Watch this great video!!
Archives for category: Supporting public schools
The Nebraska State Education Association recently paid a visit to the state’s major newspaper and explained why Nebraska doesn’t need school choice:
Editor’s note: In a recent visit to the York News-Times, Nebraska State Education Association president Jenni Benson and executive director Maddie Fennell shared that organization’s thoughts on two hot-button education issues – charter schools and private school vouchers. The NSEA is the union that represents Nebraska teachers. It is the oldest professional association in the state.
The NSEA’s 10 reasons to avoid “private school voucher schemes” are:
1. Nebraska cannot afford to finance private education as well as public education. There would be only two ways to pay for vouchers—take money from already underfunded public schools or raise taxes. Both are unacceptable.
2. Tax dollars for private education won’t fix student achievement challenges at public schools. The best way to assist all low-performing students is by strengthening public schools and addressing individual learning problems directly. Vouchers will siphon tax dollars away from our public schools where children have the greatest needs.
3. A voucher would be a ticket to nowhere for most children. Private schools can choose to accept or reject any student, and many have long waiting lists and only admit top students. On average, parochial schools reject 67 percent of all applicants. Other private schools reject nearly 90 percent of applicants. “Choice” does not reside with parents but with private school admissions committees.
4. Parents have an expanding array of choices for the public school their child attends. Among the many public school options available in Nebraska, parents may choose to send their child to another public school in the same or different school district, or enroll their child in various public academy schools, focus or magnet schools, career academies, or other public alternative schools.
5. Vouchers don’t create a “competitive marketplace.” Competition is based on an even playing field; there is no fair competition when “competitors” play by different rules. Public schools accept all applicants, private schools don’t. Private schools are not required to provide transportation, special education, bilingual education, free and reduced price lunches, and many other programs that public schools provide. They are also not required to meet even basic state certification or accreditation requirements.
6. The State of Nebraska should not spend tax dollars to pilot test a bad idea. Tax-funded pilot projects should only be conducted to test good ideas. Vouchers are a bad idea! A pilot voucher program would not be a “lifeboat” for some students, as claimed. A voucher system would be the Titanic, draining needed funds from public schools where most students would remain.
7. Vouchers would destroy the “private” in private schools. Parents of children in private schools don’t want the status quo disturbed for their children—they want their schools to be truly private. Private schools accepting tax-funded vouchers or private school tax credit schemes would become subject to government regulation. Allowing public tax dollars to be spent on private schools would be mean private schools would have to change admission requirements, implement state-required testing, certification and accreditation, comply with discipline and expulsion laws, and allow voucher students to be exempted from religious activities.
8. Inserting the word “private” doesn’t make a school good. There is no proof that private school vouchers would improve students’ academic performance. In fact, students attending private schools under the Milwaukee, Cleveland and other private school voucher programs did not outperform their public school peers.
9. Vouchers would promote further religious and economic stratification in our society. Private elementary and secondary schools have been founded primarily by two types of entities: (1) religious denominations seeking to teach academics interwoven with their religious doctrine; and (2) wealthier parents seeking to give their children an advantage over other children. Tax-funded vouchers for private schools would increase divisions between rich and poor and among different religions, threatening the future of our American democracy.
10. Public policy should respect parental choice but provide for all students. The best public policy is to provide parents with even more choices within the public schools, which serve more than 90 percent of the children in Nebraska. Nebraska legislators should concentrate on making all public schools stronger, safer, more challenging and accountable. Public tax dollars should be spent only to improve public schools—not to assist the small number of parents who choose to enroll their children in private schools.
NSEA on Charter Schools
The fact is that charter schools are not meeting the need they were created to fill—including to serve as lab schools to develop new teaching techniques—and many are failing their students and families, while squandering taxpayer dollars.
Reports detail fraud and waste totaling more than $200 million of taxpayer funds in the charter school sector. It notes that these figures only represent fraud and waste in the charter sector uncovered so far, and that the total that federal, state and local governments “stand to lose” in 2015 is probably more than $1.4 billion. It says, “The vast majority of the fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because the federal government, the states, and local charter authorizers lack the oversight necessary to detect the fraud.”1
The result of charter schools on student achievement just doesn’t live up to the hype. Less than a third of the total charter schools in the U.S. perform better than comparable public schools. The other two thirds are about the same or worse.
Article continued below advertisement
In fact, the biggest proponents of charter schools are Wall Street hedge fund and venture capital firms like JP Morgan, USB, and Liberty Partners. Unfortunately, Wall Street losses on charter schools such as Edison have proven that charter schools are a bad investment. Further, even in places where the public schools don’t come close to the standard of quality we have in our Nebraska public schools, charter schools are being closed for poor performance and irresponsible management.
The facts could not be any clearer: Investments in our public schools yield the best returns.
“The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, And Abuse,” was released jointly by the nonprofit organizations Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy. It follows a similar report released a year ago by the same groups that detailed $136 million in fraud and waste and mismanagement in 15 of the 42 states that operate charter schools. The 2015 report cites $203 million, including the 2014 total plus $23 million in new cases, and $44 million in earlier cases not included in last year’s report.
Some studies regarding private school vouchers and charter schools:
• Vouchers close neighborhood public schools and benefit wealthy school districts and privately run schools (Vasquez Heilig & Portales, 2014) http://bit.ly/EPAAVouchers
• Vouchers as a reform agenda are not viable given a paucity of peer reviewed evidence that they improve student outcomes in a consistent or large way in the US. (Vasquez Heilig, LeClair, Lemke, & McMurrey 2014). http://bit.ly/TCEPvouchers
• When vouchers are applied universally, education inequity is exacerbated. Schools do the choosing (Vasquez Heilig & Portales, 2012) http://bit.ly/IUPRAChileVouchers
• Charter schools have a 40 percent attrition rate for their African American students (Vasquez Heilig, Williams, McNeil & Lee, 2011). http://bit.ly/BREAttrition
• Charters schools are more segregated relative to public schools in their vicinity. (Vasquez Heilig, LeClair, Redd, 2014 Under Review)
Thanks to your efforts, the inaugural video about the fight to save public schools from privatization has reached over half a million viewers. In addition, it has been logged in by over a million Facebook feeds.
This is the video you shared. Please share it some more. We are aiming for one million views!
Our voices together have generated a mighty roar!
The public is waking up to the threat to their public schools.
They know that Betsy DeVos hates public schools and wants their children to go to charter schools, religious schools, cyber-charters—anything but a public school. She truly doesn’t understand the role of public schools in a democracy, nor does she have any ideas about how to improve them other than to eliminate them.
Together, we are sending her a message. The public schools belong to the public. They were paid for with tax dollars, and we are not giving them away, leasing them, or selling them off to entrepreneurs.
We will not tolerate this theft of public assets.
The public schools are a public responsibility, not a consumer good.
The Network for Public Education commissioned a series of short video clips to explain the issues in education today. The filmmaker is professional filmmaker Michael Elliot, who is a parent of children in the New York City public schools.
NPE is fighting for the future and the very existence of public education. We oppose the relentless attacks on public schools, teachers, and the teaching profession by unaccountable billionaires, entrepreneurs, and public officials like Betsy DeVos. We oppose the status quo, in which privatization is offered as the remedy for inequitably funded public schools.
We believe in the importance of democratically controlled, adequately resourced public schools staffed by professional educators. Good public schools are essential to democracy. We want to improve them, strengthen then, make them better for every child.
This short clip, in which I am the speaker, is the first of a series of eight, each addressing different reasons to fight for our schools.
The audience consists of parents, educators, and other citizens. It was filmed in a warehouse in Brooklyn.
We want our message to reach the largest possible public. Please put it on Facebook, tweet it, share it with your friends and family.
Betsy DeVos did not visit a public school in Omaha, somewhat strange since almost all children in Omaha attend public schools.
She visited the Nelson Mandela Elementary School, then visited a Catholic school. Her snub of public schools was blatant.
At the Mandela school, she was greeted by the founder, Dianne Seeman Lozier and by students and teachers wearing pro-public school stickers.
Several teachers and students wore “NE (Heart) Public Schools” stickers.
While Mandela is a private school funded by the Lozier Foundation and William and Ruth Scott Family Foundation, Lozier said in a release that school officials do not support charter schools, which DeVos has championed. The school has a strong cooperative relationship with OPS [Omaha Public Schools], she said.
“We agree with Secretary DeVos on rethinking how schools engage and teach students, however, we want to be clear that we are not advocates for charter schools,” Lozier said. “We don’t think taking money away from public schools is the right decision and are adamant that public school systems need those dollars to educate all students.”
In February, Mandela Principal Susan Toohey told The World-Herald that she was “extremely disappointed” by DeVos’ confirmation, which came on a razor-thin 51-50 Senate vote.
“We absolutely don’t think taking money away from public school systems is the right decision,” Toohey said then.
Nebraska was not fertile ground for DeVos’ message of all-choice-all-the-time.
Nebraska Loves Public Schools!
There will be a screening of “Backpack Full of Cash” in Boston on September 13. Everyone is invited. The film was made by professionals at Stone Lantern Productions and narrated by Matt Damon.
If you don’t live near Boston, go to the website, contact the producers, and arrange a screening in YOUR community.
If you recall, the Network for Public Education called on PBS to show “Backpack Full of Cash” to make up for showing a three-hour series attacking public schools and promoting the Betsy DeVos libertarian view. That show was funded by four libertarian foundations, as well as DeVos and Koch money. Despite the fact that NPE and The Daily Kos inundated PBS with more than 200,000 emails, they have not shown “Backpack.”
But you can see it by setting up a screening in your community.
The parents and educators who gathered signatures successfully met the legal requirements–and surpassed them–to get a referendum on the ballot in 2018 on vouchers. The legislature recently passed a law to extend vouchers to everyone, removing all limitations. Arizona’s public schools are already underfunded. Vouchers, even if few apply, as is typically the case, will drain even more resources from the public schools.
The referendum will be known as Proposition 305.
According to the Blog for Arizona, quoting the Arizona Capitol Times:
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office has validated 86.6 percent of a sample of signatures collected by Save Our Schools Arizona, putting the school voucher referendum on track to reach the 2018 ballot.
The majority of the roughly 108,000 signatures deemed valid by the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office were gathered in Maricopa County, and now, SOS Arizona’s statewide validation average sits at about 87 percent overall.
That gives SOS Arizona a comfortable margin of error; with an 86 percent validation rate, the referendum would have nearly 93,000 valid signatures, about 18,000 more than it needs to make it to the ballot.
Elections Director Eric Spencer reiterated what Reagan announced via social media, adding that barring the pending legal challenges SOS Arizona still faces, the outlook for the referendum is “sunny.” He anticipated a notice of certification would be sent to the governor’s office on Sept. 11, the deadline for the remaining three counties to report results.
But if those counties were to report tomorrow, Spencer said, the Secretary of State’s Office is ready to certify what will be billed as Proposition 305 on the 2018 general election ballot.
Results from Cochise, Yavapai and Yuma counties are still pending.
“We feel like this validates – pun intended – everything that we’ve been saying all along,” said SOS Arizona spokeswoman Dawn Penich-Thacker.
“You don’t get rates like that by cutting corners or trying to cheat the rules, and this speaks loudly to the fact that we played by the rules, we did it right, we took incredible care to ensure every voter who signed would be heard,” she said, referring to allegations made in a lawsuit against the referendum. “At this point, the voucher proponents are opposing the voters of Arizona.”
The first of two lawsuits filed against the petitions was dropped–the one implying that the petitions were gathered by paid felons. The second lawsuit–which criticizes the signatures–is unlikely to succeed.
The voucher proponents, says another source in this story, are “coming unglued” at the prospect of facing a referendum where the public gets its say. The voucher supporters are the Goldwater Institute (Arizona-based), Americans for Prosperity (the Koch brothers, also known as the Kochtopus), and American Federation for Children (the Betsy DeVos creation, which should be renamed Americans for Vouchers or Americans for the Elimination of Public Schools).
This is a big win for advocates for public schools. Please go to the SOS Arizona page and donate whatever you can to help them. They are facing billionaires, and the billionaires will try to exhaust the resources and energy of SOS with frivolous lawsuits.
Give whatever you can. I have contributed. If you can send $5 or $10 or $50 or $100, or more, please do.
They need our help!!!
Now that charter schools are all the rage among the rich and powerful, we are accustomed to hear about celebrities who underwrite their own charter school, like Andre Agassi (whose namesake charter school in Las Vegas is one of the lowest performing schools in Nevada, Sean “Diddy” Coombs, sponsor of a charter in Harlem, and Pitbull, the misogynistic, foul-mouthed rapper who has his own charter school in Miami and speaks at national charter school conferences.
How refreshing it is to learn about two celebrities who are giving back to the public schools, which enroll the vast majority of children of color and need the help of their friends.
LeBron James and Dr. Dre are superstars in sports and music. They too could have put their name on a charter school. They didn’t.
LeBron James made a gift of $1 million to his alma mater, a Catholic School, St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, to build a new state-of-the-art gymnasium. He is also working with the Akron public schools to provide college scholarships and to open a new school for at-risk students. James has a motto: “I promise…to never forget where I came from.” The new public school for at-risk children is called the “I Promise” school.
Dr. Dre made a gift of $10 million to Compton High School in Compton, California, where he grew up. The gift will be used to build a performing arts center with a 1,200 seat theater and digital media production facilities.
LeBron James and Dr. Dre are giving back.
Yes, Virginia, there is one billionaire in America who supports public schools, not charter schools.
His name is Charles Butt. He became fabulously wealthy through ownership of a large chain of small-town grocery stores.
He must be a genius because he understands that it makes no sense to create a parallel system of publicly funded but privately managed schools.
Inside Philanthropy writes:
“Texas has the second-highest number of public school students in the U.S., just after California. Some 5 million kids are enrolled in more than 1,000 public school districts around the state. And nowhere is the K-12 population growing faster than in Texas, which is projected to see a 14 percent increase in students enrolled between 2014 and 2026. Already, the state is struggling with teacher shortages and experts believe the problem could get much worse.
“Enter Charles Butt, a Texas grocery mogul with a net worth of over $10 billion, who earlier this month announced his latest push to improve public education in his state, launching a $50 million initiative aimed at teacher training. The grants will provide scholarships for aspiring teachers and technical support for teacher training programs across Texas.
“The gift from Butt, chairman and CEO of the HEB grocery chain, is the latest in a multimillion-dollar effort to improve Texas education. Earlier this year, Butt gave $100 million to establish a leadership institute for school administrators.
“Beyond the size of Butt’s gifts—among the biggest for K-12 in recent years—what’s significant about these commitments is that Butt is not focused on bolstering charter schools or the array of nonprofits that support choice and accountability strategies. Instead, this mega-donor is looking to improve leadership and teaching in the traditional school districts that still educate the vast bulk Texas school children—and will for the foreseeable future.
“Whatever you may think about charter schools, funders have struggled to scale this approach to improving student outcomes. Butt has apparently concluded that his giving will have the greatest impact by bolstering the school system that exists, as opposed to building out a parallel K-12 universe. These days, more top donors seem to be thinking along the same lines as Butt. Even as existing charter funders double down on this strategy, it appears that fewer of the new mega-donors arriving in K-12 are focusing on choice.”
I sure wish I knew who those other “top donors” are. Where are those other “mega-donors”?
Thank God for Charles Butt.
He sees what billionaires like Gates, Broad, and the Waltons don’t: Help the schools where 85-90% of the students are. Do not fund Betsy DeVos’s privatization agenda.
Douglas County, Colorado, will have a crucial election this fall between its current board majority and challengers. Some say it is the most important school board race in the nation.
Douglas County is the most affluent school district in the state. Yet wealthy Coloradans have showered money on pro-privatization school board members and candidates. On the other side is a pro-public education slate.
The rightwing majority consists of four members on a board of seven. The majority created a voucher program. Its anti-teachers policies have led to a high rate of exodus by experienced teachers.
The Douglas County voucher program is currently under appeal in federal courts.
Two slates are competing in the race for school board.
The differences between them are stark if you read this perceptive article. One is tied to corporate reform/Republican circles, the other is actually pro-public school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 