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Oklahoma: Governor Stitt Puts Trumpism Above Reality and Common Sense

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2020 //
5

John Thompson writes about the latest madness in his home state of Oklahoma:

The shocking headline was that the price of oil dropped to below $1 a barrel. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt was on the phone with Vice President Mike Pence when he heard the news. The legislature now faces “a loss of $1.3 billion in revenue for appropriation between FY 2020 and FY 2022.”

So, why has Gov. Stitt been talking with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about Oklahoma giving some of $40 million of new federal money to private school vouchers?

Even though the Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Program, a tax credit that raises money for scholarships to private schools, was supposed to expand school choice for low-income students, it has long been known that “families who earn up to three times the income limits for free and reduced priced lunch (a family of four earning $139,000 a year) are eligible for scholarships.”

‘Tough decisions’: Stitt projects $1.3 billion drop, legislators want the math


https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-governor-stitt-what-oklahoma-education-needs

Increasing the scholarship tax credit hurts public schools and benefits affluent Oklahomans

I’ll save non-Oklahomans the details regarding the range of bipartisan efforts to persuade Stitt to embrace reality. Before the COVID-19 shutdown, it seemed like the legislature, often led by the Teacher Caucus, might be able to counter the completely inexperienced governor’s infatuations with “reforms” that are disconnected from the real world. But, every time one government institution, or grassroots initiative, has successfully pushed back, Stitt finds another, now unguarded, door to Trumpism.

On one hand, Stitt’s effort to ban abortions during the pandemic, claiming that those services are nonessential, was reversed this week by a federal judge. On the other hand, he has ignored the “thousands of Oklahomans (who) have spoken out against the Governor’s health care proposal, which could restrict health care access for up to 200,000 Oklahomans.” Moreover, Stitt has been slow in scheduling the vote on Medicaid expansion. Frustrated by the state leaving billions of dollars of federal money on the table, Oklahomans launched SQ 802 to require the state to accept the Medicaid funding. Stitt hopes that his plan, which imposes a work requirement, will undermine the citizen-led initiative.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/federal-judge-oklahoma-abortion-ban-enforced-70267625

Thousands of Oklahomans speak out against Governor’s health care proposal

And Stitt hasn’t given up on his most hopeless fight; ignoring legal advice, he’s still fighting Oklahoma tribes, denying that the compact governing casino gambling automatically renewed in January. In doing so, he placed $130 million in education funding in jeopardy.

https://www.news9.com/story/41605034/state-education-could-be-caught-in-the-middle-of-gaming-compact-dispute

So, education is just one area where the politics of destruction are being ramped up so that no disadvantaged families are being left unpunished. Students, especially poor children, have lost months of learning. Schools face new costs for devising virtual learning, not to mention the time and money redesigning schools for a safe reopening. Especially in rural areas, where hospitals have been closing, the challenge of providing basic health services – not to mention virus-related costs – is worsening.

With Possible Student Slump, State Weighs Next Steps

And, yet, the Stitt and the Trump administrations seem committed to a double-barreled blast: subsidizing the flight of families from traditional public schools while cutting their funding. Instead of timely interventions to prevent excessive deaths due to the pandemic, they are launching assaults of education, health, and social services that would hit home next year, when a resurgence of the virus is likely.

CDC Director Warns of Resurgence of Virus Next Winter


https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/childhood-in-an-anxious-age/609079/

I said I wouldn’t bother non-Oklahomans with the details of the Stitt administration’s version of Trumpism, but the headlines keep getting crazier. Because of Oklahomans’ preexisting health problems, our state is especially at risk from the virus. And the Oklahoman reports, “Oklahoma is in the bottom four states for testing for COVID-19, according to an email sent this week by the White House coronavirus task force.” But due to bipartisan leadership of mayors in the Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Norman and other communities, and the way that the public has supported their “shelter-in-place” policies, our confirmed cases and deaths have been lower than expected.

It had been predicted that COVID-19 would peak around April 21, but recent days have seen an increase in infections. So, how did Stitt react?

The next day, Stitt announced the reopening of numerous businesses on Friday, April 24, and more openings on May 1!?!? He implied that the state might try to force cities to comply with his order!

https://oklahoman.com/article/5660710/stitt-oklahoma-businesses-can-start-reopening-starting-friday?&utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Oklahoman%20breaking-news%202020-04-2219:43:51&utm_content=GTDT_OKC&utm_term=042220

By the way, the New York Times reported that the Oklahoma rightwingers demonstrating for a reopening of business denied any connection with the Trump campaign. But to understand what Attorney General William Barr, Stephen Moore, and Tea Partiers want, the Times says we need to:

Look no further than the first protest organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund — whose chairman manages the vast financial investments of Dick and Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary — to see that the campaign to “open” America flows from the superrich and their front groups.

It’s gotten to the point where the fights picked by Stitt, a few other Republican governors. and the President are incomprehensible even in a time of Trumpism. It’s hard to understand how those policies are anything but Social Darwinism tantrums on steroids, as well as an attempt to reelect Trump, regardless of the human costs.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Oklahoma, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

Texas: Public Schools Outperform Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2020 //
7

William Gumbert relies on data from the Texas State Education Departmentvto demonstrate they the state’s woefully underfunded public schools outperform the well-funded overhyped charter schools.

The real puzzle in Texas and elsewhere is why billionaires and financiers continue to fund failure.

See the analysis here.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Texas

Texas: Charter Schools Grow Rapidly Despite Inferior Performance Compared to Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2020 //
8

William Gumbert prepared a graphic portrayal of the dramatic growth of privately managed charter schools in Texas.

Two facts stand out from his presentation:

1) Charter schools are diverting billions of dollars from the state’s underfunded public schools.

2) Public schools perform better than charter schools.

Public officials are turning public money over to entrepreneurs at a furious pace without regard to the results.

Charter schools this year will take more than $3 Billion away from the state’s public schools, despite the poor performance of the charter schools. Since their inception, charters have diverted more than $23 Billion from the state’s public schools.

Public schools in Texas are underfunded and have been underfunded since 2011, when the state legislature recklessly cut $5.4 Billion from the schools’ budget. That cut was never fully restored.

Diverting money to charter schools adds more damage to the public schools that continue to enroll the vast majority of students in the state.

Texas has about 5.4 million students. More than half of all its students are Hispanic. About 12-13% are African American. About 28% are white. The majority (58.7%) are identified by the state as “economically disadvantaged.”

The legislature does not look like the people of Texas, most of whom are people of color. Almost two-thirds of the state legislature are white. More than three-quarters are men. Why does the legislature substitute charter schools for adequate funding?

Read the whole report here.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Texas

Heritage Foundation’s “National Coronavirus Task Force” Recommends Universal Vouchers and Uncertified Teachers

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2020 //
14

Talk about taking advantage of a crisis!

The rightwing extremist Heritage Foundation has issued its own report on how to recover from the pandemic. They cover it with patriotic glitz to make it appear like a government report, which it is not. It calls itself the “National Coronavirus Recovery Commission. But it is just a self-aggrandizing report from a rightwing think tank funded by the usual suspects.

The Task Force consists of people who share the Heritage view that government is evil, as are public schools.

Tucked into its recommendations is this: eliminate public schools and certified teachers.

That will help America sink back at least a century in educating its children, perhaps even two centuries.

Perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that the lead person on education was Kevin P. Chavous, CEO of the notorious for-profit K-12 Inc. online charter chain, noted for high attrition, low graduation rates, and low test scores–and above all, high profits! In 2019, Chavous’s total compensation was $4.3 million for his estimable services. But in the nature of for-profit enterprises, there are always new worlds to conquer, new markets to open up.

On page 5:

The Commission recommends that states help families return to work with access to K–12 education by making existing education funding student-centered and portable. Many parents and guardians who now find themselves in charge of teaching and monitoring their children’s educations are unable to access the public schools they pay for through their taxes and are looking for continuity in their children’s education. States should immediately restructure per-pupil K–12 education funding to provide education savings ac- counts (ESAs) to families, enabling them to access their child’s share of state per-pupil funding to pay for online courses, online tutors, curriculum, and textbooks so that their children can continue learning. Students are currently unable to enter the K–12 public schools their parents’ taxes support. They should be able to access a portion of those funds for the remainder of the school year in the form of an ESA. Parents would receive a por- tion of their child’s per-pupil public school funding in a restricted-use account that they could then can use to pay for any education-related service, product, or provider of choice. Additionally, state restrictions on teacher certification should be lifted immediately to free the supply of online teachers and tutors, allowing anyone with a bachelor’s degree to provide K–12 in- struction online. Research suggests that there is little if any difference in student academic outcomes between teachers who are traditionally certified, alternative- ly certified, or not certified at all. States should work with school districts to reopen districts based on data about where the disease is prevalent or waning. Deci- sions about whether to keep schools closed should be medically determined by zip code, tied to districts. Dis- tricts that have low incident rates should begin plans to
reopen, and all school districts should have emergency response plans (including quick transitions to online learning) if they are forced to close again.

The Commission recommends that states remove occupational licensing requirements. States have im- posed numerous occupational licensing requirements that in many instances are simply artificial barriers to entry that can inhibit individuals’ ability to pursue en- trepreneurial work. These should be eliminated. Simi- larly, states should extend reciprocity so that licensed individuals in one state are not subject to additional requirements in the new state. Eliminating or signifi- cantly reducing occupational licensing requirements can help to get people back to work and can also provide a state with access to individuals with high-demand skills. For example, Massachusetts created a one-day approval process to license doctors with out-of-state licenses as a means to expand access to medical care in response to the virus.

Peter Greene also saw this phony “commission report” that pretends to be an official document but is just another anti-government, anti-public school self-aggrandizing piece of propaganda.

He writes:

While Trump has announced a variety of groups he wants to gather together to charter a pandemic recovery for the nation, there’s one group that is already on the job– and their plans for public education suck.

The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission– doesn’t that sound grand? It sounds like a real official government thing, only it isn’t, exactly. It’s the project of the Heritage Foundation, a right-tilted thinky tank that has been a major policy player in DC since the days of Ronald Reagan.

He notes the presence of one Kevin P. Chavous, who has made good money by running with the rightwing crowd, a sector not known for their devotion to racial equality and civil rights.

Well, look. It’s Kevin Chavous, the big cheese at K12, the 800 pound gorilla of the cyber school world, the one funded by junk bond king Michael Milken and founded by a McKinsey alum (anoter early investor– Dick DeVos). They’ve had more than their share of messes (like the time the NCAA decided K12 credits don’t count). But the Trump administration has been good times for them. And Chavous used to help run the American Federation for Children, Betsy DeVos’s dark money ed reform group, from which he called for the privatization of post-Katrina New Orleans education. Do I need to add that he has no actual education background?

Want a reason to vote for Joe Biden? Read the Heritage Foundation report with their plans for a dark future.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, K12 Inc., Online Education, Privatization, Vouchers

An Open Letter to Joe Biden, by Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2020 //
45

Carol Burris and I wrote “An Open Letter to Joe Biden,” which was published by Valerie Strauss on her blog “The Answer Sheet” at the Washington Post.

Valerie Strauss begins:

During the Obama administration, public school advocates led by Diane Ravitch opposed the education agenda of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who had embraced standardized testing, charter schools and the Common Core State Standards as the way to improve America’s schools.
Ravitch, an education historian and research professor at New York University, became the titular leader of the grass-roots movement against the privatization of public education in 2010, when she published her best-selling book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” It detailed her conversion from a No Child Left Behind supporter to an opponent.

From 1991 to 1993, Ravitch served as assistant secretary of research and improvement in the Education Department under President George H.W. Bush. She was, too, an early supporter of No Child Left Behind, the chief education initiative of his son, President George W. Bush, which ushered in the high-stakes standardized-testing movement. But when she researched the effects of the measures, she saw that NCLB’s testing requirements had turned classrooms into test prep factories and forced schools to narrow the curriculum to focus on tested subjects.

She changed her long-held views about how to improve schools and for the last decade has been speaking and writing about education reform. She also co-founded and heads the nonprofit Network for Public Education, which links people and groups that advocate to improve public schools and fight school privatization.
Ravitch became a lightning rod for criticism by supporters of President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which made standardized tests more important than ever. But, at 81 years old, she is still writing and advocating for public schools. Her most recent book was published this year, “Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools.”

The Network for Public Education that she leads opposes charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately managed — seeing them as part of a movement to privatize public education. It published two reports last year about how the federal government wasted millions of dollars on a program aimed at expanding the charter sector.

Charter supporters criticized the reports, but the overall story of waste and abuse in the federal Charter Schools Program helped to prompt Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to promise to end funding for the program when they were both running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Some Democratic legislators in the House also expressed concern about the program after the reports were released.
Joe Biden was Obama’s vice president but was not in the forefront of the administration’s education agenda. He has promised that if elected, he would, among other things, triple the federal funding for high-poverty schools, increase teachers salaries and ban for-profit charter schools. He has also expressed opposition to standardized testing.

In the following open letter to Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Ravitch and Carol Burris write about public education and their reaction to his public comments about school policy, saying they are encouraged.

Burris, a former award-winning principal in New York, is the executive director of the Network for Public Education. Burris has been writing for this blog for years, chronicling the effects of Race to the Top and about charter schools.

Here is the open letter to Biden about education policy, written by Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris:</strong

Dear Vice President Biden,

We write on behalf of the Network for Public Education, the nation’s largest group of volunteers and advocates for public schools in the nation, with more than 350,000 followers spread across all 50 states.
We have strongly opposed the education agenda of Donald Trump. For the first time in the history of the Department of Education, its secretary seems dedicated to the destruction of public schools. From her enthusiastic support of private school vouchers, charter schools, and virtual charter schools, Betsy DeVos has made clear that she believes that schools should be run by private agencies and as entrepreneurial start-ups, not as centers of community life, subject to democratic governance by elected school boards.

Our public schools and their students desperately need a champion. We hope you will be that champion. For two decades, our schools and their teachers have been micromanaged by misguided federal mandates that require states to judge students, teachers, and schools by standardized test scores, as though a test score could ever be the true measure of a child, a teacher or a school.

We know that you know better. At the Public Education Forum in Pittsburgh in December 2019, NPE Board member Denisha Jones asked you whether you would commit to ending standardized testing in public schools. You did not hesitate when you said, “Yes. You are preaching to the choir.”

You continued by saying, “Teaching to a test underestimates and discounts the things that are most important for students to know.” You explained that what is most important is building a child’s confidence and you referred to evaluating teachers by test scores as a “big mistake.”

You are right in your assessment of standardized, high-stakes tests and we appreciate your response. Hold firmly to those beliefs. We understand that federal law must be rewritten to free the schools from their fixation on test scores. We count on you to make that happen, and to put an end to the legacy of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. Billions of dollars have been wasted on testing during these past twenty years. It is time for a fresh vision of what education can be.

Former supporters of President Obama’s Race to the Top program will whisper in your ear to persuade you to double down on failed policies. They will try to convince you that testing is a “civil right.” It is not. In fact, standardized testing has its roots in eugenics — it was used for years as a means by which to shut out immigrants, students of color, and students who live in poverty in order to reserve privilege for affluent students, who more typically excel on standardized tests.

All children deserve a well-resourced public school filled with high-quality educational experiences. All children deserve experienced and well-prepared teachers. All children deserve schools that have counselors, social workers, librarians, and nurses. All children deserve a full curriculum, with science labs and arts programs. When schools become test-prep factories, the civil rights of children to equal education opportunities are denied.

Others will tell you that funding does not matter and that only choice and competition will improve public schools. They are wrong. Research consistently demonstrates that increases in funding make a difference in the educational outcomes of children. But we cannot tinker around the edges and expect to get dramatic results. That is why we fully support your plan to triple Title I funding while giving educators voice in how that money should be best spent.

We are pleased that you support community schools as a pathway for school improvement. During the forum, you said that “Betsy DeVos’s whole notion from charter schools to this [her blame the victim position on sexual harassment on campus] is gone,” if you are elected. We are glad that you endorse district public school improvement instead of embracing the expansion of what has become a competing alternative system whose growth has drained funding from public schools.

Banning for-profit charter schools is not enough. There are only a handful of for-profit charters, and they exist only in Arizona. There are, however, many for-profit charter management companies as well as nonprofit charter management companies whose CEOs enjoy exorbitant salaries, far exceeding the salaries of district school superintendents. These charter chains hide their lavish spending on travel, marketing, advertising, rental payments to related companies, and administrative salaries from community, state and federal taxpayers even as they claim to be public schools.

Although the policies of the states regarding charter schools are beyond your control, the Federal Charter School Program is not. A once modest program intended to spark innovation community-led charter schools is now a program that sends hundreds of millions of dollars each year to corporate charter school chains. Just last month, DeVos gave $72 million to the IDEA charter chain whose chief executive officer hired a private jet on which he was the only passenger to meet DeVos in Florida. That same charter chain received over $175 million from DeVos through the Charter Schools Program in 2017 and 2018.

It is time to eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program, which is no longer needed since billionaire-directed foundations supply ample funding for new charters and charter expansion. We issued two reports last year, demonstrating that the federal Charter Schools Program is riddled with waste and fraud, having spent approximately $1 billion on schools that never opened, or that opened and subsequently closed.

Your public statements encourage us to believe that you do not intend to follow the disastrous education policies of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. We are hopeful that you will renounce the status quo and bring a fresh vision that supports the work of teachers and public schools.

You will receive no better counsel on public education than you will from your educator wife, Jill Biden. We have no doubt that she will advise you well. It is time to turn the page on failed policies and invest in our nation’s public schools, which enroll nearly 90 percent of all American children.

The future of our nation depends on the success of public schools and their leaders, teachers, and support staff, who even, in this crisis, are working tirelessly to educate our students and keep them fed, well, and safe. Please stand with them and with the more than 50 million children who attend district public schools.

Diane Ravitch
Carol Burris

Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing, Vouchers

Betsy DeVos Hands Out Another $200 Million, Mostly to Rich Corporate Charter Chains

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2020 //
8

In 1994, the Clinton administration started a small federal program and funded it with $4.5 million to help launch new charter schools. At the time, charter schools were a new idea, and there were not many of them. The first charter school had opened in Minnesota in 1991, and six states passed laws authorizing charters in 1992. In 1994, the idea was too new to have produced results or research. So Congress allocated a measly $4.5 million.

In the 26 years since the federal Charter Schools Program started, the charter idea has burgeoned into an industry with state charter school associations, lobbyists in D.C. and in state capitols, and support from numerous foundations, billionaires, corporations, and Wall Street. There is considerable research about charters as well as controversy surrounding their methods of selecting and retaining or excluding students. Charters now enroll 6% of the nation’s students.

Two things are clear:

1. The charter sector today is very well funded by billionaire patrons such as the Walton Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe abroad Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, and Netflix founder Reed Hastings. It has no need of federal funding.

2. Some charters get high test scores (and are accused of skimming to get the “best” students), some get the worst scores in their states, and most get scores about the same as public schools with similar demographics. In the one all-charter district in the nation, New Orleans, about half the schools are rated D or F by the state. Although the charter industry sings their praises, it’s clear that charters have no secret sauce to lift up every child.

Yet despite the fact that charters have a huge number of financial angels with very deep pockets, despite the fact that they do not solve the deep-seated problems of American education, despite their spotty academic record, funding for the Federal Charter Schools Program has grown to $440 million per year.

Under Betsy DeVos, the CSP has become her personal slush fund to help The expansion of large corporate charter chains, like KIPP and IDEA. The original idea that the federal funds would launch entrepreneurial start-ups is long forgotten.

About two weeks ago, DeVos released the latest CSP funds and again favored the big corporate charter chains, which have many millions in reserve and long lists of billionaire patrons.

DeVos handed out the first $200 million to her favorite chain, IDEA, which has no financial need. IDEA won $72 million, having previously received more than $200 million from DeVos. IDEA, you may recall, is known for its lavish spending. Its board approved the lease of a private jet for nearly $2 million a year, but had to cancel the lease because of adverse publicity in Texas, where the chain is based. Its CEO hired a private jet to take him to meet with DeVos in Florida; he was the only passenger. The chain’s executives,lacking their own jet, are allowed to fly first class with their families, not exactly like public school employees on official travel.

The second biggest winner was Mater Academy, which won $57 million. It is affiliated with the for-profit (and very rich) Florida for-profit chain Academica.

The Network for Public Education published two reports about the CSP in 2019, documenting that the program is shot through with waste, fraud, and abuse. About 40% of the charters funded by CSP either never opened or closed not long after opening. The loss of federal funds was $1 billion. The first report—Asleep at the Wheel— is here. The second report—Still Asleep at the Wheel—is here.

Tom Ultican reviewed the two NPE reports and recounted Betsy DeVos’s unsurprising hostile response to them. Why would she relinquish control over $440 million, which helps corporate chains that divert money from public schools and advances DeVos’s long-term goal of wrecking the foundations of public education?

It is ironic that the Trump administration in its now forgotten budget for the coming year proposed to eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program by folding it and 28 other federal programs into a bloc grant to the states. At the same time, Trump and DeVos proposed The creation of a multi-billion dollar voucher program. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives made clear that these proposals were Dead on Arrival. Nonetheless, the charter lobbyists were shocked to discover that charter schools are just a stepping-stone to vouchers for DeVos.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Peter Greene: Why Business Ideas Don’t Work in Education

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2020 //
17

Peter Greene once again nails a basic fact: education is not a business, and it can’t be run like a business.

Business ideas work well in the world of commerce, where businesses compete to provide a better product or better service. Probably there will be readers who question how well business is functioning right now, as megastores like Walmart gobble up neighborhood stores, destroying Main Street, and as online giants like Amazon threaten to gobble up all brick-and-mortar stores, even Walmart.

Greene writes, and I quote him in part:

We are living through yet another demonstration of the ways in which market-based approaches fail, and in some cases, fail really hard.

Long Term Preparation Is Inefficient But Essential

Back when I was a stage crew advisor, there was a pep talk I had to give periodically to crew members, particularly those working in the wings as grips or fly. “I know that you sit and do nothing for a lot of this show,” I’d say, “but when we need you, we really need you. In those few minutes, you are critical to our success.” In those moments we were talking about, every crew member was occupied; there was no way to double up or cut corners.

Emergency preparation is much the same. It’s economically efficient to, for instance, keep a whole stockpile of facemasks or ventilators. Big-time businessman Trump justified his cuts to various health agencies by citing business wisdom:

And rather than spending the money—I’m a business person. I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.

This turns out to be just as smart as disbanding the fire department and figuring you’ll just round up personnel and equipment when something is actually on fire. It doesn’t work. And as we have witnessed, it leaves you unprepared to deal with the critical moment when it arrives.

But the market hates tying up money in excess capacity or emergency readiness, because you’re spending all that money on capacity that isn’t being used this second. Are those guidance counselors and school nurses seeing students every single minute of the day? Well then, we should be able to cut them back. Are we sure that every teacher is teaching the maximum number of students possible? Couldn’t we just put some of those students on software? This is why so many business heads are convinced that public education is simply filled with waste–because there seems to be so much excess capacity in schools.

But in many schools, there’s not enough excess capacity. When a student is in the middle of a crisis, we should be able to respond immediately, whether it’s a personal crisis, a medical crisis, or an educational issue. The response should not be “tough it out till the counselor is on duty tomorrow” or “we’ll just wrap that in some gauze until the nurse comes in three hours from now” or “I know you need help with the assignment, but I can’t take my attention away from the other thirty-five students in this classroom.” And that’s on top of the issue of preparedness, or having staff and teachers who have the capacity–the time and resources and help– to be prepared for the daily onslaught of Young Human Crises. When wealthy people pay private school tuition or raise their own public school taxes, this is what they’re paying for– the knowledge that whenever their child needs the school to respond, the response will come immediately.

Sure, you can cut a school to the bones in the name of efficiency, but what you’ll have is the educational equivalent of a nation caught flatfooted by a global pandemic because it didn’t have the people in place to be prepared.

Competition Guarantees Losers

Ed Reformsters just love the bromide about how competition raises all boats and makes everyone better. And yet, the pandemic’s free market approach to critical medical supplies doesn’t seem to bear that out. States are being forced to compete with each other and the federal government, and all it’s doing is making vendors rich. This is free market competition at its baldest– if you have more money, you win. If you have less money, you lose. At some point, if it has not already happened, some people in this country are going to die because their state, municipality or medical facility will not have enough money to outbid someone else.

The free market picks losers, and it generally picks them on the basis of their lack of wealth. The notion that losers can just compete harder, by wrapping their bootstraps in grit, is baloney. It’s comforting for winners to believe that they won because of hard work and grit and not winning some fate-based lottery, and it also releases them from any obligation to give a rat’s rear about anyone else (“I made myself, so everyone else should do the same”).

A system built on picking losers and punishing them for losing is the exact opposite of what we need for public education. You can argue that well, we just want free market competition for schools and teachers, but if that kind of competition is in the dna of the system, it will stomp all over students as well, just as all free market businesses pick customers to be losers who don’t get served because they aren’t sufficiently profitable. Kind of like a low-revenue state or old folks home that can’t get its people necessary supplies because they don’t have enough wealth to bid with.

“Compete harder” just means “be richer.” It is not helpful advice.

Please open the link and enjoy the rest of his good essay on why business thinking and cost cutting doesn’t work in education.

Categories Accountability, Competition, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

CEO of Scandal-Ridden IDEA Charter Chain Resigns

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2020 //
7

Tom Torkelson, c-founder of the IDEA charter chain, has stepped down as CEO and will be replaced by the other co-founder JoAnn Gama.

Based in Texas, IDEA is a favorite of Betsy DeVos, who has sent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the chain to help it expand. Less than two weeks ago, DeVos gave another $72 million to IDEA. The chain previously had received more than $200 million from DeVos. She sure likes IDEA.

Torkelson and Gama arrived in the Rio Grande Valley aspartame’s ofTeach for America and started IDEA in 2000. It has become a charter behemoth in the past two decades.

The chain attracted bad publicity for its free-spending ways. One of its worst ideas was leasing a private jet for nearly $2 million a year for exclusive use of its executives and their families. After getting negative press, the board canceled the lease, and now the executives fly first class.

Jacob Carpenter wrote in The Houston Chronicle:

Torkelson’s resignation caps a remarkable run for the charter pioneer, whose ambition, charisma and results-driven approach helped propel IDEA’s remarkable expansion over the past 20 years. In recent months, however, Torkelson’s push to lease a charter jet and the disclosure of questionable financial practices under his watch prompted scrutiny of the charter.

IDEA students, the vast majority of whom are Hispanic and come from low-income families, routinely score well-above average on state standardized tests and enroll in college at high rates compared to their peers. Skeptics argue IDEA’s success is inflated by high academic standards that deter families from enrolling students with more intensive academic and behavioral needs.

Torkelson and Gama started IDEA in the late 1990s while working as teachers in the Rio Grande Valley, opening a single school together in the border city of Donna. After meager growth in its first decade, IDEA rapidly expanded in the 2010s in the Valley, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso and Fort Worth.

The network operates 91 schools in Texas enrolling 49,500 students, along with five campuses in Louisiana. IDEA is scheduled to open its first four Houston-area schools this year on two sites in northern Harris County.
Torkelson served as a key figure in IDEA’s expansion, pushing to enroll 100,000 students across the country by 2022. Earlier this year, Torkelson told the Houston Chronicle that he wanted IDEA to become “the largest high-performing school system in the United States of America.”

Torkelson also played a significant role in fundraising for IDEA, which has received tens of millions of dollars from philanthropic groups to aid its expansion.

However, some of Torkelson’s financial and operational moves led to criticism over the past several months.
Torkelson’s desire to lease a charter jet as a method of reducing travel hassles between the network’s hubs drew sharp backlash in December 2019.

One month later, more scrutiny followed the disclosure that IDEA spent about $400,000 annually on luxury boxes and tickets for events at San Antonio’s AT&T Center. IDEA officials said more than 1,000 employees received tickets each season as a reward for performance, with the “lion’s share” allotted to campus-level staff and students

During Torkelson’s tenure, several relatives of IDEA executives and board members also engaged in business dealings with the charter, including a company co-owned by Chief Operating Officer Irma Muñoz’s husband that billed more than $600,000 for uniforms, other clothing and gear.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Scandals, Texas

Chalkbeat: Big Education Philanthropists Are Missing in Action on Coronavirus Response

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2020 //
13

Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat checked to see what the billionaire philanthropists are doing in response to the coronavirus. The answer: Not much.

When asked to underwrite charter schools, Teach for America, and wacky teacher-evaluation systems, they shell out hundreds of millions of dollars. When the nation’s schools are closed by a pandemic, and it’s clear that millions of children need food security, computers, and internet access, the money slows to a dribble. When the nation’s schools face massive budget cuts because of declining revenues, and these cuts will increase class sizes, cause layoffs, lead to drastic cuts in the arts and athletics, Will they wake up and pitch in to help?

He writes:

Here’s how four of the largest education foundations and grantmakers are responding:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says its “commitment to and overall objective of our education strategies are not changing.” But it is prioritizing supporting teaching by expanding “access to interactive, student-facing digital content and high-quality print materials” and “supporting data collection efforts to understand the impact of COVID-19 on educators and families.”

The City Fund, which is funded primarily by John Arnold and Reed Hastings, said it has committed new $100,000 grants to in its 14 active cities, and also allowed those organizations to repurpose $100,000 of existing grants to respond to the coronavirus. That will total nearly $3 million in emergency support. In Oakland, for instance, the Oakland Reach has used this to provide small cash payments of families in need. In D.C., money has gone to a fund to make Wi-Fi and laptops available to students. In St. Louis, a nonprofit has created a “remote learning innovation fund.”

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has awarded over $1.6 million to education groups, including money to those aiming to expand broadband access in the San Francisco Bay Area, to disseminate resources to parents, and to provide guidance to school districts moving instruction online.

The Walton Family Foundation did not offer details. But along with the Kauffman Foundation, it has contributed to a $2 million education relief fund in Kansas City designed to support teachers, families, and schools with costs and challenges associated with COVID-19.

So far, most of the private grants in response to the virus amount to a few million dollars at most. By comparison, the federal stimulus for K-12 schools totaled $13.5 billion — and many worry it won’t be anywhere near enough, considering that high-poverty school districts are facing a daunting combination of greater needs and less money.

When billionaires pony up only a few million in the face of a national catastrophe, that’s not a contribution. That’s a tip. That’s surely not “putting children first.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Philanthropy, Privatization

NPE ACTION ENDORSES JOE BIDEN!

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2020 //
64

Please read the NPE Action endorsement of Joe Biden for President.

We support public schools.

Donald Trump and his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, are hostile to the very idea of public schools. They have spent three years proposing deep cuts to public education and attempting to establish federally-funded vouchers for private and religious schools.

In contrast, Joe Biden has proposed dramatic increases in funding to public schools by tripling the amount that Title I schools would receive. He has voiced strong support for more counselors and psychologists in our schools, as well as increased funding for high-quality pre-kindergarten programs. He supports community schools that link social services and the school together to serve children and their families better.

At the Public Education Forum held in Pittsburgh in December of 2019, Joe Biden was asked by NPE Board member Denisha Jones if he would commit to ending standardized testing in schools. His unequivocal response was, “Yes. You are preaching to the choir.” He said to a national audience that “teaching to a test underestimates and discounts the things that are most important for students to know.” He described evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students as a “big mistake.”

At the same public forum in Pittsburgh, he was dismissive of the policies of Secretary of Education DeVos, saying that under his administration, “Betsy DeVos’s whole notion of charter schools…are gone.”

The public statements expressed by Joe Biden encourage us to believe that he does not intend to follow the disastrous education policies of the Obama years included in Race to the Top, which were closely aligned with the failed policies of George Bush’s No Child Left Behind.

We are taking candidate Joe Biden at his word. We believe that he recognizes that Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind were harmful to our schools and our children.

However, if those policies re-emerge, we will vigorously oppose them. We will also continue to be engaged in monitoring the words of both candidates and their parties’ platforms.

We urge our supporters and all friends of public education to go to the polls in November and vote for Joe Biden. The future of our public schools and our democracy is at stake.

In the words of NPE Action President, Diane Ravitch, “We support Joe Biden because he has promised to reverse the failed “test-and-punish” federal policies of the past two decades. For the sake of our children, their teachers, our public schools, and our democracy, Trump must go.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization, Race to the Top, Support for public schools, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, VAM, Vouchers
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