November | 2021 | Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé

Carol Burris: NPE Builds an Archive of Charter Scandals

Are you curious about all the publicly funded, private sector Charter School scandals? Thanks to laws that allow these schools to be secretive and opaque and avoid following the same transparency laws that REAL public schools must follow, laws designed to protect OUR children, there is a lot of opportunity for fraud. Click this link and learn about the epidemic of fraud and crimes caused by too many of these Charter Schools.

Diane Ravitch's blog

Carol Burris is executive director of the Network for Public Education.

She writes:

For the past four years, the Network for Public Education has collected and posted charter school scandals from across the United States on a special page of its website entitled Another Day Another Charter School Scandal which you can find here.

NPE has now turned that page into an interactive research tool, allowing you to find a collection of stories by state, by scandal type and by keyword. For example, if you want to search any published story on scandals associated with Success Academy, just type in Success Academy into the query box and ten stories pop up.

Looking for stories regarding charter theft or fraud? Use the drop down menu and 177 stories appear.

At the beginning of the month, we load up all of the stories we found during the prior month. Check back…

View original post 66 more words

Leave a comment

Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse on November 29, 2021 in Uncategorized

Stephen Sawchuk: What is Critical Race Theory and Why Is It Under Attack?

28 Nov

Who is behind the attack on Critical Race Theory?
Answer: Conservative Reptilian Trumpers.

Diane Ravitch's blog

Stephen Sawchuk is a staff writer for Education Week. He wrote this article back in May, and I missed it. I think it’s one of the clearest, most balanced explanations of CRT that I have read.

Sawchuk writes:

Is “critical race theory” a way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people? Liberals and conservatives are in sharp disagreement.

The topic has exploded in the public arena this spring—especially in K-12, where numerous state legislatures aredebating billsseeking to ban its use in the classroom.

In truth, the divides are not nearly as neat as they may seem. The events of the last decade have increased public awareness about things like housing segregation, the impacts of criminal justice policy in the 1990s, and the legacy of enslavement on Black Americans. But there is much less consensus on…

View original post 1,868 more words

Leave a comment

Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse on November 28, 2021 in Uncategorized

Steve Nelson: The Campaign to Destroy Public Education

23 Nov

Do you really want publicly funded (from the local taxes/fees we, the working class, pays) private sector charter schools that do not answer to anyone by their CEO and stockholders?

Do you really want to get rid of democratically elected school boards that are responsible to watch over public school districts, and our children, and who have to answer to local voters and parents?

Donald Trump is a private sector CEO. Do you want someone like him deciding how OUR children are treated in schools and what they are taught?

Diane Ravitch's blog

Steve Nelson, a retired educator, describes the calculated and underhanded effort to destroy public education, a ruse that proceeds by stealth and loaded language.

He begins:

The same fine folks who brought us the Critical Race Theory (CRT) scare tactic to win the Virginia gubernatorial election are now poised to bring our public education system to its knees and then put it out of its misery.

In an alarming New York Times column, Michelle Goldberg recounts an exchange with Christopher Rufo, the manipulative wizard behind the weaponizing of CRT for broad political purposes. Rufo gleefully admits that the CRT gambit, combined with widespread pandemic frustration, provides a perfect storm for completion of the decades-long conservative goal of weakening and effectively eliminating “government schools.”

Conservatives have similarly weaponized the phrase “government schools” as an emotional trigger intended to disingenuously characterize public schools as institutional agents of a sinister plot to…

View original post 321 more words

Leave a comment

Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse on November 23, 2021 in Uncategorized

West Virginia: Board Approves 2 For-Profit Online Charter Schools

23 Nov

“Online charters are known for low academic performance, low graduation rates, and high attrition. A study by CREDO found that students in online charter schools learn almost nothing.”

Knowing that, why did West Virginia approve two of these publicly funded (that means the taxes people pay to support public schools) for-profit, online charter schools?

Diane Ravitch's blog

West Virginia recently passed a charter school law, breaking its promise to the state’s teachers. A new board was created to authorize charters. That board just approved two for-profit online charter schools. One is run by K12 Inc., which changed its name to Stride. The other will be run by Ron Packard’s Accel, which operates low-performing charters in Ohio. Packard was the first CEO of K12 Inc., where he was paid $5 million a year.

Online charters are known for low academic performance, low graduation rates, and high attrition. A study by CREDO found that students in online charter schools learn almost nothing.

While findings vary for each student, the results in CREDO’s report show that the majority of online charter students had far weaker academic growth in both math and reading compared to their traditional public school peers. To conceptualize this shortfall, it would equate to a student losing…

View original post 33 more words

Leave a comment

Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse on November 23, 2021 in Uncategorized