Florida: Investigation Shows That Charters Close Almost as Fast as They Open

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2020 //
9

Channel 10 in Florida conducted an investigation of the charter industry in Florida. It looked at the history of charters and examined the high rate of charter failures, usually because of financial issues. Florida is the State with the second highest rate of charter closures (California has the most charter closures). One part of the problem is that you don’t have to be an educator to open a charter. In one case, a charter school was run by a convicted felon.

The series is informative, but what’s especially interesting is the fact that investigative reporters chose to look behind the sales pitch to discover a sector that operates with minimal accountability and has a high rate of failure.

 

Categories Education Reform

Texas: Poll Shows Respect for Teachers, Support for More Funding, Concern about Testing

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2020 //
10

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Tessa Benavides

tbenavides@ryht.org

(210) 445-3965

First-of-its-kind Poll Reveals Texans Trust Teachers, and Have Concerns About School Testing and Funding

AUSTIN, TX (February 20, 2020) The Raise Your Hand Texas Foundation has released a first-of-its kind statewide poll about Texans’ attitudes toward public education. Notable findings include Texans appreciate teachers, but have concerns about testing and the lack of funding for schools. The poll found that 77 percent of Texans express trust and confidence in their teachers, much higher than the 61 percent of Americans polled on the same question.

The poll was released during a press conference this morning. There is footage from today’s press conference available in both English and Spanish for any future use:https://www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/2020-poll-resources/.

Names of those participating in the press conference:

  • English
    • Dr. Shari Albright, President, Raise Your Hand Texas
    • Gary Langer, President, Langer Research Associates
  • Spanish
    • Max Rombardo, Research Associate, Raise Your Hand Texas

The Foundation modeled the poll after the longstanding national PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. Langer Research Associates, PDK’s polling firm and the producer of the weekly Washington Post–ABC News poll, conducted the research.

View our comprehensive digital media kit here: https://www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/2020-poll-resources/. It includes b-roll and photos for media use, as well as downloadable copies of the full poll report and toplines.

———————————————————

First-of-its-kind Poll Reveals Texans Trust Teachers, and Have Concerns About School Testing and Funding

 

– Inaugural “PDK of Texas” poll highlights statewide perceptions

on key public education topics –

 

AUSTIN, TX (February 18, 2020) — A new statewide poll on Texans’ attitudes toward public education found they appreciate teachers, but have concerns about testing and the lack of funding for schools.

 

The poll, commissioned by the non-profit Raise Your Hand Texas Foundation, found that 77 percent of Texans express trust and confidence in their teachers, much higher than the 61 percent of Americans polled on the same question.

 

The Foundation modeled the poll after the longstanding nationalPDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. Langer Research Associates, PDK’s polling firm and the producer of the weekly Washington Post-ABC News poll, conducted the research.

 

“We’re pleased to be the first organization in the country to commit to an annual statewide poll about public education issues,” Foundation President Shari Albright said. “The work of PDK is the most respected in the field, providing insight into the perceptions and trends in Americans’ attitudes toward public education. We thought it important to provide this service to Texans on an annual basis, both to understand the challenges and help find ways to improve our public schools.”

 

“Kudos to Raise Your Hand Texas for conducting this poll,”  said Dr. Joshua Starr, Chief Executive Officer of PDK International. “Like most Americans, Texans want more funding for schools, support their teachers, have concerns about testing, and want more attention paid to student social-emotional competencies. And, while there are some different perspectives based on income, geography, and race, there’s no doubt that Texans, like most Americans, support their local schools and want to see an increased investment in them.”

 

Other major findings show that, while teachers are important to school quality, Texans believe they are undervalued. The poll also found:

 

  • 93 percent of Texans say teacher quality is extremely or very important in overall school quality
  • 71 percent see teachers as undervalued in society
  • 70 percent say teacher pay is too low
  • 60 percent are not confident that state standardized tests effectively measure how well a student is learning
  • 59 percent believe their community’s public schools have too little money

 

When rating public schools as a whole, the more closely connected respondents are to a school, the higher they rate it, a trend reflected in the national research. The poll found 68 percent of Texas parents would give their oldest child’s campus an A or B grade. Overall, 48 percent of Texas gave the schools in their community an A or B grade, higher than the 44 percent of Americans who give their community’s schools the same high marks.

 

“This poll reflects positive sentiment toward our public schools,” Albright said. “The challenge is in ensuring schools have the resources they need to educate every child, starting with a well-trained teacher in every classroom and a strong leader on every campus. We must also ensure students and schools are assessed fairly. Though we still have work to do, I am confident Texas is moving in the right direction.”

 

# # #

ABOUT THE RAISE YOUR HAND TEXAS FOUNDATION

The Raise Your Hand Texas Foundation develops and strengthens school leaders and teachers, engages families in the educational experience, and advances classroom learning with innovative instructional practices to benefit all students. For more information, visit RYHTFoundation.org.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Opinion Polling, Texas

Happy Birthday, W.E.B. DuBois

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2020 //
52

Garrison Keillor notes three happy events on this date in his daily “Writer’s Almanac.”

Jonas Salk released his life-saving polio vaccine in 1954, which almost completely eliminated this scourge. How well I remember the terror all children felt in the early 1950s. We were warned not to go to movies or other public spaces. If we went, we were warned not to put our heads on the headrest.

By this time, there was tremendous pressure to find an effective way to control the disease: 1952 saw the worst outbreak in America’s history, with nearly 60,000 cases reported; more than 3,000 people died and more than 21,000 were left disabled. Salk knew that he needed to begin testing his vaccine on a large scale, and quickly. He set up a makeshift lab in the gymnasium of Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, and personally administered his vaccine to 137 schoolkids. A month later, he announced that the first trial was a success, and he soon expanded his efforts across the country. By the time the vaccine was announced to be safe and effective in 1955, 1.8 million schoolchildren had received the vaccine.

In 1952, 60,000 people contracted polio in the United States alone; 60 years later, in 2012, polio cases numbered only 223 in the entire world.

And more:

It’s the birthday of scholar and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois (books by this author), born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts (1868). Du Bois was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He decided to write about racism and the African-American experience. He published a landmark book, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899). The book popularized Du Bois’s phrase “the talented tenth,” a term describing the likelihood of one in 10 black men becoming leaders of their race. He also wrote The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of essays (1903).

In 1905, Du Bois met with 30 other African-American scholars, artists, and activists in Canada, near Niagara Falls, to discuss the challenges that people of color faced. The men had to meet in Canada because blacks were not allowed rooms at white-run U.S. hotels. It took a few years, but from this first meeting sprang the formation of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909), which still exists today to fight racism and bridge cultural divides.

It was on this day in 1940 that Woody Guthrie (works by this artist) wrote the lyrics to “This Land Is Your Land” — now one of America’s most famous folk songs.

The melody is to an old Baptist hymn. Guthrie wrote the song in response to the grandiose “God Bless America,” written by Irving Berlin and sung by Kate Smith. Guthrie didn’t think that the anthem represented his own or many other Americans’ experience with America. So he wrote a folk song as a response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” a song that was often accompanied by an orchestra. At first, Guthrie titled his own song “God Blessed America” — past tense. Later, he changed the title to “This Land Is Your Land,” which is the first line of the song.

Although Guthrie wrote the words to the song in his notebook on this day in 1940, he didn’t perform it until 1944, and it was several years more still before he published it in a book of mimeographed folk songs. The song really took off in the 1960s. Bob Dylan did a famous version, and it became a popular anthem during the Civil Rights movement.

 

Categories Education Reform

Book Tour Reaches Charleston, West Virginia: Meeting the Teachers Who Lit a Fire

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2020 //
12

I wanted to go to Charleston, West Virginia, to thank the leaders of the Red4Ed Teachers Strike of 2018. Jay O’Neal of the NEA local and Fred Albert of the AFT local made it happen. I spoke on February 22, the second anniversary of the strike.

The teachers themselves were amazed by what they had done. They were outraged back then when the cost of their health insurance reduced their already meager take home pay. They met, count by county, they organized, they eventually realized they would be ignored unless they went out on strike.

Their strike wasn’t just one county or district, but the entire state. West Virginia is a right to work state. They could be fired for striking. But every superintendent closed every school and every school employee, including support staff and bus drivers, struck too.

At one point the union leaders announced a deal that included a 5% raise for teachers but not other staff, and the teachers sent them back to demand the same raise for everyone.

They won the raise but governor promised only a “commission” to study the onerous burden of health care costs. They are still waiting. The Governor, Jim Justice, is the only billionaire in the state, and he doesn’t know what it means to live paycheck to paycheck. He was elected as a Democrat, but six months after he won in 2016, he switched parties and embraced Trump.

After the raises they won, teachers’ starting pay is $37,000, and the top pay for a teacher with many years of experience and a doctorate is about $65,000 (those greedy teachers!!).

West Virginia is a poor state that has suffered through a dire opioid crisis. It has a storied history of miners’ strikes. The people I met love their state, loves it’s mountains and folkways, and are fighting for its children and its future.

The state voted for Trump, and no, he has not revived the coal industry. He has already forgotten the people of West Virginia.

Here is an account of my talk to the leaders of Red4Ed, which launched a national movement.

I met a vigorous young man who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor, named Steve Smith. He explained something I never understood. Why do poor people vote for people who lie to them? He said the people of West Virginia were lied to by Democrats for decades. So they decided it was time to try the other party, which also lied to them. The winning ticket, he believes, is the one that appeals to independents and recognizes that most people don’t trust any politician to tell the truth.

A teacher added that a large part of the voting public will go for anyone who promises to stop abortion and gays. Another teacher said a large part of the voters were devoted to their guns. During the eight years that a Obama was President, many gun owners stocked up on AR-15 assault weapons because they wanted to be ready when the military came for their guns.

Seems the legislature cares more about abortion, guns, and gays than their own children or their future.

Categories West Virginia

Audrey Watters: Is Our Democracy for Sale to the Highest Spender?

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2020 //
15

Audrey Watters asks the question that we should all be asking: is our democracy for sale to the candidate with the most billions? 

Apparently our schools sold out years ago when money was dabbled before them.

People who take money from that powerful education foundation — you know the one, the one that turns 20 years old this year — always insist to me that they’ve never been compelled to change their policies or practices. Of course, it doesn’t have to coerce its grantees to say and do things. People self-censor. They shape their initiatives to suit the foundation’s philosophy and its goals. They value the things the foundation says it values; they measure the way the foundation says it measures. Because if they rely on the foundation for funding, they know to fall in line. They needn’t be told. That’s how the power of philanthropy works. It sets the agenda. Personalized learning. The Common Core. Charter schools. Measures of Effective Teaching. It didn’t push for these ideas because that’s what people wanted. It helped convince politicians that these were the ideas that education needed. That is to say, education policy has not been shaped by democratic forces as much as it has been by philanthropic ones — by the billionaires who wield immense political power through their “charity.”

Actually, I don’t blame schools—few of whom had a say in decisions to follow the Gates money trail—so much as I blame the policy elites, who fell in love with the idea of sitting at the feet of billionaires and following their commands. The billionaires didn’t know what they were doing, but they were so confident in the virtues of testing, accountability, competition, choice. Who could resist?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Testing

Jennifer Berkshire: Will DeVos’s Attacks on Public Schools Alienate Texas Voters?

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2020 //
3

Jennifer Berkshire went to Texas to try to learn whether DeVos was helping or hurting the GOP. You may be surprised by her answer.

She writes:

The big question that fascinates me these days is whether GOP voters who care about their public schools will abandon their party as it embraces a Trump/DeVos education freedom agenda. And the answer in Texas is yes, at least when it comes to moderate suburban voters.

Twelve seats in the Texas legislature flipped from R to D in 2018 and education was a huge part of the reason. There’s been an explosion of public education activism in Texas in recent years, and GOP candidates, feeling the pressure and fearing for their seats, are now scrambling to paint themselves as the biggest lovers of public schools and their teachers around. I went to north Texas to hear for myself what this sounds like.

 
Here’s a link to the podcast: https://soundcloud.com/haveyouheardpodcast/texas
Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Texas

Los Angeles: Charter Allies Pour Millions into School into School Board Races—And Lies

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2020 //
6

Bill Raden of Capital and Main writes here about the charter school advocates’ frantic efforts to pour millions of dollars and tons of lies into the race for four school board seats in Los Angeles. They are churning out scurrilous and defamatory lies about Jackie Goldberg and Scott Schmerelson, both of whom are veteran public school educators.

Schmerelson has received a heavy dose of filthy fliers that call him greedy, unethical and unfit, very likely because he had the nerve to reveal that at least 80% of the city’s charter schools have empty seats. In Los Angeles, the charter lobby despises critics who defy them.

If you live in their districts, vote for Jackie Goldberg, Scott Schmerelson, George McKenna and Patty Castellanos.

Stop Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump, and Bill Bloomfield from buying seats on the LAUSD school board.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Indiana: How Much Charter Graft Will Taxpayers Tolerate?

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2020 //
13

This editorial appeared in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, a newspaper that has paid close attention to the scandals and frauds in the charter industry.

It begins:

Operators of two Indiana charter schools spent nearly $86 million in tax dollars at businesses in which they had ties. The money came from state tuition support for students who, in some cases, were never enrolled in the schools.

This is the school choice Indiana lawmakers celebrate – a breathtaking violation of the public trust.

A special report by the State Board of Accounts was released last week, based on an investigation of Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy. Chalkbeat, an online education news service, first reported in 2017 that one of the online schools collected nearly $10 million in 2015-16 while graduating only 5.7% of its seniors – the lowest graduation rate in the state. Chalkbeat revealed a web of business interests between school founder Thomas Stoughton and AlphaCom, a for-profit company he operated while charging the school millions for management services and rent for offices in a suburban Indianapolis office park.

State auditors found public funds misappropriated through “malfeasance, misfeasance, and/or nonfeasance.” The complexity of the scam required a diagram to lay out ties among Stoughton, other charter officials and 14 private companies that shared in ill-gotten school funds – almost $69 million.

 

Chalkbeat’s reporting found discrepancies in enrollment now confirmed by the state. In more than 4,700 examples, children reported as enrolled completed no courses. Another 3,811 were flagged with just one or more course completions. The ghost enrollees included individuals who died or moved out of state, students withdrawn for lack of participation and some who did nothing beyond requesting information on the school. Counted as enrollees, they drew thousands of dollars each in state support that was, in turn, funneled to connected vendors. In the 2017-18 school year alone, the audit identified $15.5 million in overpaid tuition support.

Asked about the State Board of Account’s report, House Speaker Brian Bosma defended the virtual school program and pointed to Daleville Community Schools, the tiny public school district that granted its name as authorizer of the charter schools, and the Department of Education, overseen by Indiana schools chief Jennifer McCormick. The Republican state superintendent, whose office was eliminated by the legislature effective next year, has been outspoken in calling for greater accountability for schools of choice.

Blaming the Department of Education for the abuses of charter school operators is like blaming the BMV for the actions of a drunk driver. Responsibility for lax regulations and oversight for both charter schools and voucher schools falls squarely on Bosma and the GOP supermajority. In cozying up to the deep-pocketed school-choice community, they ignored glaring examples of corruption here and elsewhere. It was almost 11 years ago when The Journal Gazette first reported on the suspicious real estate deals surrounding two Imagine Inc. charter schools in Fort Wayne – schools that eventually shut down with $3.6 million in outstanding state loans.

Charter school scandals are so common that the Network for Public Education began collecting them on a website and tagging them on Twitter: #AnotherDayAnotherCharterScandal.

“There is a crisis of charter corruption in the United States and sadly the powerful charter lobby stops every attempt to enact reform,” said Carol Burris, executive director of the organization. “In 2019 alone the Network for Public Education identified four major virtual charter scandals, including Indiana’s two schools. A California virtual scandal cost that state’s taxpayers over $50 million. Virtual charter schools have a pattern of ‘cooking the books’ when it comes to attendance and enrollment, and have the worst outcomes when it comes to student achievement.”

Do Indiana taxpayers care?

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Indiana, Virtual Charter Schools

Happy Birthday, George Washington and Edna St. Vincent Millay

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2020 //
63

Today is George Washington’s birthday. I expect he would be weeping to see the caliber of the man who is now president and is engaged in destroying the federal government and our democracy. Imagine tossing out a highly qualified director of national intelligence and replacing him with a totally inexperienced loyalist who will purge the CIA of anyone who does not display loyalty to Trump, not the Constitution. Imagine putting loyalists in charge of every department whose job is to gut it.

On a happier note, it is the birthday of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Garrison Keillor wrote about her on his daily “Writer’s Almanac.”

It’s the birthday of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (books by this author), born in Rockland, Maine (1892). She was raised by her mother, who supported the family by making wigs and working as a nurse. By the time she was 14, she was publishing poems in the children’s magazine St. Nicholas. Her mother couldn’t afford to send her to college, but when she was 19, she entered a poem called “Renascence” in a poetry contest hoping to win the large cash prize. Her poem didn’t win first prize, but when she recited it at a public reading in Camden, Maine, a woman in the audience offered to pay for her to go to Vassar College, and Millay accepted.

At Vassar, she was the most notorious girl on campus, famous for both her poetry and her rebelliousness. Vassar’s president, Henry Noble MacCracken, once wrote to her: “You couldn’t break any rule that would make me vote for your expulsion. I don’t want a banished Shelley on my doorstep.” She wrote back, “Well, on those terms I think I can continue to live in this hellhole.” She moved to Greenwich Village after college, and most of the men in the literary scene fell in love with her, including the critic Edmund Wilson, who proposed to her and never got over her rejection.

Millay wrote poems about bohemian parties and free love in her collection A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), and she became one of the icons of the Jazz Age. When she gave readings of her poetry, she drew huge crowds of adoring fans. She recited her poetry from memory, delivering the poems with her whole body. Many critics considered her the greatest poet of her generation. The poet Thomas Hardy famously said that America had produced only two great things: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She became the first woman poet to win the Pulitzer Prize, in 1923.

Millay wrote, “My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — / It gives a lovely light!”

 

Categories Education Reform, Literature, Trump

Mississippi: The Shame of a Nation

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2020 //
4

Mississippi boasts about its gains on NAEP reading scores, but those “gains” were largely the result of holding back students who didn’t pass the third grade reading tests. It’s a form of “gaming the system,” aka cheating.

This article by Bracey Harris for the Hechinger Report tells a different story, a story of unequal opportunity for black children in the state, a history of racism and segregation, a legacy of underfunding black schools, of crumbling schools and high teacher turnover.

Large proportions of black children live in deep poverty, and their schools are ill-equipped to prepare them for college or career.

State leaders offer nothing but gimmicks that have failed elsewhere: merit pay, A-F grades, bonuses for new teachers, and state takeovers. What they have not offered is the funding necessary to give the schools and students and teachers the resources they need. The conservative white legislature has not been willing to do what is needed.

State leaders have attempted to improve the state’s poor educational outcomes in recent years by requiring third graders to pass the state reading test before they can enter fourth grade, offering $10,000 bonuses for Nationally Board Certified teachers to work in the Delta, assigning schools and districts A-F ratings and, on occasion, taking over failing school districts. Mississippi’s newly elected Gov. Tate Reeves, who took office in January, has also proposed paying new teachers a one-time $10,000 bonus to instruct in struggling areas like Holmes.

Mississippi has also made some positive traction after investing $15 million per year, in part to train and coach the state’s teachers on the science of reading and reading instruction, an investment that some officials said helped boost the state’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Mississippi ranked No. 1 nationally in gains in fourth grade reading and math, and near the top in eighth grade score gains in math.

To some observers, the NAEP scores suggest the state’s focus on these reforms have helped, a lot. But locals say the reforms don’t go far enough, failing to address the deeper issues of racism and poverty that are embedded in the marrow of the Mississippi Delta. Each year, districts in the region hold back dozens of third graders. At one school in Holmes, Durant Elementary, more than 80 percent of third graders failed the reading test on their first try.

Ellen Reddy, an advocate who has pushed to improve education in Holmes County said the state’s solutions haven’t reduced the challenges that dominate the average school day. Reddy, executive director of the Nollie Jenkins Family Center, said the state has to step in to help districts that struggle to raise money. “The reality is we’ll always fail. We’ll always be a step behind until they put in more resources,” she said. “You get what you pay for.”

Strapped for cash and teachers

Strapped for cash and teachers

Children in communities with a high rate of poverty are at a greater risk of poor health and high levels of stress that require more support in the classroom. Years of research have documented that poverty “creates constant wear and tear on the body” and that safe learning environments, coupled with “responsive parenting and high-quality childcare” can help children progress. But it costs money to train teachers on how to support students and to hire support staff like guidance counselors.

Never underestimate the power of poverty and racism.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Mississippi, Poverty, Racism
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