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Jan Resseger: ED Department’s Inspector General Condemns Failure of Charter Oversight—Again!

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2018 //
9

Jan Resseger reviews a major report by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General, which condemns the Department’s repeated failure to oversee the spending of federal. charter school funding.

The blame here falls not on Betsy DeVos, but on her predecessor, Arne Duncan, who was so eager to stimulate the creation of new charter schools that he failed to monitor those already opened with federal funds.

She writes:

“The report condemns a trend of poor oversight: This is the third major report in which the Department of Education’s OIG has documented poor management of federal dollars flowing to charter schools. Reports from the Department of Education’s OIG in 2012 and 2016 also disparaged Duncan’s charter school oversight. It is not likely, however, that Betsy DeVos, a libertarian, will improve the Department’s regulatory role.

“The new 2018, OIG report examines whether the U.S. Department of Education has a process for adequately monitoring the management of federal dollars and the management of student records and data when charter schools are closed. OIG examined charter school closures in three states between 2011 and 2015. Defining privately operated charter schools as public schools for the purpose of this report, the OIG notes that in the 2015-2016 school year, there were 98,277 public schools across the United States, among which 6,855 were charter schools. Between 2011 and 2015, 977 of the charter schools closed. OIG studied charter school closures in three states: Arizona, which had the highest number of closed charter schools authorized by the same authorizer; California, which had more charter schools than any other state and more students enrolled in charter schools; and Louisiana, which had the highest ratio of charter school closures relative to the number of charter schools in the state. In its 2018 report, OIG examines the procedures used in 89 of the closed charter schools—45 in Arizona, 31 in California, and 13 in Louisiana. OIG explains: “The purpose of the audit (is) to determine whether the U.S. Department of Education has effective oversight of the programs provided to charter schools….”

“The OIG begins its report by reassuring us—in oxymoronic language— that, “Charter schools are nonsectarian, publicly funded schools of choice that are intended to be held accountable for their academic and financial performance in return for reduced governmental regulation.” Maybe the myth that charters can be held accountable without accountability explains why the Department of Education hasn’t done so well with with preventing the kind of problems the report describes.

“The 2018, OIG report charges that the Department of Education has not provided adequate guidance to enable states and local school districts to comply with the federal laws and regulations they must follow to protect Title I, IDEA and Charter Schools Program dollars when charter schools are shut down. Neither Arizona, California, nor Louisiana had developed required procedures for tracking how the assets of charter schools were disposed after the schools were closed. The report notes that in September of 2015, the Department of Education sent a letter to state departments of education to remind them “of their role in helping to ensure that Federal funds received by charter schools are used for intended and appropriate purposes.” OIG explains, however, that, “The Dear Colleague Letter did not specifically discuss charter school closures.” Neither has the Department adequately monitored states’ charter school closure processes. “The Title I, IDEA, and CSP program offices did not incorporate a review of charter school closure procedures into their State Education Agency monitoring tools.”

“The 2018, OIG report continues: “During our audit period, the Department did not consider charter school closures to be a risk to Federal funds; therefore, the Title I, IDEA, and CSP program offices did not prioritize providing guidance to State Education Agencies on how to manage the charter school closure process….” “Without adequate Department guidance provided to the State Education Agencies and sufficient State Education Agency and authorizer oversight and monitoring of charter school closure processes, the risk of significant fraud, waste, and abuse of Federal programs’ funds is high. The growing number of charter schools, from 1,993 in School Year 2000-2001 to 6,855 in School Year 2015-2016, and the number of charter schools that closed, ranging from 72 in School Year 2000-2001 to 308 in School Year 2014-2015, require the Department’s program offices to develop and implement a modified approach to overseeing the State Education Agencies.””

Finally: “We found there was no assurance that for the sampled closed charter schools (1) Federal funds were properly closed within the required period, (2) assets aquired with Federal funds were properly disposed of, and (3) the students’ personally identifiable information was properly protected and maintained.”

Unfortunately, Kathleen S. Tighe, the Inspector General of the Department of Education, is retiring next month, and her replacement will be named by the president, subject to Senate confirmation. The current deputy IG Sandra Bruce will take over until a permanent IG is nominated and confirmed.

Given the track record of the Trump administration in politicizing every facet of the federal government, this change may be the end of honest inquiry about charter school oversight.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, U.S. Department of Education

Peter Greene: Why Top-Down Mandates from Washington Always Fail

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2018 //
28

Congress and the U.S. Department of Education can take different paths as it dispenses money: It can give school districts money to meet certain defined purposes (e.g., equitable resources) or it can give money for school districts to follow instructions and change what teachers are doing. The latter, as Peter Greene reminds us here, always fails. Policy direction, imposed from above on millions of teachers, must pass through multiple layers of interpretation, reinterpretation, and misinterpretation before it reaches the classroom. By then, it bears little resemblance to what was intended, and what was intended may have been misguided and muddled to begin with.

From Outcome Based Education (remember the 90s?) to Common Core to ESSA to a hundred policy initiatives on the state level, the story is usually the same: Policymakers create a policy for K-12 education, it rolls out into the real world, and before too long those same policymakers are declaring, “That’s not what we meant at all.” Explanations generally include “You’re doing it wrong” or “Maybe we should have put a bigger PR push behind it” or “The teachers union thwarted us.” Common Core fans still claim that all Common Core problems are because of trouble with the implementation.

Somehow policymakers never land on another possibility– that the policy they created was lousy. But good or bad, education policy follows a twisty path from the Halls of Power where it’s created to Actual Classrooms where teachers have to live with it. Here are all the twists that can lead to trouble.

Good luck with this

It begins with the policy generators, who might be legislators, or they might be thinky tank lobby policy wonkists who have an idea they want to push. The important detail is that the policy starts with just a handful of people who actually understand it. But the policy’s first obstacle is a larger group of legislators, some of whom have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about, and worse yet, some who don’t even know what they don’t know, but have some thoughts about how the policy could be tweaked. Let’s say for our example that the group doesn’t fiddle too much, and we end up with a simple policy:

Students will learn about how to produce excellence in widgets.

“Excellence” is one of those words that legislators use to get past the fact that they can’t agree on what an excellent widget is. But to implement the policy, teachers will have to know what the expectation is, so the Department of Education next has to “interpret” what the regulation means.
(John King and Lamar Alexander had some spirited disagreements about ESSA on just this point).

If we’re talking about federal regulations, they’ll pass through both federal and state departments of education. Reports, notes, letters, and other guidance tools will be issued by state bureaucrats who have some ideas about what widget excellence should look like and some other ideas about what the policy goals really are here.

The farther removed from the classroom, the less likely that the intended policy will make sense to the individual teachers who are required to implement it.

It is a bit like having the federal or state government do your menu planning and plan the same meal for every family in the state, without providing the food.

Peter has a better metaphor:

You can think of policy implementation as a giant Plinko board with a million slots at the bottom. The policymakers can drop the chip, and not only will it not go exactly where they want, but if they drop a hundred chips at once, they will all end up in a different place. Education policy isn’t just a game of telephone– it’s a game of telephone in which each player whispers to ten other players, until a million people have completely different messages.

This is what some folks are talking about when they demand vociferously that policies and materials be implanted “with fidelity,” which means roughly “do what I tell you and stop thinking for yourself.” But the critical problem is that actual classroom teachers are not involved until the final step. If government insists on a top-down model of education policy, they are never going to get what they think they’re asking for.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, U.S. Department of Education

Steven Singer: The U.S. Shortchanged Public Schools by Hundreds of Billions of Dollars

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2018 //
18

Steven Singer describes a new report that reached a startling conclusion: the federal government shortchanged the nation’s public schools by hundreds of billions, at the same time that the top earners raked in billions of dollars.

He writes, in part:

Fun Fact: Between 2005 and 2017, the federal government withheld $580 billion it had promised to spend on students from poor families and students with disabilities.

Fun Fact: Over that same period, the personal net worth of the nation’s 400 wealthiest people ballooned by $1.57 trillion.

So, rich people, consider this the bill.

A new report called “Confronting the Education Debt” commissioned by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) details the shortfall in minute detail.

For instance:

$347 billion owed to educate low-income students most of whom are children of color.

$233 billion owed to provide services for students with disabilities.

And this is just the shortfall of the last dozen years! That’s just money due to children who recently graduated or are currently in the school system!

We’ve been cheating our children out of the money we owe them for more than half a century!

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Funding, Poverty, Standardized Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Peter Greene: Arne Duncan Has Learned Nothing: He’s Taking a Victory Lap After Failing

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2018 //
34

Arne Duncan wrote a book about his seven years as Secretary of Education and is now promoting it and touting his record. You know, the record where teachers were demonized as lying to kids, kids were belittled as dummies, and parents were belittled for not embracing the Common Core.

Peter Greene read an interview with Arne and realized that he learned nothing from his experience.

He begins:

“Never mind a Secretary of Education who has never taught anything; I’m beginning to think it would be a step forward if we had a Secretary of Education who has ever learned anything.

“Arne Duncan was interviewed for the pages of US News, and the resulting piece reminds us, first, that there’s not nearly as much difference between Duncan and DeVos as some Democrats would like to believe, and second, that Duncan remain unrepentant and unenlightened about anything that happened under his watch. So join me in yelling fruitlessly at the computer screen as we walk through this trip down Delusion Lane.

“Chicken Little’s History of School

“Count Duncan as a member of the Century Club– that special group of reformsters that is certain schools haven’t changed in 100 years. Arne would also like to beat the expired equine about how “other nations out-educating, out-investing, out-innovating us.” Because, you know, we’re competing with India and China and Singapore for jobs. That’s certainly true, but at no point is it going to occur to Duncan that those countries compete by offering little or no regulation and workers who will do the job for pennies. In all the times I’ve heard the “we must change education to compete with China” refrain, not once have I heard an explanation of how education will help American workers better compete with people working under conditions we wouldn’t accept for wages we couldn’t live on. Arne wants us to now that our kids– his kids– are going to grow up in that world. And if you think Arne’s kids, raised in privilege and comfort, are going to be competing with some Chinese smartphone assembler for work, well– I have a bridge over a swamp to sell you.

“This guy. This frickin’ guy.

“Oh, and we are not in the top 10 internationally. Which– first, what does that even mean? Top 10 ranked by what? Because if, as I would guess, he means test scores, let me repeat for the gazzillionth time that we have never, ever been in the Top 10 for international test scores. Nor has Duncan ever offered a shred of evidence that being in the Top 10 of test scores translates into any sort of national achievement like higher GDP or higher standard of living or happier citizens or military might or best frozen desserts!

“Duncan’s Diagnosis and That Damned Status Quo

“Having failed to effectively define the problem, Duncan now goes on to offer his idea about the cause.

“This is not a cure for cancer, this is not rocket science. It’s total lack of political will. And I think the politics of the left and the right stand in the way of what’s best for kids.

“Well, actually, it is too rocket science. Duncan’s thesis is that fixing schools is actually quite easy; we’re just not willing to do it, because after all this time, he still doesn’t realize how complex and complicated it is to run an entire educational system. And Duncan doesn’t seem to know what he’s trying to change because he also notes “There’s a small number of political leaders willing to challenge the status quo.”

“Dammit, Arne.

“First, the status quo in education right now is the status quo you help make. Common Core, in its various bastardized forms and under its various assumed names, is the status freakin’ quo, and an ugly obnoxious one it is, too. Schools and teachers being evaluated based on bad uses of bad data generated by bad tests– that’s status quo, too. As is the draining of resources from public schools by private charterized schools. These are all problems, these are all status quo, and these are all a legacy in part of your administration.

“Second, the idea that you need political leaders to change the educational system shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the education system (and, for that matter, the political system) works. You need teachers and education leaders and actual trained professional educators to change an educational system, yet another fact we can put on the list of Things You Don’t Understand. All these years, and you still treat teachers like the hired help, certain that your amateur insights are more important than anything they might have to say.

“Duncan also thinks we need Republicans to challenge their base, and I’m not sure where he’s coming from here, because other than a deadly aversion to the words “common core,” the GOP base is in tune with most of the Duncan program. Duncan offers Obama’s championing of merit pay as a profil;e in courage because “that’s very hard to do” and well, yes, it’s hard to do because we have lots of evidence that merit pay doesn’t work. There’s nothing courageous about standing up for a bad idea.”

I don’t think anyone told Arne that his own Department evaluated Race to the Top and concluded it was a flop.

Categories Accountability, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Failure, U.S. Department of Education

Jan Resseger, Nancy Bailey: Why the Department of Education Should not Be Merged with the Department of Labor

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2018 //
12

Like Jan Resseger, I’m old enough to remember when the U.S. Office of Education was part of the massive Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Words matter. So do signals. We saw that when Melania Trump traveled to the Texas Border to demonstrate “compassion,” wearing a jacket that had a logo: “I really don’t care, do U?”

Jan writes here about why it is a bad message to merge Education and Labor into one cabinet department.

“Although the Trump administration cannot impose a restructure of the government without approval by Congress, one must pay attention, nonetheless, to the proposal announced yesterday and even to the meaning of the language in which the proposed restructure is framed—education defined as workforce preparation, for example, and the return of the word “welfare,’ now a pejorative in conservative political circles, to make it easier for politicians to slash funding by the federal government.

“What is being proposed lacks compassion for children. The new plan is designed by officials impervious to what is well known about healthy child development. The proposed restructure reflects the kind of heartlessness we’ve been watching as Trump administration officials callously separate babies and toddlers from their parents at the border, lock tiny, bewildered children in closed-Walmart orphanages, or send them on airplanes to social agencies or foster parents in far-off cities.”

Nancy Bailey writes on the same issue:

She asks:

Moms and Dads, when you looked into your newborn’s eyes for the first time, did you think, I wonder what job our government will steer our baby into?

A merger of the Department of Education (DOE) with the Department of Labor (DOL) is about just that.

Here’s a quote from this administration’s manual called “Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century: Reform Plan and Reorganization” (p.23-28).

The workforce development program consolidation would centralize and better coordinate Federal efforts to train the American workforce, reduce administrative costs, and make it easier for States and localities to run programs to meet the comprehensive needs of their workforce. (p.23)

Where is the word child or teen in that quote?

Chances are when you looked into your baby’s eyes, you weren’t thinking of the government at all.

No, when you marveled at the miracle of your child, your hopes were, and still are, for them, not a government that caters to corporations.

Categories Education Reform, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Mercedes Schneider: DeVos Denies Utah Parents their Right to Opt Out

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2018 //
16

Betsy DeVos claims to be an advocate for parental rights. She is not.

Utah passed a law recognizing the right of parents to opt their children out of state testing. The US Department of Education rejected the Utah ESSA Plan because it respects parents’ rights.

I want to remind every reader to recognize that the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed parental rights in a 1925 decision called “Pierce v. Society of Sisters.”the right of parents to make decisions about their child.” That decision rejected an Oregon law that required every child to attend public schools, not private or religious schools. The court said, in a decision that was never reversed and has often been cited, that the child is not a “mere creature of the state,” and parents have the power to make decisions for their children, excepting (I believe) where their health and safety are concerned.

Given DeVos’ advocacy for school choice and parental rights, it is shocking that she has agreed to punish the schools, the children and families of Utah for recognizing the rights of parents to refuse the state test.

In New York State, education officials are threatening financial punishments and other more drastic actions for schools that don’t meet the 95% participation rate. Very few schools in the state did. We will see a state takeover of 90% of the schools in the state?

ACLU, where are you?

Categories Accountability, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), New York, Opt Out, Parents, Students, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, Utah

Conservatives’ New Federal Legislation Will Enlarge Power and Bureaucracy at U.S. Department of Education

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2018 //
8

 

Sasha Pudelski of the School Superintendents Association warns conservatives about the unintended consequences of their latest effort to turn a long-established federal program into a sneak voucher initiative.

Curiously her warning was posted by an inflential conservative website, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s “Flypaper.”

She begins:

”It may seem counterintuitive, but conservative organizations from the Heritage Foundation, to FreedomWorks, to the Club for Growth are pushing an education bill this year that would significantly enlarge the bureaucracy at the U.S. Department of Education. That’s right, the same organizations that have decried the “bloated education bureaucracy” and that give awards to members of Congress who are “fighting daily to shrink government and the federal bureaucracy” are urging Congress to significantly increase secretarial authority over K–12 and higher education.

“Why are they doing this? To create a new federal education voucher program that would allow dollars to flow out of public schools and into private schools and businesses. As Congress draws to a close without a signature school voucher victory, these organizations are pounding the pavement to try and garner a big win while both chambers still remain under Republican control. The piggybank for this voucher bill is the Impact Aid program, which is the oldest K–12 federal education program and was created to support school districts impacted by a federal presence, such as military installations, Indian treaty or trust land, and other federal facilities.

“The specific voucher legislation, the Military Education Savings Account Act, targets the children of active duty military personnel. However, not all active duty servicemembers’ children are eligible. Only children with a parent on active military duty and residing within a “heavily impacted” local education agency (LEA), as defined in the Impact Aid program, or children with parents on active military duty who reside on a military installation would be eligible for vouchers. These vouchers can be used for a variety of education related expenses, including private schools, online schools and curriculum, afterschool programs, summer camps, computers, and therapists. The families are responsible for reporting how they use the money, and the U.S. Department of Education has to be able to monitor the use of funds, allocate resources on a rolling basis, and monitor for fraud and noncompliance by both families and educational providers.

“Currently, close to sixty Republicans in the House of Representatives support this proposal. What’s not clear is whether these Republicans and the aforementioned conservative organizations have considered the many ways in which this legislation would require the beastly bureaucracy of the U.S. Department of Education to further ensnarl its big federal paws into the hands of individual families’ bank accounts, private K–12 educational businesses, and private schools.

“In addition to drafting a new set of regulations (which clearly will go against the Trump Administration’s bold regulatory rollback process and provisions), at a bare minimum this will require the education department to draft, seek public input on, and finalize new regulations on how the new federal school choice program would operate.

“It would also require the agency to create and set up a completely new data system to collect, review, and monitor the following: a written contract signifying parents will abide by the terms of the statute vis-à-vis use of federal dollars; verification of parents’ active duty status; and verification that the family’s home address is located on a military installation or within the boundaries of a heavily impacted school district. For example, if a family moves off base and is no longer eligible for funding, then the U.S. Department of Education would need to track their change of address and make sure they no longer receive federal dollars. Keeping the agency informed of this changing information would be challenging for military families, who are incredibly mobile.

“In addition, the education department would have unprecedented oversight into the finances of military families. It would need to develop a process to deposit sums into parents’ bank accounts, and parents would have to submit a quarterly expense report to the agency detailing how they will use the money in accordance with federal law. And the department would need a system to recoup the money from parents who later violate those usage restrictions.”

Talk about a bloated bureaucracy!

It gets much worse. Read on.

 

 

Categories U.S. Department of Education

EdWeek: Congress Rejects Trump-DeVos Education Budget Proposals

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2018 //
11

 

EdWeek reports that Congress’s new budget ignored the funding proposals by the Trump administration’s to slash education spending and shift large sums of money to choice. 

Congratulations to a bipartisan coalition in a congress that stopped Trump and DeVos from performing radical surgery on useful federal programs.

“Lawmakers sent a message to President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in their bill to fund the federal government: We’re not the biggest fans of your big education ideas.

“Congress would increase spending at the U.S. Department of Education by $2.6 billion over previously enacted levels in fiscal year 2018, up to $70.9 billion, under a new omnibus spending bill that could finally resolve a months-long logjam on Capitol Hill.

“In addition, funding for Title I, the biggest pot of federal money for public schools, which is earmarked for disadvantaged students, would increase by $300 million from fiscal 2017 enacted spending, up to $15.8 billion.

“The fiscal 2018 spending bill, released late Wednesday, doesn’t contain several key changes sought by Trump in his first budget plan. In fact, Trump’s budget plan for fiscal 2018 would have cut discretionary education spending by $9.2 billion. So Congress’ bill is a significant rebuke of sorts to the president’s education vision.

“In fact, the spending bill leaves out a $250 million private school choice initiative the president and DeVos sought, as well as a $1 billion program designed to encourage open enrollment in districts.

“Title II, which provides professional development to educators, would be flat-funded at roughly $2.1 billion. The Trump budget pitch for fiscal 2018 eliminated Title II entirely—it was the single biggest cut to K-12 Trump sought for fiscal 2018. And Title IV, a block grant for districts that can fund a diverse set of needs from school safety to ed-tech, would receive $1.1 billion, a big increase from its curent funding level of $400 million. Trump also sought to eliminate Title IV.

“Funding for 21st Century Community Learning Centers would rise up by $20 million up to $1.2 billion; that’s another program the Trump budget proposal axed. In addition, special education grants would go up by $299 million to $13.1 billion. And federal aid to charter schools would increase to $400 million, a $58 million boost…

”The top Senate Democrat for education, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, praised the bipartisan agreement to dismiss the “extreme ideas to privatize our nation’s public schools and dismantle the Department of Education” from DeVos.”

Too bad that the federal government will put more money into charters. Democrats still fail to realize the dangers of privatization posed by privately managed charters, which take public money but fight accountability and oversight. Nor do they seem alarmed that public schools are being eliminated in cities like Indianapolis and Washington, D.C.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Funding, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

DeVos Shakes Up Department of Education Staff, Breaks Up Budget Office

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2018 //
13

 

Let’s be clear. Betsy DeVos never ran any organization other than the American Federation for Children, a lobbying group for vouchers and charters, which she funded and owns.

Now she is the U.S. Secretary of Education, overseeing a large department with many functions crucial to K-12 education, higher education, student aid, and civil rights enforcement.

She has just announced a major reorganization of the department, over the objections of the Trump Office of Management and Budget. 

Given her well-known disdain for the federal role in education and her appointment of people determined to destroy the functions of the federal agency, we can assume that this reorganization is designed to cripple the agency and introduce a new level of dysfunction and chaos.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is moving to break apart her agency’s central budget office despite objections from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

DeVos last week removed the department’s top budget official and at least one other budget division director from their posts, reassigning the employees to jobs elsewhere in the agency. Top political appointees are also taking steps to make further reassignments of staff and functions in the budget office.

The budget office has had a strained relationship with DeVos and political appointees ever since the department’s full budget request last year was published by The Washington Post, days before its official release. And the office had been blamed, incorrectly, for other leaks, several department staffers said.

As part of a sweeping agencywide government reorganization ordered by President Donald Trump, DeVos wants to break up and decentralize all of the Education Department’s budget functions. The department’s overall plan, according to an internal presentation obtained by POLITICO last month, calls for a “restructuring of how we approach policy and budget development.”

OMB officials have objected to breaking apart the department’s Budget Service, according to four officials with knowledge of the situation. The disagreement comes as OMB has green-lighted most other parts of DeVos’ proposed overhaul of the agency, two officials said.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, U.S. Department of Education

California: Why the State Board of Education Will Never Say No to KIPP

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2018 //
14

 

Expanding charter schools is the passion of Betsy DeVos.

Lest we forget, it was also the passion of the Obama administration, which spent eight years promoting the wonders of charter schools.

In the last months of the Obama Administration, with John King as Secretary of Education, the U.S. Department of Education awarded $100 million to California and to KIPP to open more charter schools. 

“KIPP Public Charter Schools and the California Department of Education have received federal grants together worth nearly $100 million to expand and start more public charter schools.

“The California Department of Education won $49.9 million to run a grant competition for charter school operators, to support nearly 500 new and expanded public charter schools.

“A consortium of the KIPP Foundation and the KIPP California Region won nearly $48.8 million over three years.

“Among schools benefiting from the award are four growing KIPP Bay Area schools: KIPP Heritage Academy and KIPP Prize Preparatory Academy in San Jose, KIPP Excelencia Community Prep in Redwood City and KIPP Bridge Academy in Oakland. Each of the schools may receive up to $500,000 over the three-year grant period for expansion.”

All that money to expand a charter chain that was first introduced to a national audience in performance at the Republican convention of 2000, when George W. Bush was nominated for the Presidency. 

Betsy DeVos will enjoy the results, but hold Secretaries Arne Duncan and John King and President Obama accountable. John King is now president of Education Trust, which supports high-stakes testing as the path to equity (which it never has been and never will be since all standardized tests mirror family income). Arne Duncan works for Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, U.S. Department of Education
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