Archives for category: School Choice
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Jan Resseger on “A Decade of Neglect”

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2018 //
28

Jan Resseger reviews the AFT report on “A Decade of Neglect,“ a decade in which states cut funding for public schools and diverted the shrinking pie to charters and vouchers. This state-by-state attack on public schools is the match that ignited the teachers’ strikes and may ignite even more in the future. Teachers will be silent no more. They will vote in massive numbers in November for those who support public schools. Many teachers are running for state legislative offices. Good luck to them!

The new report from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), A Decade of Neglect, is one of the most lucid explanations I’ve read about the deplorable fiscal conditions for public schools across the states. It explains the precipitous drop in school funding caused by the Great Recession, temporarily ameliorated in 2009 by an infusion of funds from the federal stimulus (a financial boost that disappeared after a couple of years), compounded by tax cutting and austerity budgeting across many states, and further compounded by schemes to drain education dollars to privatized charter and voucher programs all out of the same budget.

The report delineates the conditions tangled together over the decade: “While some states are better off than most, in states where spending on education was less in 2016 than it was before the recession, our public schools remain nearly $19 billion short of the annual funding they received in 2008, after adjusting for changes in the consumer price index… The recession ran from December 2007 through June 2009 and prompted a crisis setting off a chain of actions that resulted in significant budget cutting by our state governments. When the recession hit, it devastated state budgets. Job losses, lower wages, the crash in housing prices and the panic in the financial markets all worked to lower state tax revenues, while the demand for government services in the form of unemployment benefits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and housing and Medicaid assistance drove up expenditures. The Brookings Institution estimated that by the second quarter of 2009, income tax collections were 27 percent below their prior-year levels, and total state taxes were 17 percent lower… The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual report of education indicators recently found that U.S. spending on elementary and high school education declined more than 4 percent from 2010-2014…. Over this same period, education spending on average, rose 5 percent per student across the 35 countries in the OECD.”

Many states also adopted an ideology promising that tax cuts would bring the economy back. Sam Brownback’s Kansas experiment in supply side economics, however, exemplifies the failure to confirm these hopes. In Kansas the economy didn’t improve and state revenues collapsed. Only in the past two years has the legislature there raised taxes—beginning an effort to undo the damage. Overall, according to AFT’s report: “In 2016, 25 states were still providing less funding for K-12 schools than before the recession, after adjusting for inflation… Eighteen of the 25 states that provided less funding for k-12 education reduced their tax effort between 2008 and 2015.” The eight states that cut taxes most deeply were: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Virginia. And, “In 38 states, the average teacher salary in 2018 is lower than it was in 2009 in real terms… According to the Economic Policy Institute, teacher pay fell by $30 per week from 1996-2015, while pay for other college graduates increased by $124. The gap between teachers and other college graduates has continued to widen and deep cuts in school funding leave states unable to invest in their state’s teacher workforce… In 35 states, between 2008 and 2016, the ratio of students to teachers grew.”

Here is an example of the result: “(W)hile some states are doing better than others, no state is really doing well enough. California is a leader on many of the measures used in this report. But there are less than one tenth the number of school librarians as is recommended. Most school districts don’t have a nurse and there are only about a quarter of the recommended number of school counselors.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Education Law Center and ACLU Fight Michigan Law to Allow Public Funding of Private Schools

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2018 //
31

Betsy DeVos and her husband Dick DeVos sponsored a referendum to change Michigan’s State Constitution in 2000 so that the state could fund vouchers for religious schools. Their referendum was overwhelmingly defeated, by 68-32%.

Now the rightwing is trying again, bypassing another referendum (which would be defeated) and sponsoring a law to achieve the same purpose.


ELC JOINS FIGHT TO MAINTAIN MICHIGAN’S CONSTITUTIONAL BAN AGAINST PUBLIC FUNDING OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Education Law Center filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief earlier this month in a crucial case before the Michigan Court of Appeals challenging a law that would redirect public education funds to private schools. The challenged statute, which was found unconstitutional and blocked by the lower court, would divert $2.5 million a year from the State’s appropriation of public school funding to reimburse private schools for a wide array of expenses.

Several Michigan entities filed the lawsuit, Council of Organizations and Others for Education About Parochiaid (CAP) v. Michigan, alleging violations of state constitutional provisions prohibiting public aid to nonpublic schools and requiring a two-thirds majority vote of the Legislature to appropriate public funds for private purposes. The legal team representing the plaintiffs includes the ACLU of Michigan and the firm White Schneider.

After entering a preliminary injunction blocking the law, Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens ruled in April 2018 that the statute violated the plain language of Article 8, § 2 of the Michigan Constitution. This constitutional provision, approved by voter referendum in 1970, prohibits the use of public funds to “directly or indirectly” support private schools. Judge Stephens found that the statute “effectuate[s] the direct payment of public funds to nonpublic schools” and “supports the employment of nonpublic school employees.” The State then appealed Judge Stephens’ ruling.

ELC’s amicus brief provides the appeals court with historical context demonstrating that Michigan voters intended to protect the funding of public education and improve the quality of their public school system when they approved the constitutional ban on public funds for private schools.

The amicus brief also highlights the persistent underfunding of Michigan’s public schools and the widening disparities in student performance, as demonstrated by the State’s own studies. Michigan fails to equitably allocate funding and resources to state public schools, with at-risk students, including economically disadvantaged students, English language learners, and students with disabilities, experiencing the most inequitable funding and the lowest academic outcomes.

The amicus brief argues that the challenged statute will exacerbate the underfunding of Michigan public schools by diverting already inadequate funding from public schools to reimburse private school expenses in some of the same categories in which public schools are struggling to meet basic requirements.

Other states have enacted similar laws authorizing “nonpublic school aid” to reimburse private schools for a wide variety of expenditures. In New Jersey, for example, the Legislature allocates over $110 million in public funds in the annual state budget to pay for textbooks, security, nurses and remedial programs in private and religious schools. New York recently enacted a law to reimburse private schools for the salaries of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) teachers.

“Michigan’s public school funding is protected by the constitutional firewall between public tax dollars and private education,” said ELC Executive Director David Sciarra. “It is crucial that the courts not allow the diversion of any funds from Michigan’s chronically and severely underfunded public schools.”

ELC was represented as amicus pro bono by the law firms Paul Weiss and Salvatore Prescott & Porter. As the nation’s legal defense fund for education rights, ELC advocates for fair and adequate public education funding and opposes the use of public funds to pay for or support private schools.

Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

Categories Accountability, Michigan, School Choice, Vouchers

Leonie Haimson Takes David Leonhardt to the Woodshed and Pleads for Fact-Based Journalism

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2018 //
18

Leonie Haimson, parent activist in New York City, critiques David Leonhardt’s highly admiring and uncritical review of the latest study of charter schools in New Orleans.

Leonhardt says he wants a “fact-based debate,” but Leonie says, he didn’t provide “fact-based journalism.”

She opened the links he provided and found that most have nothing to do with his claims. He introduces no new facts or evidence.

She begins:

David Leonhardt’s latest NY Times column touting charter schools is full of bogus claims and sloppy journalism. He inveighs against progressive critics, writes that he wants a fact-based debate over education reform “in a more nuanced, less absolutist way than often happens” but then adds: “Initially, charters’ overall results were no better than average. But they are now.” The link is to a CREDO website that doesn’t show this.

The most recent CREDO national study of charters from 2013 examined charters in 26 states plus NYC and found significant (if tiny) learning gains in reading on average but none in math. CREDO is generally considered a pro-charter organization, funded by the Walton Foundation and many independent scholars have critiqued its methodology.

Moreover, the main finding of the 2013 study was that the vast majority of charter schools do no better than public schools, as Wendy Lecker has pointed out. In 2009, CREDO found, 83 percent of charters had the same or worse results in terms of test scores than public schools, and in 2013, about 71-75 percent had the same or worse results.

Finally, to the extent that in some urban districts, there are studies showing that charters outperform public schools on test scores, there are many possible ways to explain these results, including an overemphasis on test prep, differential student populations, peer effects, higher student attrition rates and under-funding of most urban public schools.

Leonhardt also writes that “The harshest critics of reform, meanwhile, do their own fact-twisting. They wave away reams of rigorous research on the academic gains in New Orleans, Boston, Washington, New York, Chicago and other cities, in favor of one or two cherry-picked discouraging statistics. It’s classic whataboutism. ”

Yet three out of these four links have nothing to do with charter schools, nor are they peer-reviewed studies. The NYC study by Roland Fryer instead focuses on which attributes of NYC charter schools seemed to be correlated with higher test scores compared to other NYC charter schools.

The Chicago link goes to a NY Times column Leonhardt himself wrote on overall increases in test scores and graduation rates in Chicago public schools that doesn’t even mention charter schools. The DC link also is far from “rigorous research,” but sends you to a DCPS press release about the increase in 2017 PARCC scores, with again no mention of charter schools, or even “reform” more broadly.

If there is indeed “reams of rigorous research” supporting charter schools, one might expect that Leonhardt would link to at least one actual, rigorous study showing this.

Open her post to see her masterful analysis of Leonhardt’s vapid claims.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Orleans, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation

Voucher Advocate: Test Scores Don’t Matter

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2018 //
19

For years, for decades, we have been told that the answer to low-scoring public schools was School Choice.

That was until we learned that most charters don’t get higher scores than public schools, and voucher schools actually lead to lower scores.

So school choice advocates now claim that test scores don’t matter, at least not for non-public schools. They are still absolutely essential for public schools, and can be used to stigmatize them and close them down.

But for schools of choice, they just are not all that important. They don’t matter. They only matter for public schools.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Testing, Vouchers

NOLA Research Unit Issues Glowing Report, Wins $10 Million from DeVos

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2018 //
21

Which game shall we play: Follow the Money or Connect the Dots?

Only two days ago, the Education Research Alliance at Tulane University released a glowing report about the privatization of public schools in New Orleans.

Only one day later, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the team a grant of $10 Million to continue their work on market-driven school choice.

With $10 Million, maybe they will get around to checking with researchers who don’t agree with their findings, such as those I cited in this post.

And I hope the team at Tulane-ERA will answer this puzzle:

Louisiana is one of the lowest scoring states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“The Nation’s Report Card”). Its scores declined significantly from 2015-2017. New Orleans is the largest school district in the state. If its results are amazing, why did the state drop to 48th in the nation in 8th grade reading and 50th in the nation on the 8th grade math on NAEP? This doesn’t add up.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Louisiana, New Orleans, School Choice

Jeff Bryant: Brett Kavanaugh Will Support Betsy DeVos’s Religious Agenda on the Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2018 //
14

Jeff Bryant has studied Brett Kavanaugh’s writings and has concluded that, if confirmed for the Supreme Court, he will join the other conservative justices in knocking down the last remnants of the long-established tradition of separation of church and states. This will be a great victory for Betsy DeVos and others who have been working overtime to direct public funding to religious schools.

He writes:

“As the son of a public-school teacher and a volunteer tutor of students in Washington, DC, the Kavanaugh narrative may come across as friendly to public schools, but Kavanaugh was raised in elite private schools and has nothing in his record that would indicate a strong support for public education.

“His history of legally undermining the separation of church and state is a fact not in dispute. In his work with the Federalist Society – the rightwing project that has largely engineered today’s high court and compiled the list of potential nominees for Trump – Kavanaugh has led its “School Choice Practice Group” and “Religious Liberties Group.” These groups help the Federalist Society craft its legal arguments on the unconstitutionality of excluding religious options from school choice programs.

“Among the primary targets for these groups is to repeal amendments in 39 state constitutions that prohibit direct government aid to educational institutions that have a religious affiliation. This argument already has the Supreme Court’s partial consent, given its ruling last year that ordered a New Mexico Supreme Court to reconsider a decision barring religious schools from a state textbook lending program.

“Kavanaugh also has a history of supporting school vouchers that allow parents to use public taxdollars to pay tuition for private, religious schools. In 2000, he represented then Florida Governor Jeb Bush to push through the state’s first school voucher program, which was eventually struck down by the Florida Supreme Court in a 2006 decision.

“But just as Kavanaugh and his conservative colleagues were being stymied in state courts, they were blazing a legal pathway for federal support of school vouchers.

“Religious Is ‘Secular’

“In an appearance on CNN in 2000, Politico reports, Kavanaugh “predicted … that school vouchers would one day be upheld by the Court.””

As public money flows to unaccountable religious schools, which hire uncertified teachers, use textbooks that teach religious propaganda, or don’t teach any English, Republican lawmakers may come to regret the monster they created.

Thomas Jefferson urged his friend many years ago to preach “a crusade against ignorance.” It was Jefferson who first referred to a “wall of separation between church and state,” the better to protect both church and state.

He would be appalled to see that wall disappear.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Betsy DeVos Will be in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Monday. Show Up to Protest Her Policies.

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2018 //
7

Peter Greene explains why you should protest against Betsy DeVos if you are anywhere near Erie, Pennsylvania, on Monday, July 16.

Silence = Consent.

Do not consent.

Speak out and rally begins at 1:00 on Monday, July 16, outside Pfeiffer-Burleigh Elementary School, 235 East 11th Street in Erie PA.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Resistance, School Choice

New Study: Attendance in Private Schools Has No Effect on Performance When Demographics are Controlled

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2018 //
55

A new study published by the peer-reviewed Educational Researcher by Professors Richard C. Pianta and Arya Ansari of the University of Virginia tests whether enrollment in private schools affects achievement when demography is controlled. The answer is no.

Here is the abstract:

By tracking longitudinally a sample of American children (n = 1,097), this study examined the extent to which enrollment in private schools between kindergarten and ninth grade was related to students’ academic, social, psychological, and attainment outcomes at age 15. Results from this investigation revealed that in unadjusted models, children with a history of enrollment in private schools performed better on nearly all outcomes assessed in adolescence. However, by simply controlling for the sociodemographic characteristics that selected children and families into these schools, all of the advantages of private school education were eliminated. There was also no evidence to suggest that low-income children or children enrolled in urban schools benefited more from private school enrollment.

Categories Education Reform, Poverty, Research, School Choice, Vouchers

Jennifer Berkshire: Hopeful Signs of a Movement to Save Public Schools in Wisconsin

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2018 //
4

Jennifer Berkshire writes here of the encouraging signs of a strong grassroots movement to save public schools in Wisconsin, despite the best efforts of Governor Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature to crush the teachers’ union and to offer school choice, both charters and vouchers.

She begins:

“It would be easy to write the story of Wisconsin’s current union landscape as a tragedy. In this version of events, the bomb that Governor Scott Walker and his allies dropped on the state’s public sector unions has worked just as intended: The ranks of the unions have thinned; their coffers are depleted; their influence over the state and its legislative priorities has been reduced to where, in 2017, the state teachers’ union no longer employed a lobbyist at the statehouse.

“All of this is true.

“But there is another, more hopeful story to be told about Wisconsin, seven years after Walker officially kicked off his war on labor. It involves parents and teachers and local grassroots activists coming together to fight for the public schools in their communities. While Walker and the Republicans who control Wisconsin’s legislature got their way in 2011, there is a robust ongoing debate, throughout the state, about the role of public education and who should pay for it.

“Just as in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Colorado, states roiled by teacher and parent uprisings this spring, school funding has emerged as a flashpoint in Wisconsin. In the place where the modern era of scorched-earth-style state politics began, local activism around public education may just transform Wisconsin’s political culture.”

She identifies groups that are working in a nonpartisan way to increase school funding, to offset the dramatic tax cuts that ravaged their public schools.

State leadership has a simple ethos: “Privatize everything.”

By contrast, parents and teachers are mobilizing to keep their schools funded.

“Today, the Wisconsin Public Education Network is at the forefront of a statewide effort to support Wisconsin’s public schools and the 860,000 students who attend them. DuBois Bourenane and a small army of parents, teachers, school officials, and ordinary citizens are shining a relentless spotlight on the $2 billion in cuts made to the schools here by Walker and the GOP-led legislature, and demanding a fix to Wisconsin’s deeply inequitable school funding system.”

She identifies other groups that have formed to defend students and public schools.

One of the biggest drains on the state education budget is vouchers. Advocates have pushed the idea of breaking out the costs of vouchers so taxpayers can see clearly what vouchers cost them. In Milwaukee alone, where 32,000 students use vouchers, the cost was $269 Million in the last year alone. (Voucher students do not get better results than those in public schools).

Ironically, Gov. Walker is running again as “the education governor,” despite the fact that school funding is less now than a decade ago.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Milwaukee, Privatization, School Choice, Unions, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Politico: Brett Kavanaugh on Education Issues

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2018 //
14

The signs and portents on Trump’s Choice for the Supreme Court are not good.

Politico reports:

WHAT KAVANAUGH MEANS FOR EDUCATION: D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, has considered some of the most contentious issues in education throughout his lengthy legal career. He’s written on school prayer, the separation of church and state, and affirmative action.

— Kavanaugh highlighted his connection to education during his speech Monday night, describing himself as a teacher’s son who tutors area children. He talked about his mother. “In the 1960s and ’70s, she taught history at two largely African-American public high schools in Washington, D.C., McKinley Tech and H.D. Woodson,” he said. “Her example taught me the importance of equality for all Americans.”

— Kavanaugh has tutored at Washington Jesuit Academy, where he sits on the board of directors, and at J.O. Wilson Elementary School, according to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals website. He went to high school at Georgetown Prep — which Justice Neil Gorsuch also attended — and is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.

— Here’s a breakdown of Kavanaugh’s education record, dug up by Pro’s Michael Stratford:

— School prayer and religious freedom: Kavanaugh wrote an amicus brief in December 1999 in favor of a Texas high school’s policy allowing the use of a public address system for student-led and student-initiated prayers at school football games. The amicus brief, on behalf of Oklahoma Republican Reps. Steve Largent and J.C. Watts, argued that the policy passed constitutional muster — an argument the Supreme Court rejected. In a 6-3 ruling, the court declared the school policy allowing prayer unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

— Affirmative action: Kavanaugh in 1999 co-wrote an amicus brief on behalf of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a group that opposes race-based affirmative action in college admissions. The brief argued that a Hawaii law allowing only Native Hawaiians to vote in elections for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was unconstitutional in prohibiting people from voting because of their race. (The Supreme Court agreed with that argument in a 7-2 decision.) When asked about the brief and its implications for affirmative action in 2004 as part of his confirmation for the D.C. Circuit Court, Kavanaugh said: “The Supreme Court has decided many cases on affirmative action programs and, if confirmed, I would faithfully follow those precedents.”

— School choice: Kavanaugh said during his 2004 Senate confirmation hearing that he had previously served as the co-chairman of the Federalist Society’s “School Choice Practice Group.” Kavanaugh also said, in response to written questions, that he had “worked on school choice litigation in Florida for a reduced fee.” He didn’t provide additional details about that matter. On private school choice, Kavanaugh predicted in a TV appearance in 2000 that school vouchers would one day be upheld by the Supreme Court.

— CFBP: Kavanaugh in a October 2016 opinion declared the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unconstitutional. The CFPB, which was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, pursued high-profile cases against for-profit colleges and student loan companies, during the Obama administration. Kavanaugh’s opinion said that Congress had wrongly placed “enormous executive power” in the CFPB’s single director. Supporters of the CFPB accused Kavanaugh of acting as a partisan activist, and the constitutionality of the CFPB’s structure was later upheld.

— Opponents of Kavanaugh’s nomination are already mounting their case. Civil rights groups and teachers unions were quick to blast the nominee within minutes of Trump’s announcement. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights decried him as “a direct threat to our civil and human rights,” adding that “he has consistently ruled for the wealthy and powerful.”

— National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García said Kavanaugh will be a “rubber stamp” for the agenda of Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, including on school choice issues like vouchers. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said that a Supreme Court nominee “should be fair, independent and committed to protecting the rights, freedoms and legal safeguards that protect every one of us. Judge Kavanaugh does not meet this standard.”

Categories Education Reform, School Choice, Vouchers
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