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Michael R. Ford: 41% of Voucher Schools in Milwaukee Have Closed Since the Start of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2016 //
9

Michael R. Ford, a professor of public administration at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, reports that 41% of private schools that received vouchers have closed their doors since the inception of the voucher program. Milwaukee has the nation’s oldest voucher program, and anyone looking for the miracle of school choice should look elsewhere. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Milwaukee continues to be one of the nation’s lowest performing urban districts. Milwaukee has had charters and vouchers for 25 years–two generations of students. If charters and vouchers were the answer to the problems of students and schools in urban districts, Milwaukee should be a shining star of student success. It is not.

Ford writes:

Forty-one percent of all private schools that participated in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) between 1991 and 2015 failed. I do not mean failed as in they did not deliver academically, I mean failed as in they no longer exist. These 102 schools either closed after having their voucher revenue cut off by the Department of Public Instruction, or simply shut their doors. The failure rate for entrepreneurial start-up schools is even worse: 67.8 percent.

Fredrik Andersson and I discuss these data in a new article just published online in Policy Studies Journal entitled “Determinants of Organizational Failure in the Milwaukee School Voucher Program.” We frame the article in the context of public and educational entrepreneurship “with the goal of explaining the factors that put voucher schools specifically, and public entrepreneurial public polices in general, at greater failure risk.” The Milwaukee voucher case is particularly fertile ground for this line of inquiry due its long history, organizational churn, and relevance as the birthplace of the modern school voucher movement.

We test several hypotheses using a survival model and find:

Start-up voucher schools have a much higher failure rate. It takes almost ten years for a new voucher school to lower its failure risk to that of previously existing schools;

When new MPCP schools fail they tend to fail quickly, on average just 4.3 years into program participation;

Schools without a religious affiliation are more likely to fail;

Stricter program regulations led to more failure; and

Schools can reduce their failure risk by gaining market-share.

Read his research article for the full findings.

Categories Education Reform, Failure, Milwaukee, Vouchers

Jay Greene: Do Higher Test Scores Predict Better Life Outcomes?

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2016 //
112

Jay Greene, chairman of the Department of Educational Reform at the University of Arkansas, reaches a startling conclusion: Higher test do not necessarily translate into higher graduation rates or other life outcomes that matter.

This post pretty much blows away the rationale for corporate reform. How many times did we hear from Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Wendy Kopp, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, and other “reform” leaders that charter schools get higher test scores than public schools? How many times have we heard from the Friedman Foundation and other cheerleaders for vouchers that vouchers are the key to higher test scores? But what if the higher test scores do not translate into better outcomes for students? What if Jay Greene is right? Perhaps the goal of schooling should be to teach a well-rounded education, character, and citizenship? Test scores don’t measure that.

This is one of the most important posts I have read in a very long time. I encourage you to read it.

Greene writes:

I’ve written several times recently about how short term gains in test scores are not associated with improved later life outcomes for students. Schools and programs that increase test score quite often do not yield higher high school graduation or college attendance rates. Conversely, schools and programs that fail to produce greater gains in test scores sometimes produce impressive improvements in high school graduation and college attendance rates, college completion rates, and even higher employment and earnings. I’ve described at least 8 studies that show a disconnect between raising test scores and stronger later life outcomes.

Well, now we have a 9th. Earlier this month MDRC quietly released a long-term randomized experiment of the effects of the SEED boarding charter school in Washington, DC. Because SEED is a boarding school, there was a lot of hope among reformers that it might be able to make a more profound difference for very disadvantaged students by having significantly more time to influence students and structure their lives. Of course, boarding schools also cost significantly more — in this case roughly twice as much as traditional non-residential schools.

While the initial test score results are very encouraging, the later life outcomes are disappointing. After two years students admitted to SEED by lottery outperformed those denied admission by lottery by 33% of a standard deviation in math and 23% in reading. If we judged the quality of schools entirely based on short term changes in test scores, as many reformers would like to do, we’d say this school was doing a great job.

In fact, SEED may be doing a great job in a variety of ways, but when we look at longer term outcomes for students on a variety of measures the evidence demonstrating SEED’s success disappears or even turns negative. Of the students accepted by lottery to SEED 69.3% graduate from high school after four years compared to 74.1% for the control group, a difference that is not statistically significant. And when asked about their likelihood of attending college, there was no significant difference between the two groups. SEED students also score significantly higher on a measure of engaging in risky behavior and lower on the grit scale….

If we think we can know which schools of choice are good and ought to be expanded and which are bad and ought to be closed based primarily on annual test score gains, we are sadly mistaken. Various portfolio management and “accountability” regimes depend almost entirely on this false belief that test scores reveal which are the good and bad schools. The evidence is growing quite strong that these strategies cannot properly distinguish good from bad schools and may be inflicting great harm on students. Given the disconnect between test scores and later life outcomes we need significantly greater humility about knowing which schools are succeeding.

The last time I checked (when reviewing “Waiting for ‘Superman'” in 2010, the cost of a SEED education was $35,000 per child; it is probably more now.

Be sure to open the link to read the full post, which is very informative.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Peter Greene on Jeb Bush’s Stale Vision to Disrupt, Privatize, and Monetize Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2016 //
21

Jeb is back, writes Peter Greene, with the same old snake oil. Having lost the GOP presidential nomination, he has returned to his favorite song: Public education is failing, and we (the reformers) need to disrupt it, monetize it, privatize it, and sell lots of technology to it.

As Peter shows, there is nothing new in what he has on offer. The same overworked and faulty statistics about massive educational failure (we would now be a fourth world nation if any of this baloney were true). The same claims about the wonders of technology. The same empty claims for privatization and profiteering. Merit pay. No unions. Test scores as the be-all and end-all of education.

Peter writes:

Jeb loves him some vouchers. In his perfect future, the money will follow the child. I always think this is a bold choice for a nominal conservative politician, since it is literally taxation without representation– taxpayers who don’t have kids get to pay for schools, but they have no voice in what kind of schools they get. And if the money follows the kid, why can’t the kid just have a big party?

But I have to take my hat off to somebody who still believes in vouchers. It’s the kind of devotion you usually find only in members of the Flat Earth Society, an adherence to a long-debunked belief that doesn’t have a speck of evidence to support it.

Float Free as a Bird

But why have a school at all, says Bush. Why not just get your AP Calculus from this on-line provider, and get your English from some other provider. Watch for the Amazon.com of homeschooling. Let students move through coursework at their own personal speed. Assess student mastery of skills through the year, and never social promote. Yes, we’ll have Competency Based Education, but we’ll call it something else.

Jeb’s answer to everything: get rid of public education.

Jeb Bush is the Ivan Illich of the right.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Online Learning, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Mark Dynarski Explains Why Two Voucher Studies Reached Opposite Conclusions

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2016 //
8

I recently posted a link to a Brookings Brief by Mark Dynarski, which warned that vouchers had not been successful in two states, Louisiana and Indiana. About the same time, the University of Arkansas released a research review that lauded vouchers. Although I did not know Dynarski, I contacted him and asked if he would explain the discrepancy for the readers of the blog. He graciously agreed.

He wrote:

In a recent article for Brookings, I highlighted recent research on vouchers to attend private schools that had found negative effects on student achievement. The same day, May 26, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial pointing to positive effects of school vouchers on student achievement, citing a review of studies published by researchers at the University of Arkansas. You asked if I could help readers understand the discrepancy.

In its reading of the University of Arkansas review, the Wall Street Journal included the review’s findings for voucher programs that operated in the US and programs that operated in Colombia and India. The largest positive effects of vouchers were from the program in Colombia. Education systems are quite different in other countries, however, and findings from Colombia and India have little relevance to debates about vouchers in the US today. If we ask about voucher programs that have operated in the US, the review reports that average effects of those programs is about zero.

The Louisiana and Indiana programs I focused on operated statewide. The negative effects reported for these programs could be a result of private schools being compared to higher-quality public schools in suburban and rural areas. Earlier voucher programs that reported positive results often operated in single cities—Milwaukee, New York City, Dayton, DC—which means studies of them essentially are comparing private schools only to urban public schools.

The Louisiana and Indiana programs also are recent, and my piece notes another possible explanation for their negative effects. Public schools have been under pressure for the last fifteen years to improve student achievement, which may have caused them to up their game. Recent research I cited concluded that public schools have substantially caught up with private schools. The National Assessment of Education Progress reports that private schools still have higher test scores than public schools, but those score differences could arise because of differences between private school students and public school students. The research approaches used in the Louisiana and Indiana studies allow for ‘apples to apples’ comparisons. Essentially the same students are compared in public and private schools and the test-score results favor public schools.

Vouchers will continue to be an important topic for discussion and debate, and we need to be open to new evidence and let our understanding of the world and of education be affected by it. I emphasized in my piece that our historical understanding that private schools perform better than public schools may be flawed. The University of Arkansas review is valuable for synthesizing a large amount of research on vouchers since the nineties into quantitative findings. The recent studies in Louisiana and Indiana are valuable for asking what the effects of vouchers might be today if a state were to begin a program or continue one. That the findings are negative means policymakers should proceed with caution—the relative positions of public and private schools may have changed.

I hope the discussion is useful for your readers, who rightly might feel a sense of whiplash from having different findings about vouchers released on the same day.

Kind regards,

Mark

http://www.brookings.edu/experts/dynarskim?view=bio

Categories Education Reform, Indiana, Louisiana, Research, Vouchers

Indiana: Re-Elect Glenda Ritz

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
0

Since radical extremists took control of state government in Indiana, the governor and legislators have been on an absurd mission to destroy public education, to drain resources from public schools and give it to charter operators and religious schools, and to ruin the teaching profession.

 

One person has stood in their way: Glenda Ritz, the only statewide elected official who is a Democrat. She has fought to stop the madness, and the governor and legislature have tried to strip all power from her office.

 

She has fought hard to protect public education and educators.

 

Glenda has been endorsed by the Network for Public Education Action Fund.

 

I happily endorse Glenda Ritz for re-election as State Superintendent of Public Schools.

 

Here te is the back-story, along with information about how you can help Glenda win.

 

 

“In 2012, grassroots public education groups all over Indiana worked together to defeat education “reformer” Tony Bennett and to elect Glenda Ritz, who ran on a platform of “more time for teaching, less time for testing.”

 

 

“Unfortunately, with the election of Mike Pence as Governor, the political agenda for Indiana schools that Governor Mitch Daniels and Superintendent Bennett started is still in effect. After the election, Pence told a reporter that he would move forward with Tony Bennett’s reform agenda anyway despite the overwhelming vote for Ritz. Since that time, he launched a duplicate education agency to take powers away from her office, he tried to make her position appointed instead of elected, and he signed a law removing her as chair of the State Board of Education.

 

 

“Despite all of this obstruction, Superintendent Ritz has succeeded in moving forward with her education agenda for Indiana schools. She launched a grassroots “Division of Outreach” that hired coordinators all over the state to serve as a direct liaison between the Department of Education and the schools. She worked across party lines to bring an end to the statewide high-stakes, lengthy ISTEP exam and is now serving on a panel to design a test that will inform student growth. And she launched a statewide family literacy program to encourage more time for reading.

 
“Superintendent Ritz oversees the Indiana Department of Education, the only state agency that Governor Pence doesn’t control, so he is going to do everything in his power to make her a one-term superintendent. The Friedman Foundation has been polling on this race, and “Hoosiers for Quality Education,” affiliated with the American Federation for Children, donated $10,000 to Tony Bennett’s handpicked candidate running against Superintendent Ritz.
Superintendent Glenda Ritz needs our help. Please donate $25, $50, or $100 today at http://www.glendaritz.com/donate. Additionally, you can sign up at http://www.glendaritz.com to receive campaign notifications, to volunteer and to spread the message about her student-centered campaign.

 

 

“Together, we can prove once AGAIN that grassroots support from public education advocates can beat corporate money from special interest groups who want to put another Tony Bennett in office.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Indiana, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2016 //
38

The Network for Public Education Action Fund has drafted a proposal for consideration by the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee.

We call for the elimination of federal mandates for annual testing; for a declaration of support for public schools; for a ban on for-profit charters; for regulation of charters that receive federal funds to assure that they serve the same children as the public schools; for revision and strengthening of the FERPA privacy laws to protect our children’s data from commercial data mining; for full funding of special education; for support of early childhood education; and for other means of improving the federal role in education.

The proposal is in draft form. We will be making revisions. If you see something you think needs fixing, let us know.

Please read our draft proposal. And if you agree, add your name of our petition to the Democratic party. We plan to make the same appeal to the Republican party.

Both parties, we hope, will support the public schools, which educate nearly 90% of the nation’s children. Public schools are a bedrock of our society, in the past, now, and in the future.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, NPE Action Fund, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Brookings Study: Voucher Students in Louisiana and Indiana Perform Worse than Peers in Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2016 //
23

Mark Dynarski of the Brookings Institution has published a research review in which he concluded that public schools definitely have the advantage over private schools that receive vouchers. This is especially good news because rightwing ideologues continue to argue the (non-existent) benefits of vouchers, and because Brookings had become an advocacy platform for school choice since the appointment of George W. Bush’s education research director, Grover Whitehurst to run its education center  (Whitehurst no longer runs the Brown center program at Brookings).

 

Here is the executive summary. Open the link to read the full study.

 

 

Recent research on statewide voucher programs in Louisiana and Indiana has found that public school students that received vouchers to attend private schools subsequently scored lower on reading and math tests compared to similar students that remained in public schools. The magnitudes of the negative impacts were large. These studies used rigorous research designs that allow for strong causal conclusions. And they showed that the results were not explained by the particular tests that were used or the possibility that students receiving vouchers transferred out of above-average public schools.

 

 

Another explanation is that our historical understanding of the superior performance of private schools is no longer accurate. Since the nineties, public schools have been under heavy pressure to improve test scores. Private schools were exempt from these accountability requirements. A recent study showed that public schools closed the score gap with private schools. That study did not look specifically at Louisiana and Indiana, but trends in scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress for public school students in those states are similar to national trends.

 

 

In education as in medicine, ‘first, do no harm’ is a powerful guiding principle. A case to use taxpayer funds to send children of low-income parents to private schools is based on an expectation that the outcome will be positive. These recent findings point in the other direction. More needs to be known about long-term outcomes from these recently implemented voucher programs to make the case that they are a good investment of public funds. As well, we need to know if private schools would up their game in a scenario in which their performance with voucher students is reported publicly and subject to both regulatory and market accountability.

 

 

Categories Research, School Choice, Vouchers

Laura Chapman on the Gospel of Milton Friedman

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2016 //
37

Lara Chapman has written a valuable analysis of the religious, libertarian case for school vouchers. Thank you, Laura, for doing this prodigious research for the benefit of everyone else.

 

Laura writes:

 

 

“Long post. The author of the Friedman Foundations for Educational Choice “research,” Dr. Greg Forster ends his report–titled “A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence On School Choice, Fourth Edition–with the following:
.
“Ultimately, the only way to make school reform work on a large scale is to break the government monopoly on schooling. The monopoly is not just one powerful obstacle to reform among many; it is what makes all the many obstacles as powerful as they are. The monopoly ensures that no meaningful accountability for performance can occur, except in rare cases as a result of Herculean efforts. The monopoly empowers a dense cluster of rapacious special interests resisting efforts to improve schools.

 

“Worst of all, the monopoly pushes out educational entrepreneurs who can reinvent schools from the ground up. Only a thriving marketplace that allows entrepreneurs to get the support they need by serving their clients better can produce sustainable innovation.
In any field of human endeavor—whether education, medicine, politics, art, religion, manufacturing, or anything else—entrepreneurs who want to strike out in new directions and do things radically differently need a client base.
….
“School choice has the potential to solve this problem by providing enough families (size) with enough dollars (strength) and enough choice (suffrage) to support educational entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, existing school choice programs fall short on all three dimensions. Only universal choice can open the door to the full-fledged revolution in schooling America needs in the new century. “ p. 36

 

 

“The author is preaching the gospel of the Friedman Foundation, but also a bit more. The author is a devoted believer in “universal choice,” evidently so religious schools can flourish and be tax-subsidized.

 

“I reach this conclusion from Forster’s discussion linking charters school programs to civic virtues and to religious values (pp. 30-31), and to his faculty position at Trinity International University a regionally accredited school operated by the Evangelical Free Church of America, headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois. His main job there seems to be serving as the director of the Oikonomia Network at the Center for Transformational Churches.

 

“The Oikonomia Network includes over 100 “theological educators theological educators and 18 evangelical seminaries” initially funded by the Kern Family Foundation. The network operations include a newsletter, website, network-wide events and “content creation.” The content creation includes “Theology that Works,” a paper written by Greg Forster that explains “how theology as a discipline can be in fruitful dialogue with the world of economic disciplines and activities.” More here. http://oikonomianetwork.org/economic-wisdom-project/

 

“Forster also has a faculty post at Acton University, where his bio says that he “has a Ph.D. with distinction in political philosophy from Yale University. He is the author of six books, most recently Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It.” http://university.acton.org/faculty/dr-greg-forsterhttp://oikonomianetwork.org/about/

 

“Acton University’s website opens with a display of one reason to sign up:

 

“Faith & Free Market Economics.”
“Acton University is an opportunity to deepen your knowledge and integrate philosophy, theology, business, development – with sound, market based, economics. “

 

“Acton University seems to be a holding company for lecturers who offer on-line courses and also appear in scheduled face-to-face sessions for people who pay fees to participate in four days of lecture-filled conferencing. A full list of “course lectures ” is here. http://university.acton.org/2016courses The lectures are available for purchase at http://shop.acton.org/acton-university-2010-to-2013-lecture-bundle.html

 

“The Win-Win report from political philosopher Greg Forster is written as if it is a comprehensive meta-analysis of credible empirical studies that offer irrefutable conclusions. The report is not that, but the casual reader looking for all of the charter school positives will be drawn to the pretense of scholarship and miss all of the wobbles and switcheroo’s between Forster’s criteria for the inclusion/exclusion of studies and his inferences based on these studies.

 

“The author’s identification of charters with religious values reminded me that Education Next surveys, conducted since 2007, have questions designed to provide marketing insights about the connections between a preference for charters and race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, political alliance, and much else.

 

“Here are the questions in the EdNext 2008 questions under the category of Religion, which mapped responses for people who said they were “born again” offering comparisons with responses from Public School Teachers, African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites. (I found no copyright on any of the Surveys)

 

“24. Do you think the public schools in your community generally promote the values that you think are most important, or do you think that the values emphasized at school often come into conflict with your own?

 

“25. In some public school districts, parents have requested that some time in each day be set aside for silent prayer and reflection. What do you think about this proposal?

 

“26. (Each respondent was randomly assigned to one of the following five questions):
“26A. How would you feel about a group of religious students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
“26B. How would you feel about a group of Mormon students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
“26C. How would you feel about a group of Muslim students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
26D. How would you feel about a group of atheist students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
“26E. How would you feel about a group of Evangelical students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?

 

 

“The 2014 and 2015 surveys had three (and ONLY three) questions about the respondents’ background.

 

“32. Apart from weddings and funerals, how often would you say that you attend religious services?

 

“33. Would you say that you have been born again or have had a born-again experience — that is, a turning point in your life when you committed yourself to Jesus Christ?

 

“34. Are you a member of a union or an employee association similar to a union? http://educationnext.org/files/2014ednextpoll.pdf

 

“The Education Next surveys are produced by Knowledge Networks, which specializes in “market research services, including survey design, information analysis, and data collection to produce syndicated reports and custom market research for a variety of FORTUNE 500 companies. Specializing in consumer research, it offers clients insight in such areas as advertising effectiveness, product development, segmentation, and media planning. Founded by Stanford researchers Douglas Rivers and Norman Nie in 1998, Knowledge Networks was acquired by global market research firm GfK in January 2012. “http://www.google.com/finance?cid=11462635

 

“About a week ago, (May 13, 2016) Peter Cunningham, whose Education Post has a partnership with the 74Million propaganda machine, cited an Education Next poll in a rant about needing to protect students from a bloated educational bureaucracy in Los Angeles.

Cunningham: Does LAUSD Want to Protect Children or a Bloated Bureaucracy?

 

“The Education Next surveys, like Greg Forster’s work parading as research, are designed and hyped to deliver propaganda and with a clear intent to tap veins of race-based and religious and ethnic prejudices. These are enlisted to rant against public schools, teachers, their unions, their salaries, the curriculum, and more. It is no accident that the Forster “study” has 14 reference citations from Education Next, and 50 others recycled from the Friedman Foundation.”

Categories Education Reform, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

Nevada: Judge Upholds Voucher Plan, Even Though State Constitution Bans Funding Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2016 //
33

Here is an exercise in creative and highly political decision making from the bench.

 

District Judge Eric Johnson upheld the state’s voucher plan and ruled that it does not violate the state constitution.

 

In an order dismissing a lawsuit challenging the legislation, District Judge Eric Johnson upheld the constitutionality of Senate Bill 302 as a program “neutral with respect to religion” because parents — not state actors — decide whether they will use an education savings account, or ESA, to pay for tuition at private and religiously affiliated schools.

 

Johnson also ruled a provision in the Nevada Constitution that charges state lawmakers with encouraging education “by all suitable means” permits the ESA program in addition to the public school system.

 

SB 302, passed in the 2015 Nevada Legislature, offers parents about $5,100 in per-pupil state funds to spend on private school tuition, home school expenses and other educational services if they pull their children out of a public school.

 

“The state has no influence or control over how any parent makes his or her genuine and independent choice to spend his or her ESA funds,” Johnson wrote in his decision.

 

“Parents, if they choose to use the ESA program, must expend the ESA funds for secular education goods and services, even if they choose to obtain those services from religion affiliated schools,” he added.

 

His ruling does not guarantee parents immediate access to the ESA program because a Carson City judge in January issued an injunction against its implementation in a separate case challenging SB 302.

 

Most of the money allocated to the Education Savings Account program will be spent in religious schools. But, not to worry, the instruction in religious schools will be secular, not sectarian. Got it?

 

Let’s see what the Nevada state constitution says.

 

Article 11 of the Nevada constitution declares:

 

Sec: 9.  Sectarian instruction prohibited in common schools and university.  No sectarian instruction shall be imparted or tolerated in any school or University that may be established under this Constitution.

 

Section Ten.  No public money to be used for sectarian purposes.  No public funds of any kind or character whatever, State, County or Municipal, shall be used for sectarian purpose.
[Added in 1880. Proposed and passed by the 1877 legislature; agreed to and passed by the 1879 legislature; and approved and ratified by the people at the 1880 general election. See: Statutes of Nevada 1877, p. 221; Statutes of Nevada 1879, p. 149.]

 

Do you see any ambiguity here? Do you see a constitutional clause that is permissive? Is the phrase “No public money to be used for sectarian purposes” ambiguous?

 

You be the judge.

 

 

 

Categories Nevada, Vouchers

The Latest News from the Privatization Sector

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2016 //
18

Politico reports on the latest news from school choice advocates:

 

 

 

STUDIES OF SCHOOL CHOICE: Two advocacy groups are out with papers today expounding on the benefits of school choice. The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice says in its effort that more than a dozen empirical studies have found that school choice improves student outcomes. And nine out of 10 studies say school choice can improve racial segregation, moving students from more segregated schools into less segregated ones. The report: http://bit.ly/1TiRZzn. The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council is introducing three tools – peer reviews, branding and consumer reports – that parents can use to optimize education savings accounts. The paper: http://bit.ly/1TeOVcP.

 

 

Don’t expect to learn from either the Friedman Foundation (so-named for libertarian economist Milton Friedman, a voucher advocate) or ALEC (the far-right corporate-funded group that promotes deregulation of every government function) to say anything about Milwaukee. Milwaukee has had vouchers and charters for 25 years. There is no evidence that the children of Milwaukee have benefited by their choices. Despite the failure of choice to improve education, Governor Scott Walker wants to expand school choice and eliminate public schools altogether. The irony is that the students in public schools repeatedly have outperformed the students in choice schools, even though the public schools have a disproportionate share of students with disabilities and others that are not chosen by the choice schools. Chances are that Walker and the legislature will keep some public schools to use as a dumping ground for the students unwanted by the charters and voucher schools.

 

 

– On a related note: The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation named the finalists for the 2016 Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools today: Success Academy in New York and IDEA Public Schools and YES Prep Public Schools in Texas. The $250,000 award will be given to the best-performing charter management organization on June 27 at the National Charter Schools Conference in Nashville, Tenn.

 

 

Isn’t that great news? I am rooting for Eva and Success Academy charters. If she wins, she can use the money to buy a four-year supply of beanies or T-shirts for future political rallies. The $250,000 won’t be enough to pay for both. Or she can hire a private investigator to track down the high-level official inside her organization who leaked important documents to the media, including the internal report that alleged cheating, teacher churn, and central staff turnover.

 

The spending included $71,900 for the beanies and $62,795 for the T-shirts, according to receipts submitted to Success’s board of directors.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Harlem Success Academy, Milwaukee, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers, Walker, Scott
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