Black Michigan lawmakers demand that Rick Snyder fire Detroit school system appointee

Black Michigan lawmakers demand that Rick Snyder fire Detroit school system appointee:

Black Michigan lawmakers demand that Rick Snyder fire Detroit school system appointee

The Michigan legislative black caucus voted on Friday to ask Governor Rick Snyder to fire Darnell Earley, the controversial Detroit Public Schools’ emergency manager who had formerly presided over the city of Flint and its lead-contaminated water system.

“Conditions have only worsened under Earley’s tenure, as the city of Flint worsened with his involvement,” said Representative Sheldon Neeley, a Flint Democrat and the caucus’ first vice chair. “He is the problem, not the solution.”

Detroit Public Schools is under state oversight and pressure from declining enrollment. Heavy pension and debt obligations have left the district in danger of running out of cash in April.

Earley was appointed as emergency manager for Detroit Public Schools in January 2015. The union for Detroit public school teachers sued the district on Thursday demanding Earley’s immediate removal and a return of local control with a plan to repair the district’s crumbling buildings.

Under Earley’s leadership as emergency manager of Flint, the city separated from the Detroit water department and switched its water supply to the Flint River in April 2014. Earley has said he is not to blame for the problem since the decision was made before his tenure.

The city switched its water supply back to Detroit last October, after tests found high levels of lead in blood samples from Flint children. Lead is a neurotoxin that can damage the brain and cause other health problems.

The Detroit Public Schools union has said teachers are frustrated over crumbling walls, rats, mold in classrooms and student overcrowding, combined with a teacher shortage and low pay.

Detroit Public Schools spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski said in a statement that Earley has worked to make the system more financially secure. “Mr. Earley remains focused on preparing DPS for long-term financial sustainability and a return to some form of local control,” she added.

Earley said in a statement this week that plans to address building disrepair are part of a financial investment proposal before the legislature. He did not immediately return a Black Michigan lawmakers demand that Rick Snyder fire Detroit school system appointee:

CHARTER SCHOOL CRIME WATCH: ReNEW Sci Tech used special-ed designation for cash, state report finds | The Lens

ReNEW Sci Tech used special-ed designation for cash, state report finds | The Lens:

ReNEW Sci Tech used special-ed designation for cash, state report finds

ReNEW SciTech Academy violated special education law, robbing some students of special education services, and also committed state testing violations last school year, according to a state-issued report released Friday afternoon.

The improprieties have put the organization at risk of losing its six schools if it doesn’t meet the state’s specific reform goals by mid summer.

In short, the leaders of the school said some students needed extra help, which comes with extra money in the state formula. But they then didn’t provide those students with the benefits, using the money instead to shore up a $300,000 budgeting problem.

The Lens first reported trouble at the 750-student elementary school on June 1, days after two SciTech leaders abruptly resignedamid questions over testing procedures.

The Louisiana Department of Education began an investigation into the school shortly thereafter, and over the course of six months, made four primary findings. The department found ReNEW SciTech fraudulently obtained funds, failed to comply with many aspects of federal IDEA law, and violated testing procedure in the 2014-15 school year. The department also found ReNEW’s internal processes failed to identify and address the violations.

The school received its charter through the Recovery School District. Patrick Dobard, the superintendent who leads that district, said the department did not find that the violations were systemic across the ReNEW network.

The network is now under a corrective action plan that includes providing make-up special education services to dozens of students who did not receive appropriate instruction last year.

The report states SciTech school leaders inflated the amount and type of services those students needed, in an effort to bring in ReNEW Sci Tech used special-ed designation for cash, state report finds | The Lens:

Stakes are high for a teacher/parent fighting for better conditions in Detroit Public Schools - The Hechinger Report

Stakes are high for a teacher/parent fighting for better conditions in Detroit Public Schools - The Hechinger Report:

Stakes are high for a teacher/parent fighting for better conditions in Detroit Public Schools

Teacher who commutes to one of nation’s worst districts explains why she sends her kids to DPS schools and why she participated in sick out

Detroit Public School teacher Alise Anaya drives children Victor, 10, and Analise, 8, to a public school in Southwest Detroit from their home in a nearby suburb. Photo: Erin Einhorn

Thousands of people have fled the Detroit public schools, but Alise Anaya decides every day to do the opposite, commuting from the suburbs to teach in one city school and drop her children off at another.

It’s a surprising choice. Anaya grew up in Southwest Detroit, but many of the families she was raised alongside have left the city’s public schools in part because of conditions like those Anaya and hundreds of her colleagues have highlighted in a recent series of protests and sickouts — dead rodents, rotting floors and overcrowded classrooms.

The sickouts have shuttered dozens of schools on several days this month including on Jan. 20 – the day President Obama was in town – when 88 of the city’s 100 schools were closed. The teacher’s union took their complaints even further on Thursday, filing suit against the district to demand building repairs and the removal of the state-appointed emergency manager who runs the system.

The teacher’s frustrations reflect the alarming realities of a district struggling to survive after losing the bulk of its students. As Detroit’s population has plummeted and its schools have faced new competition from suburban and charter schools, the city’s public schools have gone from educating nearly 300,000 students in 1966 to just under 48,000 today. The district now carries an estimated $515 million dollars of debt.

And families are not the only ones leaving. Many of Detroit’s teachers have left, too, in search of better pay and cleaner, safer conditions in charter schools or the suburbs.

But Anaya, 32, is among those who’ve doubled down. Not only has she remained committed to the school system where she and her mother have both taught for years, she has chosen Detroit schools for her own kids, driving them in every morning from her home in suburban Allen Park.

Her son, Victor, 10 and daughter Analise, 8, attend the Academy of the Americas in Southwest Detroit, where classes are taught in both English and Spanish. Anaya teaches English as a Second Language Stakes are high for a teacher/parent fighting for better conditions in Detroit Public Schools - The Hechinger Report:

Latino students, parents should beware school choice ‘panacea’ #SCW – Cloaking Inequity

Latino students, parents should beware school choice ‘panacea’ #SCW – Cloaking Inequity:

Latino students, parents should beware school choice ‘panacea’ #SCW

The wealthy have poured millions of dollars into “school choice” causes over the last decade. Under the mantra of civil rights, billionaires such as Eli Broad, Bill Gates, the Koch Brothers and the powerful corporate-funded lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are using venture philanthropy and the political process to press for top-down neoliberal school reforms focused on private control and privatization in the United States. Recently, the Koch brothers and others have targeted their millions on the Latino community via Libre.

Libre was founded in 2011 and claims to be a “non-partisan, non-profit grassroots organization that advances the principles and values of economic freedom to empower the U.S. Hispanic community.” Media Matters reported that Libre’s senior staff are almost all Republican Party campaign veterans and has been backed over $10 Million in Koch funding— suggesting that Libre is neither non-partisan nor grassroots.

In their op-eds placed in newspapers in states where the Latino population is substantial, Libre representatives make simplistic— yet convincing— claims about the benefits of school “choice” for underserved communities of color. The predominance of the peer-reviewed literature does not support the grandiose claims that Libre makes and instead demonstrates that school choice, on average, does not produce the equity, social justice or student success that proponents spin.

No one is claiming that there are not examples of high quality charter schools or traditional neighborhood schools. However, several decades ofpeer-reviewed charter school and voucher research have demonstrated that choice is not a panacea. In fact, school choice has in many ways Latino students, parents should beware school choice ‘panacea’ #SCW – Cloaking Inequity:

Teacher of the Year :America really doesn’t care what happens to poor people and most black people

Matt Driscoll: The uncomfortable truth of Nathan Gibbs-Bowling | The News Tribune:

Matt Driscoll: The uncomfortable truth of Nathan Gibbs-Bowling

Nathan Gibbs-Bowling, a teacher at Lincoln High School, was named Washington State Teacher of the Year in 2015.David Montesino dmontesino@thenewstribune.com

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/matt-driscoll/article56911033.html#storylink=cpy

Nathan Gibbs-Bowling is kind of a big deal right now.

An advanced-placement government and human geography teacher at Tacoma’s Lincoln High School, he’s the most recent recipient of the state Teacher of the Year award and one of four finalists for 2016 National Teacher of the Year.

Matt Driscoll staff File

When China’s President Xi Jinping visited Lincoln in September, it was Gibbs-Bowling and his students who helped roll out the welcome mat.

The young, black education leader is on the cover of the most recent South Sound Magazine. He’s also been prominently featured in this paper four times in the last few months. And when the latest issue of my Evergreen State College alumni magazine arrived in the mail, there he was — the 2004 and 2006 graduate highlighted for all his accomplishments.

But this week, it’s just over 1,000 words on his typically under-the-radar blog — A Teacher’s Evolving Mind — that really has people talking.

“I want to tell you a secret,” the post, which went online Sunday, begins. “America really doesn’t care what happens to poor people and most black people.

“There I said it.”

He sure did. Call it his Kanye West moment.

Gibbs-Bowling’s post, which he tells me he pounded out on the flight home from a Teachers of the Year conference in San Antonio last weekend, can be broken down into two main points, both of them worth discussion and thought. That’s especially true for a family like mine, who lives on Hilltop but, despite reservations, sends our daughter to school in the North End.

“As a nation, we’re nibbling around the edges with accountability measures and other reforms, but we’re ignoring the immutable core issue,” he writes, contending that talk of things such as “teaching evaluations, charter schools, test refusal, and (fights over) Common Core,” distract from a much larger societal problem that we’re content to ignore.

“Much of white and wealthy America is perfectly happy with segregated schools and inequity in funding,” he continues. “We have the schools we have, because people who can afford better get better.”

It’s a reality Gibbs-Bowling says his pessimistic side fears is too deep and entrenched to change. After all, he contends, nationally the political will simply doesn’t exist for radical moves toward full integration, or busing, or the redrawing of school or district boundaries so poorer students of color can attend school in wealthy, predominantly white enclaves. While he says the Tacoma School District is doing “a better job than most” when it comes to paying attention to “what’s happening on this end of town,” what he sees in places such as Detroit, Chicago and even south Seattle helped push him over the edge.

In response, he writes, he’s dedicating himself to a goal he believes he can help attain — a goal he believes can change the lives of students in the neighborhoods and school districts across the country that white flight has forsaken.

And it’s something he knows a little bit about.

“If you ain’t talking about the teacher in the classroom, I ain’t listening,” he writes, arguing for national policies and incentives that help keep our best teachers where they can do the most good: in our neediest schools.

“Better teaching is the one thing we never really talk about,” the blog continues. “Better teaching is the only mechanism we have left.”

All that’s missing from the post is a mic drop, but perhaps it’s implied.

“I’m overwhelmed,” Gibbs-Bowling told me by phone Tuesday of the growing reaction, which by Monday included a write-up on the Washington Post’s website, invitations from the New York Observer and The Guardian to run similar pieces or excerpts from the original and over 300 new Twitter followers.

“Foresight’s not really my thing,” he says, admitting that he didn’t see the buzz around theMatt Driscoll: The uncomfortable truth of Nathan Gibbs-Bowling | The News Tribune:

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/matt-driscoll/article56911033.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/matt-driscoll/article56911033.html#storylink=cpy

California AG s Opinion Targets School Bond Practices | The Bond Buyer

California AG s Opinion Targets School Bond Practices | The Bond Buyer:

California AG's Opinion Targets School Bond Practices

An opinion from California Attorney General Kamala Harris says some common school bond campaign and finance practices violate state law.

PHOENIX - School and community college districts violate California law if they hire outside firms to campaign for bond ballot measures or purposely incentivize municipal finance professionals to advocate for passage of a bond measure, the state's attorney general said in a formal legal opinion.

Attorney General Kamala Harris released the opinion Tuesday in response to a request from Treasurer John Chiang.

California law prohibits using public funds to influence the outcome of an election, including campaigning for the passage of a bond measure. Voter-approved bonds backed by property taxes are the primary method of new school construction in the state, and Chiang sought a clarification on whether some common industry practices might be violating the law.

"A practice has developed within the municipal financing industry whereby investment bankers, financial consultants, and bond attorneys offer to contract with a school district to provide the pre-election services that the district seeks," the opinion said. "Under such an arrangement, the firm agrees to provide the pre-election services at no, or reduced, charge to the district in exchange for the district's promise to select the firm as its contractor to provide postelection services, if the bonds are approved by the voters. Naturally, it is within the firm's financial interest to be awarded the contract to provide post-election bond services."

Such California attorney general's opinions are advisory, and not legally binding on courts, but are generally considered authoritative by the officers and agencies who have requested them and given respect by judges.

Robert Doty, a lawyer and former financial advisor who now runs his own litigation consulting firm AGFS in Annapolis, Md., said the opinion is a significant development.

"This is a very important analysis for finance," Doty said. "It is not a general attempt to say that contributions are good or bad, except when they are tied to getting business."

A previous Bond Buyer investigation found a nearly perfect correlation between broker-dealer contributions to California school bond efforts in 2010 and their underwriting of subsequent bond sales, and financial advisors have similarly been accused of using "pay-to-play" tactics.

Former California Treasurer Bill Lockyer questioned the legality of the practices, and in 2013 twelve dealer firms asked the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board to adopt further restrictions on bond ballot contributions by broker-dealers, which they are required to disclose to the board.

Harris' opinion points to a 1976 California Supreme Court case, Stanson v. Mott, in which the court ruled that public money could be used only to provide "a fair presentation of relevant information" related to a bond question. Chiang's request covered several questions, which the opinion dealt with in turn.

First, Harris concluded, school districts violate the law if they hire a firm for services that could be construed as campaigning for the bond measure. Second, they also violate the law if they receive services from a firm in return for bond business when the campaign is successful if the district "enters into the agreement for the sole or partial purpose of inducing the firm to contribute to the California AG s Opinion Targets School Bond Practices | The Bond Buyer:

CURMUDGUCATION: USED: Dear Colleague

CURMUDGUCATION: USED: Dear Colleague:
USED: Dear Colleague

TO: State and Local School Officials
FROM: Faceless Federal Bureaucrat at US Department of Education

I hope that our recent letter about participation rates in accountability testing has clarified the department's stance on the 95% participation requirement. This most recent threat of Dire Consequences should be heeded, and should not be confused with this other time we made the threat, or the time before that. This time, if more than 5% of your test-worthy students are opted out of testing by their families, we will rain hellfire and damnation down upon you, or at the very least take away some of your funding.

ESSA requires a 95% participation rate. Yes, ESSA also recognizes the right of parents to opt out, but that does not mean that we can't hold you responsible for what they choose to do.

In fact, we like this regulatory principle so much, we have whipped up some regulatory extensions of this great idea.

We note with alarm that more and more of our younger children are unattractive. We are also concerned that parents are selecting clothing for their children without proper regard for aesthetic qualities of the child's wardrobe. Therefor, if we determine that more than 5% of your state's children have been told, "You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny," we will be cutting your federal subsidy.

We believe children's health is suffering because they are being fed too many fried foods such as french fries. We would like to see healthier choices made, such as broccoli. Therefor, if we determine that more than 5% of your families are not feeding their children broccoli every night, we will be cutting a portion of your Title I funding.

We are concerned that American children are falling behind other countries in median height at age 8. We recognize that height is often genetic, and so we intend to encourage short people to CURMUDGUCATION: USED: Dear Colleague:

What Could Be Wrong With School Choice? | The Progressive

What Could Be Wrong With School Choice? | The Progressive:

What Could Be Wrong With School Choice?

This week marked the annual National School Choice Week with events across the country promoting "education options" such as charter schools and vouchers.

Everyone loves “choice,” right? In a country where every year brings us 100 new choices for how to brush our teeth, maximizing “choice” appears to be the holy grail no matter what the enterprise.

It turns out there's a lot wrong with school choice.

As People for the American Way points out,

"National School Choice Week is deliberately designed to blur important differences in educational policies…National School Choice Week wants everyone to be so busy cheering and dancing for the broad concept of giving parents and students educational options that they don't stop to think about these distinctions."

We asked some of our Progressive Education Fellows what they thought about the important "distinctions" regarding the meaning of "choice." Here’s what they said:

Ashana Brigard, Southcentral Regional Fellow

When I hear the word choice, I understand someone is choosing not to invest in black native New Orleans.

After Hurricane Katrina, 125,000 native New Orleans, a lot of them the poorest and most black, did not come back to New Orleans. And while $71 billion came to New Orleans after the storm, black people here now have 18% less income and wealth. The millions of dollars poured into our education system mostly went to new charter schools and charter management groups and organizations, such as New Schools New Orleans. These groups funnel money to consultants and start ups, many not from New Orleans. In New Orleans we have 97% charter schools and only five traditional schools. And despite the millions being spent, many children and families are not getting what they need. We have 26,000 young people ages 16 to 24 who are not in school or working. They call them “opportunity youth.” They are products of the new charter school system.

One of the five remaining traditional schools is Benjamin Franklin elementary school, a

- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/pss/what-could-be-wrong-school-choice#sthash.Sx5JgnmH.dpuf

What’s that smell? A defense of Pay for Success from the White House. | Fred Klonsky

What’s that smell? A defense of Pay for Success from the White House. | Fred Klonsky:

What’s that smell? A defense of Pay for Success from the White House

White House Director of Social Innovation, David Wilkinson and Department of Education Secretary of Policy and Early Learning, Libby Doggett.

When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was recently reauthorized as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), it contained federal approval of Pay for Success.

We have written about Pay for Success here frequently, although it has gone unspoken by both AFT and NEA leadership, even as they swooned in fandom over ESSA.

Pay for Success is a social impact bond (SIB) that pays Wall Street investors like Goldman Sachs a bounty for every child that does not receive special education support.

Pay for Success is nothing less than a push-out program that then pays the bond investor a bonus for every child that is pushed out of special ed services.

And in an op-ed piece in The Salt Lake Tribune, Department of Education and White House officials praise Pay for Success as the second coming.

Libby Doggett is deputy assistant secretary of Policy and Early Learning in What’s that smell? A defense of Pay for Success from the White House. | Fred Klonsky:

BustED Pencils Trending News: Phony; Punish; Please | BustED Pencils

BustED Pencils Trending News: Phony; Punish; Please | BustED Pencils:

BustED Pencils Trending News: Phony; Punish; Please

Grass roots rebellion growing.

We’re onto the phony education reformers: Charter school charlatans and faux reformers take it on the chin

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/09/were_onto_the_phony_education_reformers_charter_school_charlatans_and_faux_reformers_take_it_on_the_chin/

Simply failing the test, not the course, is call for punishment?

Spike proposal to punish school districts for student test failures

http://www.bradenton.com/opinion/editorials/article54898810.html

Please, this whole thing is nonsense!

A ‘No-Nonsense’ Classroom Where Teachers Don’t Say ‘Please’

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/01/10/459372410/a-no-nonsense-classroom-where-teachers-dont-say-please?utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+npr%2FRIGV+%28NPR+Most+Emailed+Stories%29&utm_source=feedburner

Get BustED Pencils Trending News to come right to your in-box!

Enter your email under “SUBSCRIBE” on our Home or Trending News page at bustedpencils.com

BustED Pencils Trending News: Phony; Punish; Please | BustED Pencils:

IMPORTANT ALERT - Students, Parents, Teachers are being bullied about opting out of testing madness - Wait What?

IMPORTANT ALERT - Students, Parents, Teachers are being bullied about opting out of testing madness - Wait What?:
IMPORTANT ALERT – Students, Parents, Teachers are being bullied about opting out of testing madness

Reports are coming in from around the state that under pressure for Governor Malloy’s Commissioner of Education, some local school officials are, once again, engaged in underhanded efforts to mislead students and parents about their rights related to the unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory Common Core SBAC and SAT testing schemes.

Last spring, some superintendents and principals went so far as to threaten children that they would not be promoted to the next grade or would not be able to graduate from high school if they did not take the Common Core SBAC test.

Such a statement is a lie!

Threatening students and parents is not only unprofessional, unethical and immoral, it is illegal.

Parents have the fundamental and unalienable right to opt their children out of the testing program and any attempt to take that right away is a civil rights violation under federal and state law.

Readers of Wait, What?

If you know of any situation in which state or local officials are engaged in efforts to bully, harass or mislead parents or students about their opt-out rights or are threatening teachers that they may not provide parents and students with accurate information about the Common Core testing, please get in contact immediately.

Information, including any related documentation, should be sent tojonpelto@gmail.com

The source of the information will be kept completely confidential.

(Please Note – School administrators and teachers wishing to report inappropriate efforts to prevent parents and students from opting out of the SBAC and SAT testing should use IMPORTANT ALERT - Students, Parents, Teachers are being bullied about opting out of testing madness - Wait What?:

Zimmer backs arts, warns against standardization | Park Labrea News/ Beverly Press

Zimmer backs arts, warns against standardization | Park Labrea News/ Beverly Press:

Zimmer backs arts, warns against standardization

LAUSD board president Steve Zimmer discusses the education challenges that Los Angeles faces. (photo by Gregory Cornfield)

Mid City West Community Council (MCWCC) and Mid City West Community Councilleaders welcomed LAUSD board president and 4th District representative Steve Zimmer on Monday to discuss with communitiy members challenges that face the district. He addressed standardized testing, and how a 5th grade art project should be a model for the city.

Zimmer complimented Mid City West-area schools on their history and diversity, but said they are being challenged like the rest of the district to close education gaps and produce equal outcomes for students.

“How do we simultaneously embrace this incredible diversity and also make sure that our education outcomes are equitable for all students?” he said. “The challenges are real, and the outcomes are not equitable. And so this is the great challenge that the public education system faces.”

Countrywide debates over district structures and education policy reform continue to challenge the district on issues such as standardized testing and charter schools.

Zimmer mostly stressed opposition to initiating academic competition between schools or young students – a common proposal to encourage higher performance. He criticized it as dehumanizing children to “above basic,” “basic” or “below basic,” and said education research shows children learn at different paces and in different ways.

“[In all the schools in the district] I promise you we would not meet a single child named ‘Basic’ or ‘Below Basic,’” he said.

Zimmer said Common Core points California in the right direction because it elevates best teaching values as well as teacher flexibility.

MCWCC’s education committee chair Eddie Campbell said one of their goals this year is to partner and better interact with LAUSD schools.

Campbell reached out to Hancock Park Elementary Principal Ashley Parker to see how MCWCC could get involved. He learned about a wall tile project that has been Zimmer backs arts, warns against standardization | Park Labrea News/ Beverly Press:

What in the World is Slave-Tag? - Student Voice

What in the World is Slave-Tag? - Student Voice:

What in the World is Slave-Tag?

 Yesterday we convened a group of students from around the city of Philadelphia in a Student Voice Convention to launch our national tour.  We didn’t choose the city by accident—Philadelphia was the birthplace of our nation.  It was here, 227 years ago that another convention created an American government for the people and by the people and it is here in 2016 that students discussed how to make an education system for the students and by the students.

We began the day with Philadelphia’s superintendent, Dr. William Hite.  He spoke about the importance of having your voice heard, especially in the conversations about the current problems facing the city.

The problems are many. The city is facing massive budget cuts that are threatening to shut schools down; students are acutely aware and ready to fight for their schools.  And many of those schools are decrepit and falling apart.  We heard from Philadelphia Councilwoman Helen Gym about an exploding school boiler which lit an employee on fire.

In conversation with students, we heard about a “game” played in an African-American History class:

Slave-tag.

In an attempt to teach slavery, one Philadelphia teacher created an activity where he designated certain students in the class as slaves and certain students as slave owners.  The goal: catch the slaves.

Philadelphia’s school system may need many improvements, but one thing was made absolutely clear: the students have a passion and dedication to their schools and communities that is inspiring. It didn’t take long for students to determine that there was something more than a little bit wrong with “slave-tag,” and they spoke out.

In Philadelphia high schools, protests are a common occurrence.  Students from all walks of life are aware of how policies at the state and district level affect their ability to learn.

Students are supportive.  One student explained how her school had their student council taken away. The other students in the room were shocked such a thing could happen. During the rest of the summit, other students helped the girl brainstorm how to What in the World is Slave-Tag? - Student Voice:

Student Voice Announces First National Tour Stops

In November, Student Voice announced plans for a nationwide tour at the White House Summit on Next Generation High Schools. The tour is first bringing Student Voice to Philadelphia, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina to connect with students. Led by UNC student and National Field Director, Andrew Brennen, the tour will shadow the 2016 presidential campaign trail. “The goal of our tour is to inspire and engage students of all ages to be more active agents in their own learning,” Brennen shares. “Students spend at least 35 hours per week in a classroom and therefore have much insight to offer on what is and is not working. We want to unleash this expertise so that everyone, most especially young people themselves, sees students as critical and creative consumers of their own education.”

Each stop of the tour will create space for students to, often for the first time, think critically about their schools. Students will vote on the Student Bill of Rights, participate in Student voice roundtable sessions, and strategize ways that they can insert themselves as stakeholders in their education.

Zak Malamed, Executive Director of Student Voice, shared, “the best way to engage students and learn from them is to meet them where they are. So, through the Student Voice Tour, that is exactly what we are going to do.”

Student Voice plans to reach at least 10,000 students from all 50 states through the Student Bill of Rights voting platform through the tour. The aim of the tour is to collect nationwide year-toyear data analysis of student perspectives on what’s most important to them in their education as well as documenting how students are driving school improvement across the country through the SBoR.

About Student Voice

Student Voice is a completely student-run, non-partisan, not-for-profit organization inspired by the lack of student voices in education. Student Voice strives to enhance the overall effectiveness of the student voice movement by bridging the gap between students and education communities around the world through its services-based approach. For more information about Student Voice, visit StuVoice.org or follow us on Twitter @Stu_Voice.

Student Voice Announces First National Tour Stops

Obama Administration Enables Billionaire Takeover of US Public Schools

Obama Administration Enables Billionaire Takeover of US Public Schools:
Obama Administration Enables Billionaire Takeover of US Public Schools

With the Walton billionaires doubling down in their efforts to accelerate the charter school industry and with the Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, throwing in $100 million to privatize traditional public schools, one might think that the U.S. Department of Education would be a major line of defense for America's public schools educating the most underserved students or even a bold investor in sustainable community schools that are truly public. 

One would be wrong.

The U.S. Department of Education, as with the education agencies of many states, has been co-opted by the spending frenzy of the billionaire class.

It's not just the Waltons and Hastings using their fortunes to undermine public education: Eli Broad has pledged nearly a half billion dollars to privatize the public schools of Los Angeles. They are mounting a radical - or really a reactionary - effort to remake public schools into private enterprises, and charters are a key component of the transition the billionaires seek. 

And editorial decisions by many in the press have aided and abetted this effort.

For example, the Walton family's press release about its new spending - which comes on top of the nearly $200 million they already spend on education "reform" each year - was widely reported, while the federal budget deal allocated $330 million more for charters was barely covered. The federal expansion of funding comes in the face of numerous scandals involving poor test results from so-called virtual charter schools and the documentation of more than $200 million of fraud and waste of taxpayer money by charter school operators. 

But the billionaires' star power garnered coverage and repetition of the "reform" talking points, despite the manifest evidence of the failures of many charter school experiments.

It's not just the press.

This movement that touts "choice" - as a more appealing frame than the "destruction" of truly public schools governed by local democracy - has been embraced by politicians who need financial support from billionaires to win their elections. And, increasingly, these political leaders have been followed into a variant of "public service" by cadres of school reform staffers and charter school cheerleaders who advance private interests.

A recent PowerPoint presentation created by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) underscores how complete that take-over is, after the federal government has itself spent billions in American tax dollars building up and buttressing the charter school industry.   

Its 25-slide PowerPoint document, "The U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools Program Overview," is an uncritical PR document embracing a magical idea of charter schools.

While it is unclear what audience the department was targeting, it clearly shows how ED has become a propagandist for charter schools - despite the mountain of fraud and failure that investigators and bloggers have documented. 

Some of the slides are comical to the point of parody. One enthusiastically asks, "Do states with the highest-performing charter schools receive [State Educational Agency] funding?" With 38 states receiving this funding, should it be surprising that some of them have some schools that test better than other charter schools that also receive funding?

Another slide says, "As of SY 2011-12, CSP-Funded Schools Serve a Similar Percentage of Students and Disabilities and Limited English Proficient Students as Traditional Schools," and then shows four lonely bar graphs. Nine percent of the Obama Administration Enables Billionaire Takeover of US Public Schools:

KILLING ED: 120 American Charter Schools and One Secretive Turkish Cleric

Trailer for KILLING ED on Vimeo:

KILLING ED

Trailer for KILLING ED from Visual Truth Projects on Vimeo.

Trailer for the feature-length documentary, KILLING ED, about charter schools, corruption and the rise of the Gülen Movement in America. Coming March, 2016.Trailer for KILLING ED on Vimeo:


120 American Charter Schools and One Secretive Turkish Cleric

The FBI is investigating a group of educators who are followers of a mysterious Islamic movement. But the problems seem less related to faith than to the oversight of charter schools.

It reads like something out of a John Le Carre novel: The charismatic Sunni imam Fethullah Gülen, leader of a politically powerful Turkish religious movementlikened by The Guardian to an “Islamic Opus Dei,” occasionally webcasts sermons from self-imposed exile in the Poconos while his organization quickly grows to head the largest chain of charter schools in America. It might sound quite foreboding—and it should, but not for the reasons you might think.

You can be excused if you’ve never heard of Fethullah Gülen or his eponymous movement. He isn’t known for his openness, despite the size of his organization, which is rumored to have between 1 and 8 million adherents. It’s difficult to estimate the depth of its bench, however, without an official roster of membership. Known informally in Turkey as Hizmet, or “the service”, the Gülen movement prides itself on being a pacifist, internationalist, modern, and moderate alternative to more extreme derivations of Sunni Islam. The group does emphasize the importance of interfaith dialogue, education, and a kind of cosmopolitanism. One prominent sociologist described it as “the world’s most global movement.”

Singling out the Gülen schools as particularly nefarious, simply for being run by Muslims, smacks of xenophobia.

Much of the praise for the Gülen movement comes from its emphasis on providing education to children worldwide. In countries like Pakistan, its schools often serve as an alternative to more fundamentalist madrassas. Gülen schools enroll an estimated two million students around the globe, usually with English as the language of instruction, and the tuition is often paid in full by the institution. In Islamic countries, where the Gülen schools aren’t entirely secular: The New York Times reported that in many of the Pakistani schools, “…teachers encourage Islam in their dormitories, where teachers set the example in lifestyle and prayers.” But the focus is still largely on academics. Fethullah Gülen put it in one of his sermons, “Studying physics, mathematics, and chemistry is worshipping Allah.”

In Western countries such as the United States, Germany, and France, there isn’t any evidence whatsoever that the nearly 120 Gülen charter schools in America include Islamic indoctrination in their curriculum. The schools are so secular that singling out the Gülen schools as particularly nefarious, simply for being run predominantly by Muslims, smacks of xenophobia.

However, these schools might be suspect for reasons that are completely unrelated to Islamic doctrine. One of their most troubling characteristics is that they don’t have a great track record when it comes to financial and legal transparency. In Utah, a financial probe launched by the Utah Schools Charter Board found the Beehive Science and Technology Academy, a Gülen-run charter school, to be nearly $350,000 in debt. Furthermore, as the Deseret Newsreported, the school’s administrators seemed to be reserving coveted jobs for their own countrymen and women: “In a time of teacher layoffs, Beehive has recruited a high percentage of teachers from overseas, mainly Turkey.”

Even more unnervingly, the school’s money—public funds from the local community—was being donated to Gülen-affiliated organizations and used to pay the cost of bringing teachers to Utah from Turkey. To illustrate the level of fiscal mismanagement, the school spent about 50 cents to pay the immigration costs of foreign teachers for every dollar that it spent on textbooks. In 2010, after being the first charter school in Utah history to be shuttered, Beehive appealed the decision and was reopened the same year.

There are similar stories from other states. In Texas, where 33 Gülen charter schools receive close to $100 million a year in taxpayer funds, the New York Times reported in 2011 that two schools had given $50 million to Gülen-connected contractors, including the month-old Atlas Texas Construction and Training, even though other contractors had offered lower bids. It was the same thing in Georgia, where Fulton County audited three Gülen schools after allegations that they’d skipped the bidding process altogether and paid nearly half a million dollars to organizations associated with the Gülen movement.

The Gülen movement is known for its secrecy. But when it comes to the Gülen charter schools, the lack of transparency is part of a larger problem that has nothing to do with the Turkish-based organization. Diane Ravitch, education professor at New York University and Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush, writes about this larger transparency issue in her latest book,Reign of Error, explaining, “In 2009, New York Charter School Association successfully sued to prevent the state comptroller from auditing the finances of charter schools, even though they receive public funding. The association contended that charter school’s are not government agencies but ‘non-profit educational corporations carrying out a public purpose.’” The New York State Court of Appeals agreed with the organization in a 7 to 0 vote. It took an act of legislation from the state—specifically designed to allow the comptroller to audit charter schools—for this to change.

Ravitch also writes of a similar instance in North Carolina in which the state, urged on by lobbying giant ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), proposed the creation of a special commission, composed entirely of charter school advocates, as a way for charter schools to bypass the oversight of the State Board of Education or the local school boards. Ravitch writes, “The charters would not be required to hire certified teachers. Charter school staff would not be required to pass criminal background checks. The proposed law would not require any checks for conflicts of interest—not for commission members or for the charter schools.” In other words, it isn’t the Gülen movement that makes Gülen charter schools so secretive. It’s the charter school movement itself.
This comes across in the latest news story related to the Gülen schools: an FBI raid last month on the headquarters of over 19 Gülen-operated Horizon Science Academies in Midwest. According to search warrants obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, federal authorities were interested in gathering general financial documents and records of communication. The warrant specifically mentions something called the E-rate program—a federal program that, according to theSun-Times, “pays for schools to expand telecommunications and Internet access.” A handful of the Gülen-affiliated contractors assisting the schools were receiving money from this federal fund. It’s difficult speculate what this could all mean, as all documents pertaining to the investigation, save the warrants themselves, have been sealed from the public.

It isn’t the Gülen movement that makes Gülen charter schools so secretive. It’s the charter school movement itself.

Meanwhile, the Ohio State Board of Education has launched its own probe of the nearly 20 Gülen-associated charter schools in its state. As part of the investigation,  four former teachers from Horizon Academy (the particular name of the Gülen charter school chain in Ohio) gave testimony. The teachers mentioned issues as disturbing as cheating on state tests, unsafe building conditions, overcrowding, and even sexual misconduct. One of the teachers, Matthew Blair, had previously tried to contact the state’s Department of Education in order to file complaints, but hadn’t heard back from officials. Board president Debe Terhar assured the teachers, “Your concerns have not fallen on deaf ears. We hear you, and we will move forward with making sure this thing is investigated.”
I contacted Matthew Blair, and he told me that the problems with the Gülen schools were merely symptomatic of a larger problem within the state’s education system. “The charter school system in Ohio is broken beyond repair,” he wrote in an email. “As it is, charter schools operate in a lawless frontier. Regulations are few and far between. Those that exist are consistently and consciously overlooked.”

The Gülen schools, he wrote, “are an excellent example” of this problem: “A Gülen organization controls the real estate companies that own their schools. They charge rent to their own schools and tax-payers foot the bill. They refuse to answer public records requests, falsify attendance records, and cheat on standardized tests. Yet, Ohio continues to grant them charters to operate.” He added, “It doesn't hurt that the Gülen organization is politically active and treats state politicians to lavish trips abroad.” But overall, he said, “this Wild West atmosphere of few regulations creates incestuous relationships among politicians, vendors, and schools. Charter schools like Gülen's give generously. In return, they are allowed to keep their saloons open and serve whatever they want. The only way to save the charter school system is to start over again by using the model of effective public schools.”

They participate in a system that gives every incentive to keep their financial dealings under wraps.

The Gülen movement insists that the accusations against are the result of gross exaggeration or outright falsehood. Websites like Gulenschools.org and hizmetchronicle.com defend Gülen charter schools from accusations of impropriety: aggregating positive news about the schools, restating their mission in magnanimous language, and distancing Fethullah Gülen himself from any of the legal proceedings or investigations. One particular article quotes Gülen’s attorney, who responds to (more) FBI raids on Gülen schools in Louisiana by reminding readers that Gülen himself “is not the founder, shareholder, or administrator of any school.”
But the problem with Gülen schools isn’t that they’re connected to a particular religious movement (although some might object to public funds making their way to any religious institution). The problem is that they participate in a system that gives every incentive to keep their financial dealings under wraps. Charter schools were designed to provide a certain amount of autonomy, and many schools have successfully walked the line between public responsibility and private innovation. But there are vulnerabilities built into the system, and one is a reduced oversight that enables schools to move vast amounts of public funds into private hands. The Gülen movement, with its foreign origins and mysterious leader, may make for a particular intriguing story. But as the saying goes, “Don’t hate the player; hate the game.” 120 American Charter Schools and One Secretive Turkish Cleric