education). They think public schools should be run like corporations, with teachers as compliant workers, students as products, and the school budget as a source of profitable contracts and subsidies for textbook companies, consultants, and others engaged in the big business of education.

Read more to learn their names. They will be familiar to you.

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

The Los Angeles School Board Race Next Tuesday

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2017 //
4

It seems every school board race in Los Angeles is a struggle for the existence of public education.

That is because Eli Broad and his billionaire friends pour millions of dollars into local school board races (and Eli is one of the few billionaires who actually lives in Los Angeles) to try to control it.

Why do they want to control it? None of them has a child in the system. They despise public schools and they want to turn Los Angeles into a charter school demonstration district. It is all about power and money. No matter how many scandals they are in charter schools in Los Angeles or in California, or how many charter leaders are arrested, or how much money is stolen or misappropriated, the charter school advocates won’t give up. They refuse to devote their energy and money to rebuilding the Los Angeles public school system.

Despite Eli Broad’s last-minute disavowal of Betsy DeVos, don’t be fooled. He is thrilled to see a like-minded reformer in charge of the U.S. Department of Education. After all, he is used to it. He was best buddies with Arne Duncan and John King. It wouldn’t do to have someone in the federal Department who actually cared about public schools.

The Network for Public Education Action Fund hopes you will vote for pro-public school candidates next Tuesday.

In District 2, one of the most vociferous advocates of privatization is Monica Garcia. We urge you to vote either for Lisa Alva (teacher) or Carl Petersen (parent) so that Garcia is forced into a runoff.

NPE Action Fund did not make an endorsement in the race for school board chair.

I personally endorsed Steve Zimmer because I know him and believe that he will be far better than any of his challengers. Eli Broad, Richard Riordan, and Michael Bloomberg have bundled a large amount of money to defeat Steve, and that’s reason enough to know that he want him gone. He has tried to be reasonable but they don’t want anyone reasonable. They want a puppet.

I urge you to vote in District 2 for either Alva or Petersen.

And to vote for Steve Zimmer, if you live in his district.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Politics, Privatization

Vicki Cobb: I Attended the Great Debate About Charter Schools at Intelligence Squared

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2017 //
15

On March 1, there was a heated debate around the proposition “Charter Schools Are Overrated,” hosted by Intelligence Squared. The room in New York City was packed. Two academics–Gary Miron of Western Michigan University and Julian Vasquez Heilig of Sacramento State–debated two charter advocates–Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform and Gerard Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute in D.C.

Education Week covered the debate here.

Vicki Cobb, a celebrated writer of science books for children, attended the debate and reports on it here. Cobb notes that she previously served on the board of a charter school, so was not anti-charter. Apparently the audience was evenly divided or undecided before the debate.

Cobb describes the major issues: the question of democracy and control; the question of teacher turnover. On the matter of data, charter schools on the whole perform no better or worse than public schools. Some get higher scores, some get lower scores. It is a wash. But as the anti-charter side pointed out, test scores are not everything.

As Julian Vasquez Heilig argued for the motion: “Charter schools, if they don’t have public accountability, direct public accountability, are antidemocratic. So, saying that publicly elected school boards and districts and unions, which are also democratic organizations are an old idea — I don’t think democracy is an old idea. In fact, I think we need excessive democracy when it comes to our thinking about education reform. We need to avoid education reform that is top down and concentrates power in the hands of just a few people.”

Cobb writes, “By the way, the team for the proposition “Charter Schools Are Overrated,” won the debate.

According to Education Week, The debate’s winner was determined by the percentage of audience members who changed their minds. In the first vote of live audience members, 33 percent cast votes for the motion and 31 percent against. In the final vote, 54 percent were for the motion and 40 percent were against. The rest were undecided.

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