Democratic Senators Call For Investigation Into Virtual Charter Schools | HuffPost

Democratic Senators Call For Investigation Into Virtual Charter Schools | HuffPost

Democratic Senators Call For Investigation Into Virtual Charter Schools
Senators say they have questions about student performance and fiscal transparency in the online school systems.

Two Democratic senators asked Wednesday for the Government Accountability Office to launch an investigation into the practices and policies of virtual charter schools. The request comes on the same day the Center for American Progress released a report outlining stark academic shortcomings at these schools and a disproportionate focus on profit over quality.

The virtual charter schools have come under scrutiny in states including California and Ohio. But now Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) are calling for a more comprehensive look at how these schools work in the 27 states that house them. About 300,000 students attend these online public schools of choice. The enrollment has been steadily increasing over the years.

“There is almost no research on whether virtual charter schools meet student needs, especially for students who require specific accommodations, including English learners and students with disabilities,” says the letter from the senators.

Brown and Murray are asking the GAO to shed light on issues surrounding student outcomes, school funding and spending, rigor of academic courses, recruitment tactics and the relationship between enrollment growth and student performance. 

The new report from the liberal Center for American Progress is providing a critical look at these schools. It looked at both for-profit virtual charter schools and virtual charter schools that are managed by for-profit companies, focusing on companies like K-12 Inc. and Connections Education. K-12 Inc. has strong ties to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who had invested in the company and has championed its brand of school choice. But Continue reading: Democratic Senators Call For Investigation Into Virtual Charter Schools | HuffPost

Tell your legislators to reject online pre-school and support real universal pre-school instead.

Tell your legislators to reject online pre-school and support real universal pre-school instead.

Tell your legislators to reject online pre-school and support real universal pre-school instead.

Click Here To Tell your legislators to reject online pre-school and support real universal pre-school instead.

The profiteers have come up with one more scam to grab public tax dollars--online pre-schools. Tell your legislators that young children need pre-school classrooms with caring teachers and peers.

Click Here To Tell your legislators to reject online pre-school and support real universal pre-school instead.

Click Here To Tell your legislators to reject online pre-school and support real universal pre-school instead.


Experts call for an end to online preschool programs - https://hechingerreport.org/?p=44036 via @hechingerreport

Our Public Schools, Our Democracy: Our Fight for the Future - https://events.bizzabo.com/NPE18INDY on @Bizzabo

Fifty Years Ago, 35,000 Chicago Students Walked Out Of Their Classrooms In Protest. They Changed CPS Forever. | PopularResistance.Org

Fifty Years Ago, 35,000 Chicago Students Walked Out Of Their Classrooms In Protest. They Changed CPS Forever. | PopularResistance.Org

FIFTY YEARS AGO, 35,000 CHICAGO STUDENTS WALKED OUT OF THEIR CLASSROOMS IN PROTEST. THEY CHANGED CPS FOREVER.

Among Their Demands: Black And Latino Teachers And Administrators, Ethnic Studies Classes And Clubs, And Bilingual Education

It’s 1968 and 18-year-old Pemon Rami, a recent graduate of Wendell Phillips Academy High School, stands in front of the Umoja Black Student Center in Bronzeville. He stares off into the distance, quiet, determined. Behind him, a poster with an illustration of Malcolm X preaches unstinting devotion to radical change, challenging viewers: “He was ready! Are you?”

It’s 2018, and 68-year-old Rami stands before a photo of his younger self. Plenty has changed in those intervening years. A half century has softened his features and grayed his short-cut hair, but his presence remains self-assured. Though his own revolutionary moment has long since passed, he still believes that revolution belongs in the hands of the young. It’s why, after a long career as a playwright and producer and as the director of educational services and public programs at the DuSable Museum of African American History, he now consults with groups such as Peace Warriors of North Lawndale College Prep High School and Fearless Leading by the Youth, hoping to pass along hard-earned lessons to those young people fighting today.

“You get to that point where you’re no longer capable of having the kind of battles that you had when you’re younger,” he explains. “I think it’s important that young people understand that it is their responsibility to be involved. It’s not something you can bargain with.”

But the bonds of solidarity that inspired Rami and his friends to launch a series of student walkouts to protest Chicago Public School’s racist policies—a protest movement that eventually included 35,000 students—live on in every student strike today.

The past five years have seen a wellspring of student activism in Chicago and beyond, actions that hearken back to the unrest that transformed society 50 years ago. In Chicago, it was Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposed closing of more than 200 schools in 2012—intended to save $43 million annually—that first sparked resistance among teachers, parents, and students, an energy that carried forward into the Chicago Teachers Union’s successful 2013 strike. In the end, 50 schools, not 200, were closed. (A 2018 study at the University of Chicago found that the closures had had no educational benefits, and CPS has not commented about whether the move did, indeed, save the district money.) In the last year, Englewood students have protested the proposed closure of four neighborhood high schools.

Everything changes, and everything stays the same. As Rami and others look back on their youthful accomplishments, organized actions that resulted in massive concessions from a school system that systematically denied Chicago’s black and Latino youth the resources they needed, they’re all too happy to help today’s youth see the connections that remain between past and present. They’ve been aided in their efforts by CPS educators. Together, they offer a potent reminder of what young people can accomplish.

The 1968 high school walkouts were an expression of growing dissent among the city’s black and Latino student population, and a reflection of a wider climate of protest that permeated society at large. Years of disinvestment by Chicago Public Schools in the education of nonwhite students had created significant barriers for these students: there were few bilingual teachers, and the curriculum didn’t represent their experiences. In 1968 they went on strike, pushing beyond the adult-led actions of previous years and defining their own Continue reading: Fifty Years Ago, 35,000 Chicago Students Walked Out Of Their Classrooms In Protest. They Changed CPS Forever. | PopularResistance.Org

An Analysis of the Performance and Financial Practices of For-Profit, Virtual Charter Schools

Profit Before Kids - Center for American Progress

Profit Before Kids
An Analysis of the Performance and Financial Practices of For-Profit, Virtual Charter Schools

Introduction and summary

California Virtual Academies (CAVA) oversees nine virtual charter schools across the state of California. Virtual charter schools are public schools that provide online instruction. Students complete assignments individually rather than attending a brick-and-mortar school. State tax records and the schools’ charters specify that CAVA schools are independent nonprofit charitable organizations, but these schools are moneymakers for K12 Inc., a publicly traded company and the largest for-profit virtual school provider in the United States. CAVA is a subsidiary of K12 Inc. and its schools run in lockstep with their parent company’s deceptive and harmful business practices.1

K12 Inc. receives substantial scrutiny from the media and advocates given its market share and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. But a growing body of research and national media reports show that, on average, fully virtual schools perform much worse than brick-and-mortar schools serving similar populations.2 For instance, students at CAVA schools significantly underperform the state average. In the 2015-16 school year, the CAVA schools @ Los Angeles’ graduation rate was 66 percent, far below the Los Angeles School District’s average of 92 percent and the state’s average of 84 percent.3

In 2016, then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced a court-approved settlement in which K12 Inc. would repay California $8.5 million—$2.5 million for inflated attendance figures and $6 million for costs ensured by the attorney general’s office—regarding aggressive marketing campaigns and inadequate instructional supports. This settlement included no admission of fault, but Harris’s office alleged that K12 Inc. and CAVA used misleading advertising to recruit students even if they were unlikely to be successful in a virtual program.4 Once enrolled, many students did not receive adequate instruction. CAVA instructed teachers to mark a child in attendance if they logged in for at least one minute a day in order to maximize the public dollars allocated to each school.5

These types of concerning outcomes among for-profit virtual charter schools are not unique to California. Schools managed by K12 Inc. nationwide struggle to match student outcomes at other public schools, even as the company’s executives receive multimillion-dollar compensation packages.6 Alex Molnar and others, “Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2017” (Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center, 2017), available at http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/publications/RB%20Virtual%20Schools%202017_0.pdf.] Rather than address these challenges and rework instructional strategies to improve outcomes, K12 Inc. has misrepresented student performance—leading to shareholders filing multiple lawsuits.7 They have also defended their outcomes, stating that policymakers use “broken” accountability measures to evaluate school performance and their schools serve struggling students.8

Virtual instruction takes many forms: virtual courses supplementing what is available at traditional brick-and-mortar schools, blended schools where students receive substantial instruction online while also having access to face-to-face teacher support, and fully virtual schools with no in-person instruction. The prevalence of all of these types has grown steadily.9

Limited online coursework can fill an important need in public education, especially within secondary schools. For example, 24 states develop their own virtual education content or partner with an outside entity that provides virtual material, in order to offer students greater flexibility to take additional credits.10 These courses can help students make up credits or expand course options in districts or schools where there are not enough students or available staff to teach full classes on specific subjects, such as some languages. In fact, the enrollments in language courses have grown more significantly than any other subject offered among state virtual schools and now account for about 12 percent of all state virtual enrollments.11

Coursework in fully virtual schools usually entails students completing their work alone, at their own pace. Students in fully virtual charter schools interact in real time with a teacher for fewer hours in one week than students in brick-and-mortar schools do in one day.12 Overwhelmingly, research shows that fully virtual schools underperform blended or brick-and-mortar schools.13 Molnar and others, “Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2017”; Miron, Shank, and Davidson, “Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools.”] Yet the number of students enrolled in fully virtual schools continues to grow. In the 2016-17 school year, virtual schools enrolled an estimated 295,518 students nationwide.14 Of those students, 76 percent—or 223,634—enrolled in fully virtual charter schools.15 Fully virtual public schools and fully virtual charter schools are both public, but virtual charter schools are operated by companies or nonprofits rather than public school districts or the state.

While K12 Inc. is well known as a for-profit company and their schools do not hide their affiliation, many independent virtual charter schools bury their connections to for-profit companies. Many states bar for-profit companies from receiving public education funding, so many of these schools establish nonprofit boards to accept the funds but contract operations Continue reading: Profit Before Kids - Center for American Progress

RAND study shows 'restorative practices' have positive effect on Pittsburgh Public Schools | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

RAND study shows 'restorative practices' have positive effect on Pittsburgh Public Schools | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

RAND study shows 'restorative practices' have positive effect on Pittsburgh Public Schools

“Restorative practices” have been touted among experts and advocates as a key tool to reduce school suspensions and expulsions — and particularly racial disparities among them.

It’s a strategy to improve school culture and build better, more communicative relationships between students and teachers rather than pushing students out of the classroom for bad behavior. 

And it seems to be showing positive results in Pittsburgh Public Schools, at least according to the preliminary results of a years-long, federally funded study of restorative practices at 22 city schools. 

The RAND Corporation released preliminary results of a two-year study on restorative practices in Pittsburgh schools, research that began shortly after the district was awarded a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2014. Teachers at 22 schools were trained by the International Institute for Restorative Practices, and those schools were paired with and compared to 22 “control” schools with certain similarities, like suspension rates. Researchers also surveyed the teachers, to gauge their use and understanding of the new program.

Overall, the study found, suspensions at schools that participated decreased more than they did at other district schools during the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years.

“It was really, really exciting and really, really validating,” said Christine Cray, PPS’ director of student services reforms. 

RAND researchers Catherine Augustine and John Engberg presented the preliminary findings to the school board last week, and said the study is undergoing one more peer review before the final report is released in December. 

Suspensions in PPS overall decreased during the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years, from 16 percent of students suspended to 13 percent, Mr. Engberg said. But in the schools that used restorative practices during that period, the suspension rates dropped twice as much as in the control group. Prior to implementation, black students were suspended four times as often as white students, and that rate dropped slightly to 3.5 times as often as white students, the study found. The suspension rates of economically-disadvantaged students also dropped from three times to twice as often as non-economically disadvantaged students. 

The “best results” were in kindergarten through fifth grade, the researchers Continue reading: RAND study shows 'restorative practices' have positive effect on Pittsburgh Public Schools | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Restorative Practices: A Guide for Educators

New Toolkit & Infographic: What Are Restorative Practices?

An Educator's Guide to Fostering Positive School Climate and Culture

Educators across the nation recognize the importance of fostering positive, healthy school climates and helping students learn from their mistakes. Increasingly, they are partnering with parents, students, district officials, community organizations, and policymakers to move away from harmful and counter-productive zero-tolerance discipline policies and toward proven restorative approaches to addressing conflict in schools.

A new toolkit released today aims to help educators better understand what restorative practices are and how they foster safe learning environments through community building and constructive conflict resolution.

"Restorative Practices: Fostering Healthy Relationships & Promoting Positive Discipline in Schools" was developed by the Schott Foundation, Advancement Project, American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association with the help of a working group of educators and school personnel.

"A Tale of Two Schools"
View the full infographic here!

The toolkit illustrates how restorative practices can be seamlessly integrated into the classroom, curriculum and culture of schools, and how they can help transform schools to support the growth and health of all students. (Don't miss the accompanying infographic, "A Tale of Two Schools," which is a great visual for explaining how restorative practices can make a critical difference in a student's day.)

This toolkit includes concrete models, frameworks, and action steps for school-wide implementation. It also includes guiding questions to support reflection for practitioners looking to make restorative methods part of the fabric of daily life in their schools.

Click here for a promotional 2-pager on the guide.

Download the toolkit here!
(Like us on Twitter and Facebook for more useful tools and infographics!)

Restorative Practices: A Guide for Educators | Schott Foundation for Public Education - http://schottfoundation.org/node/3410

How School Choice in Michigan Accelerates Student Mobility, Stresses Educators, and Undermines Education | janresseger

How School Choice in Michigan Accelerates Student Mobility, Stresses Educators, and Undermines Education | janresseger

How School Choice in Michigan Accelerates Student Mobility, Stresses Educators, and Undermines Education

Yesterday this blog examined how two school choice policies in Michigan—the rapid expansion of charter school choice and cross-district open enrollment that allows students to leave their school district and enroll in a nearby school district—are together undermining the fiscal viability of Michigan’s public school districts. Here, thanks to a collaboration between Chalkbeat, Bridge Magazine, and the Detroit Free Press is the story of how these very same policies are undermining teaching and learning in the Detroit Public Schools.

Reporters Erin Einhorn and Chastity Pratt Dawsey describe how cross-district and charter school choice are accelerating student churn as children change schools again and again.  In Detroit, the subject of the article, student mobility is also exacerbated by homelessness and foreclosure and other challenges posed by extreme poverty across the school population. But there is an additional factor: Detroit is part of a network of so-called “portfolio school districts” which are managed as though they are part of a business portfolio—establish choice; then phase out the bad investments and try something new and let families enforce accountability as they move with their feet.  According to the new report on student mobility in Detroit, school choice has resulted over the years in “nearly 200 school closures” as students tried out other possibilities.

Nikolai Vitti, Detroit’s school superintendent, explains: “You can’t create trust between a student and parent and a school when you have this constant disruption… It’s hard to hold teachers accountable to performance if children are not consistently in their classrooms. We are going to set teachers, schools, and principals up for failure if we don’t acknowledge that.”

Einhorn and Dawsey describe a very complicated problem: “In Detroit, there are many reasons why schools are in crisis. There are overcrowded classrooms and buildings in poor condition. There are children experiencing trauma at home unable to find a quiet place—or a reason—to do their homework.  But spend time in almost any Detroit school, and educators Continue reading: How School Choice in Michigan Accelerates Student Mobility, Stresses Educators, and Undermines Education | janresseger

DeVos Ally, New Leader of For-Profit K12 Inc. Promises to Clean Up Its Shoddy Record | Diane Ravitch's blog

DeVos Ally, New Leader of For-Profit K12 Inc. Promises to Clean Up Its Shoddy Record | Diane Ravitch's blog

DeVos Ally, New Leader of For-Profit K12 Inc. Promises to Clean Up Its Shoddy Record

Over the years, it has become obvious that virtual charter schools are a sham. ECOT in Ohio was a spectacular failure, which made millions for its for-profit owner (“the ECOT man”) but cost taxpayers over a billion dollars that should have gone to public schools. The founder of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School is now in jail, convicted of stealing millions of dollars, but convicted only of tax evasion, not embezzlement. June Brown, who operated K12 Inc. schools in Pennsylvania, avoided conviction because of her advanced age (she kept the money).

K12 Inc. is perhaps the biggest of the shams because it has the most students. It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It makes handsome profits, but its students drop out at a high rate and get low test scores on state tests. The NCAA stripped 24 of the virtual K12 Inc. schools of accreditation a few years back after it discovered that students were often taking the K12 Inc. tests without bothering to first sit for instruction. NCAA officials saw tests that included “true-false” questions, and observed that students could take the test again if they failed. Any number of K12 Inc. virtual schools have been engaged in fraudulent practices that led to fines or even jail sentences for their operators.

K12 Inc. has been repeatedly criticized for the poor performance of its students. They start behind and they don’t catch up. See here. See here. See here. See here.

K12 Inc. originated with Ron Packard, who was paid $5 million a year to Continue reading: DeVos Ally, New Leader of For-Profit K12 Inc. Promises to Clean Up Its Shoddy Record | Diane Ravitch's blog

Maker Movements Should NOT Endanger School Libraries, Librarians, and Reading

Maker Movements Should NOT Endanger School Libraries, Librarians, and Reading

Maker Movements Should NOT Endanger School Libraries, Librarians, and Reading

To call yourself a librarian, you need to have that training and to be certified. If you replace a certified librarian with someone who’s just an expert in technology, you’re losing half of the role that school libraries are supposed to be serving.

You still need someone who is a champion of reading.

~Leslie Preddy, president of the American Association of School Librarians discussing Makerspaces. Kansas City Star. June 26, 2016,

School libraries are where students have access to books. Librarians assist students with reading, research, and a variety of language and reading activities. Children learning to read can find a book on any topic in the library.

We know that schools with excellent libraries have students that do better than those with insufficient or no libraries. From Phi Delta Kappan:

Data from more than 34 statewide studies suggest that students tend to earn better standardized test scores in schools that have strong library programs. Further, when administrators, teachers, and librarians themselves rated the importance and frequency of various library practices associated with student learning, their ratings Continue reading: Maker Movements Should NOT Endanger School Libraries, Librarians, and Reading

How Can School Choice Destroy the Public Schools in Your Community? | janresseger

How Can School Choice Destroy the Public Schools in Your Community? | janresseger

How Can School Choice Destroy the Public Schools in Your Community?

In his column last week for the Education Opportunity Network, Jeff Bryant examines a scary question: Can school choice create the conditions that entirely shut down a community’s public school system?  Bryant reports on Michigan where school choice laws permitting inter-district open enrollment and unregulated expansion of charter schools conspire with the state’s school finance system to undermine the stability of the state’s public school districts.

“In Michigan, the intense competition for students is taking bigger bites out of student enrollments in some of the state’s largest districts.  In Flint, where there are 14,325 public-school students living in the district, 39 percent attend charters and 32 percent are enrolled in another district—meaning the district loses 71 percent of its students.  In Pontiac, with 10,985 public-school students living in the district, 36 percent attend charters and 29 percent travel to other districts, leaving local schools with only 35 percent of the community’s students.  In Detroit, the state’s largest school district with nearly 104,000 students, 58 percent of them leave the district schools to attend charters (48 percent) or cross district borders (10 percent) to attend schools elsewhere.  How low can student enrollments go before a school district becomes financially unsustainable?”

Bryant explains the thinking of school choice promoters: “The thinking behind a market-based approach to education is that when the funding follows the student, school districts vying across district lines to get their enrollments high for ‘count day,’ feel more intense pressure to provide services with greater financial efficiency.  Adding charter schools, which in Michigan are allowed to start up wherever they want, without regard to the financial impact on district schools, brings into the mix an unregulated agent that can introduce even more financial efficiency into the system, the theory goes.” (Emphasis is mine.)  Then Bryant interviews Continue reading: How Can School Choice Destroy the Public Schools in Your Community? | janresseger

American Academy of Pediatrics Suggests “Prescriptions for Play” for Children Ages Two Years and Younger | deutsch29

American Academy of Pediatrics Suggests “Prescriptions for Play” for Children Ages Two Years and Younger | deutsch29

American Academy of Pediatrics Suggests “Prescriptions for Play” for Children Ages Two Years and Younger

In August 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a paper that includes a “prescription for play” for children ages 2 years and younger.

For those who are unsure what “play” might be, AAP offers the following general definition:

The definition of play is elusive. However, there is a growing consensus that it is an activity that is intrinsically motivated, entails active engagement, and results in joyful discovery. Play is voluntary and often has no extrinsic goals; it is fun and often spontaneous. Children are often seen actively engaged in and passionately engrossed in play; this builds executive functioning skills and contributes to school readiness (bored children will not learn well). Play often creates an imaginative private reality, contains elements of make believe, and is nonliteral.

The paper, entitled, “The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children,” actually includes the suggestion for pediatricians to defend play by formally prescribing it as part of the child’s wellness visit:

Just as pediatricians support Reach Out and Read, encourage playful learning for parents and infants by writing a “prescription for play” at every well-child visit in the first 2 years of life.

Below is a summary of the takeaways from the paper, which is not restricted to children two years and younger, including confronting “more digital distractions,” and “facilitating the child’s intrinsic motivation through play rather than extrinsic motivations, such as test scores”:

Conclusions

• Cultural shifts, including less parent engagement because of parents working full-time, fewer safe places to play, and more digital Continue reading:American Academy of Pediatrics Suggests “Prescriptions for Play” for Children Ages Two Years and Younger | deutsch29

DeVos company implicated in new report on fishy communications between Trump Organization and Russian bank

DeVos company implicated in new report on fishy communications between Trump Organization and Russian bank

DeVos company implicated in new report on fishy communications between Trump Organization and Russian bank

Cybersecurity experts found evidence of suspicious communications between a Trump Organization computer and a Russian bank in the summer of 2016 — and they also noticed a link to Betsy DeVos and her family.

The researchers set out to find whether Russian hackers had also targeted Republicans after news broke about the Democratic National Committee hacks, and their investigation surprised them, reported The New Yorker.

The group found Alfa Bank computers were repeatedly looking up the address of a Trump server located in Lititz, Pennsylvania, nearly every day in the summer of 2016 — and computer scientists who examined the contacts believe they were intentional attempts at human communication.

“The timing of the communication was not random, and it wasn’t regular-periodic,” said one researcher, identified only as Paul. “It was a better match for human activity.”

Alfa Bank looked up the Trump Organization’s domain more than two thousand times more than 2,000 times between May and September 2016.

Only one other entity — Spectrum Health — reached out to the Trump Organization’s domain with any frequency during that same period.

The Grand Rapids, Michigan-based company is closely linked to the DeVos family — Richard DeVos, Jr., husband of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is chairman of the board and named one of its hospitals after his mother.

The education secretary’s brother, Erik Prince, has been investigated by special counsel Continue reading: DeVos company implicated in new report on fishy communications between Trump Organization and Russian bank