Big Education Ape

Thursday, December 1, 2016

How much do Charter School Executives make? – School Data Nerd

How much do Charter School Executives make? – School Data Nerd:

How much do Charter School Executives make?

Michelle King, the Superintendent of LAUSD makes $350,000 per year. She gets paid the big bucks because she is the leader of the second largest school district in the country. She has 639,000 (give or take) students under her purview – that number includes charter schools which LAUSD oversees.

So here is a simple question – how well are the leaders of LAUSD’s charter schools compensated?

untitled-spreadsheet-sheet1-8 — Source: Foundation Center 990 Finder

An Overall Glance at the Data

This is not all the charter schools in Los Angeles – this is a list of all the charter schools I could easily find. The thing is, many schools operate under weird names that are not exactly the same as their charter name, so finding every single one can be difficult. But I think this is a pretty nice sample and definitely includes Los Angeles’s headline charter schools.

The median charter school executive in this sample is paid $165,057. Comparing that the LAUSD salaries – those are the kinds of salaries that LAUSD pays its Local Area Superintendents ($171,266).

Think about that for a moment. Local Area Superintendents are responsible for areas that cover about 100,000 students. And they are being paid about the same as directors of charter schools with as few as 861 students.

I think an interesting way to think about this all is by considering the dollars paid per student to the executive. For example, at Los Angeles International Charter High School, the executive director made $170,000 in 2015 managing a school with 256 students. That means that, out of the state funding allocated to each student, $664 went to the executive pay.

Of course, at a small school, the responsibilities of the executive are probably greater – they may have to be both the executive director and the principal of the school. And at large districts, there are many people who fill the bureaucracy and create economies of scale.

Priorities Priorities Priorities

But what makes no sense to me is that at the small charter schools, the compensation isn’t consistent – it is all over the place. Why does the executive at Los Angeles International need $170,000 while the executive at similarly-sized Wilder’s Prep only need $103,200.

When it comes to salaries – charter schools really are the wild west. Depending on how the charter views its priorities, they can reallocate the budget with a lot of discretion.

Take Celerity. They really seem to have no problem paying their executive a TON of money. Even though it says that they only compensated their CEO $256,245 – that was only for half year of work – the old CEO who left mid-year made $225,000. So the Celerity Executive salary still appears to be close to $480,000.

And then you have Gabriella Charter – which is known for their dance program, and was the top performing K-8 School in English and 3rd in math. They seem to have the opposite priorities from Celerity – compensating their executive with $101,196.

The Decentralized Mess

I think that the most startling thing about all of this, however, is how difficult it is to find this information. I had to go through a pretty complex search engine on Foundation Center’s site, and then dig through PDFs, and I had to know exactly where to look.

Compare that to LAUSD, where the salary of every employee is searchable online (thanks to local news outlets).

I guess that is sort of what bugs a lot of people about the whole charter school movement in general though. While it seems to produce academic results, it also decentralizes the system so that each individual organization needs to be held accountable and there are more areas to evade the public eye. We need a centralized way for parents and community members to access the financial and operational records of charter schools, just as they can with our traditional public school district.

But I doubt that’ll happen anytime soon, so I guess I’ll just keep doing it this way….

How much do Charter School Executives make? – School Data Nerd:

Warning - Malloy likely to propose shifting State’s massive unfunded liability problem onto our children - Wait What?

Warning - Malloy likely to propose shifting State’s massive unfunded liability problem onto our children - Wait What?:

Warning – Malloy likely to propose shifting State’s massive unfunded liability problem onto our children

Since taking office in January 2011, Governor Dannel Malloy’s fiscal policies have been based on a reckless strategy of coddling the rich, record cuts to Connecticut’s public colleges and universities, reducing the availability of vital public services and undermining public education … all while shifting more and more of the burden to pay for public services onto Connecticut’s regressive and anti-Middle Class property tax system.

Some will remember that upon his arrival in the Governor’s Office, Dannel Malloy whined about the fact that he had “inherited” a $3.7 billion budget shortfall following the fiscally irresponsible policies of Governor Jodi Rell and the Democratic-controlled Connecticut General Assembly.

However, rather than use his time in office to put the state back on track, Malloy’s irresponsible budget tactics have further exacerbated Connecticut’s fiscal problems.

Proof of this growing disaster can be found in the reality that as the Malloy administration prepares to propose Connecticut’s next state budget, the governor and his staff are facing a projected biennial budget shortfall in excess of $3.3 billion and growing.

Will this be the year that Governor Dannel Malloy finally takes the steps necessary to confront the budget problems challenging the state?

The answer is almost certainly a resounding NO!.

Sources close to Malloy are reporting that the neo-liberal politician’s “solution” to Connecticut’s fiscal crisis will be to propose a budget full of gimmicks, all the while dumping the responsibility for dealing with the state’s catastrophically high debt and unfunded liabilities onto our children and future generations.

Behind closed doors, Malloy and his team have begun the task of putting together the Warning - Malloy likely to propose shifting State’s massive unfunded liability problem onto our children - Wait What?:

California faces a looming teacher shortage, and the problem is getting worse - LA Times

California faces a looming teacher shortage, and the problem is getting worse - LA Times:

California faces a looming teacher shortage, and the problem is getting worse

Tamara Moore thought of herself as a career teacher, but she could see burnout in her future. In her first year, she was putting in 60 hours a week but was troubled by how her school focused more on raising test scores than on working with her to meet the needs of students.

“I felt like I — as an individual in the classroom — didn’t matter,” Moore said.

Her experience encapsulates some of the root causes of a California teacher shortage that is bad and getting worse, according to a new survey released Wednesday.

The staffing problem is both wide and deep, with 75% of more than 200 districts surveyed reporting difficulties with filling positions and low-income urban and rural areas hit hardest.

“It’s a national phenomenon, but we are probably on the more severe side,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, head of the Palo Alto-based Learning Policy Institute, which oversaw the research. “This is partly because we had cuts and cuts for years in our budget for education.”

Reduced funding levels have contributed to difficult working conditions, such as larger class sizes.

LaTeira Haynes teaches biology and other science classes at Dymally High School in South Los Angeles. Her district, L.A. Unified, recently reined in some class sizes, but her smallest class still has 35 students; her largest, 47. In all, she is instructing 250 students this semester. The challenge is much greater than conveying scientific concepts en masse.

“There are so many things that our students need besides content, and if there are not systems and structures put in place to help teachers, you kind of feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle,” Haynes said. “That sense of loss and failure makes a lot of teachers leave.”

In Moore’s case, the factors nudging her toward the door were the heavy workload combined with concerns about the school’s direction.

Between 20% to 40% of teachers, according to the new research, leave the profession in the first five years, a figure that rises to 50% in some school systems, especially those such as Moore’s school that serve low-income and minority students.

At the same time, fewer prospective teachers have entered the training pipeline, a decrease of 75% over the last 10 years, Darling-Hammond said.

Even though school funding has improved with the economy, the supply of new teachers has not kept pace with those leaving, including many who are retiring.

Darling-Hammond said the reputation of the profession has taken a battering and there is a dearth of necessary financial incentives, such as programs to help teachers pay for higher education.

“For us, we’ve been just fighting against it,” said Michael Hanson, superintendent of the Fresno Unified School District in the Central Valley. “The valley floor is a tough place to be. This is not everybody’s destination for work or teaching of any type.”

Nearly halfway into the school year, he still has 24 vacancies to fill and he’s also worried about next year. His coping strategies include staging hiring fairs months ahead of other school systems. He also has a solid recruiting pitch: A teacher’s salary is enough to buy a home in the Fresno area, which is an advantage over higher-profile urban areas.

Nearly 30% of districts with shortages report the high cost of living — relative to teacher salaries — as a factor.

To fill his positions, Hanson said, “we’ve been doing the sub thing and it’s absolutely California faces a looming teacher shortage, and the problem is getting worse - LA Times:

Important Reading on Betsy DeVos | janresseger

Important Reading on Betsy DeVos | janresseger:

Important Reading on Betsy DeVos

Today’s post is an update—some new tidbits and clarifications about the record of Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education.

Jennifer Berkshire on Betsy DeVos

I encourage you to read Jennifer Berkshire’s fascinating commentary on Betsy DeVos’s role in the mess created by an out-of-control charter sector in Detroit. Berkshire explains how DeVos’ influence and money undermined a bipartisan effort to save the Detroit Public Schools: “It was out of… (a) spirit of hopefulness that the Coalition for the Future of Detroit’s Schoolchildren emerged back in 2014. And it was a for real coalition. AFT was there, but so was the (corporate) reform-minded Excellent Schools Detroit and the city’s pro-charter mayor, along with members of the corporate and civic elite. People who’d been, if not at war, at deep odds, had finally gotten together around a single, shared point of agreement: if Detroit doesn’t have some way to oversee its schools—both what remains of the district schools and the fast-growing, completely unregulated charter sector—the city can forget about the future. Bankrolled by a local philanthropy, the Skillman Foundation, the coalition had the wind at its back and the political wherewithal necessary to get a bill through the state senate, even gaining the support of Governor Rick Snyder…. But the feel-good story screeched to a halt last summer thanks to a wall of GOP opposition. Except that “wall” and “opposition’ make it sound as though there were a whole bunch of people involved in the kneecaping that went down. There was a single family: Betsy and Dick DeVos. The bill that ultimately passed, with the DeVos’ blessing and with the aid of the lawmakers they bankroll, did virtually nothing to regulate Detroit’s ‘wild west’ charter school sector, and will likely hasten the demise of the Detroit Public Schools.”

DeVos PAC Still owes Ohio $5.3 Million Fine

The Columbus Dispatch and Politico have now clarified the role of All Children Matter, a PAC that favored school privatization and that was founded in 2003 by Dick and Betsy DeVos and formerly directed by Betsy DeVos—in a huge fine still owed to the Ohio Elections Commission after a 2006 violation. Here is Randy Ludlow for The Dispatch: “The Ohio Elections Commission unanimously ruled that All Children Matter violated state law by illegally channeling $870,000 in contributions from its Virginia PAC to its then-unregistered Ohio PAC, violating a state law that restricts political action committees to accepting no more than $10,000 from a single source… David Brennan of Akron, one of Ohio’s top charter-school operators and a top state GOP donor, gave $200,000 to the Virginia PAC before it funneled money to All Children Matter’s Ohio PAC. Virginia imposed no limit on contributions to PACs.”

Politico describes what happened: “The state (elections) commission told POLITICO that DeVos’ group initially asked Ohio if this sort of spending was permissible. When the state said no, DeVos’ group did it anyway. ‘I’ve been with the commission since 1996 and I’ve never had anyone else ask for an adivisory opinion and then proceed to not do what the opinion said,’ said Philip Richter, executive director and staff attorney at the Ohio Elections Commission.”

All Children Matter lost when it appealed the decision. Finally Ohio’s attorney general, “went to court in 2012 in a bid to collect the fine, receiving a $5.2 million judgment in 2013 from Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Daniel T. Hogan.” Hogan also fined All Children Matter’s Virginia PAC $25 a day, retroactive to October 26, 2006. The Dispatch and Politicoagree that All Children Matter seems to be fading away and has inadequate assets to pay the fine. At the end of 2015, the organization had only $275 in assets. Betsy DeVos was never held personally liable.

Campbell Brown Says Her News Website Will Provide Objective Coverage of Her Good Friend, Betsy DeVos

Caitlin Emma reports for Politico Morning Education that Campbell Brown, the anti-teachers union crusader, will recuse herself from covering her friend Betsy DeVos on The 74, Brown’s website that pretends to be an objective news-reporting site on topics relating to education.

Emma explains: “Brown and DeVos are friends, and Brown sits on the board of DeVos’ school choice advocacy group, the American Federation for Children. (DeVos resigned as chair [of the American Federation of Children] last week after accepting Trump’s Cabinet offer.) In 2014, the Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation helped launch The 74 with a two-year grant—the amount of which wasn’t disclosed to Morning Education.”

Since President-elect Trump’s nomination of DeVos, The 74‘s coverage of Betsy DeVos has been largely positive. Despite a more complex piece by Michael Petrilli, The 74‘s has printed a laudatory 2015 interview with DeVos and Campbell Brown’s own gushing commentary: “Social media attacks aren’t famous for accuracy, but it’s a pity that Betsy DeVos has been so misleadingly caricatured since Donald Trump asked her to serve as secretary of education last week… The suggestion that Betsy’s work with children is ideologically or financially driven would be disputed, I’d guess, by just about everyone who has spent time alongside her during the past 30 years as she founded, helped run and advised education groups and initiatives that have helped improve education across the country — including thousands of teachers and poor families.” You’ll notice that the sole purpose of DeVos’s education work—privatization— is unmentioned in Brown’s effusive tribute to her friend.

Writing for Education Week, Mark Walsh comments: “The 74, the website founded by former TV journalist Campbell Brown, is in an awkward position when it comes to the site’s identity. Is it an independent education news and opinion site, as Brown, herself a supporter of school choice and teacher tenure reform, has maintained, or is it an electronic pamphleteer for DeVos and her causes?” Walsh acknowledges that articles about DeVos posted at The 74 have contained disclaimers explaining DeVos’s financial connections and the fact that Campbell Brown serves on the board of the American Federation for Children, but despite the disclaimers, worries remain.

Yesterday Romy Drucker, CEO of The 74, tried to clarify further in a formal statement posted on The 74 website: “Two years ago, in 2014, the Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation approved a two-year general operating support grant for The 74. The final disbursement of those funds, in the first quarter of 2016, means that the foundation is an active donor only through the end of this year. Obviously, given Ms. DeVos’s potential role in the federal government, The 74 will not be seeking additional funding for 2017 or beyond. In addition to The 74 having received support from the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation, my co-founder and the site’s editor-in-chief, Campbell Brown, sits on the board of the American Federation for Children, which Betsy DeVos previously chaired… Still, given Ms. Brown’s close ties to Ms. DeVos, she is recusing herself from editorial involvement in the coverage of Ms. DeVos and her upcoming confirmation hearing.”

This is, of course, a case of DeVos philanthropy not only underwriting the pro-privatization American Federation for Children and the Great Lakes Education Project, which has lobbied for unregulated expansion of charter schools, but also granting the seed money for Campbell Brown to launch a news outlet that in subtle and obvious ways favors the very same education ideas that Betsy DeVos’s organizations promote—even while the news site pretends to be objective.Important Reading on Betsy DeVos | janresseger:

CURMUDGUCATION: Revising Reform for Trumplandia

CURMUDGUCATION: Revising Reform for Trumplandia:

Revising Reform for Trumplandia

If reformsters are good at anything, it's revising the narrative to match current conditions. They are masters of the retcon (a comics term referring to retroactively altering character continuity, like when Frank Miller introduced Elektra into Daredevil continuity and we suddenly learned that a character we had never heard about before had actually been-- oh, shut up. You're a nerd!).

Anyway, reformsters periodically go back and retroactively rewrite the story. What's that you say? No way-- Common Core was always intended to be flexible and adaptable for each school system. What's that you say? No, we never said that every school district must adopt the Common Core Standards! Teachers? We totally love them and never ever blamed all of education's ills on them. No, we never promised that charters would do more with fewer dollars. And of course we have always contended that charter schools are ~~public~~ ~~private~~ ~~public~~ ~~private~~ ~~public~~ ~~private~~ ~~public~~ ~~private~~ look, we'll get back to you on this one. Sometimes reformsters have been rewriting harder than a Soviet Russia historian and actual history has disappeared faster than Chuck Cunningham.

No Happy Days forthis guy-- gone and completely forgotten

The Rise of Trump has brought the erasers out in force.

Reformsters have a problem, exemplified by this set of tweets regarding Jeanne Allen, head and mouth of the very reformy Center for Education Reform:

Trump is ready to give reformsters most of what they want, yet to get it, they have to figure out how to embrace-not-embrace Trump himself.

Today brought a new attempt at this dance that both reveals the tack that reformsters are going to CURMUDGUCATION: Revising Reform for Trumplandia:

See Betsy DeVos' Donations to Senators Who Will Oversee Her Confirmation - Politics K-12 - Education Week

See Betsy DeVos' Donations to Senators Who Will Oversee Her Confirmation - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

See Betsy DeVos' Donations to Senators Who Will Oversee Her Confirmation

President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, is best known in the education policy world as a school choice advocate. But on the national political stage, she and her husband, Dick DeVos Jr., the son of the founder of Amway, are perhaps best known as big-time donors to Republican candidates and groups.

In the 2016 election year, for example, the two gave $2.7 million to Republican candidates and nothing to Democrats, as we reported earlier. But their campaign-donation record goes back much further. And it includes contributions to several senators who may vote on Betsy DeVos' confirmation in the Senate education committee and subsequently on the Senate floor—more on that below. We haven't seen any campaign finance records, however, showing they donated to Trump's presidential campaign.

A Michigan resident who's been a major player in state politics for over two decades, Betsy DeVos is not the first individual for whom issues of campaign donations and Cabinet appointments have mixed. For example, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny S. Pritzker has given money to Democratic Party candidates and causes for many years and was a campaign-donation "bundler" for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012; she became President Obama's commerce secretary in 2013.

We took a look at various candidates and causes DeVos and her husband have given to over the years to those at different levels of government who are connected to education in some way. We relied on information from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, the Federal Election Commission, and the Center for Responsive Politics. It's important to remember that several other members of the DeVos family have given to candidates and groups over the years. We've tried to focus on recent donations by Betsy DeVos, along with some by her husband, although the donations listed here may not represent a complete picture of their political contributions made directly to candidates.

That's in part because, in at least a few cases, campaign finance records provided to the Federal Election Commission do not clearly distinguish between Dick DeVos Sr., Dick DeVos Jr., and Dick DeVos III. We have tried to single out only those donation records in which Dick DeVos Jr., Betsy DeVos' husband, is specifically named. That may not capture all of his donations. We also focused mostly, but not exclusively, on the couple's individual contributions made directly to candidates, not to political action committees or parties. And we highlighted donations dating from the mid-2000s onward, which does not capture the full breadth of the DeVoses' political giving.

Big Edge to the GOP

Betsy DeVos herself has given nearly $2.7 million in political donations to 370 individuals and causes over the past 20 years through 819 total contributions, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Just over $2 million of that has gone to Republican candidates or causes, while a very, very small amount went to Democratic candidates or groups.

Here's a basic breakdown of who got what share of those donations—and yes, that tiny blue sliver represents the $8,000 she's given to Democrats:

Create pie charts

The National Institute on Money in State Politics has a rundown of campaign donations Betsy DeVos has made as an individual.

In 1997,See Betsy DeVos' Donations to Senators Who Will Oversee Her Confirmation - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Education in the Age of Globalization » Never Send a Human to do a Machine’s Job: Top 5 Mistakes in Ed Tech

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Never Send a Human to do a Machine’s Job: Top 5 Mistakes in Ed Tech:

Never Send a Human to do a Machine’s Job: Top 5 Mistakes in Ed Tech

Image result for Never Send a Human to do a Machine’s Job: Top 5 Mistakes in Ed Tech

Do what you do best and let technology do the rest

Technology has transformed our lives. Virtually every school and classroom is connected. Why then, has it not transformed education? Consider these five ways educators can begin to optimize classroom technology and rethink its use.

See technology as a complement rather than a replacement
Embrace its creation potential over consumption function
Encourage design and personalized learning over standards and outcomes
Celebrate the journey toward digital competence over curriculum improvement
Focus on tech-pedagogy over product usage

Learn how to let technology cultivate student autonomy, creativity, and responsibility while focusing on lessons that hone higher-order and critical thinking skills.

Order from Amazon or Corwin

Table of Contents

Reviews

Yong Zhao and his team have written a book that challenges the ideas not of how technology can make teaching better, but of how technology can create schools that are truly learner-centered. They focus not only on what technology could do better, but how the human element of schools is still needed now more than ever.”

George Couros, Division Principal, Innovative Teaching, Learning, and Leadership Consultant

Parkland School Division, Edmonton, AB, Canada

“Dr. Yong Zhao continues to push educators’ thinking by taking a serious examination of the role technology has played (or hasn’t) in education in the last 30 years. The struggles he lays out are those that many are trying to overcome on an almost daily bases. The new thinking in this book needs to be read by those in the classroom and leaders alike.”

Steven W. Anderson, Author

Content Curation: How to Avoid Information Overload, @web20classroom

“This book masterfully address the issues related to technology integration in schools. Dr. Zhao artfully navigates through the misconception of technology as the ultimate solution to the challenges of teaching. The book provides useful examples of the successful marriage good instruction and good technology can have when properly balanced.”

Jared Covili, Author of Going Google and Classroom in the Cloud

“In the final chapter, Zhao shines a spotlight on the need to leverage the voice of the STUDENTS (#stuvoice) in our classrooms as an asset to our own evolving connected capacities as adults. The development of social media in today’s world is constant, and each day our students bring with them rich cultures and talents into our classrooms. Zhao identifies this ripe space for innovation to be infused, but a culture shift is necessary on the part of adults. It’s not about the tools but the people. Students need to be empowered and teachers (and especially school leaders) need to relinquish some control. We can breed innovation or stifle innovation here.”

Dr. Joe_Mazza, Leadership Innovation Manager

Graduate School of Education, University of Pennslvania

“Never Send a Human to Do A Machine’s Job is simultaneously an historical look at the myriad disappointments of technology in education over the past few decades and a vision for a future of a more personalized and product-filled educational experience. The vision provided in the book is realistic, well researched, and highly relevant to the needs of today’s learner. It is time to totally reimagine education. Are you ready?”

Curtis J. Bonk, Professor/President

Indiana University/CourseShare, LLC

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Never Send a Human to do a Machine’s Job: Top 5 Mistakes in Ed Tech:

Schools Matter: Reporting Jim Horn to the Professor Watchlist

Schools Matter: Reporting Jim Horn to the Professor Watchlist:

Reporting Jim Horn to the Professor Watchlist

Turding Point USA is small group of white young asshats who can't wait for the second coming of Adolf Hitler. One of their "projects" is to create a McCarthyistic list of professors who have the audacity to exercise their Constitutional rights in and out of the classroom.

I hope that every professor in the U. S. will self-report her guilt as I did today. Click below to enlarge.

Schools Matter: Reporting Jim Horn to the Professor Watchlist:

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