Archives for category: Privatization
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Vouchers for Special Education? UPDATE!

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2012 //
9

I just discovered that I forgot to post the link to the story about the McKay Scholarship Program published by the Miami New Times, so I am reposting this entry. Gus Garcia-Roberts, the reporter who conducted this investigation of fraud in the voucher program for students with disabilities, was honored by the Society for Professional Journalists for this story.

Marcus Winters is one of those researchers who always advocates for vouchers. He often writes opinion pieces in places like the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, extolling the virtues of vouchers and private management.

In this article in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, Winters explains why New York should follow the example of Florida and give vouchers to special education students.

Winters extols Florida’s McKay Scholarship program but fails to mention that it became immersed in scandal after a Miami newspaper wrote an expose.

The schools receiving vouchers are unregulated; the state never inquires about their curriculum or their facilities.

A brief excerpt from the story in the Miami New Times:

While the state played the role of the blind sugar daddy, here is what went on at South Florida Prep, according to parents, students, teachers, and public records: Two hundred students were crammed into ever-changing school locations, including a dingy strip-mall space above a liquor store and down the hall from an Asian massage parlor. Eventually, fire marshals and sheriffs condemned the “campus” as unfit for habitation, pushing the student body into transience in church foyers and public parks.

The teachers were mostly in their early 20s. An afternoon for the high school students might consist of watching a VHS tape of a 1976Laurence Fishburne blaxploitation flick —Cornbread, Earl and Me — and then summarizing the plot. In one class session, a middle school teacher recommended putting “mother nature” — a woman’s period — into spaghetti sauce to keep a husband under thumb. “We had no materials,” says Nicolas Norris, who taught music despite the lack of a single instrument. “There were no teacher edition books. There was no curriculum.”

In May 2009, two vanloads of South Florida Prep kids were on the way back from a field trip to Orlando when one of the vehicles flipped along Florida’s Turnpike. A teacher and an 18-year-old senior were killed. Turns out another student, age 17 and possessing only a learner’s permit, was behind the wheel and had fallen asleep. The families of the deceased and an insurance company are suing Brown for negligence.

Meanwhile, Brown openly used a form of corporal punishment that has been banned in Miami-Dade and Broward schools for three decades. Four former students and the music teacher Norris recall that the principal frequently paddled students for misbehaving. In a complaint filed with the DOE in April 2009, one parent rushed to the school to stop Brown from taking a paddle to her son’s behind.

The reporter described the McKay Scholarship program as: “…a perverse science experiment, using disabled school kids as lab rats and funded by nine figures in taxpayer cash: Dole out millions to anybody calling himself an educator. Don’t regulate curriculum or even visit campuses to see where the money is going. For optimal results, do this in Florida, America’s fraud capital.”

The program has doled out over $1 billion in public funds to more than 1,000 schools. What does deregulation mean? “There is no accreditation requirement for McKay schools. And without curriculum regulations, the DOE can’t yank back its money if students are discovered to be spending their days filling out workbooks, watching B-movies, or frolicking in the park. In one “business management” class, students shook cans for coins on street corners.”

Because the schools are private — although accepting publicly funded vouchers — the DOE is not allowed to monitor curriculum. For the same reason, the department claims it can’t bar corporal punishment, despite parents’ complaints that children are being paddled.

Marcus Winters’ colleague Jay Greene at the University of Arkansas defended the McKay Scholarship program by pointing to an anecdote about a child in a public school special-education program in Alabama who was maltreated. Greene disparaged the publication, implying that it is an untrustworthy source, not to be taken seriously. But the writer of the story, Gus Garcia-Roberts was honored by the Society of Professional Journalists, which named him as first-place winner of its Sigma Delta Chi award for public service journalism for a reporter at a non-daily publication.

Unlike Greene’s defense of the McKay Scholarships, the story in the Miami New Times was not an anecdote about the mistreatment of one child. It was a story about a system in which many children are mistreated, the result of a two-month investigation into a state-funded program that has no standards for the schools that receive the state’s most vulnerable children.

Six months after the original story, the newspaper wrote a follow-up. Florida legislators, including sponsors of the vouchers for special education, have vowed to reform the program. “Sen. Stephen Wise, a Jacksonville Republican who originally co-sponsored the program, declared our findings “appalling… I’m amazed that there’s not more scrutiny about where the money is going.” The program’s progenitor, former Florida Senate President McKay, a Republican from Bradenton, concluded: “Somebody better get off their ass and fix those problems.”

Meanwhile, New York legislators need to do something to reform the state’s privatized program of special education for preschoolers. Just weeks ago, the New York Times published an expose about the fraud and corruption in that expensive, scandal-ridden boondoggle.

Categories Education Reform, Pre-K, Privatization, Special Education, Vouchers

Florida’s Grading System Has a Purpose

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2012 //
0

Florida has perfected a useless system of grading schools.Matthew DiCarlo of the Shanker Institute analyzed the school grades from Florida and found that they reflect poverty and income levels, not school quality. If the school enrolls large numbers of poor kids, it stands a high chance of getting a D or an F from the state. If it enrolls middle-class or affluent kids, they get good grades. Nice way to grade schools!

Coach Bob Sikes points out that the charter corporations now colonizing the state of Florida need the school grades so that they can pick up more business. Given the nature of the grading system, there will always be ripe plums that fall their way, along with public dollars. Jeb Bush has promised to revive the failed Parent Trigger law, as that is yet another tool to generate business for the charter chains.

The most important purpose of the grading system, however, is to inculcate the consumer mentality in legislators, parents, civic leaders, and the public. If you don’t like your school’s grade, go shopping for another!

With public disgust running high against the testing regime, Coach Sikes wonders, will the state legislature be ready to fight the parents of Florida again to push for Jeb Bush’s privatization agenda?

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Poverty, Privatization

Public Education Is Not a Business

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2012 //
29

I have posted a number of comments on the subject of whether, when and how schools are like businesses. This reader says that public education is not a business.

Of course, it is important to understand that the purpose of the accountability measures and the choice policies is to get us all in the habit of thinking we are shoppers, consumers of education services that compete for our children and our dollars.

Parents are supposed to take the school letter grades and go shopping. They are supposed to teach the teacher evaluations and ask for a different teacher. This is supposed to reform schools and make kids smarter somehow. But the real purpose is to get us to view our public services and public goods with a consumer mentality. You can begin to see how nutty this is. Can we shop for a different police department? Can we shop to change our public parks and beaches? No, but we can turn over their management to private vendors. You see, when you start thinking like a consumer, then you forget the distinction between a public service and a business venture.

If they get enough of us to think like this, then we will acquiesce as they privatize everything so we can shop for everything. Or have the illusion of shopping, the illusion of consumer choice. Kind of like when you go to the grocery story and see fifty different cereals and then discover they were all made by the same company.

The problem with this comment is that it is incorrect about the definition of a business. In the second line of the first paragraph, the commenter states:“Schools are a business — they have employees, labor costs, capital costs, and budgets.”Having employees, labor costs, capital costs, and budgets is not the definition of a business. A well-to-do household could have all those things, and nobody would claim it’s a business. Many charities have those things, and they are not businesses. And of course, governments have those things, and they are not businesses.

The real definition of a business can be found in the last line of the first paragraph, although the commenter just casts it aside:

“The critical difference between schools and what we commonly think of as a business — Verizon or Citibank — is that the ultimate purpose of the schools is to provide the service (educate the children) while, for the conventional service business such as Verizon or Citibank, the provision of the service is simply a means to the ultimate purpose of making a profit for the business’ owners.”

Yes, businesses’ ultimate purpose is to make a profit for the business owners. That’s what makes a business a business. It’s the one integral, universal trait of all businesses. That is the definition of a business: It makes a profit for the business owners. That’s it.

Public Education does not meet the one actual requirement of what a business is.

To say it has a few things in common so it must be the same is just wrong. And to work from that premise leads to more poor logic, misguided decisions, and poor outcomes.

Public Eduction is not a business.
Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization

How the Attack on Public Education Is Like the Tobacco Industry

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2012 //
4

A reader read this post about FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), a strategy intended to undermine and discredit the competition. And Bingo! The light went on. It was the same pattern on the rug.

OMG! FUD jogged my memory about a book I read 2 yrs ago by Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming”. Edu-reformers are using some of the same strategies that were used by the tobacco and oil industries to advance their business agendas and preclude government regulation on their products. Oreskes is an historian of science at U Cal, San Diego. She and Conway tell an amazing story that begins in the 1980′s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOnXL8ob_js
From a review: “Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how the ideology of free market fundamentalism, aided by a too-compliant media, has skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.”Her book chronicles how the tobacco industry and the oil industry ran effective PR campaigns to mislead the public on decades of science showing the effects of tobacco smoke on health and the effects of carbon emissions on climate. Both industries set up think tanks, hired established scientists whose credentials were stellar in their fields but whose expertise were not in health and climate. These “experts” conducted research to challenge decades of established facts. Their product was doubt. The purpose was to generate mistrust in established scientific findings. The outcome was to cloud the public’s knowledge, influence the media, and effect government policies that were moving to restrict tobacco and energy industries business practices. Their explicit strategy was “teach the controversy”. The sad reality is that doubt mongering works.

American public education is in a dark corner today. Our unquestioning media plays up the attacks on established education science and teachers. Recall Jonathan Alter & David Brooks’ articles denouncing Diane’s positions on NCLB & RttT. Think Tanks and private philanthropies have made it their business to disseminate junk science written by non-educators that, by design, bypass peer review (e.g. Gates Foundation, Center for American Progress, The Heritage Foundation, AEI, NEIT, et al.) to advance increasing class sizes, high stakes testing, merit pay, ending salary bumps for advanced degrees, charter schools, online education, vouchers, turn-arounds, ending collective bargaining, etc. Claims antithetical to actual scientific findings for efficacy. Bruce Baker (and many others) who regularly debunks the reformy arguments is virtually ignored in the national media.

Oreskes makes a provocative statement about scientists who make claims outside of their expertise: ‘The very features that lead to expertise in a particular domain leads to ignorance in many others.’ Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Michael Milken, Joel Klien, Michael Bloomberg, Eli Broad, anyone?

A critical difference in the current edu-refomry campaign, missing from the previous campaign, is our government’s complicity with the privatizers. The private financial industry and philanthropists are using the full force of the government to advance their agendas. Capturing public money is their business model, schools are simply their vehicle. This is a story of betrayal by our elected officials. They are failing in their mission to serve the public. Indeed, our children’s future is in the hands of those who care the least about other people’s children.
Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Privatization

Watch Out for GERM! We Are Infected!

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2012 //
6

Pasi Sahlberg is the brilliant Finnish educator who is trying to roll back the global tide of destructive education policies.

Sahlberg wrote an important book, Finnish Lessons, explaining how the Finnish education system was transformed in the past thirty years and became one of the top-performing nations in the world on PISA tests of reading, mathematics, and science.

Recently Sahlberg wrote an article summarizing his views on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog in the Washington Post.

Sahlberg warns that there is now an infection sweeping the world which he calls GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement).

GERM is characterized by heavy emphasis on market-style reforms: testing, data, measurement of students and teachers, ranking, choice, competition.

Finland has resisted the GERM virus. Its students do not take standardized tests; they take tests made by their teachers, whose professional judgment and autonomy are deeply respected by all.

Finland has made sure that all its children are well cared for; less than 5 percent live in poverty. Our child poverty rate is close to 25 percent.

Finland became a high performer, he writes, not by seeking excellence but by seeking equity, by pursuing the goal of good schools for all.

All Finnish teachers must be well-educated in their subjects and in pedagogy, acquired at an academic university; all teachers must have a masters degree before they can teach. Interesting to note that, by contrast, a growing number of teachers in the U.S. are getting their credentials and degrees from online “universities.” Many states are lowering their requirements for teachers.

Here are the symptoms of GERM, described by Sahlberg:

The first symptom is more competition within education systems. Many reformers believe that the quality of education improves when schools compete against one another. In order to compete, schools need more autonomy, and with that autonomy comes the demand for accountability. School inspections, standardized testing of students, and evaluating teacher effectiveness are consequences of market-like competition in many school reforms today. Yet when schools compete against one another, they cooperate less.

The second symptom of GERM is increased school choice. It essentially positions parents as consumers empowering them to select schools for their children from several options and thereby promotes market-style competition into the system as schools seek to attract those parents. More than two-thirds of OECD countries have increased school choice opportunities for families with the perceptions that market mechanisms in education would allow equal access to high-quality schooling for all. Increasing numbers of charter schools in the United States, secondary school academies in England, free schools in Sweden and private schools in Australia are examples of expanding school choice policies. Yet according to the OECD, nations pursuing such choice have seen both a decline in academic results and an increase in school segregation.

The third sign of GERM is stronger accountability from schools and related standardized testing of students. Just as in the market place, many believe that holding teachers and schools accountable for students’ learning will lead to improved results. Today standardized test scores are the most common way of deciding whether schools are doing a good job. Teacher effectiveness that is measured using standardized tests is a related symptom of GERM. According to the Center for Public Education, standardized testing has increased teaching to the test, narrowed curricula to prioritize reading and mathematics, and distanced teaching from the art of pedagogy to mechanistic instruction.

We have a very bad case of GERM in the U.S. We are even exporting it to other countries, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Our educational products and ideas should be quarantined at the border. We need medication to stop the virus within our own borders. Let’s recognize the “reform” movement for what it is: a bold effort to privatize public education and open it up for private investment. This is no “civil rights movement.” This is an attack on a basic democratic institution.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Privatization, US Education

Which CEO Made $5 Million Stealing Your Kid’s Lunch Money?

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2012 //
8

At last, someone who knows and cares about public education has made a Youtube video that tells the story of ALEC and the privatization movement, linking them to the outpouring of legislation against teachers and public education. Share this with your friends and neighbors. The narrator is Julie Mead, the dean of education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Karran Harper Royal is a founding member of Parents Across America. Gary Miron of Western Michigan University wrote the National Education Policy Center’s report on K12.

The video is called “Which CEO Made $5 Million Stealing Your Kid’s Lunch Money.” Help it go viral.

Categories ALEC, Education Reform, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Parent trigger, Privatization

Kudos to Jennie Shanker! Debate Ended.

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2012 //
8

If you have been following these posts for the past few days, you will recall that New Jersey Acting Commissioner Chris Cerf claimed that legendary union leader Al Shanker would be on his side, supporting more of the (non-union) charters that Cerf wants to open all over New Jersey.

I wrote a post pointing out that Al Shanker was an original proponent of charters but turned against them in 1993 when he realized that they would become the leading edge of privatization.

I then got a tongue-lashing by someone from New Jersey for daring to say that Al Shanker would not be on board with Chris Cerf and his boss Governor Chris Christie in their campaign to turn more public schools over to entrepreneurs.

And then, blogger Mother Crusader discovered that Al Shanker’s widow, Edie Shanker, had already spoken up and reminded the world that Al would not have supported the “reform” movement.

But best of all, I just read in Jersey Jazzman’s piece that Al’s daughter Jennie Shanker posted the following comment on the article challenging my views:

# Do not speak for Albert Shanker. — Jennie Shanker 2012-07-20 11:26

It was a pleasure and joy to read 2/3rds of your article, at which point your perspective takes its own course.
As his daughter, I treasure the testimony of individuals who knew my father and his work. Lately, it has been, frankly, dreadful to find his name associated with school “reform” that undermines public education. Without exception, these articles offer a few short quotes in evidence, always inappropriately pulled out of the context of his true mission and life’s work.
I can tell you, absolutely and unequivocally, if my father was with us today he would be fighting side by side with Diane Ravitch to preserve and improve public education. The Washington Post re-published an excellent post from Ravitch’s blog this week which very clearly articulats the differences between his vision of charter reform and the for-profit version championed by Chris Cerf and others in New Jersey.
Would he have told that NJ parent to send their child to public schools? Absolutely. As mentioned in the Post article, NJ public schools are among the highest performing in the nation.
Your appreciation for my father’s work and vision was lovely to read. But your stance on this issue is diametrically opposed to his values and intent, and you are dead wrong to shame Diane Ravitch for her position. Indeed, if you consider your thinking to be in line with my father’s, I recommend that you champion her work, as my family does. If anyone can speak for my father in this day and age, the person who should be most trusted is Dr. Ravitch.
It’s unfortunate that many people who read your article will not see this comment. I would like to respectfully request that you reconsider further publicizing your characterizatio n of my father’s position on this topic. From what is in evidence in this article, despite your love for the man, you are in no position to speak for him. -Jennie Shanker
Categories Cerf, Chris, Charter Schools, Education Reform, For-Profit, New Jersey, Privatization

Bingo! Pattern-on-the-Rug Time

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2012 //
23

One of the brilliant readers of this blog sent in a comment that made me understand what has been happening to American public education for the past 15-20 years.

It is the conscious, purposeful application of a marketing strategy called FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

Wikipedia says that FUD is used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics, and propaganda. I sensed that this was happening but I didn’t realize that it was a tried and true strategy that has a name and a documented history.

It’s a strategy in which one competitor undermines the other by spreading FUD. Read the Wikipedia entry to learn who the FUDmaster is.

In this country, the enemies of public education use FUD to advance their primary goal of privatization. They say our public schools are “obsolete” and “broken.” They say it over and over again. They use that line to promote privatization and for-profit education. They want to cut costs by getting rid of experienced teachers and replacing them with online instruction, so they belittle the value of experience and push laws to get rid of tenure and seniority. As they succeed in their use of FUD, what is broken is the spirits of teachers.

They say again and again that our schools are failing when they are not. They have wept about international test scores since “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, even as our economy took off. They use FUD to blame the schools for the market failures they cause. They use FUD to blame the schools for poverty.

High-stakes testing is their tool of choice to close schools and fire teachers.

If you want to see the quintessential application of FUD to public education, read the report of the task force of the Council on Foreign Relations, chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice, which says that our public schools are a threat to national security and that their salvation is to help kids escape them via charters and vouchers. For an antidote, read my review of that report.

Or you could watch the quintessential documentary of FUD, see “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” and then read my review.

The reader who opened my eyes to this marketing strategy, designed to harm public education and to allow its destroyers to call themselves “reformers” signs her stuff as “chemtchr.” Now we know.

Your reader is describing a market-capture strategy refined in the hardware/software market wars of the last century. It is based on sowing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about competing products. I capitalized each word. because the acronym is for the strategy, FUD, is enshrined now in the history of the dawn of the computer age.Google it, and read how IBM piioneered it, and then how the FUDmaster himself out-fudded them.It’s been unleashed now on public education. The children of a whole free nation, and the very people charged with their daily defense, are deliberately assaulted by fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Our state-imposed subservience to the data industry monopolists eats into every day of their childhood, as the FUDmaster tries to impose his defective new operating system on their minds and hearts.
Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, For-Profit, Klein, Joel, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching

A Charter Takeover of Public School District?

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2012 //
6

There is a rapidly expanding charter chain in Pennsylvania called Propel.

It has charter schools in several districts in the state with a total enrollment of 2,000. They are “no excuses” schools, and they reportedly get high test scores.

The Propel charter chain wants to open a K-12 charter school in the small district of Sto-Rox, which has 1,400 students.

The charter school would enroll 800 students.

Last November, the school board unanimously rejected its request saying that it would have a “devastating” impact on the public schools. The  charter chain returned with a revised proposal.

At a hearing earlier this month, residents debated the merits of the proposal. Charter school parents supported the idea. Teachers and students in the public schools opposed it.

Based on the amount of money the public schools would lose, the district would probably be bankrupted by the charter school.

Sto-Rox families would pay no tuition to attend Propel. Cost to the district would be $11,000 per student annually, said Jean Mayes, board member. Currently, Sto-Rox spends approximately $8,000 per student, she said.

According to state Department of Education data, the district spent $7,277 per elementary student and $12,154 per secondary student in 2009-2010. The district had 1,375 students registered that year, with 584 in elementary, 409 in middle school and 382 in high school.

For the 2011-2012 budget, the district lost $1.2 million in funding due to state budget cuts. Accountability Block Grants, which fund such programs as full-day kindergarten, partial charter school reimbursement and Educational Assistance Program, which provides tutoring for students in need, were cut by the state.

During the hearing, Jeremy Resnick, executive director and Propel founder, stated that the demand for another charter school is there.

He referred to a petition with 251 signatures indicating interest in having a Propel school in the area. Of those signatures, 234 were from Sto-Rox residents and 131 checked a box indicating they had children who were interested in attending, he said.

So from the founder’s testimony, the chain wants to open a school for 800 students because the parents of 131 students expressed interest.

Earlier this week, the school board surprisingly agreed to form a committee to sit down and talk with the Propel charter chain.

The founder of the chain called this decision “courageous.”

Will Sto-Rox go the way of Chester-Upland, where a charter school absorbed most of their funding and drove the local schools into bankruptcy?

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Report from Florida: Fight Them or Join Them?

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
13

A reader reflects on the rapid advance of privatization in Florida, which has been abetted by the hard demands of the state’s high-stakes testing regime:

Having been in education in FL for over 30 years, it is gut wrenching to me to watch what is going on. Jeb Bush and his band of merry men (and women) have taken over public education in FL. Some of the best and most innovative public educators I have known are now working for him or one of his groups. I am beginning to think folks in FL have decided the privatization of public education in FL is inevitable, and our best shot at helping kids is to get involved now in that transition to make sure there will be some folks in those private enterprises that actually care for kids. The climate and culture in the public schools has become toxic to people who believe in the duty of the state to provide a free quality education to our kids (that’s actually in the FL Constitution).

I observed in a summer school class today for students who didn’t pass the third grade FCAT. Their only shot at fourth grade is to pass a similar test this summer. The teachers in those classes are some of the best in our county. And most of the summer has been spent in quality reading instruction. But the final two to three weeks is totally focused on test prep and testing, teaching ‘strategies’ to use to pass the test. “Remember, next Wednesday, use all these strategies so you can pass the big test.” You can see the stress in the faces of these eight year old children. They get one more chance to bubble in the right answers, or they get to spend another year in third grade.

What are we doing? Have we all lost our minds?

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Florida, Privatization
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