Archives for category: Privatization
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Mercedes Schneider: Kauffman Leadership Academy in Texas Closes with One Week’s Notice

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2020 //
4

The charter industry is nearing a flection point. The number of schools that open each year is almost the same as the number that close. The charter industry is rushing to open new schools before the public is fully woke to the crisis of charter corruption.

The Network for Public Education started a hashtag (#) on Twitter called #AnotherDayAnotherCharterScandal. Every day a new scandal, sometimes two or three.

Mercedes Schneider describes the latest charter debacle in Texas, where Betsy DeVos has dropped many millions to open new charters.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) will be closing the Kauffman Leadership Academy (KLA) (Cleburne) charter school with one week’s notice, as reported in WFAA.com.

In this February 13, 2020, letter to KLA leadership, TEA cites, “the [closure] order was issued as a result of the financial situation at the charter school having deteriorated significantly, including federal tax liens and levies issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that had frozen all accounts of the charter school.”

KLA filed with the Texas Secretary of State (SOS) as a business entity on August 23, 2010 (search here; KLA’s taxpayer ID# is 32042519895). According to KLA’s charter application dated 02/23/11 and on file with TEA, KLA planned “to open in August 2011 operate as a private school, pending charter approval.” These archived web pages from July 2011 and May 2015 have KLA identifying itself as an “open enrollment private school pending charter approval.”

According to the IRS, KLA received nonprofit status in August 2014, and according to KLA’s website, the school opened as a charter school in August 2016.

What took TEA so long to identify KLA’s suspicious financial situation is a looming question.

According to the IRS, KLA has only ever filed 990-N tax forms, also known as “e-postcards,” because according to KLA, for tax years 2013 to 2017 (the most recent filing,) KLA has reported “gross receipts not greater than 50,000.”

So, for five tax years, KLA told the IRS, “We have almost no money,” and the public– including TEA– had ready access to that information.

Meanwhile, on its website, KLA states, “every employee of the Academy earns the same salary, $35,000,” a statement that has remained consistent on its website since the time KLA received its charter in fall 2016, as evidenced by this October 2016 archived web page announcing KLA’s grad opening celebration.

If KLA had $50K or less per annum in 2016, that would have been enough for only a single KLA employee based upon state funding for perhaps 8 students.

Red flag, no?

Question: Why didn’t they just write to the Waltons or John Arnold or any number of other billionaires to get an infusion of cash?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Texas

Los Angeles: Charter School Advocates Continue to Pour Millions into School Board Races

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2020 //
7

By now, the California Charter Schools Association knows that they are harming public schools, where 80-90% of California’s students are educated.

By now, the CCSA knows that charter schools do not get higher test scores than public schools.

By now, they know that their industry is rife with corruption and fraud, and some of its leaders are serving jail time or on the lam.

By now, they know that charters do not have a secret sauce.

By now, they know that all they fight for is survival and power.

But they are pouring millions into the four contested seats on the Los Angeles Unified School District races, hoping to regain control so they can continue to do the bidding of Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill Bloomfield.

Here is the latest from the LA Education Examiner in the closing days of the campaign. 

See here for the money dump in the closing days of the campaign, with nearly one million going to a charter candidate running against Scott Schmerelson.

Here is Howard Blume in the Los Angeles Times, reporting on the ugly smear campaign against Scott Schmerelson. 

Charter supporters are angry at Schmerelson, first because he supports public schools, but also because he revealed that more than 80% of the LA charters have vacancies.

Blume writes:

A million-dollar attack campaign is underway portraying Los Angeles school board member Scott Schmerelson as greedy, corrupt and determined to score fast cash by exposing children to deadly vaping and McDonald’s French fries.

One mailer — which included a cartoonish image of Schmerelson, who is Jewish, bedecked with a gold dollar-sign chain and holding a cigar and fistful of cash — came under fire as anti-Semitic and its use was halted.

Behind the surge of negative mailers in this West San Fernando Valley board district is an intense effort by charter school supporters to defeat Schmerelson and elect Marilyn Koziatek, a district parent who works at a local charter school managing community outreach efforts.

The pivotal race could tip the board majority toward the protection and expansion of charter schools, which enroll about 1 in 5 district students. Charter advocates are especially concerned about a new law that will soon give school boards more authority to reject new charters.

Blume reports that the charter industry has stopped sending out its antiSemitic image of Schmerelson but that’s a meaningless gesture since it was already sent out in a mass mailing.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Lies, Los Angeles, Privatization, Propaganda

Act NOW to Stop Federal Funding of Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2020 //
2

Tomorrow February 27, Betsy DeVos defends her budget before the House Appropriations sub-committee led by Rosa DeLauro. This year, DeVos took the funding for the Charter Schools Program out of her budget and put it in a block grant.

Our job is to make sure that the nearly half billion dollars to start up new charter schools is not restored. Nearly one billion dollars of waste on charter schools that never open, or open and close, is enough.

Call the following committee members now. The hearing begins tomorrow at 10:00 am.

Lucille Roybal-Allard–(202) 225-1766
Rosa DeLauro–(202) 225-3661
Barbara Lee–(202) 225-2661
Mark Pocan–(202) 225-2906
Katherine Clark–(202) 225-2836
Lois Frankel–(202) 225-9890
Cheri Bustos–(202) 225-5905
Bonnie Watson-Coleman–(202) 225-5801

Keep your message simple:

My name is (your name). I am calling Representative X to ask that the Charter Schools Program funding not be restored. The Charter Schools Program has wasted nearly a billion dollars that could have gone to our neediest students. The Charter Schools Program should not be funded. The federal government should leave the funding for new charter schools to the state.

If the phone is not answered, or you call after hours, leave a message.

Then send an email to your representative.

Click here.

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/emergency-de-vos-budget-hearing-tomorrow-tell-congress-no-funding-for-the-charter-schools-program-give-the-funds-to-the-neediest-students-instead/

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

Thomas Ultican: Who Is Behind the Corporate Reform Agenda in Dallas?

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2020 //
3

Naming names is very important when discussing the movement to privatize public schools. In my book SLAYING GOLIATH, I devote an entire chapter to naming names. It’s not good enough to you “business interests” or “foundations.”

Name names.

Tom Ultican names names. In this podcast, he describes the wealthy people who are determined to privatize education. Why do they do this? They profess their love of the needy at the same time they try to take away one of the few institutions that belongs to them and give it to corporations.

After 20 years of corporate reform in charge of federal education policy, there is not a single example of success. It seems fair to predict that the deformers will fail in Dallas as they have everywhere else.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dallas, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Jake Jacobs: How Mike Bloomberg Trashed Public Education in New York

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2020 //
33

On Super Tuesday, we will find out whether the huge cash spent by Mike Bloomberg is enough to win any primaries. Current national polls show him number two, behind Senator Sanders. There is no reason for him to be polling high other than the many millions he has lavished on advertising and staff, outspending all the other candidates combined. The best we can say for Bloomberg is that he is not propelled forward by billionaire cash. He is one of the richest men in the world and he doesn’t need any contributions from others.

As mayor, Bloomberg tried to run the public schools like a business. He showered favor on the charter sector, because he believed that private management was superior to public management, even though he had total control of the schools. He is the quintessential corporate reformer, focused on data (testing) and the bottom line. Schools with high scores were good, schools with low scores were closed, regardless of the challenges they faced.

In this article, Jake Jacobs writes about what he experienced as an art teacher in New York City during Bloomberg’s mayoralty, which lasted 12 years, despite the City Charter’s term limit of two four-year terms.

He writes:

Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City now running for President, often brags about being one of the most prolific charter school creators in the United States. Bloomberg says he “absolutely” intends to expand charters in his federal education plan. This is a serious threat to public education, especially given Bloomberg’s history of using his fortune to shape policy. 

Since 2013, Bloomberg has been one of the nation’s biggest donors to candidates and ballot initiatives promoting charters and vouchers, giving more than $4 million to candidates in New Jersey, Colorado, Minnesota, and Louisiana, often through “dark money” PACs. In California, Bloomberg spent a whopping $39 million, backing both Democrats and Republicans who support charters. In Pennsylvania, he gave $6 million to pro-charter incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, who won re-election with a narrow 1.5 percent edge, and ended up casting a critical vote for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

New York City teachers are vocal critics of Bloomberg, who not only used public money for school privatization but usurped the power of elected community school boards as the state granted Bloomberg “mayoral control” of New York City schools in 2002. 

Bloomberg proceeded to appoint corporate attorney Joel Klein as head of New York City’s education department. Klein began a “test-and-punish” regime, which led to the closure of 150 schools and earned him an 80 percent disapproval rating with teachers

As an art teacher during the Bloomberg years, I saw the nightmare firsthand. When the former mayor cut funding for arts programs by 47 percent, over a quarter of public schools went without a full-time arts teacher; in black and brown neighborhoods like the South Bronx, it was more than half. Elementary schools were hit the hardest, with a staggering 92 percent “out of compliance” with state mandates for art.

At times, this meant teaching in an overcrowded middle school with one box of colored pencils and one box of markers to last a whole year. Forget about erasers, glue, scissors, painting supplies, charcoal, poster board or technology. I was lucky to have enough copy paper for my students to draw on.

Forget about erasers, glue, scissors, painting supplies, charcoal, poster board or technology. I was lucky to have enough copy paper for my students to draw on.

When I was a student in 1980, my New York City middle school had a dedicated art room (with a working sink), a full band program, separate orchestra and chorus programs as well as dance, a full ceramics studio and shop class. 

Today, middle schools in the city are lucky to have just one teacher in an arts discipline. We can trace this directly to Bloomberg’s “Small Schools Initiative,” where large schools were broken up into small academies, and the number of administrators tripled as class sizes grew and student services disappeared. 

Bloomberg’s claims to have made gains on test scores while reducing racial achievement gaps ended up being disproven. By 2014, New York City was the most racially segregated school system in America. Under “stop and frisk,” Bloomberg’s racist policing policy, many of my students were searched for no reason. It didn’t help that Bloomberg’s pro-developer housing policies accelerated the gentrification of New York City, leading to the displacement of low-income renters of color. 

While Bloomberg was particularly bad for the arts, he impacted teachers across all subjects. In 2011, when teachers learned that New York State’s new “accountability” metrics would use student test scores in teacher evaluations, Bloomberg went even farther, threatening that test scores would be published in the newspaper alongside the name of each teacher. With this, the best math teachers in my school transferred out to schools in more affluent neighborhoods.

I first started writing about New York’s absurd accountability policy in 2013, after being told my evaluation as an art teacher would be based on math scores. I was offended by the waste and fraud and by 2016, the state Supreme Court had indeed ruled that the formulas used to calculate teacher ratings were “arbitrary and capricious.” 

Rooted in cost-cutting practices from the corporate world, Bloomberg’s harmful education policies are today being papered over as his money cascades through the media. Spending $220 million on advertising in January alone, Bloomberg is even blanketing platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and podcasts.

So if you see effusive, rainbow-pooping endorsements of Bloomberg, it’s likely because of this unprecedented and highly deceptive media blast.  

Read the whole article. It is very instructive.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

Ohio: Who Is Writing Education Policy? Not Educators.

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2020 //
4

Joel Malin and Kathleen Knight-Abowitz of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, write here about the forces determining education policy in Ohio. 

Ohio education policy is a train wreck. It is not benefiting students or teachers or society. So who is it benefiting?

In our view, it pays to start asking larger questions about EdChoice to understand how education policy is made in Ohio. Why, for instance, did this dramatic increase in voucher eligibility occur? Why would lawmakers experiment with such an expensive initiative, when studies of such voucher programs – including a rigorous study of EdChoice – have most often revealed large, negative impacts on student learning? And, in what universe does it make sense that schools would be judged, and voucher eligibility triggered, by students’ scores in 2013 and 2014 (but not 2015-2017)?

The great uproar around EdChoice should have us asking about how policy is made: specifically, whose voices are being elevated, and whose are being diminished, when Ohio education policy is being created?

Taking a step back, we can see that the policies adopted in Ohio are part of a broader pattern of favoring business and for-profit interests over those of community members, including parents, students, and teachers. In fact, community members’ perspectives are regularly ignored in favor of business lobbyists, charter school operators, and national influencers like U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos or companies like Pearson Education.

Ohio Excels, for instance, is a recently formed, powerful business interest group that’s “quickly emerged as a heavyweight lobbying force in education policy” in Ohio, as described recently by Aaron Marshall in Columbus CEO magazine…

Many of the assumptions and methods of the business world do not neatly transfer into education. In addition, parents and communities want students to be good citizens and well-rounded thinkers, as well as good workers, when they graduate from schools.

When private sector interests dominate education policy discussions, other perspectives are routinely ignored.

Most important are the views of professional educators, who have firsthand knowledge and expertise that can shape our policy decisions in realistic and positive directions. Their participation would also serve to prevent lawmakers from making disastrous, foreseeable errors.

Education policy in Ohio and a few other states, including Indiana and Florida, has been powerfully shaped by the interests of for-profit, pro-business, and private education providers in the past decade.

In a broad and general sense, they are right, of course. The voices of educators have been silenced. Control has shifted to for-profit, pro-business, and private providers.

But what they are missing are the two most important links in this chain of influence: the D.C.-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which lobbies constantly for pro-business policies, and ALEC, which writes model legislation that promotes vouchers and charters.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Vouchers

Leonie Haimson: Mike Bloomberg’s Disastrous Education Record

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2020 //
13

Leonie Haimson, one of New York City’s leading people-public education advocates, has written a comprehensive appraisal of Mike Bloomberg’s education record as mayor. You will not read a more deeply knowledgeable article anywhere.

In his multimillion dollar ad campaign, Bloomberg presents himself as a champion of children. If you read Haimson’s article, you will see that he was a champion of charter schools. You will also see that he was autocratic, condescending towards parents, and disrespected educators.

Please read it.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization

Ask Your Congressional Representative to Act!

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2020 //
12

The Network for Public Education asks you to contact your Representative in Congress to co-sponsor this legislation:

 

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/new-federal-charter-bill-ask-your-representative-to-cosponsor/

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Education Law Center Challenges Charter Expansion in New Jersey

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2020 //
4

The Education Law Center is suing in New Jersey Supreme Court to challenge the negative effects of charter schools on public schools in Newark.

ELC is asking the court to review the fiscal impact and segregating effects of charters on public schools. The bottom line is whether the state can afford to support two different school systems.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has granted a petition filed by Education Law Center (ELC) to review the State Commissioner of Education’s 2016 decision approving an enrollment increase of 8500 students in KIPP, Uncommon and other charter operators’ schools in the Newark Public School (NPS) district.

In accepting In Re Team Academy Charter School, the Supreme Court will now decide several consequential issues raised by the State’s push to rapidly grow charter school enrollments in NPS over the last decade. Under former Governor Chris Christie, Newark charter enrollments grew 320% from 4,559 in 2009, to 19,152 in 2020. NPS payments to charter schools increased from $63 million in 2009, or 7% of the NPS operating budget, to $265 million in 2020, or 26% of the budget.

The legal issues before the NJ Supreme Court in Team Academy implicate the Commissioner’s failure to comply with the Court’s 2000 Palisades Charter ruling imposing an affirmative obligation under the New Jersey Constitution to carefully evaluate the impact of charter school applications in two interrelated areas:

  • The education resources available to NPS students from the loss of funding that will occur from increasing charter school enrollments;
  • The segregation of NPS students by disability, English language proficiency and race.

The Team Academy appeal addresses the obligation of charter authorizers to protect the constitutional rights of public school students when faced with overwhelming and unrefuted evidence that expanding charters will deprive district students of essential education resources and intensify persistent patterns of student segregation in the resident district.           

In 2016, ELC, on behalf of NPS students, submitted detailed evidence to the Commissioner opposing the charter school expansion. ELC’s evidence showed that, if the expansion was approved, NPS would continue to lose funding from its budget, causing further cuts to essential teachers, support staff and programs, including for English language learners (ELL) and students with disabilities. ELC also documented that the expansion would increase the concentration of more costly to educate students with disabilities and ELLs in Newark district schools and worsen the entrenched isolation of Black and Latino students in the already intensely segregated district.

After the Commissioner ignored this evidence and approved the applications, ELC appealed. The Appellate Division upheld the decision, relying on the failure of the NPS superintendent, hired by the State, to object to the expansion. At the time the charter applications were decided by the State, NPS was under State control.

Because NPS students are in the class of plaintiff school children in the landmark Abbott v. Burke school funding litigation, the Supreme Court will also decide whether the Commissioner bears a heightened burden when reviewing charter applications in those districts. Abbott district students remain the subject of continuing Abbott orders to remedy the State’s longstanding violation of their right to a constitutional thorough and efficient education.

Michael Stein of the Pashman Stein Walder Hayden law firm is serving as pro bono co-counsel on this appeal, along with ELC Executive Director David Sciarra, lead counsel for the Abbott v. Burke school children.

Argument before the NJ Supreme Court is expected in the fall.

Press Contact:

Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Inequity, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization

In the Public Interest: Why We Must Protect the Public Sector

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2020 //
60

Donald Cohen, executive director of “In the Public Interest,” explains a new direction that the organization will take. Not just to say that privatization is bad public policy, but to explain why the public sector can be more efficient and effective at the things it does best. In education, we have seen how privatization exacerbates segregation by race, religion, and social class; we have also seen how it opens the public purse to exploitation by profiteers and grifters who take advantage of public money without public accountability.

He writes:

 

 

 

Over the last ten years, In the Public Interest has educated organizations, leaders, and journalists nationwide about the perils of privatization—how private interests are increasingly gaining control over vital public goods.

We’re going to continue to do that. But we’re also going to start showing what public control over public goods means and looks like—both a governing vision and practical examples from across the country.

Like Kansas City, Missouri, making public transit free for all. Or the Puerto Rican public school that assigned a social worker to every student. Or the small Florida town that opened its own grocery store.

Becoming “pro-public” means a few things:

  • Reclaiming the ideal of the public in a free, democratic society.
  • Arguing that there are market things and public things. They’re different things, like apples and oranges.
  • Ensuring public goods have adequate resources—a more progressive tax system is a must.

So, what are we actually going to do? 

We’ll continue to help build a pro-public movement that can effectively compete to govern in a way that puts public over private and creates public institutions that deliver on that promise.

Everything we do—our research, writings, trainings, policy work—will be oriented towards creating a larger, more inclusive, educated, connected, and active movement competing to govern across the country.

We’ll create tools and conduct training for leaders, organizers, and activists to fully use the tools and powers of governance.

We’ll develop and support new rules and revenue generators to expand access to public goods, rebalance economic power, and eliminate the corrupting influences of money in democracy.

We’ll lift up good things government does and has done—there’s plenty of that too.

And, of course, we’ll do everything we can to stop the spread of reckless privatization schemes.

Stay tuned. And send us ideas: info@inthepublicinterest.org

Read more about our shift to becoming a “pro-public” organization here.

Thanks for being in the fight with us,

Donald Cohen
Executive Director
In the Public Interest
Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Supporting public schools
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