Schools That Hinder Opt Outs Are Participating in Their Own Demise

April 18, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Local Control, Opt Out, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Politics, Poverty, private schools, privatization, protest, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers education, Opt Out, Pennsylvania, public schools, standardized testing, test refusal

You can’t be a public school and still ignore the will of the people.

That’s the problem at too many districts across the country where narrow-minded administrators are waging an all out war on parents opting their children out of standardized testing.

The federal government still requires all states to give high stakes tests to public school students in grades 3-8 and once in high school. So states require their districts to give the tests – despite increasing criticism over the assessments’ validity, age appropriateness, racial and economic bias and the very manner in which the scores are used to justify narrowing the curriculum, school privatization, funding cuts, teacher firings and closing buildings serving the most underprivileged children.

In response, parents from coast to coast continue to fight the havoc being forced upon their communities by refusing the tests for their children.

Yet instead of welcoming this rush of familial interest, at some schools we find principals, superintendents and every level of functionary in between doing whatever they can to impede parental will.

Most administrators don’t actually go so far as out right refusal of a parent’s demand to opt out their children.

That’s especially true in states where the right to opt out is codified in the law.

Three states – California, Utah, and Wisconsin – have enacted legislation permitting parents to opt their children out of standardized tests. However, at least five others, including my home of Pennsylvania, have laws respecting parents’ opt-out wishes for certain reasons. In others states there may not be specific legislation permitting it, but none have laws forbidding it either. At worst, test refusal is an act of civil disobedience like tearing down a confederate monument or freedom rides.

In Pennsylvania, the school code specifies that parents can refuse the test for their children for “religious reasons.” Those reasons and the religion in question never need be named. Citing “religious reasons” is rationale enough.

Consider:

“PA School Code Chapter 4.4(d):

(4) …If upon inspection of a State assessment parents or guardians find the assessment to be in conflict with their religious belief and wish their students to be excused from the assessment, the right of the parents or guardians will not be denied upon written request that states the objection to the applicable school district superintendent, charter school chief executive officer or AVTS director.”

So when a parent provides just such an objection, it’s there in black and white that administrators must comply with that request.

However, some administrators are trying to game the system. When the other students are taking the state standardized test, the opt out students are rounded up and forced instead to take a district created assessment that just so happens to look almost exactly like the test their parents explicitly asked they not be subjected to.

So in my state, some parents have opted their children out of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) or Keystone Exams, but administrators are requiring them instead to take an assessment they cobbled together themselves that closely resembles the PSSA and/or Keystone Exam.

They take a little bit from the PSSA, a bit from the Partnership for Assessment of Reading Readiness for College and Careers (PARRC) test, a question or two from the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and voila! A brand new Frankenstein’s monster of standardized assessment.

But that’s not all. Some districts go one step further. They tie the results of this bogus “district” assessment with class placement. The results of the faux test are used to determine whether students are placed in the remedial, academic or the honors class in a given subject (English Language Arts, Math or Science) in the next grade.

Does that violate the law? Parents did not want their children to be assessed with a standardized test, and that’s exactly what the school did anyway. The only difference is the name of the standardized test they used.

I am not a lawyer, but I’ve contacted several. The answer I’ve gotten is that this may not be technically illegal, but it does at least violate the spirit of the law.

Districts are given a certain latitude to determine their own curriculum and assessments. This kind of runaround is ugly, petty and possibly just on the line of legality.

But our administrators are not done. Not only are they requiring such students to take a cobbled together standardized assessment, when children are done, they are forced to do hours of test prep for the state assessment that their parents refused for them.

Imagine opting out of the PSSA and then being forced to spend that time preparing for that very test. Imagine refusing to allow your children to take the Keystone Exam but then having them forced to prepare for it instead.

Petty, small-minded, punitive and – in this case – possibly illegal.

The school code is specifically against this. From the same section (4.4):

“(d) School entities shall adopt policies to assure that parents or guardians have the following:

(3) …The right to have their children excused from specific instruction that conflicts with their religious beliefs, upon receipt by the school entity of a written request from the parent or guardians.”

Again, I am not a lawyer, but it seems pretty clear that this, at least, is a violation of the law.

They can request their children not be given specific instruction – in this case test prep. Yet that’s exactly what administrators are doing anyway.

So what are opt out parents to do? Should they lawyer up?

Possibly. Though no one likes to have to take their own school to court. Any monetary damages thus recovered come from the collective pot that should go to help all students learn. It’s unfortunate that some administrators play so freely with taxpayer dollars when it would be a simple matter to safeguard them AND respect parental rights.

A better course of action may be for opt out parents in such situations to seek redress directly from the school board.

School directors are elected officials, after all. They may not be appraised of the actions of the administrators in their employ.

And that is really where the buck stops. If school directors don’t approve of this sort of chicanery, they can easily put a stop to it.

These are public schools. They are supposed to be run by the public. Our democracy is supposed to be what defines us. We are run by the people, for the people.

We’re not some charter school where school directors are appointed to their positions, hold their meetings in private and rarely if ever have to account for their decisions.

It’s shocking that in an age when public schools are often set against privatized ones that we’d allow such foolishness.

We need to set ourselves apart. Instead of denying parental requests, we should go out of our way to accommodate them.

Parents could, after all, remove their children and try their luck elsewhere.

At charter schools, they would probably get an even worse welcome. After all, most such schools pride themselves on their test scores and test prep curriculum having kicked out any students who don’t score well.

However, parents of means could enroll their children in private or parochial schools that are not required by law to even take these high stakes tests.

I’m not recommending that course of action. These schools are expensive, restrictive, insular and extremely racially and economically segregated.

But how short sighted must public school administrators be if they play these sorts of games with parents and children in just such an environment?

Any public school leader who wars against opt outs is participating in their own schools demise.

This is doubly so at schools serving high poverty populations.

Children of the poor and minorities historically get lower test scores than those from wealthier families. These tests are used to justify budget cuts and firing school staff – including these administrators.

Opting out of testing is one way to deny this data to the state so that they can’t use it against the school.

Certainly having high numbers of students opting out can, itself, become an excuse for punitive action from the state. But nowhere in the country has it ever actually happened.

State legislatures, too, are run by majority rule. The same with the federal government.

Our lawmakers have no authority to tell voters they can’t opt their children out of testing. It is the voters who are the boss.

We’d all best remember that.

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

School Accountability Begins With the People Who Make the Rules: A Code of Conduct for Politicians and Test Makers

March 21, 2019March 22, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, edtech, Education, Learning, Parents, Pennsylvania, privatization, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Value Added Measures, VAM #FairFundingPA, Code of Conduct, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, education, high stakes testing, politicians, Politics, public schools, school funding, schools, standardized testing, teachers, teaching to the test, test makers, Test Prep, test-based accountability

Standardized testing is all about accountability.

We’ve got to keep schools accountable for teaching.

We’ve got to keep students accountable for learning.

It’s kind of a crazy idea when you stop to think about it – as if teachers wouldn’t teach and students wouldn’t learn unless someone was standing over them with a big stick. As if adults got into teaching because they didn’t want to educate kids or children went to school because they had no natural curiosity at all.

So we’ve got to threaten them into getting in line – students, teachers: march!

But that’s not even the strangest part. It’s this idea that that is where accountability stops.

No one has to keep the state or federal government accountable for providing the proper resources.

No one has to keep the testing companies accountable for creating fair and accurate assessments.

It’s just teachers and students.

So I thought I’d fix that with a “Code of Conduct for Politicians and Test Makers.”

After all, that’s what we do when we want to ensure someone is being responsible – we remind them of their responsibilities.

You see, the state and federal government are very concerned about cheating.

Not the kind of cheating where the super rich pay off lawmakers to rig an accountability system against the poor and minorities. No. Just the kind of cheating where teachers or students try to untie their hands from behind their backs.

They’re very concerned about THAT.

When you threaten to take away a school’s funding and fire teachers based on test scores, you tend to create an environment that encourages rampant fraud and abuse.

So the government requires its public servants to take on-line courses in the ethics of giving standardized tests. We have to sit through canned demonstrations of what we’re allowed to do and what we aren’t allowed to do. And when it’s all over, we have to take a test certifying that we understand.

Then after we proctor an exam, we have to sign a statement swearing that we’re abiding by these rules to ensure “test security.”

This year, for the first time, I’m supposed to put my initials on the answer sheets of all of my students’ Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests to prove…. I don’t know. That I was there and if anything went wrong, it’s my fault. Burn the witch. That sort of thing.

Even our students have to demonstrate that they’re abiding by the rules. Children as young as five have to mark a bubble on their test signifying that they’ve read and understood the Code of Conduct for Test Takers.

I still don’t understand how that’s Constitutional.

Forcing children to sign a legal document without representation or even without their parents or guardians present – it sure looks like a violation of their civil rights.

But that’s what accountability looks like when you only require certain people to be accountable.

So back to my crazy idea.

Perhaps the corporate flunkies actually designing and profiting off these tests should be held accountable, too. So should lawmakers requiring all this junk.

Maybe they should have to sign a “Code of Conduct for Politicians and Test Makers” modeled after the one the rest of us peons have to use to sign our lives away.

Here’s how it might look:

CODE OF CONDUCT FOR POLITICIANS AND TEST MAKERS:

Do…

-Listen to the complaints, concerns and criticisms of parents, teachers and students about the questions and assessments you’re creating.

–Ask advice from education researchers and all stakeholders to ensure the questions you’re designing are backed up by psychological, neurological, sociological and all associated research on child development.

-Read each question you create carefully to ensure it is not simply multiple choice and instead assesses deeper understanding of concepts and skills. Also be sure that all open ended items and writing prompts allow for a multitude of answers and don’t simply ask the test taker to guess what the test maker is thinking.

-Be careful when writing your questions to make sure you have NOT left misspellings or grammatical mistakes in place that would unnecessarily increase confusion for test takers and thereby invalidate the results.

–Check and double check to make sure you have created a fair and accurate assessment before giving it to students to evaluate their learning.

-Report any suspected cheating to a certified watchdog group and the media if you find any evidence or have any suspicion that anyone has created test items purely to enrich the corporation you work for or the privatization-testing-prison industrial complex.

-If you’re a lawmaker who’s voted for annual testing, take the assessment annually yourself to prove that it is an adequate test of basic student knowledge of which as a duly elected representative you should clearly pass. Publish your score prominently in the media to prove the test’s efficacy.

DO NOT…

-Have notes in your possession from special interests such as (but not limited to) the testing corporations, the publishing industry and/or the ed tech industry before, during or after voting for legislation that promotes the very same standardized testing and testing remediation on which these industries profit.

-Have any (approved or otherwise) electronic devises that tabulate previous test questions and prescribe reusing those that have resulted in answer curves consistent with previous tests thereby continuing the trend of selecting against students of color, the poor and other groups and/or subgroups.

-Share inside information about the test or previous test questions with anyone that you do not also make freely available to the public. It is not your job to create a remediation market and/or cash in on the testing apparatus you are creating.

-Dissuade students from talking with others about questions after the test. They are human beings with rights. It is perfectly natural for them to talk and harmless for them to do so after a testing session is over.

-Take notes on individuals criticizing or opting out of testing with the purpose of punishing them for their dissent. This is a democratic process and you will welcome discussion, criticism and dissent.

-Use the bubbles in the answer booklet for anything at all. In fact, throw them away. It’s 2019. Surely we can find a better way to assess children than multiple choice questions answered by filling in bubbles on a sheet of paper with a number 2 pencil!

–Conduct an online testing session unless you are 100% positive that the information input by the students and collected about the students is secure, will be secure and cannot be shared with advertisers, corporations or any other entity, and only with a certainty that this data will not be put in any database in a manner that could identify individual test takers or otherwise violate privacy laws.

-In fact, you know what? Don’t use standardized tests at all to assess student learning – especially not connected to high stakes. Instead rely on classroom grades and teacher observations for student assessment. Use indexes and audits of school resources to determine whether they are doing their best to teach students and whether lawmakers have done enough to ensure they are receiving fair and equitable resources.

What do you think? Would any of them sign off on this?

Pam Harbin Wants to Go From Pittsburgh School Board Watchdog to School Board Member

March 12, 2019March 12, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, bloggers, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, Feminism, Labor, Learning, LGBT, Local Control, Network for Public Education, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, school closings, School Funding, School to Prison Pipeline, school vouchers, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Teach for America, Teachers, Unions, voting Allegheny County, Allegheny County Democratic Committee, education, Education Rights Network, Election, Evolve Coaching, Great Public Schools-Pittsburgh, Journey for Justice, Local Task Force on the Right to Education, Network for Public Education, One Pennsvlvania, Pam Harbin, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, school board, teachers, voting

My friend Pam Harbin is trying to undergo a startling metamorphosis.

She wants to transform from an education activist into a Pittsburgh School Director.

Now that Board President Lynda Wrenn is stepping down after 4 years, city voters in District 4 will have to decide whether Harbin can make the change. The election is on May 21.

Residents in parts of Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, Shadyside and North Oakland already know Harbin as a fierce warrior for children’s civil rights, the plight of disabled kids and authentic public schools.

I’ve known Pam, personally, for years in my own role as an education activist. Though I don’t live in the city, I’ve participated in numerous collective actions to fight for the schools all our children deserve. And right beside me in every case – often in front of me – was Pam.

I may not live in the district, but I wish I could vote for her. Harbin is an amazing leader with boundless energy, piercing intelligence, a deep knowledge of education policy, an advanced degree in finance and marketing, and an impressive track record of education justice achievements.

“I am deeply concerned for our system of public education,” she says. “The status quo isn’t working for all children. Thankfully, there are many people here in Pittsburgh and across the country who are fighting for investment in, and transformation of, our public schools. Unfortunately, their efforts are hindered by the well-funded organizations who fight for public school disinvestment, privatization, and for the elimination of teachers’ right to unionize.”

For the past 12 years, Harbin has been at the forefront of every major battle for the future of Pittsburgh’s public schools and the rights of its students.

Harbin was instrumental in pushing city school board directors to enact a suspension ban from Pk-2nd grade for minor non-violent conduct. She successfully fought to stop the district from implementing a physical restraint protocol that wasn’t trauma informed. She successfully fought against a policy that would have allowed school police officers to carry guns. She supported a successful Sanctuary Schools Policy for immigrant students. She also supported changes to the districts policies that would better welcome and include Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ students, including a change that allows students to use the bathroom that best fits their own gender identity.

Harbin and her coalition of local activists even made national news when they stopped the district from contracting with Teach for America, stopped the closing of 10 schools (after 23 were previously closed), pushed the board to hire a new Superintendent using an inclusive process that relied heavily on community input, and led the fight for a Community School Policy and the creation of 8 Community Schools.

Harbin has two challengers in the election: Anna Batista, a corporate consultant at Highstreet Consulting and Ashley Priore, a 19-year-old first year student at the University of Pittsburgh studying Business and English, who started a successful after school chess program for girls.

But despite facing a crowded field, Harbin has earned every organizational endorsement she has sought thus far, including the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, the Young Democrats of Allegheny County, the Stonewall Democrats and the Network for Public Education—an organization that frequently reposts my own writing as an education blogger and which is on the frontlines of education justice nationwide.

Harbin is one of the most experienced education leaders ever to run for school board in the city. She co-founded the Education Rights Network (ERN), a parent-led organization working for fully resourced, inclusive and quality education for students throughout Pennsylvania. The ERN is part of One Pennsylvania, an organization that unites low income and working class activists to tackle the fundamental economic justice and political problems of local communities.

“Our members are workers, students, parents, seniors, people with disabilities, and retirees who are excited to learn, collaborate, and build power,” she says. “We follow the money, confront the power, and make the change.”

ERN is a member of Great Public Schools Pittsburgh, a coalition of community, faith, and labor organizations working together to create sustainable public schools in Pittsburgh—an alliance which Harbin also helped to found in 2013. Great Public Schools is affiliated on the national level with the Journey for Justice Alliance, the Dignity in Schools Campaign, and the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools.

Harbin is also a member and past Co-Chair of the Pittsburgh Local Task Force on the Right to Education (LTF), a parent-majority organization that works with administrators of Pittsburgh Public Schools and community agencies to improve services for students with disabilities.

And she serves on the board of directors and was past President of Evolve Coaching (formerly Arts for Autism Foundation of Pittsburgh), supporting individuals with disabilities and their communities through education, employment, and the arts.

No one else in the race—and maybe in the whole city—has a resume like Harbin’s.

Harbin believes her years of leadership for and service to Pittsburgh students and families have provided her with the needed foundation for a transition from community leader to school board member. She has attended or streamed more than 2,000 hours of school board meetings. She has served on Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) district-wide advisory committees, including the Community Schools Steering Committee, Envisioning Educational Excellence Advisory Committee, Parental Involvement Policy Committee, Excellence for All Steering Committee, and the Special Education Delivery Model Advisory Committee. And through these many committees and organizations Harbin has helped more than 100 individual families secure an IEP or a 504 plan for their children—in part because she understands better than most the byzantine world of public school special education services.

No one is better suited to this position than Harbin. I literally wish we could clone her and have her fill every vacancy on the board. She is that qualified, that experienced, and that effective.

If this sounds a bit like a love letter, it kind of is.

I have many fond memories of fighting the power alongside Pam Harbin. I remember organizing events through Yinzercation with Pam, even canvasing local candidates door-to-door with her and my (then) 9-year-old daughter. No matter what, you could always count on Pam to be there for children.

“When our public schools are strong, our children and community thrive,” she says. “We have many great Pittsburgh Public Schools, teachers, and programs. But, in each school, there are children who can’t excel because their individual needs have not been met. We must do better.”

“We must remove the barriers that keep all of our children from fulfilling their dreams. This requires transformational, sustainable change in policy and practice at the local, state, and national level.”

If anyone can make that change happen, it’s Harbin. As someone who has a degree in finance, who is an experienced negotiator and a proven coalition builder, she is uniquely qualified to do so from within the board as she has been successful doing so from outside of it.

She has an ambitious set of goals and priorities if elected:

-Strengthening relationships between all stake-holders with an emphasis on child wellness.

-Defining success beyond standardized test scores to include authentic education practices, addressing trauma, disengagement, hunger, the quality of school food programs, the condition of our buildings and bathrooms, and children’s need for exercise and play.

-Achieving smaller class sizes and a smaller ratio of kids to adults in each building with more teachers, counselors, social workers, paraprofessionals, nurses, librarians, and other staff that keeps the building functioning at its best.

-Restoring funding to art, music, physical education, and other programming that keep kids wanting to come to school.

-Stopping criminalization and over-policing of students, and stopping the use of ineffective punishments that keep children away from their learning and put them on the track to drop out, to jail, and to poverty.

-Intentionally recruiting, retaining, and supporting educators of color and those who identify as LGBTQ.

-Working to make teacher mentoring, new teacher induction, and professional development better to make the very best use of teachers’ time and address key gaps in preparation to teach the wide spectrum of students in the district.

-Making teacher evaluation fair and consistent, not based solely on test scores or value added models.

-Ensuring teachers (and all school staff) are well paid, treated fairly, and valued for the critical work they do for children every day.

-Protecting collective bargaining rights so teachers (and all staff) have a voice to improve their schools – because teaching conditions are students’ learning conditions.

-Investing in the proven Community Schools model and work collaboratively with community partners to bring resources to each school.

-Working at the state level to force our legislators to finally provide adequate, equitable, and sustainable funding for public education and stop efforts to dismantle public education through vouchers and other privatization schemes.

-Building coalitions to improve the flawed state Charter School Law – Charter Schools must have more accountability for the delivery of education to all students, including disabled children, English Language Learners, and kids who are homeless or who are in foster care.

I could literally go on about Pam for another 10,000 words. Easy.

But let me close with this.

Harbin began her journey as an education leader when she started advocating for her own children at their first elementary school—Liberty elementary in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh. She found that she could make a difference for a few children at a time by throwing herself into volunteer work at the school.

But then she realized that if she wanted to make a difference for more than just a few children that she needed to work with others. Indeed, to do this work effectively Pam has had to work with people of different backgrounds, races, opinions and ideologies. She has had to listen to others, to compromise, to build bridges, and to prioritize common goals in each of her coalitions. In short, she gets things done.

And she’s been doing that for more than a dozen years.

Not because she has no choice. Not because anyone is paying her to do so. Not because doing so is bringing her any riches or fame.

But because it has been the right thing to do.

And that’s the best endorsement I can imagine.

NOTE: Special thanks to Professor Kathleen M. Newman who helped edit this article.

Click HERE to join Pam’s campaign!

Betsy DeVos’s Right Wing School Indoctrination Program

March 2, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Charter Schools, church and state, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Florida, home school, immigration, Learning, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philosophy, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Refugees, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Students, Teachers alternative facts, Betsy DeVos, Democrats, education, Florida, free thought, indoctrination, Pennsylvania, Politics, Republicans, school vouchers, separation of church and state, Students, Tax Credits, teachers

What do you do when thinking people reject your political ideology?

You get rid of thinking people.

That’s Betsy DeVos’ plan to rejuvenate and renew the Republican Party.

The billionaire heiress who bought her position as Donald Trump’s Education Secretary plans to spend $5 billion of your tax dollars on private, religious and parochial schools.

This would be federal tax credits to fund scholarships to private and religious institutions – school vouchers in all but name.

It’s a federal child indoctrination program to ensure that the next generation has an increasing number of voters who think science is a lie, white supremacy is heritage and the Bible is history – you know, people just gullible enough to believe a reality show TV star who regularly cheats on his many wives with porn stars is God’s chosen representative on Earth. A measure to make child kidnapping, imprisonment and wrongful death seem like a measured response to backward immigration policy. A measure to make collusion and fraternization with the world’s worst dictators and strongmen seem like global pragmatism.

To make matters even more galling, consider the timing of DeVos’ proposal.

In the beginning of February, Donald Trump Jr. criticized “loser teachers” who he said were indoctrinating school children into – gasp – socialism.

At the end of that same month, DeVos proposed funding Christian madrasas from sea-to-shinning-sea.

Apparently indoctrination is just fine for conservatives so long as it’s the right kind of indoctrination.

But even beyond the blatant hypocrisy, this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the differences between public and private schools.

Florida’s GOP Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted that if a school receives public funding – whether it be a charter or voucher institution – it is a public school.

To which DeVos tweeted her glowing approval.

This makes a few things strikingly clear: either (1) these folks have no idea what happens at authentic public schools or (2) they’re pretending not to know so as to further their political and financial ambitions.

Authentic public schools do not indoctrinate children into socialism or any other ideology.

They’ll teach what socialism is and how it has functioned historically without commenting on its merits or deficiencies. It’s up to individual students to decide whether it’s a good thing or not.

Public schools are supposed to be ideologically neutral.

At most, they teach children how to think. They teach media literacy, skepticism and critical thinking skills.

If that leads kids away from Republican orthodoxy, it’s not the fault of the teacher or the child. It’s a problem with your orthodoxy.

You can’t proclaim the benefits of a marketplace of ideas and then decry that too many ideas are on display.

Nor can you conflate the way a school is funded with what that school actually does and how it teaches.

There is a world of difference between authentic public schools and their market based alternatives – especially the parochial and religious variety.

It’s the difference between telling students the answer and getting them to think about the answer. It’s the difference between total certainty and doubt, between trite truths and useful skills that can help you arrive at deeper truths.

When you ask children to think, you never know what conclusions they’ll draw. When you tell children what to think, you know exactly what conclusions you want them to hold.

Authentic public schools do not indoctrinate. Conservatives graduate from these hallowed halls the same as liberals, moderates and the politically checked out. The difference is that in a world where facts are prized and logic is exercised, conservatism becomes less appealing.

I’m not saying liberalism or progressivism is guaranteed, but they are certainly more fact-based world views than their opposites.

The same cannot be said of the kinds of institutions DeVos wants to bankroll.

They educate kids behind closed doors with little to no transparency for the public about how their money is being spent. But word seeps out of the cracks in the system.

We’ve seen the textbooks they use to teach. Their graduates have returned to the public square to tell us about the instruction they received.

The American Christian Education (ACE) group provides fundamentalist school curriculum to thousands of religious schools throughout the country. Included in this curriculum is the A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press textbooks. A Beka publishers, in particular, reported that about 9,000 schools nationwide purchase their textbooks.

In their pages you’ll find glowing descriptions of the Ku Klux Klan, how the massacre of Native Americans saved many souls, African slaves had really good lives, homosexuals are no better than rapists and child molesters, and progressive attempts at equal rights such as Brown vs. Board of Education were illegal and misguided. You know – all the greatest Trump campaign hits!

We should not be funding the spread of such ignorance.

Frankly, DeVos’ ambitions have little chance of coming to fruition.

Two years ago, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, she wanted to spend $20 billion on the same nonsense. Her party refused to back her.

Now with Democrats in control of the House, it seems even more unlikely that her plan will pass.

But sadly smaller scale versions of it have been allowed by state legislatures throughout the country – often with full support from Democrats.

My own state of Pennsylvania spends $125 million in taxpayer dollars on the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs to send children to private/religious schools. And every year legislators ask for more.

Why any Democrat would support conservative indoctrination programs is beyond me.

And this is true even though indoctrination is sometimes unavoidable.

To a limited degree, it may even be desirable. You might even say it’s a normal part of growing up.

Even the most fair-minded parents often want their children to hold at least some of the same values as they do. They want to be able to relate to their kids and view them as a continuation of the kinds of lives they lived.

But what’s okay for parents is not okay for governments.

If Mom and Dad want their kids to have a Biblical education, they should pay for it. The burden should not be shouldered by society since it’s not in society’s interest.

Governments have no right taking public money and using it to prop up private interests. And that’s exactly what this is.

It is political and religious interest. It is a way to circumvent skepticism and free thought.

It’s a way to ensure that in a time where information flows freely and dogmas crumble, people like Donald Trump continue to be elected.

Still can’t get enough Gadfly? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

What Will It Take to Get Equitable School Funding in Pennsylvania – a Statewide Teachers Strike!?

February 15, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Civil Rights, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, Election Reform, Labor, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, protest, Republican, School Funding, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Strike, Students, Teachers, Tom Wolf, union busting, Unions, voting #FairFundingPA, education, Gerrymandering, Governor Tom Wolf, Harrisburg, PA Legislature, PA schools, Pennsylvania, school funding, schools, teachers, teachers strike

What if every public school teacher in Pennsylvania refused to come to work on Monday?

What if instead they took to the streets with signs and placards, bullhorns and chanted slogans.

Maybe:

“Hey! HEY! Ho! HO! This Unfair Funding Has to Go!”
Or:

“What do we want!? FAIR FUNDING! When do we want it? YESTERDAY!”

The problem is that from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and all places in between, the Keystone state has the most unequal school funding system in the country. And no one in Harrisburg seems able and/or willing to do a damn thing about it.

Nor is anyone going to do much again this year.

Gov. Tom Wolf didn’t mention it once last week during the Democrat’s first budget speech to the legislature after being re-elected.

Don’t get me wrong. He’s not exactly ignoring the issue. His newly proposed budget asks for a $200 million increase in education funding.

But that’s far from what’s needed to heal the billions of dollars schools lost during the massive budget cuts of Tom Corbett, the former Republican governor, nor does it address the underlying inequity of how we fund these schools in the first place.

Sadly, failing to fix education funding gaps is par for the course in Harrisburg.

Every year Democrats complain about the problem, suggest repairing it, and then are denied everything but an incremental increase by the Republican-controlled legislature.

Every year, that is, until this one.

This is the first time Democrats have seemingly given up on solving the problem and just proposed the incremental increase that they suspect Republicans will approve.

It’s a pitiful situation to accept as status quo.

One could argue that it’s the electorate’s fault. After all, if they keep voting for Republicans that make it clear they don’t support equity in education, that must represent the will of the people.

Except it doesn’t. Fair funding is popular among voters everywhere in the Commonwealth. And it’s one of the reasons they elected and re-elected Wolf. However, when it comes to state government, legislative districts are so gerrymandered, the will of the people gets ignored.

In November, Democrats got 381,000 more Pennsylvania votes than Republicans to represent them in the state House. But Republicans still kept the majority.

So what can you do when your voice is smothered by red tape?

You can turn to the Democratic governor who is the only thing stopping the opposition from gutting schools even further. You can ask him to push lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to get off their collective asses and do their jobs.

But Wolf does not seem ready to spend his political capital in this way.

According to an Associated Press article by Marc Levy:

“For his part, Wolf’s office says he remains open to a discussion with the Legislature on making school funding fairer. However, someone else may have to carry the torch.”

Just who could this “someone else” be?

As usual, it may have to be the Commonwealth’s teachers.

As in every state, when governments and communities can’t or won’t do right by their children, educators step up.

We buy classroom supplies, we feed the hungry, we dry the tears, and when all else fails we put our jobs on the line and strike until school boards, legislatures and governors do the right thing.

Some have suggested that’s what’s needed here.

There have been at least nine large-scale teachers strikes across various states in the last 12 months. This includes actions in Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Virginia, West Virginia, and – most recently – Los Angeles, California, and Denver, Colorado.

They began in Republican dominated states but have spread to those governed mostly by Democrats.

The Denver strike ended Thursday morning with an agreement between the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and Denver Public Schools. After three days on the picket line, teachers may be returning to their classrooms having achieved their goals.

In today’s climate of dark money and political gridlock, collective action seems the only way to get anything done.

Perhaps we need an army of the state’s 123,000 educators to walk out of their classes in unison demanding fair funding for our most vulnerable students.

Such a move would be unprecedented. To my knowledge, teachers strikes in the Commonwealth have always involved educators and staff at one of the hundreds of districts, not a unified action of teachers throughout the state. A movement on this scale would require cooperation and buy in from the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT). And union bosses are rarely motivated to endorse such measures without being forced to it by grassroots pressure from members.

Moreover, it would put teachers unions in a dangerous position. Each district contract has a no strike/no lockout clause guaranteeing that membership won’t walkout during the life of a contract. Where we’re seeing these major nationwide strikes either the contract has expired like in Denver and Los Angeles or they’re so-called “Right-to-Work” states without these explicit worker protections.

It’s doubtful the state could actually fire and replace the more than 100,000 teachers in its employ, but the worst case scenario for a state-wide strike in Pennsylvania would be the invalidation of all existing contracts, the loss of arbitration, grievances, collective bargaining and even putting retirement at risk.

That’s a lot to ask of educators – though creative organizers could find ways to avoid or mitigate the risk – for instance with a sick out or mass demonstrations on weekends or holidays.

I – for one – am sick of watching my middle school students overstuffed into classrooms with crumbling infrastructure and meager resources while a few miles down the road the rich kids have small classes and schools that look like palaces. I’ll bet there are a lot of teachers and parents who feel the same way.

Perhaps it’s time for us to take to the streets.

Perhaps it’s long past time.

When I say the state is the most inequitable in the country, that’s not hyperbole.

It’s according to several studies done over multiple years by groups like the Associated Press and the U.S. Department of Education.

More than any other, the Keystone State gives a boost to rich kids and a boot to poor ones.

Why?

You have to understand where the money comes from to educate kids in America.

Public schools have basically three revenue streams – the federal government, the state and local neighborhoods.

The federal government pays about 10% of the cost across the board. The problem in Pennsylvania is that the state isn’t meeting its obligation thereby forcing local neighborhoods to shoulder most of the cost.

Pennsylvania state government pays a ridiculously low percentage of the bill – 38%. That’s the 46th lowest in the country. The national average is 51%.

In rich neighborhoods, this is no problem. In middle class communities, it’s not much of one. But in poor communities, there isn’t enough money to make up the difference. Their kids have no choice but to do without.

So kids from rich communities get everything. Kids from middle class communities get most of what they need. And kids from poor communities get whatever scraps are left at the bottom of the barrel.

It’s trickle down economics – Pennsylvania style.

And it’s an intolerable situation!

According to an Associated Press analysis of 2016-17 state data on school district spending, middle class districts spend as much as $673 more per student than poor districts. Rich districts spend about $4,300 more per student.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, poor schools in the Commonwealth spend 33 percent less on their students than rich ones. That’s a significantly larger difference than the next-closest state, Vermont, where the spending difference between rich and poor schools is only 18 percent. Three other states — Illinois, Missouri and Virginia — have gaps of 17 percent.

We can’t keep kicking minorities and the destitute to the curb. We can’t keep giving the rich and middle class every opportunity to succeed while depriving the poor of that same chance.

Wolf, the Democrats and a few Republicans have tried several times to fix the problem.

First, they attempted large increases in education funding to catch up to where funding would be if the Corbett cuts hadn’t happened coupled with the rising costs caused by inflation.

In 2015, the governor proposed a $400 million increase but funded it with a tax increase on the rich that almost all Republicans refused.

Then he tried to bring the state share of education funding up to 50% by using a more equitable tax plan. He proposed cutting property taxes in poorer districts and replacing them with higher state taxes elsewhere. However, Republicans saw it as an opportunity to completely eliminate property taxes and cut school funding even further. It ended in a stalemate and another incremental education increase.

If the legislature wouldn’t approve the necessary spending increases to heal the cuts it made under Corbett, Wolf at least wanted lawmakers to approve dividing the money up more fairly among the state’s 500 school districts.

A funding formula had been approved four years ago to reflect changes in school district attendance and wealth that had been ignored for a quarter century. This would result in more support for poorer schools and less for wealthier ones.

And there’s the sticking point. Lawmakers wouldn’t approve a plan that would provide less funding to 70% of the state’s districts – but neither would they increase school spending to make up the difference.

You’d think that such legislative gridlock might make voters lose hope. However, there is a mass movement of people at the grassroots level demanding change for our children.

Most notably, the parents of six school children, six school districts, the NAACP and a rural schools group are suing the state over education funding.

The lawsuit – now in its fourth year – is scheduled for trial before the state Supreme Court in 2020. So at best, relief is still a ways in the future. Many are hoping justices will order the legislature to dramatically increase its investment in public schools. But the outcome is certainly not a sure thing.

Could striking teachers in red and blue states be showing us in Pennsylvania the solution?

Might it be time to raise our teacher voices in the purple states, too?

And is there a path to equity through collective action that doesn’t hang teachers out to dry?

Pittsburgh Christian Academy Tries to Become a Charter School to Cash in on Taxpayer Funding

February 5, 2019February 5, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, church and state, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Students, Teachers, Tom Wolf charter schools, church and state, education, First Amendment, Imani Christian Academy, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, public schools, separation of church and state, U.S. Constitution

The line between public and private school is getting awfully thin in Pittsburgh.

City public school directors received a request from Imani Christian Academy, a religious school in the East Hills, to be allowed to transform into Imani Academy Charter School for the Fall term of 2019.

Though parochial schools have metamorphosed into charter schools in Florida, Tennessee and Washington, D.C., this would be the first such transformation in Pennsylvania, according to Ana Meyers, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools.

The change would require Imani to give up its religious curriculum in exchange for being fully funded by taxpayer dollars.

However, there are numerous red flags in the school’s application that make one wonder if operators are being entirely honest about giving up a faith-based curriculum.

First, there is the proposal by the school, itself.

The application does not specify that religious values will be taught in the classroom. However, its personnel budget lists a comparative religion teacher on staff. The list of proposed teachers also includes a middle/high school religious studies teacher.

That’s not exactly common practice at most public schools though teaching about religion in a secular context is allowed.

According to the Anti-defamation League’s Website:

“Public schools may not teach religion, although teaching about religion in a secular context is permitted. The Bible may be taught in a school, but only for its historical, cultural or literary value and never in a devotional, celebratory or doctrinal manner, or in such a way that encourages acceptance of the Bible as a religious document.”

Even so, it’s awfully convenient that a school whose mission statement currently includes “We share Christ with our children daily and seek to help them grow into mature Christians” would somehow magically become secular overnight.

If Imani’s charter is approved, it would be required to discontinue any religious component in its curriculum. The state school code requires even charter schools to be “nonsectarian in all operations.” The proposed academy would not be permitted to display any religious objects or symbols on the premises.

Yet one wonders who will check to make sure this actually happens.

Charter schools are not required to be nearly as transparent as fully public schools. They are not required to have open meetings of school directors, release their documents for public inspection or any of a host of other safeguards that you’ll find standard at the state’s hundreds of fully public districts.

Pennsylvania charter schools have had operators embezzle millions of dollars from taxpayers to buy private jets, apartments and jewelry. It took investigators years to uncover such graft.

Will the few auditors tasked with keeping charter schools honest even be equipped to determine whether parochial schools suddenly turned charter actually refrain from ministering to students?

According to Public Source, a nonprofit digital newspaper covering the Pittsburgh area, one of the qualities Imani is looking for in an operator for its charter school is the ability to use the school building after-school hours for religious instruction and activities.

So during the day, there will be an entirely secular K-12 school at the site of the present day parochial school that just happens to teach comparative religious studies. Then at a certain time of day, it will transform into an optional religious school offering church functions!?

This is a violation of the Separation of Church and State waiting to happen.

But it’s not only the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution that is in danger of being trampled.

Imani’s proposal is not fiscally responsible.

The charter application proposes its CEO/head of school be paid a salary of $145,000 a year for an institution that would enroll merely 230 students.

Pittsburgh Public School Superintendent Dr. Anthony Hamlet earns a salary of $210,000 a year and he oversees a district with 24,652 students!

The proposed academy would also employ a principal at $85,000 annual salary.

That’s not exactly good reimbursement of services for the outlay of cash taxpayers are expected to pay.

Imani has struggled financially for several years.

In 2014, the school had more than $400,000 in additional expenses over its revenue, according to its form 990 filed with the IRS. The very next year, it had a budget surplus of almost the same amount. By 2016 – the most recent year on file – its expenses again were more than its revenue – this time by more than $500,000.

Imani CEO and Head of School Paulo Nzambi explained the up and down budgeting to state officials in 2017 this way. The parochial school relied on the state’s defacto school voucher program – the Education Improvement Tax Credit. However, payments were delayed resulting in the use of a line of credit to pay bills.

It’s just such financial uncertainties that are pushing Imani to become a charter school in the first place. Even with school vouchers, parochial schools rely heavily on tuition from parents. However, you always know where the money is coming from in a charter school. Like religious and private schools, these institutions are privately managed – but like public schools they’re funded entirely by taxpayers.

Before setting up shop, any new charter school in Pennsylvania must get the approval of the school board from the district where it would be located. If the board does not approve the application, charter school administrators can appeal to the state Charter Appeals Board.

Pittsburgh school board held a public hearing on Imani’s application in December and earlier this month. Next, the district’s review team will offer its suggestions on the application. District solicitor Ira Weiss says the board is scheduled to vote on the matter at its Feb. 27 meeting.

If approved, the district would be required to pay for each student at the new charter school based on the district’s per-student spending formula.

The Pittsburgh district already pays approximately $82.8 million – about 13 percent of its total budget – for charter school tuition.

Imani Christian Academy currently operates out of the former East Hills Elementary School building, which it purchased from the city school district for $1 million in 2008.

The objections brought up here are really just the tip of the iceberg.

The proposal leaves many questions unanswered. For instance, though the new academy would be located within the geographical boundaries of the Pittsburgh Public School District, where would it get its students from? Would current students at the religious school get preferential enrollment – and what if they don’t already live in and pay taxes to Pittsburgh?

Let’s hope Pittsburgh school directors do the right thing and deny this request.

Ten of 15 Cyber Charter Schools in PA Are Operating Without a Charter – Close Them All

January 29, 2019January 29, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, computers, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, privatization, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, Schools, segregation, small class size, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Technology, Tom Wolf charter schools, Cyber Charter Schools, ed-tech, edtech, education, fiscal responsability, Internet, on-line, online charter schools, Pennsylvania, public schools, scam, scandal, School Choice, schools, technology

Cyber charter schools are an experiment that failed.

It’s time to pull the plug and recoup our losses.

First, let’s get straight exactly what we’re talking about here.

Like all charter schools, these are contracted institutions. In fact, that’s what charter means – they’re independent businesses that sign a deal with the state to teach kids.

So they’re publicly financed but privately run. And in the case of cyber charters, they agree to educate children online without the benefit of a physical building.

Students access lessons via computer or other device, submit work electronically, get virtual feedback and assessment.

At best, these institutions are the grade school equivalent of the University of Phoenix – good only for independent, self-motivated learners. At worst, they’re the kiddie version of Trump University – a total scam.

In Pennsylvania, 10 of the state’s 15 cyber charter schools are operating with expired charters, according to a report by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

That’s incredibly significant – especially for an industry that enrolls about 35,000 students across the state.

These are charter schools operating without a charter. They only get the right to operate because a local school district or the state has signed a contract allowing them to do so.

If you hire a plumber to fix your toilet, you give him the right to enter your house and do what needs to be done. That doesn’t mean the plumber can walk in anytime he feels like it. There is a limited term of service. Once that term is up, the plumber needs to get out.

In the case of these cyber charters, the authorizer is the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE).

Charters are initially issued for three to five years. They are an essential contract between the schools and the supervisory body. The school details how it will operate, what curriculum and education strategies will be used, etc.

The state has the option to revoke the charter if the school violates its agreement or fails to meet requirements for student performance or fiscal management.

After the initial period, charters must be renewed every five years in the state.

Yet for the majority of the Keystone state’s cyber charter schools, this has not happened. The charter agreements have been left to lapse without any decision being made by state officials to renew or cancel them.

Some of the reluctance to decide may stem from the fact that the state Charter Appeal Board – the body which decides on appeals of charter applications – are all serving out expired terms, themselves. They were all appointed by the previous governor, Republican Tom Corbett, a notable privatization ideologue.

The current Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat now elected to his second term of office, still hasn’t gotten around to appointing new ones.

Another issue gumming up the works could be staffing issues at PDE that make it impossible to handle the reviews in a timely manner. It could be because the cyber charter schools have not provided all the data required of them by the state for the review to be completed on time. Or it could be because state officials are struggling with a fair and adequate metric with which to assess these schools.

CYBER CHARTER’S DISMAL ACADEMIC RECORD

To be frank, the latter option has to weigh heavily on state auditors. After all, it’s no secret that these schools are an educational disaster. On-line schools in Ohio, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada and New Mexico are all being closed by their respective states.

Study after study consistently shows that cyber charters are much less effective than traditional public schools – heck! They’re even less effective than brick and mortar charter schools!

A recent nationwide study by Stanford University found that cyber charters provide 180 days less of math instruction and 72 days less of reading instruction than traditional public schools.

Keep in mind that there are only 180 days in an average school year. So cyber charters provide less math instruction than not going to school at all.

The same study found that 88 percent of cyber charter schools have weaker academic growth than similar brick and mortar schools.

Student-to-teacher ratios average about 30:1 in online charters, compared to 20:1 for brick and mortar charters and 17:1 for traditional public schools.

Researchers concluded that these schools have an “overwhelming negative impact” on students.

And these results were duplicated almost exactly by subsequent studies from Penn State University in 2016 (enrolling a student in a Pennsylvania cyber charter school is equal to “roughly 90 fewer days of learning in reading and nearly 180 fewer days of learning in math”) and the National Education Policy Center in 2017 (cyber charters “performed significantly worse than feeder schools in both reading and math”).

Even the state’s own data shows lower graduation rates and standardized test scores at cyber charters than at traditional public schools.

According to a 2015-16 state PDE report, about 86 percent of public school students across the Commonwealth finished high school in four years. During the same time, only about 48 percent of cyber charter school students graduated in four-years.

CYBER CHARTER’S COST TOO MUCH

But providing such a poor service to Pennsylvania students is only one reason these schools are problematic. They’re also ruinously expensive.

They cost taxpayers more than $463 million in 2016-17 alone.

The state charter law grants these schools as much money per pupil as brick and mortar schools, yet their costs are much less having forgone a physical building and all that goes with it.

So cyber charters get whatever the local per-pupil expenditure is. It doesn’t matter if a district spends $8,000 on each student or $20,000. Whatever the amount, that goes to the cyber charter.

However, the cost of educating kids is drastically reduced online. Their programs are bare bones compared with what you get at a traditional public school. Most online charters don’t have tutors or teacher aides. They don’t offer band, chorus or extra-curricular activities. You don’t have to pay for any building costs, grounds, upkeep, large staff, etc. But the funding formula ignores this completely. Cyber charters get to keep the difference – whatever it is. In fact, they have an incentive to keep as much as possible because they can do almost whatever they want with it. That includes putting it into operators’ pockets as profit!

And when it comes to special education funding, it gets worse. In Pennsylvania, our funding formula is so out of whack that charters schools of all stripes including cyber charters often end up with more funding for students with special needs than traditional public schools get. However, because of this loophole in the Commonwealth, Pennsylvania online charters have been increasing the number of special education students they enroll and even working to label as many of their students as possible as needing special services on the flimsiest of pretexts.

According to a report by the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators (PASA), tuition for special education students is often twice as much at cyber charter schools than at traditional public schools.

CYBER CHARTER FRAUD

Unsurprisingly, these conditions have lead to rampant fraud and malfeasance.

Just this past year (2018) the head of the largest cyber charter chain in the state was sentenced to jail for siphoning $8 million from his school into his own pockets.

PA Cyber Charter founder Nicholas Trombetta was found guilty of tax fraud in relation to the theft of public funds. He used that money to buy an airplane, a $900,000 condo, houses for his girlfriend and mother, and nearly $1 million in groceries and personal expenses, according to the grand jury. Trombetta allegedly set up numerous for-profit and nonprofit businesses to provide goods and services to the cyber charter. Federal investigators filed 11 fraud and tax conspiracy charges against him and indicted others in the case.

Another cyber charter founder, June Brown, was also indicted for theft of $6.5 million. Brown ran the Agora Cyber Charter School, which was part of the K12 Inc. empire of virtual charters. She and her executives were indicted on 62 counts of wire fraud, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. She was well known for student test scores and had a reputation for claiming large salaries and filing suits against parents who questioned her, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

It’s no wonder the state has been tardy renewing these schools’ charters!

Frankly, there is no good reason to continue lavishing taxpayer dollars on a system of education that provides subpar services at an exorbitant expense and is subject to runaway fraud.

But lawmakers have always been reluctant to do the right thing.

After all, there are a slew of wealthy investors who want to make sure the money train of taxpayer dollars keeps flowing to their shady businesses. And lawmakers who enable them are assured hefty campaign contributions.

The only chance we have of saving our children from this monstrous abuse of power and saving our wallets from this shameful waste of funding is if voters make their intentions known.

The people of Pennsylvania need to stand up and demand an end to the cyber charter school experiment.

We need lawmakers with the guts to stand up to big money and rewrite the state’s charter school law.

And that’s part of the problem. The law is a joke.

It’s more than 20 years old and was only amended once in 2002 to allow cyber charters.

Subsequent attempts at requiring more accountability have resulted in horrible compromise bills that would have made the situation much worse and – ultimately – no vote.

With Ohio and California, Pennsylvania was in the “big three” cyber-charter states in 2016, accounting for half of cyber charter enrollment nationally, according to the industry’s authorizers’ association. While 35 states and the District of Columbia allow full-time cyber charter schools, eight do not, including neighboring New Jersey.

The right course is clear.

We just need a people-powered movement to force our lawmakers to do it.

Either that or replace them with those who will.

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