Carol Burris interviewed teachers, students and administrators about their experiences returning to school. As you might expect, she encountered a range of reactions.
The Network for Public Education is following 37 districts in New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut that reopened — either hybrid or full time. Of the 23 districts that responded to our inquiry regarding remote learners, the average rate of students who opted to not attend in person was 21 percent. Percentages ranged from 6 percent of the school population to 50 percent. Larger percentages of students of color are associated with higher remote rates.
Superintendent Joe Roy said he has been carefully examining patterns among the 25 percent of students whose families chose remote learning in his district in Bethlehem, Pa. For the most part, they are students from affluent families who have academic supports for learning at home, or conversely, are from the least affluent homes. The families of his district’s students of color, many of whom work in local warehouses, were hit harder by the pandemic and, therefore, are more reticent to send their children back to school. Roy’s neighboring district, Allentown, where 86 percent of the students are Black or Latinx, decided to go all virtual after a parent survey showed a majority were not ready for in-person learning.
One middle school teacher with whom I spoke, who requested anonymity, said he hopes that the schools open soon. Technology for remote learning has been an issue he told me — from hardware to poor connections. “We are losing kids,” he said. “Our kindergarten enrollment is much lower than it has been in previous years. Of a class of 19, maybe 17 of my students log on to my early morning class. When I meet them later in the day, 12 or fewer show up. A 6½-hour day on Zoom is brutal. Some are keeping their cameras off, and others don’t respond. Many of my students can’t work independently.”
The challenges of in-person learning
Over half of the 37 districts we are following now bring some or all students back full time. Those schools that are using hybrid typically split students into two small cohorts that share the same teacher. Some bring those cohorts back three days one week and two days the following week. Others bring the cohorts back only two days a week — on consecutive days or staggered days with a fifth day when all stay home.
Although those I spoke with are glad to be back, school is certainly not the same as before the pandemic.
My youngest grandchildren returned to in-person school for only two days last week, and they were ecstatic. The schools did everything that was required—masks, social distancing, hand washing. Who knew that children loved school so much?
A new reader to the blog posted her own recipe to describe “reform,” which has an unfortunate habit of failing again and again but being revived by Betsy DeVos and/or Bill Gates and the Walton Family:
Sandy Dixon Forrest Recipe for sucking in public tax money and making obscene profits on the backs of public school teachers and students: FINANCE inappropriate “standards” to be implemented by all teachers, REQUIRE the use of products which financially benefit the creator of the “goals,” SMILE as hired “cheerleaders” tout the benefits of the mandated program, BEAM proudly as profits roll into the companies producing the “magic” solution, CRINGE privately at dismal results, REWRITE the “cheerleader” script, AND THEN…drum roll, please.. BLAME the teachers for disappointing results of the non-educators’ (but obscenely wealthy) magic elixir to cure the problems of all public school students. RESULTS?! The sponsors of this hoax made buckets of money! Wave goodbye to the career teachers; TFA folks are cheaper and more (desperate) cooperative anyway. Don’t worry about the kiddos; just give them a double dose of grit. It’s all good…right?
David R. Taylor is a veteran teacher and blogger. He asks the important question of what to expect the consequences to be for public education if Trump is re-elected.
Very likely, it means four more years of Betsy DeVos and her crusade to destroy public education and shower federal money on charter schools, private schools, and religious schools.
Taylor reviews some of her worst actions, such as favoring predatory lenders and favoring for-profit colleges that rip off students. Such as, abandoning the kids who need her most by downplaying civil rights complaints and stripping transgender students of any protections. Such as, trying to starve her own department of funding.
Between the return of DeVos and a voucher-loving majority on the Supreme Court, public schools are in for a rough ride. We can’t change the composition of the Supreme Court (unless there is a genuine effort to expand it and add balance), but we can vote to make sure Betsy goes back to Michigan and her ten yachts.
Journalist Tim Schwab has been keeping a close watch on Bill Gates and his efforts to buy favorable media coverage. Now, he examines Gates’ very successful moves to enrich himself during the pandemic. Meanwhile, Bill and Melinda continue to receive laudatory treatment by the media that they underwrite, as if they are experts on everything from the pandemic to education. No mainstream journal has given any coverage–to my knowledge–of Gates’ serial failures to improve education, in which he uses teachers and students as guinea pigs for his theories.
Schwab writes in The Nation (which Gates does not subsidize):
In the early days of the pandemic, President Trump made headlineswhen he reportedly tried to secure rights to a vaccine from German developer CureVac on behalf of the US government—a move that stirred questions about equity and justice. Should the United States get priority access to the Covid vaccine just because we are the world’s wealthiest nation? Shouldn’t the most vulnerable—no matter their nationality or salary—get vaccinated first?
Had Trump succeeded, the deal might also have sent another stark message about economic inequality—delivering a financial windfall to one of the most moneyed players in the pandemic response: the Gates Foundation.
The foundation recently reported a $40 million stake in CureVac—one of dozens of investments the foundation reports having in companies working on Covid vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics or manufacturing, according to The Nation’s analysis of the foundation’s most recent tax return, web site, and various SEC filings. The foundation has also announced that it will “leverage a portion of its $2.5 billion Strategic Investment Fund” to advance its work on Covid.
These investments, amounting to more than $250 million, show that the world’s most visible charity, and one of the world’s most influential voices in the pandemic response, is in a position to potentially reap considerable financial gains from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Select Sub-Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis (House of Representatives) released a devastating report on the Trump administration’s efforts to hide the seriousness of the pandemic from the public.
Self-help guru Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 book, “The Power of Positive Thinking,” influenced Donald Trump’s worldview more than anything else he ever read, according to biographers. “Stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding,” Peale wrote. “Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade.” The book includes chapters with titles like “Expect the Best and Get It” and “I Don’t Believe in Defeat.” Peale, who was also a favorite of the president’s father, even officiated the first of Trump’s three weddings.
The Trump presidency has presented scores of painful lessons on the limitations of the power of positive thinking. Climate change continues to make fires, floods and hurricanes worse, even if Trump denies it and his political appointees seek to erase mentions of it from government reports. Russia interfered in the 2016 election and the intelligence community agrees the Kremlin is trying once again to influence the 2020 campaign, but Trump struggles to accept that reality because, current and former aides say, he believes that acknowledging the Kremlin’s support for his campaign would undermine his legitimacy. And so on.
But nothing captures the hubris of trying to spin the primal forces of nature into submission more than the president’s response to the novel coronavirus.
Trump said in January that the coronavirus was “totally under control” and that there would be only a few U.S. cases before the number would “go down to zero.” On Feb. 28, Trump said: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” In March, Trump said people would be able to celebrate vanquishing the coronavirus by going to church on Easter.
That was more than six months ago. Trump downplayed the dangers of the contagion not just at the country’s peril – but his own. Watching these clips with the benefit of hindsight makes the president sound like Baghdad Bob as U.S. forces closed in on the Iraqi capital in March 2003.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany became the latest member of Trump’s inner circle to test positive. She announced in a statement on Monday that she has no symptoms and will continue to work – but from home.
Apparently, denialism can be infectious, as well. The White House’s lead physician, Sean Conley, acknowledged at a news conference on Sunday that he intentionally withheld information about Trump’s blood-oxygen levels plummeting in order to put a positive spin on the president’s condition. “I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, that his course of illness, has had,” Conley said. “I didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction. And in doing so, you know, it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true.”
A virus does not care what a doctor says at a news conference. White House communications director Alyssa Farah told reporters that Conley was trying to project positive for Trump’s sake during his public remarks on Saturday. “When you’re treating a patient, you want to project confidence, you want to lift their spirits, and that was the intent,” she said.
Positive thinking has certainly gotten Trump far in life, and it can be very helpful for a patient fighting a disease. Everyone wishes the president well and hopes he recovers as speedily as possible and with no long-term damage. But Conley was not speaking to Trump during his Saturday news conference. He was addressing the American people.
Since being hospitalized on Friday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, the president has been treated with the steroid dexamethasone, the antiviral drug remdesivir and a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies that has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Outside doctors think Trump may be the first coronavirus patient ever given all three of these strong treatments simultaneously, along with a handful of supplements and over-the-counter drugs. Medical experts we checked with called it a kitchen-sink approach that suggests the president is in worse shape than the White House is claiming.
Trump, who ostensibly remains highly contagious, appears to still be in denial about the risks he poses to others by trying to return to the White House before doctors would advise him to do so – and by going for a ride in his motorcade at Walter Reed on Sunday afternoon to see well-wishers outside the gates. Current and former Secret Service agents and medical professionals were aghast about Trump’s car ride outside the hospital, saying the president endangered those inside his SUV for a publicity stunt, Josh Dawsey, Carol Leonnig and Hannah Knowles report. “As the backlash grew, multiple aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations also called Trump’s evening outing an unnecessary risk — but said it was not surprising. Trump had said he was bored in the hospital, advisers said. He wanted to show strength after his chief of staff offered a grimmer assessment of his health than doctors.”
“He’s not even pretending to care now,” one current Secret Service agent said after the president’s jaunt outside Walter Reed.
“Where are the adults?” said a former member of the Secret Service.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows listens as Sean Conley speaks to the media on Sunday at Walter Reed. (Erin Scott/Reuters)
As the virus spread among the people closest to him last week,Trump asked an adviser not to disclose results of their own positive test. “Don’t tell anyone,” Trump said, according to the Wall Street Journal.
We found out that Trump himself tested positive on a rapid test that he took Thursday and was awaiting the results of a second, more reliable, test when he called into Sean Hannity’s show that night. He did not reveal the news to the Fox News host. Former counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway’s teen daughter, Claudia, broke the news on Friday, via her social media platforms, that her mom was infected. Claudia Conway says she, too, has now tested positive for the virus.
There are other indications that the president’s attempted coverup continues. “Farah told reporters Sunday that the White House would be more forthcoming going forward, and would release information about the number of aides who have tested positive for the virus. Later Sunday, [McEnany] indicated that such information would not be released, citing privacy considerations. Several White House officials are still waiting to learn if they will be infected,” Toluse Olorunnipa, Dawsey and Amy Goldstein report. “Nick Luna, Trump’s personal assistant, has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a senior administration official. … Meanwhile, at least two White House residence staffers contracted the virus some weeks ago and were sent home. Administration officials do not believe those staffers directly gave the virus to the president, given the passage of time since their cases.” Neither of those cases were disclosed to the public. The White House did not acknowledge that senior adviser Hope Hicks had tested positive until a reporter for Bloomberg News broke the story.
There is a lot the White House still will not say. Conley declined to answer when asked how Trump’s lungs have been affected by the virus, whether he has pneumonia and what his exact temperature has been. The White House refuses to say when Trump last tested negative for the coronavirus. That is a critical piece of information to determine how long the president may have been contagious — and how many people he may have put at risk by traveling to Ohio, Minnesota and New Jersey.
And Trump continues to put a positive spin on his experience. In a video he posted to Twitter on Sunday evening, Trump said he’s “learned a lot” about covid-19. “I learned it by really going to school,” the president said from his hospital suite. “This is the real school; this isn’t the let’s-read-the-books school. And I get it. And I understand it. And it’s a very interesting thing. And I’m going to be letting you know about it.”
The American people do not approve of Trump’s denialism. An ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted in the two days after Trump announced his diagnosis found that 72 percent said both that the president did not take the “risk of contracting the virus seriously enough” and that he did not take “the appropriate precautions when it came to his personal health.” The poll, released Sunday, found that 43 percent of Republicans shared the negative sentiments about Trump’s mind-set and preventative actions regarding the coronavirus. Overall approval for the president’s handling of the pandemic held steady at 35 percent, where it has been since early July.
David Dayen writes a daily report for The American Prospect on the pandemic called “Unsanitized.” In this entry, he comments on Trump’s selfishness in spreading the coronavirus.
He writes:
The President Is a Sick Man
What happens when one of the worst people America has produced contracts the coronavirus? Well, he tries to hide it, first of all. He attends a series of fundraisers and rallies without disclosure, potentially exposing hundreds if not thousands of people. When he has to roll to the hospital because his condition is deteriorating, he shows fake photos of himself “at work,” even as most of the public knows he doesn’t work even in normal times. His physician, it is leaked, withholds details of his medical condition to lift his spirits and “convey confidence.” But it’s also noted that he’s taking a cocktail of medications that are really only reserved for very sick people. To top this off, he demands to be taken on a car parade around the Walter Reed Medical Center to wave at well-wishers, while Secret Service agents are forced to sit in the car with his contagious personage.
So whether he’s leaving the hospital today or not, I think we can say that Donald Trump is handling this disease almost exactly as you would expect it. All presidents lie, and most of them lie about their health: here’s a rundown, but I note that Gover Cleveland, known in his day for the slogan “Tell the truth,” snuck out of Washington onto a boat and had half of his cancerous jaw removed, in secret, in the 1890s when removing half your jaw was, you know, a treacherous thing, and when a reporter found out about it and leaked the information Cleveland’s White House ruined his life. There’s a great little book about this called The President Is a Sick Man by Matthew Algeo. Point being, the default setting in White Houses is obfuscation about a president’s medical condition.
Even when accounting for that, however, Trump’s… Trumpiness is exhausting and sad. The selfishness, the lies, the moral blindness is fully on display. “The President is a sick man” takes on new meaning.
Andrea Gabor, a former editor at Business Week and U.S. News & World Report, is the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York and the author of “After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform.” It appeared behind a paywall at Bloomberg News. After she wrote this article, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the proposal to mandate a course in ethnic studies as a requirement for high school graduation. The original proposal would have included the experiences of African Americans,Latino Americans, Native Americans and Indigenous peoples, and Asian Americans. The governor received complaints from other ethnic groups complaining that they should have been included. First Jewish groups complained, then Arab Americans, then Iranian Americans, then Kurdish Americans, and on and on.
In his veto message, Newsom said he values the role of ethnic studies in helping students understand the experiences of marginalized communities and that he supports schools and districts offering such courses. But, he said, there was too much uncertainty about the content of the model curriculum and he wanted to be sure it “achieves balance, fairness and is inclusive of all communities.”
This contretemps reminded me of my exposure to California culture wars in the mid-1980s when I was invited by Bill Honig, then State Superintendent of Public Instruction, to join a committee to rewrite the state’s history and social-science framework. I spent three days each month in California for nearly two years, and eventually became the lead writer. Our committee produced a groundbreaking, history-based, multicultural K-12 curriculum. When it came time for public hearings all over the state, we were pounded by every racial, ethnic, and religious group in the state for not giving enough attention to them. We made changes wherever possible to give each group its due, but some were never satisfied. We ended up writing a Human Rights curriculum that added extensive attention to the Armenian Genocide (the Armenian community was especially aggrieved, and the Governor was of Armenian descent).
Gabor wrote:
Trust California to plunge deeper into the culture wars, even at the risk of undermining its own worthy objectives.Under a bill headed for signature by Governor Gavin Newsom, the state would become the first to require that all high-school students pass an ethnic-studies course before graduating. The new mandate follows passage in August of a similar university-level requirement that is set to take effect in the 2021-2022 academic year. As if on cue, President Donald Trump charged last week that U.S. schools are “indoctrinating children,” and vowed to bring back “patriotic education.” (My Bloomberg Opinion colleagues shared some thoughts this week on how that should go.) California has the right idea. It’s past time for educators to confront long-standing gaps that have made it too easy for Americans to ignore the dark side of their own history. That’s been a recent goal of some journalists, scholars and the Black Lives Matter movement. Last year, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series sought to reframe U.S. history by arguing that “the start of this nation’s story” was not 1776 or 1787 but rather 1619, the year the first slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. The series has since been integrated into history curricula nationwide. A year earlier, a book by the Harvard University historian Jill Lepore, “These Truths,” won prizes for a nuanced look at America’s founding ideals and the extent to which the nation has lived up to them.
A small but growing number of states agree that schools need to bring a wider lens to U.S. history and integrate the perspectives and contributions of minorities, as well as the losses of indigenous communities. In addition to correcting the historical record, proponents argue that such courses also boost attendance and performance among students otherwise at risk of failing or dropping out. But California’s unfunded mandate to create a separate ethnic-studies course is a flawed approach that risks draining money and attention from history and civics curricula. A better path is being blazed by Oregon, which aims to teach a broader narrative of U.S. history by deepening existing social studies and civics standards.
Under California’s high-school mandate, every district must offer ethnic-studies courses in the 2025-2026 school year, at a time when the state will probably be recovering from pandemic- and fire-induced financial devastation. Under state law, additional funding for the mandated course could take several years to approve. Even then, depending on the state’s fiscal health, the legislature could pay for it by draining some funding from other educational programs, according to Edgar Cabral, an analyst in California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. (California is already anticipating future budget cuts; it took a decade to restore school funding following cuts made during the recession of 2008.)
California’s approach does offer districts some flexibility to modify existing courses rather than follow an ethnic-studies curriculum now being developed by the state that focuses on African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans. However, for modified courses, ethnic studies must constitute the “primary content.”
By contrast, Oregon is establishing new statewide standards that broadly define what students should learn in existing courses rather than imposing new-course mandates. The revised Oregon standards, adopted in 2018, aim to “create teaching and learning opportunities for students to examine identity, race, ethnicity, community, religion, nationality and culture in the United States.” Thus, a discussion of the nation’s westward expansion and manifest destiny would include a focus not just on settlers, but also on the people who had lived in what is now Oregon since time immemorial, as well as the contributions of European and Asian immigrants.Some states, including Vermont and Washington, where curriculum is set at the local level, also are focused on developing new ethnic-studies standards and course materials that local districts can choose to adopt, or not, as they see fit.
Making the courses optional, however, undermines a goal of public education: to create one culture out of many. Ethnic studies have been controversial since they were first conceived in the 1960s. The Cornell University literature professor Noliwe Rooks has noted that the Ford Foundation backed early university Black-studies programs at least in part to keep students from being “lured into more radical politics like that of the Black Panther Party.” In the 1970s and 1980s, budgetary crises weakened funding for ethnic-studies programs.
In extreme cases — notably in Arizona — a backlash against ethnic studies at the high-school level provoked a ban, later reversed, on any public-school courses that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of one ethnic group, or advocate ethnic solidarity.”
Today, historians are pushing to correct distortions and omissions of America’s historical record. That’s a worthy goal for educators, but it could fail if it heightens social tensions. It’s also dangerous to drain funding and focus from civics instruction, which has declined over the last two decades as standardized testing regimens focused on math, science and English. By contrast, developing standards that include a broader ethnic and racial perspective in American history and civics courses could serve to deepen education for everyone.
Jan Resseger writes here about the Republicans who refuse to fund teachers’ salaries have placed budget-cutting above education and the needs of the future. The Republicans’ disregard for teachers has been displayed over the past 20 years, as state legislatures and governors have attacked teachers’ rights, their salaries, and whatever they could to discourage teachers. The supply of young people entering education has precipitously declined, in response to the devaluing of the profession.
Among the lingering effects of state budget reductions during the 2008 Great Recession have been widespread drops in teachers’ overall compensation. Although some states and local school districts do their part to pay their teachers fairly, and some provide the fringe benefits such professionals should expect, overall according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, “teachers are paid less (in wages and compensation) than other college-educated workers with similar experience.” And, “(T)his financial penalty discourages college students from entering the teaching profession.”
Our economy has now entered another recession due to layoffs and business closures during COVID-19, and without further federal relief to states, teachers are likely once again to be the victims.
All summer and through September, U.S. Senate Republicans have refused to negotiate with House Democrats, who passed their bid for a second coronavirus relief bill, the HEROES Act, on May 15. Until this past weekend, it looked as though Congress would recess until after the election without the Senate’s agreeing even to take up the bill for consideration.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and White House negotiator Steve Mnuchin returned to discussions last week, but until the President became ill with COVID-19 over the weekend, it looked as though progress had broken down. The President’s infection by COVID-19 and indications that the economy will continue to lag have, apparently, brought Pelosi and Mnuchin back to the table over the weekend, and have also made Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his caucus more amenable to further federal investment. A relief package is needed to help the unemployed, to strengthen SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid, and to help states avoid catastrophic budget cuts like those that have continued to depress school funding more than a decade after the 2008 recession.
William J. Gumbert has studied the performance of charter schools in Texas and has consistently documented that they are inferior to public schools. Their promoters have sold the Legislature a Bill of goods, meaning that their results are nowhere as impressive as their promises. In this post, he shows that charter graduates are poorly prepared for higher education.
Privately Managed, College Preparatory Charter Schools: A Common Approach and a Common Result – Graduates Underperform in College
By: William J. Gumbert
Without any notices or disclosures, the Texas Legislature has been experimenting with students in public education for 25 years. The experiment allows a separate system of taxpayer funded, privately managed charter schools (“State Charters”) to recruit students from locally governed school districts. In this regard, the State provides approximately $10,000 for each student that a State Charter recruits from local school districts. In total, the State has diverted over $25 billion of taxpayer funding from local school districts to fund its separate system of privately managed State Charters.
With State Charters receiving taxpayer funding for recruiting students to attend a low-performing school and with the flexibility to relocate underperforming schools to another community, it is not surprising that State Charters are rapidly expanding. It is also not surprising that many State Charters are targeting the enrollment of low-income, minority students. In low-income communities across the State of Texas, the “sales pitch” is the same and it goes like this:
“Because school districts offer limited high-quality educational options, privately managed charters were created to provide a tuition free, college preparatory education to close the achievement gap for low-income and minority families. As highlighted in our recruiting brochures, our schools are nationally recognized and 100% of the graduates are accepted to college every year. We are a non-profit organization with a mission to ensure that all students get in and through college. With limited seats, please contact our full-time staff of student recruiters to assist with the submission of an application”.
However, these promotions are disingenuous and “very economical with the truth” as the facts document that school district graduates, from Dallas to Houston to the Rio Grande Valley, outperform State Charter graduates upon enrolling in college.
Results in First Year of College Indicates Probability of Graduation: Many studies have indicated that students with a low-grade point average (“GPA”) in their first-year college are less likely to persist in college and graduate. According to the published article: “First Semester GPA a Better Predictor of College Success than ACT Score” by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, students with a first semester GPA below 2.33 were half as likely to graduate from college in comparison to higher performing students. For low-income students, a GPA below 2.0 (a “D” average or below) has the potential added consequence of losing their student loans or financial scholarships/grants that make college an option. The consequences of a failing GPA for low-income students are a reminder that college acceptance is one thing and succeeding in college is another. As such, prior to college enrollment it is vital for students to be academically, emotionally, and socially prepared to succeed. If not, students are being set-up to fail.
State Charters and School District Graduates – Comparison of College GPAs: Given the relationship between first year GPA’s and college graduation, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (“THECB”) tracks the first year GPA’s of Texas students that enroll at a 4-year public university. The table below compares the GPA’s of State Charter and school district graduates within the Class of 2018 that enrolled in a 4-year public university in 2019. As shown, almost 30.3% of State Charter graduates had a failing GPA versus 17.5% of school district graduates. In addition, the percentage of State Charter graduates achieving a GPA or 3.0 or above lagged school district graduates by 15.4%.
College Preparatory State Charters Targeting Low-Income, Minority Families: There are 4 primary State Charters in Texas that target the recruitment of low-income, minority students with the allure of a “college preparatory” education (referred to as the “CP Charters” herein). As shown in the table below, the enrollment at CP Charters is 115,791 students (which is approximately 33% of the enrollment in all State Charters) and over $1.0 billion of taxpayer funding will be provided in the current year. It is noteworthy that after 20 years, CP Charters produced 3,338 high school graduates in 2018. In comparison, Humble ISD with an enrollment of 43,441 produced a comparable number of high school graduates and it will receive $403 million of taxpayer funding this year.
CP Charter Graduates Underperform in College: Although touted as “tuition-free” college preparatory schools, 39.0% of CP Charter graduates had a GPA below 2.0 upon enrolling in a 4-year public university in 2019. In comparison, only 17.5% of school district graduates had a similarly low GPA. In addition, 27.0% of CP Charter graduates excelled with a GPA of 3.0 or above, which is about half of the 53.0% of school district graduates with a GPA of 3.0 or above.
While this general comparison of college GPA’s does not account for the difference in the student populations that are enrolled at CP Charters and school districts, it does indicate that CP Charters are not successfully closing the “achievement gap” for the low-income, minority students that are actively recruited.
Comparison of College GPA’s – IDEA Public Schools, Brownsville ISD and Edinburg CISD: To compare the postsecondary success of CP Charter and school district graduates that serve similar student populations, a comparison of IDEA Public Schools (“IDEA”), Brownsville ISD (“BISD”) and Edinburg CISD (“ECISD”) is included below. IDEA Public Schools currently enrolls 7,972 students within BISD and ECISD and each school system had a similar percentage of economically disadvantaged graduates within the Class of 2018. For purposes of comparison, we will ignore that both BISD and ECISD had a higher number of graduates and a higher percentage of “At Risk” and “Special Education” graduates.
As highlighted in the graph below, the college GPA’s of BISD and ECISD graduates are similar. But despite serving a comparable student population, the GPA’s of IDEA graduates are well below BISD and ECISD graduates. For instance, 35% of IDEA graduates had a GPA below 2.0 versus only 18% of BISD graduates. In addition, the percentage of IDEA graduates that earned a GPA of 3.0 or above was 14% – 16% lower than ECISD and BISD graduates.
Comparison of GPA’s — KIPP Texas, YES Prep and Uplift Education: To further compare the GPA’s of CP Charter graduates to school district graduates with similar student populations, the GPA’s of KIPP Texas and YES Prep graduates are compared to Houston ISD graduates on the following page. KIPP Texas and YES Prep collectively enroll 20,957 students within Houston ISD. In addition, a comparison of the GPA’s of Uplift Education graduates and Dallas ISD graduates is included. Uplift Education currently enrolls 9,549 students within Dallas ISD.
The results of these comparisons are consistent with previous GPA comparisons, as a significantly higher percentage of KIPP Texas, YES Prep and Uplift Education graduates had a GPA below 2.0 as compared to Houston ISD/Dallas ISD graduates that enrolled in a 4- year public university. In fact, at least 40% of KIPP Texas, YES Prep and Uplift Education graduates had a GPA below 2.0 upon enrolling in a 4-year public university in 2019. Furthermore, the percentage of KIPP Texas and YES Prep graduates that earned a GPA of 3.0 or higher was equal to about half of the Houston ISD graduates that obtained a comparable GPA.
Common Attributes of CP Charters: With the strikingly similar low postsecondary performance of CP Charter graduates relative to school district graduates, there are numerous other commonalities among CP Charters that may be contributing to these results as discussed below. Funded and Directed by Special Interests: Every CP Charter has received millions of dollars from private foundations to expand in local communities. A few of the private foundations that are financially supporting CP Charters is included below. To maintain ongoing influence on public education in local communities and to oversee their financial investments, it is common for trustees of private foundations to be appointed to the governing boards of CP Charters. For example, Ms. Victoria Rico, Chairwomen of the George W. Brackenridge Foundation, has served on the Board of IDEA Public Schools and Ms. Carrie Walton Penner, a Board member of The Walton Family Foundation, serves on the Board of KIPP.
Expenditure Model: Prior studies have indicated that higher funding for student educational programs improves student outcomes. But each CP Charter deploys a conflicting “expenditure model” that devotes fewer dollars for student programs/services. In comparison to the state average of all public schools, CP Charters allocate up to $928 less per student for student “Instruction/Instructional Resources”, while allocating as much as $1,014 more per student for “Administration/Leadership” costs as summarized in the table below.
To illustrate the magnitude of the difference in the expenditures that CP Charters deploy to serve primarily low-income and minority families, the table below compares the “Instruction/Instructional Resources” and “Administration/Leadership” expenditures of IDEA Public Schools to the state average. Based upon the enrollment of 54,459 students, IDEA annually devotes $48.6 million less for student “Instruction/Instructional Resources” than the average public school in Texas and $55.2 million more for “Administration/Leadership”. To put it another way, if the 54,459 IDEA students were enrolled in a school district, an additional $48.6 million would be annually directed to support the instructional needs of students from low-income homes and $55.2 million fewer taxpayer dollars would be siphoned to pay the administrative costs of the private organizations within the State’s separate system of State Charters.
Teacher Staffing Model: There have been multiple studies concluding that teachers with more experience and lower teacher turnover improve student achievement. This includes information published by “tpier-Texas Education Reports” that is co-managed by the Texas Education Agency (“TEA”). According to “tpeir-Texas Education Reports”, teachers with 1-3 years of experience have 6% fewer students that pass the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness” (“STAAR”) test than teachers with 10 years of experience. Despite these findings, CP Charters impose an unorthodox approach that does not value teacher experience, teacher certifications, or teacher persistence. As demonstrated in the table below, as much as 87% of the teaching staffs at CP Charters have fewer than 5 years of experience, and in some cases, almost 60% of teachers are “non-certified”. In addition, with an annual teacher turnover rate of over 25% – 35%, the ability of CP Charters to implement consistent instructional practices and develop long-term, nurturing relationships with students is diminished relative to school districts.
Families Transfer from CP Charters to Another Texas Public School at High Rates: CP Charters recruit new families by marketing the perception that students will be enrolled in a prestigious and nationally acclaimed, tuition-free private school. But upon acceptance and witnessing the educational experience offered by CP Charters, 13.5% of the student enrolled in CP Charters in grades 7-12 transferred to another Texas public school in 2019/20. Comparatively, the student transfer rate at Brownsville ISD and Edinburg CISD that have been bombarded with the expansion of State Charters is 6.1% and 5.8%, respectively. This revolving door means that up to 75% of the students enrolled at a CP Charter in grade 7 are not enrolled in grade 12. This high transfer rate is concerning given the growing evidence that academic outcomes can be negatively impacted as students change schools.
If a restaurant or local business were required to replace 75% of its customers every 5-years, it would likely indicate a flawed business model and the restaurant or local business would be forced to close. But the business model of CP Charters anticipates the loss of students. Which is why CP Charters devote millions of dollars each year to develop a “wait list” of new families to replace those that transfer to another Texas public school each year.
Limited CP Charter Graduates Have Earned a 4-Year College Degree: While each CP Charter has been operating in Texas for at least 20-years, the number of graduates that have earned a 4-year college degree remains very limited. According to “tpeir – Texas Education Reports”, the table below summarizes the number of graduates from the Classes of 2007-2012 at IDEA Public Schools, Uplift Education, and YES Prep Public Schools that earned a 4-year college degree by 2018 (i.e. 6 or more years after high school graduation). It is noted that KIPP Texas was excluded from the table as only 13 graduates were shown to have earned a 4-year college degree and that appeared to be potentially misleading. From the 6 graduating classes in years 2007 – 2012, a total of 458 CP Charter graduates earned a 4-year college degree. For perspective, the number of CP Charter college graduates represents 0.0014% of the total graduates within the State of Texas that earned a 4-year college degree during this time and the number of CP Charter college graduates is 6.3X lower than Ysleta ISD in El Paso.
The point is not to criticize the number of CP Charter graduates that have earned 4-year college degrees. Rather, it is to highlight that the State continues to permit CP Charters to rapidly expand and recruit additional low-income families, despite the limited evidence that CP Charters are adequately preparing students to be successful in college.
Conclusion: In our public schools, students are taught to use the “scientific method” to analyze and answer questions. In this regard, students perform extensive research, formulate a hypothesis, conduct an experiment to test the hypothesis, analyze the data, and draw an evidence-based conclusion.
However, to establish public education policies the Texas Legislature does not rely upon research to form its hypothesis that privately managed State Charters will produce better student outcomes than locally governed school districts. For the last 25 years, the State has conducted a $25 billion taxpayer funded experiment to test its hypothesis about State Charters. The data produced by the State’s experiment documents that State Charters have consistently produced lower student outcomes than school districts as measured by the State’s own academic metrics. These metrics include results of the STAAR test, district and campus academic ratings, graduation rates, financial standards, etc. The difference in the postsecondary outcomes of State Charter and school district graduates referenced herein is further evidence.
So why does the State ignore the facts of its privatization experiment and continue to support the rapid expansion of State Charters in local communities? To answer that question, I conducted my research, formed a hypothesis, analyzed the facts of the experiment, and formed an evidence-based conclusion that the State’s separate system of privately managed State Charters is not about improving student outcomes for low-income and minority students. Rather, the State’s separate system of privately managed State Charters is to please the billionaire, political donors that desire to transfer the governance and taxpayer funding of public education to private organizations.
With fewer resources and a limited political profile, the initial recruitment of low-income and minority families provided the path of least resistance to establish the State’s separate system of privately managed State Charters. With the State approving more and more State Charter expansions in suburban school districts such as, Conroe ISD, Frisco ISD, Hays CISD, New Braunfels ISD, Prosper ISD, Round Rock ISD, Sherman ISD, and Whitewright ISD to name a few, the next phase of the State’s efforts to privatize public education is well underway.
It is your students, your children, your grandchildren, your tax dollars, and your community. It is time for the State to serve students with the basic principles that our taught in our public schools: honesty, integrity, morality, equality, and the scientific method.
DISCLOSURES: This material solely reflects the opinions of the author and the author has not been compensated in any manner for the preparation of this material. The author is a voluntary advocate for public education. The material herein is based upon various sources, including but not limited to, the Texas Education Agency, Texas Academic Performance Reports, Public Education Information Management System, tpeir-Texas Education Reports, The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and other publicly available information. While the author believes these sources to be reliable, the author has not independently verified the information. All readers are encouraged to complete their own review of the State’s separate system of privately managed charter schools in Texas, including the material referenced herein and make their own independent conclusions.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows listens as Sean Conley speaks to the media on Sunday at Walter Reed. (Erin Scott/Reuters)
