3 Types of People Who Should Not Go to College

3 Types of People Who Should Not Go to College:

3 Types of People Who Should Not Go to College

A woman struggles with student loan debt | Source: iStock

You’ve heard the mantra: Graduate from high school, go to college, get a good job. But as many people have discovered too late, a four-year degree isn’t always a ticket to the middle class.

While job prospects have been improving for newly minted degree holders since the Great Recession, young college grads still face relatively high levels of unemployment and underemployment. For graduates between the ages of 21 and 24 who aren’t enrolled in further schooling, the unemployment rate in 2015 was 7.2%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The underemployment rate was 14.9%. Both numbers are significantly higher than they were in 2007, when unemployment among young grads was 5.5% and 9.6% were underemployed.

The class of 2015 also earned the dubious honor of being the most indebted ever, with an average per-grad student loan balance in excess of $35,000. And roughly 42% of college grads have jobs for which a four-year degree isn’t a requirement, according to a McKinsey and Company report.

Given those numbers, some people are questioning whether a four-year college degree is really a smart investment. Former labor secretary Robert Reich has said as a society we’re too focused on encouraging everyone to attend college, when what we really need to do is expand vocational and technical training to “open other gateways to the middle class.” Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has created a $100,000 fellowship for motivated young people looking for an alternative to college.

“We have a bubble in higher education, like we had a bubble in housing,” Thiel told 60 Minutes in 2012.

Anti-college voices aside, there’s still compelling evidence that people who go to college are better off financially than those who don’t. On average, college grads earn $1 million more over a lifetime than people who only graduated from high school, according to data from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story, and college isn’t an automatic path to success.

“For some of my students, a four-year university is by far the best option for them,” Jillian Gordon, an agricultural education teacher in Ohio, wrote in an essay for PBS NewsHour. “But this isn’t the case for all students, and we need to stop pretending it is. A bachelor’s degree is not a piece of paper that says ‘You’re a success!’ just as the lack of one doesn’t say ‘You’re a failure!’”

While pursuing a four-year degree straight out of high school is the right choice for many, these three types of people might benefit from delaying college, or even skipping it altogether.

1. You’re not sure what you want to do

Dropping a lot of money on a college education without knowing what you really want to do after you graduate can be an expensive mistake. In some cases, just taking a year off after high school provides perspective and life experience that can help you decide whether you want to go to college or do something else.

“At first I wanted a year off because I thought it was going to fun,” Jules Arsenault, who took a gap year after college, told Time. “But now I realize that it will give me time to figure out what I want to do. I didn’t want to go to college and not know what I want to study, or get a degree just to have one. With what college costs these days, I wanted to get a degree in something that would be useful to me.”

2. You want a career that doesn’t require a four-year degree3 Types of People Who Should Not Go to College:

Lessons on Racism for White Students at This Detroit-Area High School — Because, Goddamn

Lessons on Racism for White Students at This Detroit-Area High School — Because, Goddamn:

Lessons on Racism for White Students at This Detroit-Area High School — Because, Goddamn

Most Americans already know what's been hiding in the water in Flint, Michigan: dangerous levels of lead and other lethal toxins. But whatever mind-warping poisons lie in the supply 75 miles southeast in Grosse Pointe Farms — a nearly all-white Detroit suburb — remain a mystery.

Officials at Grosse Pointe South High School apologized this week after an anti-black rant from some of its students surfaced in an online video.

The footage shows students using racial slurs and advocating that black people be shipped back to Africa, segregated from whites or re-enslaved to restore white rule in the United States.

"Alright — so what are you going to do to them in 2040?" one student asks another, referring to his plans for African-Americans.

"They're going to be owned by white people and white people are going to be the dominant [sic] of the country," the other student replies. The students also talked about burning blacks at the stake, maiming the enslaved with cattle brands and trading them for booze.

 Principal Moussa Hamka condemned the comments as a "deplorable" violation of the school's code of conduct, the Associated Press reported Friday. 

"The majority of our students and community members do not accept and will not tolerate such bigotry," Hamka said in an email. He also indicated the students in the video could face consequences.

This is the second time in recent months Grosse Pointe officials have had to address racism among their white students. In March, the school suspended four students who posed in a photograph with the word "n*gger" scrawled on their stomachs and legs. 

The photo went viral online. Grosse Pointe's new NAACP chapter praised the school's response to that incident.

"It's not easy to stand up to bigotry, especially if you have people out there saying, 'You can't control people's attitudes, you can't impose your values on others,'" Greg Bowens, co-founder of the chapter, saidLessons on Racism for White Students at This Detroit-Area High School — Because, Goddamn:

these girls got suspended for 5 days when they should've been expelled. they go to desert vista high school pic.twitter.com/q3Q5UKmh04

— blarissa (@calerissa) January 22, 2016

White Michigan students suspended for writing the word n*gger across their stomaches: https://t.co/rCTeYufdQ6 pic.twitter.com/PU0tXkpFfj

— The Root (@TheRoot) March 16, 2016

A Look At The Private Interests Funding California's Charter Schools

A Look At The Private Interests Funding California's Charter Schools:

A Look At The Private Interests Funding California’s Charter Schools

“They like charters in part because they decrease the publicness of public schools.”

Big Education Ape: Failing the Test: A New Series Examines Charter Schools- CAPITAL & MAIN - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/06/failing-test-new-series-examines_3.html

Charter proponents, most notably the Walton Family Foundation, contribute large amounts of money to expand charter schools in select cities around the nation. The foundation says it has invested more than $385 million in new charter schools over the past two decades and, earlier this year, announced that it plans to give $1billion over five years to support charters and school-choice initiatives.

In announcing its $1 billion strategic plan to support new and existing charter schools, the foundation has said the money would go to four initiatives – investing in cities, supporting the school-choice movement, innovation and research. It identified 13 cities nationwide where it said it can have the biggest impact, including Los Angeles and Oakland. Los Angeles already has more charter schools than any other school district in the United States and Oakland has the highest percentage of charters for any district in California.

See More Stories in Capital & Main’s Charter School Series

“If funders like Eli Broad or the Walton Family Foundation were truly committed to education equality,” says John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, “they could have taken steps to simply support reducing class size or after-school [activities] or summer programs that would provide more educational opportunity, rather than try to invest in strategies to undermine the capacities of a school district. The primary aim is to dismantle the school district as a whole and replace it with a new way of doing public education.”

Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University, agrees. “They believe in privatization,” he says. Miron co-authored a critical study, sponsored last year by the National Education Policy Center, that focused on the charter industry’s funding policies.

“They like charters in part because they decrease the publicness of public schools.”

But why do so many charter advocates embrace privatization?

“I don’t think it’s about the money,” says Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “They like charters in part because they decrease the publicness of public schools. They want a system much more based on market forces because they don’t trust democracy.”

Netflix founder and prominent charter advocate Reed Hastings seemed to confirm this view when, during a 2014 convention of the California Charter Schools Association, he decried publicly elected school boards for their alleged lack of stability in governance. He then praised the closed-governance charter model of private boards whose “board members pick new board members.”

But should the private sector be in charge of public education?

“No,” says Welner. “The public sector should be in charge of public education. Public education should be under democratic control.”

Welner is not alone in his view.

“The radical agenda of the Walton family,” says a damning report issued last year by the American Federation of Teachers and In the Public Interest, “has taken the U.S. charter school movement away from education quality in favor of a strategy focused only on growth. It’s been lucrative for some, but a disaster for many of the nation’s most vulnerable students and school districts.”

The direct funding of charter schools is only one of several strategies charter advocates are using to influence public opinion and school policies. They also fund academic studies and “grassroots” organizations such as Parent Revolution, along A Look At The Private Interests Funding California's Charter Schools:

 

Gulen Charter School ruling reignites Lancaster's surreal charter school drama | PennLive.com

Court ruling reignites Lancaster's surreal charter school drama | PennLive.com:

Court ruling reignites Lancaster's surreal charter school drama

Killing Ed | Charter Schools, Corruption, and the Gülen Movement in America - http://killinged.com/

Clarification: The headline of this article, originally containing a quote from Candace Roper of the School District of Lancaster, has been updated to ensure no confusion with the content of a court ruling in this case. 

The latest round in the School District of Lancaster's epic 3-year, $450,000 legal battle against a proposed charter school — one reportedly tied to both a convicted drug dealer and secretive Sunni Imam — has gone to the District.

Lancaster County Judge Joseph Madenspacher recently shot down an appeal filed by backers of the Academy of Business and Entrepreneurship Charter School (ABECS), finding they lacked "sufficient valid signatures" to challenge an earlier rejection of the project by the School District of Lancaster, the home district in which the charter school would be located.  

Charter schools are independent public schools established and operated under a charter from the local school board.

In this case, the School District of Lancaster's board decided not to grant that permission, citing concerns with the charter school's curriculum and administration. 

The district spent heavily defending that decision in the ensuing years, to the tune of almost half-a-million dollars to date.

"Our decision to spend the money needed for a legal fight has saved the district millions of dollars and has sent a clear message to predatory would-be schools that this is not a district that falls for charlatans posing as educators and seeking to profit at the expense of our students," board member Candace Roper said in a statement Thursday.

There are no limits to the number of times ABECS can file new applications for a charter, however, and ABECS board president Indrit Hoxha, an economics professor at Penn State Harrisburg, said they are currently considering their options.

In challenging the school board's previous rejection of their plan, ABECS backers reportedly gathered more than 2,000 petition signatures in support, or as part of an appeal. 

Judge Madenspacher weighed in last week, citing "forged, illegible and improperly gathered signatures" in deciding ABECS's appeal would not go forward, LancasterOnline reports.

School District of Lancaster officials initially challenged the signatures saying some had been collected by a convicted local drug dealer, and possibly outside of the school district's boundaries in a clear violation of the rules. It argued that others belonged to clients of a city homeless shelter whose official residency was unclear, and said at one point pages of signatures had been lost before being recovered by police and returned, raising concerns about the chain of custody and their validity.

Those questions and more have haunted the charter school ever since.

And in his ruling handed down last week, judge Madenspacher found only 580 of the 2,000-plus submitted signatures were valid, well short of the 1,000 minimum needed to carry an appeal forward to the state.  

Hoxha said this marked the reversal of an earlier court decision which found 1,066 of the signatures to be valid.

Hoxha said ABECS backers were "disappointed" in the decision.

School District of Lancaster administrators, however, were not.

Harvey Miller, school district of Lancaster board president issued the following statement: "The Board and I are grateful that Judge Madenspacher has carefully reviewed the information placed before him. We share Judge Madenspacher's conclusion that there were substantial flaws in the petition that ABECS presented to the Court."

Candace Roper called the saga "a painfully clear example of how badly we need to reform charter laws in PA," adding "That is what people need to be outraged over — the fact that a poor urban school district's only defense against these predators is going to court and draining our own precious resources."

The district has previously approved one charter for La Academia Charter School of Lancaster on North Ann Street, and has paid as much as one-million dollars a year to the school as required by the state.   

"Despite the fact that we spent a sizable sum of money on the ABECS proposal and petition fight, it was our only option to head off opening a 'school' that would have cost millions for the first year alone and would not have provided any of our district students with a high — or even mediocre — quality education," Roper added. 

Chief Financial Operating Officer with the district, Matt Przywara, agreed, saying in this case the district had to spend money to save money.

"Anytime we can invest dollars back into the classroom instead of legal defense claims, it would be better served; however, in this case the dollars spent on the defense will hopefully save local and PA taxpayers millions of dollars in the long run," Przywara explained.

The controversy surrounding the case is nothing new to the charter school industry or the ABECS brand.

Diane Ravitch, assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush and a charter school supporter-turned-critic, identified the ABECS charter school proposed for Lancaster as being under the umbrella of the "Gulen Charter School" movement, once the largest charter chain in the nation, according to Ravitch's blog, and one headed by Fethullah Gülen, a "reclusive Turkish imam who lives in the Poconos but has a powerful political movement in Turkey."

Those behind the ABECS charter proposal in Lancaster have denied any connection to Gulen, but critics insist otherwise.

'Parent leaders in Lancaster oppose Gulen Charter School'

According to Ravitch's blog, Sait Onal, a name linked to the ABECS charter proposal in Lancaster and other failed charter bids in the midstate and Harrisburg, claimed no connection to the Gulen movement, but has written for The Fountain, "a magazine produced and published by the Gulen Movement."

Supporters of ABECS call this evidence circumstantial at best, while Hoxha describes something of a smear campaign orchestrated by opponents within the Court ruling reignites Lancaster's surreal charter school drama | PennLive.com:

Big Education Ape: Update: Gulen Harmony charter school network accused of bias and self-dealing Dallas Morning News - http://go.shr.lc/1qV85Hm

Big Education Ape: Turkey Links Texas Charter Schools to Dissident - WSJ - http://go.shr.lc/1OW1ZfV

UVA Professor’s New Book Wary of Top-Down School Reform | UVA Today

UVA Professor’s New Book Wary of Top-Down School Reform | UVA Today:

UVA Professor’s New Book Wary of Top-Down School Reform

“The Children Left Behind: America’s Struggle to Improve Its Lowest-Performing Schools,” by UVA Professor Daniel Duke, analyzes the successes and failures of the No Child Left Behind Act under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

As a classroom teacher in a low-performing school on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Daniel Duke, now a professor at the University of Virginia Curry School of Education, experienced first-hand the struggles of the public school system.

At the conclusion of the first semester of his ninth-grade classes in African-American and American history, Duke was prepared to award his students their final grades, many of which were A’s.

“They earned them,” Duke said.

But a school administrator didn’t approve, stating that such a move would result in Duke’s students, who weren’t considered college-bound, shaking up the school’s student rankings by knocking down students who were.

Duke couldn’t fathom the idea of not rewarding students with the grades that they had earned and deserved, and took that as his cue to create change.

“That convinced me that there was a need for a different kind of leadership,” Duke said.

The experience propelled Duke to earn his doctorate in educational leadership from the University of New York at Albany, arming him with the tools to become a school administrator in upstate New York. Still, Duke knew there was more he could do to address the problems he had witnessed.

So Duke entered the world of academia when he was hired by Stanford University to direct its Instructional Leadership Program, focusing his attention on guiding and shaping America’s future educational leaders and administrators.

Now at UVA, Duke researches America’s low-performing schools. An internationally known specialist on school improvement, Duke has conducted numerous studies on the school-turnaround process and has designed training programs on improving struggling schools. Duke was also instrumental in establishing the Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education, a joint venture of UVA’s Darden School of Business and the Curry School that strives to help leaders in education operate school systems effectively and efficiently.

In Duke’s newest book, “The Children Left Behind: America’s Struggle to Improve Its Lowest-Performing Schools” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), he discusses the issues facing the public education system as the No Child Left Behind Act gives way to the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Q. What problems did the No Child Left Behind Act intend to address?

A. The No Child Left Behind Act received bipartisan support. At the time, the intent was to focus attention on the very lowest-performing schools. Never before had the federal government zeroed in on the lowest 5 percent.

Also for the first time, there was an actual prescription for what these schools could do. Those four prescribed strategies reflected a range of opinions about what needed to be done, including closing the schools; converting them to charter schools; firing the principal and making changes to the curriculum and in how time was allocated; and firing the principal and half of the teachers.

Q. In what ways did NCLB succeed and in what ways did it fail?

A. While some states have done reasonably well in assisting their lowest-performing schools, others have really struggled.

The Recovery School District in Louisiana has been a reasonable success. Out of over 100 schools in the district, only three or four of the highest-performing schools were kept and the others were converted to charter schools. The average performance on state tests of the African-American students in the charter schools has exceeded the performance of African-American students elsewhere in Louisiana.

Cincinnati, Ohio is the poster child for a successful district turnaround. UVA worked with Cincinnati during the early years of the Darden/Curry program.

Unfortunately, while there have been successes, they haven’t been nearly as plentiful as folks had hoped. One of the strong beliefs in our political system is that of local control, which is probably as much myth as it is reality. People cling to that belief in terms of low-performing schools. Some of the greatest successes I’ve seen have been at local level, but so have the greatest failures.

Q. What do you think the reasoning is behind some of NCLB’s failures?

A. Trying to understand the reasons why some states did better than others is a major part of the book. What comes out of the analysis is predictable: The states that have done poorly allowed the mission of

- See more at:UVA Professor’s New Book Wary of Top-Down School Reform | UVA Today:

FedED Threatens Opt Out Movement: New Dog, Same Old Tricks

FedED Threatens Opt Out Movement: New Dog, Same Old Tricks:

FedED Threatens Opt Out Movement: New Dog, Same Old Tricks

Just when the current crop of presidential candidates was making Barack Obama look good, John King, the new “dog” at the federal Department of Education(FedED), pulls an Arne Duncan and attacks the opt-out movement with the same old set of tricks.

FedED claims the purpose of the proposals is to give states “the clarity they need” to implement the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). But in the proposals, King and FedED aim right at the heart of the opt-out movement. They list punitive steps states must take to ensure 95% of their students take the tests or else face a cut-off of federal funds. States must assign a “comprehensive, summative rating for each school to provide a clear picture of its overall standing,” report on an individual school’s performance on each indicator, and take “robust action” against schools that do not test 95% of their students.

A summary of the proposed regulations is online.

My support for the opt-out movement and opposition to ESSA, Common Core, and Common Core aligned high-stakes testing is laid-out in a number of my Huffington Post blogs.

Ironically, the real educational issues are totally ignored by ESSA, FedED, and King.
ESSA left most educational policymaking power with the states. As long as states drill and test 95% of their students, they can use whatever tests they want, grade them as they wish, provide inadequate curriculum, systematically underfund education, and bankrupt public school systems to support cronies operating for-profit charter school networks. States are supposed to intervene to improve consistently underperforming schools, but there are no guidelines or requirements for action. The only thing FedED and King seem committed to ensuring is the end of the opt-out movement.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, after reviewing the proposals, issued a statement that she was disappointed with key parts of the regulations. According to Weingarten, “Rather than listen to the outcry by parents and educators over hypertesting, the department offers specific punitive consequences for when fewer than 95 percent of students participate in tests. This doesn’t solve the issue of the misuse of testing. It simply inflames the problem by suggesting punitive consequences for those who are so frustrated by the misuse and high-stakes nature of standardized testing that they want to opt their kids out.”

Bob Schaeffer, the public education director for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, or FairTest, accused Secretary of Education King of continuing to “promote the kind of federal overreach that led to widespread rejection of No Child Left Behind.’”

According to FedED, they are “interested in hearing even more from stakeholders” and there will be a sixty-day “public comment period” starting May 31 and ending July 31, 2016. King et al claim, “We are taking these comments very seriously, understanding that our final regulations will be stronger because of that input.” As FedED Threatens Opt Out Movement: New Dog, Same Old Tricks:

Jersey Jazzman: Who's Responsible For Misusing Washington DC's Test Scores?

Jersey Jazzman: Who's Responsible For Misusing Washington DC's Test Scores?:

Who's Responsible For Misusing Washington DC's Test Scores? 

Recently, Matthew Chingos and Kristin Blagg of the Urban Institute published a blog post about the rise in national test scores for schools in Washington, DC. The post has been republished elsewhere and, consequently, cited frequently in the edu-bloggosphere and press.

I have four specific objections to their post, which I'll lay out below (from least to most technical). But let me start by saying I don't think Chingos or Blagg are hacks; far from it. I want to engage on what they wrote because I think it's important and I think they are serious. My tweeting yesterday could easily be interpreted as my saying otherwise, and for that, I apologize.

However...

We now live in an atmosphere where, far too often, education research is being willfully misrepresented by people with ideological, personal, or other agendas. As I've said many times here, I don't pretend that I don't have a point of view. But I also work hard to keep the evidence I cite in proper context.

Others, like Michelle Rhee and Jonathan Chait, have no such qualms. It is, therefore, far past time for public intellectuals and researchers to start asking themselves what responsibilities they bear for the willful misuse of their work. For example...

Objection #1: The framing of the research. I realize this was just a blog post, and that the standards of a peer-reviewed article don't apply here. But I also understand that Urban is an influential think tank with an extensive communications shop, so anything they put out is going to get traction. Which I why I have a problem with starting the post with this paragraph:

Student performance in the nation’s capital has increased so dramatically that it has attracted significant attention and prompted many to ask whether gentrification, rather than an improvement in school quality, is behind the higher scores. Our new analysis shows that demographic change explains some, but by no means all, of the increase in scores.

Chingos and Blagg have got two big, big assumptions laid out right at the top of their post - See more at: Jersey Jazzman: Who's Responsible For Misusing Washington DC's Test Scores?:

Don’t confuse tax credits with school vouchers | The Star-Telegram

| The Star-Telegram:

Don’t confuse tax credits with school vouchers

Once again, the Texas Legislature is looking for ways to expand educational opportunity to all children.

While wealthy families can afford to live in districts with high-performing public schools or pay for private school tuition, low-income families often have no financially viable options besides their assigned district school.

One way to address this inequity would be for Texas to grant school vouchers that parents could redeem at the school of their choice.

Eleven of 12 random-assignment studies — the gold standard of social science research — found that school choice programs produce modest but statistically significant positive outcomes, including increased academic performance and higher rates of high school graduation and college enrollment.

However, in a recent series of op-eds, the group Pastors for Texas Children has raised valid concerns about vouchers.

First, they argue government funding generally comes with government regulations. Though there is always the possibility the government could impose harmful regulations even without corresponding funding, it is true that voucher programs often entail significant regulations on private schools.

Second, the pastors contend the use of public funds is coercive. Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school vouchers are constitutional, vouchers nevertheless force all citizens to pay for the teaching of ideas that some citizens might find objectionable.

Of course, this is also true of the public school system, but vouchers would nevertheless constitute an expansion of that coercion.

Fortunately, there’s a way to expand educational choice without using public funds.

Tax-credit scholarship laws, like Senate Bill 4 in the current legislative session, encourage private donations to nonprofit scholarship organizations that help low- and middle-income families send their children to the schools that work best for them.

Last year, nearly 200,000 students in 13 states used tax-credit scholarships to attend their school of choice, and two more states passed similar laws so far this year.

The Pastors for Texas Children claim that these scholarships “are plainly private school vouchers,” but they are not. Two programs may share the same ends but employ very different means.

For example, food banks and food stamps are both programs that aim to feed the hungry, but they are plainly not the same. Food stamps are government-funded and administered; food banks are privately funded and administered.

Likewise, vouchers and tax-credit scholarships share the same goal — expanding educational opportunity — but the differences are significant.

Vouchers are government funds granted to low-income families by the government. By contrast, tax-credit scholarships rely on voluntary contributions to nonprofit scholarship organizations, which is why the tax credit laws do not impose the same regulatory burden as vouchers.

The pastors argue that the tax credits constitute government funding, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

In ACSTO v. Winn (2011), the court ruled that private funds do not become “government property” until they have “come into the tax collector’s hands.” Rather, when “taxpayers choose to contribute to [scholarship organizations], they spend their own money, not money the State has collected.”

Constitutionally, this is no different than other forms of tax deductions or exemptions.

Do Pastors for Texas Children believe that their churches are “government funded” because their donors receive tax deductions or because their churches receive 100-percent property-tax exemptions? Do they believe that other citizens are coerced into supporting their churches because of these tax deductions and exemptions?

We should all admire the pastors’ passion for education and seriously consider their concerns about vouchers. The pastors should also consider the facts about tax-credit scholarships.

The scholarships would expand educational opportunity to low-income families without coercing other citizens or imposing harmful regulations on private schools. That’s a goal we should all embrace.

JASON BEDRICK IS A POLICY ANALYST AT THE CATO INSTITUTE’S CENTER FOR EDUCATIONAL 
FREEDOM. 

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/other-voices/article21619608.html#storylink=cpy

Walmarted Superintendent faces wary civic advisory panel at group's final meeting | Arkansas Blog

New LRSD superintendent faces wary civic advisory panel at group's final meeting | Arkansas Blog | Arkansas news, politics, opinion, restaurants, music, movies and art:
New LRSD superintendent faces wary civic advisory panel at group's final meeting

Mike Poore, the incoming superintendent of the Little Rock School District, fielded questions from the district's Civic Advisory Committee this evening at the panel's final meeting. After Poore outlined his "entry plan" for public outreach in the weeks ahead, members of the CAC asked him pointed questions about charter schools and more — but were also careful to make it clear that their current discontent is directed towards the state rather than Poore himself.

Poore, for his part, mostly hedged; as in the past, he wouldn't explicitly commit to opposing charter expansions. To be fair, that's only to be expected from an incoming school leader in a fraught political environment. Only time will tell where the new superintendent really stands.

The CAC is — or, after tonight, was — an entity created by the state Board of Educationafter it assumed control of the LRSD in January 2015. Although the advisory committee was tasked with soliciting community input on Little Rock schools when the district's elected local school board was dissolved upon takeover, it never had any real decision-making power. It did, however, take a symbolic stand against the decision to fire current LRSD Superintendent Baker Kurrus in April, including a unanimous call for the replacement of state Education Commissioner Johnny Key. It's widely assumed that Key declined to renew Kurrus' contract because of the superintendent's vocal position against charter school expansions in the city, which Key supports. 

Kurrus addressed the panel briefly, but left early to attend a principal's retirement ceremony. He thanked the CAC for its service and welcomed Poore before declaring "I want what’s best for our school district"; much of the audience gave him a standing New LRSD superintendent faces wary civic advisory panel at group's final meeting | Arkansas Blog | Arkansas news, politics, opinion, restaurants, music, movies and art:

California Legislators and Governor Brown: No Accountability for Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog

California Legislators and Governor Brown: No Accountability for Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog:

California Legislators and Governor Brown: No Accountability for Charters

Jessica Calefati of the San Jose Mercury-News wrote a shocking seriesabout the online charter schools of K12 Inc., which have the lowest graduation rate in the state, and which counts students “present” if they log on for only one minute.

Millions of public dollars fund the California Virtual Academies (CAVA), which operates for profit and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, founded by Michael and Lowell Milken, delivers a substandard education. It should be closely supervised or shut down.

Unfortunately, as Calefati discovered, the legislature is moving at a snail’s pace to authorize an audit of CAVA. Nothing seems to be happening. Much clucking of tongues, but no action.

CAVA is the lowest performing school in the state. Why hasn’t it been shut down long ago? If you recall, K12’s online charter in Tennessee was the lowest performing school in the state, and not even the State Commissioner Kevin Huffman was able to get it closed. Why?

Governor Brown likes charters. When he was mayor of Oakland, he opened two charters. The legislature has been unwilling to stand up to the rich and powerful California Charter Schools Association. CCSA should be demanding close scrutiny of CAVA, whose tactics embarrasses all charter schools. Their silence is deafening.

When the legislature dared to pass a bill banning for-profit charters, Governor Brown vetoed it. He also vetoed a bill to require charter schools to ban conflicts of interest.

So California has a greedy, rapacious charter industry, whose growth will continue unchecked until public schools enroll only students the charters don’t want. Fraud, waste, and abuse in the charter industry will grow without oversight. Conflicts of interest and nepotism will proliferate. Charters will continue to be run by entrepreneurs and speculators.

Does anyone think these developments are “reform”? From a distance, they look like graft and corruption.California Legislators and Governor Brown: No Accountability for Charters | Diane Ravitch's blog: