DeVos, unions drive Democratic candidates to back away from charter schools

DeVos, unions drive Democratic candidates to back away from charter schools

DeVos, unions drive Democratic candidates to back away from charter schools
The party's presidential hopefuls are improving their grades with labor groups representing teachers by looking to other education ideas.

WASHINGTON — In 2009, a newly-elected President Barack Obama called on lawmakers to remove limits on charter schools, saying it “isn't good for our children, our economy, or our country” to hinder their growth.

Ten years later, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., announced an almost mirror-image position: A national moratorium on federal funding for charter schools pending an audit, and a ban on for-profit charter schools.

"Charter schools are led by unaccountable, private bodies, and their growth has drained funding from the public school system," his campaign said in a press release.

He's hardly alone. At an education event in Iowa on Saturday, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg sounded a skeptical note toward charter schools.

"For-profit charter schools should not be part of our vision for the future," he told reporters. "And I think the expansion of charter schools in general is something that we need to really draw back on until we've corrected what needs to be corrected in terms of underfunded public education."

Charter schools — a type of public school that is independently operated and whose staff is often non-unionized — have long been a divisive issue within Democratic circles. Now, they're increasingly falling out of favor with the party's current crop of presidential candidates, who are aggressively courting teachers unions in a crowded field, and embracing education proposals more in tune with their demands.

Several candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden and CONTINUE READING: DeVos, unions drive Democratic candidates to back away from charter schools

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Time For Summer Edition (6/9)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Time For Summer Edition (6/9)

ICYMI: Time For Summer Edition 

Summer break has arrived in my neck of the woods, which means the Board of Directors will no longer have me outnumbered!. In the meantime, here's some reading from the week. Remember-- sharing is how you amplify the voices that you think need to be heard. Bloggers and journalists can write all day, but we all depend on readers to help put us in front of our audience.

Robots Are Not Coming For Your Job-- Management Is  

Great piece not directly about education, but a reminder that automation is not some sort of mysterious natural process.

Ohio Needs To Abandoned Failed High Stakes Tests   

The League of Women Voters comes down hard against high stakes testing as a measure of educational quality. Always nice to see people outside the classroom get it.

Schools Should Serve Humans, Not "The Economy"\

Lois Weiner makes her pitch for Bernie Sanders to reject the language of business when discussing schools. Never mind Bernie-- can we get everyone to do this?

Is Charlie Butt the New Eli Broad?

Not that we need one for anything, but her comes another deep-pocketed educational amateur with big ideas.

Millions of Kids Take Standardized Tests Just To Help The Testing Companies  

Oh, the business of field testing, wasting everybody's time.

Tennessee Achievement School District At a Crossroads  

"Crossroads" is generous, but here's the OG ASD still not getting its job done.

Let's Hear It For The Average Child  

From the New York Times.

An Anti-Racist Reading List 

Powerful and handy resources from Ibram X. Kendi.

7 Reasons We're Seeing More Challenging Behavior in Early Childhood Settings  

Rae Pica looks at some of those things that we continue to get wrong when it comes to the littles.

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Time For Summer Edition (6/9)

The Twins Are Two

100+by Peter Greene / 23h

The Board of Directors celebrated its birthday this week. Okay, they're two, so "celebrate" might be a bit of a stretch, because they didn't really know what exactly was happening other than it involved cake and ice cream and some new toys. This is not my first parenting rodeo; I have two older children and a trio of grandchildren who are, in my completely unbiased opinion, geniuses. You know the

JUN 07

Talking Point Update: Focus on Fit

58by Peter Greene / 2d

This has been going on for a while, but just in case you've missed this rhetorical shift, I want to highlight the tweaking of a reformy talking point. Complete this sentence: "We need school choice because____________________" The classic answer has been "because students need to escape failing public schools." Or "because the quality of your education shouldn't be determined by your zip code." Be

JUN 06

WV Senate Can't Seem To Hear Teachers

100+by Peter Greene / 2d

It would be funny if it weren't so angrifying. But West Virginia's legislature is at it again. Back in February of 2018, the teachers of West Virginia were fed up. Low pay. Lack of support. Lack of respect. They were fed up enough that they staged an illegal wildcat strike that shut down every school district in the state . The governor and legislature backed down, and in short order, the teachers

JUN 05

A Spectacular Charter Scam

100+by Peter Greene / 3d

You may skimmed past reports of the San Diego indictment of charter scam artists thinking, "Ah, just another charter fraud story." But this $50 million scam is worth a closer look because it highlights several of the problems with modern charters. The scammers were led by Sean McManu and Jason Schrock. McManus is Australian, but as various other operators have shown (particularly the infamous Gule

JUN 03

Teach for America: The Other Big Problem

500+by Peter Greene / 5d

Teach for America's most famously flawed premise is well known-- five weeks of training makes you qualified to teach in a classroom. It's an absurd premise that has been criticized and lampooned widely. It is followed closely in infamy by the notion that two years in a classroom are about providing the TFAer with an "experience," or a resume-builder so they have a better shot at that law or MBA pr

JUN 02

ICYMI: One Year Retireversary Edition (6/2)

30by Peter Greene / 7d

It has been exactly one year since I hung up my teacher hat, so I'll probably meditate on that today, but in the meantime, here's some good reading from the week. Remember-- if you like it, share it. Utah Picked a Testing Company That It Knew Sucked Okay, so I paraphrased the really-long headline, but you get the idea. How Utah went with a company with a history of trouble-- and how that worked ou

JUN 01

NH: Outsourcing and Privatizing Public Education

64by Peter Greene / 7d

New Hampshire's education commissioner has decided to push a really terrible education idea . It's called "Learn Everywhere," and it looks like a new approach to replacing public education, a kind of true backdoor approach to vouchering. It comes dressed in pretty language, but it still smells like a recently fertilized field on a warm summer day. Frank Edelblut was a businessman, venture capitali

Rewarding Failing Schools

400+by Peter Greene / 7d

One of the problems with the business oriented view of education reveals itself in the use of the word "reward." As long as the debate has raged, we can find commentators, thinky tanks, and policy makers arguing that giving more 

CURMUDGUCATION - https://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/

Sacramento City Unified’s budget will be disapproved | The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento City Unified’s budget will be disapproved | The Sacramento Bee

Sac City Unified’s budget faces rejection – again. But surprise savings brighten the outlook

The financially troubled Sacramento City Unified School District will wrap up the school year with yet another disapproved budget, according to its business office.

But the school board also heard hopeful news at its meeting Thursday night, as Jacquie Canfield, the district’s contracted budget consultant, surprised many attendees by saying she had identified more than $5 million in savings after combing through the budget, correcting errors and eliminating funds that had been going unspent.

While the official budget report has yet to be submitted to the Sacramento County Office of Education, Canfield said it will be rejected despite recent cuts.

The district has already had its budget disapproved twice since August and has been under threat of a state takeover as it expected to run out of cash this fall. However, it recently announced it had temporarily dodged receivership by making cuts and using reserve funds to cover the remaining shortfall. Insolvency is now expected in October 2020, according to county schools Superintendent David Gordon.

Despite news of the pending budget rejection, the tone of Thursday’s board meeting was notably calmer than in recent months as Canfield went line by line identifying existing funds she had found in the budget that would help save programs that were destined for the chopping block.

Canfield said the district had overbudgeted and allocated money to expenses that were not used. Canfield, who started working on the budget in April after Chief Business Officer John Quinto’s resignation, combed through several of the thousands of budget lines, finding $5.3 million in savings.

“There is revenue we recognized that we built in the budget,” said board member Lisa Murawski. 

For example, Canfield said, the district has long overbudgeted for 120 school bus drivers when it CONTINUE READING: Sacramento City Unified’s budget will be disapproved | The Sacramento Bee

Democrats Must Choose Between Teachers And Charter Schools | PopularResistance.Org

Democrats Must Choose Between Teachers And Charter Schools | PopularResistance.Org

DEMOCRATS MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN TEACHERS AND CHARTER SCHOOLS

For years, the safe havens for education policy debate in the Democratic Party have been expanding pre-K programs and providing more affordable college, but in the current presidential primary contest, another consensus issue has been added to the party’s agenda: salary increases for K–12 classroom teachers. Kamala Harris has gotten the most press for coming out strongly for raising teacher wages, but other frontrunners including Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Bernie Sanders have also called for increased teacher pay.

But what will happen when a consensus issue like teacher salary increases comes into conflict with a lightning rod issue like charter schools? That’s a scenario currently playing out in Florida.

A recent law passed by the majority Republican Florida state legislature and signed by newly elected Republican Governor Ron DeSantis will force local school districts to share portions of their locally appropriated tax money with charter schools, even if those funds are raised for the express purpose of increasing teacher salaries in district-operated public schools. (Charter schools in Florida, as in many states, do not receive funds that are raised through bond referendums, mill levies, or other forms of local funding initiatives.)

Florida teachers have openly opposed the new law, and local school districts have taken it to court to have it overthrown. But given this new law, it’s not at all hard to imagine a scenario, even at the national level, where Democrats pushing to increase funds for teacher pay will have to confront an expanding CONTINUE READING: Democrats Must Choose Between Teachers And Charter Schools | PopularResistance.Org

Mercedes Schneider: Who Advises Elizabeth Warren on Education? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Mercedes Schneider: Who Advises Elizabeth Warren on Education? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Mercedes Schneider: Who Advises Elizabeth Warren on Education?

Mercedes Schneider delved into the experience of Elizabeth Warren’s senior education advisor. 

He entered teaching through Teach for America. I hear that his linked-in profile has been deleted since this post appeared but you might want to check to see if it has been restored.

I have met Elizabeth Warren twice, once in her Senate Office, about 2015, where we had a 30-minute conversation about education. I was greatly  impressed by her quick intelligence. Earlier this year, I attended a house party in her honor at the home of a mutual friend in Manhattan and again was taken by her ideas about higher education, her passion, and her articulateness.

I was surprised and disappointed therefore to learn that her senior education advisor is TFA. TFA is a favorite of the Waltons, Eli Broad, and other billionaires who support privatization of public education. The Waltons have given many millions to TFA, at one point a single grant of $48 million; Broad assembled $100 from a group of his allies for TFA. The organization supplies a large part of the workforce for private charter schools. Its leaders in high CONTINUE READING: Mercedes Schneider: Who Advises Elizabeth Warren on Education? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Mike Klonsky's Blog: After Rahm's legacy tour, he heads for Wall Street

Mike Klonsky's Blog: After Rahm's legacy tour, he heads for Wall Street

After Rahm's legacy tour, he heads for Wall Street

The elite get all the breaks and are shown all the shortcuts. In the meantime, ordinary people are forced to pay full freight. -- Rahm Emanuel in The Atlantic

Once there was a wicked witch in the lovely land of Oz And a wickeder, wickeder, wickeder witch there never, never was He filled the folks in Chicago land with terror and with dread 'Till one fine day from Washington way a cyclone caught a house That brought the wicked, wicked witch his doom As he was flying on his broom For the house fell on his head and the people pronounced him dead And thru the town the joyous news was spread Ding-dong, the witch is dead! Which old witch? The wicked witch Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead Wake up, you sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed Wake up, the wicked witch is dead! He's gone where the goblins go below, below, below, yo ho Let's open up and sing, and ring the bells out Ding-dong! the merry-o sing it high, sing it low Let them know the wicked witch is dead Ding-dong, the witch is dead! Which old witch? The wicked witch Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead Wake up, you sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed Wake up, the wicked witch is dead!He's gone where the goblins go below, below, below, yo ho Let's open up and sing, and ring the bells out Ding-dong! the merry-o sing it high, sing it low Let them know the wicked witch is dead

Rahm’s announcement of his new Wall Street gig comes on the heels of his phony legacy tour where he tried, with lots of media help, to rebrand his term in Chicago as a “progressive” era of good governance. It included this piece of centrist populism in the Atlantic where Rahm fakes a hit on "American elites" but actually goes after the growing "socialist" insurgency within the Democratic Party.As many of us expected it would, the story ends with Mayor 1% laughing and flashing his middle finger at all of us as he boards his limo to the Wall Street investment firm Centerview Partners LLC, whose leaders are mainly Rahm cronies and campaign donors. They include Centerview founder Blair Effron, who contributed $61,500 to the former mayor’s campaign fund, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who has donated more than $70,000 to Emanuel’s campaign, and Robert Pruzan, another Centerview founder and Rahm pal for the past 20 years.

This so-called "boutique" investment firm Centerview (centrist CONTINUE READING: Mike Klonsky's Blog: After Rahm's legacy tour, he heads for Wall Street

Bernie is right on charter schools - New York Daily News

Bernie is right on charter schools - New York Daily News

Bernie is right on charter schools

Late last month, 11 people connected to California charter schools were indicted on criminal charges of grand theft, conspiracy, personal use of public money and financial conflict of interest. According to the Washington Post, over $50 million in total was stolen; the L.A. Times reportsthat $8.18 million went into the bank accounts and charitable trusts of the charter management company’s leaders, Sean McManus and Jason Schrock. The pair allegedly inflated enrollment numbers and cheated the kids who attended the schools they used as piggy banks.

This story is far from unique. During the month of May alone, we identified more than 40 newspaper stories from across the country documenting charter mismanagement, failure and outright fraud.

There was the May 29 story of the Tennessee charter CEO who was running a side business out of his charter school while its teachers were not being paid. and the May 25 story about the former charter board member who is seeking to make a real-estate killing based on knowledge he gained while on the Monument, Colo., charter school board. There was the May 6 story of a former school board member in Milwaukee who was bribed by a Philadelphia-based charter school company to operate three schools in Wisconsin.

Charter corruption, which now occurs every day, was one of several reasons why the NAACP called for a moratorium on new charter schools. Yet these daily instances of mismanagement, failure and fraud have not been enough to persuade charter advocates to address the concerns of our nation’s most prominent civil rights organization.

It is equally inexplicable that when Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders publicly supported that moratorium, he was subjected to a racialized attack — not only by The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools but here in the Daily News. It is long past time to set the record straight.

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The majority of black and Latino families choose public schools, even when charters are an CONTINUE READING: Bernie is right on charter schools - New York Daily News