Why Elizabeth Warren Was Right about MA Charter School Expansion

Jonathan Chait has a piece in New York Magazine that attacks Elizabeth Warren's decision in 2016 to support the continued cap on charter schools in urban areas of MA (there is no cap for the suburbs or rural areas).  What Chait knows about education policy in general and charter school policy in particular, he probably learned from his wife, Robin Chait, who did stints as a charter cheerleader at the Center for American Progress and WestEd before landing a job as Director of Performance Management and Human Resources, Center City Public Charter Schools, in Washington, DC. 

As with other disingenuous and/or delusional Democrats, Mr. Chait is promoting the idea that Warren sold out to "special interests" by backing public school parents, teachers, unionists, and small "d" democrats of all varieties who want their public school tax dollars in Massachusetts to support public schools, rather than the charter school industry.

Had Warren sided with billionaire charter zealots, hedge funders, real estate moguls, venture philanthropists, and other paternalist elites who wanted the charter cap in Massachusetts removed, that would have demonstrated, according to Chait, that she is a real progressive.  If Warren were a real progressive, according to Chait, she would be cheering on the efforts of the Waltons, Broads, Fishers, Gates's, etc. to remove all constraints on the spread of "no excuses" charter schools in urban areas.

Chait demonstrates the kind of thought disorder that binds together the neoconservatives at the Fordham Institute with the neoliberals at the Center for American Progress--or the RNC's Republicans for Education Reform with the DNC's Democrats for Education Reform.

Both of these advocacy groups share today the conclusion that Lyndon Johnson reached way back in the 1960s--that there is no appetite among the majority of the electorate to alter the structures that keep the urban poor, poor.  
So if we can't bring ourselves to risk our political capital to 1) provide a minimum income for families in poverty, 2) provide universal health care, 3) end barriers to integrated housing (which would serve, in turn, to integrate schools), minimize income inequality, and 5) institute anti-racist public policies at all levels, then the most viable solution, following Lyndon Johnson, is to focus on education funding and school quality, while offering lip service, at least, to fair housing policy and school desegregation.

The Johnson Administration was not the first to believe, or pretend to believe, in the power of schooling to achieve equality. Horace Mann in 19th Century Massachusetts wrote that education is “great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance wheel of the social machinery.”   

What the Johnson Administration found out (and then suppressed) from James Coleman's massive report published the second year into the War on Poverty, is that more money for schools is not enough to put a serious dent in the achievement gaps or educational inequality.  In fact, more financial resources is not even the most important factor in closing the gaps.  

Six years after the study was published, Coleman said in a 1972 interview  "a child's performance, especially a working-class child's performance, is greatly benefited by his going to a school with children who come from educationally stronger backgrounds. . . . A child's learning is a function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." 

If Jonathan Chait ever heard of James Coleman's research, there is no evidence of it. The research that Chait references to make a case for more charter schools in urban areas examined testing performance in over-subscribed charter schools in Massachusetts that use a lottery to determine student enrollment:

Professors Sarah Cohodes and Susan Dynarski conducted a study proving the massive gains produced by charter school students in the Bay State. Because Massachusetts has a cap on the number of students allowed to attend charters, its students have to enter a lottery to apply. This allowed Cohodes and Dynarski to compare the performance of students who won the lottery with those who lost, a perfectly randomized sample, across a broad suite of metrics. The students who won the lottery and attended a charter outperformed the lottery losers in every way: state test scores, SAT scores, number of advanced placement classes and test scores in those classes, and college attendance.

Test performance comparisons of lottery winners who attended charters to lottery losers who attended public schools would seem to offer an air-tight case  for establishing the superiority of MA charter schools over the public schools.  But when we look again to Coleman's finding over fifty years ago (which have never been refuted), we are reminded of factors that Cohode and Dynarski (or Jonathan Chait) have not considered.  

Both lottery winners and lottery losers represent a self-selecting group of students whose parents obviously are willing to exhaust every avenue in search of better education.  Lottery winners end up attending school with other lottery winners, while lottery losers must return to neglected public schools that have been labeled as failures for the past two decades and regularly targeted for intervention or even closure. 
 

As Coleman noted in 1966, “if a minority pupil from a home without much educational strength is put with schoolmates with strong educational backgrounds, his achievement is likely to increase” (p. 22).  The social capital that accrues in classrooms with students whose parents are motivated to seek out what they believe to be better options (whether real or mythical) for their children should not be underestimated.  Nor should we underestimate the effect grouping together black and brown children in demoralized, financially-strained school environments with low social capital, low expectations, and minimal support. 

The question researchers and opinion writers should be asking is this: Can higher test score results in over-subscribed "no excuses" charter schools continue to be used to justify taxpayer funding for "no excuses" charter schools' dehumanizing learning and teaching environments, where children are culturally sterilized and neurologically altered to suit the social control program goals of billionaire paternalists?  Are we really willing to continue public support for eugenics-inspired visionaries like Angela Duckworth and David Levin to "fix" those children made unfit by poverty?  

Whether or not Elizabeth Warren knew why she was answering "no" to these questions is of less importance than the fact that she did, in effect, say NO. Maybe by 2020 she will have figured out all the reasons that she was right.

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The Awkward Guilting By MA Charter Zealots

Richard Whitmire has been a mercenary scribe for the corporate education master class for a number of years.  In 2011, Whitmire wrote a book-length public relations gloss celebrating the toxic Michelle Rhee and her corporate education exploits.

In 2012, he penned a swooning paean to Gaston Caperton, the College Board CEO with a $1.3 million salary, who was exiting the presidential suite in 2012 to make way for David Coleman of Common Core infamy, who had just been promoted for his fealty to the Gates education agenda. 

In 2014, Whitmire wrote On the Rocketship. . ., a celebration of the computer-centric charter hell chain, Rocketship Charter Schools, which has one of worst academic performance records ever amassed, along with an impoverished clientele who are bug-eyed from spending half-days chained to a computer screen doing digital worksheets. It saves money.

And most recently in 2016, Whitmire published an ebook ($4.99) entitled The Founders, which is a soft-focus and soft-headed celebration of hard-fisted philanthrocapitalists like Reed Hastings and ballsy foul-mouthed profiteers like Steve Barr, who have made the "no excuses" charter industry into the dehumanizing metastasized corporate cancer that it is today, persistently eating away at the stressed body of public education.

Standing in the way of the paternalistic dream of an urban America where poor children are brainwashed to serve the corporate interests of oligarchic overlords are the stubborn pockets of resistance to corporate charter reform school takeover.  The present cap on charter expansion in Massachusetts is an example, and the upcoming vote in November has attracted more than $11 million from outsider corporate interests pushing for unlimited expansion of"no excuses" charters.  

Today the whining Whitmire has a piece in The 74, an online corporate education "news" outlet that can claim Campbell Brown, Jon Alter, and Andrew (Eduwank) Rotherham as Board members. 

In today's piece, Whitmire first tries to shame towns like Newton, MA for their strong support for keeping the charter cap in place.  

Big rich Newton trying to keep poor Roxbury from having more charters.  What's up with that, Newton?  As Whitmire asks, 

Why would Newton teachers and parents, who are unaffected by charters, vote to deny better schools for the low-income neighborhoods of Boston?

You see, in Whitmire and his patrons' self-absorbed Randian worldview, if a social policy does not take money out your own pocket or add to it, why would even bother to express an opinion?

Thank goodness that there are towns like Newton all over America that still care about the the world beyond the city limits
--towns where the social welfare of the democracy is of deep concern and where consideration for how kids are treated elsewhere is a major consideration in the way they act on social policy.

You see, Mr. Whitmire, there are people in Newton and every other city and town in MA who understand that exclusionary and abusive schools like KIPP make the weakest public schools even weaker by depriving them of public resources that are lost to the chain gang charters, which regularly mislead the public with slick advertising and high-dollar public relations campaigns.  

So even if the "no excuses" hell schools were earning the test scores they claim, which they are not, and even if they were not draining public coffers, which they are, there would be deeper reason, still, for citizens in Newton and elsewhere to recoil at lifting the charter cap.  And that reason has to do with the way children and teachers are treated and mistreated in these schools.  

When the majority of parents ask, would I send my child to one of these total compliance, grit-grinding test prep camps to be alienated and abused in hostile environments of enforced silence, they say no, or hell no.  

When they ask themselves, do children in poor neighborhoods deserve another choice besides a neglected public school or a dehumanizing charter school, they say yes, or hell yes.

And when the majority of parents ask, would I want my son or daughter to work in one of these unrelenting and unsustainable corporate school environments where teachers commonly burn out in two years with health problems or nervous breakdowns, they say no, or hell no.

And when they ask, do I want my tax dollars to fund these unregulated corporate enterprises run by clueless non-educators trained in 19th Century management strategies, they say no, or hell no.

We can only wonder how Mr. Whitmire would answer these questions if he were not paid so handsomely to guilt others for doing what moral necessity requires.

CorpEd's "Third Way" Is Corporate Welfare Stealth Scheme

Corporate education reform is scrambling to come up with a new scheme that can be foisted on a general public that is now finally awakened to the giant sucking sound that charter schools make when they start drawing off millions of education dollars to fund segregated corporate reform schools.  

One such scheme in Massachusetts is the Third Way, which appropriately echoes, whether consciously or not, the Clinton-Blair style of neoliberal governance that put international corporatism ahead of the needs of people who work for a living.  The resistance to charter expansion in MA is fierce, and a ballot initiative to lift the cap on charters is up for a vote later this year.  

Corporate education deformists, however, are not waiting for the results to come in on the vote but, rather, are moving ahead with a plan for corporate control in MA's poor school districts, whether or not charters are uncapped.  The Third Way is based on deal cut in Springfield, where governance is by a charter-centric board headed by Chris Gabrieli, who "is the Chairman and CEO of Empower Schools [a private consulting firm], Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, and a lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education." Now that's what I call triangulation.

Wondering who has the contract to advise the Springfield experiment where Gabrieli is the Chairman of the Board that governs the middle schools empowered to operate like charters?  Empower Schools, of course, which has as a partner the phony teacher prep outfit, Relay Graduate School of Education.  Also partnering with Empower Schools is TFA, TNTP, Education Cities, and the list goes on. See the bottom of the page here, but don't miss the mini bios on the staff that works under Gabrieli.  Ivy League non-educators?  You think?

So how many paychecks is Chris Gabrieli collecting here?  I lose count. 

Here is a link to a Third Way conversation between Gabrieli and Lisa Guisbond from FairTest.  Note that Lisa only wants to talk about the upcoming charter vote and does not weigh in on the virtues or vices of the Third Way.  

Oh yes, I almost forgot--the corporate "teachers'" union has cut a deal to cooperate with the Springfield experiment. 

Could this be what Eli Broad is trying to put together for Los Angeles?  Seems that Secretary King is all in.  Wonder why the Boston Globe did not cover this event? 

Let Coakley Lose

Some of us are done with "Democrats" who support corporate education agendas.  I say let Coakley's incompetence take her where it will.

By Matt Murphy STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE Posted Oct. 20, 2014 @ 5:49 am
MALDEN

BOSTON, OCT. 19, 2014.....Democratic gubernatorial nominee Martha Coakley spent part of her weekend trying to patch up her campaign's relationship with a key constituency after her recent comments about charter schools left members of the state's largest teachers union feeling "deep anger and disappointment" with their candidate .

The Massachusetts Teachers Association has endorsed Coakley in the race for governor, but their alliance began to show signs of strain after Coakley reacted last week to the state's disqualification of two proposed charter schools in Fitchburg and Brockton.

Coakley, who said she supports lifting the cap on charter schools, called on the Department of Education to reconsider, and issued a statement saying, "Families and children in Brockton and Fitchburg deserved better. We shouldn't let a technicality get in the way of offering increased opportunities to our children in school districts across the state."

That statement, according to MTA President Barbara Madeloni, left members of the teachers union who could be critical to Coakley's get-out-the-vote effort angry and confused by their candidate's position. . . .

MA Taxpayers Fed Up With Up Expansion of Segregated Corporate Charters

This is the beginning of the end for another failed experiment by profiteers and businessmen to feed on public education.  From the Boston Globe:

Voter support for more charter schools in Massachusetts appears to be weak, according to a new Boston Globe poll, highlighting a politically risky situation for charter school supporters if they pursue a ballot question.

The poll found that 47 percent of respondents opposed raising a state cap on the number of charter schools that can operate in Massachusetts, compared with 43 percent who favor such a change.

The results mean that charter school advocates would have to launch a compelling campaign to convince voters that opening more charter schools would be beneficial to students, said John Della Volpe, founder and chief executive officer for SocialSphere Inc., which conducted the poll for the Globe.

“They have their work cut out for them,” Della Volpe said. “What I mean by that is they would need to make the case why changing the current situation would result in significant more benefits for children.”

Resistance to raising the cap, Della Volpe said, could hinge on another significant finding in the poll: 72 percent of respondents said they were “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with the quality of education provided by their local school systems.

‘It’s not a simple sell that charter schools are better for our students. I think people believe in the potential of real public education. They are not willing to abandon their local school system.’

A defeat at the ballot box could deliver a crushing blow to charter school advocates, even possibly dooming future attempts to convince the Legislature to raise the cap. That’s because weary legislators could point to the referendum results and say they don’t want to betray the wishes of voters. . . .

Profiteers on the Move in MA to Expand Charters in 2016

From Lisa Guisbond at CPS:

Charter proponents may have been shocked to be handed a rare legislative defeat, but they are not sitting back on the heels of their designer shoes. The State House News Service reported this week that charter advocates "are already eyeing the 2016 ballot" and "reaching out to supporters in the business and education communities, as well as potential donors, to line up the backing necessary to mount a ballot campaign."

The report also heralded the arrival in Boston of a new pro-charter school player, called "Families for Excellent Schools," led by a Brooklyn resident (and native of Cambridge, MA) Jeremiah Kittredge. According to State House News, "The non-profit, backed by wealthy Wall Street financiers, ran nearly $5 million in television advertisements earlier this year against new New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio, who had threatened to block the opening of three new charter schools. The New York Legislature, with support from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, took back some control from the city over licensing and put in place new protections for charters."

It remains to be seen how the group will operate in Massachusetts, but in New York, they spent $6 million on media and consultants in 2014 alone. According to their non-profit filings, the group also paid parents for being "activists," more than $98,000 in 2011. That was the year they were just getting started. It's likely they have grown in the past three years and will continue to grow. It's a group worth keeping an eye on as they move into Massachusetts.

Charter Cap in Massachusetts Will Not Be Lifted

It is gratifying to know that the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where public schools were born, took a significant step this week to support Horace Mann's notion of quality public schools for all children.  As Mann said some 160 years ago, "agitate, agitate, agitate, but always for a good cause." 

The good cause that MA citizens agitated for most recently was to keep the charter school cap in place so that citizens might study the effects of a two-tiered separate and unequal system of schooling in Massachusetts that has resulted from the birth and expansion of corporate charter schools. 

This is big news, folks.  This can be done in your state, too, by organizing those who will act on their beliefs. Perhaps public education was just saved in the state where public schools were born.

From Citizens for Public Schools.  Way to go, Lisa, Ann, and everyone else who worked on this.

Charter Cap Lift Bill Defeated: Your Voice Made a Difference

Thanks to each and every one of you who called, wrote and visited your elected representatives to share your views on Senate Bill 2262, which would have lifted the cap on charter spending in so-called underperforming districts. The voices of students, parents, teachers, school board members and others made a difference and the bill was resoundingly defeated, 26-13. The message was heard, loud and clear, that most parents want high-quality public schools for every child, not school "choice." The message was heard that most parents and voters do not want money drawn away from the public schools that serve every kind of student.

The Boston Globe quoted parent Mary Battenfeld, a member of Quality Education for Every Student (QUEST). "It felt like senators were listening to parents," she said. "What we heard in the debate was not so much anti-charter as, 'we need to study this further and understand the impact of a two-tiered system.'"

In the end, those who supported lifting the cap on charters could not come up with a satisfying answer to this question: "What is the end game?" In other words, do we want to move toward a two-tier system of charters and traditional schools, separate and unequal? Or should we invest in all our schools to provide our students with things that we know can work: quality early childhood education, smaller class sizes, wraparound services and most powerfully, reducing poverty (as Senator Pat Jehlen pointed out)?

If you want to know who to thank for their vote in support of all our public schoolchildren, click here to go to the page for Senate bill 2262 (click on Roll Call and download the document labeled "Download Details PDF"). 

Massachusetts Charter School Study Not Mentioned in Boston Globe: That Can Only Mean One Thing

Paid for with federal grant money set aside for advancing the charter school crusade against public education, the State of Massachusetts commissioned the McKinsey-trained researchers at Harvard’s CEPR to examine how statewide charter school MCAS scores compare with public school MCAS scores. The results were the subject of a minor soiree and panel discussion at Harvard earlier this week, and the fact that the Boston Globe did not report on it can only mean that the results did not bode well for charters.  

Dr. Mitchell Chester, Commissioner of Schools for the Commonwealth, spins up the results in a letter that accompanies the Report:

. . .The findings are provocative. They suggest that students in Massachusetts’ charter middle and high schools often perform better academically than their peers in traditional public schools. The results are particularly large for students at charter middle schools and at schools located in urban areas, two areas where traditional public schools have found it most challenging to improve student performance.

First off, the Dr. Chester needs to hire someone competent to analyze the results for him if we are, indeed, to believe what the authors of the study tell us on the first page.  That, or get the McKinsey guys to put all the spinners to working from the same script:

Lottery-based estimates suggest that, as a group, Massachusetts’ charter middle schools boost average math scores, but have little effect on average English Language Arts (ELA) scores. The results for high school show strong effects in both subjects. These findings are broadly consistent with our earlier findings for charter schools in Boston and Lynn, though the middle school effects are somewhat smaller (p. 1).

More on this in a moment, but I’d like to turn to another focus of the Report, which points to significant differences in MCAS scores between urban charters and non-urban charters:

When estimated using admissions lotteries, the results for urban middle schools show large, positive, and statistically signif­icant effects on ELA and math scores, while the corresponding estimates for nonurban middle schools are negative and significant for both ELA and math. The results from the observational study of middle school students are broadly consistent with the lottery results in showing substantial and statistically significant score gains for urban charter students. Moreover, as in the lottery results, the observational estimates for nonurban charter middle schools are negative in the lottery sample, though not as negative as when the estimates are constructed using lotteries (p. 1).

The performance, then, of charter schools when compared to public schools has a great deal to do with

1) the public schools to which urban and non-urban charters are compared, and

2) the different purposes and practices of urban and non-urban charter schools. 

In short, non-urban charters do poorly when compared to the middle-class public schools located in the same leafy suburbs, whereas urban charters do better when compared to urban publics, where generations of malignant neglect make them easier to outscore, especially when corporate resources are also poured into many of the urban charter schools of Boston, in particular. 

Also, the non-urban charters, which are as white as their leafy suburban school cousins, are often created with missions quite different from the test-prep lockdowns of the urban charter chain gang schools.  Out in the suburbs, charters focus on the performing arts, technology, and science, etc., with instruction, curriculum, and classroom management that are light years removed from the behavioral zero tolerance and penal pedagogy of the urban charters. The Report points to these differences between urban and nonurban charters: 

Most urban charter schools also identify with a No Excuses philosophy, while none of the nonurban schools subscribe to this approach (p. 11). 

Why urban only for No Excuses?  Because suburban, middle class parents would never allow their children to be subjected to the minimum security urban penal teaching model that urban parents and students must accept as a result of corporate rules spelled out in contracts that demand it.  For instance, urban charters that were used in the lottery part of this Report sample had contracts from 100% of parents, compared to 42.9% of parents in the non-urban charter schools.  And we may bet that the content of those contracts for urban and non-urban schools were quite different.

The Seligman brainwashing and the penal pedagogy that are common in the urban KIPPs and KIPP emulators will, of necessity, be restricted to communities of high poverty.  Middle class parents will never stand for it.  In short, you will never see a KIPP in Newton or Wellesley, unless, of course, the Commissioner’s call for more “no excuses” becomes common practice in any public school that can be bullied into accepting the mis-educative practices of the No Excuses ideology:

Longer school days, more instructional time on core content, a “no excuses” philosophy, and other structural elements of school organization appear to contribute to the positive results from these schools. Perhaps most importantly, many of these elements could be implemented in traditional public schools, providing us with potential models for improvement across the Commonwealth.

So, come on, suburban schools!  Get on the medium-security schooling bandwagon that’s having such positive test score effects in urban Massachusetts, while subduing the indigenous natives by breaking down their cultural pathologies and resistance to authority.  I think Chris Hedges sums it pretty well:

       This language of blind obedience and retribution is used by authority in our inner cities, from Detroit to Oakland, as well as our prison systems. . . .But to the members of our dwindling middle class -- as well as those in the working class who have yet to confront our new political and economic configuration -- the powerful use phrases like the consent of the governed and democracy that help lull us into complacency. The longer we believe in the fiction that we are included in the corporate power structure, the more easily corporations pillage the country without the threat of rebellion.

So far at least, it is the poor and the children of the poor who must suffer the indignities of a bare-knuckled behavioral regimen and anti-cultural practices designed to minimize the pathologies that flow out of poverty without ever doing anything about the poverty that further imprisons poor children and their families.  The No Excuses bullying by the acolytes of Harvard’s Dr. Thernstrom and UPenn’s rock star professor and CIA advisor, Dr. Seligman, offers nothing more than dirty band-aids for mortal wounds. 

The No Excuses ideology remains the classist and racist excuse for doing nothing to challenge the root causes that keep the underprivileged under the thumbs of their privileged and mostly white overseers.  No Excuses hides behind a threadbare banner of civil rights, while seeking to make the poor entirely complaint and resistance-less, thereby making them complicit in their own subjugation.  The No Excuses charter school is a minstrel rendition of social justice parading in blackface, a self-parodying tribute to liberation achieved by the only “choice” that is offered by containment and segregation.

Finally, any good news for charter advocates that can be found in this Report must be tempered by information unacknowledged in the text of the Report. It is found, however, in the Descriptive Statistics on page 17, where we find real differences in the characteristics of students in the urban public schools and the urban charter schools.  We find, in fact, that urban middle public schools have almost 25% more special education students than urban charters (19.1% compared to 15.1%) and twice the percentage of limited English proficiency (LEP) students in urban public schools compared to urban charter schools (14.2% compared to 7.7%). 

The high-flying urban charter high schools have 1.7% LEP students, whereas the urban public high schools have 9.2% LEP students. As for special education populations, urban public high schools have 16.4% and urban charter high schools have 12.4%. And both urban public high schools and urban public middle schools have higher percentages of subsidized lunch students than urban charter high and middle schools.

At least it should now be clear why the Boston Globe chose not to publish anything on this Report.

Innovation Schools = Segregation Schools

It is ironic, at least, that today on Martin Luther King Day, the Governor of Massachusetts, an African-American himself, signed an education bill that assures the continued intensification of resegregation of American schools and the renewed oppression of minority children in the poorest neighborhoods of the Commonweath. Now with a state approved policy that doubles the number of chain gang corporate charters in the poorest and blackest neighborhoods, the human rights, the economic rights, and the civil rights for which Dr. King gave his life now accelerate even further and faster into our recent past. Apartheid returns with a "liberal" seal of approval.

And the fact that the Democantic establishment is so blinded by their own greed and hubris that they see nothing ironic about this sad reality shows exactly why they will lose on Tuesday the U. S. Senate seat occupied by the late Ted Kennedy. For while the Rahm troops have built a corporate constituency in Washington that can out-money even the Republicrats, the Progressive independents and progressive Democrats that elected Obama are done with the charade. Over. Out. No mas! Corporate education, corporate healthcare, corporate war, corporate welfare, corporate psychology, corporate government, corporate environmental policy, corporate rights, corporate speechifying, and corporate kowtowing. Done, over, out. No mas.

The only thing that could alter the inevitable national meltdown for the "Dems" in November would be to move quickly to Reconciliation after tomorrow in order to pass the real heath care reform with a public option that Americans support, rather than the corporate welfare insurance plan that they don't. Anything less than that will be a waste of time and effort for Democants. Of course, a repudiation of corporate schooling and corporate testing in favor of renewal of public education would be a positive sign, too. A difference is only a difference when it makes a difference. Apologies to G. Bateson.

MA Inspector General Determines Gloucester Charter School "Improperly Approved"

Who would have guessed that Inspector General Gregory Sullivan would have the audacity to offer a decision that challenges the will of the Boston Foundation and the corporate charter school philanthrocapitalists who have bought most State education decisions?

Are we about to see the re-emergence of common sense and legal process in the Commonwealth when it comes to public education? Will elected officials actually start to pay attention to the outpouring of rage by citizens that is showing up at public meetings where corporate disruptors and dismantlers of public education seek to channel public education funds into the anti-democratic charter apartheid schools? It could get interesting.

From the Boston Globe, January 3:

Inspector General Gregory Sullivan has determined that the state improperly approved a controversial charter school in Gloucester last year and believes the board should void its vote, according to a letter his office sent to the governor yesterday afternoon.

. . . .

It was not clear yesterday whether the board and its agency’s commissioner will comply with Sullivan’s findings because they have not seen a copy of the letter yet, according to a spokeswoman for the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“We don’t have any comment,’’ said spokeswoman Heidi Guarino. “We need to review it with our legal counsel.’’

. . . .

The inspector general’s office plans to release a report on its findings to the two legislators who requested it, Senator Bruce Tarr and Representative Ann-Margaret Ferrante.

In his letter, Sullivan said that Mitchell Chester, the commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education, recommended approval of the Gloucester Community Arts Charter School last February in violation of the agency’s own rules and regulations, which he says forbids a commissioner from giving a favorable recommendation against the advice of its own experts.

The department’s charter school office determined a few weeks before the board’s vote that the school’s application did not meet the approval criteria.

Chester’s favorable recommendation has been a lightening rod since a politically charged e-mail surfaced in September about the approval of the Gloucester charter school, and comes at a time when the Legislature is considering a sweeping education bill that is the cornerstone of Governor Deval Patrick’s education agenda.

In the e-mail, dated Feb. 5 - one day after the charter school office rejected all three charter school applications for last year - Education Secretary Paul Reville told Chester that the rejections could cause problems for the governor in getting his education agenda approved by the Legislature by alienating charter school supporters.

“Our reality is that we have to show some sympathy in this group of charters or we’ll get permanently labeled as hostile and that will cripple us with a number of key, moderate allies,’’ Reville wrote.

“It’s a tough but necessary pill to swallow,’’ he wrote.

Chester has repeatedly said that politics played no role in his recommendation, while Reville has said his e-mail has been taken out of context from an ongoing conversation with the commissioner and that he did not lobby any board members to vote favorably on the application.

Yesterday’s letter did not mention the e-mail controversy.

. . . .

The Gloucester charter school has been intensely controversial in Gloucester since the proposal was initially unveiled roughly a year and a half ago, primarily because it would cause the city to lose a big chunk of state education aid to the charter school.

Under state law, students who leave a school district for a charter school take with them thousands of dollars in state aid. In the case of Gloucester, that amount could reach $2.4 million annually when the school is in full operation.

Greg Verga, a city councilor who was School Committee chairman last year, called the inspector general’s determination a “vindication’’ of long-held beliefs that the state board did not follow its own procedures in approving the charter school.

Saving Public Oversight of Public Schools in Massachusetts

A public outpouring of support for public education is needed next week in Massachusetts in order to beat back a corporate sponsored bill to impose more unneeded charters and to disempower elected school committees. Call your State Representatives on Monday, please:

By Jim O'Sullivan/State House News Service

GateHouse News Service

Posted Dec 30, 2009 @ 01:34 PM

---

BOSTON —

House leaders are poised send legislation to the floor next week that narrows the scope of major education policy changes approved last month by the Senate, removing key provisions that would shield teachers from dismissal and boost the levels of reimbursement public school districts receive for students leaving to attend charter schools.

The bill, on a tight time schedule due to an application deadline for up to $250 million in federal education aid, keys on the state’s lowest performing schools, setting up state intervention guidelines that could affect 55 schools, senior House members said Tuesday. Limits on what percentage of school spending can go toward charters would double, from 9 percent to 18 percent, in the lowest 10 percent of districts on the performance scale.

The House budget committee plans to poll its members on the bill Tuesday, expecting passage, and intends an amendment deadline early next week, with votes later in the week and a conference committee with the Senate the following week. Gov. Deval Patrick’s education chief, Paul Reville, said Monday that Patrick needed the bill on his desk by Jan. 14 in order for the state to qualify for the federal assistance cut-off date of Jan. 19. Both House and Senate members say they are confident they can meet the Jan. 19 deadline for so-called Race to the Top funds. . . .

You may choose to use some of the talking points from the following op-ed:

By MONTY NEILL,

LISA GUISBOND
AND STEVE BACKMAN
Monty Neill is director of FairTest, where Lisa Guisbond also works. Steve Backman is president of Database Designs. All are on the board of the Boston-based group Citizens for Public Schools.

January 02, 2010 12:00 AM

Sometimes, reforms don't do everything you want, yet move in the right direction. This is not the case with the sweeping new law now racing through the Legislature. This law, if not fundamentally altered, will weaken Massachusetts' public schools and hurt children. What's the big rush?

Its proponents are selling the bill with false claims that changes to Massachusetts public education are necessary to secure federal "Race to the Top" funds. Not only is that mostly incorrect, but districts receiving those funds around the country will need to use the money in specific ways that will not solve their huge budget gaps.

This bill has passed the Senate and will come up in the House in early January. Thousands have called their representatives with concerns, but more are needed to counter the powerful forces backing the bill's passage.

The bill will grant superintendents unilateral power to change teacher contracts, bypassing both unions and local school committees. The bill concentrates enormous authority in the commissioner of education, trusting him to make positive changes. Yet overly concentrating power, removing checks and balances, is as dangerous for democracy as it has been for the U.S. economy.

By blaming teachers and principals for most educational problems, this bill ignores many causes of low academic achievement, particularly the consequences of poverty and unequal and inadequate school funding. It ignores the failure of many district leaders to implement effective teacher and principal evaluation and professional development that improve instruction. In short, it blames the less powerful while absolving the most powerful.

The bill will dramatically expand the number of charter schools in Massachusetts. Contrary to public relations spin, most charters do about the same as other schools, and some do worse. Charters largely avoid students who are more expensive to educate.

Regular New Bedford schools enroll nearly twice as many students with disabilities and twice as many whose first language is not English as does New Bedford's charter school. The legislation requires charters to file more reports, but it does nothing if the schools fail to enroll more of these students.

It also does nothing if charters keep pushing out kids who are harder to educate. Some charters graduate well under half their enrollees. If these were regular public schools, they would be labeled "dropout factories."

The bill's supporters claim it will improve the state testing program by looking at more than MCAS scores. In fact, it merely provides new ways to use MCAS scores. Though parents intrinsically recognize their children are more than test scores and need more than test prep, this law does not. It still fails to advance a system with varied forms of assessment, as promised by Massachusetts' Education Reform legislation from almost 20 years ago.

Now the state plans to use MCAS scores to rate teachers, which will intensify pressure to ignore untested subjects and teach to the test.

It's understandable when parents who have suffered from inadequate schools look hopefully at promised alternatives. But this scheme will undermine public control yet fail to improve education. The House must reject it.

What Massachusetts really needs is a plan to improve and equalize school resources, which can be done if wealthier communities pay their fair share, strengthen teaching and leadership, ensure parents can be engaged in their children's education, move away from one-size-fits-all testing, and not blindly expand charter schools.

A Charter Crime That Even the Boston Globe Cannot Ignore

Horace Mann must be doing back-flips in his grave, as the Home of the Common School continues to give up public ground to the Business Roundtable and the Oligarchs in the continuing privatization of public schools through the use of segregated charter test camps.

And as the Commonwealth's African-American governor continues to lobby for more of these apartheid chain gangs, more examples emerge of corruption and fraud that even the charter cheerleaders at the Globe cannot ignore:

Commissioner Mitchell Chester said that he will ask his agency’s board today to revoke the charter for the Robert M. Hughes Academy and that teachers and administrators could lose their state professional licenses. He declined to specify the acts of cheating because of investigations continue, but said it was orchestrated by the principal and carried out by several staff members. . . .

. . . . “It’s very disturbing,’’ Chester said yesterday. “In my own experience working in four different states, I have never encountered an incident of cheating that was as highly orchestrated as I’ve seen in this case.’’

Chester added: “I don’t believe they are a viable institution any longer.’’

Chester also revealed that the offices of the attorney general and state auditor are investigating the school on additional allegations of mismanagement and fiscal improprieties. Among them: the school’s trustees appointed a convicted felon to run the school with another administrator after placing the principal on leave in wake of the state’s cheating investigation. The principal has denied any wrongdoing. . . .

Merits of Gloucester, MA Charter Proposal Made Irrelevant By Political Considerations

When Secretary Paul Reville felt the heat applied by the corporate media at the Boston Globe and the philantrho-capitalists at the Boston Foundation, he sent an email to Commissioner Mitchell Chester urging his support for reasons that had nothing to do with the merits of the charter application. Note, too, in the story by Pamela Campbell, that two other proposals were dismissed for reasons that had nothing to do with the merits of their proposals, either. Here is a clip, but do get the rest here:

GLOUCESTER -
The revelation that state Secretary of Education Paul Reville urged for approval of the Gloucester Community Arts Charter School for political reasons, rather than the merits of the proposal, has thrown yet another wrench into plans for a charter school in Gloucester.

In the e-mail, dated Feb. 5, 2009, Reville urges state Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester, co-chair of the Board of Education and Secondary Education, to approve at least one charter application that had been submitted in the fall of 2008 or risk sending “the wrong signal.

“Our reality is that we have to show some sympathy in this group of charters or we’ll get permanently labeled as hostile and that will cripple us with a number of key, moderate allies [listed were the Boston Globe and the Boston Foundation, both considered strong advocates of the charter movement].

“It really is a matter of positioning ourselves so that we can be viable to implement the rest of our agenda,” the e-mail continues. “My inclination is to think that you, I, and the governor all need to send at least one positive signal in this batch, and gather you think the best candidate is Gloucester. Can you see your way clear to supporting it?”

The e-mail was originally obtained by the Gloucester Daily Times and published in its Sept. 19 edition. . . .

Gov. Patrick Doubles Down on Apartheid Charter Chain Gangs for Urban Poor

In a world where facts mattered, an African-American governor of a liberal state might think twice about his full-throated support for an educational solution that has proven itself less effective than the public schools that the Broad-Gates Oligarchy wish to replace with the resegregation testing camps preferred by the No Excuses neo-eugenics coalition. But facts don't matter, whereas campaign money does.

And all of those blue t-shirts? Who paid for those, and who paid all the black and brown parents to show up for the meeting? From the Boston Globe:

A sea of blue rolled into a State House auditorium yesterday afternoon, as charter school students, teachers, and parents donned light blue T-shirts to trumpet a quote from President Obama: “We must eliminate all charter caps.’’

Among those looking for more charter schools in the state’s worst-performing districts was 18-year-old Eddie McGuire, a senior at Boston Collegiate Charter School in Dorchester, who believes more students should have the same kinds of opportunities he has had.

“Kids deserve a successful education,’’ McGuire said in an interview as he left the hearing, which lasted several hours. “Our school has proven itself more than once over the years.’’

Hundreds of business leaders, politicians, parents, students, educators, and advocates turned out for the first legislative hearing on Governor Deval Patrick’s proposal to expand the number of charter school seats in school districts with the lowest MCAS scores as well as another proposal that would allow for a state takeover of failing schools.

While supporters were apparent with their blue shirts, plenty of dissenters, including high ranking teachers union officials, filled the seats, too. Unions see the proposals as an attack on the performance of teachers in traditional schools as well as a threat to their workplace rights because the proposals could reduce union contract provisions.

Speaking before members of the Joint Committee on Education, Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union, said, “The solution to better schools lies with working with us and not against us.’’

Concerned about lagging achievement among some disadvantaged student groups, Patrick pitched the proposals this summer to launch what he calls the second phase of the state’s more than decade-long overhaul of public education. The charter school proposal was a sharp turnaround for the governor, who had previously resisted calls for an immediate lifting of the charter school cap. . . .

Governor Patrick Intervenes in Corrupt Charter Approval in Gloucester

The letter writing by Gloucester citizens has been intense enough, and the cram-down approval process was corrupted enough, and the economic costs to Gloucester Public Schools will be severe enough, and the potential political cost to Governor Patrick is clear enough, that the Gov has scheduled a meeting in Gloucester on August 11 to reconsider the question an an unneeded an unwanted charter school in Gloucester. As reported by the Boston Globe, which did not bother to print the fact that a meeting on August 11 is planned, Commissioner Chester's corporate kow-towing earlier this year went so far as to ignore the recommendation from the State Board's own charter school office to NOT approve the Gloucester charter application:

Gloucester officials have faulted the state board for not following its own procedures in its approval process. At a Dec. 11 state-sponsored hearing on the charter, no board member attended. A month later, the board retroactively waived a rule requiring board attendance for this particular application. The commissioner also recommended a favorable vote despite a negative recommendation from the department’s charter school office.

Commissioner Chester and Board Chair, Maureen Banta (also IBM's East Coast Regional Manager for Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs), are not happy campers about the Governor's request for a revote.

Who know, State Secretary of Education, Paul Reville, might even show up for this meeting on Auguse 11. All Gloucester residents should turn out to offer him a warm welcome, don't you think?

Part of the story from Wicked Local Rockport:

GLOUCESTER - Stunning many citizens on both sides of the Gloucester Community Arts Charter School debate, Gov. Deval Patrick has decided to intervene in the process that had been considered a done deal, asking the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to reopen the process for community discussion and another vote by the board.

“Because it is essential that the community has utmost confidence in the transparency and integrity of the process, I am writing to ask you to reopen your process and reconsider your decision,” Patrick tells Maura Banta, Chair of the Mass. Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, and Mitchell Chester, Commissioner of the Mass. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, in a letter sent July 27.

“The proposed charter for the Gloucester Community Arts Charter School has caused deep division within the Gloucester community at precisely the time when we need people to come together,” Patrick continues.

He cites as reasons for his action concerns about the process raised by Gloucester’s two state legislators, Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante and Sen. Bruce Tarr, in a July 6 letter to him, along with concerns voiced and written by other Gloucester citizens, complaining that the process has been flawed and that the community’s objections to the Charter on its merits have gone unheard.

Meanwhile, at Patrick’s behest, a meeting has been scheduled in Gloucester for Tuesday, Aug. 11 with Mass. Secretary of Education Paul Reveille to allow individual proponents, opponents, both state legislators, and Gloucester’s mayor, superintendent, and School Committee to speak to Reveille personally.

Ferrante, reached Wednesday, said it would be an opportunity for Reveille, who missed the February vote, to hear a variety of views first-hand. . . .

Massachusetts and the Patrick Plan: More Apartheid Schooling for the Poor

Horace Mann must be rolling in his grave this morning here in the Commonwealth, where the Common School was born, and where philanthro-capitalism and weak politicians now take a big leap forward in replacing the public schools with corporate charters. Patrick's bow to the Bush/Obama plan to segregate the poor and the brown in test prep total control chain gangs will no doubt earn him enough federal money from Dunc's bribery fund to avoid raising state taxes on the rich as the economy continues to crumble, but we may wonder what effect this capitulation to the Oligarchy will have on Patrick's political future in the Commonwealth.

The timing of this shift toward more charters does nothing to quell the suspicion that Patrick has become another puppet of the Oligarchs, especially with the recent peer-reviewed study out of Stanford showing only 17% of charters in their sample of 2,403 were outperforming public schools, and that poor and brown children were suffering the most in the others that are performing no better (42%) or worse (37%) than the public schools.

With school committees already scratching their heads on where else to cut in order to stay afloat in the current Depression, which is brought to you by the same merchants of greed who are now bankrolling the charter movement, the removal of the charter cap in poor/brown districts could cause school chaos and a political backlash like we have not seen elsewhere in the nation.

Rather than taking the lead in crafting policy to stem the steady resegregation of American schools, it is ironic, indeed, that African-American political leaders are now intent upon throwing gasoline onto the American apartheid fire. Greed and power are, indeed, colorblind. But, then, principles went out the window some time back--otherwise, we would not hear the cacaphonous silence from the the office of once-liberal lion, Ted Kennedy.

May the citizens of Massachusetts send a message that we want to save and improve our public schools, not hand them over to CEO wannabes to run into the ground with the punishing stupidity of the anti-cultural "no excuses" reform schools. Any aspiring governor types out there who will stand up for public education?

From the Boston Globe:

Governor Deval Patrick will unveil a proposal today to nearly double the number of charter school seats allowed in the state’s worst-performing districts, a move expected to trigger a fierce debate on Beacon Hill and send tremors through local school systems.

The proposal, which requires legislative approval, would create an estimated 27,000 new charter school seats in about 30 districts across the state, from Boston to the Berkshires, according to a copy of draft legislation obtained by the Globe. Lawmakers were briefed on the plan yesterday.

Doubling the charter school seats in those districts is far more aggressive than the initial plan Patrick outlined in January, and represents a dramatic departure for a governor who had previously resisted calls to lift the state-imposed limit on new charters.

The governor’s push comes as President Obama is threatening to withhold millions in federal stimulus dollars from states that hinder charter school growth. The US secretary of education, Arne Duncan, will join the governor at a press conference today unveiling the legislation, which will be filed today.

The governor’s office declined to comment yesterday through a spokesman for the state’s secretary of education. . . .

. . . .Education leaders said the scope of the proposed charter expansion is far more dramatic than the Patrick administration had discussed with them as recently as earlier this week.

“I’m surprised and disappointed,’’ said Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, contending that the state needs to overhaul charter school funding. “We are stripping the neediest districts of necessary resources.’’

The state’s 62 existing charter schools, authorized under the 1993 education reform act, generally operate independently of local school districts and are not unionized. That has earned them the ire of local education leaders, who lose money to the schools, but have no control over them, and of the teacher unions, who have been key allies for Patrick.

While many legislators see value in charter schools, some are reluctant to support expansion without changing the way charter schools are funded so it is less harmful to local districts, said Representative Martha Walz, cochairwoman of the Joint Committee on Education. She said the committee is researching methods used by other states to fund charter schools and is considering whether to require a change in the formula for funding schools before the limit on charter schools can be lifted.

“If too much money leaves the district for charter schools, students who remain in the district could be disadvantaged,’’ said Walz, who has not taken a position on the governor’s proposal.

The state places a limit on the number of charter schools statewide, as well as limits in individual districts. While about 60 more charter schools statewide can open under current law, many urban districts, such as Boston, are near the local cap, which limits each district’s spending on charter tuition to 9 percent of its annual net school spending. The governor’s proposal would increase that limit to 18 percent, 6 percentage points higher than he proposed in January.

In Boston, the increase would add more than 5,000 seats, enabling many of the city’s approximately 16 charter schools to expand and opening the door for many new charter schools.

Statewide, districts eligible for more charters, chosen because of low scores on state standardized tests, have capacity for another 10,000 charter school seats under current law. Patrick’s proposal would raise that to about 37,000 seats.

Last month, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, a longtime charter school critic, attempted to counter the possible change, advocating creation of a type of in-district charter school that could be controlled by cities and towns, instead of by the state. The Boston school district expects to see about $50 million in state aid diverted next year to charter schools, which will enroll more than 5,200 city children. The Legislature will hold a hearing on Menino’s bill next week.

Earlier this year in his state budget proposal, Patrick attempted to link raising the charter school cap to changes in the funding formula, such as creating a separate pool of state aid for charters. But charter school advocates objected, fearing it could put them at greater risk of state budget cuts, and the governor later abandoned the plan.

That was not the only concession Patrick made to charter advocates in the revised legislation, showing just how much he has warmed to charter advocates, a group that includes several prominent business and civic leaders.

Initially, Patrick had proposed quotas for certain groups of students, such as those who are in special education or are English language learners, but he is now settling for establishing guidelines. Charter advocates worried that quotas would compromise the fairness of its open lottery system for student admission; they still have some concerns about the guidelines.

Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, said Patrick is conceding far too much to charter school supporters.

“What can it possibly be but another indication that the charter school lobby is dictating state policy?’’ Koocher said. “Districts will lose more money, and the charter schools will laugh all the way to the bank.’’

Segregation of the Poor and Disabled in Chain Gang Charters, Massachusetts Style

Last week the Governor's Office issued new verbal support for more charter schools and more money, despite the budget hemorrhage that is spread across the entire Commonwealth. There is one interesting caveat in the Governor's support that fits exactly the findings from of studies (see below) on the resegregation of America's schools. When Governor Patrick could have offered any stipulation for his support for more charters, did he choose to call for ethnically or economically integrated charter schools? Not at all, but, rather, more of the apartheid schooling we have seen so far in the KIPPs and the KIPP lookalikes that are so popular with the Business Roundtable and their inspired social entrepreneurial parasites.

Here is yesterday's piece from the Harvard Crimson, which, by the way, is far superior to the gloating propaganda the the Boston Globe continues to churn out in support of more segregated eugenics-inspired chain gangs:

By MICHELLE L. QUACH

Crimson Staff Writer

The new state budget proposed by Mass. Governor Deval L. Patrick ’78 calls for raising the cap on charter school spending to 12 percent from nine percent—a move that could allow for the creation of a fourth charter school in Cambridge.

The proposal was met with criticism from interest groups and educators on both sides of the charter school debate.

Although the governor’s proposal would allow more students who want to attend charter schools to do so, the additional funding comes with the stipulation that 80 percent of the new schools’ enrollment should come from historically low achieving populations, including low-income, minority, and special needs students.

“He’s setting up charter schools to deal with the most difficult population[s],” said Jed F. Lippard, head of Prospect Hill Academy, a charter school with campuses in both Cambridge and Somerville.

Lippard, who believes charter schools are highly effective, said he agreed with the governor’s efforts to make them more accessible. But he objects to the enrollment stipulations, which he said will contribute to the problem of racially and socioeconomically segregated schools—a problem that Cambridge already faces.

Robert C. Riordan—a former teacher and administrator in Cambridge Public Schools who now works for a network of charter schools in California—expressed the same concern, saying that the current proposal would mandate a trend towards segregated schools.

“Such a requirement would throw the weight of the state behind the current drift toward apartheid schooling,” said Riordan, who pointed out that the current charter schools in Cambridge already serve much higher populations of at risk students than their district counterparts.

At Benjamin Banneker, a charter school in Cambridge, about 75 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, compared to the district average of about 45 percent. At both the Community Charter School of Cambridge and Prospect Hill Academy, the number is about 50 percent.

Riordan said that mandating these population quotas would hurt efforts to establish schools with balanced populations.

“You can imagine that if there were a new charter school with 80 percent of students in need, not that many students of privilege would apply to that school,” he said, adding that the best model would be to have schools reflect the overall population of their communities.

But Cambridge Public Schools committee member Marc C. McGovern objects to the funding formula for charter schools in general.

For every student that goes to a charter school, money that would otherwise go to the school district would go to the charter school—which, according to McGovern, does not always provide the same services that district schools must offer.

“As it stands now, it’s not an equitable funding formula. Allowing more charter schools is going to make things worse in terms of funding. We’re in tough shape here in Cambridge. I don’t think that’s the way to go.”