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Who Are the Sacklers? The Billionaires Who Make Oxycontin and Fund Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2017 //
14

You might enjoy reading this very informative article in Esquire magazine about the Sackler family.

This is one of the richest families in America, and their name is attached to museums and universities, to perpetuate their philanthropy and greatness.

Their fortune is built on the success of Oxycontin, the painkiller to which many people have become addicted.

Fifty thousand people die per year because of their addiction to Oxycontin.

The Sacklers are also very generous contributors to charter schools.

They funded ConnCAN, and they funded 50CAN. Both organizations demand more privatization of public schools for the benefit of charter operators.

A member of the Sackler family made a movie called “The Lottery,” celebrating the Success Academy charter schools. A great big advertisement.

One of the Sacklers also invested in AltSchool, the faltering attempt to reimagine school as a high-tech environment.

Someday, as the deaths are added up, family members of the deceased may start picketing the museums and universities to take the Sackler name off buildings.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Shame

ProPublica: For-Profit Schools Offer Students Prizes to Recruit Other Students

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2017 //
9

Heather Vogell, an investigative reporter writing for ProPublica and USA Today, reports that for-profit schools are handing out rewards to students who recruit other students or post positive reviews on Facebook. This practice shows the difference between a business—where the bottom line is profit—and a school, which is dedicated to education and human development.

Vogell writes:

“Lyla Elkins transferred to North Nicholas High School in Cape Coral, Florida, in 2016 with hopes of sailing through its computer-based courses and graduating early. She didn’t realize the for-profit charter school would also be a source of income: a $25 gift card each time she persuaded a new student to enroll.

“I referred almost all of my friends,” said Elkins, 17, who earned three gift cards. She also won a Valentine’s Day teddy bear in a raffle for sharing one of the school’s Facebook posts.

“Such incentives are rampant among for-profit operators of public alternative high schools like North Nicholas, which serves students at risk of dropping out. These schools market aggressively to attract new students, especially during weeks when the state is tallying enrollment for funding purposes. They often turn their students into promoters, dangling rewards for plugs on social media, student referrals or online reviews, a ProPublica-USA Today investigation found. Some also offer valuable perks simply for enrolling.

“The schools’ reality is often less inspiring than their promotions. While they face a daunting mission of salvaging students who struggled elsewhere, they’re characterized by high absenteeism, low graduation rates, little instruction from teachers and few extracurricular activities or elective classes. Their intensive recruitment, when coupled with poor outcomes, “is wrong on so many levels,” said Samuel E. Abrams, a professor at Columbia Teachers College and author of a 2016 book on for-profit education. “It’s not addressing the pedagogical needs of these kids.”

“It’s legal for schools to provide gift cards to students for referrals, and free electronic devices, such as tablets or computers, to newcomers. And students are free to express their opinions on their schools. But advertisements have less protection under the First Amendment, and some for-profit school promotions involving online posts or reviews may violate federal consumer safeguards.

“According to the Federal Trade Commission, companies that use students and other groups as social media marketers should instruct them to disclose publicly that they expect to be paid. In settlements with the FTC, companies that failed to encourage such disclosures have agreed to follow the law — or face a potential penalty of up to $40,000 per transgression. Those instances didn’t involve students.”

For-profit companies have no shame in exploiting their students to lure more students.

“Refer-a-friend programs like the one at North Nicholas are common in the sector. “Bring a friend into Mavericks!” said one 2015 Facebook post for a Palm Springs school in the for-profit Florida charter chain. “They will get help getting their diploma and you will get a gift card.” The post promised a $5 gift card for each referral as part of the “Friends & Family Club,” as long as the recipient had acceptable attendance and no disciplinary problems.

“Mavericks’ new parent company, EdisonLearning, hands out Walmart gift cards for student referrals at its “Bridgescape” schools in Illinois and Ohio. It posted pictures on Facebook this past spring of students displaying their prizes. EdisonLearning officials said the gift cards enable low-income students to buy essentials.”

Shameless.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Shame

Laura Chapman Exposes the Billionaires Behind GreatSchools, Inc. and Redlining

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2017 //
21

Laura Chapman posted this comment, which I hope you will read:

Readers should know that GreatSchools.org website supports redlining. This is a non-profit website and organization in name only. Zillow, for example, pays a fee to lease all of the data and the ratings of schools. Specific schools can pay a fee to steer users to their websites.

The following supporters of redlining via the great schools website are not friends of public schools. They want to preserve schools and communities that are segregated by income, race, ethnicity, ownership of major assets (e.g., homes, automobiles), access to public services and amenities (e.g., public parks, libraries).

These supporters of segregation hide their agenda under a lot of rhetoric about saving children from failing schools. Wrong. These are the billionaires who are determined to misrepresent and undermine schools and neighborhoods through the irresponsible use of school “performance data,” especially scores on state standardized tests and more recently spurious surveys about school climate, the physical appearance of the school, and usually anonymous “customer” satisfaction ratings.

Major supporters of this redlining website are (logo displayed): Walton Family Foundation, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Einhorn Family Charitable Trust; The Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust,
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Other supporters: The Charles Hayden Foundation; Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation; Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation; David and Lucile Packard Foundation; Heising-Simons Foundation; The Joyce Foundation; Excellent Schools Detroit; The Kern Family Foundation; The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation;

Four other supporters of this website that forwards redlining sould be noted

America Achieves now calls itself “a non-profit accelerator” of large-scale system-wide change in public education. Achieve was and is the major promoter of the Common Core, college and career agenda, and associated tests. Achieve is funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Charles Butt, the Heckscher Foundation For Children, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, the Kern Family Foundation, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (among others).
EdChoice is the updated name for the Milton Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. EdChoice wants market-based education, unlimited choice, but subsidized by tax dollars–The DeVos/Trump policy.
Innovate Public Schools is a California-based national organization that uses GreatSchools reports to promote “new” school formation, especially charter schools, through extensive parent “fellowships” and training.
Startup:Education is a grantmaking project of the Chan/Zuckerberg Initiative founded by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. Everything promoted by Start;Up Education and the larger Chan/Zuckerberg initiative is tech-based and mislabeled personalized learning.

There are other commercial supporters of the website. They pay fees for advertising space and market a range of products called “educational.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, Segregation, Shame

Massachusetts: Commissioner Seeks Power to Remove Teachers Unilaterally

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
29

This letter came by email from a teacher in Massachusetts. Evidently, the Commissioner of Education believes there are some bad, bad teachers in his state, and he wants the power to remove them quickly. Bear in mind that by every current metric, Massachusetts is the highest performing state in the nation. It must have many excellent teachers. Why does Commissioner Mitchell Chester need a whip in his hand. This kind of power play is threatening and demoraling, as well as unprofessional.

For trying to intimidate teachers, for failing to congratulate them for their dedication, by demonizing them with actions such as those described here, Mitchell Chester now joins this blog’s Wall of Shame.

“Mitchell Chester is the MA Dept of Ed Commissioner who also had the serious conflict of interest as Chair of the PARCC Governing Board. He pushed for MCAS 2.0, which is 90% PARCC. He still has a job.

“MESSAGE SENT TO MA TEACHERS [apparently by the Massachusetts Teachers Association]:

“Below you will find some very disturbing information about DESE’s intentions around licensure changes that I have recently been made aware of.

“Back on March 10, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education released some proposed changes to the regulations around educator licensure…

“The concerning regulation changes are about how DESE can suspend, limit or revoke an educator’s license. In the current regulations, the Commissioner of Education can suspend or revoke a license if it is found that the “holder of the license is unfit to perform the duties for which the license was granted.” As you may have experienced, there are times when a member may have been investigated for some reason and DESE will also investigate to determine if the license should be suspended. In my experience, this happens in only the worst case scenarios.

“The proposed changes to the regulation give the Commissioner of Education, currently Mitchell Chester, much more flexibility in determining if an educator’s license should be suspended or revoked. The new regulations contain the following language changes: “The holder of the license is unfit to perform the duties for which the license was granted, or engaged in misconduct that, in the opinion of the Commissioner, discredits the profession, brings the license into disrepute, compromises student safety or the integrity of the student-educator relationship;” (the new language is in bold).

“As you can see, the new pieces of language have far-reaching implications and since it is determined based upon the “opinion of the Commissioner” our ability to contest these claims would be severely hindered.

“Some of the questions that come out of this are the effects on one’s First Amendment Rights by the broad nature of the statements: “discredits the profession” and “integrity of the student-educator relationship”. Do these statements mean:

*If you promote opt-out information, you could be subject to an investigation.

*If you state displeasure with any policies coming down from the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education or the Federal government, you could be investigated

*If you participate in a work action as part of a contract campaign, you could be subject to an investigation

“These are questions that have yet to be answered, but the MTA legal division has expressed to me and all the other field reps in the state that we should be concerned about this.

“Here is a general timeline that I know of at this point:

“The public comment continues until Monday May 1. In the coming days, I will have more information on MTA sponsored feedback on these regulations. If you are interested in giving feedback sooner, the website is:http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=24232.

“On May 20th, the MTA is co-sponsoring a rally at the Boston Common. Initially, this rally was to bring attention to the general concerns around education in the state, but I believe this proposal will become a focal point of this event. I have fliers that will be distributed early next week for this.

“On June 27, the BESE is expected to vote on these proposed regulatory changes. While no firm plans have been made for a presence at the meeting, I am almost certain that, if the Board moves forward with the changes, we will be asking if people would like to attend the BESE Meeting.”

Any questions please let me know. Also, if you want to forward this email to members, please feel free. Please read the attachment for further information.

Categories Accountability, Massachusetts, Shame, Teachers and Teaching, Unions, Wall of Shame

Mike Klonsky on Best Quotes of the Day

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2017 //
11

Mike Klonsky gathered some memorable quotes.

The most appalling is this one from the director of the federal Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney:

Mick Mulvaney on after-school programs that feed kids

“The way we justified it was: these programs are going to help these kids do better in school and get better jobs. And we can’t prove that that’s happening.” — Undark

So if kids don’t get better grades and test scores, they don’t need to eat.

Categories Shame, Trump

HELP Committee Approves DeVos 12-11

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2017 //
81

Not one Republican voted to defend our public schools against the most unqualified nominee for Secretary of Education in history

#stopprivatization

#dumpdevos

Categories Betsy DeVos, Shame
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