Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé

Back in March 2019, Carol Burris and Jeff Bryant released a study of the federal Charter Schools Program on behalf of the Network for Public Education.. That study, “Asleep at the Wheel,” found that about a third of the charters that received federal grants in the $440 million program either never opened or closed soon after opening. The amount of money wasted was about $1 billion over several years. The Department of Education failed to monitor wherevthe Money was going and how it was spent.

Burris has been analyzing states that received federal charter money and has concluded that the initial estimates were understated. In the states she has reviewed, 40% of the charters were failures. Some had no name. Some were not even charters.

The extent of waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal CSP is appalling, as is the ED department’s failure to pay attention to where…

ProPublica reports on its investigation of the funding and mission of Teach for America, in which it discovered that TFA is an arm of the charter movement, which aims to replace public schools with non-union private charter school.

This is an eye-popping article, an exemplar of investigative reporting.

It begins:

When the Walton Family Foundation announced in 2013 that it was donating $20 million to Teach For America to recruit and train nearly 4,000 teachers for low-income schools, its press release did not reveal the unusual terms for the grant.

Documents obtained by ProPublica show that the foundation, a staunch supporter of school choice and Teach For America’s largest private funder, was paying $4,000 for every teacher placed in a traditional public school — and $6,000 for every one placed in a charter school. The two-year grantwas directed at nine cities where charter schools were sprouting up, including New…

Mercedes Schneider was a little surprised that Bill Gates is setting up a lobbying organization. Why should he? He has been shelling out millions to buy Influence with state and federal policy makers for years.

She writes:

Whereas the idea of Gates paying individuals to lobby to alter policy in line with his billionaire preferences, the public should realize that Gates already has an oversized influence on legislators and other elected and appointed officials.

For example, from 2002 to 2018, the Gates Foundation has paid the National Governors Association (NGA) $33.2M for Gates-approved initiatives, mostly affecting K12 education.

Shall we pretend that Gates’ steadily funding an association of state governors to promote Gates goals does not sway these governors? I think not.

From 2002 to 2018, Gates has also paid $122M to the state education superintendent organization, Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) on his K12 education preferences.

Both…

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) includes “most of the city of Los Angeles, along with all or portions of 26 cities and unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. About 4.8 million people live within the District’s boundaries.” In 2018-19, LAUSD’s estimated enrollment was 694,096 students.

On June 04, 2019, voters within the LAUSD boundary could have voted to approve or reject Measure EE, a school parcel tax measure authorizing LAUSD to levy 16-cents-per-square-foot tax over 12 years to fund the LAUSD as follows, in brief:

Proceeds from the Tax shall be used for: lowering class sizes; providing school nursing, library, and counseling services and other health and human services for student support; providing instructional programs, school resources, and materials; retaining and attracting teachers and school employees; and providing necessary administrative services. …

This Measure requires a two-thirds (2/3) vote for passage.

The opportunity to vote was there, but…

Former New Mexico chancellor of education, Hanna Skandera, has been trying to re-establish herself as an ed reform name since her June 2017 departure from the New Mexico ed department.

Hanna Skandera

In April 2018, she produced a Walton-funded video about the “next step” for ed reform to “connect to real-life issues and needs,” words in step with the Walton goal of trying to appear grass roots rather than top-down (see the Walton Family Foundation 2015 report and my October 2015 post about the report for more). (The 74 is also credited with funding Skandera’s video, though the Waltons also fund The 74; so, it’s like the Waltons are paying themselves.)

In June 2018, Skandera became editor-in-chief of The Line, a K12 ed publication whose former editor-in-chief was former Los Angeles schools superintendent, John Deasy.

According to the Colorado secretary of state, on January 18, 2018…

Resident of Los Angeles: Vote for Measure EE on June 4.

Measure EE is not “just another tax.” It will bring in $500 million every year in ongoing funds, and is what the teachers and the community fought so hard to get through the strike. LA, don’t leave the job you started on the picket lines unfinished!

Measure EE is desperately needed to give local neighborhood schools the resources to educate children and reduce class sizes. Measure EE will bring the funding we need locally to recruit and retain quality staff and offer our students a well-rounded education, including:

—Lower class sizes

—More arts and music classes

—Cleaner, safer schools

—School nurses and librarians

—Guidance counselors and mental health services for students

—Support for students with disabilities and special needs

Supported by UTLA, Mayor Eric Garcetti, SEIU 99 and others (full list here https://www.yesonee.org), the measure needs 66.7% to…

Shawgi Tell, a Professor in upstate New York, thinks the public needs that charter school failure is widespread, commonplace, and underreported. Even now, mainstream publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal treat charter schools reverentially, as if they know how to perform education miracles.

Professor Tell assembles research showing the frequent failure of charters. 

Open the link to see a great cartoon.

He writes:

It is worth noting that both public schools and privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools are victims of expensive, curriculum-narrowing, time-consuming, high-stakes standardized tests produced by large for-profit corporations that have no idea what a human-centered education looks like. Such corporations are retrogressive and harmful in many ways; they are not concerned with the growth and well-being of children, or the future of society.

The research on how damaging and unsound these expensive corporate tests are is robust, unassailable, and constantly-growing.

High-stakes…

Thanks to Los Angeles blogger Sara Roos for calling my attention to this very interesting article by journalist Rachel Cohen. We have had an extended exchange about the article.

Cohen says that the typical origin story of charter schools credits the idea to AFT President Al Shanker. She shows that the idea was percolating long before Shanker began promoting charters in 1988. The idea of public-private partnerships was in the air in the late 1980s and was the underpinning of what was called Third Way politics, as practiced by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

Cohen does an excellent job of describing the milieu in which the charter idea emerged. Shanker was not its originator but he was an important publicist for the idea. Without his support, charters might never have achieved national attention.

Right-wingers today, as Cohen notes, likes to credit paternity of charters to Shanker, which is amusing…

Cynthia Liu, a journalist in California, writes:

You may hear choice zealots boasting about Jeb Bush’s “Florida Model.” As Tom Ultican explains here, they are delusional or  just making stuff up (to put it politely). 

Ultican relies on Sue Legg’s excellent report and digs down to show that the motivation behind Jeb’s so-called A+ plan was profits and religion, not education.

Jeb Bush and his friends have made Florida into a low-performing mess that can’t attract or retain teachers. But it has become a magnet for profiteers, grifters, and fundamentalists.

Ultican writes:

When the A+ Program was adopted in 1999, Florida had consistently scored among the bottom third of US states on standardized testing. The following two data sets indicate no improvement and Florida now scoring in the bottom fourth…

Last year, 21 percent of Florida’s students were enrolled in private and charter schools. The Florida tax credit scholarships (FTCS) went to 1,700 private schools and were awarded…