Archives for category: Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes
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Florida: Charter Operators with “Troubled” Histories Request Another Chance

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2014 //
18

In Broward County, Florida, several new proposals for charter schools have been submitted by charter operators who previously closed down their schools. Despite their previous failure, the local board is likely to grant them a new charter because the board is not allowed to consider past performance. How crazy is that?

The story in the Sun-Sentinel by Karen Yi and Amy Shipley says:

“At least seven groups of applicants with ties to failed or floundering charter schools are seeking second chances and public money to open 18 more.

“Odds are, most will prevail.”

“School districts say that they can’t deny applicants solely because of past problems running charter schools. State laws tell them to evaluate what they see on paper — academic plans, budget proposals, student services — not previous school collapses or controversial professional histories.”

“District officials are currently reviewing applications for next year.

“Among those vying to open new charter schools, which are privately operated but publicly funded:

• A group that managed three new charter schools in Broward and Palm Beach counties that opened this year — and then shut down on the first day of school.

• The founder of two charter schools that failed in 2007 amid accusations of stolen money, shoddy record keeping and parent complaints, according to state and local records. A state investigation later chastised school directors for “virtually nonexistent” oversight, though prosecutors filed no criminal charges.

• An educator who was banned from New Jersey public schools, then consulted for two schools in Broward and Palm Beach counties that shuttered in 2013. The Palm Beach County school district closed one of the schools because of poor academics and financial difficulties; the Broward school chose to cease operations amid dwindling enrollment, according to school district reports.

“The Sun Sentinel also found three applications from leaders at two charter schools that were ordered to close this year for poor academics. Another three proposals came from a director at an existing charter school chided for its deteriorating financial condition. An entrepreneur who has consulted for a handful of failed schools is also listed on an application.

The authors previously published an exposé of the lack of oversight of charter schools in southern Florida.

Their stories raise important questions:

Does any elected official in the state of Florida care about responsible oversight of education?

Does any elected official in the state of Florida care about responsible oversight of taxpayer dollars?

If Florida’s elected officials want to improve educational opportunities, do they really believe that children are better served by allowing schools to be opened without regard to the past performance of those in charge?

Categories Charter Schools, Florida, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Washington State: An Example of NCLB Absurdity

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2014 //
45

Washington State declined to ask Arne Duncan for a waiver from NCLB because the legislature thought that the price was too high. In exchange for gaining freedom from NCLB’s demand that 100% of students would be proficient by 2014, the state would have to agree to endorse Arne Duncan’s inane idea that teachers should be evaluated by the test scores of their students. Apparently some wise policy makers saw the research and the universal failure of Duncan’s idea and said “no thanks.”

Now virtually every school in the state of Washington is a “failing school.”

The superintendents are required to send a letter to parents informing them that their child attends a failing school. But 28 superintendents sent a cover letter explaining that the law required them to say something untrue.

““Some of our state’s and districts’ most successful and highly recognized schools are now being labeled ‘failing’ by an antiquated law that most educators and elected officials — as well as the U.S. Department of Education — acknowledge isn’t working,” the cover letter states. The letter is signed by John Welch, superintendent of the Puget Sound Educational Service District, which represents the 28 districts.

“The signees include many of the larger school districts in King and Pierce counties, such as Bellevue, Federal Way, Issaquah, Kent, Lake Washington, Northshore, Renton and Tacoma.
They announced the protest letter at an event Wednesday.

“Seattle Public Schools did not sign it, but supports the letter’s sentiments, a spokeswoman said.”

NCLB is a pathetic hoax that was intended to label almost every school in the nation a failing school. Kudos to the superintendents of Washington State for standing up to abusive federal power—not only NCLB but the coercive waiver too.

28 superintendents in Washington state join the honor roll for courage in support of public education.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Federal Waiver, Honor Roll, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Washington State

What Really Happened in New Orleans?

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2014 //
7

The mainstream media love to point to New Orleans as the national exemplar of the new brand of “reform”: replace public schools with privately-managed charter schools and get rid of the teachers’ union. Success! Many cities, especially those with high concentrations of poor African-American majorities, such as Detroit, Newark, and Philadelphia, seek to copy the New Orleans model.

What really happened in New Orleans?

Here is an excellent account in the Jacobin magazine by Beth Sondel and Joseph L. Boselovic.

This is the framework for the article:

“The state of education in New Orleans is often presented as a sort of grand bargain: on the one hand, the neoliberal transformation has been undemocratic and has marginalized community members, parents, and educational professionals; on the other hand, advocates of reform are quick to cite higher test and state school performance scores as evidence that the reforms have been successful. While the former is true, the claim that there has been substantial improvement in the educational experiences of young people is unfounded.

“In such a market-based system, students’ assessment data are used to compare charter providers, recruit families, maintain charter contracts, and reward teachers. The willingness of reform advocates to hold up test scores as the key indicator of success places enormous pressure on schools and teachers to produce quantifiable results. When the focus is on increasing assessment data, what happens to the democratic purposes of schooling?

“If we are willing to accept that the purpose of schooling goes beyond raising test scores, and is in fact tied to preparing citizens to engage in and deepen our democracy, then we need to look more closely at how power has been distributed in school governance across New Orleans and the ways in which this distribution shapes the experiences of students.

“We must ask if we are raising test scores at the expense of raising citizens.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, New Orleans, Privatization, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

New Mexico Welcomes Floundering, Profitable Virtual Charters

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2014 //
9

If data and research matter, the worst reform in U.S. education is the virtual charter school.

The League of Women Voters–one of the few national organizations with integrity about education issues (I.e. has not been bought by the Gates Foundation) issued a report about these floundering “schools,” that typically have low test scores, high dropout rates, and low graduation rates. Only a devotee of the Jeb Bush reform school would want to invite these ineffectual schools into their state. Poor New Mexico. Its acting state commissioner Hannah Skandera used to work for the Jebster himself, so whatever Florida has done to bring in for-profit hucksters must be brought to New Mexico, of course.

So New Mexico has a K12 virtual charter (listed on the New York Stock Exchange, founded by the Milken brothers), and a Connections Academy, owned by the much unloved Pearson.

Here is the study conducted by the New Mexico League of Women Voters.

Here is an article by Bonnie Burn in the Las Cruces Sun-News explaining why the League of Women Voters opposes for-profit schools. Actually, she is wrong on one point. There is a growing body of research that shows the ineffectiveness of virtual charters. However, they are highly profitable.

Will the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan speak out against for-profit virtual charters? Will elephants fly?

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, K12 Inc., On-Line Education, Pearson, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

A Mom in Utah: Next Year We Opt Out of Abusive Testing

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
27

A comment from a Mad Mom in Utah. When the parents wise up and act in concert to protect their children, the toxic reform hoax will collapse.

She writes:

“I live in Utah and I have a third and fourth grader that completed the AIR SAGE test this last school year. Yes, those test are just as long as reported for my children. These tests were given over a number of days and my children suffered from high anxiety on these days and they were exhausted. After the testing was finished I asked them how they felt about it and they said they didn’t really like it because it was long and hard (there is no ceiling). I also heard from my children that some kids in their classes cried or just put their heads down and quit, which is interesting because some of the questions were supposed to get easier if they get a wrong answer on a harder question.

“I spoke with a retiring third grade teacher in another district to see if her experience with SAGE was similar and she said it was awful for the children. She said the tests lasted up to 10 hours for some children because of the essay section. Although, she said she had two students finish the essay in 10 minutes and then they hid under their desks.

“The crazy thing is that in Utah State Code R277-515-4 Educator Responsibility for Maintaining a Safe Learning Environment in Section B4 it states educators “shall take action to protect a student from any known condition detrimental to that student’s physical health, mental health, safety, or learning”. But right after this section, in B5, it states their duty on administering all of this testing. So, which is it Utah? Because I can attest that this testing is doing more harm than good for our children. Should educators administer the tests and remain silent (which I think they are being told to do) or should educators share their experiences so we can learn from them and hopefully do better?

“Shame on those in the position of power in my state for making this happen. And shame on me for allowing my children to be the guinea pigs. I know better; but I was curious. They won’t be taking SAGE tests next year.

“Thank you to all of those that have stood up and have been brave! You have educated me and reminded me that I too can be brave. I have a voice and it is time to use it.”

Categories Parents, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Students, Testing

How Statistics Can Be Manipulated Any Which Way

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2014 //
43

Mr. Anonymous, an education policy analyst who is working towards his doctorate, wrote the following cautionary story about the use and misuse of statistics for political purposes. He requires anonymity for the usual reasons, mostly fear of retaliation for speaking up.

He writes:

The Common Core and Departments of Education: Lies, Darn Lies, Statistics and Education Statistics

Numbers have taken center stage in the discussion of education policy in the United States. Test score metrics have become a particularly critical set of numbers. They are seen as objective measuring devices, comparable across years, that provide a reliable evaluation of how students, teachers, schools, districts, and the United States as whole are doing. But are they really objective?
The push for implementation of Common Core exams has caught the attention of the public. In New York State, as in many other states across the nation, questions have been raised about the motivations of those pushing for the roll-out of these exams and their use in high-stakes evaluations. As we will see below such concerns are definitely legitimate given the history of the New York State Department of Education and the Board of Regents in setting cut-scores and changing exams in ways that serve political and other ends.

Let’s start with Biology, a standard course that almost every high school freshman takes. Remember dissecting that frog? In 2001 the New York State Department of Education changed the Biology Regents to a re-named “Living Environment.” A rather remarkable aspect of the change was the dramatic lowering of the passing score. In the Biology exam a student needed at least 59 points (out of a total of 85 possible points) to earn a passing grade of 65. On the new Living Environment Regents students need only 40 points (out of a total of 85 possible points) to earn a passing grade of 65. In some years (e.g. 2004) a student needed only 38 out of 85 points to earn a passing grade of 65.

The story repeats itself in mathematics. Until 2002 the New York State Department of Education required students to take a “Sequential Mathematics I” exam. That test had a total point value of 100 points. The conversion was simple enough, each point was equal to one point and a student needed 65 points to pass. Then, in 2002, the math exam was switched to a “Mathematics A” exam.

On this test students needed to score 35 out of a possible 84 points to earn a 65 and pass. Earning 42% of the possible points led to a 65. Then, in 2008, the math exam was switched again, this time to an “Integrated Algebra” exam. On this test students needed to earn 30 out of a possible 87 points to earn a 65 and pass. Earning 34% of the possible points now led to a 65.
The United States and Global History exams underwent similar changes at the turn of the millennium. Before the changes students were required to write 3 essays accounting for 45% of their final score. After the changes students were required to write only two essays accounting for only 35% of their final score. On one of the essays students are provided with extensive information they can use in their writing.

A couple of years later the exact same process occurred with the English Regents. In 2011 the New York State Department of Education changed the exam from a two part six hour test with two essays to a single part three hour test with only one essay. Again the cut scores were dramatically lowered. The scales on these two exams are very different making comparison difficult. One way to measure the change is to look at the grade a student would receive if s/he got exactly half the multiple choice questions correct and earned exactly half of the possible points on the essay(s). On the old English exam that student would have received a grade of 43. On the new English exam a grade of 50.

A year ago the New York State Department of Education changed things yet again. But this time they did not change the exam. They just changed the cut scores. From 2011 until 2013 out of 286 possible point combinations on the exam an average of 74 resulted in a passing grade. Then, in June of 2013, the number of point combinations leading to a passing grade was dramatically lowered by 23%. Since then an average of 63 point combinations out of 286 leads to a passing grade.

It is disturbing that this change occurred at the very moment when the test results would first be used to evaluate teachers. The research base shows that such value-added metrics are unreliable. For example a RAND report concluded “the research base is currently insufficient for us to recommend the use of VAM for high-stakes decisions.” A report out of Brown University concluded “the promise that value-added systems can provide such a precise, meaningful, and comprehensive picture is not supported by the data.” Nonetheless New York State passed laws requiring school districts to use test scores in teacher evaluations. Why, at the same time, did the Department of Education quietly change the cut scores on the English Regents? Is it an attempt to ensure that more teachers are rated ineffective? This would allow certain interest groups to declare the law a success and claim that “bad teachers” are now being identified and should be fired. Is it an attempt to create evidence that there is an epidemic of failing students in New York State? This would allow certain interest groups to proclaim that the crisis can only be solved if the new Common Core Standards are implemented without delay.

Advocates of the Common Core are either ignorant of or deliberately ignore this history. A decade ago New York State Department of Education decided that the high school graduation rate was too low. They therefore changed exams and cut scores to make them easier. The graduation rate went up. Now it seems that some powerful interests have decided that it is too easy to graduate. So they want the exams made harder and the passing cut scores raised. It is evident from the history reviewed above that playing with cut scores is not the way to improve education. After all that just leaves us in the very place we are in today. Yet we seem to be condemned to repeat this cycle all over again. We seem to be enamored of easy solutions. Make exams harder (or easier). Raise cut scores (or lower them). What we do not seem to be willing to do as a nation is roll up our sleeves and do the really, really hard work of ensuring that every student receives a quality education.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Carol Burris: How “Reformers” Inflate College Remediation Rates

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2014 //
44

In the television series called “The Wire,” there is an episode dedicated to “juking the stats.” Since it is a program about the police, criminals, and the drug trade, “juking the stats” means that the officials were able to manipulate crime data to show that crime was up–requiring more police–or down–showing their success in slowing a crime wave. Now we know that the corporate education reform movement has become expert at “juking the stats” to make public schools look bad so that the “reformers” can privatize them.

 

Many years ago, David Berliner and Bruce Biddle wrote a book called The Manufactured Crisis, describing how certain think tanks and government officials were manipulating data to make it appear to the public that the schools were in crisis. A gullible media, loving sensational stories about the “failure” of our schools, reported the “reformer” claims without bothering to check facts.

 

The corporate reformers of our day thrive on their own manufactured crisis. They seize upon any factoid to make schools and teachers look bad. They ignore the compelling facts that our schools are underfunded and overwhelmed with the problems of children in poverty. The corporate reformers’ solution to the problems they identify: More testing, more privatization. They think that students get smarter if they are tested more often, so more tests. They assume that privately managed schools must be superior to public schools, despite clear evidence that they do not produce better results and–unregulated and unsupervised–many are vulnerable to corruption, nepotism, self-dealing, and fraud.

 

In this article, Carol Burris shows how the college remediation rate has been shamelessly inflated by corporate reformers intent on advancing their agenda of privatization. Chief among those who have overstated the remediation rate is Secretary of Education Duncan, who said in Massachusetts that the college remediation rate was 40% when it was about half that number. As she demonstrates, one “reform” think tank announces the “crisis” of a 40% college remediation rate, and others soon repeat it until it becomes conventional wisdom. But it is not true. Like almost all the data trotted out by the reform crowd, it is inflated to promote their political agenda of privatization. Or they use their doctored stats to promote the Common Core, even though there is no evidence whatever that Common Core will make every student “college and career ready.” The campaign for Common Core increasingly looks like an advertising gambit that promises that your clothes will be cleaner than ever, your teeth will be whiter than ever, your weight will drop in a matter of days, if only you use this product.

 

When will the reformers target the root causes of low academic performance: poverty, segregation, and inequitable allocation of resources? Ever.

 

 

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Higher Education, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Who Is Campbell Brown and Why Does She Want to Eliminate Tenure?

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2014 //
66

Mother Jones published this article in 2013 when Campbell Brown started her campaign against “sexual predators” in the New York City public schools (there are none, apparently, in charter schools, thank goodness!).

 

Campbell Brown is now leading the lawsuit attacking tenure, seniority, and due process for teachers in New York state. Her organization has found half a dozen student plaintiffs who claim that their teachers were “bad” teachers, which denied them a quality education.

 

The big difference between then and now in Campbell Brown’s group is that in 2013 her public relations firm was connected to Republicans.

 

Her current PR spokesman is Robert Gibbs, who was President Obama’s White House press secretary.

 

What Ms. Brown seems not to know is that there are sometimes false accusations made by students. I recall that when I lived in D.C. in the early 1990s, a junior high school teacher was accused of sexual misconduct by several girls in his class. The evidence seemed overwhelming given the number of complaints. The teacher was pilloried in the press. But when the police interviewed each girl individually, they did not corroborate the other stories, and in a matter of days, they all admitted they had trumped up the charges to punish a teacher who had given them too much work and had too high standards. That was an elementary lesson: an accusation is not a conviction. Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

 

One curious aspect to this copycat case is that no one has been able to establish the basic claim that every child would have a “great” teacher if no teacher had due process rights or any job protections whatever. What seems more likely is that teachers will flee to affluent districts, if they can, to avoid the low value-added scores that are attached to teaching the most challenging students. Inner-city schools attended by the poorest children will find it more difficult to maintain a stable staff. Some victory that would be.

 

If people like Campbell Brown really cared about poor kids, they would fight for small class sizes, arts teachers, school nurses, libraries, and improved conditions for teaching and learning. They don’t.

 

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

Jeff Bryant: Who Will Stop Charter School Corruption?

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2014 //
34

Charter schools have been the beneficiary of a myth, the myth that a free market in schooling will produce miraculous results. Unfortunately, like most myths, it is not true. Deregulation translates into lack of supervision and oversight. In the absence of supervision of public funds, scams, frauds, and corruption flourish.

Jeff Bryant here reviews some of the egregious examples of charter school corruption in Ohio, Michigan, and Florida. Billions of taxpayer dollars are being transferred to the private sector, where no one supervises how those dollars are spent. Worse, the businesses that get the money spend large sums to hire lobbyists and to contribute to key legislators to make sure their charters remain free of oversight.

It is alarming that Congress is about to hand more money over to the same shady entrepreneurs and to encourage more of them to jump into the unregulated, very profitable charter industry.

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

New Orleans: The Other Side of the Story

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2014 //
39

Here is the latest from New Orleans, as locals try to tell “the other side of the story” from what you see in the national media. Dr. Raynard Sanders is an educator who is affiliated with Research on Reforms. Phoebe Ferguson is a co-founder of the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation for Education, Preservation, and Outreach.

“Dear Friends and Colleagues,

“For the past two years Phoebe Ferguson and I have been working on a documentary that tells the “real’ story about the education reforms forcefully implemented in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina. The upcoming documentary will be a response to the well financed narrative that reformers$ have been cheerleading across the country for more than nine years claiming unprecedented academic gains in the historically failing schools New Orleans.

“With that we collaborated with The New Orleans Education Equity Roundtable and the Schott Foundation to produce a series of videos that focus on the major components of the corporate reforms in New Orleans.

“Today we are releasing our first video publicly, below is a URL that directs you to the video for viewing:

Here is the URL for the video: bit.ly/nolastrm

“As friends and colleagues I am asking you kindly share this video throughout your network, for those of you’ll who that have web sites and blogs I am asking you to post it on your site.

“We will be forwarding to you the upcoming videos in this series as they are completed…….. THANKS

Raynard Sanders, Ed.D.”

Categories Charter Schools, New Orleans, Resistance, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes
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