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Tennessee Governor Plans a Statewide Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2012 //
43

Governor Haslam of Tennessee has been studying the voucher issue and intends to bring forward a proposal.

He doesn’t want to limit vouchers to any particular jurisdiction but to make them available statewide.

He is working closely with his state Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman, TFA alum, to craft his voucher plan.

Vouchers will be called “opportunity scholarships,” because Republicans understand that the public doesn’t like the word “vouchers.”

“Opportunity scholarship” sounds so warm and fuzzy. That’s what vouchers in other places are called.

But a rose by any other name is still a rose.

And a voucher is a voucher.

And if Tennessee’s law looks anything like Louisiana’s, the legislature will have to come up with a funding mechanism that doesn’t take money away from public schools.

Haslam can put forward a voucher plan because in the recent election, Tennessee Republicans won a super-majority in the legislature. They were able to accomplish this with the generous support of campaign funding for Republican candidates supplied by StudentsFirst.

Categories Tennessee, Vouchers

Beware the Boston Consulting Group

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2012 //
9

Wherever the Boston Consulting Group goes, certain outcomes are predictable:

1. It will recommend closing public schools.

2. It will recommend opening privately managed charter schools.

3. Most of the schools closed will be in African-American neighborhoods.

4. Most of the teachers laid off will be African American.

5. The Boston Consulting Group will get a fee that is outrageous in comparison to the work they do in writing a report (the report is everywhere the same, just change the name of the city).

In this case, they make the usual recommendations for Memphis.

Before, their handiwork was seen in Philadelphia.

Who advises them? Margaret Spellings.

Categories Boston Consulting Group, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Tennessee

Unmasking Michelle Rhee’s Right-Wing Agenda

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2012 //
6

Daniel Denvir has been tracking the political activities of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst and learned that most of her support went to Republican candidates.

She pretends to be a Democrat but in state after state, she has given big money to candidates who support privatization and anti-teacher legislation..

Rhee “poured money into state-level campaigns nationwide, winning 86 of 105 races and flipping a net 33 seats to advocates of so-called “school reform,“ a movement that advocates expanding privately run public charter schools, weakening teachers unions, increasing the weight of high-stakes standardized tests and, in some cases, using taxpayer dollars to fund private tuition through vouchers as the keys to improving public education.

Rhee pretends to be bipartisan. But, as Denvir writes, “90 of the 105 candidates backed by StudentsFirst were Republicans, including Tea Party enthusiasts and staunch abortion opponents. And Rhee’s above-the-fray bona fides have come under heavy fire as progressives and teachers unions increasingly cast the school reform movement, which has become virtually synonymous with Rhee’s name, as politically conservative and corporate-funded.”

With Rhee’s money, very conservative Republicans gained a super-majority in the Tennessee legislature, virtually guaranteeing that her ex-husband State Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman will have a free hand pushing privatization of public education.

No one knows all the sources of Rhee’s Funding, but it would not be surprising to learn that she is a front for the rightwing, anti-government Koch brothers and others of their ilk.

She is surely a hero to ALEC.

Categories ALEC, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Michigan, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Tennessee, Testing

Will Tennessee Create an ALEC-Style Charter Board to Trump Local Boards?

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2012 //
9

The right-wing group called ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) has model legislation to enable a governor to appoint a commission to authorize charter schools, thus bypassing those pesky local school boards that don’t want to bring privately managed schools to their local district. The local school boards are charged with improving their schools, not with dividing up the public funds between their schools and an out-of-state corporation that wants to open a school in its district.

This is the reason for the constitutional amendment that passed in Georgia. The privatizers objected to having to get the consent of local school boards, so they got the governor and legislature to put a measure on the ballot that was inaccurately described (something like “do you want to improve student achievement by opening charter schools,” rather than an honest description of the purpose of the law, which was to remove the powers of the local school boards).

Now in Tennessee, the Republicans have a super-majority (thanks in part to campaign contributions by Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, which invested generously in GOP candidates).

As readers of this blog may recall, the Metro Nashville school board has turned down an Arizona-based charter chain called Great Hearts because it had an inadequate diversity plan.

It turned down Great Hearts four times, and the TFA State Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman (Rhee’s -ex) fined the Nashville schools $3.4 million for not doing what he wanted them to do.

Great Hearts now says it will not apply to the Nashville board again. Instead, it will wait until the state legislature creates an ALEC-style law creating a charter-friendly state board that won’t ask annoying questions about the lack of diversity in most of the Great Hearts charters.

In fact, the leader of Great Hearts said he was too busy to talk to the Metro Nashville board, and if the city’s director of schools wants to talk to him, he can fly to Arizona.

After Great Hearts gets approval from an “impartial” state board, then it will open “multiple” charters in Nashville.

He knows something. He knows that the governors, the state commissioner and the legislature will give him whatever he wants.

In other news from Nashville, the school board voted to close down a charter school with abysmal test scores (but powerhouse athletic teams). A KIPP school in Nashville was also in the bottom 5% in the state, but was not closed.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Tennessee

Talking Down to Parents in Memphis

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2012 //
3

There is a new blogger in Memphis. Thus we get the low-down on how parents were treated by the “reformers.” Read this. The condescension is startling. The local Portfolio Manager (!) let everyone know that public hearings give them a chance to vent. Eventually, the parents will understand that wiser heads than theirs are making all the decisions.

As you may recall, Tennessee is on its way to privatizing large numbers of schools across the state because it suffered a double whammy: it “won” Race to the Top funding (more charter schools, more punitive teacher evaluations), and it has a super-conservative Governor, legislature and state commissioner. All bad news for public schools.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Tennessee

A Teacher Describes Parents’ Reaction to Privatization in Memphis

By dianeravitch
November 10, 2012 //
9

A teacher in Memphis writes about how parents in her school reacted to the announcement that it would be taken over by the Achievement School District and turned into a charter school. Her school is poor but it has made steady growth and is not one of the lowest performing schools in the city. The media in Memphis, she says, is not reporting the genuine rage of the local black community:

First, see this article in my local paper about the state takeover of 10 more schools and the meetings about that takeover:

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/nov/07/10-more-memphis-schools-to-be-taken-over-by/

I am a teacher at one of those schools in Frayser, a neighborhood the Achievement School District (ASD) seems to have targeted since they took over three schools there last year. The article notes that 6 of the 10 schools taken over will be run by charter operators.

I attended the meeting last night at Pursuit of God in Frayser, an impoverished and predominantly black neighborhood. The crowd was angry that their children’s teachers were going to be fired and that their children would have to adapt to a whole new school. They spoke about the great current teachers in their schools. They wanted to know what was going to make these schools better, and there was no one from the ASD who could explain that.

There was also concern expressed by a 30-year veteran teacher and resident of Frayser that this was an attempt to segregate the poor black neighborhood of Frayser from the rest of the county in the upcoming merger of Memphis City and Shelby County School Systems.

The community at the meeting was very antagonistic to state takeover. I overheard an employee of the church comment, “We got a tough crowd tonight,” and the ASD people were clearly uncomfortable.

I expected an article in the local paper to mention the atmosphere at the meeting.

The media ran this segment: http://www.wmctv.com/story/20049306/tn-asd-getting-set-to-take-over-more-memphis-schools

And the paper did not report on the events of the meeting. The shot of the crowd was purposefully taken while most of them were in the other room getting refreshments. There was no other coverage of the meeting in the media.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Parent Groups, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Tennessee

Privatization Picks Up Steam in Memphis

By dianeravitch
November 10, 2012 //
4

A teacher writes to report that the privatization movement plans to take over her school and several others in Memphis.

The schools slated for privatization are not the district’s lowest performing.

She is not pleased and feels sure that the charter operators picked her school because it is doing well, not failing.

Tennessee now has a solid rightwing majority in the state legislature, a rightwing governor, and a TFA state commissioner dedicated to advancing privatization.

Stand for Children is a major presence in the state, assuring that Wall Street money will be available to facilitate privatization and portray it as part of the “civil rights issue” of our day.

The leader of the state’s all-charter Achievement School District, Chris Barbic, who is also TFA, expressed disappointment that the scores in his new district were so low. But it is customary for administrators to low-ball scores when starting new so they have nowhere to go but up. In the new district, teachers will be paid by test scores, not by degrees or experience. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and it Is never too soon to learn that lesson.

Tennessee was one of the first two Race to the Top states in the nation, and we should soon expect to see Tennessee at the very top. It’s fulfilling all of Secretary Duncan’s expectations. Charters and TFA are flourishing. Collective bargaining rights were eliminated. Teachers are being evaluated by test scores. The Common Core has been installed. Public schools are being handed over to every manner of entrepreneur. What more is needed for success?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Merit pay, Stand for Children, Tennessee

To Sue or Not to Sue: That is the Question

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2012 //
32

In Nashville, two new members of the school board debate whether the Metro Nashville school board should sue the state for withholding $3.4 million to punish the board.

TFA Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman, who is devoted to charter schools and privatization, withheld the $3.4 million from Nashville to punish the board because it rejected an application from the Great Hearts charter corporation of Arizona. The board did not like the fact that Great Hearts had a defective plan for diversity, would locate in an affluent neighborhood, and has a reputation for requiring an upfront “contribution” of $1200-1500 from families.

Great Hearts looks like, smells like, sounds like a publicly funded school for affluent families. The board didn’t like that. It rejected Great Hearts four times.

Huffman, who once was a teacher for two years but has no other relevant experience to be a state commissioner, was furious. He held back $3.4 million from the district.

Amy Frogge, a new board member, provided the key vote to reject the charter. Frogge is a public school parent and a lawyer. She beat a corporate funded candidate who far outspent her. She wants to sue to get the money that rightly belongs to the school district. She is a member of our honor roll for her courage and dedication to public education and the right of all children to a good education.

We are proud of Amy Frogge. She will not be bullied. She is standing up for the children. She deserves her place on the honor roll.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Honor Roll, Tennessee

Rightwing Groups Pour $$$$$ into Tennessee

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2012 //
2

StudentsFirst and another far-right group called Tennessee Federation for Children are pumping huge amounts of money into state legislative races for candidates who support vouchers and charters.

Tennessee Federation for Children is affiliated with the pro-voucher organization called American Federation for Children, run by billionaire Betsy DeVos of Michigan. AFS honored Michelle Rhee and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin for their efforts on behalf of vouchers in 2010.

This report in the Tessessean says:

The Tennessee PAC affiliated with StudentsFirst, a Sacramento, Calif.-based organization led by former Washington, D.C., Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee, has pumped $376,266 into Tennessee this year. That sum includes contributions to a handful of local school board contenders in Nashville and Memphis but far more to candidates seeking state legislative seats. Most of the recipients are Republicans.

StudentsFirst’s Tennessee PAC, formed last year, spent $66,150 in the Volunteer State over the past month alone, according to financial disclosures submitted last week.

During the same four-week time frame, a PAC called Tennessee Federation for Children, a branch of a Washington organization that expanded to Tennessee this spring, accounted for $145,302 in contributions and other expenditures. The group spent $248,539 in Tennessee altogether this year, with money going to direct mail efforts and to pro-voucher candidates.

*************************
When I was in Chattanooga in September this year, a Democratic candidate told me that a campaign gift of $1,000 was considered huge, so you can imagine the power of this kind of money for conservative Republicans and a few rightwing Democrats.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Tennessee, Vouchers, Walker, Scott

Kevin Huffman Knows Exactly What He’s Doing

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2012 //
18

Kevin Huffman, the TFA Commissioner of Education in Tennessee, demands that the Metro Nashville school board authorize a charter in an affluent section of town. The Arizona-based charter, called Great Hearts, expects parents to offer a cash gift of $1200-1500 at the beginning of the school year to defray various costs. The school board worries about lack of diversity and lack of transportation.

The board has rejected Great Hearts four times. Huffman is punishing Nashville by withholding $3.4 million in state aid. The Republican-controlled legislature has threatened to adopt vouchers because of the Nashville board’s insistence on a desegregated school.

As the following article shows, Huffman knows exactly what he is doing.

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/humphrey/2012/09/huffman-on-charter-schools-use.html

Huffman on Charter Schools Used for ‘Ghettoizing’

Long before he became Tennessee’s education commissioner, Kevin Huffman penned an article on charter schools that a reader points out as interesting in light of his recent decision to withhold $3.4 million from Nashville’s schools because the local school board rejected a Great Hearts Academy application.
A key reason for the Metro Nashville board’s rejection of Great Hearts application was concern that it would be lacking in diversity. Huffman’s 1998 article for the October, 1998, New York University Law Review focuses on the possibility of litigation over school choice legislation.
In doing so, Huffman observes that a charter school can be designed to effectively exclude enrollment of poor students, either by location, which without provisions for transportation restricts availability to those in the neighborhood, or by limiting dissemination of information on the schools to the children of “quick-acting, better-informed parents… leaving children of poor and ill-informed parents behind, consigned to suffering the deterioration of neighborhood schools.”
“In such a scenario, the children of informed and quick-acting parents have a choice while those “out of the loop” have no choice at all,” he writes.
Here’s the article’s “conclusion” section:
Charter schools will play a prominent role in public education during the coming decade. They suit the political agendas of many and hold great promise for developing innovative approaches to public education.
Charter schools have the potential to reinvigorate the public schools in districts that desperately need a boost. However, as states quickly move forward with charter school legislation, they risk establishing a process that merely provides further opportunities for well-informed families while ghettoizing the poor and uninformed.
The movement toward deregulation allows schools to exclude the neediest students, either through explicit policies or simply through lack of adequate information. .Ultimately, plaintiffs will have a difficult time showing that charter schools or state enabling acts violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment….However, state constitutions and successful school finance litigation in state courts indicate that state challenges to charter school legislation have a higher chance of success.
Most significantly, several policy changes would allow states to mandate a strong, autonomous charter school movement without depriving access to the schools. Greater state oversight of admissions policies and dissemination of information would close potential avenues of litigation while maintaining the legitimacy of charter schools.
These changes would add some costs to charter school legislation, but they would ultimately allow charter schools to reach greater numbers of at-risk students.
It would be a terrible waste of resources if charter schools were consistently tied up in litigation. It would be an even greater waste, though, if the charter school movement failed to reach the neediest public school students.
Meanwhile, Joey Garrison has written a detailed analysis of people and politics involved in the Great Hearts flap.
Posted by Tom Humphrey on September 24, 2012 at 11:06 AM

https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&doctype=cite&docid=73+N.Y.U.L.+Rev.+1290&key=3694149e237c8609415cc0fd3c4e818e

Copyright (c) 1998 New York University Law Review
New York University Law Review

NOTE: CHARTER SCHOOLS, EQUAL PROTECTION LITIGATION, AND THE NEW SCHOOL REFORM MOVEMENT

October, 1998

73 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 1290

Author

Kevin S. Huffman *
Excerpt

As the quality of public education, particularly in large urban school districts, has declined, activists and politicians from all points on the political spectrum have proposed school reforms. Many reformers have suggested versions of “school choice” programs. These efforts propose to alter the school assignment systems common to most public school districts, in which students attend neighborhood schools without regard to preference. While some activists seek parent choice just among the area public schools, others would expand the notion of choice to private or even parochial schools, giving tuition vouchers to students choosing to attend private schools. 1 School choice activists have argued for nearly three decades that opening the public school market will both stimulate competition and increase school quality. 2 While the choice movement has found support among political conservatives, 3 full-scale voucher programs have been defeated largely by the efforts of teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party. 4

The continued woes of public schools have forced even the staunchest defenders of the status quo to examine new methods of improving school systems. Many districts strapped for personnel now hire teachers without degrees in education or teaching certifications. 5 Both the Bush and Clinton administrations have moved to redefine public school goals with the aim of increasing quality through national standards. 6 Furthermore, as states’ rights became a more prominent issue on the political agenda, school reformers followed suit, advocating a shift in control from state and local bureaucracies to individual schools. 7 Many …

Categories Charter Schools, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Tennessee
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