Archives for category: Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes
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Gary Rubinstein: Why You Should Not Join TFA

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2014 //
26

Gary Rubinstein was a member of one of the first Teach for America in 1991. Since then, he became a career teacher. He teaches high school math in Néw York City. About four years ago, Gary began to speak out against TFA. He has written many posts about the flaws of TFA but this one is the most scathing I have read.

He refers to TFA as “Bait-and-Switch for America.”

He writes:

“Joining the 2015 TFA corps is a terrible mistake. Two years from now everyone will know this, but right now TFA has managed to get a few last lies out of their well-oiled PR machine and lure a few more unsuspecting kids into their trap. But here’s the problem with TFA: They are a bunch of self-serving liars and anyone who joins up with them is an accomplice to any of the damage that this lying results in.

“Take a claim, any claim, from TFA. It’s either completely untrue, or just extremely exaggerated. I’ve debunked so many of their claims, I’ve lost count though you can go through my archives if you want. As their lies get uncovered, TFA has changed their message. The big thing they say now is that TFA is not a teacher training organization, but a leadership pipeline, or something.”

He adds:

“TFA is a lot like the candy store that serves as a front for the racketeering outfit in the back room. That candy store isn’t a dangerous candy store at face value. They don’t poison the candy, for example. And working at that candy store might seem like an innocuous thing to do, selling candy, keeping the place as tidy as you can. But what’s going on in that back room is causing a thousand times more damage than any of the good that is coming from your work in the front. But they need that candy store and they need workers there so you’re going to have to decide if you really have to be one of them.”

There is much more. Read it.

TFA has a PR operation to protect their brand. The PR team must be very busy.

Categories Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Teach for America

Washington State: Is “Preschool for All” a Hoax?

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2014 //
27

Parent activists in Seattle are wary of Proposition 1B, a proposal for “Preschool for All,” fearing that it means a scripted curriculum and standardized tests for tots.

They have learned that the money for the proposition is coming from hedge fund managers and corporations that have been mainstays of the charter school movement.

Parents worry that the Gates Foundation is behind the proposal and that it is a prelude to mayoral control, for-profit schools, and TFA. are they right? Read: 11 Reasons to oppose Prop 1B.

This Washington State preschool teacher explains why he will vote against Prop 1B.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Washington State

Exposed: Richard Berman of Center for Union Facts

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2014 //
15

Richard Berman has been leading a national campaign to destroy teachers’ unions. His one-man organization, the so-called Center for Union Facts, has taken out full-page ads in newspapers, rented a huge billboard in Times Square, sent out mass mailings–all to claim that Randi Weingarten and teachers’ unions as a whole are responsible for low test scores. The fact that test scores are highest in the unionized states of Massachusetts, Néw Jersey, and Connecticut has not deterred his zeal to smash the unions.

Berman was recently taped boasting to executives in the energy industry about how he could help them by tarnishing their environmentalist critics. His speech was recorded and was reported in the Néw York Times and Bloomberg Business News (“Fracking Advocates Urged to Win Ugly by Discrediting Opponents”).

His speech is here at PR Watch.

This is the opening of the Néw York Times article, which summarizes his advice (and price tag):

“WASHINGTON — If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded.

“The blunt advice from the consultant, Richard Berman, the founder and chief executive of the Washington-based Berman & Company consulting firm, came as Mr. Berman solicited up to $3 million from oil and gas industry executives to finance an advertising and public relations campaign called Big Green Radicals.

“The company executives, Mr. Berman said in his speech, must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups. And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” he said.”

Richard Berman is not an expert on education, to say the least. He is a paid lobbyist for industry. He does not reveal who funds his campaigns on behalf of far-right causes. I have previously published posts about him and his tactics. In one, I described a confrontation between us at the Philanthropy Roundtable, a group of mostly conservative foundations, where he boasted of his campaign to demonize the Néw Jersey Education Association with billboards and advertising. When I challenged his “facts,” he declared, “I am a PR man, not an education researcher.”

Categories Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Unions

Peter Greene: Don’t Be Fooled by the “Cut Back on Testing” Hoax

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2014 //
18

Peter Greene warns you not to be fooled when the biggest advocates of high-stakes testing say they want fewer and better tests. Consider the source.

Greene writes:

“The big news on the street is that the CCSSO and CGCS (state ed leaders and big city school folks respectively) have announced an intention to rein in the testing juggernaut.

“I’m not impressed. To begin with, they put front and center NY State’s John King, Louisiana’s John White, and DC Public’s Kaya Henderson– three big fresh faces of the anti-public school reformster movement (two TFA temps and a charter profiteer). That’s a big fat signal that this not about changing course, but about protecting the current high-stakes test-driven status quo.

“And in fact these folks were not there to say, “We realize something is wrong and we’re committed to fixing it.” They were there to say, “We recognize that we’re taking some PR heat on this, so we’re going to see if we can’t tweak the optics enough to get everyone to shut up while we stay the course.” They’re going to “look at” testing. Maybe “audit” the number. ”

He adds:

“The whole trick of this new position is that it carefully avoids the most important question. And so we’re having a conversation about having less testing without discussing the quality of testing and its role in driving education. We’re going to combine tests and streamline tests, but we’re not going to discuss the value of the tests or the uses of their results. It’s as if we discovered that students were getting arsenic on their school lunch every day and the compromise response was, “Well, let’s just look at putting a little less on there.” It’s like living in a crime-ridden neighborhood and being told, “Good news! The muggers have gotten together and decided that they will coordinate more carefully so that you only get robbed once a day.”

Don’t be fooled.

Categories Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Standardized Testing

When Dawn Randall Met Governor Kasich

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2014 //
35

In September, I wrote about Dawn Neely-Randall, a teacher in her 25th year of teaching in Ohio who decided she had to speak out against the testing madness that had swept the nation. I said if there were 1,000 teachers with her gumption in Ohio (and every other state), we could drive the “reformers” out of our schools and back to the smoke-filled rooms and financial institutions where they came from (of I didn’t exactly say that, I meant it).

Dawn has continued to speak out, and she sent me her Facebook page, which has pictures of her in conversation with Governor John Kasich. Governor Kasich looks on approvingly while charter pirates raid the state treasury of about $1 billion a year. He doesn’t worry about their poor performance or about their high profits because they also are generous contributors to his party! He doesn’t worry about wasting the lives of Ohio’s children by putting them in schools run by mercenaries. He doesn’t care about squandering the public’s money intended for education.

Dawn sent this new letter:

“Diane, I just thought I’d share my FB post from today. I’ve now talked with 1 Governor (and 1 Governor Candidate); 3 Senators; 6 State Reps; 1 Congress Woman (and 1 Congress Woman candidate); the Ohio Board of Education (twice); and the Ohio School Board. Here’s a photo of me trying to hold Governor Kasich to task over all this testing (who agreed that 18 hours for my fifth-graders “seems excessive” and who PROMISED I would be heard, but, of course, I have still not received the guaranteed phone call from our State of Ohio School Superintendent. (I’m the one who wrote the Washington Post piece of throwing students to the testing wolves…) In the meantime, parents in Ohio are starting to activate. It is all so overwhelming.

“Here is my FB post. Please see photos with Koch-funded and future Presidential candidate John Ka$ich from last Saturday at LCCC in Elyria, Ohio:

Dawn Neely-Randall

“Stress is really setting in.

“This morning, I awoke feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders. I don’t know how one little rant on Facebook last March got me from just being a concerned teacher to being so out there politically and publicly. I have NO political aspirations and I have received NO compensation for anything I’ve done, however, as I’m sure you can imagine, once you enter the public arena, you become a target since there is no way to please everyone. I go to bed writing letters to legislators and stakeholders in my head and awake wondering what I can do next to stop all this testing madness for my students. It has become a heart and moral issue for me. It is all so out of control and if you were already on my FB page prior to March, you heard me forewarning that all this was coming. I have said before that I felt I was building an ark and telling everyone that a flood was coming and trying to get them to save their children and that is really how I feel. (And it is only going to get worse and is already happening in other parts of our country.) If things don’t change soon, my health really can’t continue to tolerate all this stress and I don’t know what I will do differently with my career next year, but I have a feeling that the testing students will have to sit through from February through May will be a deal breaker and will send me out of the classroom for good.

“The other problem is that the more I speak out, the more people want to refuse the tests which does, indeed, hurt a teacher’s evaluation rating (brilliant move by the State of Ohio to give students a zero for refusing a testing and penalizing teachers to keep teachers silent), so, you can imagine, this will not make me popular with my colleagues. However, what about the children? I feel caught between a rock and a hard place. Legislators from both sides are telling me they can’t help and that it will take a massive act of civil disobedience from parents to change things. Teachers have duct tape over their mouths. Many School Board members are starting to catch on (thank God) and I’m putting my hopes in the fact that they will take their roles very seriously as the first line of defense against the state harming the students on their watch. And in the midst of it all, slowly but surely, I have to teach my students to navigate the computer for all the online PARCC (Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers) testing coming their way and just the first introduction I gave them to the online practice test seemed to really freak (and stress) them out; I fear it is literally breaking my heart.

“Here’s a list of Ohio Department of Education testing hours JUST for 3rd through 8th grade (NOT INCLUDING) all the other state mandated testing, which adds ample hours to each school year and not including students’ course work testing as well. Remember, please that this will be the SAME child (your child or your neighbor’s child or your grandchild) testing from grade to grade to grade; add up the hours. Which grade level will suffer the most? The grade level AFTER the grade level that students were testing. In other words, each year that goes by, the more fried students will, of course, become. (Imagine how “happy” students will be about going to school by their middle school years and how dejected they will feel about testing by then.)

“How many drives to Florida could I make from Ohio in the same amount of time that students are testing 3rd through 8th grade? And remember, kindergarteners this year started testing first off this school year. Also, remember, this is just a partial list of hours students are tested. Is it just me, or is this so insanely insane?

“The Ohio Department of Education assessment staff is pleased to report session times for this year’s administration of Ohio’s New State Tests”:

“PARCC TESTNG 3rd Grade: 9.75 hours

4th Grade: 12.5 hours
5th Grade: 12.5 hours
6th Grade: 12.3 hours
7th Grade: 10.8 hours
8th Grade: 13.3 hours”

Thank you, Dawn. Thank you for your courage. This testing is not helping children, and you know it. It is a hoax intended to make public education look bad so the profiteers can move in and “save” more children from public education. They will open fly-by-night schools staffed by uncertified “teachers.” They will profit. Our kids will not. Keep fighting. As the scandals accumulate, and as voices like yours continue to be heard, the public will support you, not the people who seek to profit by destroying what belongs to the public.

Categories Ohio, Privatization, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Mike Deshotels: The New Orleans “Miracle” is a “Complete Fraud”

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2014 //
7

Mike Deshotels, veteran educator and blogger in Louisiana, reviews the accumulating evidence and concludes: the claims of success in the Recovery School District are a complete fraud.

Most recently, the charter cheerleaders at the Cowen Institute at Tulane University withdrew in its entirety a report making claims of vast academic improvement. Someone there had too much integrity to let the report remain out front, in public. It was not true.

Then, as Deshotels shows, students in the Recovery School District posted “dismal results” on the ACT, even though they boast of college prep as their goal. It. Is a goal they have not reached.

And there is more:

“The accurate comparison of RSD charters with other public schools in Louisiana showing that RSD charters consistently perform in the bottom third of all schools. So why has the Louisiana Recovery District been touted across the nation as the miracle model for school reform and for the turnaround of low performing schools? That has happened because supposedly prestigious groups like the Cowen Institute in the past had issued glowing reports of progress by the RSD using carefully selected data, much of which was bogus and covered up the truly poor performance of the RSD.

“The sad part of this education reform hoax, is that thousands of students and teachers have been harmed in the process. Dedicated teachers were unfairly fired; thousands of students have been pushed out into the streets while the new charter managers cooked the books, and the charter operators made off with huge profits from our tax dollars. This is what the Cowen Institute and charter advocacy groups like Educate Now have promoted to the public, our state legislature, and even to the “do gooder” national news shows like Morning Joe, where both conservative and liberal opinion makers touted the New Orleans RSD school “miracle”.

“So several other states have created their own Recovery Districts and Achievement Zones patterned after the New Orleans model, only to produce disastrous results, because they were fooled by the corporate reformers and privatizers of public education. Politicians in some states are including in their platforms privatization plans based on the New Orleans Recovery District model. Never before have I seen both a local and national news media more complicit in the proliferation of false propaganda that benefits con-artists like the privatizers and charter promoters portrayed in the RSD model. Yet the retractions of these bogus reports are rare and the hoax goes on.”

Don’t be fooled by the hoax and the lies. There is no New Orleans miracle. There is a district where public education was almost completely eliminated and replaced by privately managed charters; a district where the teachers’ union was ousted; a district where 7,500 teachers (3/4 of them African American and OF the community) were summarily and unjustly fired; and a district that continues to be low-performing, ranked 65th of the state’s 68 districts.

Eventually even the mainstream media will discover that they have been hoaxed by the reformers.

Categories Charter Schools, New Orleans, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Julian Vasquez Heilig: Why TFA is a Problem, Not a Solution

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2014 //
18

Julian Vasquez Heilig has studied Teach for America and its effects, and has come to the conclusion that the organization is harming the future of the teaching profession by its grandiose and false claims.

It has raised well over a billion dollars to support a large and handsomely paid staff. Its recruits will go to classrooms where students need experienced teachers, not five-week trainees. And 80% will leave the classroom in 2-3 years.

I this post, he is in dialogue with historian Jack Schneider.

Heilig writes:

“TFA is an example of a solution being a part of the problem. Our current national teacher strategy in the U.S. can be likened to taking a plate of pasta and throwing it against the ceiling and seeing what sticks. Teach For America, with its high-levels of attrition out of the classroom after the two year temporary commitment exacerbates this issue for poor students.

“We know from the data that about 50% of traditionally trained teachers remain in the profession after five years. By comparison, previous research on TFA has demonstrated that their attrition rate out the classroom to greener pastures (Note: I did not say in the “field” of education, a phrase TFA likes to use—meaning that corps members have left teaching and gone to graduate school, have begun working for an education-oriented foundation, etc.) is around 80%, though it varies by community.

“The falling spaghetti is not just Teach For America. Almost 60% of all new teachers in Texas are alternatively certified teachers, which means they could have as little as 30 hours of training online before they enter the classroom. Alternatively certified teachers also have higher rates of attrition out of the classroom compared to traditionally trained teachers.

“Our strategy in the U.S. is to send the least qualified teachers to the classroom as quickly as possible. Thus, the falling temporary teacher approach is essentially the antithesis of the national teacher strategies employed by the countries with the world’s leading educational systems.”

The fact is that we need a well-prepared teacher corps. We need experienced teachers. What we do not need is the illusion that TFA can change our schools by sending in inexperienced teachers who leave after 2-3 years. That’s a hoax.

Categories Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

Gary Rubinstein: Louisiana Near the Bottom on AP tests

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2014 //
9

John White has done some heavy-duty boasting since he became State Superintendent of Louisiana in 2012. It seems to be a characteristic of the reformer class that they project dramatic improvement on their watch. Michelle Rhee promised the moon when she was chancellor in DC, and as G.F. Brandenburg has shown on his blog, achieved about 1.5% of what she promised.

As Gary Rubinstein shows in this post, John White made bold claims about AP courses. It is true that participation rates went up but passing rates went down. White had an explanation for that: higher participation caused a drop in pass rates.

But what White could not explain was that only 4.1% of all juniors and seniors in Louisiana earned a 3 or higher on an AP exam. That is next to last in the nation, just above Mississippi.

Really, people should not boast ever, but it is surely a bad idea to boast before the results are in.

Categories Louisiana, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Testing

Peter Greene: Charter Bait and Switch

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2014 //
88

Do you remember when the charter school idea was first circulated in 1988? Do you remember how the idea was sold in the 1990s? We were told that charters would save the taxpayers millions or billions because they would be lean and efficient: no central bureaucracy.

Surprise! Now charters are suing in Néw York and DC for the same funding as real public schools, you know, the ones that are required to accept English language learners, kids with disabilities, and unmotivated kids.

And guess who is siding with them to drain more money out of the public schools: the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

Peter Greene says this is classic bait and switch.

The bait? Charters will save money and get dramatic results for the neediest kids.

Says Greene::

“So here comes the switch. We pitched charter schools as more economical, more efficient, lower-cost alternatives. Now that we’ve got them up and running, we want more money. This is simply a continuation of the policy goal, adored and nurtured from corporate boardrooms to federal offices– the policy goal of shoving public schools aside and replacing them with charter schools. I don’t imagine that public schools will ever be completely done away with, because the charters will need some place to send the students that they refuse to educate, but those public schools will be stripped of resources and filled with the students that nobody wants.

“It is really one of the oldest business tricks in the book, used by everyone from John D. Rockefeller to Jeff Bezos– undercut your competition, and once you’ve bled them dry, boost your price as much as the market will bear. Charters just refine the technique by having federal and state government serve as the vampiric mechanism by which the competition is sucked dry.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Charter Advocates Condemn Imagine Charters for “Crony Capitalism”

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2014 //
24

I have always hoped that leaders of the charter industry would call out the frauds in their midst. Where to start? It looks like they have finally turned against the profiteering of Imagine charters. This is from politico.com:

“CRONY CAPITALISM IN THE CHARTER SECTOR? Imagine Columbus Primary Academy in Ohio plans to spend $700,000 on rent this school year. That’s more than the charter school will spend on salaries and benefits, The Columbus Dispatch reports [http://bit.ly/1yrG77D ]. The cost of rent will eat up more than half of the school’s annual state revenue. Meanwhile, Imagine Schools Inc. – one of the nation’s largest charter school operators – rakes in hundreds of thousands in public tax dollars. It’s all thanks to a complicated real estate maneuver, the Dispatch said Sunday. A subsidiary of Imagine Schools Inc., named SchoolHouse Finance, buys buildings and resells them for two or three times the purchase price. SchoolHouse Finance then leases the building from the new owner and rents the space back to Imagine. “It’s legal, but that doesn’t mean it should be,” said Greg Harris, Ohio director of StudentsFirst, an advocacy group that supports charter growth. “We don’t want charter-school operators profiting as landlords.”

– “Let’s call this what this is: Crony capitalism,” Fordham Institute President Michael Petrilli tweeted [http://bit.ly/1s7ZXzT]. At least three states and Washington, D.C. are investigating Imagine for similar practices, the Dispatch noted. One state even shuttered schools operated by Imagine. After an investigation conducted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in Missouri, the state board of education shut down six schools run by Imagine in 2012. The paper uncovered real estate deals similar to the ones happening in Ohio and poor academic performance.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Ohio, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes
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