Archives for category: Vouchers
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Mike Petrilli: In the Face of So Many Setbacks, Where Does Reform Go From Here?

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2018 //
28

Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, one of the leading advocacy groups in the Corporate Reform Movement, offers advice and consolation to fellow Reformers.

“After two decades of mostly-forward movement and many big wins, the last few years have been a tough patch for education reform. The populist right has attacked standards, testing, and accountability, with particular emphasis on the Common Core, as well as testing itself. The election of Donald Trump and appointment of Betsy DeVos, meanwhile, have made school choice and charter schools toxic on much of the progressive left. And the 2017 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate a “lost decade” of academic achievement. All of these trends have left policymakers and philanthropists feeling glum about reform, given the growing narrative that, like so many efforts before it, the modern wave hasn’t worked or delivered the goods, yet has produced much friction, fractiousness, and furor.”

Take heart, he says. The children of America need us to privatize their schools, bust teachers’ unions, and Judge their teachers by student test scores. Remember when they all laughed at NCLB, but now “we” know that it was a great success?

It’s true that NAEP scores have been flat for a decade. It’s true that charters close almost as often as they open. It’s true that the charter industry is riddled with fraud, waste, and abuse.

But stick with proven leaders like the hedge fund managers, Bill Gates, and DeVos.

Sorry to be snarky, Mike, but I couldn’t resist.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Testing, Trump, VAM, Vouchers

North Carolina: An Insider on the Hoax of School Choice

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2018 //
5

A few days ago, I posted teacher Stuart Egan’s description of the attack on public schools in North Carolina, which identified the malefactors who are luring kids to charter schools, religious schools, cyber charters, and home schools, driving down public school enrollment to 81%.

Egan received a response from a staff member of the North Carolina Department of Instruction, which is led by Mark Johnson, former TFA who marches to the tune of the Tea Party and has no conscience of his own, no vision for the 81%, no concern about the quality of education in the state’s charter or religious schools. How does TFA find the people who advocate and act so strongly against public schools that enroll the majority of students? Will TFA ever be held accountable for them?

Here is the comment:

“This is so spot on. Everyone should translate ‘choice’ into ‘undermining of public schools’, because that is exactly what it is. The most sickening part is how low-income families and those of children with disabilities have been targeted, cajoled, hoodwinked and bamboozled into believing that choice automatically equates to quality. (Anyone who considers themselves conservative should be outraged at this profound misuse of their tax dollars.)

“Unfortunately, I get to witness this erosion and implosion every day at DPI. I just met another of my colleagues whose job was eliminated by the General Assembly’s draconian cuts and our puppet superintendent’s ‘just following orders’ approach. It was so sad to see this person, who was providing passionate, competent and knowledgeable support to eastern NC schools trying mightily to serve their markedly low-income populations, tossed aside in this ponzi scheme to dangle ‘school choice’ in front of needy families. It’s like eliminating the road crew that is fixing potholes and cracks on I-95 and using the public’s money to build a flimsy expensive two-lane highway right next to it that has no markings, guardrails, speed limits or enforcement (with full kickbacks going to the private paving company). ‘Hey mom and dad — let your kids ride on this shiny new road because you’ll have a choice, and we all know choice is better!’

“EdNC put out an excellent article a few days ago: https://www.ednc.org/2018/07/11/steep-cuts-to-north-carolinas-education-agency-hurt-low-performing-schools-the-most/. It perfectly spells out the absurdity in our agency and our feckless leadership. We’re told ‘shh, be quiet; this is a sensitive time’ for all our colleagues who were laid off, when in reality there should be a loud leader fighting for his folks every step of the way, even if the jobs could not be saved. You see, that’s how the damage really occurs here in our agency — not by vocal or visible action of those who ultimately have to answer to their supervisor every day, month and year, but by the SILENCE and joint inaction of the only ones in the agency who AREN’T supervised. The superintendent has no official boss and writes no annual work plan like the rest of us; instead, he gets a four-year ride and won’t have a whiff of accountability for another two and half years, long after the damage has been done. Meanwhile, scores of good people continue to walk out the door, either voluntarily or involuntarily, and the Public Schools of North Carolina will continue to suffer for it.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, Fraud, North Carolina, Privatization, Shame, Teach for America, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Stuart Egan: Who Is Behind the Assault on Public Education in North Carolina?

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2018 //
4

NBCT High School Teacher Stuart Egan writes here that public school enrollment in North Carolina has dropped to 81%,just as the Tea Party Republicans hoped. As public schools are starved of resources, growing numbers switch to religious schools, charter schools, virtual charters and Home schools.

Who has made this happen, in addition to the Tea Party?

“Consider the following national entities:

*Teach For America
*Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
*Walton Family Foundation
*Eli Broad Foundation
*KIPP Charter Schools
*Democrats For Educational Reform
*Educational Reform Now
*StudentsFirst
*America Succeeds
*50CAN
*American Legislative Exchange Council
*National Heritage Academies
*Charter School USA
*Team CFA
*American Federation for Children

“They are all at play in North Carolina, totally enabled by the powers-that-be in the NC General Assembly and their supportive organizations.”

Think of it: 81% of the students in the state attend public schools, but they don’t matter!

To make matters worse, all the alternatives are worse than a well-funded public school.

North Carolina’s education is slipping into a deep hole. It is funding failure.

Betsy DeVos can add another notch to her belt unless the citizens rise up to save their schools.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Reform, Failure, Fraud, Funding, North Carolina, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Jeff Bryant: Brett Kavanaugh Will Support Betsy DeVos’s Religious Agenda on the Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2018 //
14

Jeff Bryant has studied Brett Kavanaugh’s writings and has concluded that, if confirmed for the Supreme Court, he will join the other conservative justices in knocking down the last remnants of the long-established tradition of separation of church and states. This will be a great victory for Betsy DeVos and others who have been working overtime to direct public funding to religious schools.

He writes:

“As the son of a public-school teacher and a volunteer tutor of students in Washington, DC, the Kavanaugh narrative may come across as friendly to public schools, but Kavanaugh was raised in elite private schools and has nothing in his record that would indicate a strong support for public education.

“His history of legally undermining the separation of church and state is a fact not in dispute. In his work with the Federalist Society – the rightwing project that has largely engineered today’s high court and compiled the list of potential nominees for Trump – Kavanaugh has led its “School Choice Practice Group” and “Religious Liberties Group.” These groups help the Federalist Society craft its legal arguments on the unconstitutionality of excluding religious options from school choice programs.

“Among the primary targets for these groups is to repeal amendments in 39 state constitutions that prohibit direct government aid to educational institutions that have a religious affiliation. This argument already has the Supreme Court’s partial consent, given its ruling last year that ordered a New Mexico Supreme Court to reconsider a decision barring religious schools from a state textbook lending program.

“Kavanaugh also has a history of supporting school vouchers that allow parents to use public taxdollars to pay tuition for private, religious schools. In 2000, he represented then Florida Governor Jeb Bush to push through the state’s first school voucher program, which was eventually struck down by the Florida Supreme Court in a 2006 decision.

“But just as Kavanaugh and his conservative colleagues were being stymied in state courts, they were blazing a legal pathway for federal support of school vouchers.

“Religious Is ‘Secular’

“In an appearance on CNN in 2000, Politico reports, Kavanaugh “predicted … that school vouchers would one day be upheld by the Court.””

As public money flows to unaccountable religious schools, which hire uncertified teachers, use textbooks that teach religious propaganda, or don’t teach any English, Republican lawmakers may come to regret the monster they created.

Thomas Jefferson urged his friend many years ago to preach “a crusade against ignorance.” It was Jefferson who first referred to a “wall of separation between church and state,” the better to protect both church and state.

He would be appalled to see that wall disappear.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

North Carolina: NEPC With More About Analysis of That Amateurish, Cooked Voucher Study

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2018 //
1

I have posted two critiques of the North Carolina voucher study that claimed great gains for students who took vouchers to learn that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.

Here is another, which is probably definitive and all you need to know. It was posted by the National Education Policy Center.


An evaluation of an education program typically gives some information about whether or not a program is working. But a recent evaluation of North Carolina’s school voucher program is so flawed methodologically that it fails to explain whether the state’s Opportunity Scholarships help or harm a student’s education, according to a review by Kris Nordstrom, an education policy consultant on the Education and Law Project at the North Carolina Justice Center, a social justice-focused research and advocacy organization.

Nordstrom’s review is part of a new NEPC feature called Reviews Worth Sharing, which are not commissioned or edited by NEPC but that we believe contribute to our goal of helping policymakers, reporters, and others assess the social science merit of reports and judge their value in guiding policy. The views and conclusions addressed belong entirely to the author.

The evaluation reviewed, An Impact Analysis of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program on Student Achievement, is a working paper by North Carolina State researchers Anna J. Egalite, D.T. Stallings, and Stephen R. Porter.

The review finds that methodological flaws in the evaluation make it impossible to accurately compare North Carolina private school students who receive the vouchers with their public school counterparts who do not. It is also possible that the private school students who participated in the analysis were not representative of the average voucher student. That’s because the working paper only examined a small, non-random handful of voucher students (89 individuals, or 1.6 percent of all voucher recipients) who volunteered to be tested for the evaluation. In addition, just over half of the private schools attended by these 89 recipients were Catholic. Yet only 10 percent of all North Carolina voucher schools are Catholic.

The evaluation did use a statistical method called propensity-score matching to create a public school comparison group that was designed to be similar to the pool of private school volunteers. However, Nordstrom identifies five main flaws with this comparison:

The private school students who volunteered to participate in the evaluation were recruited by a pro-voucher advocacy organization, Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. The evaluation does not clarify to what extent, if any, the organization cherry-picked the volunteers or their schools.

The public school students likely came from lower-income families than the voucher recipients. Evaluation authors said that they accounted for this difference by incorporating prior year’s test results into the analysis. But that assumes that income differences did not impact performance in the ensuing school year.

The public school students likely attended schools with higher poverty rates than the private school students would have been attending, absent the vouchers. Again, evaluation authors said that they accounted for this difference by incorporating prior year’s test results into the analysis, but that (again) assumes that the differences did not impact performance in the ensuing school year.

It is possible that the public and private school students had different levels of motivation when taking the test. While voucher recipients might have perceived that their performance could impact their ability to remain in their private schools, the public school students likely viewed the exam as a meaningless exercise.

The test used in the evaluation was not aligned to North Carolina’s Standard Course of Study. If it was aligned more closely with the private schools’ curricula, that could give the voucher recipients an advantage.

North Carolina’s voucher program is scheduled to grow by $10 million per year, to $144.8 million in 2027-28.
Yet as Nordstrom concludes:

North Carolina General Assembly lawmakers are about to conclude yet another legislative session without implementing meaningful evaluation and accountability measures on state voucher programs. Despite the N.C. State report, unfettered expansion of vouchers continues, and policymakers, educators, and parents still don’t know whether the program is working or not.

Categories Fraud, National Education Policy Center, North Carolina, Research, Vouchers

Great News! State Election Board Allows Jen Mangrum to Challenge Phil Berger in North Carolina!

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2018 //
0

Educator Jen Mangrum filed to run against Phil Berger, the most powerful legislator in North Carolina. She was endorsed by the Network for Public Education.

Berger appealed to a district election panel and got Jen knocked off the ballot, because she had moved to his district to run against him. Berger, the Tea Party leader, has taken the lead in defunding public education and promoting charters and vouchers. He did not want an opponent.

The N.C. State Board of Elections just reversed that decision, so Jen can run and Berger will indeed have opposition.

Jen writes:

Yesterday, the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted to reverse the District 30 panel’s decision to remove me from the ballot this November. In short, I’m cleared to take Phil Berger’s seat!

I could not be more grateful for the support that you’ve shown me as I fought this challenge, but the fight is just beginning. Just this week, America Rising, a conservative PAC that the Wall Street Journal has called “the unofficial research arm of the Republican Party” requested my employee records from UNC Greensboro, where I am an Associate Professor in Teacher Education.

Can you chip in to let Phil Berger and the NC GOP know that you won’t stand for their dirty tricks?

With less than 100 days until the start of early voting, the time to get involved is NOW! In order to win, I need to reach out to the thousands of voters in my district who are tired of politics as usual. Sign up to volunteer on my website to help let District 30 know that — you guessed it — We Got This!

Categories North Carolina, Vouchers

New Study: Attendance in Private Schools Has No Effect on Performance When Demographics are Controlled

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2018 //
55

A new study published by the peer-reviewed Educational Researcher by Professors Richard C. Pianta and Arya Ansari of the University of Virginia tests whether enrollment in private schools affects achievement when demography is controlled. The answer is no.

Here is the abstract:

By tracking longitudinally a sample of American children (n = 1,097), this study examined the extent to which enrollment in private schools between kindergarten and ninth grade was related to students’ academic, social, psychological, and attainment outcomes at age 15. Results from this investigation revealed that in unadjusted models, children with a history of enrollment in private schools performed better on nearly all outcomes assessed in adolescence. However, by simply controlling for the sociodemographic characteristics that selected children and families into these schools, all of the advantages of private school education were eliminated. There was also no evidence to suggest that low-income children or children enrolled in urban schools benefited more from private school enrollment.

Categories Education Reform, Poverty, Research, School Choice, Vouchers

Jennifer Berkshire: Hopeful Signs of a Movement to Save Public Schools in Wisconsin

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2018 //
4

Jennifer Berkshire writes here of the encouraging signs of a strong grassroots movement to save public schools in Wisconsin, despite the best efforts of Governor Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature to crush the teachers’ union and to offer school choice, both charters and vouchers.

She begins:

“It would be easy to write the story of Wisconsin’s current union landscape as a tragedy. In this version of events, the bomb that Governor Scott Walker and his allies dropped on the state’s public sector unions has worked just as intended: The ranks of the unions have thinned; their coffers are depleted; their influence over the state and its legislative priorities has been reduced to where, in 2017, the state teachers’ union no longer employed a lobbyist at the statehouse.

“All of this is true.

“But there is another, more hopeful story to be told about Wisconsin, seven years after Walker officially kicked off his war on labor. It involves parents and teachers and local grassroots activists coming together to fight for the public schools in their communities. While Walker and the Republicans who control Wisconsin’s legislature got their way in 2011, there is a robust ongoing debate, throughout the state, about the role of public education and who should pay for it.

“Just as in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Colorado, states roiled by teacher and parent uprisings this spring, school funding has emerged as a flashpoint in Wisconsin. In the place where the modern era of scorched-earth-style state politics began, local activism around public education may just transform Wisconsin’s political culture.”

She identifies groups that are working in a nonpartisan way to increase school funding, to offset the dramatic tax cuts that ravaged their public schools.

State leadership has a simple ethos: “Privatize everything.”

By contrast, parents and teachers are mobilizing to keep their schools funded.

“Today, the Wisconsin Public Education Network is at the forefront of a statewide effort to support Wisconsin’s public schools and the 860,000 students who attend them. DuBois Bourenane and a small army of parents, teachers, school officials, and ordinary citizens are shining a relentless spotlight on the $2 billion in cuts made to the schools here by Walker and the GOP-led legislature, and demanding a fix to Wisconsin’s deeply inequitable school funding system.”

She identifies other groups that have formed to defend students and public schools.

One of the biggest drains on the state education budget is vouchers. Advocates have pushed the idea of breaking out the costs of vouchers so taxpayers can see clearly what vouchers cost them. In Milwaukee alone, where 32,000 students use vouchers, the cost was $269 Million in the last year alone. (Voucher students do not get better results than those in public schools).

Ironically, Gov. Walker is running again as “the education governor,” despite the fact that school funding is less now than a decade ago.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Milwaukee, Privatization, School Choice, Unions, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Politico: Brett Kavanaugh on Education Issues

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2018 //
14

The signs and portents on Trump’s Choice for the Supreme Court are not good.

Politico reports:

WHAT KAVANAUGH MEANS FOR EDUCATION: D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, has considered some of the most contentious issues in education throughout his lengthy legal career. He’s written on school prayer, the separation of church and state, and affirmative action.

— Kavanaugh highlighted his connection to education during his speech Monday night, describing himself as a teacher’s son who tutors area children. He talked about his mother. “In the 1960s and ’70s, she taught history at two largely African-American public high schools in Washington, D.C., McKinley Tech and H.D. Woodson,” he said. “Her example taught me the importance of equality for all Americans.”

— Kavanaugh has tutored at Washington Jesuit Academy, where he sits on the board of directors, and at J.O. Wilson Elementary School, according to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals website. He went to high school at Georgetown Prep — which Justice Neil Gorsuch also attended — and is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.

— Here’s a breakdown of Kavanaugh’s education record, dug up by Pro’s Michael Stratford:

— School prayer and religious freedom: Kavanaugh wrote an amicus brief in December 1999 in favor of a Texas high school’s policy allowing the use of a public address system for student-led and student-initiated prayers at school football games. The amicus brief, on behalf of Oklahoma Republican Reps. Steve Largent and J.C. Watts, argued that the policy passed constitutional muster — an argument the Supreme Court rejected. In a 6-3 ruling, the court declared the school policy allowing prayer unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

— Affirmative action: Kavanaugh in 1999 co-wrote an amicus brief on behalf of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a group that opposes race-based affirmative action in college admissions. The brief argued that a Hawaii law allowing only Native Hawaiians to vote in elections for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was unconstitutional in prohibiting people from voting because of their race. (The Supreme Court agreed with that argument in a 7-2 decision.) When asked about the brief and its implications for affirmative action in 2004 as part of his confirmation for the D.C. Circuit Court, Kavanaugh said: “The Supreme Court has decided many cases on affirmative action programs and, if confirmed, I would faithfully follow those precedents.”

— School choice: Kavanaugh said during his 2004 Senate confirmation hearing that he had previously served as the co-chairman of the Federalist Society’s “School Choice Practice Group.” Kavanaugh also said, in response to written questions, that he had “worked on school choice litigation in Florida for a reduced fee.” He didn’t provide additional details about that matter. On private school choice, Kavanaugh predicted in a TV appearance in 2000 that school vouchers would one day be upheld by the Supreme Court.

— CFBP: Kavanaugh in a October 2016 opinion declared the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unconstitutional. The CFPB, which was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, pursued high-profile cases against for-profit colleges and student loan companies, during the Obama administration. Kavanaugh’s opinion said that Congress had wrongly placed “enormous executive power” in the CFPB’s single director. Supporters of the CFPB accused Kavanaugh of acting as a partisan activist, and the constitutionality of the CFPB’s structure was later upheld.

— Opponents of Kavanaugh’s nomination are already mounting their case. Civil rights groups and teachers unions were quick to blast the nominee within minutes of Trump’s announcement. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights decried him as “a direct threat to our civil and human rights,” adding that “he has consistently ruled for the wealthy and powerful.”

— National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García said Kavanaugh will be a “rubber stamp” for the agenda of Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, including on school choice issues like vouchers. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said that a Supreme Court nominee “should be fair, independent and committed to protecting the rights, freedoms and legal safeguards that protect every one of us. Judge Kavanaugh does not meet this standard.”

Categories Education Reform, School Choice, Vouchers

Arizona: Why You Should Vote NO on Prop. 305! No Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2018 //
0

Save Our Schools Arizona is a group founded by public school parents to fight the expansion of vouchers.

Prop 305 is a referendum that will appear on the state ballot in November. It calls for the universal expansion of vouchers so that all students can use public money to attend private and religious schools with taxpayers’ dollars.

Parents are fighting this. They fought the Koch brothers in court to get this referendum on the ballot.

This video explains what the issues are and why you should vote NO to support public schools, the schools that belong to everyone.

Voucher schools are not transparent and not accountable. Every dollar that goes to an ESA is taken away from public schools.

Vote NO!

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Koch Brothers, Support for public schools, Vouchers
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