Cash Is Figural for Gestalt Charter $chools

The Gestalt Community Schools operate a half-dozen segregated corporate reform schools in Memphis.  Their stated vision at their website is 

. . . building better communities through education. To this end, Gestalt targets low-income communities that have failing schools, then catalyzes grassroots leadership to revitalize the neighborhood, educates the youth through high-performing schools, and partners with providers to tackle out-of-school challenges that hinder students from succeeding.

This week it was announced that two of its schools in one of Memphis's shrinking neighborhoods are shutting down, thus leaving parents to wonder where their children will attend school next year.  

With Gestalt collecting about 10K for each student attending and with enrollment shrinking, it seems that Gestalt's "vision" has to take a back seat to their business plan and financial projections.

School Board Proposes Closure of 2 KIPPs

Shelby County Superintendent, Dorsey Hopson, has proposed closing a number of charter schools in Memphis.  Among them are two KIPP schools. 

. . . .The recommendation to close nine schools comes a week after an informal proposal that the district shutter up to 10 schools in order to help close a budget gap and avoid cuts to programs that keep students in the district.

Hopson recommended closing Northside and Carver high schools and Messick Adult Center and revoking six charters: Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering, KIPP Memphis Collegiate Middle School, KIPP Collegiate High School, Omni Prep Academy-North Point lower and middle schools, and Southern Avenue Middle School.. . . .

Unfortunately, another KIPP is not on the chopping block, even though it has been among the lowest-performing in the state for 13 years.

Memphis Smells the Coffee After the Pot Boils Over

With 45 cash-sucking corporate charters in operation, and with tens of thousands of children placed into penal school environments with no oversight, and with thousands of experienced teachers replaced by untrained temps, and with hundreds of millions of dollars poured into local and out-of-state charter businesses with nothing to show for it, and with dozens of communities disrupted by school closures, and with parents and teachers ready to burn down the Board of Education, the Shelby County school administration has finally admitted what we have been saying for a long, long time.

From the Commercial Appeal:

. .. .SCS currently has 45 charters operating, with five more set to open in the fall. Another 13 applied by the deadline this month to open the following year. SCS administrators have said loss of enrollment due to charters and the state-run Achievement School District is driving this year's $86 million budget gap.

"If our enrollment is going down based on ASD and charters, and this is causing us to have a financial deficit, why are we continuing to approve charters in areas where there is no need?" board member Stephanie Love asked. "It seems like we're approving a charter that then, as budget time comes, we say we have to cut the budget because of a charter that we approved."

Hopson said the district can legally deny a charter application if the school would create "substantial financial hardship to the district," but the state overruled when the district tried that a few years ago. But with so many charter schools now open, Hopson said they may have another shot at that argument.. . . .

ASD Schools Still at Rock Bottom

Of the 11 Memphis schools that have been in the ASD the longest, all 11 are still in the bottom 10 percent — including three in the bottom 1 percent. But one school — KIPP Memphis Preparatory Middle — sits just below the 10th percentile mark. --Memphis Commercial Appeal, March 31, 2016

If KIPP Memphis Preparatory Middle sits just below the 10th percentile mark, another Memphis KIPP school remains far below that.  The KIPP Memphis University Middle School has been in bottom five percent of schools for the past three years (click image to enlarge):

When ASD was created with Race to the Top money in 2011, the charter industry promoters promised that the bottom five percent of Tennessee schools entering the Achievement School District would be catapulted into the top 25 percent of state schools within 5 years.  We are now in year 5, and we see what an outrageous lie that was to begin with. 

We can also see what the Gates Foundation has delivered since it came to Memphis (Shelby County) in 2009 with $90 million to begin the corporatization and teacher deprofessionalization process.  

From the Commercial Appeal:

Of the 168 schools that make up the bottom 10 percent in academic performance in the state, 56 percent are located in Shelby County, according to new data acquired by The Commercial Appeal this week.

Those 95 schools include 54 in the bottom 5 percent — a designation with legal ramifications that allows the state's Achievement School District to take over.

The Tennessee Department of Education issues its official priority list of bottom 5 percent schools every three years, with the next edition set for the summer of 2017. The bottom 10 percent list, provided to the newspaper by the state, is an unofficial warning to local districts about schools that are struggling and could soon be eligible for state takeover.

Of the 95 schools, 11 are under the ASD, 13 are charters and the remaining 71 are operated by SCS. A school had to have at least two year's worth of data to make the list, which is why several ASD schools new to the district are not represented. Some schools may have closed last year but still had two years' worth of data that was included.

Shelby County Schools Chief of Academics Heidi Ramirez said it's no surprise that so many schools in the bottom 10 percent in the state are located in Shelby County.

"I hope it is a call to action for folks to recognize that as much great work as we're doing in Shelby County Schools, on the resource trajectory we are on, we need additional supports to accelerate progress," Ramirez said. The district is already facing an $86 million budget gap for next year.

The 10-percent list also offers glimpses at early successes and struggles from both the ASD and the SCS Innovation Zone turnaround programs, created with Race to the Top federal funding and now kept alive through state and philanthropic dollars. Both have phased priority schools into their programs since the 2012-13 school year....

Four of Memphis's Worst Charters with the Best Political Connections Will Remain Open

Since Gates and the oligarchs put Supt. Dorsey Hopson in charge of the charterization of public schools in Memphis, Shelby County Schools has been in a lather to close as many "low-performing" schools as possible.

Early in 2014, Hopson was adamant that it all comes down to poor student achievement and that the children have suffered long enough.  The emergency had been declared, and no one could wait another year or another month for low-scoring schools to improve.

Early in 2013, eleven public schools were targeted for conversion, and in in 2014, thirteen more were put on the list for closure.

Memphis now has over 40 corporate reform charter schools that are bleeding the public schools' budget dry each year.  More terminations, more cutting of services, more shrinkage of teacher benefits and retirement plans.

Increasing austerity is required in order to benefit the politically connected corporate welfare kings who run the charter chain gangs. As a result, the remaining public schools are further weakened, demoralized, and made ready for charter conversion.

Now suddenly we find that the achievement emergency has been put on hold, at least for the worst charter schools in Memphis that are owned by Senator Cory Booker's brother and his crony pals.  Without warning, the Shelby County School Board has decided not to close the four charters at the bottom of the achievement barrel in Memphis, and to give them at least three more years to miseducate children.

In order to keep the revenue stream flowing into the pockets of the the politically connected crooks who run these segregated fake schools, the children of unwitting parents must continue in these hellholes, where they are psychologically abused and educationally cheated.

In case you are wondering, this moratorium on closing low scoring schools does not apply to the public schools on the priority list, even if those schools are improving.  From Chalkbeat Indiana:

The same month they were slated to close their doors forever due to low academic performance, three Memphis charter operators received notice from Shelby County Schools that their schools will remain open for the upcoming school year.

City University School Boys Preparatory, Southern Avenue Middle School, and Omni Prep Academy Lower and Middle Schools are on the priority list of the state’s 5 percent of worst performing schools, making their closure mandatory this summer under a 2014 state law. However, a new law passed this year by the legislature gave districts discretion in deciding whether the schools should remain open for now.

“In light of the recent change in legislation that amended [the 2014 law], this letter is to notify you that district will not be pursuing the closure of your schools this year,” said Bradley Leon, the district’s chief of strategy and innovation, in a May 7 letter to school administrators. 

The news was cause for jubilation for the Memphis schools, which lost students and faculty following the district’s confirmation in December that it would comply with the 2014 law.

“Regardless of the prior [loss] of faculty, staff and scholars due to the district’s announcement of closure earlier this year, I am excited that we will be afforded an opportunity to continue to move the academic needle amongst our scholars at City University School Boys Preparatory,” said founder and Chancellor R. Lemoyne Robinson.

Under the new law, district-authorized charter schools now have until 2017 to get off the state’s priority list before state-ordered shutdown. However, local school boards still have authority to close a charter for poor performance before 2017.

Omni founder Cary Booker, who lobbied for the revised legislation, said the policy change should be seen as a necessary clarification, not a second chance for the beleaguered schools. “I see it as the law is now aligned with its original legislative intent,” Booker told Chalkbeat.

The reversal does not please everyone, however.

“Our perspective is that schools that are not performing don’t need to continue operating, but this decision is ultimately the decision of the authorizer.” said Emily Lilley, director of policy at the Tennessee Charter School Center, an advocacy group based in Nashville.

On TCAP tests in 2013-14, less than 15 percent of students earned proficient reading language scores at City University; under 27 percent at Omni Middle; 11 percent at Omni Lower; and about 23 percent at Southern Avenue Middle.

The schools now have opportunity to improve their performance before the state releases its next priority list in 2017. . . .

Rudd's Secret Corporate Giveaway Program at U of Memphis Not So Secret Anymore

Below you will find the individual slides from the secret powerpoint prepared last July in preparation for the publicly funded corporate "teacher" prep progam that David Rudd arranged without any consultation with University of Memphis faculty, either outside or inside the College of Education.  

This program was planned in secret, and it involved handing over teacher preparation for the urban charter system of Memphis to two corporate bodies, the Relay Graduate School of Education and the The New Teacher Project (TNTP). 

The need for corporate "no excuses" teachers in Memphis has been manufactured by the continuing closure or turnover of public schools in Memphis to charter operators chosen by the Achievement School District from the lowest scoring and poorest schools in Shelby County.  

When schools are closed by ASD or turned over by Shelby County to their "Innovation Zone," teachers are fired and must reapply for their jobs.  

Of course, the new corporate operators do not want professionally prepared career teachers but, rather, the inexperienced beginners who have been trained as rigid guards who treat children more like prisoners than pupils.  These beginners will do three years before moving on to become CEOs of their own charter hell schools.

Explanations and comments are included below the slides.

See any discussion or input by the Shelby County Board of Education or by the faculty and staff of U of Memphis?  Didn't think so.  

As a result of annual firing of teachers as ASD claims public schools and new charters open up, "offerees" will have plenty of spots to choose from.  In fact, there will always be a bottom 5 percent of schools to convert.

Wondering who is going to pay the cost of this program?  Hint: it won't be Bill Gates.

That's right: this corporate program will be paid for with public dollars from a cash-strapped public university.

Need some extra funding to put in the pockets of the predators who run this program? Just take it from Title I or II funding.

Notice that administrative costs top instructional costs.

 More managers, analysts, coordinators, and directors than you can imagine.

Hopson's Next Bad Idea

PHOTO: Tajuana Cheshier/Chalkbeat TN 

Look at what happened in Memphis this week, and then tell me that teachers, students, and parents standing up together doesn't matter.  

Within minutes after parents and teachers lined up to express their disgust with the planned corporate takeover of their schools, Hopson came up with a new scheme, this one hardly better than the first one.

American Way Middle School students protested during Tuesday night's Shelby County School Board business meeting. More than 20 people signed up for public comment with the majority opting to speak against the Achievement School District's takeover process. 

In response to the state’s steady takeover of Memphis schools, Superintendent Dorsey Hopson said Tuesday night that he would propose expanding his own turnaround efforts known as the iZone, and the school board’s chairwoman said she would push for a legislative moratorium on the Achievement School District’s expansion.

The district’s iZone has regularly outperformed the Achievement School District, a state-run district targeted at moving the bottom 5 percent of schools into the top 25 percent.  A full third of the district is eligible to be taken over by the state in the next three years. ASD officials are currently working to determine which seven schools they will hand over to a handful of charter schools next year.

Hopson’s and board Chairwoman Teresa Jones’ comments came shortly after more than 20 parents and teachers accused board members of allowing schools to be taken over by the state and charter schools.

“It’s time for you guys to do your jobs,” said Kenneth Ingram, a parent at American Way Middle School.  “Put a stop to this. Another charter school coming from another state and taking over our school? We’re not going to allow that to happen. Please do your job.”

Neither the board nor the Shelby County Schools administration has legal control over the Achievement School District’s takeovers of low-performing public schools, Hopson and board members repeatedly reminded the public Tuesday. The takeover process has led to contentious protests at several community meetings this week.

Hopson said he will propose to board members in the coming weeks closing several schools and merging them into one school that would join the iZone.  Similar to charter schools, iZone schools are given waivers from state laws, require teachers to reapply for their jobs, and receive extra resources to try innovative strategies to improve test scores.  Unlike charter schools, the iZone schools remain under district control.

“We’ve been kicking around some numbers and without any extra money, we would look at combining two or three schools and bring them in the iZone,” Hopson said. “That would take a few more low-performing schools out of play (for ASD takeover). At the end of the day, though it’s about what is going to be best for the kids.” . . . .

If Hopson and the Shelby County School Board want to match some schools, they should start matching economically disadvantaged schools with those that are not.  Mix the schools so that no more than 40 percent are poor, provide professional development for teachers and principals, infuse new resources, and then give it three years to see if improvements don't materialize. 

Meanwhile, the entire process of labeling schools should be audited to determine whose politcal machinations are involved to make sure that only black schools get set up for closure, when mixed schools like Cordova have weaker test scores.  Cordova, in fact, is on neither the Priority or the Focus list of low-testing state schools.  Who's pulling the strings to make sure the new penal system of pedagogy only comes to black schools?

Aspire Charter Schools: Busing to Maintain Segregation

When parents showed up last week to enroll their children at the Aspire (Coleman) charter school in Memphis, they were told there were no more seats, due to plans to expand next year to take in 6th grade.  Even if there were no expansion plans, you can't have too many children of parents who weren't there months ago to squeal with delight at the prospect of getting their children into a new segregated corporate reform school. Protect the brand.

The solution provided: Bus these 30 or so children an hour away to another Aspire store called Aspire Hanley, which last year had worse test scores than the public school it replaced in the same building.  Aspire is looking for some to pat them on the back for providing the bus cost of a bus--$50,000. 

Considering that 30 kids are worth $9,000 each to Aspire's bottom line, it doesn't take an accountant to see that Aspire could afford limos if they wanted to and still make money. 

Wasn't the ostensible purpose of turning Memphis schools over to corporations to provide better education?  What middle class school board would ever allow such corruption, mismanagment, and miseducative abuse for middle class children??

Corporate Astroturf Vultures Line Up in Memphis

As the corporate stooges of the school board waited on Tuesday evening for community members to utter their final useless pleas to keep their community schools open in Memphis, a group of fat corporate vultures had their own perch near the front in an area designated for "district officials." 

Any parent upset about public school closings should take the opportunity to spit in the face of anyone from the organizations listed in bold just below from an article from Tennessee Chalkbeat:

The school district auditorium in midtown Memphis was crowded Tuesday night, as the Shelby County school board’s debate over which schools to close before the 2014-15 school year reached its culmination. For many of the students, parents, alumni, teachers, community members, and media present, this was the last in a series of community meetings about the closings over the past two months.

Near the section of room marked for district officials, under a sign that read “Remember, it’s all about our students,” sat another group that had been to almost as many meetings as anyone in the room: Field organizers for StudentsFirst and Parent Empowerment, two school choice advocacy groups.

Representatives from school choice advocacy groups new to Memphis – Parent Empowerment and the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) – and from more-established StudentsFirst and Stand For Children attended nearly every community meeting focused on the closings this winter. . . .

Public Meeting To Discuss Closing 12 Memphis Schools to Benefit Charter Industry and Gates Plan

A local columnist in Memphis, Wendi Thomas, has a cynical piece today in the Memphis Corporate Appeal on the planned shutdown of 12 more Memphis schools.  

The Shelby County School Board, which represents the interests of the corporate machine, has brought in an economist from Chicago to assure the local media and politicians that the closure of 47 schools in Chicago is fine, because, after all, the closures have not affected test scores in Chicago. How the Chicago researcher knows this is hard to tell, since the closures were only approved at the end of the last school year!  So, school closures in Memphis will be just fine, the illogic goes, because someone said it will not hurt test scores in Chicago.  

The meeting will be at 6 PM today at 160 South Hollywood in Memphis.

Below is a chart that Wendi Thomas posted from the Achievement School District, which attempts to justify the closures on low test scores and low enrollment.   

If low enrollment were a criterion that really mattered in making decisions on closing schools, then almost all the charter school in Memphis would shut down: only one of the 22 charter schools in Memphis has over 400 students, and almost half of the 22 charters have fewer than 100 students.  

Will Shelby County Schools try to make the case that turning over closed public schools to smaller corporate charter operators will improve the "programmatic utilization rate?"  I'd say.

In terms of low test scores of targeted schools that the chart above identifies as  having "less than 40% Proficient," this is another phony criterion being used to justify school privatization in Memphis.  

Note in the chart below that the Memphis average is closer to 30% of students at Proficient.  Are the poorest schools supposed to be better than the average school in terms of test scores??

When we look at the Memphis charter schools in the chart below from the latest State report (2012), we see that very few of the replacement charter schools have proficiency rates over 40 percent.

In fact, we find a number of charter schools'  Math or Reading/Language Arts scores below Wendi Thomas's public poster school of failure, with its 20 percent of children proficient in reading and math. Why is the school board of Shelby County not howling to shut down these segregated charter schools?

Please note, too, the vast differences in the percentages of ELL and SPED students in Memphis charters, compared to Memphis public schools:

Below are my comments on the Wendi Thomas column, which is here if you can get by the firewall.

Let's face it, these planned closures will serve the needs of corporate charter school operators and the local/state political cowards who are flush with Gates cash and federal grants for coming up with this scheme.

Ms. Davis is quick to note that leaving these malignantly neglected schools open will not solve poverty in the community, but she does not acknowledge that closing them will have the opposite effect, as these schools, once closed, will remove the principal sources of any remaining pride in these impoverished communities, These closures will simply add to the reasons for others to flee these areas that could use some of the hundreds of millions that will be outsourced to charter operators to open schools with fewer students.

The charters that replace them will pay corporate foundations to provide charter reform schools that look more like minimum security prisons than schools, with white missionary teachers who work for a couple of years before moving on to grad school. It's not hard to tell who the winners and losers are here, especially since most of the charter reform schools do no better on tests than the shuttered public schools.

What will happen to the empty schools? Easy--they will be handed over the KIPPs and KIPP knockoffs to use for a few dollars a year, if that.

Please note, too, that if the size of the student population were the issue here that most of the charter schools in Memphis should be shut down, since most are smaller than these public schools that are on the chopping block.

Finally, to Ms. Davis's callous calculus in weighing the effects of closure in Chicago of almost 50 schools. To reduce down the human loss and the community disruption to whether or not test scores went up or down as a result seems to me to show a level of indifference that I am unaccustomed to seeing, even in the Commercial Appeal.

Shelby County Schools Slashing, But Charter Plans Remain Untouched and Invisible

The Gates Plan for Memphis schools is proving to be more expensive than Bill fans ever dreamed, and apparently the superintendents of city and county plan to push forward without public knowledge or discussion among themselves, preferring instead to present a phony-baloney budget to the County Commission that they know will not survive.   Apparently, the Board is not eager to take responsibility for increasing class sizes or for slashing employees, benefits, libraries, etc.:

Despite a proposed 170 central office employee layoffs, five school closings, changes in the teacher-pupil ratios in the schools, a reduction in the district’s contribution to employee health insurance premiums and other cost-cutting measures, however, a preliminary 2014 general fund budget for the unified district was still short by $83 million.

Meanwhile, no one at the School Board is talking about the primary reason there is a projected deficit of $200 million.  If the local news media were interested in finding out, it on page 168 of the Transition Commission's Report from 2012.  This is what happens when 20 percent of the the system's students are turned over to corporate apartheid charter schools to be psychologically brutalized in the name of equal education.

Cost Management of Enrollment Shifts

Summary

A system with multiple school operators (e.g. District, ASD and charter schools) inherently costs more to operate due to loss of scale with fixed costs being allocated across a smaller volume of students. This multi-operator environment is in place today and is projected to expand irrespective of the merger. To date, the districts have found creative ways to manage the increased costs of the existing multi-operator system (e.g. cutting or shifting 400+ positions out of the General Fund to right-size staff). However, with the projected share of students in non-district operated schools expanding rapidly in the next few years—from approximately 4% in FY2012 to 19% by FY2016 (equivalent to approximately $212M of revenues shifted to charter schools and the ASD in FY2016)—it is critical to implement strategic cost management to ensure each pathway in the Multiple Achievement Paths model is financially equitable to students.