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The Biggest Charter School Theft in Georgia History

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
16

Molly Bloom of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes here about the biggest theft in the brief history of charter schools in Georgia. That state is in the process of expanding the number of charters and is considering creating an “Achievement School District,” modeled on the failed ASD in Tennessee, in which low performing schools are turned over to charter operators.

Here is the story of Atlanta’s Latin Academy Charter School.

A $12,000 charge at a strip club. Thousands of dollars spent at Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead. ATM withdrawals of hundreds of dollars at a time.

The charges to Atlanta’s Latin Academy Charter School should have raised eyebrows. For the top state education officials and corporate executives on the school’s board, they should have set off earsplitting sirens.

Instead, the charges continued for years, siphoning more than $600,000 in taxpayer dollars that should have been spent on students.

Christopher Clemons, the school’s founder, has been charged with fraud and theft in the largest such case in Georgia charter school history.

Clemons left Atlanta after the losses were discovered.

He left a rented townhome strewn with Hermes boxes, lease paperwork for a new BMW, used boarding passes and a Rolex receipt.

He left the school so financially troubled that board members closed it.

He left nearly 200 children with few options.

And he left a cautionary tale for Georgia’s growing charter school movement. Latin Academy, with its all-star board and experienced leader, seemed on track to thrive. But behind that facade of apparent success, the school spent millions of tax dollars with little public scrutiny and operated with a lack of public input foreign to many traditional public schools.

Latin Academy’s academic performance ranked in the top 25 percent of all Atlanta middle schools in an area where neighborhood middle schools are better known for hallway chaos than academics.

Clemons is presently in jail in Colorado, awaiting extradition to Georgia.

In the last decade, the number of students in charter schools has tripled to 91,000, with more growth expected. In addition, the legislature allows entire districts to have “charter-like” freedoms, which means deregulation and freedom from oversight.

Expect more scandals, fraud, corruption, and theft. If men were angels, there would be no reason for oversight or regulations.

Could someone explain why deregulation is supposed to create better education?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Georgia, Privatization

Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
38

The Network for Public Education Action Fund has drafted a proposal for consideration by the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee.

We call for the elimination of federal mandates for annual testing; for a declaration of support for public schools; for a ban on for-profit charters; for regulation of charters that receive federal funds to assure that they serve the same children as the public schools; for revision and strengthening of the FERPA privacy laws to protect our children’s data from commercial data mining; for full funding of special education; for support of early childhood education; and for other means of improving the federal role in education.

The proposal is in draft form. We will be making revisions. If you see something you think needs fixing, let us know.

Please read our draft proposal. And if you agree, add your name of our petition to the Democratic party. We plan to make the same appeal to the Republican party.

Both parties, we hope, will support the public schools, which educate nearly 90% of the nation’s children. Public schools are a bedrock of our society, in the past, now, and in the future.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, NPE Action Fund, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

California Legislators and Governor Brown: No Accountability for Charters

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2016 //
32

Jessica Calefati of the San Jose Mercury-News wrote a shocking series about the online charter schools of K12 Inc., which have the lowest graduation rate in the state, and which counts students “present” if they log on for only one minute.

Millions of public dollars fund the California Virtual Academies (CAVA), which operates for profit and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, founded by Michael and Lowell Milken, delivers a substandard education. It should be closely supervised or shut down.

Unfortunately, as Calefati discovered, the legislature is moving at a snail’s pace to authorize an audit of CAVA. Nothing seems to be happening. Much clucking of tongues, but no action.

CAVA is the lowest performing school in the state. Why hasn’t it been shut down long ago? If you recall, K12’s online charter in Tennessee was the lowest performing school in the state, and not even the State Commissioner Kevin Huffman was able to get it closed. Why?

Governor Brown likes charters. When he was mayor of Oakland, he opened two charters. The legislature has been unwilling to stand up to the rich and powerful California Charter Schools Association. CCSA should be demanding close scrutiny of CAVA, whose tactics embarrasses all charter schools. Their silence is deafening.

When the legislature dared to pass a bill banning for-profit charters, Governor Brown vetoed it. He also vetoed a bill to require charter schools to ban conflicts of interest.

So California has a greedy, rapacious charter industry, whose growth will continue unchecked until public schools enroll only students the charters don’t want. Fraud, waste, and abuse in the charter industry will grow without oversight. Conflicts of interest and nepotism will proliferate. Charters will continue to be run by entrepreneurs and speculators.

Does anyone think these developments are “reform”? From a distance, they look like graft and corruption.

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

Los Angeles Times to Bill Gates: Stop Trying to Run the Nation’s Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2016 //
65

This is a remarkable editorial that appears in the Los Angeles Times, of all places. The headline tells a story we did not expect to read on this newspaper’s editorial page:

Gates Foundation failures show philanthropists shouldn’t be setting America’s public school agenda

Read that again. Slowly.

The editorial recaps the serial failures of the Gates Foundation in education: Small high schools (abandoned); evaluating teachers by test scores (not yet abandoned but clearly a failure, as witnessed by the disasterous, costly experience in Hillsborough County, Florida); Common Core (not abandoned, but facing a massive public rejection).

But it’s not all bad, says the editorial:

It was a remarkable admission for a foundation that had often acted as though it did have all the answers. Today, the Gates Foundation is clearly rethinking its bust-the-walls-down strategy on education — as it should. And so should the politicians and policymakers, from the federal level to the local, who have given the educational wishes of Bill and Melinda Gates and other well-meaning philanthropists and foundations too much sway in recent years over how schools are run.

That’s not to say wealthy reformers have nothing to offer public schools. They’ve funded some outstanding charter schools for low-income students. They’ve helped bring healthcare to schools. They’ve funded arts programs.

This is not the whole story, of course. They have funded a movement to privatize public education, which drains resources and the students the charters want from public schools, leaving them in worse shape for the vast majority of students. And they have insisted on high-stakes testing, thus leading schools to eliminate or curtail their arts programs. As for healthcare in the schools, there should be more of it, but it should not depend on philanthropic largesse. Two children in the Philadelphia public schools died because the school nurses were cut back to only two days a week, and there were no philanthropists filling the gap.

Knowing how destructive the venture philanthropists have been–not only Gates, but also Eli Broad and the Walton Family, and a dozen or two other big philanthropies–one could wish that they would fund healthcare and arts programs, and perhaps experimental schools that demonstrated what public schools with ample resources could accomplish.

Still we must be grateful when the Los Angeles Times writes words like these:

Philanthropists are not generally education experts, and even if they hire scholars and experts, public officials shouldn’t be allowing them to set the policy agenda for the nation’s public schools. The Gates experience teaches once again that educational silver bullets are in short supply and that some educational trends live only a little longer than mayflies.

Allowing Bill Gates or Eli Broad or the Walton Family to set the nation’s education is not only unwise, it is undemocratic. The schools belong to the public, not to the 1%.

Since the editorial mentioned Bill Gates’ devout belief that teachers could be evaluated by the test scores of their students, it is appropriate to recall that the Los Angeles Times was the first newspaper in the nation to publish ratings for teachers based on test scores; it even had hopes of winning a Pulitzer Prize for this ugly intervention by non-educators who thought that teaching could be reduced to a number and splashed in headlines. Let us never forget Rigoberto Ruelas, a fifth-grade teacher who committed suicide shortly after the evaluations were published by the Los Angeles Times, and he was declared by the Times to be among the “least effective” teachers. There followed a heated debate about the methodology used by the Times to rate teachers. That was before the American Statistical Association warned against using test scores to evaluate individual teachers. But the Los Angeles Times was taking Gates’ lead and running with it. It was not worth the life of this good man.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Testing, Walton Foundation

California: State Superintendent Orders Audit of Low-Performing K12 Virtual Charter School

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2016 //
9

Jessica Calefati wrote a blistering series about Michael Milken’s K12 Inc. virtual charter school in California (called California Virtual Academy or CAVA) a few weeks ago. The series caused enough of a stir to persuade State Superintendent Tom Torklakson to order a state audit of CAVA.

Calefati reported that less than half the students at CAVA graduate, and none is qualified to attend a California public university.

The virtual charter industry is noted for high profits and poor performance. Student attrition is high, test scores and graduation rates are low. But profits are excellent, because the “school” receives full state tuition but has none of the expenses of a brick and mortar school. No grounds, no transportation, no custodian, no food services, no library, no support staff, no athletics. And classes that range from 40-more than 100 in number. As Calefati reported in the original series, students may get credit for attendance if they are online only one minute a day. The latest CREDO study found that for every 180 days enrolled in a virtual charter, students lose 180 days of instruction in math and 72 in reading. This is a lose-lose.

It is heartening to see state officials taking action to curb the fraud that runs rampant through its charter industry, unsupervised, unregulated, and unchecked.

Calefati writes:

In a rare move, California’s top education official has enlisted the state’s highest-ranking accountant to conduct a sweeping audit of California Virtual Academies, a profitable but low-performing network of online charter schools that enrolls about 15,000 students across the state.

The audit is the first that Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has asked the state controller’s Office to conduct since he took office in 2011. The request comes two months after this newspaper published an investigative series on K12 Inc., the publicly traded Virginia firm that operates the schools and reaps tens of millions of dollars annually in state funding.

In a statement Thursday, Torlakson said he has a duty to ensure that public money isn’t being squandered and sought the probe into the California Virtual Academies because of “serious questions raised about a number of their practices.” He said the audit would examine the relationship between the schools and the company and the “validity” of attendance, enrollment, dropout and graduation rates reported by the academies to the state.

This isn’t the first time the company has come under fire in recent weeks.

Torlakson’s request follows lawmakers’ calls last month for the state auditor to examine for-profit charter schools operations and Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla’s introduction earlier this month of legislation that would prohibit online charters from hiring for-profit companies like K12 for management or instructional services. The company is also being probed by Attorney General Kamala Harris, who launched an investigation of online charter schools last fall.

If Controller Betty Yee finds evidence of gross financial mismanagement, illegal or improper use of public money, a disregard for sound educational practices or repeated failure to improve student test scores the state Board of Education, may — based on a recommendation from Torlakson — vote to revoke the schools’ charters.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, K12 Inc., Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Jeannie Kaplan: Don’t Fall for the Hoax about Reform “Success” in Denver!

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2016 //
13

Jeannie Kaplan was twice elected to the Denver Board of Education and is well qualified to review the claims made about that city’s schools. Due to an infusion of reformer cash from across the nation starting in 2009, Denver’s elected school board is now completely dominated by supporters of choice and high-stakes testing (i.e. corporate reformers). These “reformers” have a 7-0 grip on the city’s schools and its publicity machine, thanks to national corporate reform-minded groups like Stand for Children and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Their claims are repeated in the reformer media, including at Gates-funded and rightwing think tanks and publications. Jeannie is a very kind and compassionate person, and she is tired of having to refute the claims, again and again. But she comes once more to the front, to explain why Denver is a hoax, not a model.

 

In this post, she reviews the latest phony claims about “reform” in Denver.

 

She writes:

 

 

Let’s do a quick refresher course before we delve into this faux success story.

 

 

The main goals of “education reform” are:

 

Expanding charter schools, which as the state of Washington has determined are not common (public) schools;
Improving graduation rates. The most recent DPS strategic plan, Denver Plan 2020, calls for graduation rates for African American and Latino students of 89% by 2020, 90% for students who start in DPS in ninth grade;
Reducing or eliminating the achievement gap, that is, the gap between children living in poverty and those not. Another goal of Denver Plan 2020.
Eliminating the union protected workers in the public school system which can be exacerbated by closing “failing” schools and replacing them with either charter schools or innovation schools both of which are for the most part non-union;
Evaluating teachers based on test scores with all the concomitant issues around high stakes testing.

 

 

Reformers try to reach these results through something called a portfolio strategy, a business model used by Wall Street that simply put is predicated on constant churn. As Osborne writes, a portfolio strategy works “to replicate successful schools and replace failing ones.” The problem with such a strategy is students and teachers and parents and communities are neither commodities to be bought and sold nor should they be characterized as winners and losers. Denver has seen up close and personal how the chaos and churn this model brings.

 

 

Kaplan devotes the bulk of her post to debunking false claims of Denver’s success made in an article by David Osborne in the Hoover Institution-sponsored publication Education Next. EdNext cheerleads for charters, vouchers, and all forms of school choice. Osborne reliably concludes that “reform” has been a great success in Denver and that the day is in sight when most families will choose charters or other choice schools, thus obliterating neighborhood schools. Kaplan goes point by point through his article to correct him, though she notes that he provides no documentation for his statements.

 

She shows that at the present rate of change, Denver has no chance of reaching its “reform” goals by 2020. It is always dangerous for reformers to set concrete dates as predictions of their total success. This was done in Tennessee by Chris Barbic and the Achievement School District. He predicted in 2012 that the schools in the bottom 5% statewide would reach the top 25% in only five years. None of them has even managed to exceed the bottom 10% thus far and most remain in the bottom 5%.

 

Probably reformers should promise to reach their ambitious goals by 2050, a date so far removed that they won’t be held accountable in the meanwhile.

 

Kaplan concludes:

 

Denver has become a national leader for its implementation of “education reform.” This has been relatively easy to accomplish with the help of the national media who continuously bolster the “education reform” agenda of chaos and churn. “Education reformers” in Denver have all the elements in place to continue to push a failing education model. Be afraid, Denver. Be very afraid.

 

Why the hatred of neighborhood public schools? I don’t know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

News: Ohio Wasted Millions in Federal Funding on Charters that Never Opened and on Very Low-Performing Charters

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2016 //
26

A new study based on publicly available data on the state’s website finds that the state has wasted millions of federal dollars designated for charter schools. Of the state’s federally funded charter schools, 37% either never opened or were among the state’s lowest performing schools. Only recently, the U.S. Department of Education decided to award another $71 million to expand the charter industry in Ohio, but the new funding has been delayed because of outrage over scandals in the state’s charters. The study was conducted by the Ohio Charter School Accountability Project.

 

 
New Study Shows Millions Intended for High-Performing Charter Schools
Went to Some of Ohio’s Worst – and Others That Never Even Opened

 

 

For Immediate Release: May 26, 2106

 

 

COLUMBUS – The federal government has sent more money to Ohio to expand “high-performing” charter schools than all but two other states, but Ohio spent millions on some of the lowest-performing schools. And nearly $4 million went to schools that never opened, according to a new analysis.

 

 

The Ohio Charter School Accountability Project did the analysis to determine how a state with so many of America’s worst-performing charter schools could be in line for so much federal money intended to help the best ones.

 

 

Ohio ranks third nationally in total money received during the program’s 21-year history. During that time, the U.S. Department of Education did just one assessment of the grants’ success in Ohio. Although it raised serious questions about the Ohio Department of Education’s ability to properly distribute the money, nothing appears to have changed as a result.

 

 

“As Ohio takes steps to make charter school sponsors more accountable under the reform law passed last year, it’s important that policy makers understand the past,” said OEA President Becky Higgins. “Together with our colleagues at Innovation Ohio and ProgressOhio, we examined how these Charter School Program (CSP) grants have been awarded, and tried to identify the shortfalls along the way. Ohio cannot afford to waste money on failing charter schools. It needs to invest in the good ones.’’

 

 

The new analysis, Belly Up: A Review of Federal Charter School Grants, shows how state and federal education departments ignored warning signs, systemically wasted tax dollars and made learning more difficult for many Ohio students.

 

 

Among the main findings:

 

 

· Of the 292 Ohio charter schools that have received federal CSP funding since 2006, 108 (37 percent) have closed or never opened, totaling nearly $30 million. Meanwhile, barely 2 percent of all companies nationwide that have received any federal grants or incentives since 2000 have failed.

 

 

· The Ohio tally includes 26 charter schools that received nearly $4 million in CSP funding but never opened. There are no records to indicate whether any of these public funds was returned.

 

 

· Ohio charters that received past CSP funding and State Report Card grades in the 2014-2015 school year had a median Performance Index score that was lower than all but 15 of Ohio’s 613 school districts.

 

 

· Since the federal grant program began 21 years ago, its lone assessment – conducted by WestEd – identified material weaknesses that appear to have been ignored by federal grant makers. In one instance, a potential grant reviewer even told the Ohio Department of Education that she was unqualified for the job and asked to be excluded from its reviewers’ list. Instead, the department thanked her for “agreeing to participate as a community school grant reader.”

 

 

· Paolo DeMaria, recently appointed Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction, was Associate Superintendent of Finance and School Options at the time WestEd raised concerns about Ohio’s processes for distributing the federal money to charter schools.

 

 

Of the 44 Ohio charter schools where State Auditor David Yost conducted surprise attendance audits recently, 17 had received federal CSP funding. One of them – the London Academy – only had 10 of the 270 students ODE thought it had in attendance the day Yost’s investigators showed up. All told, these audited schools received about $6.6 million in federal funding.
Last September, federal officials stunned education experts by announcing that Ohio would receive $71 million in CSP grants – more than any other state. Ohio’s large award came in spite of its reputation as one the worst charter states in the country, according to national charter advocates. The swift and severe criticism that followed prompted USDOE to put Ohio’s award on hold.

 

 

“We urge federal regulators to revamp the way in which it makes grants so that the money goes to the best performing charter schools,” said Innovation Ohio President Keary McCarthy. “The mistakes of the past should not be repeated in the awarding of future grants.”

 

 

Those mistakes include giving millions to the state’s most notorious charter school scofflaws, including:

 

 

· Horizon Science Academies and Noble Academies: Total CSP Grants: 7.6 million

 

 

Linked to a Muslim cleric exiled in Pennsylvania, the chain is the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation, and WikiLeaks revealed cables showing the U.S. State Department notified the CIA about suspicious visas for teachers and administrators. In June 2014, 19 of its schools were raided by the FBI, including four in Ohio. The Ohio schools also have been dogged by allegations of test-tampering, teachers using racial slurs in the classroom, unqualified teachers, sexual misconduct in the classroom. ODE investigated allegations raised by teachers who witnessed the problems but found no wrongdoing.

 

 

· Imagine Schools: Total CSP Grants: $5.9 million

 

 

The chain has been under fire nationally for saddling schools with exorbitant leases paid to its subsidiary, SchoolHouse Finance. Imagine recently lost lawsuits in Indiana and Missouri over the same type of abusive leases seen in Ohio. A federal judge in Missouri ordered Imagine to pay $1 million and called the lease arrangement “self-dealing.’’ One of the chain’s worst-performing Ohio schools, Romig Road in Akron, is among the charters that closed – but received federal grant money. All of Imagine’s Ohio schools received a D or F on the most recent state report cards.

 

 

· White Hat Management: Total CSP Grants: $1.4 million
Owner David Brennan has been the most powerful and influential of Ohio’s charter school operators since state money started flowing to them. Brennan’s schools also are routinely among the lowest performing. While Ohio’s historically lax regulations make it difficult to close even the worst schools, several of Brennan’s schools have been shut down for academic reasons or contractual non-compliance. Staffers for GOP state Auditor David Yost made surprise visits to charters to see if they are padding attendance records and concluded that White Hat’s dropout recovery schools were among the worst.

 

 

It’s been well documented that ODE’s grant application for the $71 million was inaccurate and misleading, prompting state officials to revise the number of poor-performing charter schools in Ohio from six on its initial application to 57 – a tenfold increase. The author of the application, David Hansen, was forced to resign as head of ODE’s office of school choice and community schools after getting caught illegally cooking the state’s accountability system to benefit Ohio’s politically connected eSchool operators.

 

 

It is unclear when or if federal regulators will release the $71 million.

 

 

The Ohio Charter School Accountability Project is a joint venture of the Ohio Education Association, Innovation Ohio and ProgressOhio. OEA and IO host the website, knowyourcharter.com, which provides data from the Ohio Department of Education on how the state’s charter schools are faring compared to local public schools.

 

 

For More Information, contact:

 

 

Stephen Dyer, Innovation Ohio Education Fellow, 330-338-1486
Keary McCarthy, Innovation Ohio President, 614-425-9163

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Jeb Bush Resumes His Fight Against Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2016 //
29

The Foundation for Excellence in Education announced the return of its founder, ready to fight for privatization, high-stakes testing, and the end of the teaching profession.

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 24, 2016 Contact: Press Office
850-391-4090
PressShop@excelined.org

 

JEB BUSH TO SERVE AS CHAIRMAN OF THE FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION

 

 
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd) today announced the election of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush as Chairman and President of its Board of Directors. Governor Bush replaces Dr. Condoleezza Rice, who has served as Chair since January 2015 and remains a member of the Board of Directors.

 

 

“One of the greatest challenges and opportunities we have in America today is to create a 21st century education system that ensures all students have the skills, teachers and educational options they need to succeed in life,” said Governor Bush. “Too many children right now are failed by a deeply flawed bureaucratic system, but I’m optimistic about the future because I’ve seen the great results produced by states across the country. It is an honor to rejoin ExcelinEd as we continue to support states in bringing choice, innovation and accountability to the classroom. I am thankful to Dr. Rice and this exceptional board for their leadership over the past year.”

 

 

Since 2008, ExcelinEd has worked in 48 states across the country to champion state-driven, proven transformational education reform policies that lead to rising student achievement. Because of these reforms and hard work by state leaders and educators, students have achieved remarkable academic success. Last year, as a result of active engagement by ExcelinEd and ExcelinEd in Action, 43 education laws were adopted in 15 states to improve or enact new reform policies.

 

 

Governor Bush also has been elected to the Board of Directors of Excellence in Education in Action (ExcelinEd in Action). The sister 501(c)(4) organization to the Foundation for Excellence in Education, ExcelinEd in Action helps advance legislation at the state level to improve the quality of education for every child. Governor Bush launched ExcelinEd in Action in 2014 and will serve as the organization’s Chairman and President.

 

 

*****

 

 

BIOGRAPHY: Governor Jeb Bush

 

 

Jeb Bush was elected the 43rd governor of the state of Florida on November 3, 1998, and was re-elected by a wide margin in 2002. His second term as governor ended in January 2007.

 

 

Jeb earned a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and moved to Florida in 1981. With partner Armando Codina, he started a small real estate development company, which grew to become the largest, full-service commercial real estate company in South Florida.

 

 

Jeb served as Florida’s Secretary of Commerce under Bob Martinez, Florida’s 40th governor. As Secretary of Commerce, he promoted Florida’s business climate worldwide. Following an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1994, Jeb founded the nonprofit Foundation for Florida’s Future, which joined forces with the Urban League of Greater Miami to establish one of the state’s first charter schools. He also co-authored Profiles in Character, a book profiling 14 of Florida’s civic heroes–people making a difference without claiming a single news headline.

 

 

After his election in 1998, Governor Bush focused on reforming education. Florida students have made the greatest gains in achievement, and Florida is one of a handful of states that have narrowed the achievement gap. In addition, he cut taxes every year during his tenure as governor, and Florida led the nation in job growth seven out of eight years. Governor Bush put Florida on the forefront of consumer healthcare advances by signing Medicaid reform legislation “Empowered Care” in June 2006.

 

 

Before launching a run for the Republican presidential nomination in June of 2015, Governor Bush led his own successful consulting business, Jeb Bush and Associates, whose clients ranged from small technology start-ups to well-known Fortune 500 companies. He also served as the chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education; co-chairman of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy; and chair of the National Constitution Center.

 

 

He is the co-author of Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution (2013) and author of Reply All (2015).

 

 

Governor Bush is the son of former President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush. He lives in Miami with his wife, Columba. They have three children and four grandchildren.

 

 

For more on the ExcelinEd Board of Directors, visit: http://www.ExcelinEd.org/board-corner/board-of-directors/. For more on ExcelinEd in Action, visit http://www.ExcelinEdInAction.org.

 

 

###
The Foundation for Excellence in Education is igniting a movement of reform, state by state, to transform education for the 21st century economy by working with lawmakers, policymakers, educators and parents to advance education reform across America. Learn more at ExcelinEd.org.
 

CONTACT US
P.O. Box 10691
Tallahassee, Florida
32302-2691
850.391.4090
info@excelined.org

Copyright © 2015
Foundation For Excellence in Education

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Laura Chapman on the Gospel of Milton Friedman

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2016 //
37

Lara Chapman has written a valuable analysis of the religious, libertarian case for school vouchers. Thank you, Laura, for doing this prodigious research for the benefit of everyone else.

 

Laura writes:

 

 

“Long post. The author of the Friedman Foundations for Educational Choice “research,” Dr. Greg Forster ends his report–titled “A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence On School Choice, Fourth Edition–with the following:
.
“Ultimately, the only way to make school reform work on a large scale is to break the government monopoly on schooling. The monopoly is not just one powerful obstacle to reform among many; it is what makes all the many obstacles as powerful as they are. The monopoly ensures that no meaningful accountability for performance can occur, except in rare cases as a result of Herculean efforts. The monopoly empowers a dense cluster of rapacious special interests resisting efforts to improve schools.

 

“Worst of all, the monopoly pushes out educational entrepreneurs who can reinvent schools from the ground up. Only a thriving marketplace that allows entrepreneurs to get the support they need by serving their clients better can produce sustainable innovation.
In any field of human endeavor—whether education, medicine, politics, art, religion, manufacturing, or anything else—entrepreneurs who want to strike out in new directions and do things radically differently need a client base.
….
“School choice has the potential to solve this problem by providing enough families (size) with enough dollars (strength) and enough choice (suffrage) to support educational entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, existing school choice programs fall short on all three dimensions. Only universal choice can open the door to the full-fledged revolution in schooling America needs in the new century. “ p. 36

 

 

“The author is preaching the gospel of the Friedman Foundation, but also a bit more. The author is a devoted believer in “universal choice,” evidently so religious schools can flourish and be tax-subsidized.

 

“I reach this conclusion from Forster’s discussion linking charters school programs to civic virtues and to religious values (pp. 30-31), and to his faculty position at Trinity International University a regionally accredited school operated by the Evangelical Free Church of America, headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois. His main job there seems to be serving as the director of the Oikonomia Network at the Center for Transformational Churches.

 

“The Oikonomia Network includes over 100 “theological educators theological educators and 18 evangelical seminaries” initially funded by the Kern Family Foundation. The network operations include a newsletter, website, network-wide events and “content creation.” The content creation includes “Theology that Works,” a paper written by Greg Forster that explains “how theology as a discipline can be in fruitful dialogue with the world of economic disciplines and activities.” More here. http://oikonomianetwork.org/economic-wisdom-project/

 

“Forster also has a faculty post at Acton University, where his bio says that he “has a Ph.D. with distinction in political philosophy from Yale University. He is the author of six books, most recently Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It.” http://university.acton.org/faculty/dr-greg-forsterhttp://oikonomianetwork.org/about/

 

“Acton University’s website opens with a display of one reason to sign up:

 

“Faith & Free Market Economics.”
“Acton University is an opportunity to deepen your knowledge and integrate philosophy, theology, business, development – with sound, market based, economics. “

 

“Acton University seems to be a holding company for lecturers who offer on-line courses and also appear in scheduled face-to-face sessions for people who pay fees to participate in four days of lecture-filled conferencing. A full list of “course lectures ” is here. http://university.acton.org/2016courses The lectures are available for purchase at http://shop.acton.org/acton-university-2010-to-2013-lecture-bundle.html

 

“The Win-Win report from political philosopher Greg Forster is written as if it is a comprehensive meta-analysis of credible empirical studies that offer irrefutable conclusions. The report is not that, but the casual reader looking for all of the charter school positives will be drawn to the pretense of scholarship and miss all of the wobbles and switcheroo’s between Forster’s criteria for the inclusion/exclusion of studies and his inferences based on these studies.

 

“The author’s identification of charters with religious values reminded me that Education Next surveys, conducted since 2007, have questions designed to provide marketing insights about the connections between a preference for charters and race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, political alliance, and much else.

 

“Here are the questions in the EdNext 2008 questions under the category of Religion, which mapped responses for people who said they were “born again” offering comparisons with responses from Public School Teachers, African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites. (I found no copyright on any of the Surveys)

 

“24. Do you think the public schools in your community generally promote the values that you think are most important, or do you think that the values emphasized at school often come into conflict with your own?

 

“25. In some public school districts, parents have requested that some time in each day be set aside for silent prayer and reflection. What do you think about this proposal?

 

“26. (Each respondent was randomly assigned to one of the following five questions):
“26A. How would you feel about a group of religious students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
“26B. How would you feel about a group of Mormon students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
“26C. How would you feel about a group of Muslim students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
26D. How would you feel about a group of atheist students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
“26E. How would you feel about a group of Evangelical students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?

 

 

“The 2014 and 2015 surveys had three (and ONLY three) questions about the respondents’ background.

 

“32. Apart from weddings and funerals, how often would you say that you attend religious services?

 

“33. Would you say that you have been born again or have had a born-again experience — that is, a turning point in your life when you committed yourself to Jesus Christ?

 

“34. Are you a member of a union or an employee association similar to a union? http://educationnext.org/files/2014ednextpoll.pdf

 

“The Education Next surveys are produced by Knowledge Networks, which specializes in “market research services, including survey design, information analysis, and data collection to produce syndicated reports and custom market research for a variety of FORTUNE 500 companies. Specializing in consumer research, it offers clients insight in such areas as advertising effectiveness, product development, segmentation, and media planning. Founded by Stanford researchers Douglas Rivers and Norman Nie in 1998, Knowledge Networks was acquired by global market research firm GfK in January 2012. “http://www.google.com/finance?cid=11462635

 

“About a week ago, (May 13, 2016) Peter Cunningham, whose Education Post has a partnership with the 74Million propaganda machine, cited an Education Next poll in a rant about needing to protect students from a bloated educational bureaucracy in Los Angeles.

Cunningham: Does LAUSD Want to Protect Children or a Bloated Bureaucracy?

 

“The Education Next surveys, like Greg Forster’s work parading as research, are designed and hyped to deliver propaganda and with a clear intent to tap veins of race-based and religious and ethnic prejudices. These are enlisted to rant against public schools, teachers, their unions, their salaries, the curriculum, and more. It is no accident that the Forster “study” has 14 reference citations from Education Next, and 50 others recycled from the Friedman Foundation.”

Categories Education Reform, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Erie, PA, Considers Closing All Its High Schools

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2016 //
34

Peter Greene reports on the latest terrible news from Pennsylvania. Because of the highly inequitable funding formula for the state, because of the legislature’s inability to pass a budget for almost a year, because of the burgeoning charter movement, school districts across the state are in dire condition.

 

Erie is considering closing all its high schools and sending its students to other districts. The decision may be made today. Peter predicts that the end result of this crisis could be the end of public education, as the free-market mania consumes everything in its path:

 

The district is looking at a $4.3 million gap, and like many districts in PA, it has no possible response except to cut, “including eliminating sports, extracurricular activities, art and music programs, district libraries, and the district’s police department.” Plus cutting various administrative positions out the wazoo.

 

 

PA Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has taken a look at Erie finances and determined that the crappy state funding formula and the loss of money to charters are a huge part of the problem. DePasquale has actually been saying this a great deal, all over the state, because from Erie to Philadelphia, bad funding and a terrible charter law are guttting school finance.

 

 

It is, of course, the same death spiral visible across the country. If Erie does hang in there, how well can the public schools compete with the charters if the public schools must cut all sorts of services? This is one of the most baloney-stuffed parts of the Free Market Competition Mantra– competition will spur Erie schools to become greater and more competitive by stripping them of the resources they need just to function. Is that how it’s supposed to work?

 

 

No, this is how charter eat public schools from the inside out, like free market tapeworms. The more the eat, the weaker public schools become, and the weaker public schools become, the more charters can attack them and eat more….

 

Particularly in the long term, closing down the high schools and farming out the students qualifies as a viable solution. It also qualifies as a breakdown of the public education system. If the schools shut down (a process that would take over a year), what happens to the students? While there would be public and charter schools that could, maybe, take those students, there’s no guarantee that there would be enough capacity to absorb those students and more importantly, none of those schools would have an obligation to absorb the Erie students (and Erie’s only remaining obligation would be to pay tuition– it would actually be to their benefit if a student is not placed anywhere). Whether the student is expensive to teach or a behavior problem or can’t get transportation or the receiving schools are just out of desks and don’t want to hurt their own programs through overcrowding, there will be students that nobody takes responsibility for….

 

The bulldozing of public schools in order to make room for the free market presumes that the free market has the chops to absorb what the public system turns loose. What if we burn down the public school to make room for a shiny charter, and all we end up with is a vacant lot? The biggest danger of a botched conversion to a charter choice system is not that we’d end up with a bad charter choice system, but that a city could end up with no system at all.

 

 

Categories Budget Cuts, Pennsylvania, Privatization, School Choice
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