A reader sent the list of contributors to the campaign for 1240 in Washington State, which authorizes charters. See here and here for more about 1240.
Please read the list. Not clear if anyone on it is a parent of a public school student. What you will see is a list of billionaires in the high-tech sector.
Will big money buy the referendum?
Is public education for sale to the billionaire boys’ club?
Help your friends fight off the charter billionaires in Washington State.
Tomorrow is Money Blast Day:
It’s here – Money Blast Day in Washington state to fight off I-1240 that would establish charter schools here. (Washington is one of just nine states that does not have them and we have voted – three times – and said no to charters.)
But Bill Gates and his wealthy friends just infused the Yes side to the tune of $3M (they are up over $8M total). It’s a David and Goliath fight that we intend to win but we need help.
The No On 1240 campaign is having a MONEY BLAST all day on October 11th to raise money for this fight that has national implications. We have an angel donor that will match the first 50 people who donate $100.
Please help us draw this line in the sand against charters, their poor outcomes, their bad ramifications and the insanity that is the “conversion/trigger” charter embedded in I-1240. (This would allow a charter to use a petition signed by parents OR teachers to take over ANY existing school, failing or not. It would be the harshest conversion charter trigger in the country.)
Please help us say NO to charters and NO to I-1240.
Bill Gates just added another $2 million, and Alice Walton of the Walmart family just dropped another $1 million.
I am donating $100. Will you donate whatever you can?
Louisiana passed its historic privatization legislation last spring, which included not only vouchers for more than half the students in the state, but inducement for many organizations to open multiple charter schools.
Now the state is getting swamped with applications from unknown or little-known groups. Maybe it is your Uncle Harry and Aunt Mabel. Maybe it is the guy who usually runs a hardware store. Maybe it is a dentist and his friends. Are they qualified to run schools?
Who knows?
People in public schools call them “pop-up charters” because they materialized out of nowhere to grab some funding away from the public schools. Yes, that. Every charter that opens, no matter how unqualified its founders or inexperienced its teachers, takes money away from the minimum foundation funding fo the state’s public schools. Once they get set up and operating, there is no one to hold them accountable. Accountability is only for public schools.
This is a money grab, plain and simple. And call it what is is: privatization.
Please look over this list and see if you ever heard of any of these would-be charter operators.
Frankly it seems that Bobby Jindal and John White don’t care who sets themselves up in business and calls themselves a school, so long as they take money away from public schools.
The online for-profit corporation K12 wants to grow its business in Florida but school boards are opposing it. The online charters poach students and funding from public schools while providing a poor quality of education.
They do, however, have one big political advantage. They have the fervent support of former Governor Jeb Bush, who is a political powerhouse in the state.
Independent studies have found high dropout rates, low test scores, low graduation rates, and inflated billing at the virtual charters. K12 is under investigation in Florida. But it is so profitable that it is undeterred by little issues like poor results and the harmful effects on the entire structure of public education. These guys are corporate raiders of the public purse. A “school” that recruits only 10,000-15,000 students will draw $100 million in revenues while having no maintenance costs, no nurses, no social workers, no library, nothing like the fixed costs of real schools. And what profits!
Two months into the school year, the head of the Recovery School District abruptly fired the principal of Walter L. Cohen High School as well as several teachers and announced that he was turning the school over to a charter operator called the Future Is Now.
Students reacted angrily and protested the disruption in their school. They issued their own demands, which included the funds to repair the building, reinstatement of the fired staff and a full report from the charter about its record, its test scores, suspensions, police reports, graduation rates, attrition rate and other data about its performance.
The Future Is Now is a charter chain led by Steve Barr (formerly of Green Dot in California) and real estate developer Gideon Stein of New York City, who has been associated with Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy schools.
The following exchange of letters between Tracie Washington, a prominent civil rights attorney in New Orleans, and Gideon Stein, shows the heat of the controversy. In New Orleans, the wishes of parents, students, and communities count for nothing. All decisions are made elsewhere.
From: “Tracie Washington”
Date: Oct 9, 2012 6:02 PM
Subject: RE: Walter L. Cohen High School
To: “Gideon Stein”
Cc: “Vaughn R Fauria” , , , , , , , , “Mary Joseph” , “Judith Browne-Dianis” , “Tracie Washington”
Gideon:
The problem is the presumptions made that started this web of deception and mess. That web continues, even today with Recovery School District (RSD) and FINS-Nola backdating a contract (it’s a public record folks; that’s a big ‘no,no’). Apologizing to me means little. You and your Board and the RSD did something that really is unforgiveable. You entered a community and said “I know what’s better for you and your children. I will not consult with you, but instead take over your community.” I’m saddened not because you did this. You are not a member of my community. But Black folk in this community did it to other Black folk. And yesterday, when these students were exercising civil disobedience the likes of which I had not seen from our young folk, RSD threatened them with the declaration of truancy, which is criminalization in our community.
On Sunday, the students told our community they felt like slaves. SLAVES. It’s 2012. FINS-Nola and RSD made a group of Black children feel like slaves. We have Congo Square. I guess we should have simply sent the kids there on Friday.
I don’t know how you resolve the lies told to take away the rights of these parents and students. You all have been paid. So it’s all better because now you say you’re sorry? Really.
You get to fly out of here. So it’s up to Black women to clean up this mess? My grandmother worked for $3/day and carfare so that I would not have to clean up behind white folk. Not today. This is your mess Gideon. Stick around!
I’m just sick!
Tracie L. Washington, Esq.
President & CEO
Louisiana Justice Institute
Every day without fail — Make Justice Happen
1631 Elysian Fields Avenue | New Orleans, Louisiana 70117
p 504.872.9134 | f 504.872.9878 | c 504.390.4642
Admitted to Practice in Texas and Louisiana
tracie@LouisianaJusticeInstitute.org | tlwesq@cox.net
http://www.LouisianaJusticeInstitute.org
Visit our blog and comment: http://www.JusticeRoars.org
Learn about LJI’s Project Transparency: http://www.NolaPublicRecords.org
From: Gideon Stein [mailto:gstein@finschools.org]
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 5:42 PM
To: Tracie Washington
Cc: Vaughn R Fauria
Subject: Re: Walter L. Cohen High School
Tracie,
I’m replying to you and Vaughn and bcc’ing the rest of the FINNOLA board and other people cc’d on your email. First, let me state that FINNOLA is very sorry for any disruption and hurt caused to the Cohen community. As with John McDonogh, FINNOLA recognizes the important history of New Orleans schools and the unique identity that students, alumni, parents and the community all share with respect to their schools. FINNOLA is committed to working with all stake holders at Cohen to hear concerns and ensure that community interests are considered along with our commitment to providing the best possible education for children.
I spent time at Walter L. Cohen today and can report that the protests are over, the kids are back in class and we are working with the RSD and NOCP to address many of the issues raised by the Cohen students.
Sincerely,
Gideon
—
Gideon Stein
President
Future Is Now Schools
646.373.3888
Yesterday I wrote a post about how the Pennsylvania Secretary of Education was pulling a few fancy tricks to inflate the scores of charter schools. This makes it easier to claim that they are incredibly successful (when they are not) and persuade the Legislature to add many more.
But it turns out that Louisiana is even slicker than Pennsylvania when it comes to playing games with the data. One of our readers, whom I deduce is or was an employee of the Louisiana Department of Education, has the goods.
Read this post and please be sure to open the link for more chicanery in Baton Rouge. The bottom line: Now that Bobby Jindal and John White control the State Department of Education, don’t trust the data they produce.
Actually, John White and Louisiana have already perfected several of these techniques and added a few twists of their own. I’ve documented some of the tricks being used here:
Basically they are defining schools they take over and/or turn over to charter operators as “Turnaround” schools for two years and don;t report any data on them. If the scores don’t improve they plan to reassign them to a new charter. Only schools that do well will ever get reported. Additionally, all of the recovery school district in New Orleans is defined as a small school district, less than 1000 students. Even though taken together they easily exceed that coun. Several of the sub-districts like Algiers have multiple sites and exceed that number, but for purposes of reporting the data for these districts LDE has decided to count the schools as their own district. I’m pretty sure even then we have one or two schools with more than 1000 students, but this has been reported by our departing accountabilty folks to USDOE with no apparent effect.
PA’s only mistake is not reporting what they were doing, USDOE doesn’t care if you cook the numbers, as long as you tell them you are I guess.
Edushyster has done it again.
Here, Edushyster defends Joel Klein against the outrageous claim that Rupert Murdoch is trying to make a profit by selling lots of stuff to the schools. It’s all about collaboration. It’s all about replacing teachers with technology to help with budgetary issues. It’s all about reform.
Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute summarizes “What’s Next” for reformers (some prefer to call them privatizers).
Race to the Top was a great coup for the privatizers/reformers.
Now they plan to follow up with a direct assault on schools of education, abetted by NCTQ’s forthcoming rankings, to be published by US News. NCTQ was created by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation a dozen years ago, and saved at the outset by a $5 million grant from Secretary of Education Rod Paige. In 2005, it got caught up in a federal investigation for taking money from the Department to speak well of NCLB. Read here to learn more about NCTQ.
The privatizers intend to move on principal evaluation, to make it more like teacher evaluation (test scores matter).
Pension reform will be high on their agenda.
Privatizers will promote digital learning by removing seat time requirements and following the guidance of former Governor Jeb Bush on this subject. No mention is made of the negative evaluations of cyber charters, both by Stanford’s CREDO and the National Education Policy Center, or of exposes that appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post about the awful performance of cyber charters.
Gird your loins, folks, the privatizers are flush with victories in Wisconsin, Louisiana, Ohio, Michigan, Maine, Florida, and other states, and they are coming back to do some more reforming.
Here’s a hard-hitting investigative report on the money pouring into California to beat the unions by cutting off dues collections. The face of this campaign is Gloria Romero, who flipped to the right and is now the face of Democrats for Education Reform, the pro-privatization Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group.
Seems the Koch brothers tossed in a few million, which makes it hard to maintain the pretense that the anti-union campaign is warm, fuzzy and progressive.
The only error that I spotted is calling ALEC “neoconservative.” It is a reactionary organization pushing radical schemes to suppress voter rights, relax gun control, crush unions, relax environmental regulation, and privatize public education, among other things.
The Mercury of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, has an editorial describing the devastating effects of budget cuts and tax caps on Pennsylvania’s public schools.
The cuts threaten the future, says the editorial. Class sizes are growing. Thousands of teachers have been laid off. On the chopping block and already cut are music and art, sports, kindergarten, early childhood education, after-school activities.
State budget cuts, combined with the transfer of public funds to charter schools and voucher schools, are eroding public education for the vast majority of the state’s children. The great many are suffering because of privatization.
What is at risk?
“Public education is the foundation of our democracy,” said William LaCoff, Owen J. Roberts School Board member. “You need an educated populace to make good decisions about the nation’s future and education is expensive. If we have no public schools, or if they are the school of last resort, not everyone is going to get an education and then we have a permanent under-class? That’s the last thing we want.”
My comment on the editorial: as privatization expands, public education will implode. And maybe that is the goal of the privatizers. As they grow, they are plundering a basic democratic institution.
