Archives for category: Privatization
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How the Little Rock School District Lost Local Control

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2015 //
9

Max Brantley, a fearless blogger in Arkansas (and former editor of the Arkansas Times), wrote an analysis of the Arkansas State Board of Education’s decision to takeover the Little Rock School Board. “The Billionaires Boys Club and its allies at the chamber of commerce won a hard-won and well-orchestrated battle,” he wrote.

 

Look who is on the state board:

 

The votes for takeover included Diane Zook, wife of Randy Zook, head of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce and aunt of Gary Newton, who heads several organizations financed by the Walton Family Foundation and advocates establishment of charter schools. Others included Vicki Saviers of Little Rock, who’s served on the board of the pro-charter-school Arkansans for Education Reform, a lobby financed by the Waltons and other wealthy Arkansans. She also helped found the eStem charter school in Little Rock, another beneficiary of Walton money. Another takeover vote was Kim Davis of Fayetteville, director of external relations for the Northwest Arkansas Council, a private development group whose key backers are the Walton Family Foundation, Sam’s Club and Tyson Foods. The other vote for takeover, besides Ledbetter, was Toyce Newton of Crossett, who heads Phoenix Youth and Family Services. She has served on the Board of the Rockefeller Foundation, which has been partnering with the Walton Family Foundation on an education improvement project. Saviers is on the Rockefeller Foundation board as well. The Rockefeller Foundation is a financial contributor to Newton’s nonprofit.

 

You know what will happen next, right? You remember that Carrie Walton Penner told Forbes that her vision for “fixing” education in America was charter schools, vouchers, and a free market in schooling.

 

 

Categories Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

My Critique of Governor Cuomo’s “Reform” Agenda: It Will Harm Students, Teachers, and Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2015 //
41

I was invited to write an article for the New York Daily News reviewing Governor Cuomo’s recently announced “opportunity agenda” for education.

 

Here is what I wrote.

 

The Daily News published other articles praising the Governor’s plans for toughening teacher evaluations, adding more charters, and introducing voucher legislation. Given the limitation of 800 words, I was unable to write about the noxious effects of vouchers, which have succeeded nowhere.

 

It is an agenda that will subject the state’s children to more testing, more test prep, and less of everything that they enjoy about school.

 

It is an agenda that will ignores expert opinion about the harmful effects of judging teachers by the test scores of their students.

 

It is an agenda that is innately hostile to public education.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Nine Things You Should Know about School Choice

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2015 //
20

Peter Greene read an article in Forbes about the “nine things you need to know about school choice,” and he uses it to critique the current narrative about the wonders of choice.

 

Yes, there are more charters than ever before. No, charters do not have higher test scores than public schools. Yes, there are more students using vouchers than ever before, but they account for only 100,000 students out of 50 million, a tiny percentage. Eight states don’t allow charters (though there are efforts in some of the eight to authorize charters).

 

He sees the article as evidence of the “long game” of choice proponents:

 

Just keep insisting something is true long enough (public schools are failing, vaccines are dangerous, fluoride makes you communist, The Bachelor is a show about finding true love, charter schools are popular and successful) and eventually it enters Conventional Wisdom as, at a minimum, a “valid alternative view.” It’s not necessary for the things to be true, or even supported by facts– just keep repeating them uncritically and without argument, and eventually, they stick.

 

I beg to differ. Lies don’t stick over the long term if critics like Peter continue to expose them as lies. Over the long term, facts prevail. The Big Lie technique ultimately is revealed, and people recognize it as such. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t keep this blog going day after day.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Two Views of a New Study About Choice in New Orleans: Schneider and Kamenetz

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2015 //
15

Anya Kamenetz of NPR described a new study of choice in New Orleans that found that most parents picked schools based on proximity and extracurricular programs, not academics.

 

She wrote:

 

The charter school movement is built on the premise that increased competition among schools will sort the wheat from the chaff.

 

It seems self-evident that parents, empowered by choice, will vote with their feet for academically stronger schools. As the argument goes, the overall effect should be to improve equity as well: Lower-income parents won’t have to send their kids to an under-resourced and underperforming school just because it is the closest one to them geographically.

 

But an intriguing new study from the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans suggests that parent choice doesn’t always work that way. Parents, especially low-income parents, actually show strong preferences for other qualities like location and extracurriculars — preferences that can outweigh academics.

 

Mercedes Schneider, who has written frequently about New Orleans, took issue with a different aspect of the study, its claim that low-income families had greater access to high-performing schools, and that higher-performing schools moved into low-income neighborhoods following Hurricane Katrina.

 

She says that what the study calls progress is probably examples of “gaming the system” and recalculating what produces a higher letter grade for a school (links are found in the original post):

 

First, in their comparison of school performance scores pre-Katrina to post-Katrina, Harris is aware that the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) even awards some schools points for students whose scores are not proficient on state tests.

 

Consider this statement from the Harris/Larsen OneApp analysis:

 

After Katrina, the lowest-income families had greater access to schools with high test scores. School bus transportation systems expanded, average test scores increased across the city, and schools with higher test scores were more likely to locate near lower-income neighborhoods. Pre-Katrina public schools zoned for the highest-income neighborhoods were 1.3 letter grades higher than schools zoned for low-income neighborhoods; the difference between the lowest- and highest-income neighborhoods dropped to just a half letter grade considering the nearest schools after Katrina.

 

It seems that Harris and Larsen are equating higher school performance scores with higher test scores. As noted above, the LDOE incorporation of “bonus points” for non-proficient students boosted school performance scores, and RSD benefited from this practice.

 

Also, not sure how useful the above pre- to post-Katrina school grade comparison is given that there is no anchor. That is, the “closing if the letter grade gap” could mean that the highest letter grades have fallen. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the highest remained stationary while the lowest rose. Also, the highest-to-lowest income ratios are not necessarily the same pre-Katrina versus post-Katrina.

The degree to which the letter grade “gap closure” is an artifact of the post-Katrina mixture of income levels brought about by open enrollment remains unclear.

 

Moreover, school letter grades and performance scores serve as a fine example of high-stakes numbers easily gamed. Whereas Harris and Larsen re-scaled performance scores to compare pre-Katrina with post-Katrina school scoring outcomes, since 2011-12, the public has only “seen” the letters A B C D F and not the alterations in scoring that make those letters not directly comparable from one year to the next. Therefore, in 2011-12, a school with a D could have had a C in 2012-13 simply due to changes in calculation. However, the public “sees” the grade as “improved.” A deception.

 

Additionally, Harris and Larsen comment that “very-low-income families also have greater access to schools with high average test scores.” However, even with inflated school performance scores, most RSD schools continue to be rated as C, D, or F, the definition of a “failing school” by the original Louisiana voucher standard. The schools that have consistently been “high average test score” schools are those that were not taken over by the state post-Katrina and continue to be with the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB). General “access” to “higher average test score” schools might be “greater,” but it remains limited.

 

Next, Harris and Larsen note that “practical considerations” prevent parents from choosing higher-test-score schools. Indeed, it could be that so few A and B schools are available for parents to “choose,” especially given that many of these are selective-admissions schools, that the limited choice of a C school over a D school does not entice parents to choose to a greater degree based on academics.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, New Orleans, Privatization, Testing

United Opt Out Writes a Letter about NCLB to Senator Lamar Alexander

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2015 //
20

United Opt Out sent a letter to Senator Lamar Alexander, who chairs the HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee in the Senate. Senator Alexander intends to rewrite No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which was originally called the Elementary and Secondary Education Act when it was first passed in 1965. At that time, the law was passed to send federal aid to poor districts. It said nothing about testing and accountability. But NCLB turned the federal law into a high-stakes testing mandate. Senator Alexander conducted his first hearing on January 21 and plans another hearing on January 27. Senator Alexander proposed two options in  his draft legislation: option 1 was to replace annual testing with grade span testing; option 2 was to keep annual high-stakes testing (the status quo). UOO is opposed to high-stakes testing in the federal law, period. (So am I.)

 

Here is UOO’s letter:

 

 

United Opt Out Public Letter to Senator Alexander

 

 
January 22, 2015

 

Dear Senator Alexander,

 

There is a great deal of discussion about where education leaders and organizations “stand” when it comes to the latest revision for ESEA titled Every Child Ready for College or Career Act of 2015. In response, the organizers of United Opt Out (UOO) find that we stand between Scylla and Charybdis, between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

 

In your bill you pose the question of support for Option 1, a reduction in testing to grade span, or Option 2, which continues the current testing nightmare; we support neither. We find many items in the 400 page document too egregious and insupportable even though we do accept the notion of “grade span testing,” preferably via random sampling, as an alternative to what is in place now.

 

While we understand why many of our respected colleagues have shown support for Option 1 in your bill, we cannot endorse either. This is because both options are tucked neatly inside a larger bill that promotes the expansion of charters and other policies destructive overall to the well-being of students, public schools, and communities. Another reason we are reluctant, no matter what enticing promises are included therein, is due to those who lobbied for this bill in 2013: The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Alliance for Excellent Education and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has immense ties to ALEC.

 

While we are inclined to support H.R. 4172 – Student Testing Improvement and Accountability Act sponsored by Rep. Chris Gibson and Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, which also calls for grade span testing, we would like to see additional safeguards included against possible punitive (i.e. high stakes) state policies. Also, as stated above, we prefer random sampling. In our assessment, H.R.4172 does not go far enough to protect children, educators, and communities against state policies that are damaging in nature in spite of good intent. To elaborate, this bill requires those tests be administered at least once during: (1) grades 3 through 5, (2) grades 6 through 9, and (3) grades 10 through 12. However, “under H.R. 4172, the states would retain the ability to exceed federal testing requirements if they seek to do so.” In other words, students could be tested just as much as they are now if states choose to do so. The bill is not a guaranteed protection against over-testing and its punitive consequences; it’s just a hope. We believe that hope alone is not sufficient.

 

Make no mistake, Senator Alexander, we understand fully that you are a supporter of the privatization of public schools. Despite that fact, your bill and Gibson’s may be preferable to some who are against the privatization of public schools because they contain the possibility of being better than the existing federal and state policies. However, they are not appealing to many, in particular states that have suffered the negative impact of high stakes testing. Furthermore, we can’t see how either of the current bills proposed are the “solution” to problems such as equity in funding, re-segregation, compromised pedagogy, data mining, or the intrusion of corporate interests – to cite from a list of many – that continue to fester in public education.

 

We agree that education decisions should be decided in state legislative and local district bodies, but safeguards should be in place to ensure horrific policies such as over testing and attaching results to student, teacher, school, and community worthiness are not pushed through state and district legislative bodies. Your bill and Gibson’s include no such safeguards for polices that have been detrimental to the non-white, special needs, immigrant, and impoverished communities.

 

UOO and most other human rights organizations will vigorously oppose ANY state level measures that sanction the following:

 

Increase standardized testing even if it’s under “state control”

 

Support using high stakes to make decisions about students, educators, school buildings, or communities

 

Use of sanctions such as “shuts downs” or “turn overs” based on test data of any kind

 

Display favoritism toward increased charters and state voucher programs

 

Facilitate data mining and collection of private student information

 

Engage in sweet insider deals between state policy makers and corporations or testing companies using tax-payer dollars and at the expense of safety, quality and equity in public education

 

Therefore, we demand greater safety, equity and quality for ALL schools and that includes the elimination of ALL standardized -paper based or computer adaptive testing – that redirects tax-based funding for public education to corporations and is punitive or damaging to children, teachers, schools, and communities.

 

We will not accept ANY bill until the following criteria are included:

 

Increased resources for the inclusion of local, quality curricular adoptions devoid of “teaching to the test”

 

Quality, creative, authentic, and appropriate assessment measures for general students, special needs, and English language learners that are sustainable and classroom teacher-created

 

Smaller teacher/student ratios

 

Wrap-around social programs, arts, physical education programs, and creative play recess

 

Career-focused magnet programs

 

Additionally, we demand legislation that supports a broad and deep system-wide examination of the power structures that perpetuate poverty-level existence for millions of Americans.

 

To conclude, we find ourselves having to choose between being shot in the head and being shot in the foot. For now, we choose neither. Instead we call for continued revisions of current legislation to include the items and protections outlined in this letter. We thank you for this opportunity to share our sentiments and our voice.

 

Sincerely,

 

United Opt Out Administrators:

 

 

Rosemarie Jensen
Denisha Jones
Morna McDermott
Peggy Robertson
Ruth Rodriquez
Tim Slekar
Ceresta Smith

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Opt Out, Privatization, Testing

Pennsylvania: Watching Public Education Die in Delaware County

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2015 //
12

The Chester-Upland school district teeters once again towards bankruptcy. Half of of its students are enrolled in charter schools, and the public school district is in deep deficit. The Corbett administration refused to supply the funding needed to survive, abandoning the state’s constitutional obligation to maintain public schools. Former Governor Corbett, a proponent of privatization, appointed an emergency manager who was known as a supporter of charters and vouchers. He recommended merging the administration of public schools and charters, but the charters declined to join.

 

“The Chester-Upland School District faces a $20 million structural deficit, which Watkins attributes to costs incurred by student exodus to charter schools and the state government’s decision in 2011 to eliminate money in the budget to help districts cover the cost of departure.

 

“Almost half of the more than 7,000 students in the area attend charter schools.

 

“Watkins has floated several unorthodox fixes for the chronically underperforming and overextended school district, including talk of a partnership and an flux of more than $1 billion from a Chinese investor…

 

“Watkins unpacked his plan to partner with the charters -– which included recategorizing charter students as Chester-Upland School District students — at a hearing in December.

 

“By recategorizing charter students and making them Chester Upland students, we wouldn’t have been obligated to pay their tuition costs,” said Watkins. He said the district currently pays $9,000 to $35,000 in tuition per student, in addition to absorbing departure costs.”

 

The biggest charter in the district is the Chester Community Charter School, which is owned by a wealthy lawyer who was one of Corbett’s major campaign contributors and a member of his education transition team. When the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about him, he sued the newspaper (he lost in the appellate court). His readiness to sue stills critics; he even threatened to sue a website run by an 18-year-old that featured his fabulous homes. His for-profit company has made tens of millions by supplying goods and services to his nonprofit charter school.

 

The charter owner recently built a $28 million mansion in Palm Beach. That’s American education, folks.

 

NOTE: I WAS INFORMED THAT THE CHESTER-UPLAND SCHOOLS ARE IN DELAWARE COUNTY, NOT CHESTER COUNTY AND I CHANGED THE HEADLINE ACCORDINGLY. FORGIVE THIS TEXAN LIVING IN NEW YORK FOR HER GEOGRAPHICAL IGNORANCE OF COUNTIES IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Categories Charter Schools, Pennsylvania, Privatization

What “Reformers” Really Want, in Their Words

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2015 //
32

I have had many exchanges with “reformers” who denied that they wanted to destroy public education and replace it with a privatized system. No, they insisted, competition will be good for the public schools. Charters and vouchers will improve public schools. I disagreed because I had heard many of their allies speak truthfully about their desire to privatize the public spending on education, behind closed doors, back when I was with them.

Now we know that competition doesn’t improve public schools. It takes money away from public schools. It weakens them.

But what do “reformers” want? Let them tell you. Jeanne Allen, who founded the Center for Education Reform after working for the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation in D.C., has advocated for charters and vouchers for more than two decades. In a few weeks, she will offer a seminar at the Center called “The Decline and Fall of the U.S. Education System – The Development of a Movement.”

That’s the goal of reform. Weakening and privatizing public education.

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, Vouchers

Camins on the Federal Role: Should It Be Curtailed or Redirected?

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2015 //
17

This is one of Arthur Camins’ best articles about education and its ills. He poses the question of whether there is too much federal meddling in education or whether the federal role has been corrupted by pursuing the wrong goals.

 

He argues on behalf of a vigorous federal policy in education by referring to other areas–like Social Security, Medicare, and civil rights laws– where the only “fix” was federal policy. The reason that so many are now disgusted with federal policy in education is that the Obama administration has pursued the wrong goals and alienated its allies. Its reckless promotion of high-stakes testing and privatization has actually undermined the appropriate goal of federal policy, which should be equity and justice. The so-called “reform” movement relies on federal power to impose unpopular and failed mandates, wielding power in a manner which is inherently undemocratic and even anti-democratic.

 

Camins writes:

 

The problem over the last several decades of education policy is not overreach. It is that the federal government has been reaching for the wrong things in the wrong places with the wrong policy levers. For example, the nation has largely abandoned efforts to end segregation, arguably a prime driver of education inequity. The large-scale, community-building infrastructure and WPA and CCC employment efforts of the Great Depression have given way to the limited escape from poverty marketing pitch of education policy following the Great Recession. Whereas the 1960s War on Poverty targeted community resource issues, current education efforts target the behavior of individual teachers and pits parents against one in other in competition for admission to selected schools.

 

It cannot be repeated often enough: No country that has made significant improvement in its education system has done so through test-based accountability, teacher evaluation systems, charter schools or other school choice schemes. Improvements will only come from a national commitment to the values of equity, democracy, empathy, respect and community responsibility and by providing the funding for solutions based on those values.

 

Community and individualist values have been in tension throughout U.S. history. The diminishment of inequality that characterized the 1930s-1970s was the result of empathetic community responsibility values and strong unions. The growing inequality of the 1980s through the present is the result of the dominance of competitive individualist values. When inequity is the norm, policies that favor competition over collaboration turn potential allies into foes. When competition is the norm among parents for their children’s schools and among teachers for professional advancement, narrow individual solutions undermine broad systemic solutions.

 

The rhetoric to support current education reform is that individual poor families should have choices about which schools their children attend just like rich folks. Tellingly, this does not mean that rich and poor or black and white children attend the same schools. Instead, new charter schools are located in racially and economically isolated communities so that poor families compete with one another for admission. The result has been increased segregation with no effort to ameliorate resource allocation differences between wealthy and poor communities.

 

We do not need the federal government to specify teacher evaluation mechanisms, rank teacher preparation programs based on the test scores of their graduates students, fund privately operated charter schools or promote education entrepreneurs. The proper role for the federal government is to be the guarantor of justice and equity.

 

Unfortunately, given the Obama administration’s ties with the uber-wealthy philanthropists who believe in free-market competition, there is no hope that it will change direction. It will continue to push for the very policies that promote “competitive individualist values” and pay lip service to the “values of equity, democracy, empathy, respect and community responsibility.” We can only hope that the next administration changes course from the status quo. If not, the public will turn against the federal role altogether as the values of “justice and equity” are sacrificed and abandoned. And this will be the sad legacy of the Obama administration.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Jersey Jazzman: How Charter Schools in Hoboken Cut Costs, Part 3

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2015 //
4

In this riveting post, Jersey Jazzman quotes extensively from a presentation by the business manager of one of Hoboken’s charter schools. From state data and her recommendations, he details how charter schools cut costs.

 

1. They hire less experienced teachers, who cost less. ”

 

Perhaps the most significant difference between the staffs at district and charter schools in New Jersey is that charter school teachers have far less experience.

 

Now, contrary to what you may have heard, experience is not an impediment in teaching; to the contrary, there is plenty of evidence teachers gain in effectiveness as they gain experience well into their second decade of teaching. But there is an upside for charter schools in hiring less-experienced staffs: it improves the bottom line.

2. They pay less than district schools, even when experience is equivalent: “In all cases, district teachers make more, even accounting for experience, than their counterparts in charter schools.”

 

3. Avoid paying teachers for experience and longevity and avoid unions, which might insist on a salary scale. JJ writes: “The truth is that in most American workplaces, more experience leads to higher salaries — which is why charter schools like Elysian maintain staffs with less experience so they can keep their costs lower. Again, we should ask: is this a good thing in the long-term for the teaching profession?”

 

4. “Replace professionals when appropriate with assistants.” The examples of assistants who might be able to replace professionals are librarians, speech therapists, and teachers (with paraprofessionals). JJ reacts with scorn to this practice: “A strategy of replacing certificated teachers with lower-cost, non-certificated staff might be good for a charter school’s bottom line, but it’s almost certainly a lousy deal for students. And thinking an untrained, non-certificated librarian or speech therapy assistant can replace a fully-trained and certificated staff member is, again, insulting.”

 

5. Health benefits are costly, so try to hire unmarried staff, or hire staff married to public sector workers who have health benefits to cover them.

 

6. Aim to move your special education students into general education as soon as possible. JJ points out that this is easier when you don’t enroll students with severe disabilities.

 

7. Use technology to cut costs. As JJ points out, computers don’t need health insurance.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, New Jersey, Privatization

Florida: Governor Scott Proposes $100 Million for Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2015 //
32

Florida has more than 600 charter schools. It has a significant number of for-profit charter schools that make money on management fees and paying rent to their own corporations. Many charter schools have failed and closed. But charter schools fund candidates for the state legislature who support the expansion of charter schools, and some of their champions hold key positions in the state legislature.

 

Governor Rick Scott announced that he wants $100 million for construction and maintenance of charter schools. He didn’t mention whether he would propose any funding for construction or maintenance of public schools. At his side in Miami was the rapper Pitbull, famous for his misogynistic lyrics. The announcement was made at the charter school founded by Pitbull, called the Sports Leadership and Management Academy (SLAM). It is managed by the politically powerful Academica charter chain.

 

It is all about politics, money, and power. Not kids or education. Politics, money, and power.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, Privatization
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