Archives for category: School Choice
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Waltons Fund “National Parents Union” to Advocate for Privatization

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2019 //
20

 

Maurice Cunningham, a dogged investigator of Dark Money, has discovered a shell operation funded by the multibillionaire Walton family. 

It is called the “National Patents Union,” and its goal is to defund public schools and transfer public money to private hands.

Its leader Keri Rodriguez led the effort in Massachusetts to raise the cap on charter schools in 2016. The referendum would have allowed a dozen new charters every year forever, located wherever they chose. The vote went overwhelmingly against the charter proposition.

But wherever there is money, there are people ready to pick up the banner of privatization. And the Waltons, whose fortune exceeds $150 Billion, have plenty to spend in their quest to destroy public schools.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Massachusetts, Privatization, School Choice, Walton Foundation

Indianapolis: The Purpose of School Choice is to Destroy Communities, Which Endangers Us All

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2019 //
28

 

Jim Scheurich is a professor at Indiana University and a public education activist. He writes here about how School Choice is intended to destroy community.

 

Folks, the philosophy that charter and innovation schools are built on is that your children’s school should be individualized parental choice.  This means parents individually search across the Indy area as to where to send their children, which often means leaving their neighborhood community.  Each family or individual parent is thus on her, his, or their own and not engaged with their neighborhood community.  Also, each family or individual parent is pitted against or in competition with other similar families and parents for the so-called “better” schools.

This individualistic orientation of charters and innovation schools undermines neighborhood communities and even the possibility of neighborhood communities.   Undermining neighborhood communities, according to sociological research, increases violence, including murder.  Other research shows that building community decreases violence, including murder.

This, therefore, means that charter and innovation schools are likely one of the causes of our high murder rate in Indianapolis as the individualized school choice model is broadly undermining neighborhood communities across our city. 

Of course, building community in low income areas is not easy, but not impossible.  However, many such communities have created positive community spaces.  Given the difficulty of creating such communities, we certainly do not need more policies, like charter and innovation schools, that are threats to community and community building.

If you study the neoliberal political and economic “philosophy” behind the choice school movement, you will find a strong focus on individualism over community.  If you want to understand this movement, which is driving the creation of individualistic “choice” schools, read Democracy in chains by Nancy MacLean, a Duke historian, and then read the award winningDark money by Jane Mayer, which analyzes who the Koch brothers are as they are primary supporters of neoliberalism.  Indeed, overwhelmingly, the financial supporters of neoliberalism, the people behind the curtain, the people funding Stand for Children and the Mind Trust, are conservative to rightwing billionaires.

If you don’t believe me or think I am just some conspiracy nut, I dare you to read Democracy in chainsby the highly respected Duke historian, Nancy MacLean. I dare you.

My point is that charter and innovation schools help destroy community, which according to sociological research can lead to increased violence.

 

Jim Scheurich, Indianapolis Public Schools Community Coalition, a multi-racial, multi-class, citywide group of Indianapolis citizens working to reverse the takeover of our school district by those funded by white, conservative or rightwing, billionaire neoliberals. Also, an activist professor of Urban Education Studies at Indiana University – Indianapolis

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Indiana, Indianapolis, Injustice, Innovation, Privatization, Safety, School Choice, Vouchers

Bernie Sanders’ Staff Called Me to Talk About Education Policy

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2019 //
186

 

I got an e-mail recently from Senator Bernie Sanders’s education advisor. She said she reads the blog and wondered if we could talk. I said sure but I was not ready to endorse anyone in the Democratic primaries.

I asked for and got her permission to share that this conversation occurred. As everyone knows who ever gave me confidential information, I never write or speak about what I was told in confidence.

We set a date to speak on the phone since I am in New York and she is in D.C.

She called and conferenced in the campaign’s chief of staff.

Here is what happened.

I told them that I was upset that Democrats talk about pre-K and college costs—important but safe topics—and skip K-12, as though it doesn’t exist. Every poll I get from Democrats asks me which issues matter most but doesn’t mention K-12.

I expressed my hope that Bernie would recognize that charter schools are privately managed (in 2016, he said in a town hall that he supports “public charter schools but not private charter schools). No matter what they call themselves, they are not “public” schools. They are all privately managed. I recounted for them the sources of financial support for charters: Wall Street, hedge fund managers, billionaires, the DeVos family, the Waltons, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, ALEC, and of course, the federal government, which gave $440 million to charters this year, one-third of which will never open or close soon after opening. (See “Asleep At the Wheel: How Athens Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride,” Network for Public Education).

I proposed a way to encourage states to increase funding for teachers’ salaries. I won’t reveal it now. I think it is an amazingly innovative concept that offers money to states without mandates but assures that the end result would be significant investment by states in teacher compensation, across the board, untethered to test scores.

I recommended a repeal of the annual testing in grades 3-8, a leftover of George W. Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind. I pointed out to them that all the Democrats on the Education Committee in the Senate had voted for the Murphy Amendment (sponsored by Senator Chris Murphy of Ct), which would have preserved all the original punishments of NCLB but which was fortunately voted down by Republicans. I suggested that grade span testing is common in other developed countries, I.e., once in elementary school, once in middle school, once in high school.

We had a lively conversation. Our values are closely aligned.

They are in it to win it. I will watch to see if Bernie moves forward with a progressive K-12 plan. No one else has.

My options are open. My priorities are clear.

Let’s draw a line in the sand. We will not support any candidate for the Democratic nomination unless he or she comes out with strong policy proposals that strengthen public schools, protect the civil rights of all students, curb federal overreach into curriculum and assessment and teacher evaluation, and oppose DeVos-style privatization (vouchers, charters, cybercharters, for-profit charters, home schooling, for-profit higher education).

Silence is not a policy.

Democrats support public schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Sanders, School Choice, Teacher Pay, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Tennessee: Showdown Over Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2019 //
18

 

Governor Bill Lee has proposed a voucher program. Teachers and parents are outraged. —but not enough of them.

When the bill moved from the House to the Senate,  the number of vouchers were doubled to 30,000.

The money for vouchers will be subtracted from public schools, which educate 90% of the children of Tennessee. Expect more segregation, more bigotry, more children taught by uncertified teachers, more state-sponsored ignorance of science and history. Expect budget cuts in public schools, larger classes, no money for higher salaries, layoffs for teachers, school nurses, librarians, counselors, the arts.

Betsy DeVos visited Tennessee last week to promote vouchers, and she flatly lied about Florida’s test scores, which are mediocre. She claimed that achievement in Florida had gone up because of the $3 billion that the state spends each year on vouchers and charters. Not true. Surely she is well aware of the voucher studies in D.C., Milwaukee, Ohio, Louisiana, and Indiana showing that students who use vouchers do no better or much worse in school than their peers who remain in public schools.

Florida’s performance on NAEP is mediocre, except for fourth grade, where scores are artificially inflated by the state policy of holding back low-scoring third graders.

Quote of the day:

“‘We don’t have the luxury of worrying about a handful of children,” said Knox County teacher Lauren Hobson, speaking to another crowd assembled by the Tennessee Democratic Party. “We have to worry about the 90% of the children across the country left in schools with us.”

“Hobson and other critics believe underfunding is the real battle in public schools.

“‘Our legislators actually have a constitutional duty in Tennessee to maintain and support a public education,” she said. “They have no duty to support private education.’”

Read that last line again. She is right. Republican legislators in Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, and other states are ignoring their constitutional duty “to maintain and support public education,” not private schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Florida, Lies, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers

Wisconsin: Charters and Vouchers Strip $193 Million from Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2019 //
10

 

Yes, charters and vouchers take money from public schools, which enroll nearly 90% of students.

In Tuesday’s election, a pro-public school slate swept the Milwaukee school board. It will be interesting to see what happens with that city’s heavy dose of privatized charters and vouchers.

In Wisconsin, a legislator revealed that school choice removes $193 million in state aid from public schools. 

“MADISON, Wis. — A new report shows voucher and charter schools will reduce aid to public schools by nearly $193 million.

“Democratic state Rep. Sondy Pope released an analysis Thursday that the Legislative Fiscal Bureau prepared for her. The report shows voucher and charter schools will consume $192.9 million that could have gone to public schools this year.”

There’s only one pot of State money for K-12 schools. Dividing it three ways makes all sectors suffer.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Funding, School Choice, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Anthony Cody Fact-Checks Betsy DeVos on Class Size, and Jeanne Allen Scoffs At Cody

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2019 //
22

 

In this post, veteran teacher Anthony Cody explains how he happened to have a seat directly behind Betsy DeVos at the Congressional budget hearings, and he fact-checks DeVos’ preposterous claim that large classes may be preferable to small ones. No one asked her why wealthy parents who send their children to elite private schools expect and demand small classes. If they listen to our Secretary of Education, they should insist on large classes.

He begins:

“A video of Betsy DeVos responding to questions from Lucille Roybal-Allard of the House Appropriations Committee hearing has gone viral, and has been watched now by many thousands of people. I appear in the background, shaking my head as DeVos asserts that larger class sizes might actually be beneficial since they allow students to collaborate with more classmates, and might allow the best teachers to be paid more. So in this post, I will take a look at the actual research on the subject, and a bit of the history of the idea.”

Rightwing Activist Jeanne Allen slammed Cody on Twitter and advised him to spend his time helping needy students. 

Apparently she did not know that he spent 18 years teaching middle school science in Oakland. Cody asked her whether she had ever been a teacher, but she did not respond. She runs an advocacy group-the Center for Education Reform- that supports vouchers, charters, home schooling, and for-profit schooling. She opposes public schools and teachers unions. She works closely with DFER and other anti-public school organizations. That’s her idea of “helping needy students”: not actually teaching them but closing their public schools. Her salary: $217,000.

Read the other comments on this exchange: Mitchell Robinson says that Anthony Cody has “forgotten more about teaching than anyone in your group [the Center for Education Reform] has ever known.” I doubt that there are any teachers on the CER board.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Class size, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, School Choice, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

A Teacher in Arizona Reports on the Slow Strangulation of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2019 //
9

An Arizona Teacher left this comment:

“I teach in an AZ public school–title 1 school. The poverty in this school is astonishing. This is my first year teaching in AZ after moving here from another state. I taught almost 20 years in a public school that was also a Title 1 school before moving to AZ. I have a lot of experience teaching in poverty schools. I have never seen anything as dysfunctional and as underfunded as the school I teach in currently. The whole district is in dire straits as it is funneling money away from public schools into charters. The lack of resources in this school is stupefying and confounding. It seems that the people in AZ are automatons and that this “cheating” of public schools is the new-normal. It’s not that people don’t care about education, its just that most people who can leave the poverty schools behind do so without realizing the impact they have. And to be honest, if I had children I don’t know if I would want them to attend one of these public schools. The discipline problems and lack of support for teachers is driving parents and teachers away. Buildings are falling apart. Just today part of the roof caved in at the school library. And then the corruption in the state legislature is driving the drain of resources.”

 

 

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Poverty, School Choice, Vouchers

DeVos Wants to Defund Special Olympics, Boost Funding for School Choice

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2019 //
27

 

Betsy DeVos was grilled yesterday in Congressional hearings about her budget proposals. She was repeatedly questioned about her desire to increase charter school funding from $440 million to $500 million a year. The Network for Public Education report on the waste, fraud, and abuse in this program was cited.

While increasing the charter budget, DeVos wants to cut $18 million from the Special Olympics, which benefits 272,000 children with disabilities. 

To put it mildly, her priorities are wacky. She wants to cut the budget of a successful and valuable program while heaping money on charters that are likely to never open or quickly close.

DeVos said the philanthropic community already funds the Special Olympics. The same is true of charters. Billionaires and Wall Street heap hundreds of millions on charters. The Waltons alone have spent more than a billion on charters. Why does the Federal government add hundreds of millions more?

To add insult to injury. She is proposing a 12% cut for the Department but a 15% increase in executive salaries.

Then there was this exchange, reported by Politico:

“— Another concern raised by Democrats was the department’s proposal to cut funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which funds aftercare. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) questioned DeVos about why she’s attempting again to cut a program that’s long had bipartisan support and has shown results. She noted that Congress had rebuffed the proposal last year, and instead gave the program a $10 million boost.

“— DeVos responded that the funds flowing out of the program aren’t necessarily getting to the centers that work really well and there aren’t great participation rates. She said the department’s budget focused on things “we really know are yielding results.””

If DeVos cared about results, the Department would cut funding new charters (many of which will never open, will close soon after they opened, will get poor results, or will cherrypick the students likeliest to succeed on tests), and eliminate all proposed funding to vouchers, which consistently get very poor results.

The only good thing about the DeVos heading was that Anthony Cody arrived early, sat directly behind DeVos, and scowled throughout her testimony, prominently featured on CSPAN. He was her Greek chorus.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Funding, School Choice, Special Education, Vouchers

Muncie, Indiana: Voucher School for 6 Students Condemned, Deplorable Conditions

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2019 //
14

 

Fire and building inspectors condemned the Delaware Christian Academy after entering the building and finding its six students huddled around a heater for warmth. Betsy DeVos always says that parents always know best, but why did these parents send their children to school in an unsafe building?

”Fire and building inspectors say they found six students at the private Delaware Christian Academy “huddled around a kerosene heater in blankets trying to stay warm” one morning last week.

“Authorities ordered the building — the former Riley Elementary School on North Walnut Street — to be vacated. The children’s teacher took them home.

“Meanwhile, the city building commissioner on Wednesday condemned the structure, finding it unsafe for occupancy.

“The school, whose enrollment has declined to just six students, was using only one classroom in the 28,282-square-feet building.

“The school superintendent acknowledged in an interview Thursday that the building has deficiencies but denied the children were cold — “some kids just like to have blankets” — and said the plan is to reopen.”

A school of six students? Six vouchers do not produce enough revenue for one teacher. Not to mention enough revenue to heat and maintain the building.

Categories Accountability, Indiana, School Choice, Vouchers

North Carolina: “White Flight Academy” Turns into a Charter School to Get Public Funding

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2019 //
11

In this post on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet, North Carolina educators Justin Parmenter and Rodney D. Pierce report that a “white flight academy” is turning itself into a charter school so it can collect public funding. More than two-thirds of the state’s charter schools are more than 80% black or white.

Hobgood Academy opened in 1970 as an escape route for white children whose parents wanted to avoid sending them to integrated schools. Now Hobgood wants to convert to charter status so its parents don’t have to pay tuition. The North Carolina State Board of Education has approved the conversion, so the funding for the segregationist academy will come in large part from the funding now provided to the highly segregated public schools.

Please read the full article to understand the history of segregation and racism in Halifax County. If it is behind a paywall, let me know and I will post it in full.

 

Last month, the North Carolina State Board of Education voted unanimously to approve the conversion of Halifax County’s private Hobgood Academy to a public charter school. Halifax County ranks 90th out of 100 North Carolina counties in terms of per capita income, and more than 28 percent of its residents live below the poverty line — nearly double the national average. Hobgood’s student population is 87 percent white, while only 4 percent of those attending Halifax County Schools are white.If you read the charter application that Hobgood submitted to state officials, you might be inclined to think that the very purpose for the school’s existence is to lift children out of poverty by offering them a better education.

The application notes the “low performing” status of the public schools in the area and the “vicious cycle of poverty” that contributes to that low performance. It lays out the applicants’ supposed view that “the potential exists to turn the tide of poverty in this community through excellence in education” and refers to Hobgood as “the perfect place to impact the most vulnerable of our children.”

The real reason Hobgood is converting to a charter school is something entirely different. In the application’s section about enrollment trends, applicants admit to a “significant decline in enrollment,” acknowledging that the private school’s $5,000 annual tuition could be a barrier for some families.

A Google Site called “Let’s Charter Hobgood,” set up to organize Hobgood parents to push for the charter conversion, shows the motivation has nothing to do with extending opportunity to people who don’t currently have it.

Rather, it is for parents of students who already attend the school to be able to keep going there without paying tuition. In addition, responses to recent questions that are posted on the parent site include the statement: “No current law forces any diversity whether it be by age, sex, race, creed.” The question isn’t posted, so you’ll have to infer what it was.

Hobgood’s conversion to a charter school means the school could see a windfall of more than $2 million from the state. Of course, that money is coming out of someone else’s pocket. Remember those impoverished students Hobgood’s charter application claimed to be so concerned about? They’ll be paying much of that tab via pass-through transfer funding from Halifax County Schools.

Halifax County’s entire education budget, including community college, is $11.2 million. In the Department of Public Instruction’s most recent facility needs survey, the district reported $13.3 million in capital needs, including more than $8 million in needed renovations to existing school buildings. Financially, Halifax County school district is most definitely not in a position to be bailing out private schools.

The history of racial segregation in Halifax County is crucial to understanding what is currently playing out….

Hobgood currently receives $69,300 a year from the state’s voucher program. Once it turns into a charter, it will receive an additional $2 million a year. The population in Halifax County is almost evenly divided between whites and blacks. Hobgood Academy is 88 percent white.  The public schools are more than 90% black. The families who send their children to Hobgood will no longer have to pay tuition. The children in the Halifax County public schools will have less money for their education.
We are reminded that school choice was first advocated in response to the Brown decision of 1954 by segregationist governors and senators. Sixty-five years later, their vision is being realized.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization, Racism, School Choice, Segregation
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