Archives for category: Tennessee
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New York City: Parent Leader Seeks to Block Release of Student Info to Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2017 //
20

Johanna Garcia, a New York City public school parent and president of her district’s Community Education Council, has lodged a formal complaint to the U.S. Department of Education about the city Department of Education’s policy of turning over student records to charter schools for their marketing and recruitment campaigns.

Here is the press release.

Question: we have heard for years about charter school waiting lists, about their need for more seats. Why do they need to spend so much effort and money on recruitment and marketing if these wait lists actually exist? Why do they need to extract students names and addresses (and more) from the public schools if they have wait lists?

Leonie Haimson writes about Johanna Garcia’s complaint here:

“In her complaint, Johanna questions whether charter operators are receiving students’ test scores, grades, English learner and/or disability status from DOE in addition to their contact information, based on her personal experience with the selective charter recruitment of her three children. More evidence for this possibility is also implied by an email that I received from the DOE Chief Privacy Officer Joe Baranello, in response to my inquiry about the legal status of these disclosures.

“DOE has voluntarily supplied the contact information for students and families without parental consent to Success Academy and other charter schools since at least 2006 and perhaps before, as revealed in emails FOILed by reporter Juan Gonzalez in 2010 and cited below.

“As Eva Moskowitz wrote Klein in December 2007, she needed this information to “mail 10-12 times to elementary and preK families” so that she could grow her “market share.” Attention has been paid recently to Moskowitz’ current goal of expanding to 100 charter schools, and her aggressive expansion plans will be facilitated by SUNY’s recent agreement to change their regulations, exempting her from teacher certification rules and allowing her to hire teachers with just a few weeks of training to staff her schools.

“Just as critical to her plans for rapid expansion is her ability to send multiple mailings to families for recruiting purposes. In 2010, it was estimated that Success Academy spent $1.6 million in the 2009-2010 school year alone on recruitment and promotion costs, including mailings and ads, amounting to $1300 for each new enrolled student. The need to do a massive amount of outreach to fill seats is intensified by the fact that only half of the students who win Success Academy admissions lotteries actually enroll in her schools, according to a new study.

“In stark contrast to DOE’s voluntary and continuing practice of helping charter schools recruit students by providing them with the personal information of NYC public school students, the Nashville school board has recently refused to provide their students’ contact information to charter schools, prompting a lawsuit filed against them by the State Education Commissioner. The Commissioner cites a Tennessee law passed by the Legislature in August that she claims requires the district to share student contact information with charters.

“In response, Nashville attorneys argue that the release of information to charter operators for the purpose of marketing their schools to families is forbidden by FERPA, as this would be a commercial use of the data. Last spring, a Nashville charter school agreed to pay parents $2.2 million to settle a class action lawsuit against them for spamming them with text messages urging them to enroll their children in the school.”

Open the post to read it in full and to follow the links.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Parents, Privacy, Privatization, Tennessee

North Carolina: “Innovative School Distrct” Has Zero Schools to Give to For-Profit Charters

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2017 //
14

North Carolina decided to copy Tennessee’s failed “Achievement School District” by creating a special district to take over low-scoring schools, giving them to charter operators, and claiming victory. Despite the abysmal failure in Tennessee, North Carolina created an “Innovative School District” and identified 48 Low-scoring prospects. One by one, they got off the state takeover list, after protests by parents and local boards. Finally, only one was left, and its school Board decided to close the school rather than let it go into the takeover District.

“Without a school to take over, ISD Superintendent Eric Hall says the district may have to pick up additional schools when they take up the matter next year. Leaders were expected to choose two schools this year and another two next fall, but this month’s developments are likely to shift that timetable.”

A letter to the editor following the article:

“Learn as they proceed….”??? Really?? The ISD Superintendent will make more than the governor of NC to oversee only ONE school?? A school that would actually be run by a for-profit charter company?? And he says they only chose one this year to learn as they go?? If they don’t ALREADY know what they are doing, how do they expect to turn around a “failing school”?? What a bunch of goobers… #WAKEUPNC!! #PUBLICservants??!!
“Hall described the program’s slow roll-out as an opportunity for North Carolina officials to learn as they proceed with the new district.”

Another big victory for reform.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, North Carolina, Privatization, Tennessee

North Carolina: When Did Conservatives Become Opponents of Local Control?

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2017 //
11

North Carolina is undeterred by the abject failure of Tennessee’s “Achievement School District,” which turned control of low-performing schools to charter operators. North Carolina will try exactly the same strategy but will call it the “Opportunity School District.”

School board members are miffed that it is taking so long to select five schools for their experiment. Many likely takeover schools have fought back and resisted, with community support.

The state board is adopting a strategy that has no evidence that it works. It removes local control and gives public money to charter operators. Board member Olivia Holmes Oxendine is certain that what failed in Tennessee will succeed in North Carolina, even though Tennessee had many additional millions in Race to the Top funding.

Since when did conservatives become enemies of local control?

Can’t they come up with a better idea than to copy the plan that failed in Tennessee?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization, Tennessee

Nevada: The Copy-Cat “Achievement School District” Is Failing

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2017 //
8

Angie Sullivan teaches young children in the public schools of Clark County (Las Vegas), Nevada. Her school is a Title I School. She often excoriates the legislature for ignoring the needs of the state’s neediest children. In this post, which she sent to legislators and journalists, she reminds them that Nevada’s charter schools are among the lowest performing schools in the state, and that their so-called Achievement School District, modeled on the ASD that failed in Tennessee, is also a massive failure.

The Nevada ASD

The Achievement School District is the biggest reform failure in the state of Nevada.

Built on the flawed premise that charters are a remedy for failing public schools, the ASD forces 6 failing public schools into charters. Unfortunately, the worst academic performers in Nevada are charters. Charters are not a remedy. There are zero excellent charters in Nevada. And certainly zero excellent charters in places needing remedy in Nevada.

This is a description of Nevada ASD.

http://www.doe.nv.gov/News__Media/Press_Releases/2016a/Nevada_Achievement_School_District_Eligibility_List_Submitted_to_State_Board_of_Education/

When implemented, no one wanted the ASD job. Certainly no one in the Nevada community wanted the task.

Eventually a young woman Jana Wilcox Lavin with a background in public relations and marketing was imported from the failed Tennessee ASD model to form the new Nevada ASD.

Jana immediately announced she did not want to “takeover” an older school facility. Her primary concern was plumbing. Seems that her “takeover” in Tennessee had issues with pipes she did not want to deal with again. Also charter vendors are not attracted to rural communities. And charter takeover of a failing charter was not an option. Proving ASD charters were not a remedy for student achievement but a business function since they do not go where a remedy for student achievement is needed the most.

Jana has moved on and is now at Opportunity 180. That organization had $10 million (including funds from Eli Broad) under former Nevada State School Board Member Allison Serafin to bring non-profit charters to Nevada. Opportunity 180 also failed.

Due to low per pupil funding, ASD and Opportunity 180 did not attract any quality charter vendors. It certainly did not attract quality vendors with education experience dealing with high poverty and high language learning populations.

Some scary vendors were chosen – later to be excluded.

As mentioned before, the selection process for the ASD was unfair with schools being “chosen” in urban Vegas because the facilities were new. I believe the ASD thought minority parents would be easily swayed to become a charter. They were wrong.

The underperforming list was very telling. Half the list were rural schools and charters. Many listed were immediately disqualified because they were already charters. Outside charter vendors had zero appetite for rural school takeover. No one had an appetite for rural school takeover. Again proving the ASD is not a function of doing what is best for all Nevada students.

The ASD moved to force the six charter vendors on minority communities in Vegas.

Low Performing Vegas schools were the victims. While a very small handful of parents welcomed becoming a charter, overwhelmingly the community came out by the thousands rejecting “takeover”. The community is tired of failed experimentation on communities of color by outsiders. Decades of invasion has taught our parents to be highly skeptical and critical of crazy ideas imposed by top-down policy makers who do not know or care about our kids.

The ASD ended up taking in the Agassi Charters and a very tiny four teacher Futuro started by Allison Serafin’s TFA friends. Some schools ended up with a “compact” since there was no one willing to take them over.

During the last legislative session, correction of this failed reform was attempted. Unfortunately the revised legislation may have been worse than the current version with teacher voice squelched and parent trigger like language. The correction was about forcing charters with even stronger language. Hard to explain the poison pills the NVDOE wanted to place in the revision but they were nasty. While some pieces of the new legislation were better; other pieces were worse. Unfortunate maneuvering by the NVDOE and the ASD. Taught me a lot about the individuals at the NVDOE and how little they know about my community.

We needed to change the ASD legislation but the poison was too hard to swallow.

We are stuck with a system which parents already rejected.

This years underperforming list looks to be similar to last years list. The lowest of the low performers are obviously charter schools and rural schools once again.

https://www.scribd.com/mobile/document/362048046/Nevada-s-2017-Rising-Stars-Schools?skip_app_promo=true

Elementary Schools

CCSD Bottom 5% – 12 Schools (5%)
CCSD Low Performing – 14 Schools (6%)
CCSD has 216 elementary schools. (11%)

Washoe Bottom 5% – 3 Schools (5%)
Washoe Low Performing – 5 Schools (8%)
WCSD has 60 elementary schools (13%)

Rural Bottom 5% – 3 Schools
Rural Low Performing- 8 Schools
** 100% of schools in most places are failing – since often only a singular choice is offered**

Charter Bottom 5% – 1 Schools (4%)
Charter Low Performing – 4 Schools (17%)
24 charters – (21%)

Middle Schools

CCSD Bottom 5% – 2 schools (3%)
CCSD Low Performing – 6 schools (10%)
CCSD has 59 middle schools. (13%)

Washoe Low Performing – 2 schools (13%)
WCSD has 15 middle schools (13%)

Rural Bottom 5% – 5 schools
Rural Low Performing – 4 schools
** 100% of schools in most places are failing – since often only a singular choice is offered**

High Schools

CCSD – 4 schools
CCSD has 49 high schools. (8%)

Rural – 5 schools
** 100% of schools in most places are failing – since often only a singular choice is offered**

Charters – 8 schools (67%)
24 charters – 12 having high schools

Nevada has 24 charters. 11 are on the list. 46% of charters are performing lowest of the low. Mater (Academica) , NV Connections, Nevada Virtual, Quest, Delta Academy, Innovations, Odyssey, Beacon, Encompass, Silver State, and I Can Do Anything.

Elko County has nine schools. 7 are on the list. 78% of its schools.

Places like McDermitt which serves primarily Native Americans – 100% of its schools are on the list for elementary and high school.

Unfortunately the list still includes schools which are obviously credit retrieval and alternative programs. This should be fixed instead of continuing to list obvious programs already identified as specialized.

Alternative Schools
CCSD Burk
CCSD Desert Rose
Nye Pathways

In summary:

If ASD is really about improving student achievement and not a Vegas school grab – it will look at the data.

Reform rural schools first since there is zero other school choice in those locations. Some places have the most obvious and overwhelming need. Start in Elko and McDermitt. ASD should focus on places with 100% of schools failing – which are most of the rural schools listed and a third of the list.

In addition, all schools listed should be allowed to make a compact instead of charter takeover if targeted. This was allowed last year and set a precedent.

If CCSD schools are the only schools targeted again for takeover – it will be obvious to everyone this is unfair according to the data. Also, Vegas offers choice by magnet, zone variance, and location. Parents can move students because we have 351 schools not a singular choice.

Charters under scrutiny by the State Public Charter Authority, in receivership, or under investigation should not be allowed to “escape” by opting in to the ASD. That would include all of them on the low performing lists. Nevada Charters have avoided accountability for too long. They need to be closed if they are failing.

Personal note: Also listed are many schools with ZOOM, Victory, SB178 money. This shows that money is obviously required and the Vegas schools labeled Low Performing are filled with students experiencing high poverty and language learners. Since this funding was recently legislated, especially the weighted funding, those places should be left alone to see if those funds can work.

I will be watching ASD closely to make sure it makes it choices based on student achievement . . . and not nice real estate or extra money.

Forcing a charter on minority communities is not school choice.

And that is why Nevada ASD is a huge policy failure.

Angie.

Categories Charter Schools, Failure, Fraud, Nevada, Tennessee

Gary Rubinstein: The Collapse Of Tennessee’s Achievement School District

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2017 //
22

Gary Rubinstein has been tracking the progress—and the hubris—of the Tennessee Achievement School District. The ASD was created with millions drawn from Tennessee’s $500 Million Race to the Top Grant, the first in the nation. The basic idea was that the ASD would create a special district for the state’s lowest performing schools, turn them over to charter operators, and within precisely five years, these schools would be “catapulted”into the top 25% of the schools in the state.

The first cohort of six schools were in the bottom 5% of schools in the state.

“Two years into the five-year mission, the superintendent at the time, TFA alum Chris Barbic, declared in an interview that of the original six schools, two were on target to get to the top 25% in five years while one of the six schools, Brick Church Elementary, was on a trajectory to reach the goal after just four years.

“Three years into the five-year mission, the improvements that he had based these projections on did not continue and Barbic was saying that they underestimated how difficult this would be, even admitting that the ‘immigrant poverty’ he worked with as a charter school founder in Houston is very different than the ‘generational poverty’ he works with in Tennessee.

“Four years into the five-year mission, Barbic resigned from the ASD, citing among other things, his health as he had recently had a heart attack. He soon got hired by the John Arnold foundation to work on education issues for them.”

In the fifth year, the state testing system was messed up by technical glitches, so there were no scores. So the ASD got six years to work its magic.

Now the scores are out, Gary analyzed the results, and one thing is clear: the ASD was an abysmal failure.

Of the original 6 ASD schools, one is in the bottom 7%, the rest are still in the bottom 5% with two of them in the bottom 1%.

This is what is called a total and complete failure. It was not “for the kids.” It was for the ego-gratification of arrogant deformers.

Gary writes:

“There are actually other states considering starting their own ASDs, I just read that Mississippi is working on it. Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada already have them in the works. There was one in Michigan which folded and there is still the original one in New Orleans which continues to post awful test results.”

Most of the ASD schools were in Memphis. Jeannie Kaplan reported earlier today that author David Osborne was in Denver touting Memphis as a reform Success. Six out of six of the state’s lowest performing schools are still the state’s lowest performing schools. If this is success, what does failure look like?

The definition of a reformer today: Never look at evidence, never admit failure, never learn anything new, just keep pushing privatization, lower standards for teachers, and high-stakes testing. Fail, fail, fail, and do it again.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Memphis, Privatization, Race to the Top, Tennessee

Tennessee: Thousands of Test Scores Are Inaccurate

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2017 //
9

Tennessee has had years of problems with test vendors. This year, then state thought all the glitches were fixed. Wrong. Thousands of scores were wrong.

About 9,400 students across the state received incorrect scores after the testing vendor, Questar, used a scanning program that included an error.

Our friend and reader Duane Swacker would say that all the scores are meaningless and measure nothing. I just finished reading Daniel Koretz’s new book, “The Testing Charade: Pretending to Improve Education,” and he might agree with Duane. The chances are that the scores have been corrupted by test prep and score inflation. Throw them all out.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Tennessee, Testing

North Carolina Forges Ahead with Plan to Copy Tennessee’s Failed “Achievement School District”

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2017 //
21

Five years ago, Tennessee was flush with cash from its Race to the Top grant, and it created a state takeover plan called the “Achievement School District.” The idea was to identify the schools with the lowest test scores and give them to private companies to manage. The promise was explicit: within five years, the lowest-performing schools would join the ranks of the highest-performing schools thanks to the magic of privatization. In the five years since, two leaders have departed, and the schools that were privatized remain among the lowest performing in the state.

North Carolina had to copy this model–after all, it was recommended by ALEC, the corporate bill mill. They had to copy it even after hearing testimony from a Vanderbilt researcher who found no evidence that the ASD was on track to meet its goal.

Given the failure of the Tennessee ASD, North Carolina continued to pursue the idea but renamed it: the North Carolina Ipportunity School District. Same plan, new name. Six schools across the state are on the state’s list for ending local control.

Educators in Durham are fighting back. Two Durham schools are targeted for takeover, and the Durham community says NO.

The elected school board says it will fight the state takeover.

The legislature hasn’t considered the impact of their budget cuts or their attacks on the teaching profession or the decline of teacher salaries as causes of poor performance. And of course they have not given a thought to poverty and segregation.

For some inexplicable reason, Republicans have become the enemies of local control. They think that only the state can fix schools, despite the abysmal results of the Tennessee ASD.

Recently NC elected a young TFA alum to be its state superintendent. He taught for two years but there’s no reason to believe he knows how to turn around schools, never having done it.

Nothing fails like copying failure.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, North Carolina, Parents, Privatization, Tennessee

Gary Rubinstein: Tennessee ASD Schools Get Lowest Possible Growth Scores

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2017 //
22

Gary Rubinstein has been watching the trajectory of the much-ballyhooed Tennessee Achievement School District. It was the pinnacle of reform chutzpah. Give us the lowest scoring schools in the state, said the reformers, and we will turn them into high performing schools in only five years.The basic strategy is to turn public schools over to charter operators.

That’s what they said in 2012. Five years ago. Time’s up.

Gary writes here–with full acknowledgement that “growth scores” are “garbage,” that the ASD is lagging far behind. Why use “garbage” scores? Because that the reformers’ chosen metric. The state has not released the latest scores, but the growth scores are abysmal.

He writes:

“Six years ago, the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD) was created with the promise that within 5 years they would ‘catapult’ the schools in the bottom 5% to the top 25%. They would do this by either taking over schools or finding charter schools to take over those schools.

“Things were not looking good for the ASD four years into the experiment and then they got a reprieve in the 5th year when the state test results were nullified because of technical snafus.

“The spring 2017 test scores would settle the question about whether or not the ASD would be a success or a failure. But the test scores were not announced at the usual time, over the summer. Instead they released the high school scores a few weeks ago, which were awful for the ASD with less than 1% meeting the standard in math. A few days after that, the superintendent of the ASD, Malika Anderson, resigned after less than 2 years on the job. She had replaced ASD founder Chris Barbic, who resigned after 4 years.

“Well, the 3-8 Tennessee test scores still haven’t been released, but the other day the state released the ‘growth scores’ for the districts. Tennessee is actually the birthplace of the value added growth model and the version of it that they use is called TVAAS.

“The Achievement School District probably made a mistake in making their name something that would likely be on the top of an alphabetical list of scores. Looking at the chart from Chalkbeat Tennessee, it can be seen very clearly, that The ASD students, on average, did not ‘grow’ at least according to the magical TVAAS formula that they have so much confidence in.

“Looking at the individual school results from the state website, we see that 19 out of 29 schools in the ASD got a 1 on their overall growth for 2017. Among those schools was KIPP Memphis Prep.”

Gary will write again when the scores are released, but the prospects are not good for the schools in the ASD.

Meanwhile the ASD concept has been replicated in other states, modeled on the Tennessee ASD. I am not sure how many others have created their own ASD but North Carolina and Nevada are among them.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Tennessee, Testing

Tennessee: The Much Hyped “Achievement School District” in Trouble Again

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2017 //
10

Tennessee created the so-called “Achievement School District” in 2012, to take over schools in the lowest 5% of the state, based on test scores, and hand them over to charter operators. The head of the ASD at the time, Chris Barbic, who had run the YES Prep charter chain in Houston, promised that these low-performing schools would be in the top 20% within five years. The five-year mark is approaching, and none of the schools is in the top 25%. It is not clear that any of them have moved out of the bottom 5-10% (moving to the bottom 10% would be progress, though not much). Gary Rubinstein called ASD the “Underachievement District.” See here for his 2016 post. Barbic left before the five-year marker, and the ASD carries on. Unfortunately, despite the meager (or nil) results of the ASD, several states have created their own versions of the ASD. If it failed in Tennessee, why notcopy it in Georgia and Nevada?

The latest news from the ASD is that it is laying off 29 employees. This is not a sign of good health.

The state-run Achievement School District is losing 29 employees including 13 who are involved in the direct running of the first schools in Frayser taken over by the district in 2012.

The changes, which include another 16 positions in the central office, are the most significant change to the district for the bottom 5 percent of public schools in the state in terms of academic achievement.

All but two of the 33 schools in the ASD, including two alternative schools, are in Memphis.

As expected, management says that this move will strengthen the organization for future success. They are “right-sizing” and “streamlining” the organization for the future.

Although the ASD consists of charter schools, parents did not choose them. Their local public schools were taken over without their consent, and that takeover is certainly not school choice. Consequently the ASD has faced considerable parent and community hostility.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Tennessee

Tennessee: Parents Explain Why National PTA No Longer Represents Them

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2017 //
9

This is a must-read.

The Momma Bears of Tennessee are ferocious in protecting their children against corporate reform.

In this post, they excoriate the National PTA for selling out the interests of real parents and deferring to the powerful.

The National PTA supports Common Core and high-stakes testing; it opposes opting out of tests.

“As Momma Bears, we are beyond frustrated with TNReady testing. Every year, it’s one testing fiasco after another. Already, reports are coming in this year that the test booklets and answer sheets don’t line up. It’s just another source of frustration for our children. So, its no wonder that more and more parents are wanting to opt their children out of testing. Unfortunately, the Tennessee Department of Education refuses to recognize that parents do have opt-out rights.

“​So, wouldn’t it be great if we had a state law that settled things once and for all by giving parents the explicit right to opt out of standardized testing?

“YEAH!!! Momma Bears would love to see a law giving parents explicit opt-out rights!!! But guess what?

“​If you are a Momma Bear PTA leader, you are not allowed to publicly advocate for legislation allowing parents to opt out of standardized testing. That’s right. A couple of dozen uppity-ups in the National PTA all got together last year and decided that parents didn’t want the right to opt their children out of testing.

[National PTA said:] “National PTA does not believe that opting out is an effective strategy to address the frustration over testing. Mass opt-out comes at a real cost to the goals of educational equity and individual student achievement.”

“We know, parents are scratching their heads on that one!! When did dues paying PTA members vote to oppose a parent’s right to opt their children out of abusive standardized testing?

“Oh, yeah, they didn’t. Nope. There wasn’t a vote. PTA members did not approve this position statement.

“Instead, the PTA uppity-ups aligned with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to oppose parents who wanted the right to protect their children from abusive testing. While the PTA attempts some lame plattitude about supporting parental rights, it’s clear the PTA thinks that parents only get to decide what’s best for their kids when it doesn’t run afoul of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”

Why did National PTA become cheerleaders for Common Core? Was it right after receiving a grant from the Gates Foundation in 2009 to promote Common Core?

The Mama Bears say:

“Now, we know why the PTA likes to say, “it’s not your Momma’s PTA” because our Momma’s PTA actually taught parents to advocate for the best interests of their children. Today’s PTA is nothing more than a corp-ed shill who wants to push parents right out of the decision-making process.”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Opt Out, Parent Groups, Parents, Resistance, Special Education, Tennessee, Testing
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