Archives for category: Privatization
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Checker Finn Opposes the “For-Profit Model in Education”

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2012 //
69

Back when I was a conservative, I was a founding member of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which is now the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

TBF was a continuation of work that Checker Finn and I started in the early 1980s as the Educational Excellence Network.

We advocated for liberal education and for higher standards for all students.

Checker was always more enthusiastic about choice than I was, but we worked together harmoniously in our shared distaste for humbug of any kind. We even traveled together in Eastern Europe at the invitation of the AFT, to talk about education and democracy.

When I left the conservative fold, I left the board of TBF.

While I still disagree with TBF’s love affair with school choice, I admire the honesty and transparency that has distinguished the organization.

In this latest report, TBF hired an experienced journalist to investigate why Edison failed in Dayton, Ohio, as an operator of a large charter school. Checker was one of the founding gurus of Edison.

The story is fascinating.

Most interesting is this quote:

“Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, whose sister organization sponsors the two schools overseen by the Alliance for Community Schools board, is among the most disillusioned about Edison’s effort in Dayton. Finn was at the table with Whittle and Chubb when Edison was conceived, and he was an early proponent of its education model. He said that the company’s “horror show” in his hometown is a special embarrassment.

“They did an abysmal job in Dayton,” Finn said. “I think it was an implementation and an accountability failure.”

An assistant secretary of education under former President Ronald Reagan, Finn said he has become “cynical” about the for-profit model in education. “Shareholder return ends up trumping the best interests of students,” he said. Having watched education management companies for 20 years, “Most of the models I admire today are run by non-profit groups.”

Now that is newsworthy! Checker is one of the most prominent of the conservative champions of choice, and he here admits that he has become cynical about the for-profit model.

Tell that to Governor Snyder in Michigan, where 80% of the charters are for-profit. Or to Governor John Kasich in Ohio, who has collected millions of dollars in campaign funding from for-profit operators.

And thank you, TBF, for showing other advocacy groups what it means to be transparent and self-critical and honest.

Categories Charter Schools, For-Profit, Ohio, Privatization

A Wonderful Article About Destructive Reforms

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2012 //
15

The New York Times has a terrific article today by Michael Brick about the destructive policies that are called “reforms.” This is the first time in my memory that an article in the newspaper of record–albeit an opinion piece–has acknowledged that both political parties share the same demented and punitive approach and that their ideas are hurting, not helping.

Please read it. It gives me hope that our message is breaking through the elaborate publicity machine of corporate education reform.

Here is a sample:

“For the past three decades, one administration after another has sought to fix America’s troubled schools by making them compete with one another. Mr. Obama has put up billions of dollars for his Race to the Top program, a federal sweepstakes where state educational systems are judged head-to-head largely on the basis of test scores. Even here in Texas, nobody’s model for educational excellence, the state has long used complex algorithms to assign grades of Exemplary, Recognized, Acceptable or Unacceptable to its schools.

“So far, such competition has achieved little more than re-segregation, long charter school waiting lists and the same anemic international rankings in science, math and literacy we’ve had for years.

“And yet now, policy makers in both parties propose ratcheting it up further — this time, by “grading” teachers as well.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing, Texas

What Happened to Local Control in Nashville?

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2012 //
8

Amy Frogge is a recently elected member of the Metro Nashville school board. She overcame a heavily funded opponent. She was named to our honor roll because she ran for school board to speak for parents and students. A lawyer, she takes her civic duty seriously. She believes in democracy, where the people closest to the problems have a voice in resolving them.

That’s why she has been a strong opponent of the Great Hearts charter school. Frogge describes the situation here.

Its plans were inadequate in relation to diversity. Few of the Arizona Great Hearts schools are diverse. This was not acceptable to the Nashville school board. It was no problem for state commissioner of education Kevin Huffman, who didn’t care if Great Hearts ended up with few or no black children. He withheld $3.4 million from the children of Nashville to punish the school board for turning down Great Hearts.

Why is Kevin Huffman so devoted to this charter operator?

This is what Timothy Noah wrote about Great Hearts Academy in The New Republic, quoting investigative journalist Ann Ryman in the Arizona Republic:

“The schools’ purchases from their own officials,” Ryman writes, “range from curriculum and business consulting to land leases and transportation services. A handful of non-profit schools outsource most of their operations to a board member’s for-profit company.” A nonprofit called Great Hearts Academies runs 15 Arizona charter schools. Since 2009, according to Ryman, the schools have purchased $987,995 in books from Educational Sales Co., whose chairman, Daniel Sauer, is a Great Hearts officer. And that doesn’t count additional book purchases made directly by parents. Six of the Great Hearts schools have links on their Web sites for parents who wish to make such purchases. The links are, of course, to Educational Sales Co. Since 2007 Sauer has donated $50,400 to Great Hearts. You can call that philanthropy, or you can call that an investment on which Sauer’s company received a return of more than 1800 percent. I’m not sure even Russian oligarchs typically get that much on the back end.”

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

In Which I Agree with Andy Smarick

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2012 //
21

Andy Smarick believes that public schools can’t be fixed or turned around. He thinks that the only way to solve their problems is to close them down and replace them with privately managed charters. Andy served on the board of a KIPP school, so he is confident that KIPP can do what no public school can do.

In a previous post, I called on Andy to join me in “the KIPP Challenge.” This is the challenge for KIPP to take over an entire low-performing district and show what it can do. Prove that it doesn’t skim the best students, show what happens when it takes all the kids, prove the critics wrong. Given Andy’s experience as a member of a KIPP board, I thought he should join me.

Now he says that the School Improvement Grants (SIG) are a vast waste of money. I agree with him again.

Billions have been spent with meager results. The Department of Education has boasted of double digit gains, but Anthony Cody showed the statistical game that the DOE was playing. Anthony warned last March that the DOE was “spinning the numbers,” and that the SIG program was not working.

Agreed!

I feel strongly that a decade from now, we will look back and realize that the billions spent on Race to the Top were a waste of money that diverted schools from their true mission of developing and educating citizens, not the best test-takers who can win a race for higher test scores.

Andy, lover of all things new, wants to see the SIG program replaced by a commitment only to new schools.

But Chicago and New York City have been doing that for years without much success. The New York Daily News reported recently that nearly 60% of the new schools opened by Mayor Bloomberg had lower passing rates than the “failing” schools they had replaced. Why do more of the same when it didn’t work? If most of the new schools do worse than the old schools, we will move backwards, not forwards.

So, my suggestion is that federal money go to build and strengthen communities as well as schools; that it be coordinated with social services and health services to make sure that children are fit and healthy; that it be spent to make sure that schools in every community have a full rich curriculum with experienced teachers; that it be used to make sure that every school serving poor communities has strong parental involvement and social workers. And that we honor our nation’s commitment to equality of educational opportunity.

I know Andy won’t agree with my prescriptions. But I don’t agree with privatizing education.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit, KIPP Charter Schools, Privatization, Race to the Top

Georgia DOE Blasts Cyber Academy, Threatens to Revoke Charter

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2012 //
4

The Georgia Department of Education issued a scathing report about the Georgia Cyber Academy for its handling of students with disabilities.

The state DOE warned that the online charter school might lose its charter.

The Georgia Cyber Academy is owned by for-profit K12.

K12’s stock price dropped recently after news of the poor performance of its Colorado Virtual Academy, whose graduation rate is 22%.

K12 is planning to expand into the lucrative Washington, DC, market.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Georgia, On-Line Education, Privatization

Expose of Charter Corruption in The New Republic

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
42

Timothy Noah, a senior editor of The New Republic, has written a stunning expose of charter school corruption. He begins with Arizona, where the laws are so lax that self-dealing by charter executives is the rule, not the exception. Noah points out that 90 percent of charter operators are exempt from state laws requiring competitive bidding. The state has never withdrawn an exemption.

Noah bases his observations about Arizona’s Wild West of charters on investigative reporting by Anne Ryman of the Arizona Republic.

He quotes from Ryman’s article:

“The schools’ purchases from their own officials,” Ryman writes, “range from curriculum and business consulting to land leases and transportation services. A handful of non-profit schools outsource most of their operations to a board member’s for-profit company.” A nonprofit called Great Hearts Academies runs 15 Arizona charter schools. Since 2009, according to Ryman, the schools have purchased $987,995 in books from Educational Sales Co., whose chairman, Daniel Sauer, is a Great Hearts officer. And that doesn’t count additional book purchases made directly by parents. Six of the Great Hearts schools have links on their Web sites for parents who wish to make such purchases. The links are, of course, to Educational Sales Co. Since 2007 Sauer has donated $50,400 to Great Hearts. You can call that philanthropy, or you can call that an investment on which Sauer’s company received a return of more than 1800 percent. I’m not sure even Russian oligarchs typically get that much on the back end.

Oh, yes, Great Hearts Academy. This is the same Arizona-based outfit that has been turned down four times by the Metro Nashville school board because it did not have a diversity plan. Because of its rejection of Great Hearts, the Nashville schools were fined $3.4 million by Tennessee’s TFA state commissioner of education Kevin Huffman. Huffman and the governor really, really want Great Hearts in Nashville and apparently they “won’t back down” until Great Hearts has at least three or four campuses in Nashville, regardless of what the school board says. The governor and legislature are set to pass an ALEC-model law to create a commission to overrule local school boards that have the nerve to turn down a charter school.

By the way, Great Hearts Academy just got permission to open charters in San Antonio.

Noah notes corruption in Ohio and California charters, including the Adelanto Charter School, which was shut down. It will now be replaced the the nation’s very first parent trigger charter, also in Adelanto, California, which was selected by only 50 parents in a school that enrolls more than 600 children.

Keep writing, Timothy Noah.

Categories California, Charter Schools, For-Profit, Privatization

America’s Favorite Parlour Game?

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
5

What is America’s favorite parlour game?

If you are talking about the average American, I don’t know though I would guess that parlour games have been replaced by watching TV.

However, if you are talking about the wonks in conservative think tanks, a rare breed to be sure, I will share their secret: they are obsessed with trying to understand how their idol, Tony Bennett, got beat at the polls.

He had everything going for him: the nation’s leading advocate of privatization. Chair of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. Plenty of money. And he lost.

Some attribute it to the massive power of those evil unions (Mike Petrilli at Fordham).

Some say he lost his base by embracing Obama’s Common Core standards (Rick Hess at AEI).

This Hoosier says he lost because he became a willing servant of the federal Department of Education and forgot the people of Indiana.

Remember federalism? An old idea, to be sure, but a good one.

Categories Accountability, Chiefs for Change, Education Industry, For-Profit, Indiana, Privatization

Credit-Rating Agency: Charter Schools Are Risky Investment

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
9

Well, we are into big-time business talk about education.

For-profit colleges are losing market share.

K12 Inc.’s stock price drops after Wells Fargo downgraded its rating in response to the poor performance of K12’s Colorado Virtual Academy, where the graduation rate is 22 percent.

Now a rating agency finds that despite the passage of an ALEC-style amendment in Georgia, allowing a gubernatorial commission to open charters over the objections of local school boards, and despite a likely charter victory in Washington State, the charter sector as a whole is a risky investment. Read the analysis here.

Hey, is any of this about education or just about increasing market share and profits and return-on-investment?

Categories Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, K12 Inc., Privatization

EduShyster on the Michigan Plan to End Public Education As We Know It

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
17

Just to show that great minds think alike, here is EduShyster’s description of the Michigan plan to end public education as we know it.

The plan was designed by the deep thinkers at the free-market think tank called the Mackinac Center.

She calls it a reform “turducken,” which is one reform wrapped inside another, all of them together accomplishing the long-held dream of the extreme right: abolish public education and replace it with a market-driven system, with minimal regulation, minimal oversight, free choice for all, and profits for the plucky.

Sort of like the stock market. Just where you want your children’s future to be decided, right?

I wonder whether Governor Snyder will get a special award from ALEC as the first state to take the bold move of dis-establishing public education?

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit, Michigan, Privatization

For-Profit Colleges in Trouble

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2012 //
8

No tears from this corner for the for-profit sector in higher education.

It is losing market share and closing campuses as students figure out that the degree from a for-profit college is not entirely respectable.

John Hechinger again proves he is at the top of his game as an education writer.

He knows how to follow the money.

Remember the old days when we didn’t use terms like “market share” to talk about education?

Categories For-Profit, Higher Education, Privatization
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