CURMUDGUCATION: To Choice Advocates: Some Questions

CURMUDGUCATION: To Choice Advocates: Some Questions

To Choice Advocates: Some Questions

I have concerns about school choice programs, and I usually express them as complaints, criticism, general snark. This time, I'd like to come at it a little differently. Let me frame these concerns as questions, because maybe there are answers that I'm just not aware of. As is obvious from a multitude of posts, I am skeptical; these questions show exactly what I'm skeptical of. 

And before I start, I'll agree that some of these concerns are not always well-addressed by public schools. So I'm not looking for answers in the old mode of "Yeah, but public schools do X!" I'm still wondering how a charter or voucher system would do a better job of managing the issues. If you want to take a shot an answering these, the comments are open.

1) A choice system is built on the idea of making parents the primary stewards of their child's education. Contrary to the usual criticism, I believe that the majority of parents are smart and capable and caring. But a non-zero number are not. I've told the stories: the student whose mother tried to run her over with a car; the student who was always tired because dad spent the utility money on beer; the student whose father threw him out of the house for trying to take some of dad's drugs; the student who was thrown out for coming out as gay; etc.  In those sorts of CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: To Choice Advocates: Some Questions

CURMUDGUCATION: What Happens To Students That Charters Don't Want? (The Chester Upland Saga Continues)

CURMUDGUCATION: What Happens To Students That Charters Don't Want? (The Chester Upland Saga Continues)

What Happens To Students That Charters Don't Want? (The Chester Upland Saga Continues)

In Chester Upland School District, the process of selling off the district schools to charter operators has continued (for a deeper dive into CUSD's troubled history, read here). Three charter operators have made their bids, and we'll take a closer look at that another day. It's all pretty sad and ugly.

But there's another troubling aspect to the dismantling of Chester Upland schools. The three charter companies have placed their bids to take over CUSD elementary schools. As has been hinted at all along, nobody wants to take over either of the two high schools.

The debates about charters and choice have often centered on the question of the students left behind in a school. when other students leave for a charter. How do the financial resources balance out? How does a district financially support ten schools when it was having trouble supporting two? 

But this is a whole other scenario. The charter operators are taking over elementary operations, but leaving the high school untouched, meaning that the high school can find itself drained of resources with absolutely no reduction in cost at all. Theoretically it would not be a problem because the charters would be inheriting the same student body and therefor the same funding. Except that in Pennsylvania's screwy funding system, a special; education student is funded at a far higher level for charters than in a public school. In public schools, special ed students are arranged in tiers are according to how expensive it is to meet their needs; in charter CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: What Happens To Students That Charters Don't Want? (The Chester Upland Saga Continues)

West Virginia: The Great Charter School Swindle | Diane Ravitch's blog

West Virginia: The Great Charter School Swindle | Diane Ravitch's blog

West Virginia: The Great Charter School Swindle

State Senator Mike Romano of West Virginia wrote an article about the hoax of charter schools, which will cost the state’s public schools hundreds of millions of dollars without improving education.

He wrote:

In the shadows of Covid, bills have passed during the 2021 Legislative session that will move West Virginia backwards. From the weakening or elimination of state licensing for electricians, plumbers, crane operators, elevator technicians, among others, to the weakening of drinking water standards, to creating a new layer of government with an Intermediate Court that no one wants (except insurance companies), which will cost tens of millions of tax dollars every year.

As bad as those bills are, no bill has the potential to damage our collective future or waste more of our tax dollars than charter schools. The obsession of the Republican Majority with charter schools and private CONTINUE READING: West Virginia: The Great Charter School Swindle | Diane Ravitch's blog

Texas: Public Schools Are Better Than Charter Schools: Stop Funding Failure! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Texas: Public Schools Are Better Than Charter Schools: Stop Funding Failure! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Texas: Public Schools Are Better Than Charter Schools: Stop Funding Failure!

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to the North Texas School Boards Association by Zoom. Right now, Texas is ground zero for the charter industry. This is astonishing because the public schools in Texas far outperform the charter schools. The charter school lobby markets themselves as “saviors” of children, but they are far more likely to fail than public schools. This is a summary of what I told my friends in Texas:

I am a graduate of the Houston public schools. My father, who grew up in Savannah, never finished high school; my mother, who was born in Bessarabia, was very proud of her high school diploma from the Houston public schools.

I believe that all of us, whether or not we have children, whether or not we have children in public school, have a civic obligation to support public schools, just as we must support other public services, like police, firefighting, public roads, public parks, and public libraries. Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society, and no investment is more precious than investing in the education of our CONTINUE READING: Texas: Public Schools Are Better Than Charter Schools: Stop Funding Failure! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Corbett Burris: Why Do Charter Schools Get Away with Massive Fraud? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Corbett Burris: Why Do Charter Schools Get Away with Massive Fraud? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Corbett Burris: Why Do Charter Schools Get Away with Massive Fraud?

Carol Corbett Burris was a teacher and principal on Long Island, in New York state for many years. After retiring, she became executive director of the Network for Public Education.

She writes:

Last spring, HBO released Bad Education, which tells the story of how a Roslyn, New York Superintendent named Frank Tassone conspired to steal $11.2 million with the help of his business officer, Pamela Gluckin.  Promo materials called the film “the largest public school embezzlement in U.S. history.”

I did not watch it. I am waiting. I am waiting for HBO to release a movie on how a crafty fellow from Australia, Sean McManus, defrauded California taxpayers out of $50 millionvia an elaborate scheme to create phony attendance records to increase revenue to an online charter chain known as A3. 

Or the documentary about the tens of millions that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) owes taxpayers for cooking the books on attendance. Or CONTINUE READING: Carol Corbett Burris: Why Do Charter Schools Get Away with Massive Fraud? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Rhode Island: Teachers Demand End to State Takeover of Providence Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Rhode Island: Teachers Demand End to State Takeover of Providence Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Rhode Island: Teachers Demand End to State Takeover of Providence Schools

Rhode Island is a mess. Two years ago, the state took control of the Providence public schools. The Governor, Gina Raymond, is a former hedge funder and not a friend of public schools. She loves charter schools and welcomed them to her state. She is now Biden’s Commerce Secretary and has been succeeded by her Lieutenant Governor Dan McKee, who is also a privatizer. The relatively new State Commissioner is Angelica Infante Green, who comes from Teach for America and had a desk job in the New York State Education Department. She is a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. The Providence Teachers Union originally supported the state takeover, hoping that it would bring new resources to the schools. Instead, the takeover has meant disruption, turmoil, threats to teachers, and bitterness between the hard-charging, inexperienced State Commissioner and the teachers.

Mary Beth Calabro, the president of the Providence Teachers Union, has been a teacher for 24 years and president of the union for five years.

Less than two years later, and with the COVID-19 pandemic overshadowing nearly all of the takeover, CONTINUE READING: Rhode Island: Teachers Demand End to State Takeover of Providence Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: State Board, by 4-3, Gives Charter Schools Access to Local Tax Revenues | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: State Board, by 4-3, Gives Charter Schools Access to Local Tax Revenues | Diane Ravitch's blog

Oklahoma: State Board, by 4-3, Gives Charter Schools Access to Local Tax Revenues

Over the opposition of Joy Hofmeister, the state superintendent, the Oklahoma State Board of Education voted 4-3 to allow charter schools to have a share in property taxes and motor vehicle taxes that previously were reserved for public schools.

A groundbreaking settlement will fundamentally change the way charter schools are funded in Oklahoma, despite vehement opposition from the state’s top education official.

The Oklahoma State Board of Education voted 4-3 on Thursday in favor of an agreement with the Oklahoma Public Charter School Association to settle a 2017 lawsuit.

The charter school association called the agreement a “tremendous step” for equality in school funding.

State schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister said the settlement could violate state law and have “seismic” CONTINUE READING: Oklahoma: State Board, by 4-3, Gives Charter Schools Access to Local Tax Revenues | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: Is Your Charter School A Public School?

CURMUDGUCATION: Is Your Charter School A Public School?

Is Your Charter School A Public School?

It seems to be one of the eternal questions (well, sort of a question) of the education debates-- aren't charter schools public schools? So for those folks who are still a little fuzzy on this, let me offer a handy set of questions to help you decide. Here are the signs of a public school.

Is the school and its resources owned by the public?

Who owns the building? If the school closed tomorrow, who would take possession of the building, the desks, the chairs, the books, the music stands, etc etc etc. If the physical resources of the building are owned by the public, it's probably a public school.

Does the school accept all students?

Usually when discussing this point, we get all caught up in the ways that charter schools market, cream, council out, don't offer specialized programs, and set up enrollment hoops that allow them to decide which students they will and will not take. But let's simplify this issue. Does the school accept all students? All. If they have a lottery to award seats to a select few, the answer is no, they are not a public school. No public school district gets to say, ever, "I'm sorry, we only have enough seats for fifty of you, so we'll have a lottery, and CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Is Your Charter School A Public School?

Segregation factories, pt 4: The dark story of "Failure Factories" and "Schools without Rules" shows how power dominates education journalism, narrative, and humanity - Public Enemy Number 1

Segregation factories, pt 4: The dark story of "Failure Factories" and "Schools without Rules" shows how power dominates education journalism, narrative, and humanity - Public Enemy Number 1

Segregation factories, pt 4: The dark story of "Failure Factories" and "Schools without Rules" shows how power dominates education journalism, narrative, and humanity

Power used the Tampa Bay Times' Pulitzer tagline to strip mine Florida's public schools. It largely ignored the Orlando Sentinel's better, further-reaching voucher reporting. Why?

Part 1: Welcome to Jeb Crow Florida, 2021

Part 2: What "Jeb Crow" has wrought for FTC, McKay, and Gardiner kids -- and everybody else

Part 3: How to shop in a Jeb Crow voucher marketplace built to cheat and grift and harm your child

Today’s Part 4 is a comprehensive history and accounting of the consequences from Florida’s two most important pieces of newspaper journalism since 2015. Both concern education; and both illustrate how power determines the impact of journalism, in different ways. This article may be truncated in email delivery; so you should plan to click through to the website.

It would take a reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, to which I am a subscriber, a couple of days at most to go through the Step Up for Students website and compile a spreadsheet of voucher schools for the counties in their coverage area — with the same information I put together in this spreadsheet. (I will send you the full sheet if you want it, TBT, for a template.)

I would bet my house that every county would have a giant list of racially and ESE-segregated voucher schools with no accreditation or oversight or capital. These voucher schools exist only because of direct taxpayer funding or because big corporations get a public dollar-for-dollar tax break for funding them directly rather than funding real public schools.

In Polk County, 16 voucher schools have enrollments that are at least 76 percent black. Twelve of the 16 schools are at least 95 percent black or greater. Six are 100 percent black. Not one of those schools has accreditation, of any kind. More than 800 black children attend these segregated, no-capital “schools.”

Beyond purely black segregation, 30 out of 65 Polk voucher schools are at least 70 CONTINUE READING: Segregation factories, pt 4: The dark story of "Failure Factories" and "Schools without Rules" shows how power dominates education journalism, narrative, and humanity - Public Enemy Number 1

Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain - Network For Public Education

Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain - Network For Public Education

Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain

In this report, we focus on the world of charter schools run for profit, a world both hidden and misunderstood. We pull back the veil on tactics and practices designed to reap as many public dollars as possible from charter schools while hiding behind laws designed to keep profit-making hidden from the public’s eyes.  This report exposes how both large and small for-profit companies evade state laws that make for-profit charter schools illegal by the use of related entities and a nonprofit front. We explain and provide examples of how for-profit owners maximize their profits through self-dealing, excessive fees, real estate transactions, and under-serving students who need the most expensive services.

You can view and read the report by clicking the image below.

Download a PDF of the Report

Download the Executive Summary

READ THE COMPLETE  REPORT:  Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain - Network For Public Education

Should KIPP Be Allowed to Build a School on a Toxic Waste Site? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Should KIPP Be Allowed to Build a School on a Toxic Waste Site? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Should KIPP Be Allowed to Build a School on a Toxic Waste Site?

The tiny city of Cudahy, California, is locked in battle with the mega-powerful KIPP charter chain over KIPP’s determination to build a charter school on a toxic waste site. KIPP is avoiding the usual environmental review that would be required for public schools. Local environmental activists and parents are raising money to fight the KIPP machine.

Larry Buhl writes in “Capital & Main”:

At issue are a state law allowing different building standards for different types of schools, and a planning code, obscure to most local residents, that allows a charter school company to build a new school without thoroughly cleaning up the site’s alleged toxins.

Using a process that allows the company to skirt state environmental rules, KIPP SoCal Public Schools plans to build a new elementary school on land that its own reports show contains toxic substances including lead and arsenic. The company can do that because the CONTINUE READING: Should KIPP Be Allowed to Build a School on a Toxic Waste Site? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Shawgi Tell: Charter School Disinformation About Families Being the Most Important “Stakeholders” | Dissident Voice

Charter School Disinformation About Families Being the Most Important “Stakeholders” | Dissident Voice

Charter School Disinformation About Families Being the Most Important “Stakeholders”

Since day one, advocates of privately-operated charter schools have tried to convince everyone that segregated charter schools “empower parents” and that parents are not only “stakeholders” but the most important “stakeholders” in education. Everything in education is supposedly all about parents first and foremost. Parents are the end-all and be-all. Education apparently serves no one else or 10 other broad functions. Education exists mainly to serve parents. Everyone and everything else is secondary at best. Oddly enough, while the “parent empowerment” theme is central to charter school disinformation it is actually charter schools that choose parents and students, not the other way around.

Such a narrow notion of parents-first-last-and-always deliberately degrades and debases the historical, cultural, social, political, and economic role, significance, and importance of public education in a modern society based on mass industrial production. The days of petty production, small estates,  small farms, and feudal manors are long gone. Humans today are born to a complex modern society in which all production is highly technical, scientific, advanced, large-scale, and cooperative. Everything is interdependent and impossible without millions of skilled working people. The problem is that this modern mass production system is based on outdated relations of production, that is, it is owned and controlled by competing private owners of capital CONTINUE READING: Charter School Disinformation About Families Being the Most Important “Stakeholders” | Dissident Voice

Are Urban Schools A Site of Occupation? - PopularResistance Org

Are Urban Schools A Site of Occupation? - PopularResistance.Org

ARE URBAN SCHOOLS A SITE OF OCCUPATION?

In the third season of Black Lightning, the fictional Black city of Freeland was living under a military occupation by the ASA (the quasi governmental organization occupying Freeland). Not only did the city have heavily armed troopers patrolling the streets, but also had troopers patrolling the schools– detaining anyone they deemed a threat – using violence if necessary.  In episode four, students are in a classroom discussing similar military occupations in multiple countries around the world and their harmful effects on the people being occupied.  Some students agree, but then others claim the ASA occupying their city might be a good thing, suggesting that the ASA’s presence comes with safety.  As they are discussing, the ASA comes into the classroom to detain (and abduct) a student named Tavon, under the suspicion of having powers.  Although his teacher tries to protect him from the ASA’s unlawful detainment, his teacher is beaten with the butt of an ASA officer’s gun, and Tavon is taken away and murdered by the ASA. Enraged by the murder of their classmate, students confront the ASA with a protest to get them out of their schools as well as demand answers for what happened to Tavon.  As one student tries to show ASA officers a picture of their murdered classmate (pictured above), another ASA officer beats the student with their gun and tries to detain him until Guidance Counselor Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightning) arrives to protect his students. Although Black Lightning is a fictional show with CONTINUE READING: Are Urban Schools A Site of Occupation? - PopularResistance.Org

Rhode Island: Dark Money Backs “Parent Group” for More Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Rhode Island: Dark Money Backs “Parent Group” for More Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Rhode Island: Dark Money Backs “Parent Group” for More Charter Schools

Maurice Cunningham specializes in digging up the facts about Dark Money (political contributions where the donors’ names are hidden). His expose of Dark Money from the Waltons and other billionaires turned the public against a 2016 state referendum in Massachusetts to expand the number of charter schools, and it was defeated. I wrote about this campaign in Slaying Goliath.

In this post, published here for the first time, he exposes a “parent group” demanding more charter schools in Rhode Island.

Cunningham writes:

Parents who care about public education need to be wary of dark money fronts masquerading as concerned reformers. These are lavishly funded efforts with the goal of privatizing public schools. Rhode Islanders should take a long hard look at Stop the Wait RI.

This operation registered with the Rhode Island Secretary of State as a social welfare organization organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue on February 25, 2021. That status allows Stop the Wait to engage in a wide range of political activities including spending on political campaigns. The big advantage for a 501(c)(4) is CONTINUE READING: Rhode Island: Dark Money Backs “Parent Group” for More Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion

I am a great fan of Eve Ewing’s book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard.  I have read the book twice, visited in Chicago some of the sites she describes, given the book to friends as a gift and blogged about it.  In that book, Ewing documents the community grief across Chicago’s South Side, where the now three decades old Renaissance 2010 “portfolio school plan” pits neighborhood public schools and charter schools in competition and closes the so-called “failing” neighborhood public schools when too many families opt for a charter school.

In a column published in Monday’s NY Times, Eve Ewing wants to make peace with charter schools.  She writes that we should allow families to choose and ensure that neighborhood schools and charter schools can all be well resourced and thriving. Ewing grasps for a third way—some sort of amicable compromise in a very polarized situation.

Ewing is a University of Chicago sociologist, and, in her column she examines many of the factors by which neighborhood public schools and charter schools have been compared and rated. She points out that academic quality is a mixed bag with neighborhood and charter schools sometimes besting each other in terms of student achievement. Then she wonders, “What would it look like if we built an education policy agenda dedicated to ensuring… resources for all students?

The problem in Ewing’s column this week is that she never identifies or addresses the matter of public funding for education. I assume she wants to equalize school funding across both sectors. But when charter schools compete for students with public schools, there are now two separate education sectors to split what has proven to be a fixed pot of money.  In every single place I know about where charter schools have been allowed to open up, this is a zero sum game.  A sufficient and growing body of research demonstrates that there is no way to split CONTINUE READING: In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

Shawgi Tell: Charter Schools Distort the Modern Socialized Economy | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Distort the Modern Socialized Economy | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Distort the Modern Socialized Economy

Every year billions of public dollars and assets flow into the hands of private businesses like charter schools, leaving public schools, the economy, the public interest, and the nation worse off. This is due to the fact that competing owners of capital are using deregulated charter schools to atomize the socialized economy for private gain. As pay-the-rich schemes, privately-operated charter schools drain the large-scale socialized economy of a huge amount of social wealth produced by working people and meant for the public interest.

When public funds leave the public sector and end up in the hands of deregulated private entities like non-profit and for-profit charter schools, that means narrow private interests are benefitting at the expense of the public. It means less added-value is used by and benefits the public. It means all public wealth is not reinvested fully and directly back into the public sector. Instead, a large portion of social wealth produced by workers is illegitimately claimed by external private claimants whose aim is to maximize profit as fast as possible.¹ This distorts the economy and undermines public schools and the public interest. It is a net loss for society. It is socially irresponsible. Funneling public funds to private interests undermines modern nation-building that relies on a diverse, self-reliant, balanced, and pro-social economy under public control.

It may be asked: Why don’t public funds stay in public hands? Why aren’t CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Distort the Modern Socialized Economy | Dissident Voice

ASD Light – Tennessee Education Report

ASD Light – Tennessee Education Report

ASD LIGHT

State Senator Ferrell Haile of Sumner County has filed SB 122, a bill creating a “School Turnaround Pilot Program.” Maybe Haile has never heard of the Achievement School District? It’s difficult to understand why someone who has served on the Senate Education Committee for some time now and should have at least a vague familiarity with education policy in our state would want to recreate one of the biggest public policy failures of the last decade.

Here’s a bit of text from his bill:

(a) The department shall create and develop a five-year school turnaround pilot program for district schools that are in need of intervention pursuant to § 49-6-3604.
(b) The department shall select twenty (20) schools in need of intervention that are diverse geographically, including rural and urban schools and schools in different regions of the state, and diverse in grade levels for the pilot program.
(c) From the twenty (20) schools in need of intervention selected for the pilot program, the department shall randomly select ten (10) schools to be a control group and ten (10) schools to participate in a school turnaround group.
(d) The department shall operate and administer the school turnaround pilot program for five (5) school years beginning with the 2021-2022 school year.

The basis for admission into this “turnaround group” is scores on Tennessee’s failed TNReady test.

Just in case Haile hasn’t been paying attention, here’s a bit of what’s been happening with the Achievement School District since its inception:

Gary Rubinstein refers to the ASD as the Edsel of school reform:

The Tennessee Achievement School District, or ASD, is the Edsel of school reform. Created with a Race To The Top Grant and developed by TFA alum Kevin Huffman, CONTINUE READING: ASD Light – Tennessee Education Report