Failed charter schools cost federal government almost $505M in nine years: report | TheHill

Failed charter schools cost federal government almost $505M in nine years: report | TheHill

Failed charter schools cost federal government almost $505M in nine years: report

Charter schools that never opened or that have opened then closed between 2006 and 2014 have cost the federal government almost $505 million, according to a recent report.

The Network for Public Education, an advocacy group, released a report Friday that found more than 35 percent of charter schools never opened or ended up closing down in that time frame, The Washington Post reported. Those schools received more than a half of $1 billion, or 28 percent, of the funding from the federal Charter School Program (CSP). 

Through analysis of almost 5,000 schools, researchers found almost 540 schools never opened between 2006 and 2014 but were funded $45.5 million, the report said. Michigan, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s home state, had the most charter schools that never opened at 72.

The Hill reached out to the Education Department for comment. The department did not respond to the Post’s request for comment about the report. 

Casandra Ulbrich, the president of the Michigan State Board of Education, told the Post she thought the report was “extremely troubling.”

“It raises some very legitimate questions about a federal grant program that seems to have been operating for years and years with little oversight and very little accountability,” she said.

This report served as a follow-up to a March report that found up to $1 CONTINUE READING: Failed charter schools cost federal government almost $505M in nine years: report | TheHill

Schools Spy on Kids to Prevent Shootings, But There's No Evidence It Works - VICE

Schools Spy on Kids to Prevent Shootings, But There's No Evidence It Works - VICE

Schools Spy on Kids to Prevent Shootings, But There's No Evidence It Works
Spyware like GoGuardian, Bark, and Gaggle are monitoring students’ internet habits, both on and off school grounds.

It was another sleepy board of education meeting in Woodbridge, N.J. The board gave out student commendations and presented budget requests. Parents complained about mold in classrooms. Then, a pair of high schoolers stepped up to the podium with a concern that took the district officials completely off guard.

“We have students so concerned about their privacy that they’re resorting to covering their [laptop] cameras and microphones with tape,” a junior said at the October 18, 2018 meeting.

Woodbridge had recently joined hundreds of other school districts across the country in subscribing to GoGuardian, one of a growing number of school-focused surveillance companies. Promising to promote school safety and stop mass shootings, these companies sell tools that give administrators, teachers, and in some cases parents, the ability to snoop on every action students take on school-issued devices.

The Woodbridge students were not pleased.

“We just want to ask again: How are you going to assure our right to privacy when we have been having these problems and we have so many fears CONTINUE READING: Schools Spy on Kids to Prevent Shootings, But There's No Evidence It Works - VICE

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy - https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/

AFT’s Weingarten urges members: Push lawmakers to impeach Trump – People's World

AFT’s Weingarten urges members: Push lawmakers to impeach Trump – People's World

AFT’s Weingarten urges members: Push lawmakers to impeach Trump

WASHINGTON—With the House Judiciary Committee scheduled to vote on impeachment articles against GOP President Donald Trump the week of Dec. 9, Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten is urging her members to strongly lobby their lawmakers now to vote to impeach Trump for bribery and obstruction of justice.

At this point, with reports in hand of Trump’s constitutional crimes from both the Judiciary and Select Intelligence Committees, the lone remaining question seems to be whether the lawmakers will stick to impeaching the president for bribery by endangering national security with his demands to Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, using $391 million in U.S. military aid to get the Ukrainians to act – or how far to go beyond that.

The Judiciary panel also plans to impeach Trump for obstruction of justice in stonewalling the Ukrainian investigation. Still uncertain: Whether the Democratic-run committee will add obstruction counts for Trump’s refusal to cooperate in any way with the congressional probes.

Weingarten, a New York City high school civics teacher, says in her open letter to her union’s 1.6 million members that Trump committed impeachable offenses in his dealings with Ukraine.

That follows up on the AFT board’s earlier decision supporting the opening of the impeachment CONTINUE READING: AFT’s Weingarten urges members: Push lawmakers to impeach Trump – People's World

The Lure of Bad News | Teacher in a strange land

The Lure of Bad News | Teacher in a strange land

The Lure of Bad News

I have this Facebook friend—a woman I haven’t seen in decades but who was my actual pal and work partner in high school.  As it happens, with relationships like this—threadbare, based on outgrown commonalities—we have taken two very diverging roads in the yellow wood of life.

And not just politically and socially. She is that person who continually reposts urgent TV reports of missing children, including children who have mercifully been found safe, six months ago. I don’t know where she gets her news and information, but you can count on her to post flamingly incorrect horror stories every three or four days:

Did you know the Obama White House banned nativity scenes?  Not a single flag at the Democratic debate! There once was a time the president was honored, no matter who he was—let’s get that back! Christians are being persecuted! We could feed and house all the homeless in America with what the Democrats have spent on impeachment!

About that last one, which Snopes doesn’t touch—there are an estimated 553, 742 homeless people in the United States. Spending $10K on each homeless person (which might, optimistically, feed them and get them off the streets for six months) would cost us $5.5 billion.  A far cry from the actual costs of investigating the President since 2017, CONTINUE READING: The Lure of Bad News | Teacher in a strange land

CURMUDGUCATION: Can Rich Content Improve Education?

CURMUDGUCATION: Can Rich Content Improve Education?

Can Rich Content Improve Education?

Modern high-stakes testing really kicked into gear with No Child Left Behind, and then got another huge boost with the advent of Common Core. All through that era, teachers pushed back against the fracturing of reading instruction, the idea that reading is a suite of discrete skills that can be taught independent of any particular content. 

The pendulum has begun its swing back. Content knowledge is coming back into vogue, and while there are plenty of cognitive science-heavy explanations out there, the basic idea is easy to grasp. If you know a lot about dinosaurs, you have an easier time reading and comprehending a book about dinosaurs. If you are trying to sound out an unfamiliar word on the page, it’s easier if you already know the word by sound. If you learn and store new information by connecting it to information you already have banked, that process is easier if you actually have plenty of information already stored away. 

Classroom teachers have known this. Some have argued that the Common Core acknowledged this (but did so in the appendix, none of which is tested material). And while much of the education reform crowd joined the “skills” push (one attempted catchphrase of the new SAT created under Common Core creator David Coleman was “skilled it”), some reformers never lost faith in the work of Ed Hirsch, Jr., who has himself stayed committed to the idea through his Core Knowledge Foundation.

So if we restore rich content to education and provide students with a wealth of background knowledge, will that revitalize education and fix some of the issues that have plagued us? Or will this, like the great skills revolution at the beginning of the century, turn out to be a terribly CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Can Rich Content Improve Education?

Steeling Myself | radical eyes for equity

Steeling Myself | radical eyes for equity

Steeling Myself

Forget it, nothing I change changes anything

“Walk It Back,” The National

Just come outside and leave with me

“The Day I Die,” The National

Yesterday I met with my four classes for the last time this semester. The classes include about 75% first-year students, something I very much enjoy about teaching at the college level.

As I have started doing more purposefully, I ended these last class sessions by telling the students I feel very fortunate to have taught them, that I love them, and that I am always here to help if they need anything since once they have been my students, they are always my students.

While I was telling the first class of the day, my foundations education course, all of this, I felt myself flushed with cold chills, the urge to cry rising up through my chest toward my eyes.

This is nothing unusual because I am a world-class crier, but except for people very close to me, my crying is usually reserved for times when I am alone—often in the car listening to music and being very melodramatically maudlin.

I toyed with that this morning, in fact, as I sang along to The National’s Sleep Well Beast; the rising drums of the opening of the album, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” always pulls at my chest and then by “Hey baby,” the CONTINUE READING: Steeling Myself | radical eyes for equity

Report: Federal government wasted millions of dollars on charter schools that never opened - The Washington Post

Report: Federal government wasted millions of dollars on charter schools that never opened - The Washington Post

Report: Federal government wasted millions of dollars on charter schools that never opened

More than 35 percent of charter schools funded by the federal Charter School Program (CSP) between 2006 and 2014 either never opened or were shut down, costing taxpayers more than half a billion dollars, according to a new report from an advocacy group that reviewed records of nearly 5,000 schools. The state with the most charter schools that never opened was Michigan, home to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

The report, titled “Still Asleep at the Wheel,” said that 537 “ghost schools” never opened but received a total of more than $45.5 million in federal start-up funding. That was more than 11 percent of all the schools that received funding from CSP, which began giving grants in 1995.

In Michigan, where the billionaire DeVos has been instrumental over several decades in creating a charter school sector, 72 charters that received CSP money never opened, at a total cost of some $7.7 million from 2006 to 2014. California was second, with 61 schools that failed to open but collectively received $8.36 million.

The Education Department did not respond to a query about the findings. DeVos has made expanding alternatives to school districts — including charters and programs that use public money for private and religious schools — her top priority as education secretary, and has said her metric for a state’s education success is how much they expand school “choice.”

Casandra Ulbrich, president of the Michigan State Board of Education, said in an interview that she found the new report “extremely troubling.”

“It raises some very legitimate questions about a federal grant program that seems to have been operating for years and years with little oversight and very little accountability,” she said.

The report — published by the Network for Public Education, an advocacy group that supports public education and was co-founded by education historian and advocate Diane Ravitch — says the Education Department has failed for years to properly monitor how its charter grant funding is spent. The new CONTINUE READING: Report: Federal government wasted millions of dollars on charter schools that never opened - The Washington Post

Big Education Ape: Carol Burris Responds to Charter Industry Critique of NPE’s “Asleep At the Wheel” | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/07/carol-burris-responds-to-charter.html

NYC Educator: The Thing

NYC Educator: The Thing

The Thing

Nothing strikes fear into a teacher's heart quite like the prospect of another day of PD on the New Thing. There are all these programs, based on the presumption that you're doing everything wrong, and trying to get you to correct yourself and do everything right. Right there you've already lost. It's like you're five years old and someone is telling you to drink castor oil for your own good.

First, no one wants to do anything for their "own good." Doing something for your own good is virtually always synonymous with doing something you don't want to do. More importantly, the people who claim to know what's good for you, well, they're often way off base. The implicit assumption of a whole lot of PDs is that we don't know what we're doing. I sat for several hours a few weeks ago while some highly paid corporate functionary told me what is and is not a good story.

It wasn't as bad as the first time they came, when we compared and contrasted crap with good writing, but all in all it was not a productive use of my time. I'd argue that if I, as an English teacher, were unable to distinguish between cleverness and crap there would be something amiss that a three-hour workshop would be unlikely to correct. The assumption that I don't know the difference, though, is insulting, and that's what you get from a lot of PD.

At a friend's school they simulated a sweat shop and had to make things. I saw pictures of baskets they created. This might be a great activity for a social studies class. In fact, given that I teach immigrants, it might be a great activity for my class. This is the sort of work my grandparents had to do when they came here. For all I know, this is what my students' parents are still doing. And in the US of A in 2019 working newcomers are reviled for doing work a whole lot of Americans wouldn't dream of doing. It's great to see someone break out of the New Thing Mode.

I wonder why PD can't consist of us going somewhere and doing something, perhaps as a model for something we'd go and do with our students. I once took my students to the CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: The Thing

NYC Public School Parents: Achieve Inc. seriously misleads the Board of Regents on graduation exit exams

NYC Public School Parents: Achieve Inc. seriously misleads the Board of Regents on graduation exit exams

NYC Public School Parents: Achieve Inc. seriously misleads the Board of Regents on graduation exit exams 

Thanks for Stan Karp of the Education Law Center for much of the data here.

Achieve Inc. has been commissioned by the Board of Regents to research what other states are doing with their graduation exit exams, and review the current New York high school graduation requirements which mandate that students have to pass five high-stakes exit exams to graduate from high school. They are now engaged in an "information gathering phase" that is being being funded with an $100,000 grant from the Gates Foundation.

Accordingly, the organization gave a presentation to the Regents today,  entitled "Graduation requirements review," which included the following statements: that "states are making adjustments to their assessments required for high school graduation" followed by this claim: "28 states administer an ELA, mathematics, science and/or social studies exam(s) that factors into students' grades or graduation requirements."

Missing from their presentation are the following facts:
FairTest reports that currently, only 11 states currently have high school graduation exit exams, down from high of 27.

For the year 2018-2019, Education Week wrote this:  "Thirteen states require students to pass a test to get a high school diploma,...Exit exams used to be more popular: In 2002, more than half the states required them.”

Yet their list included Washington which recently approved an end to exit tests for the class of 2020.

The Fordham Institute put out a report over the summer, with the following information:  "just 12 states will require students in the class of 2020 to pass exit exams, falling from a peak of 30 states requiring them for the class of 2003."

When challenged on Twitter about the disparity in their figures compared to other sources, Achieve responded that they "define them [exit exams] as assessments that matter for students - impacting course grades or graduation."  Yet to conflate states that require students to pass a test to graduate from high school with those that assign ordinary CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Achieve Inc. seriously misleads the Board of Regents on graduation exit exams

Ed Tech about Profits NOT Education | tultican

Ed Tech about Profits NOT Education | tultican

Ed Tech about Profits NOT Education

By Thomas Ultican 12/10/2019

Anthony Kim founded Education Elements in 2010. He sold Provost Systems – which built virtual schools – to Edison Schools in 2008 and was ready for a new project. His new company sells personalized learning systems and consulting services to several school districts. Education Elements is one of more than a hundred ed tech companies being supported by venture capital organizations hoping for one big score. It is representative of the education technology startup business.

With education businesses there is opportunity for magnificent profits because of the large scale of education spending. The United States alone spends $650 billion dollar a year on public education. If businesses can convince people that learning at a digital screen is equivalent to or even better than a teacher led classroom, education technology would become America’s next great profit center minting many new billionaires. This allure of lavish profits is driving education technology.

The Venture Capital Firms

Crunchbase, which analyzes venture capital and startups, lists five venture capital companies investing in Education Elements.

Harmony is the only one of the five venture funds that does not focus specifically on education technology. They simply say, “Over the past 20 years, we have invested over $750 million in 80 companies.” They list their current investments which includes Education Elements.

NewSchools Venture Fund is the most strident in its commitment to disrupting public education. NewSchools is a non-profit that claims they are a “venture philanthropy working to reimagine public education investing in education CONTINUE READING: Ed Tech about Profits NOT Education | tultican

The Face of CTC & The Lack of Transparency By Those in Power #SaveFairfax

The Face of CTC & The Lack of Transparency By Those in Power #SaveFairfax

The Face of CTC & The Lack of Transparency By Those in Power #SaveFairfax

I have been asked by people for an update about Fairfax High and I am sorry to say it continues to be a mess.  Last month I wrote aboutplans for a new middle school which will serve a primarily white high socio economic group of families in West Hollywood.  This school will push out a program of mostly black and brown Special Need Students (of lower socio economic means) at Fairfax High. Now, one month later, this social injustice continues to be a real threat on a fragile group of Los Angelenos. While it is a smudge on the progressive values that are often celebrated in West Hollywood, the cavalier adventure of “Let’s-Make-a-School,” is also hurting moms like Florencia and her eighteen- year old autistic son Jose. It is a level of cruelty I didn’t think possible in 90048 but then, ever since November 2016, it is clear there is no place safe from lack of transparency and the hurt it brings to the innocent. 

I met Florencia soon after the CTC (Career & Transition Center) teachers were told by LAUSD District West that their school would be moved off Fairfax for the WHFA (West Hollywood Fairfax Academy).    I realized early that the narratives around WHFA were cloaked in misinformation and it seemed to me that my grandmother’s favorite expression, “The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing” was in effect. As a parent in LAUSD for a dozen years, I know confusion is easy. Between all the departments, endless personnel and the voluminous acronyms (SSC, API, CTC) a parent can be forgiven if they CONTINUE READING: The Face of CTC & The Lack of Transparency By Those in Power #SaveFairfax

Network for Public Education Releases Explosive New Report on Federal Charter Schools Program | Diane Ravitch's blog

Network for Public Education Releases Explosive New Report on Federal Charter Schools Program | Diane Ravitch's blog

Network for Public Education Releases Explosive New Report on Federal Charter Schools Program

Last spring, the Network for Public Education published a report on waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal Charter Schools Program. The report, called Asleep At the Wheel, documented the Department of Education’s failure to monitor the veracity or feasibility of applications for the program or to follow up on what happened to the money spent to launch new charter schools. It found that nearly $1 billion of federal dollars had been wasted on charters that either never opened or closed soon after opening.

Today, NPE released a new report that delves into what happened with federal money from the Charter Schools Program in the states. The findings were even more concerning than last spring’s report.
The new report is called Still Asleep At the Wheel.

An excerpt:

This report, Still Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Results in a Pileup of Fraud and Waste, takes up where our first report left off. In it, we provide detailed information, state by state, on how federal dollars were doled out to schools that no longer exist or never existed at all.

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) published a list of charter schools that received grants between the years of 2006 and 2014. Using that database of 4,829 schools, we meticulously determined which charters that received grants were still open, which had closed and which had never opened, CONTINUE READING: Network for Public Education Releases Explosive New Report on Federal Charter Schools Program | Diane Ravitch's blog

Charter Schools Exploit Children of Color | gadflyonthewallblog

Charter Schools Exploit Children of Color | gadflyonthewallblog

Charter Schools Exploit Children of Color

Go to most impoverished black neighborhoods and you’re bound to find three things in abundance.

Liquor stores, payday lenders and charter schools.

It is no accident.

In the inner city, the underemployed compete for a shortage of minimum wage jobs, healthcare is minimal, public transportation inadequate and the schools are underfunded and short staffed.

But that doesn’t mean money isn’t being made.

In capitalist America, we make sure to turn a profit off of everything – including our peculiar institutions of racial inequality.

Businesses are on every corner, but they aren’t set up for CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Exploit Children of Color | gadflyonthewallblog

2019 Medley #23 | Live Long and Prosper

2019 Medley #23 | Live Long and Prosper

2019 Medley #23

Let the Children Play,
Reading: Too much too soon,
The Common Good,
Is the Teacher Pay-gap Gender-related?
Vouchers hurt students in Ohio

HEALTHIER KIDS NEED PLAY, PLAY, AND MORE PLAY

FreshEd with Will Brehm: Let the Children Play (Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle)

Earlier this year I reviewed a book by Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle titled Let the Children Play. On December 2, the authors were interviewed by Will Brehm on his excellent podcast, FreshEd.

The authors’ emphasis during their interview, and the emphasis in their book, is that play is much more important than most Americans realize, and most American children, especially children who live in poverty, don’t have enough time in their day to play. Some excerpts from the podcast…

DOYLE: Play is a fundamental engine of learning for children and if you CONTINUE READING: 2019 Medley #23 | Live Long and Prosper

Rochester teachers rally against ‘Christmas massacre’ layoff plan | WBFO

Rochester teachers rally against ‘Christmas massacre’ layoff plan | WBFO

Rochester teachers rally against ‘Christmas massacre’ layoff plan

CREDIT GINO FANELLI / CITY NEWSPAPER

The chants of “Let teachers teach” and “Education is a right, that’s why we have to fight,” echoed clearly down West Broad Street early Thursday evening. They came from a rally organized by the Rochester Teachers Association and were meant to send a message: Stop the proposed layoffs of Rochester School District teachers.

The teachers union organized the rally in response to Superintendent Terry Dade’s plan to lay off 218 district staff members, 152 of whom belong to the union. The Board of Education will vote on the cuts on Thursday, Dec. 19.

Standing outside of the district’s offices just before Thursday’s regularly scheduled meeting of the school board, RTA President Adam Urbanski grimly referred to the proposal as a “Christmas massacre.”

“We have an alternative proposal for the Board of Education we’re advancing today -- don’t act until you can figure out how we got into this mess,” Urbanski said. “The teachers and students didn’t cause this problem, they shouldn’t be punished.”

Urbanski urged the board to delay voting on Dade's plan until June, a move that CONTINUE READING: Rochester teachers rally against ‘Christmas massacre’ layoff plan | WBFO

Unexpected side effect of Texas school finance overhaul has Dallas schools nixing controversial charter partnership

Unexpected side effect of Texas school finance overhaul has Dallas schools nixing controversial charter partnership

Unexpected side effect of Texas school finance overhaul has Dallas schools nixing controversial charter partnership
Fort Worth ISD, however, plans to continue its charter partnership

One of the most politically heated battles the Dallas school board has undertaken in recent years was the decision to transform some classrooms into charters.

Parents and teachers crowded meetings for months urging the board to not “privatize” any part of DISD by handing control over to outsiders. Trustees argued amongst themselves late into the evening — and well into the early morning hours — before finally agreeing earlier this year to create partnerships that allow private operators to run some DISD prekindergarten classes as charters.

But now, DISD is hitting reverse. Administrators told trustees on Thursday that the district needed to scrap the plan altogether because the district will receive dramatically less money from the state than projected.

Trustee Joyce Foreman, the only sitting board member to oppose the partnerships, said the unexpected was exactly why she didn’t want DISD to participate.

“I’ve been a person who has cautioned this board about moving too fast — and the administration — on things before we have the full understanding,” Foreman said. She added, “Yes, I’m gonna crow. Take your time. Slow your roll.”

This summer trustees gave final approval to convert some DISD pre-K classes already offered at 10 preschools outside the district into charter partnerships.

The district was taking advantage of a 2017 law, SB 1882, aimed at encouraging traditional districts to partner with charters, which are public schools that are generally run by independent operators. Districts using the law would receive about $1,800 more per student in 1882 partnerships, which was CONTINUE READING: Unexpected side effect of Texas school finance overhaul has Dallas schools nixing controversial charter partnership