Archives for category: Privatization
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Tennessee: Details About the Ruling Against Vouchers

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2020 //
13

Media Contacts:

Ashley Levett, SPLC, ashley.levett@splcenter.org / 334-296-0084

Sharon Krengel, ELC, skrengel@edlawcenter.org / 973-624-1815, x24

Lindsay Kee, ACLU-TN, communications@aclu-tn.org / 615-320-7142

Christopher Wood, Robbins Geller, cwood@rgrdlaw.com / 615- 244-2203

Judge Strikes Down Tennessee School Voucher Law

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Public school children in Tennessee won today when Davidson County Chancellor Anne C. Martin struck down the state’s private school voucher law, known as the Education Savings Account (ESA) Pilot Program. Because the law applies only to students in Davidson and Shelby counties, Chancellor Martin ruled that it violates the Home Rule provision of the Tennessee Constitution, which prohibits the General Assembly from passing laws that target specific counties without local approval.

The rulings are a milestone victory for the plaintiffs challenging the voucher law in two separate cases: public school parents and community members in Nashville and Memphis, who sued in McEwen v. Lee, and Davidson and Shelby County governments, in Metropolitan Government of Nashville v. Tennessee Department of Education.

The voucher law was enacted in May 2019 over the strong objections of legislators from both counties. The voucher program was originally intended to begin in the 2021-2022 school year, but Governor Lee accelerated the timeline with plans to issue vouchers starting this fall.

In March, the plaintiffs in McEwen v. Lee filed a lawsuit to challenge the voucher law in Davidson County Chancery Court. The lawsuit argues that the voucher law violates several provisions of the Tennessee Constitution, including the Home Rule provision as well as the Education and Equal Protection provisions and the Appropriation of Public Moneys provision.

When the state began accepting applications for vouchers to be used in fall 2020, the McEwen plaintiffs immediately moved for an injunction to temporarily block the law until the court had the opportunity to rule on its constitutionality.

Davidson and Shelby counties filed a motion for summary judgment in their separate lawsuit challenging the voucher law.

Both cases are before Chancellor Martin in Davidson County Chancery Court. Oral argument on the summary judgment motion was originally scheduled to be heard in late May. However, the McEwen plaintiffs requested that Chancellor Martin hear argument before the state began giving out vouchers for this fall. Accordingly, Chancellor Martin accelerated the schedule for oral argument on all motions in both cases, setting them for late April, and the McEwen plaintiffs secured the state’s agreement that it would not notify voucher applicants until after she issued her decision on the motions.

Chancellor Martin’s decision today, granting the counties’ summary judgment motion, now permanently enjoins the state from implementing the unconstitutional voucher program.

The McEwen plaintiffs are represented by Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which collaborate on the Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) campaign to ensure public education funds are used exclusively to maintain, support and strengthen public schools. The plaintiffs are also represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and represented pro bono by the law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP.

Plaintiff Roxanne McEwen, a public school parent in Nashville, said “I am grateful to Chancellor Martin for safeguarding the resources in Metro Nashville Public Schools and Shelby County Schools, and the rights of all public school children in these districts. Our public schools serve every child who walks through their doors. Especially in this time of crisis, our schools could not afford to have more resources drained away from them.”

“Chancellor Martin’s ruling is an enormous victory for Tennessee public school students,” said Chris Wood, a partner at Robbins Geller who argued for the McEwen plaintiffs last week. “This unpopular voucher program was forced on two communities without their consent, and it threatened to drain public resources from already underfunded public schools. Today, the voices of public school parents and community members were heard. The state needs to adequately fund our existing public schools, which educate the vast majority of students in Tennessee, instead of trying to send our taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools.”

# # #

The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, visit http://www.splcenter.org/.

Founded in 1973, Education Law Center is a national leader in advancing the rights of public school students to equal educational opportunity under state and federal law through litigation, policy, advocacy and research. For more information, visit http://www.edlawcenter.org/.

The ACLU of Tennessee, the state affiliate of the national American Civil Liberties Union, is a private, non-profit, non-partisan public interest organization dedicated to defending and advancing civil liberties and civil rights through advocacy, coalition-building, litigation, legislative lobbying, community mobilization and public education. For more information, visit http://www.aclu-tn.org/.

Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP is one of the world’s leading complex litigation firms representing plaintiffs in securities fraud, antitrust, corporate mergers and acquisitions, consumer and insurance fraud, multi-district litigation, and whistleblower protection cases. With 200 lawyers in 9 offices, Robbins Geller has obtained many of the largest securities, antitrust, and consumer class action recoveries in history, recovering tens of billions of dollars for victims of fraud and corporate wrongdoing. Robbins Geller attorneys are consistently recognized by courts, professional organizations and the media as leading lawyers in their fields of practice. Visit http://www.rgrdlaw.com/.

Categories Privatization, Resistance, Tennessee, Vouchers

Valerie Jablow: Why Does D.C. Government Give Away Public Property?

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2020 //
7

Valerie Jablow, parent activist in the District of Columbia, posts often about the D.C. government and its passion for giving away public property.

In this post, she questions what happened to the playing field of a Duke Ellington High School of the Arts.

Some time in February, Ellington Field–the field that belonged for most of a century by court order to DCPS’s Duke Ellington High School of the Arts–was officially transferred from DCPS to the department of parks and recreation (DPR). Despite many appeals to the DC city council and to the deputy mayor for education (who has oversight of both DPR and DCPS) explicitly asking for the terms of the use agreement before the transfer and assurance that Duke Ellington high school would have first priority use among all users, no one in the public knows what the terms of that transfer really are; what use of the field the high school (or any DCPS school) is allowed; and whether Duke Ellington will be able to provide credited programming there ever again.

The Ellington transfer happened because Mayor Bowser gave Maret, a private school, exclusive use of a nearby public field, Jelleff. In the wake of public protest against the Jelleff deal, Bowser then transferred Ellington Field from Duke, to make it a public recreation center kinda sorta standing in for Jelleff.

So it was that despite opposition of parents, neighbors, and many others (see here and here for a few), this unprecedented transfer of an asset of a DCPS school, actively used by students, for the immediate and lasting benefit of those not necessarily affiliated with DCPS happened without much fanfare.

A short time later, on the afternoon of March 3, the private Maret school (yes, that same one) was photographed using Ellington Field. On its website, Maret had posted a spring schedule of activities it was hosting at Ellington Field.

All of this was quite some news to Duke Ellington HS staff, who apparently had no idea of Maret’s activities at the field that day beforehand–much less that the field had been, by that point, officially transferred from Duke’s control.

Categories Accountability, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization

Texas: Parent Complains to State Superintendent About Approval of Unwanted Charter School

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2020 //
5

Dr. Theresa Trevino, a public school parent in Austin, wrote to Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath to complain about the insertion of a BASIS charter school into a community where the school is neither wanted nor needed. BASIS is owned by a couple who pay themselves $10 million a year. Their charter schools require students to pass multiple AP exams, which effectively winnows out low-performing students, who no longer bother to apply. Most of their charters are in Arizona, where they are celebrated for their high scores. Their high scores are achieved by excluding students who might get low scores.

See the letters here and here.

 

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

California: Charter Leaders Charged with Breaking Securities Law; No Criminal Charges

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2020 //
4

As the old saying goes, better to steal a million dollars than to steal a loaf of bread. The former is smart thinking, the latter is a crime.

In Livermore, California, the leaders of a charter chain were charged with securities fraud. But they got off without any criminal charges or jail time.

When you read this story, you realize what clever guys they were to figure out such a complex scheme. You have to be an accountant to follow the money.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged former CEO of the Tri-Valley Learning Corporation, Bill Batchelor, with allegedly misleading investors when acquiring a $25 million bond for Livermore charter schools.

Batchelor and John Zukoski, the former director of finance for the schools, were charged with a violation of the antifraud provision of the Securities Act of 1933. They were accused of helping prepare and sign a bond-offering document of $25.54 million to fund the purchase and renovation of a Livermore building to house two schools in May 2015. One was a charter school run by the Tri-Valley Learning Corporation (TVLC) and the other was a private school, which Batchelor also managed.

But according to the complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission filed in the U.S. District Court of Northern California and made public this week, both men were aware that TVLC had “serious cash flow problems” that would negatively affect the corporation’s ability to make payments on the bonds. The commission also alleges that TVLC was delinquent on payments owed to vendors, had other debt from a private loan that was overdue by a year and had drawn a bank line of credit to its limit in a previous bond.

But, the bond document failed to disclose that TVLC was in “serious financial distress,” and both Batchelor and Zukoski signed documents stating the material had no misrepresentations or omissions.

Without admitting any wrongdoing, Batchelor and Zukoski agreed to not participate in any future municipal debt offerings. Batchelor agreed to pay a $20,000 penalty, and Zukoski a $15,000 penalty. Both settlements are subject to a court approval, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

TVLC and California Preparatory Academy, the private high school school, went before the Alameda County Board of Supervisors seeking approval for a $30 million municipal bond to finance the purchase of a new high school building at 3090 Independence Drive in May 2015.

The bond was approved, and the Livermore Valley Charter Prep high school and the private school ended up sharing the same space on Independence Drive in Livermore.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein: What Percent of Success Academy’s Students Graduated?

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2020 //
3

Gary Rubinstein saw an article in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post claiming that 100% of the 98 students in the graduating class of Success Academy’s high school had been accepted into college.

Based on Success Academy’s long history of high attrition, he knew this claim was likely false.

So he checked and his hunch was right.

He asked:

Is 98 really all the students in the class of 2020?

The answer, of course is, ‘no.’ What the actual number is depends on how you define the class of 2020.

If you go back to a New York Post editorial from just six months ago, it begins with the sentence “Seniors at the Success Academy HS of the Liberal Arts just got their SAT scores — and all 114 did great, with an average score of 1268, 200 points above the national average.” So six months ago there were 114 seniors, which is 16 more than the 98 that are now called the ‘entire’ senior class. For Success Academy to lose roughly one-seventh of the students who were in the senior class just six months ago is stunning. These 16 students had been at the school since at least 3rd grade. Where did those 16 students go?

But if you look further back to the state data, you will find that the class of 2020 had 146 eleventh graders for the 2018-2019 school year. This means that they lost about 1/3 of the class of 2020 between then and now….

If you go back two more years to see where the class of 2020 was when they were in 9th grade you find that there were 191 students in the cohort back then. Also notice that when they were in 9th grade the boy/girl split of the 191 was about 50%/50% while when they were in 11th grade the boy/girl split of the 146 was 44%/56% in favor of the girls. We will have to wait until the official data comes out next year to see what the split was for the ‘entire’ 98 who graduated.

Rubinstein looks at the numbers all the way back to kindergarten and finds that only 28% of those who started Eva Moskowitz’s celebrated Success Academy made it to high school graduation. Way different than 100%.

Another great “success” for skimming, exclusion, and attrition.

Another landmark in the history of charter hype.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, High School Graduation, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Jeb Bush Wants Relief $$ for Private Schools

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2020 //
5

Mercedes Schneider reports that Jeb Bush has staked a claim on Coronavirus relief dollars to benefit private schools.

When it comes to supporting voucher schools, including those that openly engage in discrimination, no dollar will be left behind.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization

Tom Ultican: Who Paid to Make Indianapolis the Second Most Privatized School District in the Nation?

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2020 //
8

In this post, Tom Ultican takes a close look at the takeover and privatization of the Indianapolis school district, funded by billionaires and managed by a well-funded group called The Mind Trust (which, of course, claims to be deeply concerned about “civil rights,” while stripping parents of color of their right to elect a school board that represents them). By Ultican’s reckoning, nearly 64% of the students in Indianapolis now attend privately managed schools.

He writes:

With the introduction of Innovation schools in 2015, Indianapolis Public Schools quickly became the second most privatized taxpayer supported schools system in America. It has zoomed past Detroit and Washington DC in the privatization sweepstakes to only trail the poster child for disaster capitalism, New Orleans. The right wing billionaire funded organization, The Mind Trust, has played a major role in this outcome.

He provides a handy list of the major funders of this betrayal of the public trust. Leading the charge is the Lilly Endowment, with a donation of $22.7 million, followed by the City Fund (Reed Hastings and John Arnold) at $18 million. And there are other familiar names, well known in the disruption industry.

Ultican traces the history of the disruption/privatization industry in Indianapolis and finds that its origins can be traced to the far-right extremists of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Koch brothers. You will not be surprised to learn that Teach for America and TNTP (the organization founded by Michelle Rhee) are integral to the privatization of Indianapolis’s schools. And Relay “Graduate School of Education” (the one with no real faculty or campuses or professors or researchers or library) is also in the mix.

Ultican reviews the sorry situation in Indianapolis, where disrupters have pulled the wool over the eyes of the public and the media with their dazzling sums of money, and he speculates about why billionaires are so devoted to undermining public schools and the teaching profession:

Why are billionaires spending so much to undermine professionalism in public education? It is probably not altruism. More likely, they want to reduce the biggest cost associated with education; teacher’s salaries. In the antebellum south, plantation owners preached anti-tax ideology because they owned the most and paid the most. Today’s billionaires aren’t much different. Most of them won’t put their children in public schools and really don’t value high quality public education. It seems the big motivation is to reduce tax burdens and simultaneously create new education industries.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, Indianapolis, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein: KIPP Flees the Edsel of School Reform in Tennessee

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2020 //
9

Gary Rubinstein reports that KIPP has taken advantage of the coronavirus shutdown of schools to close two of its charters in the ill-fated “Achievement School District” in Tennessee. Once hailed as a model for other states to copy, the ASD has been a flop.

Rubinstein has followed the ASD from its early days, so filled with promise and boasting, to its collapse.

The Tennessee Achievement School District, or ASD, is the Edsel of school reform. Created with a Race To The Top Grant and developed by TFA alum Kevin Huffman, who was state education commissioner at the time, and TFA alum Chris Barbic, the first ASD superintendent, the ASD completely failed in it’s mission to ‘catapult’ schools from the bottom 5% into the top 25% in five years. It is now eight years into the experiment and hardly any of the 30 ASD schools even made it out of the bottom 5%. Not to worry, both Huffman and Barbic resigned and are doing very well with their new project called The City Fund.

Three of the 30 ASD schools are run by KIPP. Five days ago I read in Chalkbeat TN that two of those KIPP schools are shutting down at the end of this school year. On the KIPP Memphis website they explain to the families “While the community welcomed our network with open arms, we’ve been unable to fulfill our academic promise to our students, teachers and families at KIPP Memphis Preparatory Elementary and KIPP Memphis Preparatory Middle. We understand that these closures will have significant implications on our families. However, we strongly believe this decision is in the best interest of our entire KIPP Memphis community and is a step in the right direction to improve our organization’s ability to build a stronger network of schools.”

Tennessee is where the value-added and growth metrics were developed and these two schools ranked at the bottom of the state. Out of a 4 point scale, one of the schools got a 1 and the other got a 0.1 in growth.

Incidentally, KIPP currently has 13 schools in Tennessee. Of those 13 schools, only 11 have growth scores for 2018-2019, five of those (including the two that are now closing) had growth scores between 0 and 1 and two had growth scores between 1 and 2. So of the 11 schools with this rating, 7 had below to very below average ‘growth.’ Reformers are going to have to make up their minds: Is KIPP a fraud or are growth scores a fraud — they can’t have it both ways.

In other words, Kippsters, we are outta here! Sorry, kids, we just couldn’t help you!

But with tens of millions of federal dollars awarded by Betsy DeVos, there may soon be another KIPP, opening near you.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, KIPP Charter Schools, Privatization, Tennessee

Nancy Bailey: 8 Ways to Save Public Schools from Draconian Budget Cuts

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2020 //
6

Veteran educator Nancy Bailey knows that public schools will be confronted with the threat of deep Bridget cuts in the wake of the pandemic.

She here presents eight excellent ideas to stave off the pain of budget cuts and save public schools. Betsy DeVos offered her ideas, which are the same-old same-old stale voucher schemes. Privatization only hurts public schools, which enroll the vast majority of American children. Let’s put our money where the kids are.

Bailey explains her eight ideas.

She begins:

1. End charter schools. We can’t afford to fund two different school systems.

2. End vouchers. We already know they are unsuccessful.

3. End high-stakes testing. They waste money and produce no benefits for students.

4. End the Common Core. Ten years after this radical standardization was introduced, its proven to be ineffective.

That’s four of her eight big ideas. Open the link to read about the others.

So sensible.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Christine Langhoff: The Great Boston School Heist

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2020 //
11

Christine Langhoff is a retired teachers in Massachusetts who is an activist on behalf of public schools. She warns here about the unfolding plot to impose a state takeover of Boston public schools. Having been decisively rebuffed at the polls by the state’s voters in 2016, the Walton allies on the state board have found another way to disrupt and control the Boston public schools and install Broadies and other willing allies to advance their privatization agenda.

Christine writes:

Massachusetts’ state board of education has been moving inexorably toward a takeover of the Boston’s schools. On March 13, the same day as schools shut down, DESE announced a MOU with Boston’s superintendent. In response, Alain Jehlen, Board Member of Citizens for Public Schools, is taking a deep dive into how and why the state rates city schools so poorly on the Schoolyard News website.

Here’s Part 1:

“Boston has 34 schools (out of about 125) that rank in the bottom 10 percent in the state. BPS as a whole is 14th from the bottom out of 289 districts. Why is it rated so low?

“One major reason is that the rating system was designed in a way that almost automatically puts Boston and other urban centers with large numbers of low-income students and recent immigrants at the bottom.

“Here’s how it works: The state rates schools and districts mostly according to test scores. But there are two ways they could use the scores. State officials picked the one that makes urban areas look worse.”

https://schoolyardnews.com/one-reason-boston-gets-low-ratings-from-the-state-the-system-is-designed-to-give-bad-marks-to-f6c9ee3418d

The current board of education is loaded up with Walton connected folks. No doubt that has some impact on decision making.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Privatization, Walton Foundation
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