Big Education Ape

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

More affluent neighborhoods are creating their own school districts - Vox

More affluent neighborhoods are creating their own school districts - Vox

More affluent neighborhoods are creating their own school districts
The legally sanctioned fencing-out of low-income students of color.

In the past two decades, 128 communities have had a simple idea: to make their own school district.

For many of them, the underlying purpose was to draw a legal fence between their community and a poorer one. Because a large chunk of public education is funded using local property taxes, making your own district with your affluent neighbors means that you’re able to hoard resources — and not share tax dollars with poorer communities of color.

In 2017, I wrote about how a surprising number of these efforts have succeeded.

Since then, 11 more communities have seceded from their districts, according to a report from EdBuild. Another 16 communities are currently in the process of trying to secede. And two states — Indiana and North Carolina — have made it easier for these communities to form their own districts.

“It’s a disturbing trend. We’re seeing legislators making this overtly permissible,” said EdBuild CEO Rebecca Sibilia.

To be clear, school secession isn’t a viral trend yet. Most of the new divisions are in Maine, where Republican Gov. Paul LePage successfully pushed the legislature to lift penalties on communities that left regionalized districts. And some of the seceding districts are doing so for legitimate reasons such as “shifting enrollments and geography,” as EdBuild notes.

But school secession is one of the more brazen examples of affluent communities using their political clout to fence out everyone else. And as leading school segregation writer Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in 2017, “School secessions, at least in the South, trace their roots to the arsenal of tools that white communities deployed to resist the desegregation mandate of the Brown ruling.”

One high-profile secession case was blocked last year, but many others went through

Advocates who oppose this behavior got a big win in 2018 when a federal court blocked an Alabama community from leaving its district.

In 2017, I wrote about a community called Gardendale, which took initial steps to leave the CONTINUE READING: More affluent neighborhoods are creating their own school districts - Vox

Shorting pension payments and teacher salary caps. – Fred Klonsky

Shorting pension payments and teacher salary caps. – Fred Klonsky

SHORTING PENSION PAYMENTS AND TEACHER SALARY CAPS

When the Democratic legislature and Bruce Rauner finally agreed on a full year state budget in his third year in office they included a salary cap of 3% on teachers.

The cap was hidden in the bill – not by the Republicans and Bruce Rauner – by Democratic Party legislative leaders.

The budget, including the salary cap, was passed with full support of the Democrats.

The Democrats, when pressed, explained that they needed something to get Republicans on board to pass a budget.

Naturally, what came to mind was capping teacher salaries.

The Senate has now voted to repeal the 3% teacher salary cap. It is stalled in the Democratic Party controlled House.

What are they waiting for? They have no excuses now.

Meanwhile Democratic Party governor JB Pritzker continues to support a three year pension payment holiday.

He wants to reduce the state’s pension payments by over $800,000 a year for at least the next three years and extend the pension debt payment ramp by 7 years.

He has the support of powerful Democratic Senator Andy Manar.

Manar has recently been parading around as a friend of teachers because he sponsored CONTINUE READING: Shorting pension payments and teacher salary caps. – Fred Klonsky

LeBron James’ I Promise Public School Supports Rising Achievement Among Akron, OH’s Poorest Children | janresseger

LeBron James’ I Promise Public School Supports Rising Achievement Among Akron, OH’s Poorest Children | janresseger

LeBron James’ I Promise Public School Supports Rising Achievement Among Akron, OH’s Poorest Children

LeBron James understands that 90 percent of American children and adolescents are enrolled in public schools. He knows that if you want to support the education of America’s poorest children, you’ll have to do it by improving the experiences of students and teachers in the public schools in our nation’s poorest neighborhoods. Erica Green’s NY Times report on LeBron James’ school in Akron, Ohio, his hometown, is inspiring and measured. It isn’t the story of some kind of one-year, impossible school turnaround, the kind we’ve been led to expect by federal laws and programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Instead it is the bottom-up story of someone who himself experienced educational failure as a young child, figuring out a way to give back.

Now a star in the NBA, LeBron James missed 83 days of school in the fourth grade. He understands that school improvement requires a lot of support. He knows that expectations for improved academic prowess must be incremental, the timeline for measuring improvement reasonable, and acknowledgement for even small successes consistent. Green describes Nataylia Henry, “a fourth-grader (who) missed more than 50 days of school last year because she said she would rather sleep than face bullies at school. This year, her overall attendance rate is 80 percent.” While some school reformers would call a school a failure if this student’s attendance didn’t increase more rapidly, this school celebrates the student’s improvement.

LeBron James’ I Promise School is an Akron City Schools public school; James chose not to underwrite a charter school: “The school’s $2 million budget is funded by the district, roughly the same amount per pupil that it spends in other schools. But Mr. James’s foundation has provided about $600,000 in financial support for additional teaching staff to help reduce class sizes, and an additional hour of after-school programming and tutors.”

James’ vision was for a school to serve young students facing the kind of challenges he faced as a kid. The school is selective: To qualify for the lottery, a student must have been among the school district’s lowest scorers on standardized tests. Nevertheless, the children are making what District officials view as good progress on the Measures of Academic Progress or MAP CONTINUE READING: LeBron James’ I Promise Public School Supports Rising Achievement Among Akron, OH’s Poorest Children | janresseger

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part One | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part One | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part One

Of all the charter school networks in the country, there is none that is more controversial or more secretive than Success Academy. If ‘success’ is defined as high 3-8 state test scores, then Success Academy has earned its name. But critics charge that this ‘success’ comes at the expense of other, more important measures of success.

This past November, a seven part podcast was published by a production company called startup. Soon after it was released, there were some excerpts of some of the most negative parts of the podcast printed on some blogs, but generally it seems to have came and went.

I was very interested in this podcast for a lot of reasons. I’ve been following Success Academy for years and have been piecing together evidence about all the different wrongdoings that this network engages in. Over the years I’ve probably written twenty different blog posts with my findings. I was also interested because last summer I was interviewed by one of the producers of this podcast while they were gathering material. Besides an hour or two of interviews, I also had several follow-up emails with this producer where he asked me to clarify certain arguments. I was curious to see how balanced the eventual product would be.

The podcast runs about seven hours and I listened to it a few months ago for the first time. What I found was a bizarre mix of about six hours of puff piece and one hour of devastating expose. Throughout the episodes the producers generally gave Success Academy the benefit of the doubt any time they could — until eventually even they couldn’t CONTINUE READING: Revealing Podcast About Success Academy — Part One | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Schools Matter: A charter school story

Schools Matter: A charter school story

A charter school story

I want to apologize to Schools Matter readers for my infrequent contributions. I thought once I graduated from law school and passed the most difficult bar examination in the country on my first attempt, that I'd have more time to write. Instead, in addition to my long-time day job, I now have an internship once a week at an education law firm, and I am teaching on Thursday nights at my law school. In a word — I'm swamped. However, I managed to piece together this twitter thread on Monday, that I thought was worth reposting here.

Researching for a case and came across a personal injury settlement between a charter school corporation in the Central Valley and multiple student plaintiffs for some $6-million+. The amount is on the low side considering the horrific injuries some of the students suffered.

It was the typical charter school money-making scam. They had a former employee form an unregistered and uninsured transportation company. The charter's Vice Principle provided one of their family's vehicles to that company. They paid themselves $6K a month from public money to operate a vehicle that had several defective seatbelts. Moreover, they consistently exceeded the vehicle's passenger capacity. Students had to share seats and some had to ride on the floor.

Struck by another vehicle traveling at high speed, the charter corporation's vehicle rolled multiple times and ejected several of the unrestrained students. The injuries were as bad as you could imagine them to be.

This was the inevitable result of putting public money into private hands. Because charter school corporations are privately managed with de minimis oversight, transparency, and accountability, they find ways to channel public revenue streams into CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: A charter school story

Howard Fuller’s Segregated School Vision: Will the Walton Family Pay for It? | deutsch29

Howard Fuller’s Segregated School Vision: Will the Walton Family Pay for It? | deutsch29

Howard Fuller’s Segregated School Vision: Will the Walton Family Pay for It?

Since 2010, Arizona State University (ASU) and Global Silicon Valley (GSV) have held an annual summit, described on the ASU GSV site as “the industry catalyst for elevating dialogue and driving action around raising learning and career outcomes through scaled innovation.”

In 2019, it seems that one of the scaling goals is to increase the number of segregated schools. ASU GSV offered a panel, entitled, “No Struggle, No Progress: An Argument for a Return to Black Schools”:

No Struggle, No Progress An Argument for a Return to Black Schools

speaking:

Jeanne Allen

Howard Fuller

Lloyd Knight

Candice Burns

Description

As racial separation in U.S. schools becomes more pronounced in many places and hate crimes against minorities increase in schools and communities, many education advocates and Black leaders say racial integration is the solution. Challenge your assumptions with this dynamic group of black education reform leaders who have worked to restore quality options for black and brown students. Join civil rights and ed-reform advocate Howard Fuller to kick off this dynamic panel with leaders of successful urban schools.

This session will start with a firestarter from GSV Lifetime Achievement Winner Howard Fuller followed by the panel.

Moderator: Jeanne Allen, Founder & CEO, The Center for Education Reform

Panelists: Candice Burns, Chief Communications Officer, Friendship Public Charter School; Howard Fuller, Director, Institute for the CONTINUE READING: Howard Fuller’s Segregated School Vision: Will the Walton Family Pay for It? | deutsch29

Um, who are Melinda and Bill Gates trying to kid? - The Washington Post

Um, who are Melinda and Bill Gates trying to kid? - The Washington Post

Um, who are Melinda and Bill Gates trying to kid?

What are Melinda and Bill Gates talking about?

In recent public statements, one or both of them have said things about their powerful role in education philanthropy that strains credulity.

Through their Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the two have poured far more money into education projects than any other individuals in the world, at least $2 billion over the past few decades. They have used their fortune to leverage public money to support pet projects and worked with the Obama administration to implement standardized-test-based policies.

Yet, in a new interview in the New York Times, Melinda Gates said she and her husband do not — repeat, do not — have “outsize influence” in public education. When reporter David Marchese said “certainly you have more influence than, say, a group of parents,” Gates replied: “Not necessarily.”

That prompted a “jaw-dropping” tweet from author and journalist Anand Giridharadas, whose latest book is “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.” He wrote:

Jaw-dropping.@melindagates says she and her husband, spending vast sums on education, don’t have “outsize influence.” She also doubts that two billionaires seeking to transform education have any more power than a “group of parents.” True privilege is denying you have it.

Now, let’s go back two months, when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter was published and addressed nine things the couple said surprised them along their philanthropic journey.

This was Surprise #8: “Textbooks are becoming obsolete.”

The two then discuss the issue, not actually proving that textbooks are becoming obsolete — possibly because they aren’t — but instead talking up the virtues of online education. Why would the founder of Microsoft want to tout online education?

The Gates Foundation began its first big effort in this world nearly 20 years ago with what it said was a $650 million investment to break large failing high schools into small schools, on the theory that small schools worked better than large ones. Some do, of course, and some don’t, but in any case, Bill Gates declared in 2009 it hadn’t worked the way he had hoped (with some experts saying the Gateses had ignored fundamental CONTINUE READING: Um, who are Melinda and Bill Gates trying to kid? - The Washington Post

CURMUDGUCATION: Guns Headed For The Classroom

CURMUDGUCATION: Guns Headed For The Classroom

Guns Headed For The Classroom

Of all the bad ideas.

I know there are folks who believe in their heart of hearts that arming teachers will make schools safer, or that putting armed police in the building will be helpful. But there are so many bad signs.

I want to believe that school resource officers can be helpful. Earlier this month, a school shooting was likely averted just up the road because students at the school felt comfortable enough with the SRO to turn in the students who were planning the attack.

But when I see stories like the one of the Chicago cops dragging a sixteen year old student down a flight of stairs, or see the video of a Florida cop body slamming an eleven-year-old, I have to conclude that sooner or later, some child is going to be killed in school.

I have even more misgivings when I see what a rush some states and districts are in to put guns in the hands of teachers.

A school district in Ohio apparently just decided that teachers should be able to carry in schoolafter a three-day twenty-seven hour training. Three days. That seems like... not very much.

But that's still better than Oklahoma, where a bill just came out of committee to allow teachers to have guns in their classrooms with zero-- that zip, nada, none-- hours of training. Previously the state allowed only those withe peace officer or armed security guard certificates to carry, and those require 240 hours of training.

The potential for disaster here is huge. Were I still teaching, I'm not sure that finding out my neighbor was packing in the classroom next door wouldn't have me dusting off my resume. Guns in CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Guns Headed For The Classroom

Choosing Democracy: Study Shows California Significantly Underfunds Its Schools

Choosing Democracy: Study Shows California Significantly Underfunds Its Schools

Study Shows California Significantly Underfunds Its Schools

The problem of the SCUSD budget crisis is not a problem of teacher health benefits. Rather It is the failure of California School Finance.

Present funding, including LCFF is substantially unfair, inadequate, and unequal.

The report, “The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems,’ from Rutgers University shows that California ranks 41^stout the 50 states in state fiscal effort, and 47^thin adequacy of funding.

These shortages produce the strikes in Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento and more to come.

Teachers are insisting that their districts provide at least adequate funding for the students. This inadequacy is seen more clearly in out of control class sizes.

You would think that California, the richest state in the nation, could at least get to average.

We need a new tax structure – like the Schools and Communities First proposal, to fix the budget problems and properly educate our children.

The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems

NEW REPORT FINDS THAT EDUCATION FUNDING IN MOST STATES FALLS WELL BELOW ADEQUATE LEVELS

[ California ranks at the bottom on most measures !]
WASHINGTON – Most states’ education finance systems do not target resources at districts that serve high-poverty students, and funding systems in virtually all states fail to provide adequate support to all but the most affluent districts, according to a new report released today by researchers at the Albert Shanker Institute and Rutgers Graduate School of Education.
Over the past decade or so, a political consensus, backed by high-quality empirical research, has started to emerge about the importance of adequate and equitable funding for U.S. public schools. While there is plenty of important debate about how money should be spent, virtually all of the best policy options require investment. The idea that “money doesn’t matter” in school funding is no longer defensible.
This new consensus, however, is not reflected in most states’ school finance systems. The report, “The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Funding Systems,” evaluates states’ systems using three “core” indicators:

Effort: How much do states spend as a proportion of their total economic capacity?
Adequacy: Do states spend enough to meet common outcome goals?
Progressivity: Do states target more resources at the districts with the most need?

These three measures are calculated using data from roughly a dozen sources, and control for various factors – such as Census poverty, labor market costs, population density, and district size – that affect the value of the education dollar. The data presented in the report apply to the 2015-16 school year.
The authors find, predictably, that states vary widely on all three measures. There are states, such as Wyoming, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, in which education funding is relatively adequate and distributed progressively. In most states, however, the results are disappointing and, in some cases, deeply troubling.

Highlights

Effort

On average, states devote about 3.5 percent of their gross state products to K-12 education.
These effort levels vary between roughly 2.5 percent in Hawaii and Arizona to over 5 percent in Wyoming and Vermont.
Adequacy

Virtually all states spend far less than what the authors estimate would be required for students in their higher-poverty districts to CONTINUE READING: Choosing Democracy: Study Shows California Significantly Underfunds Its Schools

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