Use of Public Funds without Oversight Mars Escondido Charter Schools

Use of Public Funds without Oversight Mars Escondido Charter Schools:

Use of Public Funds without Oversight Mars Escondido Charter Schools

Editor Note: This is part three of the series about charter schools in Escondido.  Part one here and part two  here.

Public education advocates around the country are taking a closer look at charter schools, their finances, their admission and expulsion policies, as well as their questionable academic results. These schools, while privately run, receive millions of taxpayer dollars annually, yet oversight is difficult because charter schools are exempt from much of the Education Code that governs traditional public schools.

Public dollars with little public oversight have created environments in which irregularities and questionable practices–both academic and financial—are thriving. At Alianza North County, we’re taking a closer look at these taxpayer-funded schools in Escondido. One such unusual practice is occurring at the city’s most popular and controversial charter school.

It is hard to imagine a publicly-elected school board of a public school district authorizing the payment of one individual’s salary through a different organization than the rest of the staff and faculty. Yet that is what appears to be happening at Escondido Charter High School.

While we are not making any claims about legality of these policies and procedures, we believe there is cause for concern. The Times of San Diego has reported that CalStrs is reviewing the complaint filed by the authors of the article. We are not pension or accounting experts which is why, as citizens and taxpayers, we passed along our concerns to CalStrs. It is up to CalStrs to determine whether this is another charter school loophole or if there is indeed a violation of CalStrs post-retirement earnings policy. We are simply shining light on the concern.

Retirement with six figure pension + six figure salary
Dennis Snyder, Executive Director of Escondido’s most controversial group of charter schools, retired from Escondido Charter High School in 2007.  The school was the last named employer of his long career while contributing to the CalStrs pension fund.

According to data retrieved via Transparent California Link, he has been collecting his full pension since 2007 and is also paid a six-figure salary through the charter schools, but not exactly through the charter schools. He is paid through the Heritage American Foundation. Most likely few people know of his retirement, because by all appearances, Mr. Snyder has continued to work for his schools in the same capacity after his retirement that he did prior to it.

In 2007, the year of his retirement, tax documents show the official source of his salary changing from Escondido Charter High School to The American Heritage Education Foundation, a non-profit entity established by Snyder that raises funds for his schools. According to IRS 990 forms, since 2007, Snyder has been the foundation’s sole full-time employee.

In 2012, the salary he claimed was $104,000 for 40 hours of work per week – specifically for The American Heritage Education Foundation with no salary claimed through the schools. All other teachers and administrators of the charter schools receive salaries as employees of the schools.

Since retiring, Mr. Snyder continues to be the face and the voice of his schools and is usually named as Executive Director, just as he was before his 2007 retirement. In recent years, as Executive Director, he has opened two new schools and it is rumored they are planning to expand. There have been closed-door negotiations at Escondido City Hall about acquiring city-owned land at Mountain View Park but the status of this negotiation is unknown.

One of the Highest Teacher Pensions in the State, Top Three in Escondido Unified High School District
According to Transparent California, Snyder will collect a pension of over $116,000 this year through CalStrs Retirement Fund. The amount has increased a few thousand dollars per year since 2007, but has always been over $100,000 per year, making his pension one of the top 6000 or so for retired educators in the entire state of California. In the Escondido Union High School District, only two retired employees collect a higher pension than Snyder, one being a retired superintendent for the Escondido Union High School District.

CalStrs Limitations on Post-Retirement Wages
One logical reason a retired educator might not want to be paid directly by a publicly-funded school is that CalStrs places a $40,100 limit on post-retirement earnings for retirees employed in a public school (or a CalStrs contributing charter school).

Mr. Snyder’s salary via the American Heritage Education Foundation is 2 ½ times that amount. Because there is no salary paid directly from the school, a full pension seemingly could be collected. In a traditional public school, it would be highly unlikely a public school administrator/educator could retire from his/her position, claim full pension benefits through CalStrs, yet still remain in the same position receiving a salary well beyond the limit of $40,100.

Oversight Needed
Charter schools are notorious for claiming to be “public” when seeking funds, but “private” when they are asked to be accountable. Charter schools are allowed to be less transparent and are not held to the same standards as public schools when it comes to contractor bids, accounting transparency and all sorts of other policies than schools that are directly governed by a publicly-elected board.

Perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at all the charter schools in Escondido. As public education advocate Diane Ravitch has said, “Charter-school people keep saying, “We’re public schools, we’re public schools!” Well, no, they’re not public schools. They can pick and choose their students, and they can kick out students that public schools can’t kick out. Charter schools are privately managed, many of them are not accountable or transparent, and they’re allowed to do things that public schools could never do. For instance, they can say, “We may be using public funds, but you have no right to audit our books.”

Public dollars need public oversight. It is time for thorough and effective oversight of Escondido’s charter schools.

Nina Deerfield is a Naturopathic Physician, Martial Arts Master, Publisher of Alianza North County and a political activist.

Rebecca Nutile is a resident of Escondido. She is a public education advocate and the parent of three young children.Use of Public Funds without Oversight Mars Escondido Charter Schools:

This Week In Education: Thompson: Rick Hess Is Back!

This Week In Education: Thompson: Rick Hess Is Back!:

Thompson: Rick Hess Is Back!

Rick’s back! And Hess’s Personality Quiz: Am I a Wannabe Edu-Bureaucrat? is hilarious. Every other paragraph, I had to shout at the computer screen, “I wish I’d said that!” 

The conservative Rick Hess, who hasn’t explicitly repudiated his identification as a school reformer (or conservatism), is back blogging at Education Week after a several week hiatus. Hess unveils a 17-point quiz which can determine, “Congrats! You're an aspiring bureaucrat!” In doing so, the American Enterprise Institute scholar explains the rise of a new “cheery, ready-made mantra for your brand of ‘reform.’ It's: ‘Meet the new boss; same as the old boss . . . except this time you're going to be lucky to have a really, really smart boss. Not like all those others who have come before.’"

Hess identifies wannabe edu-bureaucrats by asking whether they “routinely describe teachers and schools as ‘good’ or ‘effective’ based on limited, simplistic, standardized metrics like reading and math scores,” seek to impose the “right way to train all new teachers” and mandate teacher evaluation models “for every school in every district in their state,” or condemn parents who opt out of standardized tests as irresponsible.

Wannabe edu-bureaucrats “get a warm feeling when talk turns to ‘P-20 alignment.’" They believe that “people who disagree with me on Common Core, ESEA, teacher evaluation, and the rest are mostly just playing politics. … [and] really wish they'd simmer down and shut up.” Aspiring bureaucrats aren’t trained to conduct or evaluate research, and they “rarely read beyond an abstract,” but they find that "good” research usually agrees with their views on reform. These wannabes “find it easiest to communicate in acronyms and buzzwords.”

Hess writes that you might be a wannabe edu-bureaucrat if “I've never been reminded of the USSR's 'five-year plans' when the U.S. Department of Ed orders waiver states to devise . . . five-year plans, with ambitious (if arbitrary) race-based performance targets.”

A serious analysis of “reform” overreach can’t pack the punch of Hess’s wit, but it can supplement it. For instance, there are reasons why Hess is correct and reformers have become more edu-bureaucratic in the last five years. Under Arne Duncan’s USDOE, competition-driven, test-driven reformers got everything on their wildest wish lists. Many of the reformers’ market-driven, standards-driven, and accountability-driven policies are mutually contradictory. Some policies verged on Libertarianism (for their choice schools) while others imposed social engineering on the rest of us. But, Duncan and the Billionaires Boys Club "incentivized" almost every state to abruptly codify reformers opinions' into law.  Now they have to double-down, forcing schools into fulfilling the unkeepable promises they were coerced into making.

Pre-Duncan, the term “earned autonomy” encapsulated the tension between Free Marketeers and wannabe edu-bureaucrats.  Favored schools, with high test scores (resulting from creaming higher performing students), were granted the autonomy to teach meaningful concepts in an engaging manner. Low-performing schools (that serve everyone who walks in the door) were often required to teach to the basic skills tests and to follow a mandated "aligned and paced" curriculum. If its Tuesday, students must master Reconstruction and move Wednesday to Imperialism, and so on. 

Hess is thus lampooning the results of a dog catching the bus it was chasing. Charter management This Week In Education: Thompson: Rick Hess Is Back!:

New data shows school “reformers” are full of it - Salon.com

New data shows school “reformers” are full of it - Salon.com:

New data shows school “reformers” are full of it

Poor schools underperform largely because of economic forces, not because teachers have it too easy

In the great American debate over education, the education and technology corporations, bankrolled politicians and activist-profiteers who collectively comprise the so-called “reform” movement base their arguments on one central premise: that America should expect public schools to produce world-class academic achievement regardless of the negative forces bearing down on a school’s particular students. In recent days, though, the faults in that premise are being exposed by unavoidable reality.

Before getting to the big news, let’s review the dominant fairy tale: As embodied by New York City’s major education announcement this weekend, the “reform” fantasy pretends that a lack of teacher “accountability” is the major education problem and somehow wholly writes family economics out of the story (amazingly, this fantasy persists even in a place like the Big Apple where economic inequality is particularly crushing). That key — and deliberate — omission serves myriad political interests.

For education, technology and charter school companies and the Wall Streeters who back them, it lets them cite troubled public schools to argue that the current public education system is flawed, and to then argue that education can be improved if taxpayer money is funneled away from the public school system’s priorities (hiring teachers, training teachers, reducing class size, etc.) and into the private sector (replacing teachers with computers, replacing public schools with privately run charter schools, etc.). Likewise, for conservative politicians and activist-profiteersdisproportionately bankrolled by these and other monied interests, the “reform” argument gives them a way to both talk about fixing education and to bash organized labor, all without having to mention an economic status quo that monied interests benefit from and thus do not want changed.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that many “reformers’” policies have spectacularly failed, prompted massive scandals and/or offered no actual proof of success, an elite media that typically amplifies — rather than challenges — power and money loyally casts “reformers’” systematic pillaging of public education as laudable courage (the most recent example of this is Time magazine’s cover cheering on wildly unpopularChicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel after he cited budget austerity to justify the largest mass school closing in American history — all while he is also proposing to spend $100 million of taxpayer dollars on a new private sports stadium).

In other words, elite media organizations (which, in many cases, have their ownvested financial interest in education “reform”) go out of their way to portray the anti-public-education movement as heroic rather than what it really is: just another get-rich-quick scheme shrouded in the veneer of altruism.

That gets to the news that exposes “reformers’” schemes — and all the illusions that surround them. According to a new U.S. Department of Education study, “about one in five public schools was considered high poverty in 2011 … up from about to one in eight in 2000.” This followed an earlier study from the department finding that “many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding … leav(ing) students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers.”

Those data sets powerfully raise the question that “reformers” are so desperate to avoid: Are we really expected to believe that it’s just a coincidence that the public education and poverty crises are happening at the same time? Put another way: Are we really expected to believe that everything other than poverty is what’s causing problems in failing public schools?

Because of who comprises it and how it is financed, the education “reform” movement has a clear self-interest in continuing to say yes, we should believe such fact-free pabulum. And you can bet that movement will keep saying “yes” — and that the corporate media will continue to cheer them as heroes for saying “yes” — as long as public education money keeps being diverted into corporate coffers.

But we’ve now reached the point where the economics-omitting “reform” propaganda has jumped the shark, going from deceptively alluring to embarrassingly transparent. That’s because the latest Department of Education study isn’t being released in a vacuum; it caps off an overwhelming wave of evidence showing that our education crisis has far less to do with public schools or bad teachers than it does with the taboo subject of crushing poverty.

In 2011, for instance, Stanford University’s Sean Reardon released a comprehensive New data shows school “reformers” are full of it - Salon.com:

HISD seeks to terminate charter school's contract after finding irregularities | News - Home

HISD seeks to terminate charter school's contract after finding irregularities | News - Home:

HISD seeks to terminate charter school's contract after finding irregularities

 HOUSTON -

The Houston Independent School District announced Tuesday that it is seeking to terminate the contract of the Hope Academy charter school.

HISD said that irregularities were found involving 35 of 68 students who were reviewed. Officials said 51 irregularities were found, including credit restorations, grade changes, class deletions and class additions.

Authorities said the investigation determined that only two of 21 students who were scheduled to graduate on May 29 were eligible.

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• Teachers want federal charges filed in HISD...

HISD released a statement that read in part:

"The district is now contacting all families directly to explain the situation and develop individual plans to ensure each student’s academic needs are being addressed.

"Launched in August 2009, Hope Academy is an external charter school that contracts annually with HISD to provide educational services to at-risk youth in grades 9-12. The school, which has an enrollment of 136 students, is operated by Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Houston’s Third Ward.

"Allegations of possible irregularities first surfaced in April, when the then-Hope superintendent reported concerns to an HISD administrator.

"HISD completed its investigation on June 1. The recommendation to terminate the charter school contract for Hope Academy is scheduled to go before the HISD Board of Education on June 11."HISD seeks to terminate charter school's contract after finding irregularities | News - Home:

Providence plans to abandon school reform organization | wpri.com

Providence plans to abandon school reform organization | wpri.com:

Providence plans to abandon school reform organization

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – It was billed as the “first labor-management educational management organization in the nation,” winning praise from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

But three years later, United Providence (UP!) is on the chopping block.

Outgoing school Superintendent Dr. Susan Lusi said Tuesday federal budget cuts have forced the district to eliminate the taxpayer-supported nonprofit that was created to oversee Carl G. Lauro Elementary School, Gilbert Stuart Middle School and Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School, three of the city’s lowest-performing schools.

“Three years ago I did not have a crystal ball and I did not foresee the full financial picture that we now live in,” Lusi said.

The decision to slash UP! is the latest blow to a district that has already had to put off technology upgrades in schools across the city as well as a promise to provide more bus passes to high school students in the face of Mayor Jorge Elorza’s decision to level fund the city’s appropriation – $124.9 million – to the school department for a sixth consecutive year. The overall projected school budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is $353.5 million.

• Related: School board president opposes Elorza education budget
• More: Changes coming to school reform organization
• Also: Everything to know about Providence’s two new high schools

Providence’s schools have seen a steady stream of increased state aid since the 2010 passage of the state education funding formula – including another $7 million for the upcoming fiscal year – but Lusi and several school board members have said those dollars aren’t keeping pace with the department’s rising annual fixed costs. The decision to do away with UP! was directly related to a projected $9.1 million in cuts in federal aid, Lusi said.

Lusi said the district also plans to allow a separate contract with Cambium/NAEP to expire. The city is also reducing the number of days reading and math coaches can work by 10, but it is not planning to eliminate any coaches. She said the district and the Providence Teachers Union are also exploring ways to generate cost savings in professional development.

The loss of UP! will likely come as a surprise to education stakeholders.

A 501(c)3 nonprofit education-management organization housed in the same building as the Providence Teachers Union, UP! was created in 2012 in response to an Obama administration policy requiring each state to put together a specific strategy for turning around its lowest-performing schools.

Federal officials gave districts four options for tackling the problem schools: turnaround, which meant replacing at least half of the staff; transformation, which included replacing the principal and extending the school day; school closure; and restart, which forced a school to reopen under a new operation – most commonly as a charter school.

The option chosen for three Providence schools – Lauro, Stuart and Alvarez – was a restart. But instead of bringing in an outside charter organization, the city established United Providence as a way of meeting federal standards without alienating the teachers’ union.

The initiative was praised by Duncan as well as Gov. Lincoln Chafee and former Mayor Angel Taveras, who hailed UP! as a national model for labor and management to work together to improve failing schools. The organization was funded with a $100,000 startup grant in early 2012 from the Rhode Island Foundation and received a three-year, $2.6 million contract from the city on the promise that it would improve school climate and implement rigorous reforms to turn around the low-performing schools. It also received a $100,000 legislative grant from the General Assembly.

“The unique, child-centered, approach United Providence is taking to maximize student achievement is particularly exciting because it can be proven successful then replicated throughout the city, the state, and elsewhere,” Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed said in 2012.

The plan to abandon UP! comes just as the organization was viewed to be hitting its stride following initial growing pains that included staff turnover and resistance from teachers in all of its schools.

The organization took steps to right the ship last year when it hired Denise Jenkins as its managing director. Jenkins, who came to the district after overseeing education grants at the Rhode Island Foundation, is credited with using her wealth of experience as a former school administrator and case worker to provide stable leadership of the nonprofit.

At an UP! board meeting on April 27, Jenkins and other officials from the organization said the suspension rate at Alvarez High School had plummeted to 3%, down from 21% at the same time in the 2013-14 school year. The group said suspensions were down and school culture was improving at Stuart Middle School. Chronic absenteeism was down significantly at Lauro Elementary School. Last week, Lauro first-grade teacher Diane Ciccarone was named Providence’s teacher of the year.

But while Lusi and union president Mariebth Reynolds-Calabro agreed that there have been significant “culture and climate changes” in each of the UP! schools, Lusi acknowledged the schools have been a “mixed picture academically.”

“We have not found the secret sauce to really see a steep improvement in student achievement,” Lusi said.

Lusi said she believes UP! was a success because it gave the school department an initial glimpse of what school autonomy can mean across the city. She said the district will continue to give more control to principals at individual schools in the coming years.

Reynolds-Calabro said she was disappointed with the decision to cut UP!, but indicated she believes teachers in the three schools will remain committed to improving student outcomes.

“Providence teachers are used to bumps in the road and this is another bump in the road,” she said.

Continue the discussion on Facebook

Dan McGowan ( dmcgowan@wpri.com ) covers politics, education and the city of Providence for WPRI.com. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter: @danmcgowan

 Providence plans to abandon school reform organization | wpri.com:

Barbara Byrd-Bennett resigns as CPS CEO; teachers union speaks out | WGN-TV

Barbara Byrd-Bennett resigns as CPS CEO; teachers union speaks out | WGN-TV:

Barbara Byrd-Bennett resigns as CPS CEO; teachers union speaks out

CHICAGO — Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett handed in her resignation letter Monday amid a federal criminal investigation.

Byrd-Bennett was already on paid leave as the government was investigating a $20 million no-bid school contract to her old employer, the Wilmette, Ill.-based SUPES academy.

Federal investigators have asked for records related to the district’s contract with SUPES Academy, which provides principal training. CPS has suspended its contract with SUPES, which has defended its training.

Byrd-Bennett’s letter read in part: “I will remain forever thankful for the opportunity to serve the children of Chicago and the District.” Read the full letter here.

In a statement, Emanuel says he is “saddened by the circumstances” that led to Byrd-Bennett’s resignation.

A separate statement from school board president David Vitale says the resignation is effective Monday.

The Chicago Teachers Union says it’s not surprised to hear about the resignation.

Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey said Monday that Byrd-Bennett’s departure set what he called a “horrible standard for our students and educators who looked to her leadership.”

Vitale had little comment on the resignation, saying for now, interim CEO Jesse Ruiz would continue in that role until they find a permanent replacement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Barbara Byrd-Bennett resigns as CPS CEO; teachers union speaks out | WGN-TV:

Explainer: Common Core State Standards -- What Is Christie Walking Away From? - NJ Spotlight

Explainer: Common Core State Standards -- What Is Christie Walking Away From? - NJ Spotlight:

EXPLAINER: COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS -- WHAT IS CHRISTIE WALKING AWAY FROM?

JOHN MOONEY | JUNE 2, 2015

Much of the backlash from parents and teachers has been over the PARCC assessments linked to the academic guideposts

Gov. Chris Christie speaks at Burlington County College about the Common Core standards and PARCC testing.

What they are: The Common Core State Standards are a set of academic requirements in language arts and math that have been adopted in New Jersey and more than 40 other states. They are intended to be guideposts for children from kindergarten through 12th grade to ensure that they are ready for college and jobs.

What they mean: The Common Core has many goals, including raising the rigor of academic standards and increasing the depth of learning. And with 43 states and the District of Columbia signed on, it provides a single metric to help compare state achievement levels against one another.

RELATED LINKS

Common Core State Standards

What’s the big deal? The Common Core has returned to center stage in New Jersey, with Gov. Chris Christie in May 2015 announcing that he no longer supported the national standards and would move for the state to set its own. This comes after the standards enjoyed a fairly easy launch four years ago, when New Jersey was among four-dozen states to initially embrace the goal of more rigorous academics. But as the standards have been rolled out -- and new state tests developed -- concerns and criticism have arisen from both the right and the left.

A little history: The Common Core is an outgrowth of the “standards and assessment” movement that actually started under President George H. W. Bush. The standards continued to evolve through President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, and President Barack Obama, ultimately being released in 2010, as defined by a confederation of states, education groups, and business leaders under the umbrella of the nonprofit group Achieve. They then got a big boost with President Obama’s Race to the Top grant competition starting in 2010 that all but required adoption, leading to New Jersey joining the list.

What they do: The standards only set the endgame of instruction, not the actual curriculum, but they definitely change how schools teach students in different grades, including more depth in specific topics and often earlier in a child’s school career.

For example: Students in all grades -- including elementary school -- are being asked to write based on informational texts, using evidence and research. In math, numeric operations and fractions are the focus of elementary and middle schools, while it isn’t until high school where algebra is taught in depth.

All about the testing: Any discussion of the Common Core is incomplete without discussion of its biggest impact, the new state tests. And that has been where most of the debate has arisen. The standards are the basis of New Jersey’s new tests starting in the spring, known by the acronym of the group that developed them, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). New Jersey is one of 9 states participating in the PARCC tests, which are administered online. Twenty-two states have adopted a parallel test also aligned to the standards, known as Smarter Balanced.

Who’s for and against: Much of the education establishment and the business community, including the state’s chamber of commerce, have strongly backed the new standards. The state’s largest teachers unions, including the New Jersey Education Association, have also been among the supporters. And the Christie administration, the governor included, had been staunch supporters and defended the standards as critical in raising student performance. But with the advent of the new tests, the Common Core has come under debate. The teachers unions, for example, have softened their support, especially since the tests affect teacher evaluations under the state‘s new tenure law. And opposition has surfaced from both conservative and liberal camps that see the standards and tests as a top-down incursion on instruction.

RELATED STORIES

CHRISTIE STIRS THINGS UP WITH CALL TO DROP COMMON CORE BUT KEEP PARCC

STATE BOARD REAFFIRMS ITS COMMITMENT TO COMMON CORE STANDARDS

Explainer: Common Core State Standards -- What Is Christie Walking Away From? - NJ Spotlight:

Fla. teacher faces criminal charges for helping kids on standardized test | Extra Credit

Fla. teacher faces criminal charges for helping kids on standardized test | Extra Credit:

Fla. teacher faces criminal charges for helping kids on standardized test

A former teacher in Florida’s Panhandle is facing criminal charges after authorities say he helped students during an end-of-course exam at Newpoint High in Escambia County, the Pensacola News Journal reports.

Christopher David Fowler, 30, was charged Monday with four misdemeanor counts of violating the state’s Test Administration and Security Law, the Journal reports.

Don’t know which EOC that was or how exactly he “helped” but the paper says more arrests may be coming.

This comes not quite two months after an Atlanta jury convicted 11 teachers of racketeering and other crimes in a test-cheating scandal reportedly fueled by teachers and administrators who feared the consequences if the students failed.

(Note: This is not the Georgia district from which incoming superintendent Robert Avossa hails. He’s from Fulton County schools. The ring of cheats come from the Atlanta Public School district. )

According to the Atlanta Constitution Journal:

Investigators said the educators worked together, sometimes holding erasure parties or dinners, sometimes working alone, to correct answers on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. The cheating robbed students, who were passed up to the next grade without being prepared to succeed, and caused the schools to miss out on grants that could have provided tutoring or other help for those who were failing.

The investigation revealed student test sheets that had inordinate numbers of erasures changed to correct answers. One expert testified that the odds that students in one classroom would have so many wrong-to-right erasures without some kind of intervention was one in 284 septillion, 284 followed by 21 zeros.Fla. teacher faces criminal charges for helping kids on standardized test | Extra Credit:

Policy Group to Congress on ESEA: Don't Let the Perfect Be Enemy of the Good - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Policy Group to Congress on ESEA: Don't Let the Perfect Be Enemy of the Good - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Policy Group to Congress on ESEA: Don't Let the Perfect Be Enemy of the Good

Before members of Congress took off for Memorial Day recess last week, the Washington policy think-tank Third Way blasted out their message to members of Congress about overhauling the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, specifically the bipartisan Senate bill:

"The bipartisan Every Child Achieves Act may not be perfect, but it makes notable improvements to the most scorned aspects of No Child Left Behind."

Now that lawmakers are back in town and the Senate sits poised to take up the bill brokered for months by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., the chairman and ranking member who carefully shepherded the bill through committee, Third Way's message is a salient one.

When Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., calls up the bill for debate toward the end of this month or early July—as many advocates predict he will—that message will be crucial to drive home in order to garner enough support for the bill from both sides of the aisle.

That's especially true for those on the right who will want to see more school choice policies like Title I portability included in the bill, and for those on the left who will want to see more safeguards in place for low-performing schools and subgroups of students. 

"While few would call the bill perfect, voters and policymakers across the political spectrum should appreciate just how far Alexander and Murray's ECAA goes in moving the country away from the one-size-fits-all approach of NCLB," wrote Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, the policy group's director of social policy and politics, in an email sent to every office on Capitol Hill.

Third Way's reminder came packaged as an infographic bulleted with key aspects of the proposal: The main takeaways?

• On testing, the bill "lowers the stakes on testing while maintaining our ability to collect crucial data on achievement gaps."
• On accountability, the bill "gets rid of one-size-fits-all, unrealistic goals."
• On low-performing schools, the bill "allows districts and states to take the lead on developing plans to address low-performing schools."
• On teachers, the bill "shunts the outdated "highly qualified teacher" standard while prioritizing equal access to great teachers and school leaders."

You can view the entire infographic here.

Policy Group to Congress on ESEA: Don't Let the Perfect Be Enemy of the Good - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Mexican leader retreats on education reform as teachers rampage | The Sacramento Bee

Mexican leader retreats on education reform as teachers rampage | The Sacramento Bee:

Mexican leader retreats on education reform as teachers rampage

MEXICO CITY 

Ratcheting up violence in the run-up to Sunday’s midterm elections, Mexico’s renegade teachers have won a stunning concession from President Enrique Peña Nieto: the indefinite shelving of teacher evaluations.

Twenty civil society groups on Monday lashed out at Peña Nieto, calling the abandonment of teacher evaluations and uniform hiring practices an “unconstitutional” betrayal of promises to wrest control of schools from a powerful union.

“We regret that with this action, the federal government boycotts the implementation of the education reform,” the groups said in a statement. “We demand that President Enrique Peña Nieto reverse this announcement and not allow education in Mexico to be subject to blackmail and used as a political bargaining chip.”

Some of the nation’s most prominent think tanks and advocacy groups signed the statement, including the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, Mexican Transparency, Mexicanos Primero and México Evalúa.

Education Secretary Emilio Chuayffet announced the “indefinite suspension” of teacher evaluations in a brief message Friday night on his secretariat’s website. The message was later deleted.

Even with the concession from the Peña Nieto government, angry teachers shut down schools Monday in much of Oaxaca, Michoacán, Guerrero and Chiapas states, closing the doors on millions of pupils. The strike is to last until June 8.

Striking teachers burned an elections office in Juchitán and trashed a similar office in Tehuantepec, both in Oaxaca state, a hotbed of teacher dissent.

Assailants tossed Molotov cocktails and ignited small fires at Education Secretariat and elections offices early Monday in the industrial city of Puebla, an automotive manufacturing hub.

Hundreds of teachers belonging to the National Coordinator of Education Workers, a militant wing of the powerful national teachers’ union, gathered in central Mexico City to march on the main plaza.

The striking teachers want abolition of the education reform and higher pay. Median teacher salaries are about $15,000 a year at current exchange rates, well above what average Mexicans earn.

Analysts warned that the pre-vote retreat on education reform underscored the political weakness of Peña Nieto and his failure to rally public support for broader overhauls that he pushed through after taking office in late 2012.

The education overhaul, now enshrined in the constitution, requires eventual uniform evaluations of teachers with specific criteria. It would base promotions on merit as well as seniority.

It also would have allowed federal authorities to centralize payrolls to avoid widespreadMexican leader retreats on education reform as teachers rampage | The Sacramento Bee:

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/world/article22839303.html#storylink=cpy

An Imagined Interview With the New New York State Education Commissioner | Alan Singer

An Imagined Interview With the New New York State Education Commissioner | Alan Singer:

An Imagined Interview With the New New York State Education Commissioner

 

The New York State Board of Regents, the governing body for the state's schools, voted unanimously to appoint MaryEllen Elia as state education commissioner. This has to be an imagined interview. There were no open meetings with candidates where they were required to lay out their views about educational issues to the public. The winning candidate and her sponsors did not explain what they hoped she would achieve before she was anointed. New Yorkers can only assume Elia was selected because she will implement the Cuomo (Governor) and Tisch (Regent Chancellor) agenda which includes the incessant testing of students, evaluating teachers based on student test scores, a tax cap that prevents school districts from raising needed funds, and an all-out legislative push for tax credits for "donations" to private and religious schools.

Elia is the former superintendent of schools in Hillsborough County, Florida, a district that includes the city of Tampa. Hillsborough County is the eighth largest district in the United States. She started her career as a social studies teacher in western New York near Buffalo, helped her district receive a multi-million dollar Gates Foundation grant to overhaul the district's teacher evaluation system, and was named the Florida district superintendent of the year for 2015, just before she was fired by the Hillsborough school district.

Elia has a reputation for working well with different constituencies in Florida including the teachers' union and Florida Republicans. But she has also beendescribed as a fiscal conservative, promoter of magnet theme schools, an advocate of merit pay for teachers, and insensitive to the needs of minority youth and special education students. In 2008, a coalition of advocacy groups including the NAACPfiled a class action suit against the Hillsborough school district, then under Elia's leadership, charging disciplinary discrimination against African Americans and discrimination against special needs students. In 2012, Hillsborough School Board President April Griffin claimed that Elia "demonstrated a complete lack of professionalism with staff members and board members by cursing, yelling and bullying." Given that Elia was fired at Hillsborough and the current battles going on in New York State over high-stakes testing, the opt-out movement, teacher evaluations, and the governor's support for tax credits for parochial schools, it is amazing that Elia was appointed unanimously by the New York State Board of Regents and without any public discussion.

In 2013, Elia teamed with Florida's education commissioner, an avid advocate for charters schools and vouchers, and supporters of home-schooling, virtual education, and tax-credits for parents who send children to private and religious schools on a panel sponsored by the Florida Alliance for Choices in Education. Elia pioneered magnet schools in Hillsborough and the district under her leadership was one of the earliest to welcome charter schools with 50 in 2013-2014. According to a 2010editorial in the Tampa Bay Times, Elia also endorsed private school vouchers.

In an effort to find out who Elia is and more about what she thinks about educational issues, I have been plumbing the Internet for quotes by and about Elia and anything she wrote or said. Based on my findings I created this imagined interview with the new Education Commissioner as a way of welcoming her to Battleground New York.

Why were you fired in Hillsborough?

Commissioner Elia - "When you run a business that has a $2.7 billion budget which has 27,000 employees and 206,000 students and their families and all of the departments that support more than 300 schools, I think that you are bound to have people that disagree with decisions that have to be made to function. What you have is a level of concern about what has been a very decisive style. When you are running an An Imagined Interview With the New New York State Education Commissioner | Alan Singer:

Big Education Ape: MaryEllen Elia Approved as Néw York Commissioner of Education | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1GDyu1T

Big Education Ape: Hillsborough School Board member: Firing Superintendent MaryEllen Elia is a good deal http://bit.ly/1J3eGoS

Big Education Ape: Elia inherits controversy as new education chief - City & Region - The Buffalo News http://bit.ly/1Au1h83

Big Education Ape: Perspective: Gauging impact of Gates' $100 million Hillsborough schools grant (w/video) | Tampa ... http://bit.ly/1Q9uC9n

Big Education Ape: 8-2-14 Scathing Purple Musings | Color me purple in Florida http://bit.ly/1GiYuRE