Another Former KIPP Teacher Steps Forward

Posted at Edushyster:

A former KIPP teacher in New Orleans finds her voice

I was never much of a champion [reference to Teach Like a Champion, Doug Lemov's exhausting checklist that serves as a bible for TFA and KIPP], to be honest. KIPP defines a successful teacher as someone who keeps children quiet, teaches children how to answer each question on a test composed of arbitrary questions, and then produces high scores on this test. Mind you, I was teaching Pre-K and then kindergarten at a KIPP school in New Orleans—and these were still the metrics by which I was being evaluated. Since my definition of a successful early childhood classroom looked very different from silence and test prep, I had to figure out how to survive. I lasted three years.

Exit ticket
 By year three it had become very, very difficult for me to hide my disdain for the way the school was managed. In the previous two years, I’d fought hard for the adoption of a play-based early childhood curriculum, only to see it systematically dismantled by our 25-year old assistant principal. When this administrator told us that our student test scores would be higher if we used direct instruction, worksheets and exit tickets to check for their understanding, I lost my shit. I’m sorry, but five year olds don’t learn that way.

I was fired a week later. Well, to be fair, I was told that I *wasn’t a good fit*—most likely because I talked about things like poverty and trauma and brain development, and also because at that point I knew significantly more about early childhood education and what young children actually needed to grow and develop than the administrators who ran the school. And that made me a threat.

How did I survive as long as I did? During my time at KIPP, I made a point of seeking out other critically-minded educators. I met veteran teachers through the United Teachers of New Orleans and new teachers interested in educational justice through the New Teachers’ Roundtable. I also read as much as I could about how teaching can and should be. Critical pedagogy, liberatory education, anti-bias curriculum—you name it, I was reading it. And while it was nearly impossible for me to implement anything I was learning, my mindset was shifting.

I also channeled my energy into working with teachers, families, students and community groups to resist corporate school reform in all of its machinations. I also spoke truth, as I saw it, to my bosses at KIPP. If I had to be a shitty teacher at KIPP, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

Control issues
And the truth is that I was a shitty teacher at KIPP. For one thing I was a terrible disciplinarian. I couldn’t control the kids the way that my administrators wanted me to. There was a lot of chaos in my classroom, and a lot of yelling—because I was so confused and frustrated. As I quickly found out, you can basically only control kids in the KIPP way if you never question the value of control. The kids sensed my doubt and chaos ensued. And chaos was inevitably followed by my yelling.

Ironically, now that I’m teaching 3rd grade English at one of the few remaining traditional public schools in New Orleans, I’m much stricter than I ever was at KIPP. For example, every night my students answer an open-ended question in their journals for homework. When they come to class the next day, a few of them share what they wrote and get feedback from their peers. Their courageous honesty leads to incredible discussions about bullying, and gender roles, racism and deep dark fears of all sorts. But I recognize that my strictness makes those conversations possible. I’m super, super strict about how to listen respectfully, and about how important it is to take turns giving feedback. I’ve discovered that it’s actually very easy to be strict when you deeply believe that what you’re requiring kids to do is for their own good and for the good of the community.

Letting go
As I’ve let go of the priorities KIPP set for me, it’s been liberating to define my own values and priorities according to what makes sense for my classroom and my students. I started the year giving tests sporadically but I’ve given those up completely. Formal assessments don’t give me any new information, and they only serve to make kids who’ve already been disenfranchised by the schooling process feel even more frustrated. And I no longer plan formal units. Instead I define some general themes—last semester we explored self, family and community—now we’re learning about the history of African-Americans, starting in Africa and working our way to the present through literature, poetry and essays. I let the kids’ interests determine what we zoom in on.

I also expect my students to read independently any time they have a free moment. I’ve built a library of culturally-relevant picture books and graphic novels and chapter books, and by literally making them read at the beginning of the year, have been able to create a culture of reading. I’d say that the majority of my kids have come to realize that reading is really awesome and they voluntarily read all the time now.

One of my goals as a teacher is to create and facilitate a space where we all care for each other. How I handle things in the classroom needs to reflect this priority. So my students and I stop and talk about things—a lot. Somewhere along the line I developed this radical idea that children are humans who should be treated with dignity, and that the classroom should, ideally, be a place they’d want to be even if schooling weren’t compulsory. This idea that my students are human beings with thoughts and feelings, and that these thoughts and feelings should be at the center of what I do in the classroom, comes from my mentors here in New Orleans and is a radical shift from the silence and test prep that rule at KIPP.

Rebecca Radding came to New Orleans as a Teach for America corps member. She currently teaches third grade English at Benjamin Franklin Elementary Mathematics and Science School.

News Flash: K-12, Inc. Cyberschools Are a Waste of Taxpayer Money and Miseducative Isolation Chambers

 From NEPC:

Reference Publication: 

Understanding and Improving Full-Time Virtual Schools

Contact:
William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Gary Miron, (269) 599-7965; garmiron@gmail.com
URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/7s4lsds

BOULDER, CO (July 18, 2012) -- A new report released today by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado shows that students at K12 Inc., the nation’s largest virtual school company, are falling further behind in reading and math scores than students in brick-and-mortar schools.

These virtual schools students are also less likely to remain at their schools for the full year, and the schools have low graduation rates. “Our in-depth look into K12 Inc. raises enormous red flags,” said NEPC Director Kevin Welner.

The report’s findings will be presented in Washington today to a national meeting of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), where the report’s lead author, Dr. Gary Miron, is scheduled to debate Dr. Susan Patrick, president and CEO of the International Association for K–12 Online Learning. The report is titled, Understanding and Improving Full-Time Virtual Schools.

“Our findings are clear,” said Miron, an NEPC fellow, “Children who enroll in a K12 Inc. cyberschool, who receive full-time instruction in front of a computer instead of in a classroom with a live teacher and other students, are more likely to fall behind in reading and math. These children are also more likely to move between schools or leave school altogether – and the cyberschool is less likely to meet federal education standards.”

K12 Inc. schools generally operate on less public revenue, but they have considerable cost savings, says Miron. They devote minimal or no resources to facilities, operations, and transportation. These schools also have more students per teacher and pay less for teacher salaries and benefits than brick-and-mortar schools.

“Computer-assisted learning has tremendous potential,” said Miron. “But at present, our research shows that virtual schools such as those operated by K12 Inc. are not working effectively. States should not grow full-time virtual schools until they have evidence of success. Most immediately, we need to better understand why the performance of these schools suffers and how it can be improved.”
Student performance results from the current study are clearly in line with the existing body of evidence, which includes state evaluations and audits of virtual schools in five states as well as a more rigorous study of student learning in Pennsylvania virtual charter schools conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University. CREDO’s study found virtual-school students ended up with learning gains that were “significantly worse” than students in traditional charters and public schools.

Miron and co-author Jessica L. Urschel, a doctoral student at Western Michigan University, analyzed federal and state data sets for revenue, expenditures, and student performance. In terms of student demographics and school performance data, the researchers studied all of K12’s 48 full-time virtual schools. In terms of revenues and expenditures, they used a federal data set that includes seven K12 Inc. schools from five different states (Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Ohio and Pennsylvania), although these seven schools accounted for almost 60 percent of all of K12 Inc.’s enrollment from 2008-09, which is the most recent year of available finance data.

Key findings include:
• Math scores for K12 Inc.’s students are 14 to 36 percent lower than scores for other students in the states in which the company operates schools.
• Only 27.7 percent of K12 Inc.’s schools reported meeting Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards in 2010-11, compared to 52% for brick-and-mortar schools in the nation as a whole.
• Student attrition is exceptionally high in K12 Inc. and other virtual schools. Many families appear to approach the virtual schools as a temporary service: Data in K12 Inc.’s own school performance report indicate that 31% of parents intend to keep their students enrolled for a year or less, and more than half intend to keep their students enrolled for two years or less.
• K12 Inc.’s schools spend more on overall instructional costs than comparison schools – including the cost of computer hardware and software, but noticeably less on teachers’ salaries and benefits.
• K12 Inc. spends little or nothing on facilities and maintenance, transportation, and food service.
• K12 Inc. enrolls students with disabilities at rates moderately below public school averages, although this enrollment has been increasing, but the company spends half as much per pupil as charter schools overall spend on special education instruction and a third of what districts spend on special education instruction.

“Part of K12’s problem seems to be that it skimps on special education spending and employs few instructors, despite having lower overhead than brick-and-mortar schools,” said the NEPC’s Welner, who is a professor of education policy at the University of Colorado.

Also, students enrolled at K12 Inc. cyberschools are much less likely to remain – raising inter-connected issues of mobility, attrition and graduation rates.

“Our research highlights a number of significant issues at K12, Inc. schools, and we recognize that these issues are also of concern at other full-time virtual schools,” said Miron. “We need a better understanding of how this new teaching and learning model can be most effective, so that full-time virtual schools can better serve students and the public school system as a whole.”

The NEPC report on K12 Inc., Understanding and Improving Full-Time Virtual Schools, can be found on the web at
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/understanding-improving-virtual.

The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence. For more information on NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.

ALEC and the Privatization Agenda

Great short video, less than 5 minutes, that connects many dots, especially in relation to the virtual school corporate welfare program. HT to Monty Neill:

Nashville's Mayor Karl Dean, a KIPPster with a Public Purse

After the Brown v Board of Education decision in 1954, Southern governors and mayors spent large sums of cash to fix up ramshackle black schools in an attempt to placate African-American communities and, thus, seek to avoid the white nightmare of court-ordered desegregation.  Now a half century later, Mayor Karl Dean of Nashville is doing something similar, but this time the effort not only serves segregationists but also the corporations in need of a compliant and positivized work force that is to include a few black and brown faces that can be counted upon to keep their mouths shut.

Mayor Dean has committed almost 10 percent of Nashville Metro’s 4-year school building budget for a new segregated KIPP, Inc. corporate charter school, which lays claim to the exemplary urban penal pedagogy model that has the backing of all the oligarchs of the Billionaire Boys’ Club, regardless of whether they keep Republican or Democratic politicians in their stables. 

Meanwhile, Nashville's public schools that serve the poor and the brown use garbage cans to collect water from leaky roofs and cram their kids into overcrowded and damaged classrooms.  At Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet, a high-performing integrated public school, kids eat lunch in the hallways and do not have a functioning gym.

Never mind that KIPP has unlimited funds at its disposal and more on the way, thanks to bottom feeders like hedge funder, Whitney Tilson, who beats the Wall Street bushes daily for new philanthro-capitalists looking for big tax breaks and a sure-fire way to behaviorally neuter and culturally sterilize minority schoolchildren.  Meanwhile, KIPP, Inc. spares no expense to shuttle children around to Ivy League schools under the pretense that a significant percentage of these kids will someday actually attend college at Ivy League schools. 

Nor does KIPP, Inc. spare any expense when it comes to the Disney Orlando Seligman-inspired high-rolling retreats for KIPP staff, which a former KIPP teacher describes as reminiscent of the Nuremburg rallies during the heydays of the Third Reich.

The photo at left is from John Partipilo of the Tennessean, and it features three of Nashville's white KIPP missionaries: Jake Ramsey (former campus recruiter for TFA), Meredith McCoy (TFA alum), and Nikki Miller (TFA alum).  KIPP loves TFA alums, er, Corps members, for they have been successfully assimilated into the Family and have learned to teach on poor people's kids.  Now they are ready to use their methods to uphold the KIPP brand.

How long will Nashville parents and grandparents allow their schools to be taken over by missionaries from the Billionaire Boys' Club?  And allow the Mayor to ignore the needs of public schools, while favoring his high-rolling cronies from Wall Street's corporate foundations? 

Here is a list of whales (national partners) from the KIPP website, and this list is just for the ones who want to be named publicly:

$60,000,000 and Above:

---

$25,000,000-39,999,999:

---

$10,000,000-24,999,999:

---

$5,000,000-9,999,999:

---

$1,000,000-4,999,999:

Anonymous

Laura and John Arnold Family Foundation

Reed Hastings and Patty Quillin

Marcus Foundation

Miles Family Foundation

---

$500,000-999,999:

Thomas and Susan Dunn
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

$100,000-499,999:

Abrams Foundation
All Stars Helping Kids
The Annie E. Casey Foundation
CityBridge Foundation
Credit Suisse
John and Laura Fisher
Robert and Elizabeth Fisher
William and Sakurako Fisher
Goldman Sachs Foundation
Goldsbury Foundation
Kinder Foundation
Koret Foundation
Leon Lowenstein Foundation
The Louis Calder Foundation
Hee-Jung and John Moon
Stephen Jr. and Susan Mandel
National Geographic Education Foundation
Prudential Foundation
Arthur Rock
SAP America, Inc.
Paul Singer
State Farm Companies Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

$50,000 -$ 99,999:

David Goldberg and Sheryl Sandberg
The Jay Pritzker Foundation
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
NewSchools Venture Fund
NFL Charities
Peter B. and Adeline W. Ruffin Foundation
Select Equity Group Inc.

Texans Can, Inc.: Another Charter Chain "Innovation" Story

Photo from Texans Can website: The Dallas chapter of the Texas Association of Business (TAB) honored Richard Marquez, CEO of Texans Can!, as the 2009 Distinguished Business Leader in Education at a November 12 luncheon at the Renaissance Hotel in Dallas (11/19/09).

Here is the summary of Texans Can, Inc.'s amazing success, from the Houston Chronicle (January 25, 2010)

• Number of campuses: 10

• Number of “unacceptable” schools: 9

• Total enrollment: 4,380

• Revenue from state funding: $32 million

• Revenue from car donations: $8 million

• Advertising budget: $2.5 million

• Combined salary of top six executives in 2008: $880,000

Source: Texas Education Agency, Texans Can Academy

Texans Can's partners in corruption: Collabrian, Wal-Mart, Park Cities Bank, Trinity Floor Covering, and Kimberly-Clark. Another item that deserves to go in the bullets above: Texan Can, Inc. teachers make on average $10,000 per year less than public school teachers in Texas.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Former Dallas Cowboys and local celebrities take to the airwaves each year imploring Texans to donate their used vehicles to Texans Can, a charter school system that caters to dropouts, recovering drug users and teenage parents.

“Write off the car, not the kid,” urges the campaign, which generates about $8 million in annual revenuefor its 10 campuses in Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth.

While tugging at donors' heartstrings with success stories, the 4,400-student system is strapped with its own problems: declining enrollment, dismal academic results and a history of top-heavy spending.

Three of its schools — including the Houston Main Street campus — are on the verge of being closed for repeatedly failing to meet minimal federal standards, and the former celebrity spokesman for the Dallas campuses has turned his back on the nonprofit, advising would-be donors to find other charities to support.

“The mission is good. The purpose is good. They just lost their way,” said Dale Hansen, a longtime sportscaster in Dallas who raised millions as the face of Dallas Can over 15 years.

Its top six executives earned a combined $880,000 in 2008, with founder Grant East topping the list with a salary of $236,000 as president emeritus, according to tax documents for that fiscal year. Grant has since retired, and is now drawing $50,000 a year, officials said. Current president Richard Marquez earns more than $190,000 a year. . . .

. . . .Teachers at the Main Street campus earned an average salary of $41,778 in 2009, about $10,000 less than the typical Houston ISD teacher.

Texans Can also spends $2.5 million a year on advertising, primarily to attract vehicle donations. Retired Dallas Cowboys who have appeared in TV commercials include defensive lineman Tony Casillas and backup quarterback Babe Laufenberg. . . . .

. . . .

“They've done a great disservice to the general public,” said Robert Sanborn, president of Children at Risk, a Houston advocacy group. “They're basically preying on the good intentions of Houstonians.”

Several other charter schools and traditional public schools that serve at-risk students produce better results — casting doubt on whether Texans Can is a good use of tax dollars, he said.

“People do want to support public education, but unfortunately this has become the wrong way to do it,” Sanborn said. “There's no way to maneuver the statistics around to say they've been a success.”

The schools were the brainchild of East, who served three years in prison for bank robbery in the 1960s. After time in the oil and computer industries, East established a nonprofit in 1976 to educate adult and juvenile prisoners in the Dallas area.

In 1985, he opened the first Can academy. Ten years later, he earned one of the state's first charters to operate it as a public, tax-funded school. The Can system has since enrolled 62,000 students and produced 9,800 graduates.

9 of 10 ‘unacceptable'

Now, nine of the 10 schools in the system are rated “academically unacceptable”by the Texas Education Agency. The Main Street campus failed to meet standards so frequently that law required the school to be restructured with a new principal and several new teachers last year.

Only 18 percent of students there passed the math portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in 2009. A TEA adviser clocked about 120 hours on the campus last year, and state officials are also advising district leaders on how to improve. . . .

Imagine Schools, Inc., Pt. III of the Corporate Charter School Story

In this episode of the continuing corrupt adventures of crackpot, Dennis Bakke, and Imagine Schools, Inc., we find out how corporate charters in Texas are owned by corporate charters in Ft. Wayne, all of which are controlled by, that's right, by Dennis Bakke at the home office in Arlington, VA. Clips from the Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette:

FORT WAYNE, Ind. – On Feb. 8, 2008, a curious thing happened.

According to Texas Secretary of State records, Imagine Schools of Central Texas Non-Profit LLC of Georgetown, Texas, was established. That in itself was no surprise, because Imagine charter schools have been popping up all over the country.

What was curious was who owns the corporation and its twin, Imagine Schools of North Texas Non-Profit LLC of McKinney, Texas. The sole member of both limited-liability companies is Imagine-Fort Wayne Charter Schools Inc.

And the Texas entities get their tax-exempt status because each is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Fort Wayne company.

Imagine-Fort Wayne Charter Schools Inc. is the non-profit corporation that runs Imagine MASTer Academy, a charter school at 2000 N. Wells St. in Fort Wayne. Imagine MASTer Academy is a public school whose $2.9 million cost to operate last year was paid for with state taxes.

So why does a Fort Wayne charter school own two charter school corporations in Texas? It’s a question most board members here could not or would not answer, even though in January 2008 they secretly signed documents creating and governing the schools there and, as recently as August, made drastic changes to one of their entities in Texas.

All of these actions were done in secret: According to board meeting minutes provided by the Imagine-Fort Wayne Charter School board, Fort Wayne members never publicly discussed or voted to create the Texas schools, amend the agreements that govern the relationship between the schools or appoint board members to their Southern franchise.

They merely signed resolutions they thought exempted them from the Indiana Open Door Law, although their own bylaws say they are subject to its provisions. The state’s open meetings law does not allow public bodies to make decisions outside public meetings.

Asked about the Texas entities, most board members refused to speak about it. Some referred questions to Imagine Schools Inc., the for-profit management company based in Arlington, Va., hired by the charter schools to handle day-to-day operations. Others didn’t seem to know what they had signed.

"It sounds sneaky and sleazy," said Trent Stamp, who served as the founding president of non-profit watchdog Charity Navigator for seven years.

"Any time something doesn’t pass the basic smell test for a layperson, there’s a problem there."

Not only does the Fort Wayne charter school own the two school corporations there, but the "company agreement" – the contract between the Texas and Fort Wayne corporations that explains how their relationship will work – also gives the Fort Wayne entity the sole power to appoint and remove the Texas board members.

And when board members at the McKinney school objected to the amount of control Imagine’s board would have over their school, they were pushed off the board and new members were appointed, former McKinney board president Don Newsome said.

Newsome’s replacement: Don Willis, a local businessman who founded the three Imagine charter schools in Fort Wayne and is president of the Imagine-Fort Wayne Charter School board.

"I was approached by that board to come talk to them about how boards should be run in the business world," Willis said. "I said I don’t think you can be successful if the board is going to assume the mantel of staffing the school and determining curriculum. … That’s not our role."

What role the Imagine boards should play and do play is what’s in question. Internal Revenue Service regulations say tax-exempt organizations such as this one must have independent, local control.

Imagine Schools President Dennis Bakke said in a 2008 memo that local school boards exist only to give them advice and consent where legally required. And when it comes to using the Fort Wayne school’s tax-exempt status to expand Imagine’s charter schools into Texas, it appears that all the decisions were made by Imagine Schools Inc.

Like the contracts with the schools in Fort Wayne, the Texas contracts put Imagine Schools Inc. – not the local board – in charge of all major decisions. Where the Fort Wayne contracts give Imagine 12 percent of the schools’ revenue, the Texas contracts give Imagine everything left over after expenses. . . . .

. . . . Newsome, the former McKinney, Texas, board president and a former public school superintendent, said he was approached in 2007 by a group of people known as the "core founders" about serving on a charter school board in McKinney. Over the next two years, Newsome would find himself in a battle with that group after questioning the practices of Imagine Schools Inc.

Newsome was mainly concerned with signing an indefinite contract with Imagine after similar concerns were raised by an attorney with the Texas Education Agency.

"There were some things that just didn’t look right to me," Newsome said. "I could see where TEA was raising a question."

Imagine wanted the board to sign a contract that employed it as the management company for as long as the school existed. Newsome and other board members wanted to draft a contract that would be reviewed every couple of years, to allow for some accountability.

Even though those concerns were raised with members of the school’s founding group, Newsome said they didn’t care and just wanted to get a charter. The group eventually asked for Newsome’s resignation, saying he showed a lack of support for Imagine.

Newsome said he would comply but wanted his resignation letter, which would outline his concerns with Imagine, sent to all the parents who wanted to send their children to the school and posted on the school’s Web site. The group said no.

Newsome said he then received an e-mail that said if he didn’t resign by noon the next day, the founding group would begin the process of removing him from the board, enlisting the help of Willis and the Fort Wayne board.

After the founding group threatened to have a news conference announcing Newsome’s resignation in a negative light, Newsome said, he complied and jointly resigned with three other members of the five-person board. The board now has three members, including Willis.

Among the new board’s first orders of business was to approve the contract with Imagine Schools Inc.

"I see nothing functionally wrong with the contract," Willis said.

Newsome said the question was one of control.

"My concern all along was who’s going to run it and who’s going to have the final say-so," Newsome said. "Well, in my opinion, the organization of it needs to be the local people. … A board needs to have the final say-so, not some organization in Virginia or wherever they are."

ksoderlund@jg.net

dstockman@jg.net

Many thanks to Kelly Soderlund and Dan Stockman for some great reporting. Hope it earns you a Pulitzer.

Imagine, Inc. Charter Schools and Real Estate

The inherent fetidness of the charter school model is without parallel in the history of American schooling. As the economy continues to sink as a result of capitalist greed, our "leaders" continue to foist on the American people a scheme that epitomizes the corruption and reckless disregard that brought us the current Depression.

By MATTHEW HAAG / The Dallas Morning News
mhaag@dallasnews.com
The Texas Education Agency last week approved the opening of a McKinney charter school run by a company that other states rejected over concern about its tax status.

The Texas board of education allowed the for-profit Imagine International Academy of North Texas to run the school even though state law allows only nonprofit organizations to open state-funded charter schools.

Imagine argued that it would use the nonprofit status of an affiliate charter school in Indiana.

State officials said the Texas attorney general reviewed the arrangement and determined that it was allowable before the school was approved.

But school officials in Florida and Nevada have raised questions about other Imagine schools, saying they have not proved they are nonprofit and that public money should not flow into for-profit hands. The company has opened dozens of schools in 13 states.

Multiple calls to the Imagine Schools Inc. headquarters in Arlington, Va., for comment were not returned.

Florida's reaction
In Florida, Imagine intended to open 15 schools.

But the company met heavy resistance from local and state education officials, and withdrew its applications. Florida education leaders questioned whether Imagine was a certified nonprofit or a business attempting to profit from public education money.

"They cannot prove to us that they are a nonprofit. They do not have a 501c3," said Tina Pinkoson, chairwoman of Florida's Alachua County Public Schools, where Imagine applied to open a charter school this year. "They say they can prove it, but we won't believe it until they show us."

The school district's attorney, Tom Wittmer, voiced similar reservations to the school board.

The structure of the school in McKinney, and another campus approved last week in Georgetown, is similar to that of the proposed schools in Florida. According to paperwork submitted to TEA, the charters will use Imagine Schools Inc. for "the opening and ongoing operation of the Academy."

That means Imagine Schools Inc. would receive 12.5 percent of the per-pupil state funding, which is about $750,000 from each of its Texas schools, according to the TEA.

Monthly allowance
The charters would also pay Imagine Schools Inc. monthly allowances, Julia Brady said. Ms. Brady was a founding parent of the McKinney campus and was later hired as school development director of Imagine International Academy of North Texas.

The amount of the monthly allowances has not been set in Texas, but in Alachua, Fla., Imagine Schools Inc. proposed receiving $3,000 a month for 20 years, plus 1 percent to 3 percent of the charter's revenue for up to 20 years.

In return, Imagine Schools Inc. would provide the two Texas charters everything from teachers to budgeting to human resources, the charter applications state.

Both the Texas charters will lease school space from Schoolhouse, a subsidiary of Imagine Schools Inc., Ms. Brady said.

She said the Imagine charter schools are paying for services they need.

"It's hard to find a vendor to lease something or provide loans to a new charter school," Ms. Brady said. "It's essentially a way for schools to tap into an existing company with a strong credit background."

Ms. Brady said the company is not unjustly siphoning public funds.

"I don't see it that way," she said. "Essentially, the local board has contracted with Imagine Schools to set up and start up the charter, paying them for services rendered."

Ken Berger, CEO of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog group, said the setup skirts the rules.

"The charter seems like a shell corporation created for the for-profit corporation," he said. "It looks like they found a way around regulations."

According to the Internal Revenue Service, Imagine Schools Inc. is not a certified nonprofit – or 501c3. Ms. Brady said the company is expecting to receive the status soon. The company applied for it in November 2005.

Mr. Berger said the process should take months, not years.

Mr. Berger said it's fine for nonprofits to contract with for-profit corporations. But when most of the contract appears to be made with the same company, the relationship becomes "questionable," he said.

"It seems like they are giving oversight duty to Imagine," he said. "It seems like the tables have turned and Imagine Schools are managing them. But it certainly sounds like a questionable arrangement."

Handing Over the High School Curriculum to Corporate Control in New Jersey

NJ MISSTEPS ON SECONDARY REFORM PLAN
NEW TESTS, NO NEW RESOURCES
Stan Karp

On April 25, the New Jersey High School Redesign Steering Committee released its long-awaited recommendations for secondary reform in a report entitled NJ Steps: Re-designing Education in NJ for the 21st Century. In a presentation to a joint meeting of the State Board of Education and the NJ Commission on Higher Education, Governor Jon Corzine and Commissioner Lucille Davy outlined a major increase in state graduation requirements, including six new high stakes end-of-course exams that would be required to earn a high school diploma by 2016.

Although the report urges "a fundamental change in public education in the state that will affect students in all grades," the committee did not propose any new resources to support its recommendations. The absence of new funds in a time of tight budgets and continuing controversy over the state’s new school funding formula raised serious questions about how the committee plans to reach its goal of "preparing every student for success." There is also debate about how that "success" should be defined.

Aside from the costs of implementing the plan, education advocates raised concerns about the impact of the proposed tests and standardization of courses on school programs and student options, and about the top-down process that has so far shaped the HS Redesign effort.

End of Course Exams

The plan offers little direct help to the state’s large urban high schools that are already struggling to meet existing state standards and the escalating benchmarks of the federal No Child Left Behind Law. NJ Steps promises "special consideration" to such schools declaring, "The extra supports required by these students...must be front and center of any efforts to raise expectations." However, these supports are not described in detail in the proposal or backed with committed resources.

By contrast, the new standards and tests are outlined in charts and timelines that leave little room for alternative visions of reform. To receive a high school diploma, students would be required to take and pass end-of-course exams in Language Arts, Algebra I & II, Geometry, Biology and Chemistry. The plan includes references to "individualized attention, more relevant coursework," and "restructured learning experiences." But the heart of the proposal is a largely conventional plan to ramp up traditional academic course work in a "one-size-fits-all" framework that will be difficult to impose and costly to implement.

As a report on exit exams from the Center on Education Policy notes:

"The direct costs of developing and administering the tests themselves make up a tiny fraction of the total costs of implementing an exit exam policy. The bulk of the costs go toward other ‘hidden’ expenses necessary to give students a strong chance of passing the mandatory exams. These include remedial services for students who fail, programs to prevent failure, and professional development to upgrade the skills of teachers who must prepare students for the exams....The true costs of an exit exam policy are often invisible to state policymakers, because the expenses are being borne mostly by local school districts—and often by shifting existing funds away from other educational priorities." (“The Hidden Cost of High School Exit Exams,” Center on Education Policy, May 2004)

Currently only 35% of all NJ districts require Chemistry, less than 45% require Algebra II, and less than 70% require Algebra I, Geometry, and Biology. Moving these numbers up to 100% within eight years, as NJ Steps proposes, would require major increases in educational investment. The report acknowledges that "New Jersey is currently facing a shortage of qualified math, science, and special education teachers" and that "Teacher attrition...is especially acute in low-performing, high poverty schools where experienced, expert teachers are most needed."

Under the plan, freshman entering high school in September 2008 would need to pass tests in Language Arts, Algebra I and Biology to get a diploma. Two years later, Geometry and Chemistry would be added. The following year’s freshman class would also have to pass an Algebra II exam.

Advocates for vocational ed programs are concerned that required courses will squeeze out the applied electives and practical real world training that attract students to such programs. Others are concerned that an expanded system of high-stakes exit tests will negatively affect graduation and dropout rates, especially if they are not matched by dramatic improvements in secondary programs and performance. Currently, New Jersey has the nation’s second highest graduation rate according to Education Week. Neighboring New York state, which adopted a similar series of tests several years ago, is number 40.

American Diploma Project

Although the plan was presented by the New Jersey High School Redesign Committee, its origins lie in the American Diploma Project (ADP) sponsored by Achieve, Inc. Achieve is a national educational consulting group created by business leaders and the nation’s Governors to align K-12 curriculum with the needs and expectations of the business world and higher education. Art Ryan, retiring CEO of Prudential and a national co-chair of Achieve, has been a leader of the NJ effort. Ryan, Corzine and Susan Cole, the president of Montclair State University, are co-chairs of the Redesign Steering Committee. According to NJ Steps, the "ADP benchmarks have become the foundation for change and redesign of high schools in New Jersey."

In August 2006, the HS Redesign Steering Committee was formed with representation from the state’s major professional education organizations, including the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, New Jersey School Boards Association, New Jersey Commission on Higher Education, and the New Jersey Education Association. The Chamber of Commerce and the business-led New Jersey United for Higher School Standards were also represented. Parent and community groups, school-based educators and others were limited to asking questions at a series of public meetings designed to win support for the plan.

Now that the plan has been formulated and endorsed by "New Jersey’s higher education and business communities," it is being submitted to the State Board of Education for approval. The plan also calls for creation of a "P-16 Council" of "key stakeholders to create a seamless, aligned system of public education in New Jersey." The recurring theme of "aligning" the K-12 system from the top-down to meet the needs of higher education and business has sparked concerns that the plan does not represent the full range of interests that public education must serve and could reinforce new types of tracking and other forms of educational inequality.

Secondary Education Initiative

Throughout the process, the concerns of urban "Abbott" advocates been marginalized. A Court-ordered mediation agreement did lead in 2004 to the creation of the Secondary Education Initiative [SEI] which required the 31 "special needs" Abbott districts to develop plans to provide college prep curricula, small learning communities and student/family supports for all middle and high school students. But this effort was consigned to a separate, lesser track in the NJ Department of Education’s since-dissolved "Abbott division" and only belatedly folded into the HS Redesign effort. As it became clear that the Administration was developing a new school funding formula that would eliminate the Abbott framework, hoped-for supports for SEI, including formation of technical assistance teams, inclusion of SEI in district budget planning, and development of a research plan to evaluate the reform, did not materialize.

NJ Steps does pledge to continue SEI and even declares, "with the implementation of the new school funding formula in January 2008, these reforms will be expanded to districts throughout the state." However the substance of these commitments is uncertain and the DOE’s record of sustaining secondary reform, especially in urban districts, is not strong.

NJ Steps says that "with strained local and state budgets, any additional resources will have to be found through strategic reallocations." Yet for nearly 15 years the State has assumed full control of NJ’s three largest urban districts during a period with the highest, Abbott-mandated levels of funding for urban secondary schools in the nation. But little has been accomplished in the way of "reallocation" or sustained investment for secondary reform, particularly in the large comprehensive high schools. When the SEI regulations were first adopted in 2004-2005, four districts were selected as "phase one pilots" to test the assumptions of the plan and apply its lessons to other districts. But only one limited pilot, in Orange, went forward and a systematic evaluation of the results has not been done.

As it retreats from Abbott commitments, the Department is circulating a scaled-back, draft version of the secondary regulations for use under the new School Funding and Reform Act. Where the original SEI regulations required implementation of small learning communities and a defined program of student/family supports, the draft regulations ask districts to pick from a list of "personalization strategies" that include "adult mentoring programs" or "other practices." Substantive elements like a requirement that teacher teams working with cohorts of students over multiple years receive two-three hours per week of common planning time have been removed, (even as NJ Steps declares that: "New Jersey’s schools must design and offer sustained, intensive, job-embedded professional development to enable teachers, superintendents, principals, and supervisors to support high student achievement.")

Unfortunately, these are signs of the recurring pattern of reform failure. New plans drop from the sky without summing up the lessons of previous ones or addressing the real experience of school communities with past reform efforts. Those parts of the plan that can be moved "on paper," such as standards and tests, are adopted by the State, with increasing detail and prescription, in the name of "accountability" and "higher expectations." But the more difficult efforts to build local capacity that can address issues of school climate, improve professional practice and create inclusive, credible process don’t receive the sustained attention and resources needed to put them in place. The rhetoric of "higher expectations" substitutes for the real changes needed to achieve them.

There are too many examples of this in NJ Steps. In proposing that Chemistry, now required by just 33% of all NJ districts, be made mandatory for all students, the report says, "The Steering Committee recognizes that a Lab Chemistry course, as it has been traditionally taught, would require facilities that may not be available in many schools for dramatically increased numbers of students." Yet instead of linking this recommendation to the need for equalizing educational opportunity, the report cites ways "to reorient how Chemistry is taught so that extensive capital investment by districts may not be required." Such approaches raise doubts among educators, parents and equity advocates about the real intent and potential impact of the plan. A plan that relies so heavily on "raising expectations" through high-stakes exams has a special obligation to address the true costs of passing them.

New Jersey is in urgent need of a robust reform effort that promotes multiple pathways to success for an increasingly diverse student population. But such an effort must rely less on state standards and high-stakes exams and more on credible resources, school-based change, and an inclusive, collaborative reform process. Unless the NJDOE and the HS Redesign Committee heed the lessons of past rounds of failed reform, this new plan could do more harm than good or be "dead-on-arrival" in the schools and communities that need reform most.

For more info contact skarp@edlawcenter.org.

Prepared: April 30, 2008

Copyright © 2008 Education Law Center. All Rights Reserved.

More dropouts? You bet. What is going to help the tens of thousands of poor kids pass multiple exams, the ones who can't pass the current single high school graduation test? "Thowed away."

One curriculum "choice" for all, no excuses, no ifs, ands, or buts? You bet--that's what the economy of scale demands.

The arts and music and history and constitutional government? If it can't be used to pump consumption in the global economy, who cares?

What's it all based on? Propaganda from the Fordham Foundation and Manhattan Institute. There is not a single refereed source in all of the Report to substantiate any of the proposed actions.

Where is environmental awareness in this Exxon/Mobil science curriculum that ignores the approaching ecological calamity? Nowhere in sight.

Where are the university schools of education in this discussion? Waiting for their marching orders.

Where was the NJEA as all this was unfolding? Right up there in line at the same feeding trough. Ditto for the NJ School Boards Association.
JH

__________________________

Published and unpublished commentary or essays from educators, parents, grandparents, students, and even politicians and other bloggers will be considered, too.

Please send your post as a Word attachment, include your name (no pseudonyms, please), return email, and phone number. I will, at your request, post your entry anonymously if you indicate that is what you prefer.

Save the Republic and the Earth,
Jim Horn
ontogenyx@mac.com

L.A. to Force Public Schools to Give Corporate Charter Schools Space

Apparently that most recent$12,000,000 gift by Eli Broad to Green Dot Public Schools, Inc. was not enough to provide the EMO with school facilities, even though it obviously was enough to buy a 4-3 vote by LAUSD to force their own public schools to turn over public school space to Green Dot's corporate charters.

Never mind that public school teachers will lose their rooms and have to teach from carts. And never mind that there is no research to demonstrate the veracity of CEO Steve Barr's public relations campaign lies that his Green Dots are performing miracles in LAUSD. The corporate takeover is simply being ignored, even by national newspapers like USA Today, who tout Green Dot, Inc., even with zero evidence of school effectiveness.

Will someone have the guts to stop or even question the corporate takeover of American schools How about you, Hillary? Barack?

From the LA Times:

More Los Angeles campuses will have to make room for charter schools, even if some teachers are forced to give up their classrooms and become roving instructors, under a litigation settlement approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday.

The agreement requires the school district to inventory all properties and work directly with charter schools to find space on or off campus. Charter advocates say finding and paying for facilities is their No. 1 challenge.

The settlement signals "new cooperation" toward serving all students -- whether they attend a charter or a traditional school, supporters said.

"We share the pain of overcrowding equally," said Caprice Young, president of the California Charter Schools Assn., a party to both suits. "We in the charter school movement recognize that the Los Angeles Unified School District has a space crunch, and we all have to work together to create great facilities for all kids."

Agreeing to the possibility of roving instructors, called "traveling teachers," was perhaps the major -- and most controversial -- concession by the school district. Because of classroom shortages, these teachers move from room to room with cartloads of materials throughout the day, an intensely unpopular assignment.

The school district could provide no figures on how many teachers travel, but their numbers have declined dramatically in recent years with the construction of new schools and declining enrollment.

Two lawsuits were filed in May under a state law that calls for public school campuses to be "shared fairly." Charters are independently run public schools freed from many provisions that govern other schools, including adherence to union contracts and district curriculum.

The school board approved the settlement by a 4-3 vote after a closed session.

Board member Richard Vladovic dissented, recalling the time he "traveled" as a middle school teacher early in his career. "I couldn't spend the time I wanted to focus on my lessons and on meeting with students and counseling them," Vladovic said. "I felt my students got cheated." He also worried that traditional schools would lack needed space and flexibility to improve their schools.

Before the litigation, the two sides had been split on facilities, especially with L.A. Unified dealing with its own classroom seat crunch. Currently, 143 district schools operate on a year-round schedule, and 42 have a shortened school year. Even after the district completes a $12.6-billion school construction program, adding about 165,000 seats, officials say some schools will remain overcrowded.

At newly constructed district schools, officials have rarely considered charter school needs, except in rare cases when seats are left over. And no existing school was to be significantly hindered by a charter. Moreover, the review of available space was partly an honors system, with principals disclosing whether or not they could house a charter school.

Over the last decade, charter schools have operated out of churches, high-rises, warehouses and portables slapped down in parking lots. They are supposed to model academic innovation, but officials also saw another benefit.

"Charters could go into storefronts," said board member Julie Korenstein, who voted against the settlement. "They were increasing space so our [traditional] schools would become less overcrowded. Putting them back on our campuses does just the reverse."

L.A. Unified now oversees 125 charter schools with 47,000 students, more charters than any school system in the nation. About a dozen are in district-owned facilities. These include three of the 10 small high schools operated by Green Dot Public Schools, which filed the lawsuits along with PUC Schools, six charter parents and the charter association.

"In other cities, people offer facilities if we come," said Green Dot founder Steve Barr. "We should be looking at this strategically -- together."

The settlement aims at that goal, substituting a five-year plan for a cumbersome, almost ad hoc process that gives charter schools little advance notice on availability, and then guarantees space for only one year. The agreement, which leaves many details to the future, relies much on good faith.

Negotiators for the charter schools said they made numerous concessions and that the terms of the agreement do not represent their view of state law. Board member Yolie Flores Aguilar said the settlement protects "our schools from staying on or going back to [year-round schedules], making sure we don't bus kids out of their neighborhood or put students back in portables."

Charter advocates said they expected the agreement to open up many more new and existing campuses to charter schools, which is precisely what critics worry about.

"This is the kind of thing that makes everyone in the school business crazy," said Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Assn. Charter schools are "the interlopers here. They land from outer space, get kids to sign up and now they say, 'We want special accommodations made for us.' "

The agreement still needs the formal approval of other parties to the suit, including parents and the boards of the charter schools.