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Gary Rubinstein has a peculiar habit of insisting on integrity of reporting. He gets hot and bothered when people claim “miracle achievements” but hide the facts or distort them.

He noticed an article in USA Today that both appeared to criticize charter schools and at the same time to claim that some of them had achieved astonishing college graduation results.

The bottom line, said USA Today, was that many charter school students don’t make it through college. But, it also said, their college graduation rate is far higher than that of comparable low-income students.

Gary did an inquiry, and he learned that the writer of the article–as is typical–did not take the charters’ high attrition rates into account.

So, in the end, the article was another phony claim about the “success” of charter schools, when that “success” depends on shedding large numbers of students.

The star example: Democracy Prep in…

Mike Klonsky, veteran activist in Chicago, was surprised to read in the New York Times that the public schools of Chicago were the fastest improving urban schools in the nation and that their improvement was due to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s wisdom in choosing principals. This ran counter to everything he knew.

He writes:

I’m not sure who in Rahm Emanuel’s oversized City Hall PR Dept. planted this story in the New York Times, but kudos to them for getting this piece of fluff past the fact checkers and custodians of common sense. Peter Cunningham swears it wasn’t him, but I congratulated him anyway.

The Op-ed by David Leonhardt, “Want to Fix Schools, Go to the Principal’s Office” focuses on Chicago and gives all the credit to the mayor and CPS super-principals for the district’s supposed “fastest in the nation” gains in student achievement, rising graduation rates and lower dropout rates.

John Kuhn is an eloquent, wise superintendent in Texas who spreads truth to power.

In this address to the Association of Texas Professional Educators, he warned that the very existence of public education was under fire by a coalition of the rich and the greedy.

He is so brilliant, so eloquent, and so on target that it is hard to excerpt his speech. I urge you to read it in full. If you know anyone in Texas, share it. Send it to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the politician who wants to monetize and privatize the state’s underfunded public schools. That’s his game. That’s his shame. Be sure to tweet JOHN Kuhn’s speech to Dan Patrick @DanPatrick and @LtGovTX

Kuhn says:

“It all really comes down to vouchers. This has been the end-game the whole time. Going back through the decades from TABS to TEAMS to TAAS to TAKS to STAAR…

You know you’ve made it when the Koch Brothers are funding a critique of your work.

Most of the time I just toil in obscurity.

I sit behind my computer furiously pounding away at the keys sending my little blog entries out onto the Interwebs never expecting much of a reply.

Sure I get fervent wishes for my death.

And the occasional racist diatribe that only tangentially has anything to do with what I wrote.

But a response from a conservative Web magazine funded by the world’s most famous billionaire brothers!?

I guess this is what the big time feels like!

The article appeared in The Federalist, an Internet publication mostly known for anti-LGBT diatribes and climate change denial. But I had the audacity to write something called “Top 10 Reasons School Choice is No Choice.”

I had to be taken down.

And they had just the person to…

Eva Moskowitz has rented the Rockefeller Center Radio City Music Hall for her charter chain’s annual test-prep rally.

The charter network’s dance team will perform, school officials will present awards to students for academic excellence and Moskowitz will deliver a keynote speech.

Eva Moskowitz photo angers protesters outside her home
Moskowitz and Success Academy grabbed headlines in 2016 when the network purchased ground-floor classroom space in a luxury Midtown tower for nearly $68 million.

Success Academy reported $49 million in net assets in 2014 and received at least $35 million from hedge fund billionaires in 2016.

The privately run, publicly funded charter network operates 41 city schools with three more set to open this year.

Two years ago, the Success Academy charter chain spent $734,000 on a pep rally in Albany to seek more public funding for their well-funded schools.

At that time, Politico reported:

Success and Families for Excellent…

This letter was sent to me by the person who created the SCAM advertisements in the previous post. i asked to explain why she decided to leave her job as a teacher at Success Academy Charter Schools. She sent the following commentary.

She writes:

When I applied to teach at Success Academy Charter Schools, I was just out of college with little teaching experience, and I was interviewing at every school I could, hoping to get my first real teaching job. As soon as I walked into Success’s Wall Street office for the interview, I knew this was a different kind of school. The space looks and feels like corporate headquarters, complete with glass-walled conference rooms and a minimalist aesthetic.

I was called into a boardroom with five or so other applicants, and someone from the “Talent” team (in charge of hiring) showed us a slick marketing video: we were…

Betsy DeVos called Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the president of the National Education Association. She said, let’s talk. Lily wrote her a letter laying out some conditions before talking or meeting.

Read Lily’s letter here.

http://lilysblackboard.org/2017/02/betsy-devos-called-sent-letter/

Here are her conditions:

“It’s important for educators, parents, and communities to know where you stand on some of the most critical work of the federal Department of Education. We must ask you to give us the substantive answers that we did not hear you give to the senators at your hearing on issues critical to our students:

1. Do you agree that all schools receiving public dollars must be held to the same accountability and transparency standards?

2. Will you agree not to privatize funding for Special Education of Title I?

3. Will you stand with educators and protect our most vulnerable students from discrimination, including LGBT students, immigrant students, students of color, girls…

There is a wonderful organization in Texas called Pastors for Texas Children, led by the indefatigable Pastor Charles Foster Johnson of Fort Worth.

Their members span the state, and they have worked with public schools and parents to oppose vouchers, which would destroy many communities and defund their community’s public schools.

Pastor Johnson recently sent out this letter:

Pastors for Texas Children is a three-year-old organization that mobilizes the faith community for public education assistance and advocacy. Our website is http://www.pastorsfortexaschildren.com

Our goal is to connect every single local congregation to every single public school in wrap-around care and school improvement assistance – especially high-need schools in poor neighborhoods. We do this always under the authority of the local superintendent and principal – and always scrupulously adhering to the principles of religious liberty and church/state separation.

We believe fully in the First Amendment prohibition against any religious instruction in our…

One of the founding principles of the United States is public education.

We fought a bloody revolution against England for many reasons, but chief among them was to create a society where all people could be educated.

Certainly we had disagreements about who counted as a person. Women? Probably not. Black people? Doubtful. But the ideal of providing a quality education for all was a central part of our fledgling Democracy regardless of how well we actually lived up to it.

In fact, without it, our system of self-government just wouldn’t work. A functioning Democracy, it was thought, couldn’t exist in a nation where the common person was ignorant. We needed everyone to be knowledgeable and enlightened.

That’s why we have public schools – so that an educated citizenry will lead to a good government.

Our founders didn’t want a system of private schools each teaching students…

For Immediate Release: February 7, 2017

Media Contact: Carol Burris 718-577-3276

cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org

The Network for Public Education furious over the approval of Betsy DeVos. Begins campaign to thwart any attempts to privatize schools.

The Network for Public Education (NPE) announced its campaign to oppose any attempts by the newly appointed Secretary of Education to privatize public education. In a letter to its 316,000 members, NPE vowed to continue the fight against the DeVos agenda at both the state and national level.

“Betsy DeVos put a spotlight on the ongoing threat to our democratically governed, community public schools. Public school advocates across the nation spoke out. Our campaign against DeVos generated over 600,000 emails and thousands of phone calls and letters to the Senate. Americans do not want an unregulated, privatized school system paid for by American taxpayers. They do not want public school funds taken from their neighborhood schools for…