Privatization of public education is a failure

Privatization of public education is a failure:

Privatization of public education is a failure

This election cycle has been heavy on rhetoric and light on policy. Given that nearly 50% of Americans consider themselves angrier than a year ago - with white Republicans being the angriest - it’s no wonder that rather than having substantive discussions, most solutions being offered currently are knee jerk reactions that have little to no factual support. A prime example of this are the changes many conservatives endorse for “fixing” public education.

Consider for example the panacea of conservative school improvement ideas - charter schools. The most recent data show that around 25% outperform their local public school counterpart. This means that around 75% of charter schools are no better or actually worse than the local public school. Essentially, in locations where charter schools exist they are on average no better or worse than the average public school. If the goal is to improve education, getting the same results as local schools, deemed failing by charter school advocates, is a shockingly disappointing outcome. 

Of course it should be noted that charter schools never get a foothold in areas where the schools are already high performing. Given that charters can’t even outperform average public schools the fact that some of the country’s best schools aren’t included in this analysis only makes the results for charter schools that much more disconcerting. Perhaps, instead of spending tax dollars to spread charter schools that don’t improve outcomes, we should take the model used by some of the thousands of exceptional public schools and disseminate that to the lower performing schools.

Having said that, the goal of the majority of charter schools and the politicians that support them isn’t to improve student achievement. It is to siphon taxpayer money out of public schools and into the hands of wealthy donors. Because these politicians understand that the only thing that matches the Republican base’s hate of government spending is their unwavering belief in the magical powers of capitalism. This mentality is why military spending accounts for 54 % of the Federal Government’s discretionary spending, (more than that of the next 10 countries combined), and why few industries turned out better profits during the Great Recession than the Defense industry.

Ironically, many of the people who think that the potentially cozy relationship between some school board members and the teachers’ union leads to sweetheart deals seems unfazed by the reality that corporations outspend unions 15 to 1 when it comes to political contributions. If union spending buys special treatment, then spending 15 times as much should certainly result in some ill-gotten gains for corporations.

Based on the amount of money that corporation are pouring into political coffers, it should come as no surprise that other faux-solutions to improve education such as privatization of public schools’ services are on the docket for school boards across the country. While the companies offering these services and the politicians they have bought will argue that this is a way for schools to save money, the data show that in nearly every case it costs taxpayers more when a public service is privatized. 

The reason private services typically cost more is that you are inserting a highly paid middle man into the process. Obviously the goal of any for-profit company is to make a profit, which means they will either cost more or they need to find savings elsewhere. These companies will try and sell schools on the idea that there are savings to be had which will come from eliminating inefficiencies; however, the reality is the reduction in cost will likely come from lowering employee wages and Privatization of public education is a failure:

Governor “Charter School” | tultican

Governor “Charter School” | tultican:
Governor “Charter School”

I recently commented on a Diane Ravitch post writing, “I love Governor ‘Moon-beam’; I detest Governor ‘Charter-School;’” referring to Governor of California, Jerry Brown.

Ed Source recently reported:

“Brown started two charter schools in Oakland when he was mayor of the city, and has fought, through vetoes, attempts to encroach on their independence or dilute protections in the state’s charter school enabling law. This year, he vetoed AB 787, which would have banned for-profit charters, which operate primarily online charter schools. Brown said proponents failed to make a case for the bill, and the bill’s ambiguous wording could have been interpreted to restrict the ability of nonprofit charter schools to continue using for-profit vendors.”

Two consistent features of modern education governance are that politicians and business men who have power enforce their own particular biases even though lacking both educational experience and knowledge. The second feature is education policy is NOT based on research. As Anthony Cody describes, “Sadly, Lubienski, Debray, and Scott discovered that ‘research played virtually no part in decision making for policymakers, despite their frequent rhetorical embrace of the value of research.’”

Governor Brown (in the face of mounting evidence) is more concerned about the future of the charter industry than he is about fraud and the diminution of public schools. He obviously believes that public schools are failing and that privatized schools are the path to better education. Neo-liberal philosophy increasingly embraced by the Democratic party postulates that “private business will always outperform government institutions.”

Is it Cyber-Charter or Cyber-Fraud?

The private businesses being protected by Brown, cyber-schools, are increasingly seen as extremely poor quality and more fraud than education alternative. In February Steven Rosenfeld reported, “For the second time in three months, the Walton Family Foundation—which has spent more than $1 billion to create a quarter of the nation’s 6,700 public charter schools—has announced that all online public school instruction, via cyber charter schools, is a colossal disaster for most K-12 students.”

Steven Singer an education commentator and activist from Pennsylvania stated it succinctly, “If you’re a parent, you’d literally be better off having your child skip school altogether than sending her to a cyber charter. LITERALLY! But if you’re an investor, online charters are like a free money machine. Just press the button and print however much cash you want!”

The nation’s largest cyber-charter chain is Michael Milken’s K-12 Inc. (remember his junk bond fraud conviction) The state legislation, AB 787, that Brown vetoed Governor “Charter School” | tultican:

Jersey Jazzman: Does Opting-Out "Punish" Schools? Not As Much As Serving High-Needs Students

Jersey Jazzman: Does Opting-Out "Punish" Schools? Not As Much As Serving High-Needs Students:

Does Opting-Out "Punish" Schools? Not As Much As Serving High-Needs Students

The opt-out scolds -- those who spend their days tut-tutting at parents who've decided to take their children out of high-stakes standardized tests -- having been warning over and over that there will be serious financial consequences for schools that do not have high test participation rates.

Could they actually be right?

BROOKLYN — The state has penalized 16 high-performing city schools — potentially costing them each up to $75,000 in grant money — because of their exam opt-out rates, DNAinfo New York has learned.

These schools were on track to win recognition from the state as “Reward Schools" — an annual honor that makes schools eligible to apply for grants — but were not included in the list because they failed to meet a 95 percent participation rate on the exams, state education officials confirmed. 

“While U.S. Department of Education [USDE] guidelines allow states to impose sanctions on districts specifically for failure to meet participation requirements [of the tests], including the withholding of state funds, New York State has not taken such action against any district or school,” State Education Department spokeswoman Jeanne Beattie said.

“However, under New York’s flexibility waiver approved by USDE in 2010, a 

Jersey Jazzman: Does Opting-Out "Punish" Schools? Not As Much As Serving High-Needs Students:

 

New Research Report: Are U.S. Schools Inefficient? | Shanker Institute

New Research Report: Are U.S. Schools Inefficient? | Shanker Institute:

New Research Report: Are U.S. Schools Inefficient?

At one point or another we’ve all heard some version of the following talking points: 1) “Spending on U.S. education has doubled or triped over the past few decades, but performance has remained basically flat; or 2) “The U.S. spends more on education than virtually any other nation and yet still gets worse results.” If you pay attention, you will hear one or both of these statements frequently, coming from everyone from corporate CEOs to presidential candidates.

The purpose of both of these statements is to argue that U.S. education is inefficient - that is, gets very little bang for the buck – and that spending more money will not help.

Now, granted, these sorts of pseudo-empirical talking points almost always omit important nuances yet, in some cases, they can still provide important information. But, putting aside the actual relative efficiency of U.S. schools, these particular statements about U.S. education spending and performance are so rife with oversimplification that they fail to provide much if any useful insight into U.S. educational efficiency or policy that affects it. Our new report, written by Rutgers University Professor Bruce D. Baker and Rutgers Ph.D. student Mark Weber, explains why and how this is the case. Baker and Weber’s approach is first to discuss why the typical presentations of spending and outcome data, particularly those comparing nations, are wholly unsuitable for the purpose of evaluating U.S. educational efficiency vis-à-vis that of other nations. They then go on to present a more refined analysis of the data by adjusting for student characteristics, inputs such as class size, and other factors. Their conclusions will most likely be unsatisfying for all “sides” of the education debate.

Baker and Weber show, first of all, that assessing educational efficiency of nations in a manner that is sufficiently rigorous and comparable is an extraordinarily difficult endeavor.

For example, simple comparisons of U.S. per pupil spending with that of other OECD nations do not account for the breadth of services provided through the education system, such as teacher health and retirement benefits, which many other nations provide outside of their education systems. Similarly, U.S. schools serve a higher poverty student population than do their counterparts elsewhere. For these and other reasons, the unadjusted comparisons that dominate the discourse about international education comparisons are of little value, and are more likely than not to be misleading.

The good news, however, is that cautious, appropriate use of the data can provide important, policy relevant insight. For instance, Baker and Weber show that the gap between U.S. teachers’ wages and other U.S. workers of comparable age and education is large compared to this discrepancy in other nations’, and that this cannot be explained by smaller classes (classes in the U.S. are average or large compared to other nations’). These low U.S. teacher wages (relative to other professions) makes it more New Research Report: Are U.S. Schools Inefficient? | Shanker Institute:

CURMUDGUCATION: The Left and Right of Ed Reform

CURMUDGUCATION: The Left and Right of Ed Reform:

The Left and Right of Ed Reform

Robert Pondiscio triggered a reformy tempest almost two weeks ago when he wrote that the Left was in danger of pushing conservatives out of the ed reform movement. The reformy blogoverse and twitterverse have not shut up about it since, with responses ranging from the sympathetic to... well, less so (Best title: "Audacity of Nope"). A large portion of the education post stable has taken a shot at the issue, and so have many of standard-bearers on the right-leaning side of the ed reform tracks. I had a response of my own (written before I realized this was going to be A Thing), but I am not going to try to digest the whole sprawling conversation here. You can read your way around the internet if you've missed this.

But I'm writing about it today, because reading all of these responses has revived one of the questions that has puzzled me about ed reform for quite a while.

When we look at the ed reform coalition of the Left and the Right, how are we supposed to tell the two sides apart?

Exactly what policies or principles are different when one compares lefty reformsters to righty reformsters?

There was never any real difference on Common Core support, other than folks on the right abandoned it a little faster than folks on the left, and both have been stalwart in supporting the Big Standardized Test. Even the differences one might have expected to find are not there. One might expect that conservatives might be more inclined to defend the traditional institutions of public education or to stick up for local control instead of state-level or mayoral take-overs, that didn't happen. It's happening now (here's Rick Hess just today), but it sure wasn't happening when reformsters were railing about defenders of the status quo. One might expect that lefties would hew close to traditional lefty allies like teacher unions, but we find nominal Democrats like Whitney Tilson (DFER) and Andy Cuomo ranting about how the evil unions must be crushed.

If we look at reformy politicians, are there real policy differences between the education policies of Rahm Emmanuel and Chris Christie, between Marty Walsh and Nathan Deal? Certainly, when it comes to education policy, there were no substantial difference between the goals of the Bush and Obama administrations.

Pondiscio's original piece distinguished between the practicality of righties and the social justice concerns of lefties, but I'm not sure that really holds up-- at least not in terms of how both groupCURMUDGUCATION: The Left and Right of Ed Reform:


CURMUDGUCATION: Icahn: A Better Charter? - http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/06/icahn-better-charter.html

How white teachers can become culturally competent.

How white teachers can become culturally competent.:

How to Change White Teachers’ Lenses

America’s students are now majority-minority, but its teachers are not. That’s why they need to be “culturally competent.”

Amy Davis teaches a second-grade class about parachutes at Manchester Avenue Elementary School.

LOS ANGELES—When she began teaching a class of second-graders in South Los Angeles in 2002, Amy Davis expected she’d occasionally hit snags with issues like lesson planning. But she figured she’d have little trouble relating to her mostly low-income black and Latino students. After all, she was raised nearby, in a household headed by a single mother who for years survived on welfare and food stamps. Like her students, Davis knew what it was like to grow up poor.

But Davis, who is white, struggled to connect with several of the children—particularly a 7-year-old black student named Patrick.

If Patrick came to school in good spirits, Davis’ day generally went smoothly. But if he showed up in a sullen or angry mood, Davis knew there was a good chance he would derail her plans for the class. She couldn’t control his meltdowns, which could be triggered by both his classmates and his schoolwork. On those days, she’d often end up crying throughout the car ride home. 

It took months of worrying, and the advice of a veteran colleague in the classroom next door, for Davis to have an epiphany: Despite her own experiences as a child, she was now, unlike her students, a firmly established member of the middle class. The leap from economic insecurity to stability had created an inevitable chasm.

Davis, now 48, marks that moment as the beginning of her efforts to become a more “culturally competent” teacher, someone who strives to understand where her students are coming from—literally and metaphorically. 

In the most basic terms, Davis represents the quintessential American teacher: white, middle-class, female. But where Davis approaches teaching as a social-justice mission, and has painstakingly worked to build influential relationships with her students, countless other well-intentioned educators never succeed in forging similar bonds. Yet they are charged with changing lives and boosting test scores in some of the nation’s poorest and most struggling schools. 

It’s a disconnect that’s raising alarms for educators and parents alike at a time when minority children now account for more than half of all students in public schools and the teacher workforce remains more than 80 percent white. And so teacher-training programs are increasingly trying to figure out how to bridge this divide. The goal is to help make teachers more aware of their own biases and enable them to understandHow white teachers can become culturally competent.:

New Report: Why most international comparisons of spending & outcomes are total BS! | School Finance 101

New Report: Why most international comparisons of spending & outcomes are total BS! | School Finance 101:

New Report: Why most international comparisons of spending & outcomes are total BS!

 New Report: http://www.shankerinstitute.org/resource/deconstructing-myth-american-public-schooling-inefficiency

Here’s the summary:

In this paper, we begin by classifying the arguments that assert American schools are relatively inefficient into two categories: the long-term trend argument and the international comparison argument. Our focus herein is on the latter of these two. We then describe two frameworks for approaching either of these arguments: cost efficiency and production efficiency. We explain that the typical spending/outcome model used to make the case that the United States is a relatively inefficient nation is wholly unsuitable for drawing these or any conclusions. Accounting for differences in student populations is helpful, but still inadequate for building a model that can be used to assess a country’s relative efficiency. Evaluating education inputs such as teacher wages and class sizes can further refine comparisons between nations; however, it is unlikely that even these refinements are enough to conduct analyses that can credibly back claims about the relative efficiency of America’s education system. That said, an appropriately limited analysis can still inform our understanding of how the U.S public education system compares with systems in other countries.

What does this all mean?

• First and foremost, we can say with some confidence that existing expositions of U.S. inefficiency (based on Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] national spending data and Program for International Student Assessment [PISA] scores) are so lacking in methodological rigor that they are of little if any value in public discourse or for informing national education policies.
• Second, it is unlikely that we could ever obtain data of sufficient precision, accuracy and comparability to meet the demands of more legitimate efficiency modeling for cross-national, intercontinental analyses.

Any and all comparisons using OECD and related data should be conducted with consideration of the limitations discussed herein. But some insights might be drawn from our analyses:

• Among other things, the OECD per-pupil spending measure, as incomparable as it is, shows that the U.S. may have higher per-pupil spending than many nations, but falls right in line with expectations for nations of similar gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
• The U.S. is both a high-spending and high-GDP country, but some of that high education spending may be a function of the scope of services and expenses included under the education umbrella in the U.S.
• We also know that despite seemingly high spending levels in the United States, teachers’ wages lag with respect to other professions, and the wage lag is not a result of providing relatively smaller class sizes.
• In fact, our primary class sizes (roughly equivalent to schooling provided from about age 5 through 11 or 12 years of age) are average and lower secondary (roughly equivalent to schooling provided from about 12 to 16 years of age)[1] class sizes large. Our wage lag is, to an extent, a function of high non-teaching wages (related to our high GDP per capita), necessarily making it more expensive to recruit and retain a high-quality teacher workforce.

To summarize: The U.S. is faced with a combination of seemingly high education expense, but noncompetitive compensation for its teachers, average to large class sizes, and a high rate of child poverty. Again, it’s hard to conceive how such a combination would render the U.S. comparable in raw test scores New Report: Why most international comparisons of spending & outcomes are total BS! | School Finance 101:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: "Dude, Seriously?"

Seattle Schools Community Forum: "Dude, Seriously?":

"Dude, Seriously?"

In more McCleary news, the plaintiffs in the McCleary case gave their reply to the State's explanation of what is being done to fulfill the constitutional mandate to amply fund public education in Washington State.

As you can see by the title of this thread, the plaintiffs are both hard-hitting and entertaining.  But it's true - if you or your child's teacher told your child a firm deadline for a project with clear expectations about the quality of the work, that might be the reply when your child didn't get it done.

From the filing (red mine):

Plaintiffs do not expect this Court to use the same words. But as the following pages explain, this Court should come to the same conclusion: Despite the 2014 Contempt Order and 2015 Sanctions Order in this case, the State is still not complying with this Court’s rulings. 

Court orders and constitutional rights either matter or they don’t. If they do, this Court must effectively compel the State’s full compliance with Article IX, section 1 by the firm 2017-2018 school year deadline. 
On the "plan" from the Legislature:

Another problem with continually kicking the can down the road is you eventually run out of road. Which is where the State now is. 2016 was the last legislative session that could produce a complete plan for phasing in the revenue and funding increases needed to reach full Seattle Schools Community Forum: "Dude, Seriously?":

Sacramento County schools superintendent: Accountability plans ‘an enormous adjustment’ | EdSource

Sacramento County schools superintendent: Accountability plans ‘an enormous adjustment’ | EdSource:

Sacramento County schools superintendent: Accountability plans 'an enormous adjustment'

David Gordon is Sacramento County's Superintendent of Schools.

California’s 58 county offices of education generally receive far less attention than the school districts within their geographic boundaries. But they have been given an important role in implementing the financial reforms championed by Gov. Jerry Brown. In particular, they are responsible for approving the Local Control and Accountability Plans that every district is required to draw up. Here, Sacramento County schools superintendent David Gordon gives his views on how the LCAPs are working. 

What lessons have you learned from the first two years of LCAPs in your county?

Districts benefit from customized technical assistance. They have different needs depending on their size and resources. The process for developing an LCAP cannot be concentrated into a few months. Key events and activities, such as reporting on metrics as they become available, must be scheduled throughout the year. Change takes time, and this is an enormous adjustment for everyone.

Are you inspired, frustrated, overwhelmed or any combination of those?

We must be careful that completing a template not become a compliance exercise. We need to keep the districts focused on continuous improvement, which can be extremely challenging. We are all waiting for more information on the rubrics and eager to learn how they will be structured and used. There is a good deal of anticipation about how support for districts will be provided and customized to the needs at the local level.

What goals did you start with two years ago, and where are you now?

Many districts that began the process with numerous goals have consolidated them into fewer goals, with the actions and services aligned accordingly. The consolidation comes from realizing that fewer goals help to see the plan in a more holistic manner. In our own county LCAP we have maintained the same five goals because they are aligned to our accountability model. Districts were able to report progress in many areas after the first year of implementation, but some targets will take more time to achieve.

What examples of significant changes have you seen in your county?

The fiscal and program staff have collaborated to develop and monitor the LCAP, whereas this may not have been the way other plans were implemented in the past. There also has been an increase in the stakeholder engagement process: broader representation, groups working in a more advisory capacity, and more opportunities for involvement. The transparency of the planning process has been at the forefront.

The document may be longer with the addition of the annual update. Can parents, students and community groups understand it?

The LCAPs should be about the same length in year three as they were in year two as a result of the Annual Update that was added a year ago. Many districts break the components into smaller sections or present the information in a simplified format so they can share it with the various stakeholder Sacramento County schools superintendent: Accountability plans ‘an enormous adjustment’ | EdSource:

Garfield teacher pepper-sprayed by Seattle police to receive $100,000 settlement | The Seattle Times

Garfield teacher pepper-sprayed by Seattle police to receive $100,000 settlement | The Seattle Times:

Garfield teacher pepper-sprayed by Seattle police to receive $100,000 settlement

 Jesse Hagopian, a history teacher at Seattle’s Garfield High School, was walking on a sidewalk and talking to his mother on his cellphone when an officer pepper-sprayed him on Jan. 19, 2015, after he participated in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event.

The city of Seattle has agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by a Seattle high-school teacher who was pepper-sprayed by a police officer after giving a speech at the city’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day rally and march last year.

Jesse Hagopian, a history teacher at Garfield High School, said in his complaint that he was walking on a sidewalk and talking to his mother on his cellphone when a female officer pepper-sprayed him on Jan. 19, 2015.

The incident was recorded on video, which showed the officer waving a canister and screaming at passers-by to back up before spraying some of them.

The civil-rights complaint, which sought damages to be determined at trial, said Hagopian suffered difficulty breathing, anxiety and stress after being pepper-sprayed, and that he missed some of his 2-year-old son’s birthday party as he treated his injuries.

Earlier, Hagopian had filed a $500,000 claim against the city.

The case was dismissed in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Monday, after the settlement was reached last month with no admission of liability on the city’s part nor additional payment to Hagopian’s attorneys.

The Seattle Police Department’s handling of the incident sparked controversy when Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and then-Councilmember Nick Licatajoined with Hagopian at a news conference in October to question why the officer who sprayed him had received a verbal reprimand rather than a stiffer penalty.

Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole issued the reprimand after the department’s Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) recommended a one-day suspension.

When the incident occurred, Hagopian was “escorting an unpermitted protest following a permitted march,” according to the OPA. An overhead view of the encounter also was caught on video.

The OPA determined the use of spray was not reasonable, necessary or proportional and it determined Hagopian posed no threat.

Hagopian’s attorney, James Bible, said Tuesday that he and his client are “at Garfield teacher pepper-sprayed by Seattle police to receive $100,000 settlement | The Seattle Times:

More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing: Jesse Hagopian, Diane Ravitch, Alfie Kohn: 9781608463923: Amazon.com: Books - https://www.amazon.com/More-Than-Score-Uprising-High-Stakes/dp/1608463923?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

More on How Charter Schools Profit from Tax Dollars and Undermine Host School Districts | janresseger

More on How Charter Schools Profit from Tax Dollars and Undermine Host School Districts | janresseger:
More on How Charter Schools Profit from Tax Dollars and Undermine Host School Districts

Recent weeks have brought a lot of press about the way charter schools are undermining public school districts and diverting tax dollars allocated for education too often to for-profit companies.  Capital & Main in California just published a week-long expose explaining how rapid expansion of charters threatens the financial stability of the Los Angeles and Oakland school districts. The Salt Lake Tribune editorialized against for-profit charters after that newspaper’s scathing investigation explained how, “A handful of private companies have banked more than $68 million from Utah taxpayers over the past three years.”  And in Ohio, after the legislature ended its spring 2016 session without considering an excellent law that would have required the notorious cyber charters to prove that the students the state is paying for are actually participating in the online program, the Columbus Dispatcheditorialized: “The idea was that if student outcomes improved in charter schools, then the schools would continue… But the straightforward experiment went off the rails when some clever operators figured out how to get rich by sponsoring charter schools.  And to keep the gravy flowing, they began making major political contributions to the lawmakers who control the gravy.”

This is the context in which the Center for Popular Democracy has just released its third annual report, Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse: “Two years ago, the Center for Popular Democracy issued a report demonstrating that charter schools in 15 states—about one-third of the states with charter schools—had experienced over $100 million in reported fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement since 1994.  Last year, we released a new report that found millions of dollars of new alleged and confirmed financial fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in charter schools had come to light, bringing the new total to $203 million.  This report offers further evidence that the money we know has been misused is just the tip of the iceberg. With the new alleged and confirmed financial fraud reported here, the total fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in charter schools has reached over $216 million.”

The new report examines fraud and mismanagement across the states and explains that, “State oversight systems are currently reactive by design. While states do require that charter schools submit budgets, financial reports and independent financial audits, most do not proactively monitor for fraud, waste, mismanagement, or other financial abuses.”  The Center for Popular Democracy recommends that charter schools be required to institute internal More on How Charter Schools Profit from Tax Dollars and Undermine Host School Districts | janresseger:

New Civil Rights Data Shows Just How Misguided Attack on Tenure Is; Teacher Quality Problems Run Much Deeper Education Law Prof Blog

Education Law Prof Blog:

New Civil Rights Data Shows Just How Misguided Attack on Tenure Is; Teacher Quality Problems Run Much Deeper

 The Office for Civil Rights' new data collection shows vast disparities in regard to teachers.  Racial minorities were twice as likely to attend schools where one out of five teachers were brand new.  Racial minorities were also more likely to attend schools with unlicensed teachers.  Race aside, about 800,000 student attended a school where one out of five teachers lacked the required state licence.  

Teacher quality is inherently a difficult thing to measure with blunt qualification metrics, but studies have show that some blunt measures matter.  First, there is a learning curve to teaching.  While quality may flatten after about five years of teaching, teachers do tend to improve during the first five years or so.  Second, while "certified" teacher encompasses a broad range of teachers and teaching quality, uncertified is a relatively narrow group who have yet to demonstrate the basic requirements to enter a classroom.  As a result, studies do show that uncertified teachers have a negative impact on student achievement.

Interestingly, none of these teacher inequalities have anything to do with tenure.  As very rough measures, they tend to show just how wrong-headed the legal challenges to tenure are.  These numbers show that if ever teacher in the country lost tenure tomorrow and we fired everyone of them on Monday, there are not enough certified teachers to fill our nation's classrooms.  Moreover, this problem is most acute in predominantly minority schools.  Tenure may randomly operate as a burden or disincentive to removing some teachers, but it is not a significant cause of low quality teaching.  For a host of other flaws in the challenges to tenure, see here.  Education Law Prof Blog:

Big Education Ape: What Do Teaches Unions Say About Tenure - Due Process And A Little History from the CA Dept. of ED - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-do-teachers-unions-say-about.html

4 Reasons Why Charter Schools Should Not Do Special Education

4 Reasons Why Charter Schools Should Not Do Special Education:

4 Reasons Why Charter Schools Should Not Do Special Education

A common complaint about charter schools is that they don’t provide special education. This makes charter schools much different from traditional public schools which provide services to all children.

Charter schools should not get district special education funding for services they do not provide. But I don’t think charter schools should provide special education. Here’s why.

1. Charter Schools are Not Equipped to Serve Students with Serious Disabilities

Done right, good traditional public schools include a professional team who come together to consider the needs of the student with disabilities and/or gifted students.

The Individual Educational Plan (IEP) meeting includes a variety of specialists. A school psychologist, a district special education staffing specialist, school counselor, principal or school special ed. representative, a special education teacher, a general education teacher, possibly a social worker, and significant others come together and provide valuable feedback about the child.

Parental presence and involvement at this meeting is critical and is a feature that creates the best kind of public school accountability. It is why the idea of an IEP for all children is enticing.

If a student is interested and can participate in the meeting, they are invited to attend too.

Many of the professionals that attend this meeting are support staff coming from the school district, not the individual school. That’s the beauty of a school system when it 4 Reasons Why Charter Schools Should Not Do Special Education:

California and the End of Local Control | Diane Ravitch's blog

California and the End of Local Control | Diane Ravitch's blog:

California and the End of Local Control

Reader D.L. Paulson writes here about the charter industry’s sabotage of local control in education.

The overruling of local school boards is a terrible problem in California. Now that it’s hitting an upper-income community (actually, the Mt Diablo district is mixed in its demographics), middle class parents will see what poorer urban districts have had to contend with for years.

Stories abound of charter schools not only wanting the equivalent of what real public schools get, but feeling like they deserve even more. Their mode of operation is to achieve through political connections what they can’t obtain by deceptive marketing practices or bullying of local school boards.

At the bottom of this post are links to stories of a charter network called Caliber, which operates in the poor districts of Richmond and Vallejo, CA. It has another questionable educational program, especially for math, which consists of plopping kids in front of a computer for endless repetition and test prep, masquerading, of course, as “personalized learning”. All that Caliber really does is siphon badly needed funds from other schools for a relatively select group of students that it can profit from.

One particularly interesting thing about Caliber is the couple which founded it: Ron Beller and Jennifer Moses. Mr. Beller was famous for the collapse of his hedge fund and an odd story of a secretary embezzling millions of dollars. Both are part of a cabal of rich individuals that have torn apart the public education system in England, with Ms. Moses funding and pushing heavily for charter schools there. They left London a few years ago for unexplained reasons, but possibly because they smelled blood and opportunity in the charter-infested waters of Northern California.

Many people wonder, if charter schools like Caliber are non-profit, and they’re spending the same money as real community-run schools, how can anyone accuse founders of profiteering? The answer: land grabs and self-dealing. Many of the networks that run these schools, like Rocketship, buy their products (software, supplies and more) from the same companies they or their friends invest in. The properties they purchase are securitized by taxpayer dollars, allowing them to leverage an investment in the same manner as a Real-Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Since there is no public oversight over their purchasing, no bid requirements, no review of salaries or per-pupil spending, they can quite literally get away with anything.

The motives of investors like Ron Beller and Jennifer Moses are not philanthropic. That’s why they and so many other hedge-fund managers love the story of failing schools, so they can cover-up what they’re doing by pretending to serve poor minorities and other victims of some mythical failing system. No matter what jargon is used to describe their “personalized” or “no excuses” model, making poor minority students walk in straight lines, silently, and then plopping them in front of a brain-numbing computer program is not giving them the same educational opportunities as kids in, say, Lafayette, CA (right next door to Mt Diablo). It’s greed, pure and simple, as evidenced by Goldman Sachs seminars telling investors exactly how to make money through the privatization of schools. It is destroying public education in this country, and it’s going to worsen our problems of racism, community polarization, and income inequality.

We can only hope that Jerry Brown will “get it” soon. He understood similar issues with redevelopment agencies, and he ended them early in his first term. Perhaps ending the insidious invasion of charter schools will be his second term legacy.

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http://www.eastbaytimes.com/contra-costa-times/ci_23866222/county-school-board-overrules-rejection-caliber-charter-school

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/west-county-times/ci_26553653/richmond-district-saddled-cost-house-charter-school

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/general-news/20160511/richmond-proposed-sale-of-school-site-for-charter-campus-draws-fire/3

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/general-news/20160509/new-vallejo-charter-school-seeks-more-student-bathrooms

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/social-affairs/20160218/charter-school-in-vallejo-seeks-better-offer

 California and the End of Local Control | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Big Education Ape: California: The Charter Game is Rigged | Diane Ravitch's blog - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/05/california-charter-game-is-rigged-diane.html