Defund the Police to Fund Public Schools

June 7, 2020June 7, 2020 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, history, immigration, Labor, Learning, New York, nonviolence, Pennsylvania, Police, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, protest, Racism, Republican, School Funding, Schools, Shooting, small class size, Social Justice, standards, Students, Teachers, union busting, voter suppression, voting Black Lives Matter, Civil Rights, defund the police, education, George Floyd, law enforcement, police, police brutality, police shootings, Politics, protest, public schools, school funding

Back in the pre-Coronavirus days when we still had in-person classes I used to come to school in a suit.

Every day, suit and tie.

I didn’t have to – the dress code allowed me to wear pretty much whatever I wanted and most teachers dressed much more casually.

Now let me be clear – I’m not saying my way was the only way. Each teacher has his or her own way of doing things that work in their particular cases. But as for me, I’ve always agreed with the old adage that you should come dressed for the job you want, not necessarily the job you have.

I think educators are professionals. They should be respected and taken seriously.

And on the first day of school that’s what I want to tell my students without even opening my mouth: Hey! We’re doing important work here today.

However, as time goes on I often wear whimsical ties. A saxophone, multicolored fish, Space Invaders on test days.

In fact, this year some of the kids nicknamed me “tie man” and even if they didn’t have me as their teacher they’d pop their heads into the room to see what was hanging from my neck that day.

So when I see police officers lined up at George Floyd rallies, I’m aware of what they’re saying without saying a word.

Wearing riot gear, armed with billy clubs and shields. Tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at the ready. Backed by military style tanks and helicopters flying overhead.

That all sends a message: We’re not here to protect and serve. We’re here to pacify and put down.

And like my choice of school attire, this message isn’t just for the observer. It’s for the wearer, too.

There’s no mistaking what you’re there to do with a sport jacket across your shoulders and a piece of fabric knotted around your neck. Just as I’m sure there’s no mistaking your intent when you survey the public behind a plexiglass helmet with a heavy wooden club in your gloved fist.

You’re a soldier and the protesters are your enemy.

Any individual police officer can act differently, but if they do, they’re going against the tide.

That’s why many people are saying “Defund the Police.”

To some that may sound kind of scary.

Defund the police? If we do that, who will protect us from violent criminals?

But hear me out.

Defunding the police doesn’t have to mean abolishing the police (though some would go that far).

For me, it means a radical reinvention of what it means to be a police officer and their role in our society.

Let’s not forget that policing began in this country not so much as law enforcement but as a way to catch runaway slaves and put down labor unions.

It’s not enough to suggest our law enforcers not dress like stormtroopers.

It’s not enough that we ask often progressive mayors not to use their police as thugs and bullies.

It’s not enough that we demand racists be screened out of the hiring process and for more rigorous training before officers become a permanent part of the force.

We should do all of that, but let’s not be blind to what we’ve seen the last week.

A 75-year-old man shoved to the ground and left to bleed in Buffalo, NY. A police SUV driving through a crowd of protestors in Brooklyn knocking several to the ground. A group of police in Philadelphia using a baton to hit a man on the head before pinning him to the ground. In Minneapolis police shouting “Light ‘em up” before firing paint canisters at a woman standing on her own front porch. And in many cities police using teargas, flash-bangs and rubber bullets on a peaceful protesters.

The fact that there was so much police brutality at nationwide anti-police brutality protests proves the need to radically rethink what it means to be law enforcement. And that starts with the money we put aside for this purpose.

If the police are not an occupying army, we shouldn’t fund them or outfit them like the military.

According to a recent analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data conducted by the Urban Institute, the cost of policing has tripled in the last four decades to $115 billion while violent crime has declined.

In most cities, the police budget is orders of magnitude greater than many other departments. For example, Los Angeles spends $1.8 billion annually on law enforcement – nearly 18% of the city’s entire budget.

From 2014-19, New York City spent $41.1 billion on police and corrections while spending $9.9 billion on homeless services and $6.8 billion on housing preservation and development. If you combined the city’s spending on homelessness and housing and quadrupled it, that would still be less than what the city spent on policing and corrections.

Even before the Coronavirus pandemic ravaged the economy, legislators made deep cuts to other services like education, parks, libraries, housing, public transportation, youth programs, arts and culture, and many more. But police budgets have only gotten bigger or remained largely untouched.

As Joe Biden said while Vice President, “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”

If we don’t want the police to be militarized thugs that keep people in line by force, we shouldn’t give them the tools to do so.  Officer Friendly doesn’t patrol in a tank and Barney Fife never fired a rubber bullet or tear gas canister at anyone in Mayberry.

Likewise, if we value things like social services and public schools, we should give a lot of the savings to them. A culture of life invests in future generations. The land of the brave and home of the free does not value obedience over free thought and the learning necessary to become an educated participant in our democracy.

I live in Pennsylvania.

No other state in the country has a bigger gap between what it spends on rich vs. poor students, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

The state legislature has been paying less and less of public schools’ budgets over the last four decades. The Commonwealth used to contribute 54% of all public school costs in the early 1970s. Today it pays only 35% of the costs, leaving local taxpayers to take up the slack. Since districts are not equally wealthy, that increases the disparity of resources between rich and poor districts.

The difference is significant. Rich districts spend $10,000 to $20,000 on each student, while poorer districts barely pull together $5,000-$6,000.

In addition, impoverished students have greater needs than rich ones. They often don’t have books in the home or access to Pre-kindergarten. Poor students often suffer from food insecurity, malnutrition, a lack of neonatal care, worse attendance, are less well rested and have greater special needs and suffer greater traumas than wealthier students. Moreover, it is no accident that the group privileged with an abundance of funding is made up mostly of white students and those being underprivileged are mostly students of color.

What better way to show that black lives really do matter than to invest in black minds?

The situation isn’t limited to Pennsylvania.

Education still hasn’t recovered from the Great Recession. You see today’s public schools employ 250,000 fewer people than they did before the recession of 2008–09. Meanwhile enrollment has increased by 800,000 students.

So if we wanted today’s children to have the same quality of service kids received in this country only a decade ago, we’d need to hire almost 400,000 more teachers!

Instead, our children are packed into classes of 25, 30 even 40 students!

And it’s about to get worse!

Across the nation with the inevitable loss of taxes after shutting down the economy to save lives during the global Coronavirus outbreak, local districts are bracing for a 15-25% loss in revenues next fiscal year.

In Pennsylvania, districts anticipate $850 million to $1 billion in revenue shortfalls.

That could result in massive teacher layoffs and cuts to student services just as the cost to provide schooling increases with additional difficulties of life during a worldwide pandemic.

If police are there to protect people, what are they protecting us from?

The system is set up to criminalize citizens and keep them in line with brutality.

We’ve criminalized homelessness, drug addiction, even poverty, itself. And lacking a quality education increases a student’s chances of becoming part of the criminal justice system – the school-to-prison pipeline.

We need a new system that works for us.

We need a system where murdering black people – even if you’re wearing a uniform – sends you to jail, and not only after global protests.

We need a system where people feel safe, where no one has to worry about being targeted because of skin color, nationality, religion, immigration status, sexuality, gender or creed.

We need a system where mass gatherings don’t trigger a police response but a political one to redress our grievances.

And to get there we need to defund the police.

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Good News: Harrisburg is Not Cutting Education Funding! Bad News: Handouts for the Rich & Charter Schools

May 30, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Congress, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Democrat, Education, Harrisburg, Labor, Local Control, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, private schools, privatization, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Special Education, Student Mobility, Students, Taxation, Teachers, Technology #FairFundingPA, #PAbudget, Budget, charter schools, coronavirus, Cyber Charter Schools, education, education tax credit scholarships, EITC, Harrisburg, legislature, Local Control Funding Formula, PA Budget, Pennsylvania, Politics, public schools, school board, school funding, school privatization, school vouchers, schools, tax cuts

If you live in Pennsylvania, you can breathe a sigh of relief now that the legislature has passed a stopgap budget that does not cut education funding.

But you can let out that breath in a cry of disgust when you see where much of that money is going and how many underprivileged kids will be left wanting.

GOOD NEWS

With the economy in tatters due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the state legislature never-the-less passed a budget this week providing flat funding for most state programs for five months.

The major exception is public schooling. That has been fully funded for the entire year.

So for 12 months, there will be no state cuts to basic and special education or block grant programs for K-12 schools. Nor will there be state cuts to pre-kindergarten programs or colleges and universities receiving state funding such as community colleges.

That’s really good news in such uncertain times.

School directors can get their own financial houses in order for 2020-2021 without wondering whether the state is going to pull the rug out from under them.

In any other year, flat funding would be a disappointment though.

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

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

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, the local tax base can pick up the slack. In middle class neighborhoods, they can try. But poor communities end up relying more on the state to help or else their kids (who already have greater needs growing up in poverty) have to do without.

Last year, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf was able to increase funding for K-12 schools by $160 million, $50 million more for special education and $25 million for Pre-K programs.

Even this victory was a baby step to healing the billions of dollars looted from our schools during Republican Tom Corbett’s administration which has never been fully replaced or outpaced with increased inflationary costs.

Flat funding is great in a time of a global pandemic.

But in the broader view, it still shirks our duties to subsequent generations.

BAD NEWS

The 2020-21 state budget also includes $200 million in one-time funds to help districts pay for additional costs incurred during the Coronavirus crisis.

This includes the price of new technology to allow for distance learning, as well as deep cleanings in school buildings, new materials, remodeling, etc.

This money includes $150 million received from the federal government’s CARES Act and $50 million from state taxpayers.

That’s good news. Districts need extra money to help with unforeseen costs during this health crisis.

Unfortunately, this money is not being allocated by need.

Those with greater problems are not given more money to deal with them. Instead, the money is being divided nearly evenly.

If you think that’s fair, imagine dividing $10 so a rich person, a middle class person and a poor person could get lunch. They’d each get $3 and change. The poor person can eat off the dollar menu at a fast food restaurant. The middle class person can use it to pay for tip at a sit-down restaurant. And the rich person can light his cigar with it on the way to a fine dining establishment.

In the case of theCOVID-19 stimulus money, each school district will get a minimum of $120,000 while each intermediate unit, career and technical center, charter school, regional charter school and cyber charter school gets $90,000. If there is any money left over, those funds will be distributed to school districts based on 2018-19 average daily membership.

However, why should cyber charter schools receive this money at all? They don’t have any extra costs for transitioning to distance learning. That is their stock and trade already. Moreover, they don’t have buildings that need deep cleaning or remodeling. This money is a no strings gift to such enterprises while other educational institutions go wanting.

Moreover, brick and mortar charter schools almost always serve smaller student populations than authentic public schools. Why should they receive a flat $90,000? Wouldn’t it be better to given them a portion of this money based on the number of students they serve and the degree of poverty these kids live in?

In fact, wouldn’t it make more sense to do the same among authentic public school districts, too? Why should a rich district where almost everyone already has wi-fi and personal technology devices get the same as a poor one where these services are much less widespread? Why should the state give the wealthy as much help as those who can’t meet their basic obligations to children without it?

It’s not like the Commonwealth doesn’t already have a measure to allocate funding more fairly. The legislature passed a bipartisan Basic Education Funding formula that we could have used to ensured districts would have received funding proportionate to the needs of their students.

The fact that the legislature neglected to use it here shows too many in the Republican majority are not committed to equity. In fact, they revel in being able to bring unnecessary money to their wealthier districts.

THE COMING STORM

These measures from the state legislature are a start at addressing the financial impact of the  Coronavirus crisis.

But the worst is yet to come.

In Pennsylvania, districts anticipate $850 million to $1 billion in revenue shortfalls.

That could result in massive teacher layoffs and cuts to student services just as the cost to provide schooling increases with additional difficulties of life during a worldwide pandemic.

The state legislature can’t fix the problem alone.

The $13.5 billion in CARES Act stimulus provided to states is a fraction of the $79 billion that the federal government provided during the Great Recession. U.S. Congress needs to step up federal aide to protect our children and ensure their educations aren’t forfeit for economic woes they played no part in causing.

At the same time, Harrisburg can do more to stop giving handouts to educational entities that don’t need or deserve it thereby freeing up that money to patching holes in funding streams to local districts.

At the top of the list is charter school funding reforms already proposed by Gov. Wolf.

It is way passed time to end gross overpayments to cyber charter schools and eliminate all charter schools ability to profit off of students with disabilities. Gov. Wolf estimates this would save districts more than $200 million while stopping wasteful spending by charters on advertising and other things that should not be bankrolled by taxpayers.

Another way to generate extra money is to stop letting businesses and the wealthy cut their own taxes to support private and parochial schools.

The Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) program allows people and businesses to donate their expected tax bill to the state for the purpose of helping parents pay off enrollment at a private or religious school for their children. Then these same people or businesses get between 75-90% of that donation back.

So if your tax bill is $100 and you donate $100, you can get back $90 – reducing your total tax bill to a mere 10 bucks.

Heck! Since this money is classified as a “donation” you can even claim it on your taxes and get an additional refund – even to the point where you end up making money on the deal! Pennsylvania even allows a “triple dip” – so you get the EITC tax credit, a reduction in your taxable income, and a reduction in your federal taxable income. We actually pay you to shortchange us on your taxes!

Now I’m oversimplifying a bit since you can only use the EITC for up to $750,000 a year, but it’s still a sweet deal for those who take advantage of it.

Meanwhile, this is less money for the rest of us to pay for much needed services. We lost $124 million in 2018-19, alone, to this program. Yet the legislature still voted to increase the program by $25 million last year.

We cannot afford to give away hundreds of millions of dollars annually to private and parochial schools while our authentic public schools which serve more than 90% of our children are underfunded.

And this doesn’t even address the blatant unconstitutionality of the program which, itself, is an obvious workaround to the separation of church and state!

It’s high time we closed this and many other loopholes that allow unscrupulous people and businesses to get away without paying their fair share.

Societies only work when everyone pulls their weight.

The commonwealth will only weather this storm if we stop the fiscal shenanigans and pull together for the benefit of all.

We are all being tested here.

Will Pennsylvania pass or fail?

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Demand Reform to Pennsylvania’s Charter School Law – Before It’s Too Late

December 6, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Harrisburg, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, privatization, protest, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, Social Justice, Students, Teachers, Tom Wolf activism, charter schools, Department of Education, PDE, Pennsylvania, Politics, Propel Charter Schools, protest, public schools, school funding, school privatization, teachers, Tom Wolf

If no one answers a question, was it even asked?

Way back on August 24, 2019, the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) quietly posted a little notice on the PA Bulletin Website asking for public comment on the state’s charter school law.

This is not exactly a high traffic site.

It’s a state-run page that includes proposed rules, notices, proclamations, court rulings, actions and executive orders.

Unless you work for the state, are a journalist or a policy wonk, you probably didn’t see it.

Since then, there has been little fanfare, no hoopla, nothing much in the media about the notice at all.

But this is a huge opportunity for residents fed up with the nonsense the school privatization industry has been getting away with in the Commonwealth for decades.

Pennsylvania has one of the worst charter school laws in the nation.

Charter schools are taxpayer-funded but privately operated.

Though there are about 180 of these privatized institutions throughout the state with more than 137,000 students, that represents only about 6 percent of the kids enrolled in public school.

Yet the state funding system pits authentic public schools against charter schools for the financing needed to stay open.

Charter schools siphon money from authentic public schools serving the neediest students creating a deficit spiral. Money gushes out of public districts which have to cut teachers and programs to patch budget gaps which in turn result in even more parents pulling their children out of the public schools and trying to enroll them in charters.

Though the legislature used to help authentic public schools by reimbursing them for 30% of the charter school costs, that funding has been eliminated.

Meanwhile, the charter school law has barely changed at all since it was enacted in 1997.

Gov. Tom Wolf has promised to correct that with sweeping reforms in 2020 – even if it means bypassing the gerrymandered and gridlocked legislature with executive orders.

But before he can begin, he needs to hear from commonwealth voters.

Charter schools are backed by billionaires like Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates and the Walton Family. To hold these privatized schools accountable, he needs tangible proof that he has voter support.

So the more comments he receives demanding action, the better the chances that gets done.

PDE has set no deadline for comments, but to make the most difference, we have until the end of the year – Dec. 31, 2019 – to make our voices heard.

There are two ways to do it. You can:

1) Write a letter to Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera at:

Pedro A. Rivera
Office of the Secretary
Pennsylvania Department of Education
333 Market St.
Harrisburg, PA 17120

2) Email your letter to Special Assistant to the Secretary Adam Schott at:

adschott@pa.gov

Comments can be as long or short as you want, but here are some suggestions to keep in mind when writing.

1) Begin by telling who you are.

2) Explain the problem with charter schools briefly. Use real world examples if you can. There’s nothing wrong with referring to a newspaper article or blog. And if you can mention specifics from your school district, all the better.

3) Make suggestions for reform. You can address anything, but PDE is specifically looking for comments on these topics:

· Charter school applications: Strong regulations would require the application be comprehensive, set high standards, ensure only operators with needed skills are approved and maintain maximum local control.

· Admissions policies: Strong regulations would ensure charters conduct fair lotteries that don’t allow cherry picking. Schools should be located in areas that are accessible to poor students and those relying on public transportation. Charters should be required to create recruitment plans for specific groups of vulnerable students including EL students, students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students and students in foster care.

· Accountability for boards of trustees: Strong regulations would aim to prevent financial wrongdoing, eliminate conflicts of interest, and impose stronger penalties for the misuse of public funds.

· Information on charter management companies: Strong regulations would end high fees paid to charter management companies and increase transparency of boards, budgets, costs and contracts.

· Insurance, financial and accounting standards: Strong regulations would ensure there were independent auditors and accountants as well as increased transparency.

· Funding: This is about the subsidy redirection process that forces PDE to pay charters directly when they dispute a bill with a school district. Strong regulations would ensure all disputed funds go into an escrow account rather than just being paid.

· Academic accountability: Strong regulations would ensure all charters should be part of a performance system that is used in renewal and revocation decisions. The lowest performing charter schools should be subject to closure without appeal.

Education Voters of Pennsylvania, a non-profit organization working to promote public education throughout the Commonwealth, published this suggestion:

  “We are recommending that your comments include the following:

1. We strongly support the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s decision to develop these regulations.

2. The regulations must end the conflicts of interest, financial self-dealing and lack of transparency that occur in the charter sector today. Charters must be held accountable for their performance in operations, finance and academics.

3. We strongly support local control over charter school opening and closing. Elected school boards know the needs of the community the best and are responsible to taxpayers and families.

4. The charter school law acknowledges that charter schools have an impact on the finances of school districts. The districts should be able to consider that impact when making decisions to open or renew a charter.”

Here is the letter I will be sending:

Dear Pedro A. Rivera:

Thank you for seeking comments from Pennsylvania residents about our 22-year-old charter school law.

I live in the Pittsburgh area and am both a public school teacher and the father of a public school student.

I have seen the damage charter schools can do in my career at the Steel Valley School District in Munhall. We have a Propel charter school in our community. Just three years ago, the Propel franchise siphoned away $3.5 million from our district annually. This year, they took $5 million, and next year they’re projected to get away with $6 million. That’s about 16% of our entire $37 million yearly budget.

Meanwhile, enrollment at Propel has stayed constant at about 260-270 students a year since 2015-16. It’s only the amount of money that we have to pay them that has increased.

The state funding formula is a mess. It gives charter schools almost the same amount per regular education student that my district spends but doesn’t require that all of that money actually be used to educate these children.

In the 2015-16 school year, Steel Valley paid the 19th highest amount of its budget to charter schools in the state (9%) and that number is growing.

According to the state Department of Education, here’s how our charter school spending has increased:

Steel Valley Per Student Charter School Tuition:

2000-01 – 2012-13
Non-Special Ed: $9,321
Special Ed: $16,903

2013-14
Non-Special Ed: $9,731
Special Ed: $16,803

2014-15
Non-special Ed: $10,340
Special Ed $20,112

2015-16
Non-Special Ed: $12,326
Special Ed: $25,634

2016-17
Non-Special Ed: $13,879
Special Ed: $29,441

2017-18
Non-Special Ed: $13,484
Special Ed: $25,601

2018-19
Non-special ed: $14,965
Special ed: $32,809

All of this has real world consequences in the classroom. It means fewer teachers and larger class sizes. It means narrowed curriculum and fewer extracurricular activities. It means reduced options and opportunities for all children – just so a new business can duplicate the services already being offered but skim tax dollars off the top.

So here are the reforms I think we need to make.

There is zero reason why there should be charter schools at all. We do not need to spend public tax dollars on schools that are privately operated. If a school takes public money, it should be run by the public – specifically an elected school board. So we should repeal the charter school law in its entirety. We should be like Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kentucky and West Virginia and have zero charter schools.

Of course, that leaves us with the question of what to do with the charter schools that already exist here. First, we have to commit to a complete moratorium on any new charter schools – ever. Then we need to decide what to do with those that already exist.

I think we should do a thorough audit of each of them. Any charter school that fails the audit, closes. They should have to prove they haven’t been wasting taxpayer funds and are providing a real service to students and families. They also should not be drawing any kind of profit from their efforts.

If we have any charter schools that meet these stipulations, we should reform them into fully authentic public schools. They should have to be run by elected school boards. They should have to abide by every rule authentic public schools already do – fully transparent, public meetings, accept all students in their coverage areas, etc.

Finally, any funding shortfall caused by keeping these schools in existence would have to be subsidized by the state. They would not get any funding that goes to the existing authentic public school. The charter schools that we are transforming into authentic public schools would have to be funded by an additional revenue stream from the state – and this may require an increase in state taxes. No one wants that but it’s the only fair way and will help reduce the number of ex-charter schools we rehabilitate.

I realize my suggestion goes against what we have always done and may provoke heated opposition. But I think it is what is best.

Moreover, if we have to find a compromise position, this is where we start from. If we must keep charter schools in Pennsylvania, they should be as transparent as authentic public schools, they should have to be run by elected school boards, they should not be able to make a profit (regardless of their tax status), they should have to accept all students in their coverage areas, and they should be fully funded by the state and not as parasites to authentic public schools.

Thank you for considering my position. There are thousands of parents, teachers, students and community members who feel as I do and we will work to support your efforts and/or push you to do right thing.

Thanks again.

Yours,

Steven Singer

If you live in Pennsylvania, I strongly encourage you to send a letter (whether by email or snail mail) today. Feel free to borrow as much as you like from what I have here.

Together we can make a difference for our children and our communities. Please share widely and encourage your commonwealth friends and family to raise their voices as well.

From Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and all places in between, it’s time we were heard.

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!

The Stink of Segregation Needs to End in Steel Valley Schools

November 12, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, bloggers, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, history, Labor, Learning, Media, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Student Mobility, Students, Taxation, Teachers #FairFundingPA, Allegheny County, charter schools, Homestead, Munhall, Pennsylvania, Politics, prejudice, public schools, school funding, school segregation, segregation, Steel Valley Schools, Students, teacher autonomy, teachers, West Homestead

I am a teacher at Steel Valley Schools.

I am also an education blogger.

In order to belong to both worlds, I’ve had to abide by one ironclad rule that I’m about to break:

Never write about my home district.

Oh, I write about issues affecting my district. I write about charter schools, standardized testing, child poverty, etc. But I rarely mention how these things directly impact my school, my classroom, or my students.

I change the names to protect the innocent or gloss over the specifics with ambiguity.

In six years, it’s a maxim I’ve disregarded maybe once before – when writing specifically about how charter schools are gobbling up Steel Valley.

Today I’ll set it aside once more – specifically to talk about the insidious school segregation at work in Steel Valley elementary schools.

But let me be clear about one thing – I do this not because I want to needlessly agitate school board members, administrators or community members.

I do it because the district has specifically asked for input from stakeholders – and for the first time in years, teachers (even those living outside district boundaries) have been included in that designation.

School directors held a town hall meeting in October where 246 people crowded into the high school auditorium to present their views.

Last week there was a meeting with teachers and administrators to discuss the same matter.

I didn’t say anything at either gathering though I had many thoughts circling my head.

Instead I have decided to commit them here to my blog.

Maybe no one will read them.

Maybe that would even be best. I know that no matter what invitations are publicly presented, in private what I write could be used against me.

Yet I feel compelled to say it anyway.

So here goes.

Something stinks in Steel Valley School District.

It’s not the smell of excrement or body odor.

It’s a metaphysical stink like crime or poverty.

But it’s neither of those.

It’s school segregation.

To put it bluntly, we have two elementary schools – one mostly for white kids and one mostly for black kids.

Our district is located on a steep hill with Barrett Elementary at the bottom and the other schools – Park Elementary, the middle and high school – at the top.

The student population at Barrett Elementary in Homestead is 78% black. The student population at Park Elementary in Munhall is 84% white.

These schools serve students from K-4th grade. By 5th grade they are integrated once again when they all come to the middle school and then the high school. There the mix is about 40% black to 60% white.

But having each group start their education in distinctly segregated fashion has long lasting effects.

By and large, black students don’t do as well academically as white students. This is due partially to how we assess academic achievement – through flawed and biased standardized tests. But even if we look solely at classroom grades and graduation rates, black kids don’t do as well as the white ones.

Maybe it has something to do with the differences in services we provide at each elementary school. Maybe it has to do with the resources we allocate to each school. Maybe it has something to do with how modern each building is, how new the textbooks, the prevalence of extracurricular activities, tutoring and support each school provides.

But it also has to do with the communities these kids come from and the needs they bring with them to school. It has something to do with the increasing need for special education services especially for children growing up in poverty. It has something to do with the need for structure lacking in home environments, the need for safety, for counseling, for proper nutrition and medical services.

No one group has a monopoly on need. But one group has greater numbers in need and deeper hurts that require healing. And that group is the poor.

According to 2017 Census data, around 27% of our Steel Valley children live in poverty – much more than the Allegheny County average of 17% or the Pennsylvania average of 18%.

And of those poor children, many more are children of color.

Integrating our schools, alone, won’t solve this problem.

Putting children under one roof is an important step, but we have to ensure they get what they need under that roof. Money and resources that flow to white schools can almost as easily be diverted to white classes in the same building. Equity and need must be addressed together.

However, we must recognize that one of those things our children need is each other.

Integration isn’t good just because it raises test scores. It’s good because it teaches our children from an early age what the world really looks like. It teaches them that we’re all human. It teaches tolerance, acceptance and love of all people – and that’s a lesson the white kids need perhaps more than the black kids need help with academics.

I say this from experience.

I grew up in nearby McKeesport – a district very similar to Steel Valley economically, racially and culturally.

I am the product of integrated schools and have benefited greatly from that experience. My daughter goes to McKeesport and likewise benefits from growing up in that inclusive environment.

I could have enrolled her elsewhere. But I didn’t because I value integration.

So when Mary Niederberger wrote her bombshell article in Public Source about the segregated Steel Valley elementary schools, I was embarrassed like everyone else.

But I wasn’t shocked.

To be frank, none of us were shocked.

We all knew about the segregation problem at the elementaries. Anyone who had been to them and can see knew about it.

In fact, to the district’s credit, Steel Valley had already tried a partial remedy. The elementaries used to house K-5th grade. We moved the 5th grade students from each elementary up to the middle school thereby at least reducing the years in which our students were segregated.

The result was state penalty.

Moving Barrett kids who got low test scores up to the middle school – which had some of the best test scores in the district – tipped the scales. The state penalized both Barrett and the middle school for low test scores and required that students in each school be allowed to take their per pupil funding as a tax voucher and use it toward tuition at a private or parochial school – as if there was any evidence doing so would help them academically.

Not exactly an encouragement to increase the program.

But school segregation has a certain smell that’s hard to ignore.

If you’ll allow me a brief diversion, it reminds me of a historical analogue of which you’ve probably never heard – the Great Stink of 1858.

Let me take you back to London, England, in Victorian times.

The British had been using the Thames River to wash away their garbage and sewage for centuries, but the river being a tidal body wasn’t able to keep up with the mess.

Moreover, getting your drinking water from the same place you use to wash away your sewage isn’t exactly a healthy way to live.

But people ignored it and went on with their lives as they always did (if they didn’t die of periodic cholera outbreaks) until 1858.

That year was a particularly dry and hot one and the Thames nearly evaporated into a dung-colored slime.

It stunk.

People from miles away could smell it.

There’s a funny story of Queen Victoria traveling by barge down the river with a bouquet of flowers shoved in her face so she could breathe. Charles Dickens and others made humorous remarks.

But the politicians of the time refused to do anything to fix the problem. They sprayed lime on the curtains. They even sprayed it onto the fecal water – all to no avail.

Finally, when they had exhausted every other option, they did what needed to be done. They spent 4.2 million pounds to build a more than 1,000 mile modern sewage system under London.

It took two decades but they did it right and almost immediately the cholera outbreaks stopped.

They calculated how big a sewage system would have to be constructed for the contemporary population and then made it twice as big. And the result is still working today!

Scientists estimate if they hadn’t doubled the size it would have given out by the 1950s.

This seems to be an especially important bit of history – even for Americans more than a continent and a century distant.

It seems to me an apt metaphor for what we’re experiencing here in Steel Valley.

Everyone knows what’s causing the stink in our district – school segregation.

Likewise, we know what needs to be done to fix it.

We need a new elementary complex for all students K-4. (I’d actually like to see 5th grade there, too.) And we need busing to get these kids to school regardless of where they live.

The excuse for having two segregated elementary schools has typically been our segregated communities and lack of adequate public transportation.

We’re just a school district. We can’t fix the complex web of economic, social and racial issues behind where people live (though these are matters our local, state and federal governments can and should address). However, we can take steps to minimize their impact at least so far as education is concerned.

But this requires busing – something leaders decades ago decided against in favor of additional funding in the classroom.

In short, our kids have always walked to school. Kids at the bottom of the hill in Homestead and West Homestead walk to Barrett. Kids at the top in Munhall walk to Park. But we never required elementary kids to traverse that hill up to the middle and high school until they were at least 10 years old.

We didn’t think it fair to ask young kids to walk all the way up the hill. Neighborhood schools reduced the distance – but kept the races mostly separate.

We need busing to remove this excuse.

I’ve heard many people deny both propositions. They say we can jury rig a solution where certain grades go to certain schools that already exist just not on a segregated basis. Maybe K-2 could go to Park and 3-4 could go to Barrett.

It wouldn’t work. The existent buildings will not accommodate all the children we have. Frankly, the facilities at Barrett just aren’t up to standard. Even Park has seen better days.

We could renovate and build new wings onto existing schools, but it just makes more sense to build a new school.

After all, we want a solution that will last for years to come. We don’t want a Band-Aid that only lasts for a few years.

Some complain that this is impossible – that there just isn’t enough money to get this done.

And I do sympathize with this position. After all, as Superintendent Ed Wehrer said, the district is still paying off construction of the high school, which was built in the 1970s.

But solutions do exist – even for financial problems.

My home district of McKeesport is very similar to Steel Valley and in the last decade has built a new 6th grade wing to Founders Hall Middle School and Twin Rivers, a new K-4 school on the old Cornell site.

I’m sure McKeesport administrators and school board members along with those at other neighboring districts could provide Steel Valley with the expertise we need to get this done. I’m sure we could find the political will to help us get this done.

And that’s really my point: our problem is less about what needs to happen than how to do it.

We should at least try to do this right!

We can’t just give up before we’ve even begun.

Debates can and should be had about where to build the new school, how extensive to have the busing and other details. But the main plan is obvious.

I truly believe this is doable.

I believe we can integrate Steel Valley elementary schools. And I believe we can – and MUST – do so without any staff furloughs.

We’re already running our classes with a skeleton crew. We can ensure the help and participation of teachers by making them this promise.

That’s what true leaders would do.

Sure, some fools will complain about sending their little white kids to class with black kids. We heard similar comments at the town hall meeting. But – frankly – who cares what people like that think? The best thing we could do for their children would be to integrate the schools so that parental prejudices come smack into conflict with the realities of life.

And if doing so makes them pull out of Steel Valley, good riddance. You never need to justify doing the right thing.

Again this will not solve all of our problems. We will still need to work to meet all student needs in their buildings. We will have to continue to fight the charter school parasites sucking at our district tax revenues.

But this is the right thing to do.

It is the only way to clear the air and remove the stink of decades of segregation.

So let’s do it.

Let’s join together and get it done.

Who’s with me?

NAEP Test Scores Show How Stupid We Are… To Pay Attention to NAEP Test Scores

November 1, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, bloggers, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Democrat, Education, Junk science, Learning, Media, NAEP, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, small class size, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers assessment, Betsy DeVos, education, high stakes testing, International, international test scores, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Politics, school funding, standardized testing, teaching, test-based accountability

Brace yourselves!

America’s NAEP test scores in 2019 stayed pretty much the same as they were in 2018!

And the media typically set its collective hair on fire trying to interpret the data.

Sometimes called the Nations Report Card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test is given to a random sampling of elementary, middle and high school students in member countries to compare the education systems of nations.

And this year there was one particular area where US kids did worse than usual!

Our scores went down in 8th grade reading!

To be honest, scores usually go up or down by about one or two points every year averaging out to about the same range.

But this year! Gulp! They went down four points!

FOUR POINTS!

What does that mean?

Absolutely nothing.

They’re standardized test scores. They’re terrible assessments of student learning.

You might as well compare the relative body temperatures of randomly selected students and wonder why we aren’t bridging the body warmth gap with the somber hummingbird! I mean it has an average temperature of 114 F! And the best we can do is a measly 98.6 F! Why won’t enough kids get a fever for America!?

If test scores have any meaning at all – it’s parental wealth. Rich kids tend to score higher than poor kids. That’s partially because of the inequality of resources each receive, but also because of racial, cultural and economic bias embedded in the questions.

So the NAEP shows us what any study of parental income would show. America has a lot of poor kids and underfunded schools.

Thanks, NAEP! There’s no way we could ever have figured that out without you!

But having this information come to us via test scores allows us to deflect from the real problem and instead continually blame the victim.

Why can’t these poor kids from impoverished schools score as well as kids from richer countries with more well-funded schools?

I can’t imagine!

Typically politicians used the results to push their pet policies.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos used the scores to wash her hands of the entire public education system. I know – isn’t her job to safeguard public schools? It’s like a zoo keeper complaining that the penguins aren’t bringing in enough visitors and then refusing to feed them.

DeVos proposed we improve test scores by cutting $4.8 billion from public schools in 2020 and instead pumping $5 billion to a tax credit school voucher scheme that props up private schools.

I know that sounds dumb, but before you judge her, realize she also proposed cutting federal funding for afterschool programs, teacher professional development, student support and enrichment programs.

So there.

Education Blogger Peter Greene claims that this move is based on a reading comprehension problem the Education Secretary is having, herself.

She says that the NAEP results mean that 2/3 of American students read below grade level. However, Greene points out that she is conflating two different things – grade level proficiency and NAEP proficiency.

Here’s what the NAEP wrote:

“The NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade-level proficiency, but rather competency over challenging subject matter. NAEP Achievement levels are to be used on a trial basis and should be interpreted and used with caution.”

Which kind of begs the question of why we need these scores in the first place.

There is much clearer data out there.

A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded that 29 states spent less per student in 2015 than they had before the Great Recession.

And the federal government has done little to help. Since 2011, spending on major K-12 programs – including Title I grants for underprivileged students and special education – has been basically flat.

According to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, today’s public schools employ at least 250,000 fewer people than they did before the recession of 2008–09. Meanwhile enrollment has increased by at least 800,000 students.

So to ensure our students had the same quality of service children received only a decade ago, we’d need to hire almost 400,000 more teachers!

That’s how you cut class size down from the 20, 30, even 40 students packed into a room that you can routinely find in some districts today.

If we looked at realities like these instead of test scores – which at best provide us data at several removes – we might actually be motivated to reach solutions.

For instance, the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world – if not probably the ONLY country – that funds schools based largely on local taxes. Other developed nations either equalize funding or provide extra money for kids in need. In the Netherlands, for example, national funding is provided to all schools based on the number of pupils enrolled. But for every guilder allocated to a middle-class Dutch child, 1.25 guilders are allocated for a lower-class child and 1.9 guilders for a minority child – exactly the opposite of the situation in the U.S.

If we want to compare the US to other countries, this is a perfect place to start.

But a focus on test scores obscures the differences.

Virtually all of the top scoring countries taking these exams have much less child poverty than the U.S. If they had the same percentage of poor students that we do, their scores would be lower than ours. Likewise, if we had the same percentage of poor students that they do, our scores would go through the roof! We would have the best scores in the world!

These scores just mirror back to us our child poverty rate – that more than 1/3 of our students live below the poverty line and more than half of public school students qualify for free or reduced lunches.

But this myopic focus on standardized tests also blinds us to the ways our system is superior to that of many other countries.

We do something that many international systems do not. We educate everyone! Foreign systems often weed children out by high school. They don’t let every child get 13 years of grade school (counting kindergarten). They only school their highest achievers.

So when we compare ourselves to these countries, we’re comparing ALL of our students to only SOME of theirs – their best academic pupils, to be exact. Yet we still hold our own given these handicaps!

This suggests that the majority of problems with our public schools are monetary. Pure and simple.

At least House Democrats passed a Labor-HHS-Education funding bill to increase public school funding by $3.5 billion. Even if it were somehow passed by the Republican controlled Senate, that’s a drop in the bucket after decades of neglect – but it’s something!

It’s certainly better than DeVos who claims that funding somehow doesn’t matter for public schools – only for her pet charter and voucher schools.

A 2018 review by Northwestern University found that in 12 out of 13 studies increased spending had a positive effect on student outcomes. And that result has been verified by studies since then in California, Texas, Wisconsin and other states.

Money makes a difference.

Money spent on students – not more testing.

So why the drop in this year’s 8th grade reading scores?

Who knows? It could be a spike in the rate or effect of child poverty in the middle school years.

It could be the impact of decades of high stakes testing on middle school curriculum – narrowing what is taught and muscling out authentic instruction.

Frankly it doesn’t matter because the data is suspect.

Standardized testing will never give us an accurate picture of what is going on with our students or our schools.

And until we, as a society, finally realize that and focus on things that actually matter, we will continue to fail the only test that matters – how well we provide for our children.

What Kind of A—hole Ransoms School Data?

August 29, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Budget, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Civil Rights, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Data Driven Instruction, Data Mining, edtech, Education, Learning, Local Control, Politics, Poverty, privatization, ransomware, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, student privacy, Students, Teachers, Technology blackmail, cyber attack, Data, Data Mining, edtech, education, Embezzle, Politics, Privatize, public schools, ransom, ransomware, school funding, schools, standardized testing, Students, teachers, technology, theft

You’ve got to be a grade A sleaze bag to steal from kids’ public schools.

But that’s exactly what a growing number of slime balls are doing when they hack into schools’ computer networks and hold their data for ransom.

Even worse – districts are paying it!

Just this week the Rockville Center School District in New York state paid an $88,000 ransom to get back files that had been encrypted by Ryuk ransomware.

The district negotiated the payment down from $176,000. School directors only decided to pay after realizing it would cost more to hire another firm to fix the problem.

Plus the school had insurance that covered ransomware so it only ended up losing its $10,000 deductible.

But this district isn’t the only one being extorted by these basement dweller bandits.

In July, alone, schools in New Mexico, Nevada, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Alabama, Connecticut and another in New York suffered similar cyber attacks.

Nor do they show any signs of slowing down.

A report by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future concluded that attacks on state and local governments have reached an all time high. There were 170 cyber attacks since 2013, of which 22 occurred just this year.

After years of budget cuts and downsizing, hackers see local governments like wolves see the oldest and weakest animals in the herd – easy pickings.

And schools are particularly vulnerable.

They often have small IT departments, antiquated equipment and the cheapest cybersecurity.

That’s why in recent months schools in Lake City, Fla.; La Porte County, Indiana; and Riviera Beach, Fla. have all paid ransoms to regain access to their data.

If you think about it, data is one of the most financially valuable things schools have.

Districts are responsible for students’ privacy in so many ways – records of special services, grades, accommodations, discipline, etc. In addition, schools are large employers with privileged information on their staffs including healthcare, finances, insurance, social security numbers, etc.

School directors and administrators have a responsibility to safeguard this information. It’s no wonder, then, that many are giving in to these demands, especially when nefarious nonentities ensure payment is cheaper than any other alternative.

Even so, what a monster you have to be to squeeze schools in order to make a buck!

Every dollar you blackmail away from district coffers is a dollar not spent on children’s educations.

That’s less money for teachers, supplies, classes, tutors, nurses, counselors, etc.

You aren’t stealing candy from a baby. You are literally snatching away opportunities for a better future.

Given the stakes involved, it shouldn’t be all up to individual districts to stop cyber thieves. The state and federal government should be flexing their muscles to help.

One thing they can do is toughen laws against using ransomware.

Maryland legislators proposed a law to consider ransomware attacks that resulted in a loss of more than $1,000 as a felony, which would then be subject to a fine of up to $100,000 and 10 years in jail.

Current Maryland laws define such attacks that extort less than $10,000 as misdemeanors, while only a breach that results in a loss of greater than $10,000 is a felony.

But some argue that there are already federal laws on the books criminalizing ransomware such as The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Unfortunately, these laws don’t mention ransomware specifically and may be too broad.

Federal and state governments could at least offer grants to update school cybersecurity to make such attacks more difficult. Otherwise, the burden becomes an exponential increase in the cost of doing business for schools which can only be made up by increasing local taxes and/or cutting student services.

Another option would be setting up a federal program to step in whenever schools are victims of ransomware. After all, these are public schools! If they were under attack by armed terrorists, the federal government wouldn’t think twice before jumping in.

With federal resources, perhaps we could stop all schools from ever paying these ransoms again. Because that’s the only way to truly end these cyber attacks.

As long as schools and governments are willing to pay, there will be trolls unscrupulous enough to take advantage.

Public services set up to meet the public good should never have to shortchange society so they can meet some fool’s ransom demand.

Ransomware has been around since at least 2012. The largest incident so far came last year with the WannaCry attack which infected more than 200,000 computers in about 150 countries, including the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, at a cost of about $4 billion.

It’s past time we got serious in dealing with these cowards.

As technology increases, data crimes have become more common. In fact, there are far too many legal ways to pilfer private data.

Schools, in particular, do a bad job of safeguarding student data by entering into unregulated and nefarious contracts with ed tech companies. Contracts with these companies commonly contain loopholes allowing them to take student data at will and sell it.

The situation is worsened by the supply-side economic policies governing public schools. There are already numerous roads to privatize public schools and turn tax dollars into corporate profits. Moreover, the standardized testing industry monetizes learning when their services are mandated by the state and federal government. They conveniently offer to remediate the large numbers of students who don’t score well on these same tests and cash in on both ends.

With so many fully legal ways to steal education dollars from practices and policies that actually help kids learn, it’s no surprise where these shadow dwellers get their ideas.

As repulsive and selfish as these hackers are, they’re only taking the greed of the testing, privatization and ed tech industry to its logical conclusion.

What kind of a—hole ransoms school data?

The a—holes we allow to get away with it.

Blaming Schools for Student Absences is Like Denouncing Doctors for Disease

August 25, 2019 stevenmsinger absenteeism, Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, Charter Schools, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers absenteeism, Accountability, charter schools, chronic absences, education, Every Student Succeeds Act, Politics, public schools, responsability, safe schools, school funding, school segregation, schools, Students, teacher bashing, Teacher Evaluation, teacher shortage, teachers

If something is wrong with children, it must be the school’s fault.

Right?

If kids can’t read, write and do ‘rithmetic, the teachers must not have taught ’em right.

It couldn’t have anything to do with home life, generational poverty, economic inequality and systemic racism.

Except that it almost always does.

Inextricably.

The fact is children who don’t live in safe, loving homes have much greater difficulty concentrating and caring about academics. Kids with impoverished parents are much more likely to go to underfunded schools and sit in classrooms that are racially segregated.

None of that is under the control of teachers or schools, but a focus on high stakes standardized testing, school privatization and dangerously unregulated ed tech hides the problem.

It’s not that teachers don’t teach. Inequality, prejudice and privatization – these are the root causes and the reason we do nothing about them generation after generation is that we have an easy scapegoat in the public schools in general and public school teachers in particular.

Take student absences.

It’s a huge problem.

When kids don’t show up to school, they learn less. It’s a simple concept.

Yet just four years ago when we had a chance to rewrite the federal law governing public education to actually DO SOMETHING about the problems we’re facing, we dropped the ball. Again!

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to include five indicators measuring school performance: four based on academic achievement, and a fifth, “non-academic” measure of student success.

Most states have adopted chronic student absenteeism as this “fifth indicator.”

So we take those five indicators, weight them and combine them together to get overall school scores that are used to sort and rank educational institutions. That way we can prioritize funding to the highest performers and withhold it from the lowest.

It’s the same supply side nonsense we’ve been doing for years with a few numbers moved around and given a different name.

Schools overflowing with resources serving rich white kids get a sticker. Schools starving for resources serving poor brown kids get a kick.

And somehow that’s supposed to help things get better.

Don’t get me wrong. Absenteeism is important.

Nearly 8 million students missed 15 or more days of school in 2015-16 — an increase from the 6.8 million who missed the same amount in 2013-14, when the federal Department of Education began tracking the data. And there’s a mountain of research that links chronic absenteeism with poor academic performance, delayed graduation, and increased dropout rates.

But putting it all on neighborhood schools and local districts is a huge abrogation of responsibility.

By and large, public schools do not cause students to be absent. Nor do they have the resources to ensure these students start attending.

But we’ve found someone to blame and that’s really all this whole exercise was about in the first place.

It’s like denouncing your doctor for your disease. It won’t cure you, but it might make you feel justified as you die.

The reasons students are chronically absent have little to do with individual schools.

According to Attendance Works, a non-profit focusing on ways to improve student attendance, the main causes of chronic absences are:

•Chronic disease or lack of health care and/or dental care.

•The need to care for siblings or other family members.

•Unmet basic needs: transportation, housing, food, clothing, etc.

•Trauma.

•Feeling unsafe getting to school.

•Academic or social struggles.

•Being teased or bullied.

•Poor school climate or unsafe schools.

•Parents had negative school experience.

•Lack of engaging and relevant instruction.

•Peer pressure to be with peers out of school vs. in school.

•No meaningful relationships with adults in school.

•High suspension rates and disproportionate school discipline.

Certainly some of these things are under the control of school directors, administrators, and teachers.

Schools can and should provide safe ways for students to get to and from school. They should work to reduce bullying and make school a welcoming place for all children. They should provide engaging instruction, fair discipline policies and reach out to parents and the community.

But most schools are already doing that – or certainly trying to do that within the confines of their budgets.

My own Western Pennsylvania district has been flagged by the Commonwealth for increasing chronic absences. In the state, this is defined as students with 10 or more unexcused absences. We’ve been put on an improvement plan – which basically means an employee at the state Department of Education wagging his finger and telling us to get better or else.

However, the overarching problem and solution are easy to see. We are a district without busing.

The high school and middle school sit on top of a hill. Students who live in the poorer sections of town at the bottom of the hill have to walk or take public transportation daily to get to school.

It’s no wonder that some of them don’t do that every day and stay home instead.

However, we serve a mostly impoverished population. Decades ago, school directors decided it would be more cost effective to save money on busing so they could provide greater services for students. Yet as the economy has continued to stagnate and funding has become even more hard to come by, attendance has worsened.

So what are we to do? Cut services and add buses?

Doing so would mean we’d have to bus students to local charter schools as well, increasing the burden on taxpayers and the amount of muscle and bone we’d have to cut from our own academic programs.

It’s all very well and good to have the federal government tell us that attendance is important – but where is the help to improve it?

As with everything else in education, we get threats and the promise of economic sanctions but nothing in the way of assistance, aide or intervention.

We could be working together to try to solve this and other social issues. We could pool resources and construct social programs to help parents get jobs, set up stable homes, fund robust systems of public transportation, and a host of social services for students and their families such as tutoring, counseling, child care, and continuing education classes. We could end discriminatory policies such as school segregation, school privatization and high stakes standardized testing.

But doing so would mean abandoning the blame game and nothing has worked better to shield the rich from paying their fair share than pointing fingers at the less privileged and those who dedicate their lives to help them.

In truth, the problems with public schools are rarely the teachers.

It’s that society has written them off and refuses to take responsibility for its own role in supporting the next generation.

Gov. Wolf Tries to Stop Charter Schools Gorging on Public School Funding

August 22, 2019August 22, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Democrat, Education, Local Control, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, Students, Teachers, Tom Wolf Accountability, charter schools, Cyber Charter Schools, education, fiscal responsability, Governor Tom Wolf, Harrisburg, legislature, PA Budget, PA House, PA Senate, Pennsylvania, Politics, school funding, teachers, teaching, Tom Wolf, transparency

Sooey! Here Pig Pig Pig!

No one minds that healthy call at the hog farm when it’s time to feed the sows.

But taxpayers do take issue with it when it’s the call of the state legislature gathering a different kind of swine around public tax dollars.

Pennsylvania’s 180 charter schools gobbled up $1.8 billion last year from the Commonwealth’s public schools.

And Gov. Tom Wolf is refusing to let them continue to gorge on public funding meant to nourish everyone.

Last week, he took executive action to hold these schools accountable and force them to be more transparent – even if the legislature won’t.

Charter schools are publicly financed but privately run. Unlike authentic public schools, charters are often administered by appointed boards. They don’t have to provide the same level of services for children, don’t have to accept all students, can make a profit and don’t even have to be transparent about how they spend their money.

Yet that money comes from taxpayers.

For years fiscal watchdogs have complained that the state’s 22-year-old charter school law needs revising. However, after lining lawmakers pockets with charter school cash, the legislature continually refuses to do anything about it.

A few Democrats have offered plans that would increase accountability, but they’ve gotten no traction. And Republican plans have almost exclusively offered to make matters worse by dumping more money in the trough and putting up a thicker curtain so we don’t see the school privatizers eat.

So finally Gov. Wolf, a Democrat, took action on his own.

He has directed his Department of Education to circumvent the legislature to develop regulations that he says, “will level the playing field for all taxpayer-funded public schools, strengthen the accountability and transparency of charter and cyber charter schools and better serve all students.”

His plan would:

•Allow districts to limit student enrollment in charter schools where students aren’t making academic gains.

•Require charter schools to stop turning away students based on race, ethnicity, gender, disability, intellectual deficits, lack of athletics or other student characteristics.

•Make charter schools as transparent as authentic public schools.

•Stop conflicts of interests for charter school board members and operating companies so that they can’t make decisions on behalf of the school that would enrich themselves, their families and/or friends.

•Make charters submit to financial audits to state regulators, make them publicly bid contracts for supplies and services and use fair contracting practices.

•Provide greater oversight of charter school management companies so they can’t profit off of the students enrolled in the schools they’re managing.

•Seek more information about how prospective charters will be run in a new model state application to be used when charters seek to open up shop or renew existing charters.

•Require charters to accurately document their costs.

•Prevent charters from overcharging for services they provide to students.

•Make charters pay to cover the state’s costs for implementing the charter school law.

•Recoup money from charter schools for the time and services the state provides when it reviews applications, distributes payments and provides legal and administrative support to them.

It’s a bold step for a governor, but apparently Wolf is tired of waiting on a dysfunctional legislature to actually legislate.

The problem is Wolf has to be more than a governor. He has to be a goalie.

The state House and state Senate are deeply gerrymandered and controlled by Republicans.

Every year, lawmakers pass mostly crap bills written by Koch Brothers proxies only to be vetoed by Wolf.

Occasionally, the GOP convinces enough right-leaning Democrats to go with them and Wolf can’t or won’t veto the bills.

And that’s pretty much how things work in Harrisburg.

However, this time Wolf wasn’t content to just guard the net. He actually took the puck down the ice, himself, and made a slap shot on the opposing team.

Can he do this? Is he still operating within the law?

Time will tell – though I’d argue that in the absence of legislative action, he is within his job description.

Moreover, this is only a first step.

Wolf, himself, has said that more needs to be done by the legislature. Even after his executive actions, much needs to be done to make charter schools function properly in the Commonwealth.

Specifically, Wolf asked the legislature to pass a moratorium on new cyber charter schools, cap enrollment in low-performing charter schools until they improve, subject charter management companies to the same transparency rules that districts must follow, and create a fair, predictable and equitable charter school funding formula.

I’d like them to go even further.

Frankly, I’d like to see charter schools ended as educational institutions.
Why should the public pay for schools that aren’t locally controlled? Why pay for privatized schools at all?

I suppose if there are some that are functioning well for students, they can be grandfathered in, but they should be funded separately. When two districts have to compete for the same funding, the students lose.

At least, we should not be opening up new charters. The public should not be in the business of funding privatized schools.

I am grateful to Gov. Wolf for finally having the guts to stand up to this powerful industry.

The state exists to further the public good – not enrich private corporations like those running many charter schools.

It’s time we admitted that charter schools are a failed experiment and shut them down.

It’s time to block these pigs from chowing down on public funding without public oversight.

See how much each charter school gets of Commonwealth tax dollars.

Top 10 Reasons Bernie Sanders’ Education Policies Are Light Years Ahead of Everyone Else’s

June 19, 2019June 19, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bernie Sanders, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Cory Booker, Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Elizabeth Warren, Feminism, Gun Control, immigration, Labor, Learning, LGBT, Local Control, Obama, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, privatization, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, School to Prison Pipeline, Schools, segregation, small class size, Social Justice, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Taxation, Teacher Tenure, Teachers, Technology, Unions, voting #FeelTheBern, 2020, Bernie Sanders, charter schools, Civil Rights, education, education policy, Election, high stakes testing, platform, Politics, President, progressive, public schools, school funding, school segregation, segregation, Special Education, standardized testing

For most of my life, the United States has been neglecting its public school children – especially the black and brown ones.

Since the mid 1970s, instead of integrating our schools, we’ve been slowly resegregating them on the basis of race and social class.

Since the 1980s, instead of measuring academic success by the satisfaction of an individuals curiosity and authentic learning, we’ve been slowly redefining it to mean nothing but achievement on standardized tests.

And since the 1990s, instead of making sure our schools meet the needs of all students, we’ve been slowly allowing charter schools to infect our system of authentic public education so that business interests are education’s organizing principle.

But now, for the first time in at least 60 years, a mainstream political candidate running for President has had the courage to go another way.

And that person is Bernie Sanders.

We didn’t see this with Barack Obama. We didn’t see it with Bill Clinton. We certainly didn’t see it with any Republican Presidents from Reagan to the Bushes to Trump.

Only Sanders in his 2020 campaign. Even among his Democratic rivals for the party’s nomination – Warren, Biden, Harris, Booker and a host of others – he stands apart and unique. Heck! He’s even more progressive today on this issue than he was when he ran in 2015.

It doesn’t take a deep dive into the mass media to find this out. You don’t have to parse disparate comments he made at this rally or in that interview. If you want to know what Bernie thinks about education policy, you can just go on his campaign Website and read all about it.

The other candidates barely address these issues at all. They may be open about one or even two of them, but to understand where they stand on education in total – especially K-12 schooling – you have to read the tea leaves of who they’ve selected as an education advisor or what they wrote in decades old books or what offhand comments they made in interviews.

In almost every regard, only Sanders has the guts to tell you straight out exactly what he thinks. And that’s clear right from the name of his proposal.

He calls it “A Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education.”

Why name his agenda after the first black Supreme Court justice? Because prior to accepting a nomination to the highest court in the land, Marshall argued several cases before that court including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education. He also founded the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. Not only did Marshall successfully argue that school segregation violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, but he spent his life fighting for civil rights.

Sanders is the only candidate out there today brave enough to connect those dots. The fight against segregation, high stakes testing and school privatization is a fight for civil rights.

That is clear in nearly every aspect of his plan.

I’m not saying it’s perfect. He doesn’t go as far as he might in some areas – especially against high stakes testing. But his plan is so far advanced of anything anyone else has even considered, it deserves recognition and strong consideration.

So without further ado, I give you the top 10 reasons Bernie Sanders’ education platform is the most progressive in modern American history:

1) He Proposes Fighting School Segregation and Racial Discrimination

Sanders understands that many of our public schools today are more segregated than they were 65 years ago when Brown v. Board was decided. Only 20 percent of our teachers are nonwhite – even in schools that serve a majority of black and brown children. Implicit racial bias puts these students at risk of higher suspensions, unfair discipline policies and an early introduction into the criminal justice system through the school-to-prison pipeline.

Bernie proposes we increase funding to integrate schools, enforce desegregation orders and appoint federal judges who will support these measures. He wants to triple Title I funding for schools serving poor and minority children and increase funding for English as a Second Language programs. He even suggests racial sensitivity training for teachers and better review of civil rights complaints and discipline policies.

This could have an amazingly positive impact on our schools. Imagine a school system where people of all different races, nationalities, sexualities and creeds could meet and get to know one another. It’s harder to be racist and prejudiced adults when as children you learned not to consider people different than you as an other. It’s also harder to withhold funding and opportunities to minority populations when you mix all children together in the same schools.

2) He Would Ban For-Profit Charter Schools

This is a case of Bernie just listening to what educators, school directors and civil rights organizations like the NAACP are already saying. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately operated. Though this differs somewhat from state to state, in general it means that charters don’t have to abide by the same rules as the authentic public schools in the same neighborhoods. They can run without an elected school board, have selective enrollment, don’t have to provide the same services for students especially those requiring special education, and they can even cut services for children and pocket the savings as profit.

Moreover, charters increase segregation – 17 percent of charter schools are 99 percent minority, compared to 4 percent of traditional public schools.
To reverse this trend, Bernie would ban for-profit charter schools and impose a moratorium on federal dollars for charter expansion until a national audit was conducted. That means no more federal funds for new charter schools.

Moving forward, charter schools would have to be more accountable for their actions. They would have to comply with the same rules as authentic public schools, open their records about what happens at these schools, have the same employment practices as at the neighborhood authentic public school, and abide by local union contracts.

I know. I know. I might have gone a bit further regulating charter schools, myself, especially since the real difference between a for-profit charter school and a non-profit one is often just its tax status. But let’s pause a moment here to consider what he’s actually proposing.

If all charter schools had to actually abide by all these rules, they would almost be the same as authentic public schools. This is almost tantamount to eliminating charter schools unless they can meet the same standards as authentic public schools.

I think we would find very few that could meet this standard – but those that did could – with financial help – be integrated into the community school system as a productive part of it and not – as too many are now – as parasites.

Could Bernie as President actually do all of this? Probably not considering that much of charter school law is controlled by the states. But holding the bully pulpit and (with the help of an ascendant Democratic legislature?) the federal purse strings, he could have a transformative impact on the industry. It would at least change the narrative and the direction these policies have been going. It would provide activists the impetus to make real change in their state legislatures supporting local politicians who likewise back the President’s agenda.

3) He’d Push for Equitable School Funding

Bernie understands that our public school funding system is a mess. Most schools rely on local property taxes to make up the majority of their funding. State legislatures and the federal government shoulder very little of the financial burden. As a result, schools in rich neighborhoods are well-funded and schools in poor neighborhoods go wanting. This means more opportunities for the already privileged and less for the needy.

Bernie proposes rethinking this ubiquitous connection between property taxes and education, establishing a nationwide minimum that must be allocated for every student, funding initiatives to decrease class size, and supporting the arts, foreign language acquisition and music education.

Once again, this isn’t something the President can do alone. He needs the support of Congress and state legislatures. But he could have tremendous influence from the Oval Office and even putting this issue on the map would be powerful. We can’t solve problems we don’t talk about – and no one else is really talking much about this. Imagine if the President was talking about it every day on the news.

4) He’d Provide More Funding for Special Education Students

Students with special needs cost more to educate than those without them. More than four decades ago, the federal government made a promise to school districts around the country to fund 40 percent of the cost of special education. It’s never happened. This chronic lack of funding translates to a shortage of special education teachers and physical and speech therapists. Moreover, the turnover rate for these specialists is incredibly high.

Bernie wants to not only fulfill the age old promise of special education funding but to go beyond it. He proposes the federal government meet half the cost for each special needs student. That, alone, would go a long way to providing financial help to districts and ensuring these children get the extra help they need.

5) He Wants to Give Teachers a Raise

Teachers are flooding out of the classroom because they often can’t survive on the salaries they’re being paid. Moreover, considering the amount of responsibilities heaped on their shoulders, such undervaluing is not only economically untenable, it is psychologically demoralizing and morally unfair. As a result, 20 percent of teachers leave the profession within five years – 40 percent more than the historical average.

Bernie suggests working with states to ensure a minimum starting salary of $60,000 tied to cost of living, years of service, etc. He also wants to protect and expand collective bargaining and tenure, allow teachers to write off at least $500 of expenses for supplies they buy for their classrooms, and end gender and racial discrepancies in teacher salaries.

It’s an ambitious project. I criticized Kamala Harris for proposing a more modest teacher pay raise because it wasn’t connected to a broad progressive education platform like Sanders. In short, we’ve heard neoliberal candidates make good suggestions in the past that quickly morphed into faustian bargains like merit pay programs – an initiative that would be entirely out of place among Sanders initiatives.

In Harris’ case, the devil is in the details. In Sanders, it’s a matter of the totality of the proposal.

6) He Wants to Expand Summer School and After School Programs

It’s no secret that while on summer break students forget some of what they’ve learned during the year and that summer programs can help reduce this learning loss. Moreover, after school programs provide a similar function throughout the year and help kids not just academically but socially. Children with a safe place to go before parents get home from work avoid risky behaviors and the temptations of the streets. Plus they tend to have better school attendance, better relationships with peers, better social and emotional skills, etc.

Under the guidance of Betsy Devos, the Trump administration has proposed cutting such programs by $2 billion. Bernie is suggesting to increase them by $5 billion. It’s as simple as that. Sanders wants to more than double our current investment in summer and after school programs. It’s emblematic of humane and rational treatment of children.

7) He Wants to Provide Free Meals for All Students Year-Round

One in six children go hungry in America today. Instead of shaming them with lunch debts and wondering why they have difficulty learning on an empty stomach, Bernie wants to feed them free breakfast, lunch and even snacks. In addition, he doesn’t want to shame them by having the needy be the only ones eligible for these free meals. This program would be open to every child, regardless of parental wealth.

It’s an initiative that already exists at many Title I schools like the one where I teach and the one where my daughter goes to school. I can say from experience that it is incredibly successful. This goes in the opposite direction of boot strapped conservatives like Paul Ryan who suggested a free meal gives kids an empty soul. Instead, it creates a community of children who know that their society cares about them and will ensure they don’t go hungry.

That may seem like a small thing to some, but to a hungry child it can make all the difference.

8) He Wants to Transform all Schools into Community Schools

This is a beautiful model of exactly what public education should be.

Schools shouldn’t be businesses run to make a profit for investors. They should be the beating heart of the communities they serve. Bernie thinks all schools should be made in this image and provide medical care, dental services, mental health resources, and substance abuse prevention. They should furnish programs for adults as well as students including job training, continuing education, art spaces, English language classes and places to get your GED.
Many schools already do this. Instead of eliminating funding for these types of schools as the Trump administration has suggested, Bernie proposes providing an additional $5 billion in annual funding for them.

9) He Would Fix Crumbling Schools

America’s schools, just like her roads and bridges, are falling into disrepair. A 2014 study found that at least 53 percent of the nation’s schools need immediate repair. At least 2.3 million students, mostly in rural communities, attend schools without high-speed internet access. Heating and cooling systems don’t work.  Some schools have leaks in their roofs. This is just not acceptable.

Bernie wants to fix these infrastructure issues while modernizing and making our schools green and welcoming.

10) He Wants to Ensure All Students are Safe and Included

Our LGBTQ students are at increased risk of bullying, self harm and suicide. We need schools where everyone can be safe and accepted for who they are.

Bernie wants to pass legislation that would explicitly protect the rights of LGBTQ students and protect them from harassment, discrimination and violence. He is also calling for protection of immigrant students to ensure that they are not put under surveillance or harassed due to their immigration status. Finally, this project includes gun violence prevention to make school shootings increasingly unlikely.

There are a lot of issues that fall under this umbrella, but they are each essential to a 21st Century school. Solutions here are not easy, but it is telling that the Sanders campaign includes them as part of his platform.
So there you have it – a truly progressive series of policy proposals for our schools.
Not since Lyndon Johnson envisioned the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) has there been a more far reaching and progressive set of education initiatives.

What About High Stakes Testing?

Unfortunately, that also highlights Sanders biggest weakness.

Johnson’s signature legislation which had been focused on addressing funding disparities in 1965 became under George W. Bush in the 2000s a way of punishing poor schools for low standardized test scores.

The glaring omission from Sanders plan is anything substantive to do with high stakes testing.

The Thurgood Marshall plan hardly mentions it at all. In fact, the only place you’ll find testing is in the introduction to illustrate how far American education has fallen behind other countries and in this somewhat vague condemnation:

“We must put an end to high-stakes testing and “teaching to the test” so that our students have a more fulfilling educational life and our teachers are afforded professional respect.”

However, it’s troubling that for once Bernie doesn’t tie a political position with a specific policy. If he wants to “end high-stakes testing,” what exactly is his plan to do so? Where does it fit within his education platform? And why wasn’t it a specific part of the overall plan?

Thankfully, it is addressed in more detail on FeelTheBern.org – a Website not officially affiliated with Sanders but created by volunteers to spread his policy positions.

After giving a fairly good explanation of the problems with high stakes testing, it references this quote from Sanders:

“I voted against No Child Left Behind in 2001, and continue to oppose the bill’s reliance on high-stakes standardized testing to direct draconian interventions. In my view, No Child Left Behind ignores several important factors in a student’s academic performance, specifically the impact of poverty, access to adequate health care, mental health, nutrition, and a wide variety of supports that children in poverty should have access to. By placing so much emphasis on standardized testing, No Child Left Behind ignores many of the skills and qualities that are vitally important in our 21st century economy, like problem solving, critical thinking, and teamwork, in favor of test preparation that provides no benefit to students after they leave school.”

The site suggests that Bernie supports more flexibility in how we determine academic success. It references Sanders 2015 vote for the Every Child Achieves Act which allows for states to create their own accountability systems to assess student performance.

However, the full impact of this bill has not been as far reaching as advocates claimed it would be. In retrospect, it seems to represent a missed opportunity to curtail high stakes testing more than a workaround of its faults.

In addition, the site notes the problems with Common Core and while citing Sanders reticence with certain aspects of the project admits that he voted in early 2015 against an anti-Common Core amendment thereby indicating opposition to its repeal.

I’ll admit this is disappointing. And perplexing in light of the rest of his education platform.

It’s like watching a vegan buy all of his veggies at Whole Foods and then start crunching on a slice of bacon, or like a gay rights activist who takes a lunch break at Chick-fil-a.

My guess is that Sanders hasn’t quite got up to speed on the issue of standardized testing yet. However, I can’t imagine him supporting it because, frankly, it doesn’t fit in with his platform at all.

One wonders what the purpose of high stakes testing could possibly be in a world where all of his other education goals were fulfilled.

If it were up to me, I’d scrap high stakes testing as a waste of education spending that did next to nothing to show how students or schools were doing. Real accountability would come from looking at the resources actually provided to schools and what schools did with them. It would result from observing teachers and principals to see what education they actually provided – not some second hand guessing game based on the whims of corporations making money on the tests, the grading of the tests and the subsequent remediation materials when students failed.

For me, the omission of high stakes testing from Sanders platform is acceptable only because of the degree of detail he has already provided in nearly every other aspect. There are few areas of uncertainty here. Unlike any other candidate, we know pretty well where Sanders is going.

It is way more likely that advocates could get Sanders to take a more progressive and substantial policy stand on this issue than that he would suddenly become a standardized testing champion while opposing everything else in the school privatization handbook.

Conclusion

So there it is.

Bernie Sanders has put forth the most progressive education plan in more than half a century.

It’s not perfect, but it’s orders of magnitude better than the plans of even his closest rival.

This isn’t to say that other candidates might not improve their education projects before the primary election. I hope that happens. Sanders has a knack for moving the conversation further left.

However, he is so far ahead, I seriously doubt that anyone else will be able to catch him here.

Who knows what the future will bring, but education advocates have a clear first choice in this race – Bernie Sanders.

He is the only one offering us a real future we can believe in.

Charter Schools Are Quietly Gobbling Up My Public School District 

May 20, 2019May 20, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, history, Learning, Local Control, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, small class size, Social Justice, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Taxation, Teachers charter schools, education, Pennsylvania, Politics, Propel Charter Schools, public schools, school funding, school vouchers, Steel Valley Schools

I work in a little suburban school district just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that is slowly being destroyed by privatization.

Steel Valley Schools have a proud history.

We’re located (in part) in Homestead – the home of the historic steel strike of 1892.

But today it isn’t private security agents and industrial business magnates against whom we’re struggling.

It’s charter schools, voucher schools and the pro-corporate policies that enable them to pocket tax dollars meant to educate kids and then blame us for the shortfall.

Our middle school-high school complex is located at the top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill in our most impoverished neighborhood sits one of the Propel network of charter schools.

Our district is so poor we can’t even afford to bus our kids to school. So Propel tempts kids who don’t feel like making the long walk to our door.

Institutions like Propel are publicly funded but privately operated. That means they take our tax dollars but don’t have to be as accountable, transparent or sensible in how they spend them.

And like McDonalds, KFC or Walmart, they take in a lot of money.

Just three years ago, the Propel franchise siphoned away $3.5 million from our district annually. This year, they took $5 million, and next year they’re projected to get away with $6 million. That’s about 16% of our entire $37 million yearly budget.

Do we have a mass exodus of children from Steel Valley to the neighboring charter schools?

No.

Enrollment at Propel has stayed constant at about 260-270 students a year since 2015-16. It’s only the amount of money that we have to pay them that has increased.

If you’re a charter school operator and you want to increase your salary, you can do that. Just make sure to cut student services an equal amount.

Want to buy a piece of property and pay yourself to lease it? Fine. Just take another slice of student funding.

Want to grab a handful of cash and put it in your briefcase, stuff it down your pants, hide it in your shoes? Go right ahead! It’s not like anyone’s actually looking over your shoulder. It’s not like your documents are routinely audited or you have to explain yourself at monthly school board meetings – all of which authentic public schools like mine have to do or else.

Furthermore, for every student we lose to charters, we do not lose any of the costs of overhead. The costs of running our buildings, electricity, water, maintenance, etc. are the same. We just have less money with which to pay them.

But that’s not all. The state funding formula also requires we give exponentially more money to charters for students labeled special needs – orders of magnitude more than we spend on these kids at my district.

Here’s how the state school code mandates we determine special education funding for charter school kids:

“For special education students, the charter school shall receive for each student enrolled the same funding as for each non-special education student as provided in clause (2), plus an additional amount determined by dividing the district of residence’s total special education expenditure by the product of multiplying the combined percentage of section 2509.5(k) times the district of residence’s total average daily membership for the prior school year. This amount shall be paid by the district of residence of each student.”

So authentic public schools spend a different amount per each special education student depending on their needs. But we have to pay our charter schools an average. If they only accept students without severe disabilities, this amounts to a net profit for the charter schools – and they can spend that profit however they want.

Moreover, if they reclassify students without disabilities or with slight disabilities as special needs, that means more money for them, too. Is anyone checking up on them to make sure they aren’t gaming the system? Heck no! That’s what being a charter school is all about – little transparency, little accountability and a promise of academic results (which don’t have to pan out either).

In the 2015-16 school year, Steel Valley paid the 19th highest amount of its budget to charter schools in the state (9%) and that number is growing.

According to the state Department of Education, here’s how our charter school spending has increased:

Steel Valley Per Student Charter School Tuition:

2000-01 – 2012-13

Non-Special Ed: $9,321

Special Ed: $16,903

2013-14

Non-Special Ed: $9,731

Special Ed: $16,803

2014-15

Non-special Ed: $10,340

Special Ed $20,112

2015-16

Non-Special Ed: $12,326

Special Ed: $25,634

2016-17

Non-Special Ed: $13,879

Special Ed: $29,441

2017-18

Non-Special Ed: $13,484

Special Ed: $25,601

2018-19

Non-special ed: $14,965

Special ed: $32,809

Our State Senator Jim Brewster understands the problem.

“Charters are strangling school districts, eventually will put them out of business. When you lose your school district, you lose your city,” he said in an article published by Public Source.

Brewster is a Democrat from McKeesport with four school districts being likewise “cannibalized” by charter schools.

Steel Valley School Board President Jim Bulger also characterized the situation as dire.

“ Charter Schools have become a twisted profit-making machine and not what they were originally intended for,” he said.

“Originally charter schools were meant to serve a demographic that the public schools could not. For example being heavy in the performing arts or items like that. It’s unfortunate that several people have decided to twist this decent idea into a profit-making scheme that bleeds public education and its very soul.”

Much of the problem is in Harrisburg where legislators refuse to see or address the issue. And that’s often the best situation. Others actively make things worse.

For instance, the state used to reimburse each district for 30% of its costs to charter schools. Then in 2011, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett cut that while slashing the education budget by an additional $1 billion a year.

Though some of that money has been restored in subsequent budgets, the charter reimbursement has not. Putting it back in the budget would go far to alleviating the bleeding.

But legislators need to get serious about charter school reform.

We can no longer afford a system that requires authentic public schools to fund their own competition. In fact, schools should never be in competition in the first place. Every school should be excellent – and the only way to get there is to start with adequate, equitable, sustainable funding in the first place.

There are seven charter schools within 5 miles of my district: Propel Homestead, Propel Braddock Hills, Environmental Charter School at Frick PA, Propel Hazelwood, Academy Charter School (in Pittsburgh), Propel Mckeesport, and Propel East (in Monroeville).

In addition, there are 55 private schools in the same area. Though the Commonwealth doesn’t have school vouchers, per se, it does have a backdoor version supported by both Democrats and Republicans. Many of these private and parochial schools gobble up $210 million of state tax dollars through these tax credit programs – the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs. And there’s a bill currently being considered in Harrisburg to increase that amount by $100 million this year and even more in subsequent years!

It seems our legislature has no problem spending on the school system so long as it isn’t the PUBLIC school system.

And the reason usually given for such support is the results privatized schools get. They claim to be better alternatives to the public system, but this is rarely if ever true.

Test scores are a terrible way compare schools, but charter and voucher schools rarely – if ever – outpace their authentic public school competitors. They either get similar scores or in many cases do much, MUCH worse.

For instance, take Propel Homestead.

In 2015-16, it served 573 students in grades K-12. Only 22% of students were proficient in math and 40% in Reading on state tests. Both scores are below state average.

Meanwhile, at Steel Valley High School during the same time period, we served 486 students in grades 9-12. In math, 50-54% of our students were proficient and 65-69% were proficient in Reading. That’s above state average in both cases. And we had similar results at our middle and elementary schools.

However, test scores are poor indicators of success.

Steel Valley Schools also had lower class sizes. We averaged 12 students per teacher. Propel Homestead averaged 15 students per teacher.

And then we come to segregation. Though both schools had significant minority populations, Steel Valley Schools had 42% minority enrollment, most of whom are black. Propel Homestead had 96% minority enrollment, most of whom are black.

So the authentic public school option is demonstrably of better quality, but our inability to bus students to-and-from school opens us up to predatory school charlatans who take advantage of our poverty.

And the situation is similar in surrounding communities. Poor districts serving impoverished minority students become targets for privatizers looking to make a fast buck off of our kids and families. They offer them a lower quality education and a slick sales pitch.

They increase segregation, lower academic quality, and get away with much needed funds that could help kids get a better education.

This nonsense has to stop.

The only schools that should be receiving public tax dollars are the authentically public ones.

They should have to abide by the same regulation, the same accountability standards, the same democratic governance, the same enrollment standards as authentic public schools. Otherwise, they should not qualify for public tax dollars.

We’re boring holes in the ship to make rickety life boats.

It’s time to stop the madness.

It’s time to stop letting our best chance to help all kids get eaten alive by the sharks of privatization.

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school funding

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