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?

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!

Rahm Emanuel’s Non-Apology Apology for Being a School Privatization Cheerleader

February 10, 2019 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Arne Duncan, Bernie Sanders, Betsy DeVos, California, capitalism, Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Cory Booker, Credibility, Democrat, Democrats for Education Reform, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Hillary Clinton, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Obama, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, principals, Racism, Rahm, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, small class size, Social Justice Unionism, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, union busting, Unions, voting charter schools, Chicago, Chicago Schools, Chicago Teachers, Democrats, education, Local Control, neoliberal, Politics, Privatize, public schools, rahm emanuel, rebranding, Republicans, schools, unions

Rahm Emanuel’s recent op-ed in The Atlantic may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read.

The title “I Used to Preach the Gospel of Education Reform. Then I Became the Mayor” seems to imply Emanuel has finally seen the light.

The outgoing Chicago Mayor USED TO subscribe to the radical right view that public schools should be privatized, student success should be defined almost entirely by standardized testing, teachers should be stripped of union protections and autonomy and poor black and brown people have no right to elect their own school directors.

But far from divorcing any of this Reagan-Bush-Trump-Clinton-Obama crap, he renews his vows to it.

This isn’t an apologia. It’s rebranding.

Emanuel had been White House Chief of Staff at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s first term. He’s a former U.S. Representative, and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Yet he’s persona non grata.

Now that the extremely unpopular chief executive has decided not to seek re-election, he’s trying to secure his legacy – to make sure the history books don’t remember him as the Democrat In Name Only (DINO) mayor who closed an unprecedented number of schools serving mostly minority students while catering to the will of rich investors. He doesn’t want to be remembered as the lord on a hill whose own children went to private school while he cut services and increased class size for black and brown kids. He’s trying to save a series of abysmal policy failures so that he and his neoliberal pals like Cory Booker and Arne Duncan can still hold their heads high in Democratic circles. In a time when authentic progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have won the heart of the party, he wants to ensure there’s still room for that old time corporate education reform he is infamous for.

Like I said – dumb.

To quote the Principal in Billy Madison:

“…what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

If only he’d respond like Madison:

“Okay, a simple ‘wrong’ would’ve done just fine, but thanks.”

But like that straight man school administrator in an Adam Sandler movie, I’m going to give you the long answer. I’m going to explain why what Emanuel said was supremely stupid.

He begins the piece with a lengthy description of how he got one over on those darn teachers unions.

He wanted what was best for children, but those pesky teachers just wouldn’t do it until he twisted their arms and got them to play ball.

And keep in mind – this is the softer, gentler Emanuel who wants you to like him! This is the Emanuel who’s trying on progressive clothing to look more appealing!

Hey, Rahm, attacking working people while casting yourself as a savior is so two years ago. We’ve had a conservative Supreme Court hobble unions’ ability to stop free riders and a teacher uprising since then. Union educators from West Virginia to Oklahoma to Los Angeles, California, have gone on strike demanding Republican and Democratic chief executives like yourself make positive change for children.

No one’s buying your fairytales anymore.

But it leads into a series of important points he wants to make:

“For most of my career, I preached the old gospel of education reform. But now research and experience suggest that policy makers need to embrace a new path forward and leave the old gospel behind. Principals, not just teachers, drive educational gains. The brain-dead debate between charter and neighborhood schools should be replaced with a focus on quality over mediocrity. To get kids to finish high school, the student experience should center on preparing them for what’s next in life. Finally, classroom success hinges on the support that students get outside school. If other cities follow Chicago’s lead in embracing those ideas, they’re likely to also replicate its results.”

Oh and what results those are! But we’ll come back to that.

He reasons that principals drive educational gains. In fact, this is his a-ha moment. Don’t focus on teachers, focus on principals.

He pats himself on the back for raising principals’ salaries and recruiting only people who think and believe just like him. Then he didn’t have to watch over them so closely and they were even promoted to higher administrative positions.

Wow. What an innovation! Stack your school system with yes-people and your initiatives will get done. Great. No room for diversity of thought. No one who thinks outside of the box. Just functionaries and flunkies who do what you say.

This is sounding like a great case for progressive education reforms already! If you’re a fascist dictator.

Next comes my favorite – a further commitment to school privatization hidden behind the flimsiest rechristening in history.

Stop talking about charter schools vs. authentic public schools, he writes. Talk about quality schools vs. mediocre ones.

What bull crap!

Imagine if pirates were robbing ships on the high seas. Would you talk about good pirates and bad pirates? Imagine if vampires were attacking people in the night and draining their blood. Would you talk about good vampires and bad vampires?

I mean Dracula did suck Mina dry, but he spends the rest of his nights reading to orphan children. Long John Silver may have stolen hundreds of chests of gold from merchant ships, but he donates every tenth doubloon to fighting global warming!

Hey, Rahm, you can’t escape from the argument of whether school privatization is good or bad. Charter schools drain funding from authentic public schools and give it to private investors. They allow unscrupulous operators to cut services and pocket the profits. They increase segregation, decrease democracy and transparency, give choice mainly to business people who get to decide if your child is allowed to enroll in their school – all while getting similar or worse results than authentic public schools.

If you stopped taking corporate money for one second, maybe you could understand this simple point – no system will ever be fair that allows theft and then protects the thieves.

But on to your next point. You want to focus the student experience on what comes next in life. You want to focus on jobs and career readiness.

This is just dumbing down what it means to get an education. Going to school shouldn’t be reduced to a career training program. If we only teach kids how to manufacture widgets, what will they do when the widget factory closes?

We need to teach them how to think for themselves. We need to offer them real opportunities for self-discovery and challenge them to think deeply through an issue.

When kids graduate, we don’t want to have simply made a generation of workers. We need them to be thinking adults and citizens who can participate fully in our democratic process and help lead our country toward a better and brighter future – not just learn how to code.

Finally you talk about the support students get out of school. That’s stupid because…

Actually it’s not.

You’ve got a point there. We do need to support programs to help students succeed outside the classroom – summer reading, after school tutoring, etc. However, making kids sign a pledge to go to college in order to be eligible for a summer job? That’s kind of cruel when many have no way to pay for college in the first place. Moreover, it completely ignores the huge section of children who have no desire to go to college and would rather go to career or technical schools.

And that brings me to his dismal record of failure described by neoliberals as success.

Emanuel pushed forward a policy that in order to graduate, Chicago seniors must prove that after 12th grade they’re going to college, trade school, an internship, the military or would otherwise be gainfully employed. OR ELSE they can’t get a diploma!

Rahm’s all about adding more hoops for poor minority kids to jump through. Very rarely is he about providing any help for them to make the jump.

He’s a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps Democrat. Or what we used to call – a Republican.

Emanuel wants to tout his record as “proof” that his methods worked.

Let’s look at them.

He has closed 50 public schools – 46 of which serve mostly black students. Southside residents had to resort to a month-long hunger strike to keep their last neighborhood school open. He laid off hundreds of teachers and staff – many just before school opened. Yet he always had money for state of the art charter schools like the $27 million new charter school for the University of Chicago as part of the Obama Presidential Library. In addition, his economic policy consisted of closing public health clinics for the poor and installing red light cameras to increase fines – none of which actually boosted the economy.

And then we get to the scandal that made a third term as mayor impossible. Emanuel actually covered up the police killing of unarmed black teen, Laquan McDonald, so it wouldn’t hurt his re-election campaign.

In October of 2014, Officer Jason Van Dyke shot the 17-year-old 16 times. Most of those bullets went into the teenager after he was already flat on the ground and the officer was at least 10 feet away.

Emanuel quickly issued a $5 million settlement to McDonald’s family on the condition they keep quiet about the incident. It wasn’t until after Emanuel had won re-election, that an independent journalist put two-and-two together and asked for the officer’s dashcam video to be released. It took the full power of the media and a lawsuit to accomplish this resulting in charges against Van Dyke for first degree murder. Just last year the officer was found guilty of second degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, but was found not guilty of official misconduct. He was sentenced to 6.75 years in prison.

This is not a sterling mayoral record. It is not a proven record of success.

He says graduation rates are up as are rates of Chicago students who go on to college. He neglects to mention that they’re up nationwide. He neglects to mention that the quality of education these kids receive is often watered down to whatever will help them pass the federally mandated standardized test. He neglects to mention the loss of teacher autonomy, and the rise in class size.

Face it. Emanuel is a crappy mayor. Chicago and the nation will be better if he fades into the sunset.

His political career was backed by the same big money conservatives that back Republicans like Chris Christie, Mitt Romney and Bruce Rauner. He was a puppet of charter schools, hedge fund managers and the Koch Brothers.

In fact, his corruption was so bad that during the 2016 primary, he became an issue for Democratic Presidential contenders.

Bernie Sanders actually called him out in a tweet saying: “I want to thank Rahm Emanuel for not endorsing me. I don’t want the endorsement of a mayor shutting down schools and firing teachers.”

Emanuel had endorsed Hilary Clinton, and her education advisor Ann O’Leary wrote in a private email to senior campaign staff that this might actually hurt the candidate’s primary chances. She wanted Clinton to distance herself from the troubled mayor or at least explain how she differed from his troubled policies.

They eventually settled on saying nothing. That didn’t backfire at all!

Look. Democrats need to learn the exact opposite of the lesson Rahm is selling here.

Corporate education reform is poison. School privatization is not progressive. High stakes testing is not progressive. Hiring like-minded flunkies to run your schools is not progressive. Closing black kids’ schools is not progressive.

Emanuel has learned nothing. Have we?

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.

LA Teachers Strike is About Charter Schools and High Stakes Testing

January 14, 2019January 14, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, Budget, California, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Democrats for Education Reform, Donald Trump, Education, Labor, Local Control, Obama, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, protest, Republican, School Choice, Schools, segregation, small class size, Social Justice, Social Justice Unionism, Standardized Testing, Strike, Students, Teachers, Unions California, charter schools, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, education, high stakes testing, LA Unified Schools, Los Angelos, solidarity, standardized testing, Strike, teacher strike, teachers, Union Contract, unions, unity, UTLA

On Monday more than 30,000 teachers at 900 schools in Los Angeles, California, will be on strike.

And unlike the wave of teachers strikes last year in red states like West Virginia, this time educators are taking to the streets due to the policies of Democrats.

At issue are things like lowering class sizes and providing more nurses, librarians and counselors.

But behind these issues lies one of the most important facts about our country.

When you get right down to it, there is very little difference between many Democratic policymakers and their Republican counterparts.

You think Betsy Devos is the opposite of Arne Duncan? Wrong.

You think Barack Obama is the opposite of Donald Trump? Wrong again.

Though there are differences, those often amount to differences of degree.

Corporate Democrats like almost all Republicans support the same education policies – school privatization and high stakes testing – that are robbing the LA Unified School District of the funding it needs to meet the needs of its students.

THAT’S why class sizes have ballooned to more than 45 students in secondary schools; 35 students in upper elementary grades; and 25 students in lower elementary grades.

THAT’S why the district does not have nearly enough counselors, psychologists or librarians to give students the support they need.

THAT’S why 80% of schools don’t have full-time nurses.

The second largest district in the country has more charter schools than any other. The overwhelming majority of them are operated by corporate chains and have expanded by 287% over the last 10 years.

These are publicly funded but privately run schools. They don’t have to meet the same standards of accountability or transparency about how they spend taxpayer dollars – all while gobbling up $600 million a year!

That is money that parents and community members are forced to pay but about which they have very little say. It’s money that can – and often does – go right into the pockets of charter school operators without providing its full value to the students it was meant help educate. It’s money set aside for all children but given to educate merely a handful of students chosen by those same businesspeople who run these charters because they think these children will be cheaper and easier to educate.

That’s not Democracy. No self-respecting Democrat should support such a thing – but you’ll find luminaries from Obama to the Clintons to Cory Booker who will tell you what a great idea it is. Along with DeVos, Trump, Jeb Bush and the Koch Brothers.

LA Superintendent Austin Beutner is a Democrat, but he’s also a multimillionaire with experience in corporate downsizing and none in education.

According to an op-ed by President of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) Alex Caputo-Pearl published in the LA Times:

“…Beutner has moved ahead with what we believe is his agenda to dismantle the district. Through an outside foundation, he has brought on firms that have led public school closures and charter expansion in some districts where they have worked, from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. This approach, drawn from Wall Street, is called the “portfolio” model, and it has been criticized for having a negative effect on student equity and parent inclusion.”

These are policies in direct opposition to the progressive ideals at the heart of the Democratic Party. They are, in fact, bedrock Republican ideology and demonstrate the vast divide among Democrats.

New Democrats oppose them. Grassroots Democrats oppose them. Democratic voters oppose them. And it will be telling whether the policymakers in our halls of power will follow the lead of the people or try to shepherd the power behind the party into doing what the patricians think best.

That’s why this strike is important way beyond California. Whatever happens will send echoes throughout the country, because school districts from sea to shining sea are facing similar issues.

In the meantime, the LA Unified District has a $1.8 Billion budget surplus it can use to help meet these needs. But the solutions to the district’s woes require a long-term commitment to public education.

Certainly the state of California needs to increase its per pupil spending. It’s the richest state in the country, yet ranks 43^rd out of 50 in this regard.

This would help the district raise teacher salaries to match those of surrounding districts.

But the root problem is a lack of ideological support among policymakers.

Too many Democrats inside and outside the district don’t support the very idea of public schools. They’d rather boost privatization.

Too many Democrats support unnecessary and harmful high stakes standardized testing which not only unfairly paints the district as a failure for the poverty of its students but forces out things of real education value like the arts and ethnic studies.

Too many Democrats have no problem doing this in a district that serves a majority of students of color while providing only the best for middle class white kids.

That’s why today the American people stand with the UTLA as they go on strike.

It’s why we always stand with educators – You can’t put students first if you put teachers last.

Democrats need to get their priorities straight.

It’s time to decide if they’re going to continue being Trump lite or reclaim their progressive heritage and rejoin the rest of the nation.

How Many Decisions Do Teachers Make Every Day?

January 5, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, Labor, Learning, Obama, Parents, Philosophy, Politics, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, small class size, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Technology decisions, education, educators, research, schools, Students, teachers, teaching, thinking

Teaching is an exhausting job.

If you’re a parent, you know how tiring it is with just one or two kids.

Imagine having a room full of them — Twenty to thirty children, each demanding your attention, each requiring your urgent help – every minute, every day, for hours at a time.

Back in the late 1980s, before education became totally absorbed by standardized testing and school privatization, we used to wonder about the effects of such need on a single individual.

We used to wonder how much was really being asked of our teachers.

Today no one outside of the classroom really gives it much thought. We think of educators as part of a vast machine that is required to give us and our children a service.

We’re stakeholders. They’re service providers. And the students are a national resource.

None of us are people.

Perhaps it’s this dehumanizing economic framework that’s helped the edtech industry and testing corporations make so much headway trying to replace educators with apps and iPads.

We no longer give the teacher an apple. We displace her with a Mac.

But back in the days before George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind or Barrack Obama’s copycat Race to the Top, or Donald Trump’s blatant Destroy Public Education, we wondered about teacher psychology and how to best help our human workforce meet the needs of our human children.

That’s when researchers observed elementary school teachers and noted that, on average, they made at least 1,500 decisions a day.

That comes out to about 4 decisions a minute given six hours of class time.

In the decades since, this figure has come to be associated with elementary and secondary teachers. In fact, it’s become so ubiquitous that I wondered where it originated.

The first reference I can find to it comes from C.M. Clark & P.L. Peterson’s article “Teachers’ Thought Processes” published in the Handbook of Research on Teaching from 1986. (3rd ed., pp. 255–296). New York: macmillan.

Though subsequent studies came up with slightly different numbers, the basic argument holds.

Researchers Hilda Borko, Carol Livingston and Richard Shavelson mark the low end of the scale. In their 1990 article “Teachers’ Thinking About Instruction,” they summarize studies that reported .7 decisions per minute during interactive teaching or 42 judgements per hour, 252 a day.

On the upper end of the scale is Philip Jackson who wrote in his 1990 book “Life in Classrooms” that elementary teachers have 200 to 300 of these determination generating exchanges with students every hour (between 1,200-1,800 a day). Most of these are unplanned and unpredictable calling for teachers to make what they term shallower decisions or deeper judgments (p. 149).

So because teaching involves waiting for the right opportunities for learning, neither student nor teacher can say with confidence what exactly will happen next. It requires “spontaneity and immediacy” (Jackson, p. 166, 152).

As a classroom teacher with more than 15 years of experience, none of this is surprising to me.

Just imagine the various tasks teachers are required to do every hour. We take attendance, review homework, help with seat-work, ask questions, etc. And that doesn’t even take into account all the times we’re unpredictably interrupted by the unexpected – upset students, administrative announcements over the PA, student questions, equipment breakdowns, etc. Each one of these requires us to make spontaneous, unplanned calls before the lesson can continue.

It just goes to show some of the various roles teachers are expected to fill in the lives of their students. They are expected to be information providers, disciplinarians, assess student learning, administrate school policies, facilitate student inquiry, act as role models and even be foster parents.

In any given lesson, we have to make decisions based on our plans AND decisions based on things that just happen to crop up unexpectedly – multiple times each day.

In fact, it seems to me that the research fails to account for innumerable situations that also require determination and deliberation as part of an educator’s everyday routine.

What about curriculum and instruction design? Grading? Written and verbal feedback to students? Reflection and revision of lesson plans?

When you think of all that, 1,500 decisions a day seems like a conservative estimate indeed.

Perhaps the most troubling thing about this is where it impacts teacher quality.

And when I say that, I don’t mean the basterdized modern meaning of that term – that teachers are responsible for maximizing student test scores on standardized assessments. I mean the quality of authentic instruction teachers are able to give their classes.

When we expect educators to turn on a dime more than a thousand times a day, doesn’t that impact the depth with which we can accomplish the job?

Busyteacher.org certainly thinks so. I’m not sure where the Website got its statistics, but they are sobering.

In a fascinating infographic, the site claims that multitasking leads to a 40% drop in productivity. It causes a 10% drop in IQ. It causes people to make 50% more mistakes than concentrating on one task at a time.

I don’t know if these statistics are accurate, but the general principle is sound. When we’re forced to “do more with less” we actually end up producing more with less quality.

Focusing on fewer things increases ones accuracy. Therefore, teachers who have to make fewer decisions in a day would probably be able to do their jobs more effectively.

And there are plenty of ways to accomplish this.

We could reduce class size. If educators can concentrate on the needs of fewer children, they would be more effectively able to meet those needs.

We could reduce the amount of time teachers have to be in the classroom in a given day. I’ve often thought teaching was analogous to being an actor up on the stage – but we’re also responsible for writing the script, operating the lighting, etc. And we have to interact with the audience many of whom would rather be elsewhere, and we have to do multiple shows each day.

In some countries, teachers spend a significant part of their days planning and grading and less in the classroom. They don’t have to do all that behind the scenes stuff on their own time without any additional pay.

In Finland, for example, teachers are paid 13% more than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average but spend 100 hours less in the classroom. And class size is between 9-14 students, the lowest in OECD countries. No wonder their children are near the top of the scale in international comparisons!

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we lived in a society that valued education and didn’t try to turn everything into economic quantities for corporations?

We could actually focus on the real phenomena of educating children and not have to fight warped education policies more concerned with turning it all into dollars and cents.

Perhaps teachers wouldn’t have to make so many thousands of decisions if our lawmakers could just make this one.

Yellow Vest Protests Include Resistance to School Corporatization

December 19, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bill Gates, Budget, capitalism, Censorship, Civil Rights, college, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, G.E.R.M., Journalism, Labor, Media, Obama, Police, Politics, Poverty, school violence, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, standards, student action, Students, Teachers, Unions Civil Rights, common core, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, education, France, G.E.R.M., Global Education Reform Movement, Macron, neoliberal, protest, revolution, schools, Students, Yellow Vests

If you want to know what the French Yellow Vest Protests are all about, just refer to the arrest of 153 teenage students this month near Paris.

The kids at a high school in Mantes-La-Jolie were forced to kneel down, hands on their heads or secured behind their backs with zip ties as riot police circled them with assault weapons.

Why did law enforcement take such extreme measures? The students had been protesting their government’s education policies.

“What a well-behaved class!” French police commented ironically on a video documenting the arrest on social media by Violences Policières, a watchdog group.

Yes, how well behaved!

Of course! Children should be seen and not heard. Speaking out for yourself is a definite faux pas.

So is detaining minors without a lawyer, which the officers did and which is illegal in France.

But C’est la vie!

Unfortunately such scenes have been repeated throughout the country since November. Despite police opposition, high school students from a number of French schools have joined the Yellow Vests to protest French President Emmanuel Macron’s education policies – inaccurately dubbed “reforms” – among other austerity measures resulting in stagnant wages and a high cost of living.

Macron was elected in 2017 on a neoliberal platform much like that of Barack Obama. And though he was praised for his demeanor, especially in comparison to the boorish Donald Trump, his policies at first met with criticism and then outright protests in the streets.

Citizens took issue with new labor laws, the rail system and taxes. You can’t save the environment by cutting taxes for the wealthy and raising them for the poor to discourage them from driving. You can’t stomp on workers rights in order to create more low-paying jobs.

Protestors repurposed the yellow vests they are required to keep in their cars in case of an emergency into an iconic image of resistance to the gas tax. Hundreds of thousands demanded not just a repeal of Macron’s policies but a new platform to bolster social services and the economy.

The Macron administration has met these demands by at first violently stifling them and then agreeing to individual points before returning to suppression.

Perhaps it is the administration’s insistence that it is beset by violent “hooligans” while most protestors do no more than block traffic that has resulted in a continued rejection of Macron. Protestors even spray-painted a demand that Macron resign on the Arc de Triomphe, the arch on the Champs-Elysées.

Though the American media has mostly ignored the situation, critics blame widespread police brutality including the use of tear gas and clubs for at least four deaths and 700 people wounded in weeks of political challenges that some have compared to the French Revolution.

In particular, students take issue with at least three components of Macron’s plan: (1) changes to the high school graduation exam, (2) changes to college admissions and (3) a new requirement that all students participate in a lengthy volunteer national service project.

First, protestors oppose changes to the end-of-school exams known as baccalaureate or ‘bac.’ Though the proposal includes positive reforms such as reducing the number of exams and providing a longer time frame to take them, it also changes focus from academics to careers.

Much like Common Core did in the United States, the exams would be revised and rewritten. Instead of being tested on broad subjects such as science, literature or social sciences, students would be assessed on much narrower content.

Macron seems to be taking his queue from US philanthrocapitalists like Bill Gates in order to make French students more “college and career ready.”

The new assessments would push students toward specific degrees sooner. Before their final undergraduate year, high school students would have to choose two specific majors and two specific minors alongside the standard curriculum – similar to American colleges.

Students are against this because of what they call “hyper-specialization.” They say these changes would deprive them of exposure to a wide range of disciplines and force them to make life-long choices too early. This would be especially harmful for poor students because, as Liberation editorialist Laurent Joffrin put it, “Those who have more, know more.” In other words, wealthier students would probably be better prepared to navigate the choices open to them than those in poorer areas.

Next, students also want the repeal of stricter selection criteria to universities – a law passed just last year – which they say increases economic inequality between rich and poor schools.

The government provides free college to any student who passes the high school exit exams. However, just like in the US, corporate interests complain that college students struggle with the increased workload and pressures at universities. The new measure solves this by ensuring that fewer students are admitted.

Students say Macron has it backwards. The government shouldn’t be undermining free access to higher education. It should be investing more in the country’s universities and helping students succeed.

Finally, students want to get rid of a mandate that all 16-year-olds will have to participate in a national civic service program scheduled to begin in 2026.

French youths would have to volunteer in fields like defense, environment, tutoring or culture. During the long school breaks, they would have to undergo a one-month placement, consisting of two weeks in collective housing to promote a “social mix,” and then another two weeks in smaller, more “personalized” groups.

The measure doesn’t go as far as Macron wanted. He originally proposed mandatory military service.

Students object to the plan because they say it’s unnecessary and extremely expensive. The program is estimated to cost $1.8 billion ($1.6 billion Euros) with a $1.98 billion ($1.75 Euro) investment up front.

In addition to these demands, some have included limits on class size. Protestors have demanded no more than 25 students per class from nursery school through high school. Low class size ensures each student gets more personal attention from the teacher and a better chance to ask questions and learn.

What we’re seeing in France is extremely important for those living in the US.

It shows that as terrible as the Trump administration is, there are many flavors of bad government. When your representatives are more interested in seeing to corporate whims than the will of the people, chaos can ensue.

Perhaps the US media has been so adverse to reporting on the Yellow Vests because of corporate fear that protests will jump the pond and land on our shores, as well. We have many similar neoliberal and neofascist policies in the US of A, some passed by Republicans and others passed by Democrats.

Here’s hoping that we all can establish legitimate governments that seek to further the ends of liberty, equality and fraternity.

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Charter School Lobby Silent as Charter Teachers Continue Strike

December 7, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Budget, Campbell Brown, capitalism, Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Hillary Clinton, Labor, Local Control, Obama, Parents, Politics, privatization, protest, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, small class size, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, union busting, Unions Acero, charter schools, Chicago, Chicago Schools, Chicago Teachers, labor, Politics, teacher strike, teachers, teaching, unions

Charter school teachers in Chicago are in their fourth day of a strike.

Yet I wonder why the leaders of the charter movement are quiet.

Where is Peter Cunningham of the Education Post?

Where is Shaver Jeffries of Democrats for Education Reform?

Not a word from Campbell Brown or Michelle Rhee?

Nothing from Bill Gates, Cory Booker, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?

Not a peep from Betsy DeVos or Donald Trump?

This is a historic moment. Teachers at various charter schools have unionized before, but it has never come to an outright strike – not once since the federal charter school law was established in 1994.

You’d think the charter cheerleaders – the folks who lobby for this type of school above every other type – would have something to say.

But no.

They are conspicuously silent.

I wonder why.

Could it be that this is not what they imagined when they pushed for schools to be privately run but publicly financed?

Could it be that they never intended workers at these schools to have any rights?

Could it be that small class size – one of the main demands of teachers at the 15 Acero schools – was never something these policymakers intended?

It certainly seems so.

For decades we’ve been told that these types of schools were all about innovation. They were laboratories where teachers and administrators could be freed from the stifling regulations at traditional public schools.

Yet whenever wealthy operators stole money or cut services to maximize profits or engaged in shady real estate deals or collected money for ghost children or cherry picked the best students or fomented “no excuses” discipline policies or increased segregation or denied services to special education kids or a thousand other shady business practices – whenever any of that happened, we were told they were just unfortunate side effects. Malfeasance and fraud weren’t what charters were all about. They were about the children.

And now when charter teachers speak out and demand a better environment for themselves and their students, these ideologues have nothing to say.

Funny.

It’s not hard to figure out what’s going on here.

The latest audit of Acero shows they have $10 million a year in additional revenue that they aren’t spending on the students. Yet they’re cutting the budget by 6 percent annually. Meanwhile, Acero’s CEO Richard Rodriguez is taking home more than $260,000 for overseeing 15 schools while Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson makes slightly less money for managing more than 500 schools.

If the school privatization lobby cared about kids, it shouldn’t be hard to come out against Acero and in favor of these teachers and students.

But nothing.

Silence.

It seems to prove what charter critics have been saying all along – and how full of crap the privatization lobby has always been.

In short, the charter movement is all about the rich getting richer. It has never been about helping students and families.

Well, maybe it was once upon a time when union leader Albert Shanker backed the plan. But even he turned against it when he saw how it enriched the moneymen and corporations while doing very little for children.

The fact of the matter is that the only people at charters on the side of teachers, parents and students are the people generally associated with opposing them.

I, myself, am a huge foe of school privatization in all its forms – and that includes school vouchers and charter schools.

However, I have nothing against charter students, parents or teachers.

I know many educators who’ve worked at charters. In most cases they are dedicated, caring professionals who’d rather work at a traditional public school but had to settle for employment where they could find it even if that meant less pay, longer hours, and fewer rights.

I know many parents who sent their kids to charter schools because of funding inequalities or rampant high stakes testing at traditional public schools. In every case, they are doing the best they can for their children – navigating a system they hate looking for the best opportunities.

I’ve taught many students who’ve gone to charter schools and then returned to my traditional public school classroom disillusioned from their subpar experience in privatized education. Without exception they are great kids who try their hardest to succeed despite huge deficits from the years lost at charters.

These people are not our enemy. We are their allies.

We are pushing for a better education system for all of us. And this strike is part of that.

If the operators of Acero charter schools in Chicago (formerly UNO’s charter schools) agree to a living wage for teachers and lower class sizes, it sets a standard for the industry. It helps push other charters to do the same. It pushes charter schools to become more like traditional public schools. And that’s a good thing.

The amenities at traditional public schools should not be rarities.

Every school should have an elected school board. Every school should have public meetings, transparency and be accountable for how it spends tax dollars. Every school should have to accept the kids living in its borders and provide them the proper services and respect their rights. Every school should treat its employees like professionals and pay them a fair wage for a fair day’s work.

Ultimately, I think this means the end of the charter school concept. But that doesn’t have to mean the end of all these charter schools. Many of them that can operate effectively and efficiently should become traditional public schools. That may mean incorporation into existing districts or creations of new ones. It may mean additional funding from the state and federal government.

In the case of fly-by-night charters that do nothing but enrich their investors while cheating kids out of an education, they should be closed immediately and the persons responsible should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (whatever that is, if at all possible).

I don’t have all the answers, and what’s right in one neighborhood may be wrong in another. However, I am confident that there is a solution.

No matter how this strike is resolved, the fact that it exists – and is probably a precursor to more such strikes – points the way to a brighter future for everyone.

It’s a victory for workers over wealth.

And that is a victory for students, too.

gadflyonthewallblog

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

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