Petition REPEAL Charter School Act of 1992 in CA Ballot Initiative

Petition REPEAL Charter School Act of 1992 in CA Ballot Initiative:

REPEAL Charter School Act of 1992 in CA Ballot Initiative

Ballot Initiative to REPEAL the Charter School Act of 1992

Click Here to sign the petition

As many of you know the charter school movement is at the heart of the corporate takeover of our public schools

Charter schools cherry pick students, falsify records, commit enrollment fraud, close down community schools, destroy jobs, bust up unions and segregate students where we now see essentially a three tiered system--- charter schools in affluent neighborhoods lacking students with behavior issues, lacking students with special needs and lacking students who are English Lagrange learners- these charter schools tend to have highly qualified credential teachers; then there are the charter school in low income areas where many teachers are unlicensed and the third tier is everyone else in traditional public schools. Charter schools are draining funds from our traditional public school system

Charter school receive public funds but have private, often secret school boards unaccountable to the taxpayers.

The charter school profiteers have essentially stolen our money and destroyed lives. We will never see the huge amounts of money that has been squandered away- it is gone.

Click Here to sign the petition

Please share the recent report entitled Charter Schools Cheating Communities Out of Millions. See below link:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/04/29/fraud-waste-and-lies-charter-schools-cheating-communities-out-millions-dollars

Enough is enough.

Click Here to sign the petition

It is time for the people of California to come together and take back our public schools from the profiteers.

A REPEAL is long overdue. The billionaire game is over and we the people are not going to put up with it anymore.

To place a repeal of the charter school act of 1992 on the ballot will require approximately 370,000 signatures. I know more than this number wishes to vote for repeal, but we need to know who you are so we can make this happen.

So, for those of you who are saying YES, it is about time, we need your help and we need to know who you are.
We need to assess that the numbers are there to support this. So, reach out to your friends, your family, your social and/or political groups..and provide us with names, county of voter registration and contact information.

The way this works is that for now we build support, get contact information because once we file the proposed initiative, a clock starts ticking, and we only have 150 days to gather actual signatures. All the signatures must qualify 131 days prior to a statewide election.

So, for November 2016...we must start gathering names now and obtain organizational support...file by early Spring 2016 just to obtain a Title and Summary that allows us to gather signatures and begin gathering actual signatures to qualify for ballot prior to end of June 2016 .

Keep in mind to qualify for ballot is not enough, we need time to promote the initiative before the actual election as well.

Time is of the essence.

So, even if you might not have the time to help spread the word about this, please let us know who we might contact, who might be able to help in this effort. And please at least give us your name and contact information.

Let's take back our public schools from the profiteers

Even if you can only provide us with a few names at this point, please do so, every name will count as we move forward.

Remember these are OUR schools built up with our tax dollars, not sitting their to have corporate interests bilk them for millions of dollars. Please sign today that you would vote for a Repeal. Also we need your name, county of voter registration and both an e-mail and phone #.

Click Here to sign the petition

New CPS board appointee resigns from organization that got a school contract | Chicago

New CPS board appointee resigns from organization that got a school contract | Chicago:

New CPS board appointee resigns from organization that got a school contract

As one wealthy member of the Chicago Board of Education accused of conflicts of interest with the school system is about to end her term, her replacement has chaired the board of a politically connected nonprofit awarded a $250,000 contract by Chicago Public Schools.

Deborah Quazzo’s investments in companies doing business with CPSattracted the eye of the CPS inspector general after the Sun-Times revealed an increase in CPS business to companies in which she had invested since her appointment in June 2013 — for a total of about $3.8 million. The millionaire will leave the Board of Education at the end of the month along with three other members.

“I notified the mayor’s office and CBOE leadership that I would not seek another term earlier this year,” Quazzo said Tuesday in an email. “It was a total honor to serve and I will continue to serve as I have done prior to and while being on the board.”

Mark F. Furlong, a longtime BMO Harris Bank executive and recent LEAP Innovations board chair, was picked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to fill one of the four vacancies. The mayor did not mention in his announcement Furlong’s role at LEAP, a technology nonprofit that was awarded a $250,000 contract by CPS in August. Furlong received no pay for his service and has resigned from LEAP.

Furlong could not be reached for comment. A BMO Harris spokeswoman said the mayor’s office requested all questions be directed to Adam Collins, who did not respond to Sun-Times messages.

Furlong was a founding board director at LEAP in late 2013 when the nonprofit incorporated with the secretary of state’s office, though tax filings show — and a LEAP spokeswoman repeated — that he received no compensation for his service. The organization was founded by Phyllis Lockett, formerly of the charter-backing New Schools for Chicago and of The Renaissance Schools Fund, to connect tech companies and educators to “help pilot the best teaching and learning tools,” according to LEAP’s website.

Furlong resigned from LEAP by telephone on Friday, according to LEAP spokeswoman Jennifer Cline. He also retired from BMO Harris as of June 1.

CPS has paid LEAP $65,000 to date, procurement records show but has a renewable annual contract authorizing the district to spend up to $250,000 this year for “consulting services.”

Quazzo, who championed LEAP’s services, abstained from that vote. She also abstained from a vote on a $6 million CPS contract to a company she invested in called Think Through Math but has voted to expand seats at charter schools that also are her companies’ customers.

Quazzo told the Sun-Times she saw no conflict of interest between her roles as steward of the cash-strapped school system and as a private investor. In addition, she has promised to donate any profits from her investments or the sale of the companies for a year after her term on the board ends, totaling about $2,600 to date.

The inspector general continues to investigate.

Also leaving the Board are Andrea Zopp, who resigned May 20 to seek a U.S. Senate seat; Carlos Azcoitia, an education professor at National Louis University; and Henry Bienen, president emeritus of Northwestern University.

In addition to Furlong, joining the board are the Rev. Michael Garanzini, retiring president of Loyola University; Dominique Jordan Turner, president and CEO of the Chicago Scholars Foundation; and Gail Ward, a 35-year veteran of CPS who served as the first principal of Walter Payton College Prep.

“If you look at the four people that I appointed,” Emanuel said Tuesday, “they bring a new set [of eyes], a fresh level of energy to see CPS through what it needs through the next stage.”

Action Now, which advocates for working-class people and called for Quazzo’s resignation in the wake of the the Sun-Times’ revelations, said Emanuel’s changes hardly clean house and “fall woefully short of [February’s] voter mandate for an elected representative school board.”

Spokesman Aaron Krager said that “Emanuel’s appointees do nothing to divert from the ways of the past. . . . These new appointees reaffirm the mayor’s commitment to privatizing Chicago’s public school system.”

ARTICLE 2 OF 5 COMPLETED. UP NEXT: EDITORIAL: BYRD-BENNETT’S RESIGNATION A CHANCE TO RESTORE TRUST

News

Mihalopoulos: Board games prompt changes in the players

WRITTEN BY DAN MIHALOPOULOS POSTED: 06/02/2015, 04:32PM

Chicago Police Board president Demetrius E. Carneyin 2003. File Photo by Jim Frost Sun-Times.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in the news this week for major changes he’s making to the Chicago Board of Education and the city’s police board.

Gone are many of the school board members who nodded along as Chicago Public Schools officials signed contracts with education consultants whom Barbara Byrd-Bennett had worked for before Emanuel chose her as CPS’ chief executive.

Byrd-Bennett, too, is now gone, after federal investigators sought records on her, her itinerant band of top aides and the consultants/former Byrd-Bennett employers who got a $20.5 million, no-bid contract from CPS.

OPINION

The departing board members included Deborah Quazzo, who said she saw no conflict between her roles as education reformer and education entrepreneur. Quazzo had insisted her motivations were above New CPS board appointee resigns from organization that got a school contract | Chicago:

What the election said about the kind of schools Philadelphians want | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

What the election said about the kind of schools Philadelphians want | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

What the election said about the kind of schools Philadelphians want 

 The primary election was, among other things, a referendum on what kind of schools Philadelphians want and how they think they should be governed.

Taken together with polling data, the election results show that the forces for corporate education reform, headquartered locally in the Philadelphia School Partnership, are losing the fight for hearts and minds, despite a seemingly limitless amount of money, a well-oiled public relations machine, and many friends in high places, including the media.

For years the mantra of school choice advocates has been that “people are voting with their feet.” It was their way of saying that parents want their children enrolled in charter schools. But in the recent primary, people voted with their ballots. The results suggest that the “dump the losers” approach to school reform does not reflect how Philadelphians are thinking about education, in so far as elections reflect popular opinion.

A year ago, State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, a strong advocate for charters and school vouchers, was widely regarded as the likely Democratic nominee for mayor. With a trio of Main Line billionaires ready to spend whatever it takes and the blessing of party chair Bob Brady, many Black elected officials, and ward leaders, Williams was regarded as a formidable candidate whose race it was to lose.

The coming together of a winning coalition around James Kenney happened, in part, because important elements of the labor movement, Black political leadership, and community-based education justice advocates were energized around defeating Williams. This coalition aggressively championed investment in neighborhood public schools and sought to expose his ties to right-wing elements that embrace privatizing education, tax relief for big business, and undermining labor unions.  

Not only Kenney, but all the candidates, with the exception of Williams, opposed charter expansion and signed a PCAPS letter calling for the School Reform Commission to vote no on all new charter applications this year. Williams was isolated as the only candidate prepared to support charter expansion, even though it would deepen the District’s fiscal crisis. 

Williams, as many have pointed out, did not run a very effective campaign and sometimes soft-pedaled his school-choice message. However the American Cities PAC kept up a steady stream of school-choice commercials, and Williams clearly was identified with this position. His crushing defeat has to be seen as a repudiation of the policy agenda that is his only claim to distinction.

And let’s be clear, this election was first and foremost about education. A poll of likely voters conducted by the Inquirer, which showed Williams badly trailing Kenney a week before the election, also found that 37 percent of those asked said education was their top concern -- number one on the list by far. The victory of longtime public schools advocate Helen Gym, who was not endorsed by the party and whose campaign relied on the energy of education and social justice advocates, underlines the point. So, too, does the big response to the ballot questions on whether to abolish the School Reform Commission and extend pre-K education.

Polling data shows the primary vote aligns with public opinion on education issues. A poll released by the Pew foundation in March found that three-quarters of polled residents gave city public schools low marks and a majority continue to view charters favorably. Fifty-eight percent said they believe charters improved education options and helped to keep middle-class families in the city; but this is down from 62 percent in 2013. A third of those polled think charters take too much money away from traditional public schools and lack oversight, up from 26 percent in 2013.

While charters have significant support, 55 percent endorsed a statement calling for more spending on traditional public schools, while 35 percent called for creating more charter schools and other options.  

This reflects the strong continued support for neighborhood public schools. Low marks for performance but continued support suggest that people understand the devastating impact of budget cuts and recognize expanding charters will further aggravate the problem.

The Pew poll also highlights, as does the ballot question results, the low esteem in which What the election said about the kind of schools Philadelphians want | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

‘We now know students cannot be tested out of poverty’ - The Washington Post

‘We now know students cannot be tested out of poverty’ - The Washington Post:

‘We now know students cannot be tested out of poverty’

Last month, a dozen civil rights groups issued a statement, under the umbrella of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, saying that parents opting their children out of high-stakes standardized tests are harming at-risk students. I published a few posts questioning the rationale of the groups (here and here, for example), which argued that only by obtaining data from annual standardized tests can further the goal of achieving educational equity. It said in part:

For the civil rights community, data provide the power to advocate for greater equality under the law. It’s the reason we’ve fought to make sure that we’re counted equally in every aspect of American life, such as in employment, the criminal justice system, and consumer lending.

Our commitment to fair, unbiased, and accurate data collection and reporting resonates greatest in our work to improve education. The educational outcomes for the children we represent are unacceptable by almost every measurement. And we rely on the consistent, accurate, and reliable data provided by annual statewide assessments to advocate for better lives and outcomes for our children. These data are critical for understanding whether and where there is equal opportunity.

The following post is a new critique of that argument. It was written by Judith Browne Dianis, John JAckson and Pedro Noguera. Dianis is co-director of the national racial justice organization Advancement Project; Jackson is president and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education; Noguera is the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University. A version appeared in The Hill.

By Judith Browne Dianis, John H. Jackson and Pedro Noguera

Recently some national civil rights organizations vocally opposed the growing “opt-out movement” in which parents and students are  opting out of annual standardized tests in various states to highlight the dangers of high-stakes testing. Those groups include the National Council of La Raza, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the League of United Latin American Citizens and National Urban League. Uniting under the banner of the Washington D.C.-based Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, these groups are urging parents to comply with annual testing requirements. We strongly disagree with their position.

Data from these annual assessments are not a reasonable proxy for educational opportunity, and even more, educational equity. African American and Latino students are more likely to be suspended, expelled or pushed-out of school regardless of their performance on the test; and despite some improvement in graduation rates, significant disparities remain.

[Why the movement to opt out of high-stakes tests is a big deal]

Moreover, of all the topics that could be addressed as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is being considered by Congress for reauthorization, why defend a ‘We now know students cannot be tested out of poverty’ - The Washington Post:

The states that spend the most (and the least) on education, in one map - The Washington Post

The states that spend the most (and the least) on education, in one map - The Washington Post:

The states that spend the most (and the least) on education, in one map 

U.S. states’ education spending averaged $10,700 per pupil in 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but that average masked a wide variation, ranging from $6,555 per pupil in Utah to $19,818 in New York.

There’s an even larger range separating the lowest- and highest-spending of the nation’s largest 100 school districts: At the low end is Jordan, Utah, at $5,708 per student; at the high end is Boston, Mass., at $20,502.

Part of the variation is due to the huge differences in costs of living nationwide, which influence everything from teacher salaries to the cost of building and maintaining school facilities. Part is also due to economic realities — many states’ education spending remains lower than it was before the recession.

And part of the variation is due to political decisions to invest more or less in schools, or to do more or less to equalize education spending across low- and high-income areas.

Federal data show that there is a growing gap in education spending by the nation’s poorest and most affluent school districts.

This map shows how per-pupil spending varies nationwide.

Spending ranges from $6,555 per pupil in Utah to $19,818 in New York. Source: U.S. Census Bureau’s “Public Education Finances: 2013″

Top spenders among states and “state-equivalents,” the Census Bureau’s term for D.C.:

1. New York ($19,818 per student)
2. Alaska ($18,175)
3. District of Columbia ($17,953)
4. New Jersey ($17,572)
5. Connecticut ($16,631)

Bottom spenders among states:

1. Utah ($6,555)
2. Idaho ($6,791)
3. Arizona ($7,208)
4. Oklahoma ($7,672)
5. Mississippi ($8,130)

For the full list of states and their per-pupil spending, see the list below, taken from the report, or page 8 in this PDF.

Top spenders among the largest 100 school districts:

1. Boston ($20,502)
2. New York City ($20,331)
3. Anchorage, Alaska ($15,419)
4. Montgomery County, Maryland ($15,080)
5. Baltimore City ($15,050)

Bottom spenders among the largest 100 school districts:

1. Jordan, Utah ($5,708)
2. Davis County, Utah ($6,130)
3. Cypress-Fairbanks, Texas ($6,798)
4. Capistrano Unified, California ($6,811)
5. Conroe, Texas ($6,860)

For the full list of the largest districts and their per-pupil spending, see the list below, taken from the report, or page 25 in this PDF.

The states that spend the most (and the least) on education, in one map - The Washington Post:

Emma Brown writes about national education and about people with a stake in schools, including teachers, parents and kids.

Is The Anti-Common Core Movement Just 'Suburban White Moms'? - NationalJournal.com

Is The Anti-Common Core Movement Just 'Suburban White Moms'? - NationalJournal.com:

Is The Anti-Common Core Movement Just 'Suburban White Moms'? 

(Steve Rhodes/Shutterstock)

June 2, 2015 On a Monday morning in March, several hundred Albuquerque (New Mexico) High School students walked out of their first period classes and onto the grounds in front of school. Despite warnings from school leaders that they could lose the chance to walk in graduation ceremonies by participating in the protest, students chanted slogans and held up handmade signs with messages like, "We are not defined by test scores" and "We have a say in our education." 

They were protesting new state tests aligned to the Common Core academic standards. "This test is infringing on our rights," says Maya Quinones, a senior and one of the protest organizers. Most of the students at Albuquerque High School are Hispanic and comes from low-income families. 

Education Secretary Arne Duncan famously singled out "white suburban moms" for their opposition to the Common Core and the tests associated with it. But many low-income, minority communities aren't sold on the new standards, either. Skepticism in those communities challenges a key argument for why such standardized tests exist in the first place.

A tension has emerged between national civil rights groups, which generally support the Common Core and believe standardized tests can help promote equity, and grassroots activists, who say parents and students have a right to refuse to participate in state tests they don't believe in.

Supporters of test refusal "claim a false mantle of civil rights activism," twelve civil rights organizations said in a statement last month. When parents "opt-out" of state tests, the statement said, they undermine efforts to improve schools for all children.

To understand the debate, it helps to understand the civil rights logic that undergirded the 2002 federal law No Child Left Behind. "The story of children being just shuffled through the system is one of the saddest stories of America," then-President George W. Bush said when he signed the law. Lawmakers wanted to hold schools accountable for every child's progress, regardless of that child's background.

So No Child Left Behind required states to regularly test all children in math and reading, and to separate out scores by student characteristics such as race and disability status. States had to take action when children in any demographic failed to meet learning goals.

The Common Core builds on the same logic. In 2009, a group of experts, backed by state governors and foundations, created a set of learning goals they thought better aligned with the skills students need to succeed in college and the workforce. Today, 43 states have adopted the standards, and children in most of those states took Common Core-aligned tests this spring.

Yet the Common Core has proved incredibly controversial—even more controversial than No Child Left Behind. There's something in the standards for both Democrats and Republicans to hate, from the collection of private student data to the loss of local control. Almost all the Republican presidential candidates—with the exception of former Florida governor Jeb Bush—oppose the standards.

Opponents say U.S. children take too many standardized tests, they don't measure learning well, and the new standards aren't age-appropriate. Quinones thinks the tests aren't fair to Is The Anti-Common Core Movement Just 'Suburban White Moms'? - NationalJournal.com:

Creepy Takeover and other Minnesota Public Education News | Education Town Hall Forum: Archives, Announcements, & Extended Discussion on Weekly Broadcasts...

Creepy Takeover and other Minnesota Public Education News | Education Town Hall Forum: Archives, Announcements, & Extended Discussion on Weekly Broadcasts...:

Creepy Takeover and other Minnesota Public Education News

What do you know about the “creepy” (CRPE: Center on Reinventing Public Education) takeover of our schools? Catch up on this important, but little known, development in public education on this week’s Education Town Hall.

The assumption always seems to be that schools just need to do more with less, so the suggestions are pragmatic. They include encouraging schools to grow their enrollment (the presenter, Marguerite Roza, who now works for CRPE, recommends pushing schools on this, because they’ll always say they’re too full). CRPE also suggests paying teachers extra to teach more kids, and pitting schools against one another in a battle for resources. All of this is based around a central question: What does it look like when a district starts to view schools like businesses?
— read more on AlterNet

Sarah Lahm, Minneapolis-area writer with a background in education, joins We Act Radio’s Education Town Hall, Thursday, June 4, to discuss CRPE’s incursions into Minneapolis and other Minnesota education news.

The Education Town Hall broadcasts from Historic Anacostia in Washington, DC, Thursdays
at 11:00 a.m. Eastern on We Act Radio.
Listen live via TuneIn.
Shows are archived for convenient listening shortly after broadcast.Creepy Takeover and other Minnesota Public Education News | Education Town Hall Forum: Archives, Announcements, & Extended Discussion on Weekly Broadcasts...:

Inside Information and Reflections from a Former TFA trainer | Cloaking Inequity

Inside Information and Reflections from a Former TFA trainer | Cloaking Inequity:

Inside Information and Reflections from a Former TFA trainer

I spent many years training new Teach For America (TFA) recruits. I was responsible for accessing TFA’s classroom practice and reviewing real-time student math test scores.

Lack of Preparation

The bare truth is that way too many TFA’s are assigned to teach math, but are not qualified to do so. They are teaching out of-field, which means that merely because of one’s association with TFA, they are suddenly deemed as math experts when they enter the classroom. How can this be valid when corps members report that they either never took a math class in college, or didn’t complete more than a general college mathematics course? Couple that fact with limited practice actually teaching math to children, and doubts surface regarding math studies and TFA’s effectiveness across all populations of children in public and charter schools in the United States.

What’s generally taken as fact is that Teach For America’s novices graduate in the top 10% of their highly selective institutions. But, not all corps members hail from “elite” universities. The organization’s website notes this admission criteria: “In order to apply to Teach For America you must satisfy the following prerequisites: Your undergraduate cumulative GPA is at least 2.50 on a 4.00 scale.” So, in effect, candidates can apply with a 2.5 GPA and still be admitted. Regardless, neither GPA, nor corps member elite profile necessarily translates to a CM’s classroom effectiveness.

Moreover, way too many variables, with respect to one’s placement, debunks the guarantee that suggests that corps member’s attributes transfer to their students’ math scores in the classroom. Teach For America’s expectation of high performance, often places “blame” squarely on the shoulders of novice corps members when they burn out or fail, who are not adequately prepared when they arrive in their placement classroom, and have no definitive way in determining their teaching assignment (other than selecting a general region where they would agree to be relocated to).

I have coached and come to know very determined and dedicated CM’s who faced challenges in their site-based realities that were obscured from policymakers, corporate funders and philanthropists who drop in for photo Inside Information and Reflections from a Former TFA trainer | Cloaking Inequity:

Columbus school attendance scandal | The Columbus Dispatch

Columbus school attendance scandal | The Columbus Dispatch:

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• Gene Harris sentenced
• Will Gene Harris be charged?
• Tankovich sentencing delayed again
• Columbus schools fires four principals
• Bunker culture contributed to problems
• School Data Scandal Dissected
• Police seize Columbus school records
• Cheating on school enrollment

The Allegation

Columbus City Schools employees - and perhaps others in schools throughout the state - are accused of falsifying students' records to improve their schools' standing on state report cards.

The Method

School workers withdrew students they knew to be still enrolled, deleted their absences, and then re-enrolled them. The district is accused of choosing children with many absences or low test scores.

The Motive

By withdrawing and re-enrolling students, employees can break a student's string of "continuous enrollment." Only the test scores of students who have been enrolled nonstop from October through the time they take state tests in the spring are counted in a school's overall test-passing rate.

Former superintendent Harris pleads to dereliction of duty in data scandal

The former superintendent of Columbus schools pleaded no contest this morning to a misdemeanor dereliction of duty charge for failing to fully investigate and stop data fraud in the district. A judge placed her on probation for a year and sentenced her to 100 hours of community service.

LATEST STORIES

Columbus schools’ data-scandal legal bill: at least $1.4 million

The legal tab paid to a Downtown law firm representing Columbus City Schools in data-rigging matters continued to swell over the second half of this school year. The Columbus Board of Education approved $275,000 more on Tuesday night, to be paid to Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur by the end of this month.

In wake of school data scandal, state investigating more teacher misconduct

The state education department investigated more educators for misconduct last year than it has in at least a decade, a surge driven in part by its scrutiny of dozens of educators caught up in the student-data tampering scandal. In 2014, the Office of Professional Conduct, the educator-discipline arm of the Ohio Department of Education, investigated 997 of the more than 9,000 referrals of potential wrongdoing it received, according to the annual report the office released this week.

Ginther’s documents show Columbus school audit started, then stalled

Responding to attacks by his political opponents that he didn’t do enough to uncover the Columbus schools data scandal, Columbus mayoral candidate Andrew J. Ginther says his campaign has unearthed documents that show the investigation continued at least as long as he was on the school board. But one of the key documents — a list of school-district audits active as of November 2006 — also shows that about two years after the student data audit started, investigators had spent just 114 hours on it. That’s equivalent to about a week and a half of work for two auditors.

School board fires ex-principal who altered grades at Marion-Franklin

The Columbus Board of Education voted unanimously last night to fire former Marion-Franklin High School Principal Pamela Diggs. A hearing examiner ruled last month that her role in district data manipulation was “dramatically wrong.” Diggs changed 186 grades at her school during the 2010-11 school year. At Marion-Franklin that year, 31,079 absences were deleted and 43 students were withdrawn retroactively at year’s end.

Columbus schools auditor gets three-year contract, raise

The Columbus school board approved a three-year contract for its internal auditor last night and gave her a raise. Carolyn Smith, who is most well known for investigating and helping to expose the district’s student-data scandal, had been working under a series of one-year contracts. Her salary will increase to $131,000 a year from $97,500.

Report: Firing former Marion-Franklin principal is justified

The Columbus school board would be justified in firing a former principal for falsifying student data at her school, a hearing officer ruled yesterday. Pamela Diggs, the former principal at Marion-Franklin High School, is the second principal the district moved to fire more than a year ago in connection with its data scandal. Diggs and other educators at her school had to return bonuses that were based on the altered data.

Ex-administrators from Columbus schools stripped of licenses

Two former Columbus schools administrators — one involved in the district’s data scandal and another who used school email and students to send sexually explicit notes to a teacher — lost their educator licenses yesterday.

Columbus school board dumps ‘policy governance’

It was out with the old last night, as Columbus City Schools ridded itself of the controversial “ policy governance” oversight model that it instituted in 2006, fired a principal accused of data-rigging and announced it would sell three unused school buildings. Policy governance, the hands-off model that put extraordinary power to run the district in the hands of the superintendent with minimal board oversight, is officially revoked. In a unanimous vote, the board put the final nail in the coffin of a system that began crumbling soon after it became apparent that a major data-altering scandal had been allowed to unfold under the board members’ collective noses.

Most Columbus schools staff repaying unearned bonuses

Most of the Columbus school workers who were told to repay unearned bonuses have started making payments, district financial data shows.

Columbus school board justified if it fires ex-principal, hearing officer rules

The former Linden-McKinley STEM Academy principal cared for her students, but overwhelming evidence that she knowingly cheated gives the Columbus school board good reason to fire her, a hearing officer has ruled. In a decision sent yesterday to lawyers for Columbus City Schools and for former principal Tiffany L. Chavers, the hearing officer agreed that evidence and witnesses in an 11-day employment hearing proved Chavers withdrew undesirable students and gave passing grades to some who failed.

Columbus school attendance scandal | The Columbus Dispatch: