Valerie Strauss Posts a Portrait of Nashville Leader Amy Frogge, from SLAYING GOLIATH

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2020 //
4

 

Valerie Strauss posted an excerpt from SLAYING GOLIATH about one of its heroes.

SLAYING GOLIATH contains many true stories of individuals and groups who took a stand to defend their schools against the assault of well-funded privatizers. Amy Frogge is a lawyer and a public school parent. She decided to run for the Metro Nashville school board. She had no agenda other than to do her part as a citizen. She was outspent 5-1, but she won. She quickly learned about the struggle for control of the future of the public schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Nashville, Privatization, Resistance

AFT Sues Betsy DeVos for Failing to Protect Defrauded Students

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2020 //
7

Forbes’ education writer Wesley Whistle writes about the lawsuit filed by AFT against Betsy DeVos for her failure to protect the students who were defrauded by colleges and universities, mostly for-profit.

DeVos rolled back an Obama-era regulation intended to prevent colleges from loading students with high debts and worthless degrees.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has one more lawsuit to deal with this week. Yesterday, one of the largest teachers unions in the country filed suit against DeVos and the Department of Education (Department). The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is suing DeVos for repealing the “gainful employment” regulation that is meant to protect student borrowers from programs that load them up with debt that doesn’t yield a job with an income sufficient to repay their student loans.

The complaint from AFT—filed by the National Student Legal Defense Network (NSLDN)—says the repeal of the rule was illegal and didn’t provide the proper justification required in federal rulemaking. The lawsuit asks the court to reinstate the rule to protect students from low-quality degrees and unmanageable debt.

“With this lawsuit we are going to strike down DeVos’ illegal repeal of the gainful employment rule and protect students from schools that leave borrowers with worthless degrees and debt they can never repay,” said Aaron Ament, president of NSLDN, in a press release.

In her continued effort to repeal or rewrite higher education regulations, Secretary DeVos first delayed, then delayed some more, and finally repealed the 2014 gainful employment regulation in July 2019. The Secretary claimed the rule unfairly targeted for-profit colleges—an industry rife with predatory practices, fraud, and abysmal outcomes for students—even though it was not a regulation solely for for-profit schools.

Under the Higher Education Act, career-oriented programs (think welding or nursing) and all programs at for-profit colleges must show that they lead to “gainful employment” for their graduates. This provision has appeared in some form since the Higher Education Act was first passed in 1965. After years without specificity of what this actually meant, the Obama Administration issued a regulation to finally put some teeth on one of the few accountability tools in higher education.

The rule basically created a debt-to-income measurement so that if these programs left their graduates with sky-high debt and too little income to repay it they would lose access to federal student aid—grants and loans. Issuing this regulation was meant to protect students from programs that would saddle them with debt they’d either never repay or struggle to do so. And it would protect taxpayers from having to foot the bill for loans that won’t be repaid because low-quality programs didn’t get their graduates in jobs with salaries sufficient to repay their debt.

All kinds of programs failed the gainful employment rule. For example, a dental laboratory technology certificate program left graduates with median earnings under $7,000, well under the federal poverty level. And it impacted all degree levels and types of schools. A graduate certificate at Harvard even failed the test. It was far from perfect as it didn’t address the schools that failed to graduate their students but left them with debt they cannot afford, but it was a one of the few protections students had.

When DeVos repealed the regulation she said that transparency was enough and released new data on the College Scorecard that showed debt and earnings for each program. While that is a great step in the right direction, it is far from enough. Research has shown that transparency cannot replace accountability and isn’t sufficient to protect students and taxpayers. Reinstating this rule would go a long way to ensure students aren’t left with worthless degrees and unaffordable debt.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

John Thompson: How Robert Pondiscio’s Book About the Success Academy Charter Chain Reflects Our Edu-Political Culture

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2020 //
14

John Thompson used to be a friend of Robert Pondiscio, who is now a vice-president at the rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute. A decade ago, Robert was a good friend of mine; he was one of the early readers of Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. At the time (2010), Robert and I agreed on the importance of public schools and the irrelevance of charters. I recall the publication party at the home of then-NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, where I told Robert how much I appreciated his help and his ideas, which were consonant with mine. I saw him as a professional ally. But since then, Robert has changed his views (as I changed mine in 2008-2010). I never criticize anyone for changing their views, even when I disagree with them.

John Thompson often posts here about what is happening in Oklahoma, where he was a teacher for many years. He also has useful insights on national topics, and I welcome his contributions to our discussion about providing “better education for all,” not just for the strivers or the gifted. The discussion below bears on an extended exchange that I had recently with a Wall Street guy, who has given six-figure donations to Success Academy. He insists that Eva Moskowitz has “cracked the code” and knows how to educate all children, if only the powers-that-be would copy her model. He insists that “every child” would have high scores if they all attended Success Academy charters. Pondiscio helpfully debunks that idea, although nothing I was able to say could change the belief of this donor. John makes the point below that many educators were offended by the claim that Success Academy was for all children; Robert explains that the chain cherry-picks the parents, not the students. I doubt many people would object to Eva or her chain if they openly admitted what Robert demonstrates in his book. Eva’s charters are not for all kids.

John Thompson writes:

This isn’t a review of Robert Pondiscio’s How the Other Half Learns but a review of our edu-political culture using the book review process to understand why we still have to fight education “Disruptors.” A decade ago, Robert and I were long-distance friends, continually sharing thoughts on how we should resist corporate reformers like Michelle Rhee and test-driven accountability, while improving schools like Robert’s in the South Bronx and my mid-high, which was the lowest performing secondary school in Oklahoma.

Now I’m trying to make sense of the aftershocks from the reformers’ previous political victories and the education debacles they prompted.

Being a former elementary teacher, Robert focused much more on reading instruction and curriculum. We agreed on the need to bring history, science, arts, and music back into the classroom, while opposing high stakes testing. Robert was more confrontational. He characterized Rhee’s value-added teacher evaluation system, IMPACT, as “pure lunacy,” and coined the phrase, “Erase To The Top.”

http://www.livingindialogue.com/5801-2/
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/03/30/the-best-posts-articles-about-erase-to-the-top/

Even after we grew apart, Robert wrote, “It’s long past time to acknowledge that reading tests—especially tests with stakes for individual teachers attached to them—do more harm than good.” Moreover, he said, “if your goal is to boost test scores now, you’re incentivizing bad teaching by encouraging a vacuous skills-and-strategies approach to reading, conspiring against patient investment in knowledge and vocabulary, and sacrificing vast amounts of class time for test prep.”

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/10/26/obamas-school-testing-talk-is-meaningless
https://www.the74million.org/article/pondiscio-its-time-to-end-the-testing-culture-in-americas-schools-and-start-playing-the-long-game-to-produce-better-life-outcomes-for-at-risk-kids/

Conversely, I took an embarrassingly long time before realizing that the Billionaires Boys Club wasn’t going to listen to classroom teachers.

I’ve been intrigued by Pondiscio’s recent writings, especially his critiques of the reforms that failed in the ways that we and so many others predicted. “Ed reform circa 2010 was riding a cresting wave, but in retrospect it was the high-water mark,” Pondiscio explained. And, ten years later, most of the reform victory has been “reversed or is in retreat. Big reform is dead.”

Pondiscio’s own review of his book foreshadowed ambivalence, at least in terms of what it would take to improve the highest challenge schools, “Regardless of where you stand on charter schools, choice, ed reform or education at large, you’re going to be disappointed: My book does not support your preferred views or narrative.” He concluded:

We have become overdependent on pleasing or expedient narratives that we know aren’t quite right, and we have become tribal in our devotions to them. It’s going to be painful and unpleasant, but it’s time to let them go.

So that’s my new book [wrote Pondiscio]. I hope you hate it

Fortunately, Gary Rubinstein has already written a definitive review of How the Other Half Learns. His title, “How the Other 1/300 Learn” spoofs the claim, which once was presented with a straight face, that Eva Moskowitz and company show what could have been accomplished had teachers and unions embraced “No Excuses!,” accountability, and competition.

Rubinstein focuses on the narratives that “will be devastating to the reputation of Success Academy,” concluding “if it is true that reformers do really like this book and are not just pretending to then Pondiscio has really accomplished quite a feat.”

Rubinstein stresses Pondiscio’s statements, such as the following, which implicitly explain why Success Academy isn’t scalable. Pondiscio wrote:

“•       The common criticism leveled at Moskowitz and her schools is that they cherry pick students, … This misses the mark entirely. Success Academy is cherry-picking parents.”
“•       Is Success Academy a proof point that the reform playbook works and that professionally run schools with high standards and even higher expectations can set any child on a path out of poverty?  Or does the rarity of Moskowitz’s accomplishment suggest that however nobly intended it might have been, the reform impulse was doomed from the start?
“•       It would be dishonest to pretend that Success Academy is not a self-selection engine that allows engaged families who happen to be poor or of modest means to get the best available education for their children.”

And that third paragraph brings me back to my review of the process of reviewing How the Other Half Learns. The second half of Pondiscio’s paragraph illustrates the two most salient features of his narrative.

Pondiscio then writes:

“It is equally dishonest and close to cruel to deny such families the ability to self-select in the name of “equity.” Indeed, it is nearly perverse to deny low-income families of color — and only those families — the ability to choose schools that allow their children to thrive, advance, and enjoy the full measure of their abilities.”

First, Pondiscio repeatedly pretends that the issue is how to educate the relatively small number of students who have benefited from Moskowitz et al’s charters. This would be valid if her enemies were elite schools that don’t properly serve poor children. But if that was her obsession, as opposed to a scorched earth crusade against traditional public schools, would educators and patrons have felt the need to resist her agenda?

Second, and most importantly for his book, it created another opportunity for Pondiscio to attack the integrity of his opponents as “dishonest and close to cruel,” and “nearly perverse.”

The following are illustrations of the pattern which reoccurs when Pondiscio is citing journalists’ criticisms of Success Academies:

•       Page 259 is a part of perhaps the best reporting in How the Other Half Learns where Pondiscio digs deeper into the exclusionary nature of Success Academy’s admissions lottery. As Rubinstein explains, the truth is even more upsetting than the story Pondiscio recounts. His narrative, however, creates the opportunity for attacking the New York Times’ Kate Taylor for her “armor-piercing articles” that “have frightened prospective parents away.”   

•       On page 53, Pondiscio characterized “no-excuses” as “an optimistic belief that the root cause of educational failure and black-white achievement gaps was adult failures – not poverty …” Two pages later, rather than acknowledge he had just made the argument against the scalability of the reformers’ solutions,  Pondiscio shifts gears and blames educators for “no excuses” going from a “rallying cry to a curse,” after a “sustained attack from political progressives, teachers’ unions, and anti-reform activists,” led by Diane Ravitch, their “Joan of Arc figure.”

•       On page 88, closing the chapter on the hugely important New York Times report on a first grade teacher ripping up a student’s work and “exiling her from the classroom rug,” Pondiscio cites the problem caused by teacher turnover. But, he then explains,  but doesn’t analyze, how Moskowitz suddenly realizes that the problem isn’t overworked and overstressed, inexperienced teachers, but “leadership via BFF.” The problem is that young teacher leaders want to be liked, so they aren’t tough enough!

•       On page 152, Moskowitz acknowledges to charter management organization leaders that she has no idea how to turn around high schools. This previews Success’ failure to run a high school, as well as the admission that “no-excuses” schools haven’t shown much of an ability to produce longterm, life-changing gains. This was an opportunity for Pondiscio to ask for evidence that their behaviorist methods are sustainable, as well as scalable. Instead, he quotes Moskowitz’ description of Success Academy as a “Catholic school on the outside, Bank Street [progressive school] on the inside.” That opens another door to Pondiscio’s attacks on opponents who have “promiscuously used, impressionistically defined” and “fetishized” progressivism.

•       On page 159, just after reporting on the beginning of the high school, Pondiscio seems to inexplicably change the subject to the unsupported claim that “students faced an intense scrutiny from critics.” This weird assertion made sense only after he identified the supposed lead critic – Diane Ravitch, “the longtime ed reform critic and fierce Moskowitz critic.”

•       On 179, Pondiscio addresses the New York Times description of “students in the third grade and above wetting themselves during practice tests.” Pondiscio’s reply is that it is “inaccurate” to blame “’drop everything and test-prep’” because there is “an overtone of test prep” throughout the year!?!?

•       He then changes the subject to the “opt out” movement which is “particularly strident.” And on page 180 Pondiscio seems to defend Success Academy’s test-prep as a part of a new normal which isn’t going away, “”No person in the room … likely ever spent a day in school, as an administrator, a teacher, or even a student, that was not dominated by the imperatives of standardized testing.”

And that, of course, is the real reason why educators across the nation fought back against Moskowitz. As another review of the Other Half by reform-sympathizer Natalie Wexler says, the book’s title is misleading because, “we’re not talking about the other ‘half,’ we’re talking about the other 1%—or less.” Teachers wouldn’t have had to counter-attack if the issue was merely “How the Other One Percent Learns – to Take Tests.”

As Pondiscio used to know, the problem wasn’t just tests; it was the high stakes they were tied to. The problem we fought wasn’t just tests; it’s the teach-to-the-test culture that reform imposed on everyone, whether they chose it or not.  We didn’t resist charters just because we opposed competition; it was the resulting toxic culture of competition. The damage was then multiplied as test scores became the ammunition for this battle for the survival of public schools. The biggest problem wasn’t just the false statements claiming that “no-excuses” charters served the same poor students who attended the highest-poverty schools. It was the well-funded and vicious propaganda campaign using such falsehoods to demonize teachers.

After a decade of failure, corporate reformers have backed off from the “bad teacher” meme. But Pondiscio now exemplifies the quieter ways their anger is revealed. Yes, reformers, we have a problem, he says. Then Pondiscio repeatedly spins and blames the problem on those of us who resisted their failed agenda. His theme is, yes, Success Academy failed its student, Adama. But you defenders of the status quo failed my student, Tiffany, and she might have benefited by being in the 1 percent.

I’m afraid this pattern in his (and his colleagues’) writing shows that Pondiscio is just one of many defeated Disruptors who admit that something went wrong but who habitually change the subject by responding to evidence-based criticism with the children’s defensive meme, “I know you are, but what am I?”

Finally, here’s why I approach Pondiscio’s book as an opportunity for contemplation, not just an education case study. I admit to mistakes rooted in my congenital optimism. I’d thought, however, I’d learned my lesson when realizing why corporate reformers were not about to listen to people who saw the world differently. I belatedly acknowledged that the movement was about more than accountability-driven, competition-driven policy; it was a part of a larger privatization movement. I’m finally understanding how corporate reformers, who couldn’t face facts, became Disruptors.

In contrast to Pondiscio, who also sought more pragmatism among traditional school system leaders, as well as a serious effort to build safe and orderly school cultures, I continued to work within the system. Today, after defeating so many of the worst data-driven experiments, its frustrating when traditional public schools remain terrified that a new Goliath will emerge, again attacking the professional autonomy of educators.

The Disruptors’ politics of destruction may have been beaten back. But Pondiscio illustrates the politics of resentment which remains threatening. How the Other Half Learns provides more evidence how and why their experiment failed. It also personifies their anger, and how they still blame teachers (and Diane Ravitch) for their theories’ defeat.         

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization, Testing

Jan Resseger: Ohio Voucher Plunges Public Districts into Fiscal Crisis

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2020 //
4

Jan Resegger summarizes the disastrous Ohio plan to expand vouchers and how grossly unfair it is to public schools, which enroll nearly 90% of the children in the state. As she points out, most of the children drawing money away from her district never attended public schools, yet now their tuition will be extracted from the budget of the public schools. Read her post in its entirety.

She writes:

On Tuesday afternoon, I went to a meeting of my monthly book discussion group—all of us retired and over 70.  But as we sat down with our coffee and before we discussed the book we had all been reading for the month, we found ourselves distracted by the topic that is tearing our community apart: the changes the Ohio Legislature made last summer in the fine print of the FY 20-21 state budget—changes that exploded the size of the state’s EdChoice school voucher program.

I wonder whether legislators have any real understanding of the collateral damage for particular communities from policies enacted without debate. Maybe, because our community has worked for fifty years to be a stable, racially and economically diverse community with emphasis on fair housing enforcement and integrated schools, legislators just write us off as another failed urban school district. After all, Ohio’s education policy emphasizes state takeover and privatization instead of equitable school funding. The state punishes instead of helping all but its most affluent, outer ring, exurban, “A”-rated school districts, where property values are high enough that state funding is not a worry.

What this year’s EdChoice voucher expansion means for the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district where the members of my book discussion group all live is that—just to pay for the new vouchers—our school district has been forced to put a property tax levy on the March 17 primary election ballot. Ohio’s school finance expert, Howard Fleeter explains that in our school district, EdChoice voucher use has grown by 478 percent in a single year.  Fleeter continues: “Cleveland Heights isn’t losing any students…. They are just losing money.’” “If this doesn’t get unwound, I think it is significant enough in terms of the impact on the money schools get to undermine any new funding formula.”

Ohio deducts the price of the vouchers students carry to private and religious schools from the local school district budget even though, in the case of Cleveland Heights-University Heights this year, 94 percent of those students have never attended the public schools in our district. The state counts the voucher students who live in our community as though they are enrolled in our school district and then deducts the voucher from the local school budget, but the cost of each voucher is more than the state allocates per pupil.  In fact, in the current Ohio biennial FY20-21 state budget, state public education basic aid funding is frozen, which means our district actually gets no new state funding for each voucher student, but one hundred percent the cost of each voucher is deducted anyway.

Why are the people in my book group so upset about the voucher explosion and another levy on the ballot in March?  We are not a bunch of old ladies grousing about the burden of our taxes.  Two of us co-chaired a successful school levy campaign back in 1993; one person served on the board of education; and the rest were teachers in our school district. As we read the conversation threads on Next Door, where people are accusing our district of mismanaging funds, or paying teachers too much, or hiring too many school psychologists, we worry about all the undocumented misinformation floating around. Members of our group are anxious about our grandchildren and our neighbors’ children who depend on the public schools we have spent our lives supporting and protecting.  But it is difficult to explain what happened in the budget, our plight this winter set in motion last June and July in the budget conference committee, when amendments were added to the state budget without debate. It was done so quietly at the time that people across the state only began to grasp the impact later in August when the Ohio Association of School Business Officials alerted school treasurers about the potential impact.

Fortunately the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District sponsored a special public meeting on January 9, 2020, to explain the changes in the EdChoice Voucher Program and begin quelling the anxiety that is tearing our community apart. The school district has posted the powerpoint presentation from the meeting, and at the meeting,  the school district distributed a clear, factual brochure about the legislature’s changes in the EdChoice Vouchers.  The brochure explains: “(T)he program was expanded to the point of unsustainability. Ohio had fewer than 300 buildings deemed eligible for vouchers in 2018-2019; that number has exploded to 1,200 for 2020-2021. When the Ohio General Assembly passed its biennial budget in July 2019, it froze receipts at 2018-2019 levels. This means that for every new voucher used, none of the cost would be offset by state aid. Legislators also removed the provision that required students to attend a public school prior to using the voucher. Unable to prepare financially for the change, the District was forced the following month to negotiate one-year contracts with the teachers union, as opposed to multi-year contracts. In CH-UH, approximately 1,400 students, 94% of whom have never attended our K-12 public schools, are taking scholarships to attend private schools. This has amounted to an actual loss of $4.2 million for us last fiscal year and an estimated loss of $6.8 million this fiscal year.” Each time a student secures an EdChoice Voucher, that student can keep the voucher, paid for by the school district deduction, every year until the student graduates from high school.

The school district’s information handout continues: “The CH-UH City School District will ask the community for a new 7.9 mill operating levy in March. The current funding issues with EdChoice are the major reason for this millage. In fact, the District would not need to ask for a levy until 2023 if it weren’t for the way EdChoice was funded, and the millage would be significantly less.”

School districts across Ohio are demanding that the Legislature do something about what has become a crisis for many school districts. It is important that the Legislature act quickly, before the February EdChoice Voucher enrollment period for next school year. The Heights Coalition for Public Education, a community organization, has prepared a list of short-term voucher fixes which the Legislature should consider:

  1. “Remove budget language from House Bill 166 (the current state budget) expanding vouchers in grades 7-8 and for high schools.  Restore voucher language to pre-budget language.”
  2. Limit state report card ratings on which EdChoice schools are designated to 2017-18 and 2018-19.  Currently districts are held accountable all the way back to 2013-14, and considerable changes in school programming have occurred in the seven ensuing years.
  3. “Restore funding for school districts that have lost funds to voucher students who were not part of their 2019 Average Daily Enrollment.”
  4. “Cut the loss of funds for high poverty (50% economically disadvantage) districts at 5% and other school districts at 10%.”
  5. Adopt the funding methodology for EdChoice Expansion (another Ohio voucher program) which awards vouchers to needy students and pays for the vouchers fully with state funds (not the school district deduction).

State Senator Matt Huffman has long been among the Ohio Legislature’s strongest proponents of school vouchers.  Earlier this week, the Plain Dealer‘s Patrick O’Donnell reported that Senator Huffman himself supports the fifth voucher fix listed above: “State Sen. Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, wants a bigger change. He is resurrecting his 2017 proposal to offer vouchers to any family in Ohio whose income falls under certain limits… His proposal would have the state, not districts, pay for the vouchers of $4,650 for grades K-8 and the $6,000 a year for high school. That would eliminate many district complaints that voucher costs are killing their budgets.  He said the state can control costs by limiting how many students can use vouchers in a given year. Some extra money is already available in the budget, he said. ‘That seems to be the only way, really, to do this in a fair way,’ he added.”

There is reason for caution here, even though Huffman’s assessment is correct that eliminating the school district deduction method for funding vouchers is the only fair way to address what has become an urgent crisis for the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City Schools and for many other Ohio school districts. We all remember Naomi Klein’s 2007 warningabout the danger of adopting “shock doctrine,” privatization policies in a hurry in the midst of a crisis. We need to be sure that any so-called fix isn’t just an opportunity for the Legislature to grow the state’s voucher programs in some other way.  After all, in the case of Ohio’s current voucher mess, the Ohio Legislature itself created the crisis by expanding school privatization with explosive growth in the EdChoice school district deduction.

This blog has emphatically and consistently opposed private school tuition vouchers paid for with public funds, because vouchers undermine public funding for public education. Education privatization is never in the public interest.

However, currently in Ohio, an existential crisis for local school districts demands an immediate solution. The Legislature has saddled school districts with a school privatization program whose size the Legislature has no incentive to control because the money quietly washes out of local school district budgets. Neither can school districts control what is happening to their local budgets when the Legislature has set up an uncontrollable flow of dollars into the vouchers.

Huffman’s proposed solution would not solve the bigger problem of Ohio school vouchers. On the other hand, Huffman’s plan would pay for the vouchers out of the state budget, and as he points out, if it were to be so inclined, the Legislature could control costs by limiting how many students can use vouchers in a given year. Huffman’s idea would address the immediate school district financial crisis. It would then be up to all of us to pressure the Legislature to control the size and number of Ohio school vouchers awarded each year. Perhaps we can motivate a future legislature to eliminate vouchers entirely and return to a system where public dollars serve the mass of our children in the public schools.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Funding, Inequity, Injustice, Ohio, Vouchers

Teresa Hanafin on the “Trial” with No Evidence Allowed

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
45

Teresa Hanafin writes the daily “Fast Forward” for the Boston Globe.

She writes:

It’s the last day for House Democrats to argue why senators should find Trump guilty and remove him from office. Yesterday they focused on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power; today they tackle the second, obstruction of Congress.

In making the case yesterday that Trump abused the power of his office, once again the House managers were clear, methodical, and thorough, using video, e-mails, and other material they were able to obtain from witnesses since Trump has tried to block everyone and everything (hence the obstruction charge).

They even showed a clip of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham arguing during the Clinton impeachment trial that a president need not have committed a crime to be removed from office. Why show that? Because now that a Republican is in the White House, Graham is arguing the exact opposite.

But the closing statement by lead manager Adam Schiff stole the show, and his passionate and emotional plea that “Here, right matters” went viral before he had even sat down.

Schiff was echoing the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman,an Iraq War veteran who had told the House Intelligence Committee that he wanted to reassure his father not to worry about his decision to defy Trump and show up to testify. Why shouldn’t his father worry?

“Because this is America,” he said. “This is the country I have served and defended, that all of my brothers have served. And here, right matters.”

It was the perfect phrase for Schiff to adopt last night. After he pointed out that when it came to the false Putin propaganda that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election, Trump chose to reject the truth as told to him by all of his intelligence experts and instead, believe what Rudy Giuliani was telling him. Why? Because people like FBI Director Christopher Wray were offering him information that was in the country’s interest, Schiff said, while Giuliani was offering him information that was in Trump’s personal and political interest. With Trump, the latter will win out every time, Schiff said, and that makes him dangerous. In closing, Schiff said:

If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn’t matter how well-written the oath of impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. The framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves if right and truth don’t matter.

Here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No Constitution can protect us if right doesn’t matter anymore.

You know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. This is why if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters, and the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.

Here’s a 9-minute clip of Schiff’s statement, or follow the trending Twitter hashtag #RightMatters.

Today, the House managers will make the case that Trump obstructed Congress,arguing that if Trump’s refusal to comply with every congressional request is allowed to stand, then Congress will have enabled him and all future presidents to hide their wrongdoing, effectively killing Congress’ constitutionally mandated duty to hold the executive branch accountable.

Their arguments come as the Republicans are touting a new reason not to find Trump guilty: That he’s just going to assert executive privilege anyway, and it will be dragged out in the courts, so why bother? They point to the fact that the House didn’t go to court (it actually did on several matters, and those matters are still tied up), but they are willfully ignoring history: During the Richard Nixon investigation, the House didn’t go to court to compel Nixon to turn over more information (he turned over many), but the Senate did. The difference? Those Senate Republicans wanted the truth; these Senate Republicans don’t.

Remember: In the entire history of the United States, no president has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry.

What is stunning is how assiduously the Republicans are avoiding the simple question: Do you believe the accusations against Trump? Instead they’re whining about having to sit so long, they’re complaining that the Democrats have been repetitive, and they’re pouting that the House didn’t go to court. Yoo-hoo … do you think he’s guilty or not? Crickets.

The GOP begins its arguments tomorrow, and Trump’s lawyers have indicated that they likely won’t use their full 24 hours. The Republicans could vote to acquit Trump by the end of next week.

Meanwhile, a reprehensible spectacle unfolded on Twitter when GOP Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee attacked Vindman, the veteran who has shrapnel in the body and a Purple Heart on his chest. With no evidence, she decided to accuse him of leaking information about Trump’s fateful phone call with the president of Ukraine to the whistleblower. And she called him unpatriotic.

How sad. How vulgar. To see a US senator grovel like this for Trump’s approval shows just how far the Republican Party has fallen. As anchor Jake Tapper put it on CNN: There’s no reward for decency in Trump’s Republican Party. There’s only reward for indecency.

Categories Fraud

DeVos Opposes “Choice,” Compares It to Slavery

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
32

Politico Morning Education reports on Betsy DeVos’ attack on “choice.” She was talking about slavery, not schools. Ironic. She’s wrong about both. She has a gift for bad analogies, like comparing schools to Uber and taxis or food stands outside the ED building.

HOW DEVOS USED THE ABORTION, SLAVERY ANALOGY: DeVos, a Christian conservative, was talking about the Trump administration’s record of opposition to abortion and her own at the Museum of the Bible on Wednesday when she invoked the comparison, saying she was reminded of President Abraham Lincoln “contending with the ‘pro-choice’ arguments of his day.”

— “They suggested that a state’s ‘choice’ to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it,” she said, according to prepared remarks shared Thursday by the department with POLITICO. She said Lincoln reminded “those pro-choicers” that a vast majority of Americans viewed slavery as a moral evil. “Lincoln was right about the slavery ‘choice’ then, and he would be right about the life ‘choice’ today,” she said.

— Similar comparisons between slavery and abortion by conservatives have drawn intense criticism. Minority members of the Utah Legislature, all of them Democrats, condemned comments by GOP Lt. Gov Spencer Cox comparing abortion to slavery at an Eagle Forum convention earlier this month.

— In November, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, a Republican, called abortion a “scourge” that’s comparable to the scourge of slavery. State Sen. Erika Geiss, a Democrat who is black, called the remark “incredibly insensitive,” adding “I don’t think comparing something that is a reproductive health care choice for one in four women … has any place in a conversation about slavery,” the Associated Press reported.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform

Sacklers Sell Home for $38 Million, Leave for Europe

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
8

Ah, sad for the Sacklers! Having become multi-billionaires by manufacturing, marketing and selling opioids, they can’t find peace. Major institutions are refusing their donations, some are taking their names off buildings they endowed, states are trying to claw back their fortune.

One branch of the family sold its NYC mansion for $38 million and left for Gstaad in Switzerland, future unannounced.  Perhaps the Swiss will be more forgiving than the states where thousands died of opioid abuse, victims of pill-pushing doctors who were assured that the drugs were safe—or didn’t care.

Even charter schools may be embarrassed to take their money.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform

Happy Birthday, Edith Wharton!

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
7

Garrison Keillor writes today in his online “A Writer’s Almanac”:

 

It’s the birthday of novelist Edith Wharton (books by this author), born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City (1862). She grew up in a rich, socially prominent family with old money — the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” is said to be a reference to them. In a family of beautiful women, she was not a beautiful girl, often teased about her big feet and hands, and her red hair. Her parents — especially her mother — strongly disapproved of her storytelling and writing. She said: “I was never free from the oppressive sense that I had two absolutely inscrutable beings to please — God & my mother […] and my mother was the most inscrutable of the two.” Her parents refused to give her writing paper, so she had to steal pieces of brown wrapping paper for her stories. She wrote her first novella at age 14, but her mother had only critical feedback; Wharton said, “This was so crushing to a would-be novelist of manners that it shook me rudely out of my dream of writing fiction.”

It was many years before she returned to fiction. In the meantime, she was married, finally, at the age of 23 — her mother had brought her into society and had been trying to find her a husband since she was 17. Her husband, Teddy Wharton, was a friend of her brother’s, and they were a terrible match. Teddy Wharton was pleasant but completely uninterested in the intellectual world that his wife craved; and as their marriage progressed, he descended into mental illness. She had a stretch of difficult years, feeling constantly nauseated and exhausted.

During these years, she continued to write poetry and short stories, and published here and there. Despite her unsatisfying marriage, she enjoyed being in charge of her own home. In 1897, she published her first book, The Decoration of Houses, which she co-wrote with an architect friend.

In 1902, the Whartons built a 35-room mansion called The Mount in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Edith and Teddy each had a bedroom — his was smaller, as was his den — and it was in her bedroom that Edith did most of her writing. She would wake up early in the morning and write by hand in bed, dropping the pages on the floor as she completed them. Sometimes she had coffee and rolls while she wrote. By late morning, she would turn her attention to seeing to the grounds and attending to her guests. Her secretary would take the pages and type them up, and then Wharton would make changes and have them retyped; the process repeated until she was satisfied. At The Mount, she wrote her first major novel, The House of Mirth (1905), which was a best-seller and made Wharton famous. She wrote to her lover, Morton Fullerton, about her work on the house and property of The Mount: “I am amazed at the success of my efforts. Decidedly, I’m a better landscape gardener than novelist, and this place, every line of which is my own work, far surpasses The House of Mirth.”

She wrote: “I have sometimes thought that a woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; […] and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.”

By the end of her life, Wharton’s popularity had faded, but she was earning a huge amount for her work; in the year 1936, when a good salary was about $2,000, Wharton earned $130,000 from her writing. Her books include Ethan Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913), The Age of Innocence (1920), and The Gods Arrive (1937).

Categories Education Reform

Peter Greene: Will Pennsylvania Dare to Regulate Its Failing Cyber Charter Industry?

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
7

Peter Greene writes here about the possibility that legislators might attempt to limit the damage done by the cyber charter industry, which is protected by armor of cash and campaign contributions.

Numerous studies, including one by the charter-friendly CREDO of Stanford, have found that students in cyber charters don’t learn much. Some studies have shown that cyber charters don’t learn anything.

But the industry is immensely profitable, because the cyber charters get paid full state tuition and provide almost nothing, unlike a brick and mortar school that must provide heat, electricity, a custodian, a library, transportation, etc. Cyber charters make all those things unnecessary, but at the same time that provide as meager an education as is possible.

Greene writes:

Rep. Curt Sonney is a GOP top dog in the Pennsylvania Education Committee, and he’s never been known as a close friend of public schools. But he represents Erie, a district that has been absolutely gutted by school choice, so maybe that’s why he has spent the last couple of years nipping at the heels of Pennsylvania’s thriving cyber charter industry.

Harrisburg just had hearings on his latest proposal, a bill that he first announced last October and which has something for virtually everyone to hate.

Pennsylvania cyber schools are an absolute mess, barely covered by laws that never anticipated such a thing and protected by a massive pile of money thrown both at lobbying and campaign contributions.

The cybers do offer a service that is useful for some students (I personally know of one such case). But they also provide a quick exit for parents who don’t want to deal with truancy issues or other disciplinary problems. Their results are generally very poor (none have ever been ranked proficient on the Big Standardized Test), and state oversight is so lousy that many were allowed to continue operating for years without ever having renewed their charters.

But what really has drawn the wrath of even people who don’t pay much attention to education policy is that they are expensive as hell. Because the charter laws didn’t really anticipate this cyber-development, cyber-charters are paid at the same rate as a brick-and-mortar charter. So an individual student may bring in $10-$20K, but costs the cyber charter the price of one computer, one printer, and 1/250th of an on-line teacher. The profit margin is huge, but so is the cost to local districts, with poorer districts in the state being hit the worst.

A year ago, there was a bill floating around Harrisburg to change the game– if a local district opened a cyber-school, then any families that wanted to send their kid to an out-of-district cyberwould have to foot the bill themselves.

The bill (HB 1897) is a bit involved, and we’ll go digging in a moment, but the two headline items are this: all cyber-charters will be shut down, and all school districts will offer cyber education. Now, to look for some of those devilish details.

Betsy DeVos is a huge fan of cyber charters and has even invested in them.

Be that as it may, they are a financial success and an education failure.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Failure, Virtual Charter Schools

Oklahoma: How to Disrupt and Demoralize a School Distruct

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
26

Oklahoma is famous for underfunding it’s schools. The legislature is under the thumb of the oil and gas and fracking industry, which wants low taxes and no regulations. Teachers revolted and went on strike in 2018 but the legislature continues to starve its schools, opting to satisfy its funders and forget about its children and its future.

The superintendent of Tulsa, Deborah Gist, is a Broadie who previously served as State Superintendent of Rhode Island, where she made her mark by threatening to fire everyone who worked for the Central Falls School District, a high-poverty district that was and remains the lowest performing district in the state.

As superintendent of Tulsa, she has worked with business leaders to cut the deficit by cutting the budget. Apparently the legislature’s neglect is just a given that Tulsa’s civic and business elite don’t want to bother by asking for more funding.

 

A parent sent me this analysis of the surgery Gist is performing on the schools—closing schools and laying off staff. To protect his children, he requested anonymity. Since I know his credentials, I agreed.

He writes:

How To Create A Zombie Public School District And What That Means For Tulsa Parents

Last week at the Tulsa Public Schools board meeting, Superintendent Deborah Gist and her administration laid out part of their plan to resolve a questionable $20 million budget deficit for the 2020-21 school year due to a declining enrollment.  Most of the attention has been focused on the four school closings (actually five), and little attention has been made of the other hits that are occurring.

Last fall, the administration held so-called community meetings to take input on what parents, teachers and students thought was most important for the district. These meetings mirrored the process in 2016 when the district was reeling from nearly a decade of budget cuts to education from the state. Both in 2016 and for the most recent cuts, the district listed identical items to absorb the loss, and asked people at community meetings to prioritize what they felt was important to save from cuts. The surveys included the following recommendations: reduce transportation by changing bell times; reduce costs through efficient use of buildings and operations; reduce central officeservices; increase class sizes; provide less professional development; reduce athletics and on and on.

The 2016 budget reduction outcome results were the following: Close three elementary schools and consolidate them into a fourth, consolidate a middle school and high school, eliminateover 142 teaching positions, increase class sizes, reducecustodial services and a create a supposed $1M savings in district office reorganization, among other items.

The survey results from the community meetings for this year’s(2020-21) budget reduction showed that respondents were leastwilling to: reduce teacher compensation; increase class sizes;reduce social emotional learning and supports. Respondents were most willing to save money in the following areas: change student transportation and bell times; reduce teacher leadership opportunities; provide more efficient building utilization and district office services.

After collecting and ostensibly reviewing the community survey results, the district recommendations for the 2020-21 school year were to: reduce district office services ($13-14 million); close and consolidate schools ($2-3Million); and change the elementary staffing plan, i.e. increase class sizes ($3 million)

Wait a minute. Didn’t the community just say they were least willing to increase class sizes?  Not only is Superintendent Gist recommending increasing the class size, she is also calculating it based on SITE totals rather than GRADE level totals.  What does this mean?  

Say you have a school with 400 students and one grade level has 66 students. A 24/1 ratio gets you 2.75 allocations or 3 allocations. Do this for every grade and you end up being allocated 18 teachers based on grade level counts. However, when teachers are allocated to schools based on the school total rather than the grade level total, a school with 400 students at the site will be allocated only 17 teachers (16.66).  So who gets the extra-large class? Principals are normally reluctant to have large classrooms, so they look to cut other allocations such as art teachers, music teachers, librarians, councilors, gifted & talented teachers and on and on.

And what does “office services” mean? No more school supplies? No more copies?  No more textbooks? Reducing social and emotional services?  So far, the district administration has not shared what “reducing district office services” means.

While TPS was having a “budget crisis” in 2016, what nobody was taking notice of at that time was the district’s declining enrollment (which puts the most pressure on the budget) at the same time that charter schools were quickly expanding. In 2015,enrollment in TPS stood at 39,451 and enrollment in charterschools stood at 1402. In 2019-20, enrollment in TPS is 35,390, a decline of nearly 10%, and enrollment in charters stands at3,119, a 120% increase.  In addition, in December of 2018, the TPS Board approved the expansion of an additional 875 seats for charter schools.

At the same time TPS is scheduled to close four elementary schools, the district is also poised to expand a so-called “partnership” school called Greenwood Leadership Academy(GLA).

The Founder and Chairman is Dr. Ray Owens, Pastor of the MET Church and GLA was supported by the usual charter-loving foundations and organizations: George Kaiser Family Foundation, Schusterman, Zarrow, Walton, Loebeck/Taylor and the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center.  

Greenwood Leadership Academy has been a train wreck since it opened in 2017.

In May of 2018: “Greenwood Leadership Academy staff member no longer employed after allegedly leaving student in locker.”  

A few months later, the principal who was a part of the Tulsa TFA cohort of 2013, unexpectedly resigned:  

“TPS partner Greenwood Leadership Academy to replace principal”    “I am resigning from my role as principal because I feel led by God to do so. I am, unashamedly, a man of faith,” Asamoa-Caesar.

But, fear not, he landed at 36 Degrees North, an entrepreneurial incubation organization, also supported by George Kaiser Family Foundation and the Loebeck/Taylor Foundation. Asamoa-Caesar has now decided to run for congress.

Despite GLA’s questionable past, an article in the Tulsa World reported on the intent of the TPS administration to expand GLA. “Tulsa school board to vote on accelerating Academy Central Elementary’s conversion into Greenwood Leadership Academy”  

Tulsa School Board Member Jennettie Marshall, district 3,expressed concern about closing a public school to expand Greenwood Leadership Academy, a partnership school, which, arguably, is a failing school.

The article states: “Marshall said she’d rather vote on the proposal after the final testing cycle is completed and noted the board typically doesn’t vote to renew GLA until the summer. Her concern stems from a history of underwhelming proficiency rates and disciplinary issues at the school.

She cited a recent data report showing a steep decline in third-grade proficiency. The report states 6% of GLA’s original student cohort, who now are in third grade, were proficient in math during the fall semester, compared to 31% in fall 2018. Their reading proficiency also declined from 27% to 13% during that time.”

That’s right, Gist is recommending that those same third graders now enter the fourth and fifth grades under this “partnership” school. But what isn’t mentioned is that TPS promised the North Tulsa Community Task Force a moratorium on its school closures. Greenwood Leadership Academy is co-located in Academy Central Elementary’s building. Apparently TPS doesn’t consider a school closed if they transfer all the students out of it and let a privately run “partnership” school take over the building.   Why not allow Academy Central Elementary to “absorb” GLA, and then work to improve Academy Central Elementary?  

To further complicate the matter, TPS School Board Vice President Suzanne Schreiber works for the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF)/Tulsa Community Foundation.  One would think if your boss was a major donor to the school (GLA) that is before the board for approval (or for that matter any of the other seven charter schools that have received GKFFdonations), you would have some sort of conflict of interest. Schreiber spoke in support of GLA at the January school board meeting:

“These are our partners,” Schreiber said. “We need to trust and support them. We’ve seen really robust data and a trajectory going (upward). So I support this recommendation. I’m excited for Greenwood to accelerate to fifth grade, and I just expect that they’re not going to do anything but continue to provide a high-quality education for our kids.”

Let’s rewind:  

5.56% of GLA’s third graders are proficient in math – that’s three students out of 53.  THREE!

13.21% of GLA third graders are proficient in reading.  That makes 7 students.

Who in their right mind thinks that is providing a high-quality education and an upward trajectory?

Shouldn’t the Board Member Schreiber be trusting and supporting the public school, Academy Central Elementary, in the community she works for, or is she working on the school board for GKFF? Where is her first responsibility?

In addition, school board member Jania Wester works for Community in Schools and shares an office with her husband who is the Executive Director of Growing Together, a GLA partner which has also received millions of dollars from the George Kaiser Family Foundation.  No possible conflict of interest there.

And in the category of “You just can’t make this stuff up,” over the winter break Dr. Gist married Ronnie Jobe.  Congratulations!   The groom is Senior Vice President and Manager – Institutional Markets for Bank of Oklahoma.  BOK is the largest bank in Oklahoma and its majority shareholder is one George Kaiser.

And speaking of transfers, what also isn’t being talked about is TPS’s new open enrollment, or as they explain it to their charter partners, “Unified Enrollment.”  This is where anyone can go down to the TPS Enrollment Center and enroll their child in any school if there is an open seat. That’s right, TPS will assist you in enrolling your student in any public school or private charter school merely for the asking as long as there are seats available.  

Do you remember at the beginning of this article when I mentioned the budget deficit was due to declining enrollment?  Does anyone else see a problem here?

To make the process even easier, TPS administrators are also recommending a re-alignment of schools so all elementary schools are configured the same.  That way if you want to leave your public school, you will fit right in to the private charter schools.

To top it off, the charter schools now need space to expand.  Where are they going to get it?  The closed school buildings of course.  And just to make sure those spaces are nice, at the end of December the TPS Board voted to spend $1.6M not for the benefit of TPS students, but to benefit the private Legacy Charter School to improve its building. Simultaneously, one of the public elementary schools slated for closure has plenty of students, but the district plans to shutter it because the building is in need of repair and that would be too costly. Maybe they want those students to move to Legacy Charter School since it’s getting a nice refurbishment.

Tulsa Collegiate Hall has its eye on Wright Elementary, one of the schools slated to close at the end of this year.  Crossover Preparatory Academy wants the Gilcrease school building, which was recently closed in north Tulsa.    Crossover Preparatory Academy was recently visited by governor Kevin Stitt to tout the so-called benefits of the Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Act which primarily grants scholarships to Christian schools .  Tulsa Honor Academy has reached out to the Walton Foundation for a $1 million donationto apparently go at it alone through Level Field Partners.  Does anyone else see a transfer of public dollars to private schools and real estate LLC’s in the future?

Nobody is talking about the costs associated with closing the schools. It isn’t zero. Nobody is talking about what an utter nightmare it is going to be to bus the students who under open enrollment can supposedly go to any school, with district transportation provided. TPS has enough problems trying to get students to school on time, now imagine buses taking any student to any school.

This last Friday it was announced that employees had been notified of the intent to eliminate their positions.  While Gist repeatedly assured the community that her staff would do everything they could to transfer teachers to other schools within the district once the schools were closed, the process is the equivalent of being fired and then having to re-apply for a job as if you had never been with the district.  I can only imagine the high morale of employees who have that to endure.

In five years, Superintendent Gist’s merry band of Broadies haveclosed at least eight schools, lost 10% of the enrollment, expanded charter schools by over 120%, re-aligned all the schools to make it easier for students to leave the district, helped them fill out the paperwork to do so, spent Bond dollars meant for TPS students for private charter schools and are cutting central office services while increasing class sizes.

If you’re a parent like me and are interested in saving public schools, you might want to look at two truly grassroots organizations that take no funding from reformer foundations or those who wish to privatize public schools: Network for Public Education and the Badass Teachers Association.

 

Addendum: The Oklahoma City School Board approved Superintendent Gist’s school closings and budget cuts. 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Oklahoma
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »