Monday, February 3, 2020

For Your Browsing Pleasure: Who Got Walton Money for Education Disruption in 2018? | Diane Ravitch's blog

For Your Browsing Pleasure: Who Got Walton Money for Education Disruption in 2018? | Diane Ravitch's blog

For Your Browsing Pleasure: Who Got Walton Money for Education Disruption in 2018?


The Walton Family Foundation is the fruit of the Walmart chain. It was created by the Waltons, one of the richest families in the world. The three senior members of the Walton family–Alice Walton, Jim Walton, and Rob Walton–have a collective net worth in excess of $150 billion. There is a younger generation of Waltons whose wealth is not included in that total. The Walton family increases its wealth by $4 million an hour, every hour of every day.
The Walton Foundation has a few causes in which it concentrates its giving. Reforming K-12 education is one of the major areas for giving.
The Walton Foundation is the biggest single private funder of charters schools and vouchers in the United States.
In 2018, it gave $210 million to a long list of grantees to promote its K-12 goals, especially privatization of public schools via charters and vouchers.
In the same year, it increased that giving by another $238.6 million, in a section of its website called “Special Projects,” many of which went to the same K-12 charters and vouchers, or advocacy for charters and vouchers.
I am leaving it to you to review the list of grants. What do you see that is interesting or surprising? Some years I read the entire list. Now I am asking you to do it and report back.
The only other source of funding at this scale is the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program, which gave $440 million in 2018 to launch new charter schools, most of which went to large corporate charter chains like KIPP, IDEA, and Success Academy in New York City. The original federal program, created in 1994, was intended to launch start-up charters that needed a financial boost, not to build financial behemoths to replace public schools. Under DeVos, the CSP has become a juggernaut to disrupt communities and states, whether or not they want charters. New Hampshire, for example, got the largest single state grant of $46 million, and its Democratic-controlled legislature has thus far refused to accept the money, which would double the number of charters in the state and knock a huge hole in the financing of public schools.
For Your Browsing Pleasure: Who Got Walton Money for Education Disruption in 2018? | Diane Ravitch's blog
at

Los Angeles: Defeat the Charter Combine! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: Defeat the Charter Combine! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Los Angeles: Defeat the Charter Combine!

Jackie Goldberg, the dynamic progressive on the Los Angeles school board, send this request for help:


 FROM THE DESK OF JACKIE GOLDBERG


 Dear Friends and Family,

First, I cannot thank each and every one of you enough for all you’ve done to support me over so many years.  And I have another personal request for each of you because you are all important in the struggles for full funding for public education and for progressive goals in civil rights, human rights, immigration rights and addressing the global climate crisis.
This request is not for my candidacy.
It is a request for the immediate future of the LAUSD school board.  In the March 2020 primary election, there are two school board candidates for the LAUSD School Board that I am asking you to support.  They are current Board Member Scott Schmerelson and Board District #7 candidate Patricia Castellanos.

Unless BOTH are elected either in the March primary in the November general election, my ability to bring progressive change will be severely restricted.  Right now there is a 4 to 3 pro-public education majority on the school board.  But all four are up for election in 2020 and we don’t have a vote to spare.
Luckily, Board Member Dr. McKenna has no opponent.  I have a fairly weak opponent, but charter proponents have already spent $250,000 in attack ads against me.
So the only chance the conservatives have of retaking the majority is to defeat Mr. Schmerelson, or by electing someone other than Ms. Castellanos in Board District 7.
PLEASE HELP ONE OR BOTH OF THESE EXCELLENT CANDIDATES WIN THEIR ELECTIONS.  HERE IS HOW:
SEND MONEY (up to $1200) to each of these two as follows:
Scott Schmerelson for School Board 2020
Contribute online at www.Scott4lausd.com
Patricia Castellanos for School Board 2020
Contribute online at www.Patriciacastellanos.com
VOLUNTEER TO PHONE OR WALK PRECINCTS as follows:
Scott Schmerelson- Contact Brent Smiley
Email: Campaign@scott4lausd.com
Phone: 818.324.8327
Patricia Castellanos- Contact Albert Ramirez
Email: info@patriciacastellanos.com
Phone: 310.864.3383
I’ll be calling soon to see if you can help me keep a progressive majority on the LAUSD Board of Education.
With warm regards,


Jackie
at

This election is off-limits to voters. But the results will matter a lot to L.A. school families - Los Angeles Times

This election is off-limits to voters. But the results will matter a lot to L.A. school families - Los Angeles Times

This election is off-limits to voters. But the results will matter a lot to L.A. school families

One ballot this season is off-limits to the public but carries far-reaching ramifications for hundreds of thousands of youths and their families — the election of a new president and other officers for the Los Angeles teachers union.
United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl, who led 30,000 teachers in a strike that gripped Los Angeles last year, is barred by term limits from running for a third three-year term. His replacement will instantly become a major voice in the nation’s second-largest school system and the leader of a union that has long influenced education policy in Los Angeles. The winner also will confront internal challenges, including the mobilization of anti-union groups that seek to persuade members to abandon UTLA entirely.
“The UTLA elections always matter,” said Tyrone Howard, professor of education at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. “They are an important player in the educational landscape in Los Angeles. They shape board elections, influence policies and have a critical voice in the current and future makeup of Los Angeles.”
Just a year ago, the union’s leadership led members in a momentous six-day strike — and won broad sympathy for teachers who rallied public attention to difficult working conditions and their crucial mission to educate Los Angeles’ most underserved youth. The union election represents an internal referendum on how all that worked out, whether the gains of the strike justified losing six days of instruction and 3% of last year’s salary.
“Many members are questioning what they gained,” said Howard, and the election will determine how the union wields its influence going forward and the extent to which it remains “a critical voice in school reform.”
“The right leader can hurt or hinder that process,” he added.
UTLA often has changed the classroom or political equation. In the 1990s, when the union couldn’t win raises, it pushed for greater control over schools and classrooms, winning the right for teachers — not principals — to in many cases choose which grade levels or courses they taught.
The union also won the ability for members to earn lifetime health insurance. The cost has created financial strains for the Los Angeles Unified School District, but supporters see that benefit as a valuable recruitment tool.
More recently, UTLA was among the first unions to push back successfully against a nationwide trend to rate teachers based on student standardized test scores.
Teachers unions remain among the most powerful interest groups in California — they played a key role in last year’s legislation that could limit the growth of new CONTINUE READING: 

at

Dallas: Charter Operator Sentenced to 7 Years, Then Claims Bonus | Diane Ravitch's blog

Dallas: Charter Operator Sentenced to 7 Years, Then Claims Bonus | Diane Ravitch's blog

Dallas: Charter Operator Sentenced to 7 Years, Then Claims Bonus


The charter industry is overrun with scandals because charter laws do not require accountability and transparency. Theft, conflicts of interest, nepotism, and fraud are a feature, not a bug.
A charter operator in Dallas was sentenced to seven years in jail for taking a kickback, but then convinced the board to give her a bonus of $20,000.
Donna Houston-Woods was convicted of defrauding her own Dallas charter school, but she wasn’t done taking its money for her own benefit, a federal prosecutor said Thursday.
She returned to Nova Academy after her October trial and pocketed a $20,000 bonus. Houston-Woods, the school’s longtime CEO, then asked for another $300,000 in severance, but the school board denied it.
Her actions, the prosecutor said, showed zero remorse and a lack of respect for the law.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Houston-Woods to seven years and three months in prison for accepting $50,000 in kickbacks in exchange for steering a school CONTINUE READING: Dallas: Charter Operator Sentenced to 7 Years, Then Claims Bonus | Diane Ravitch's blog
at

Fracking has led to a "bust" for Pennsylvania school district finances | Salon.com

Fracking has led to a "bust" for Pennsylvania school district finances | Salon.com

Fracking has led to a "bust" for Pennsylvania school district finances
Fracking in Pennsylvania has led to disadvantages in state school districts.

Unconventional natural gas development has transformed American energy over the past decade.
Hydraulic fracturing, often popularly referred to as "fracking," is a process used in extracting oil or gas resources from underground formations such as shale or sandstone. In Pennsylvania and elsewhere, this has been an industrially intensive method, and wells are often drilled a mile or more beneath the ground and a mile or more horizontally along the shale or sandstone.
Several Democratic presidential candidates have called for new limitations on the practice because of environmental and other concerns. Two of the leading candidates, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have promised to ban fracking if elected.
Opponents of these restrictions insist these bans would devastate the economies of states like Pennsylvania. These debates have also raised serious questions about swing state support for democratic candidates in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
As educational researchers in the Keystone state, we recently conducted a study on the impact of unconventional gas development on the financial resources of the Pennsylvania's school districts.
We found that fracking had largely negative impacts on affected school districts.
Fracking history
In the mid-2000s fracking's largely unanticipated gas development dramatically changed much of Pennsylvania.
Fracking has made gas extraction technologically and economically possible from energy deposits that CONTINUE READING: Fracking has led to a "bust" for Pennsylvania school district finances | Salon.com
at

Florida: 2 Big Banks Abandon Florida’s Voucher Program Due to Anti-LGBT Policies | Diane Ravitch's blog

Florida: 2 Big Banks Abandon Florida’s Voucher Program Due to Anti-LGBT Policies | Diane Ravitch's blog

Florida: 2 Big Banks Abandon Florida’s Voucher Program Due to Anti-LGBT Policies


A free press makes a difference. Here is proof.
On January 23, Leslie Postal and Annie Martin of the Orlando Sentinel wrote that nearly 160 religious schools receiving vouchers from the state of Florida openly discriminate against students, families, and staff who are gay. Voucher schools drain $1 billion away from public education every year in Florida, and state legislators want to expand vouchers until they are available to every student in the state.
The next day, opinion writer Scott Maxwell of the same newspaper wrote more about public-funded religious  schools rejecting students and families. He wrote:
One school told a mother — a firefighter married to U.S. Air Force veteran — that her children were unfit to be educated there simply because the couple was two women.
The two women served their country and community. But the school — which received $371,000 in state scholarship money last year — told the family to get an education elsewhere.

at

EdChoice Voucher Negotiations Break Down in Ohio: Four Questions Must Be Addressed in 60-Day Delay | janresseger

EdChoice Voucher Negotiations Break Down in Ohio: Four Questions Must Be Addressed in 60-Day Delay | janresseger

EdChoice Voucher Negotiations Break Down in Ohio: Four Questions Must Be Addressed in 60-Day Delay


Rancor and confusion over the issue of EdChoice private school tuition vouchers filled the chambers of the Ohio Legislature all last week. In anticipation of the February 1st date when families were supposed to start signing up for vouchers for next school year, the Legislature set out to address problems with Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program, problems created when changes were surreptitiously inserted into the state budget last summer during last minute hearings by the conference committee.
Last week’s negotiations about the voucher program broke down entirely on Thursday night and Friday, however.  The Legislature has now delayed the EdChoice voucher sign-up process; it has given itself two months to address big problems in the program. Here is how the Plain Dealer‘s Patrick O’Donnell describes the chaos in Ohio:
“Ohio’s controversy over tuition vouchers sparked anger, political posturing and suspense in Columbus this week, with no clarity for anyone. That won’t come for two months.  Parents won’t know until April if their children are eligible to receive a tax-funded voucher toward private school tuition.  Vouchers applications that were supposed to start Saturday won’t. Private schools won’t know if they will receive any state tuition help. And about 1,200 public schools across Ohio don’t know if they will remain on a state list of underperforming schools which lets students use vouchers that are then billed to the district. Even state legislators can’t say what form Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program will take for the fall. After the Ohio House and Senate proposed drastic changes this week to rework which students would be eligible for vouchers and who would pay for them, negotiations fizzled. By Friday, with Saturday’s start of the voucher application looming, both houses voted to delay any applications until April 1, while they search for a compromise.”
One interesting detail about the huge fight in Columbus about school choice right now is that CONTINUE READING: EdChoice Voucher Negotiations Break Down in Ohio: Four Questions Must Be Addressed in 60-Day Delay | janresseger
at