Riding the 'turnaround' merry-go-round in the continuing assault on Philadelphia public schools: Part VI - Who is Afton Partners?

 by Ken Derstine
@ Defend Public Education
March 14, 2016

The previous article in this series was posted June 2, 2016. This series has detailed the assault on Philadelphia public schools by corporate education reform business and financial interests. At the last posting, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission had not acted on the non-renewal recommendation of its charter office for Aspira, Universal, and Mastery charters. 

Pennsylvania law mandates that a charter term is five years and must undergo a renewal process after that.  There is a stipulation in the law that the renewal process can be extended for one year, if there are mitigating circumstances.  That one-year extension can only be used one time. They have been postponing the renewals month after month since April 2016. Aspira’s was postponed without the SRC even taking a vote in 2015.

Now, as can be seen in Part VI in this series, the privatization merry-go-round is spinning ever faster in the assault on Philadelphia public schools.

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In a recently released report by Afton Partners, the cost of students leaving Philadelphia public schools to transfer to charters was examined. The study had been commissioned in February, 2015 by the School Reform Commission, which functions as a school board and makes all final decisions for Philadelphia schools.

Click here to read the entire Afton report.

In “is the glass half full or half empty” coverage, the Philadelphia Inquirer published Report: Philly schools still face costs when students go to charters vs. the Philadelphia Public School Notebook’s Students leaving Philly schools for charters less costly than once thought.

According to The Notebook article, the resolution calling for the contract with Afton said the analysis would take place between February 20, 2015 and May 1, 2015. SRC officials claim the report “got lost in the shuffle as old administrators left and new administrators replaced them.” The District’s Chief Financial Officer Uri Monson, appointed February, 2016, said he first got word of the report last summer and has been working with Afton “to make sure the report addressed all questions.”

Why is the report being released now? Could it have something to do with a bill in the Pennsylvania House introduced by Speaker Mike Turzai on March 6th which would require the Philadelphia School District to add 3,000 charter seats per year? This bill would undercut the charter oversight authority of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (SRC). The establishment of the SRC in 2001, as part of the state takeover of the School District, abolished local control of public schools, along with any hope of any type of democratic process.  A 2014 bill passed by the legislature imposed a $2/pack cigarette tax for school funding; it included a last-minute provision that the SRC consider applications for new charters each fall.  Rejected applicants would be able to appeal to the state Charter Appeal Board.

Now, invoking the states rights' provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Turzai wants to completely take even this oversight from any local influence. He has been agressively intervening in the SRC's charter approval process lobbying for approval of charters that the SRC has rejected. The SRC's Uri Monson said the bill is unessessary because in the SRC's five year financial plan presented last year there is an already projected annual growth of charter enrollement of between 2,700 and 3,000 seats.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

NPE Action Helps Halt Dead Bill

The NEA/AFT support group at NPE are declaring victory over a Congressional bill that had been shelved weeks before Diane Ravitch rallied the unwary and naive to sign an online letter to stop what was already dead.

Ravitch, in the meantime, was able to add thousands of unsuspecting souls to her database for future efforts to pry dollars from them to support her role in promoting AFT/NEA/DNC talking points.

And now that it has become common knowledge that H.R.610 was never ever close to a vote and posed no real threat, Ravitch has quickly claimed victory.

In doing so, she and her NEA/AFT patrons ask for your continued financial support.  

Four SASIC Charter Schools Shut Down in San Antonio

It was the school kitchen floor covered with meat blood after holiday break that made one charter teacher suspicious. She soon, thereafter, quit, and became a whistleblower.

Now all four of the SASIC corporate reform schools have been shut down, pending an investigation.

For the State of Texas to investigate, you know something stinks.  Oh yeah, the meat.

Serving rotted meat is not the only charge facing these charter industry predators.

Here are some of the other charges listed in a letter to Commissioner Mike Morath from State Representative, Diego Bernal:

What Ending Regulations on ESSA Will Mean

Yesterday, Diane Ravitch had this bit of news at her blog:

. . . .The Senate also voted to roll back an Obama administration rule to “hold schools accountable,” which passed by only 50-49, over vociferous Democratic opposition. Frankly, I don’t know which rule this is. If it was the Obama-Duncan-King test-based accountability, then I think its repeal or elimination is a step forward. As we saw again and again over the past eight years, the Obama Department of Education had an obsessive devotion to test-based accountability that harmed students, teachers, and schools. If this is what the Senate knocked down, count me in. Even the znational Academy of Sciences issued a report critical of test-based accountability, but Duncan was as smitten with standardized testing as DeVos is smitten with vouchers.

Now we all know that Diane is busy, but is she too busy to find out that the squeaker bill resulted from a joint resolution introduced by Ravitch's close friend and former boss, Lamar Alexander.  

Is she too busy to find out before posting at her blog that this bill has nothing to do with ending test-based accountability? Did she not do her due diligence to find out the facts, or was she too much in a hurry to use opportunity to bash Obama, while ignoring the potential for this dangerous Congressional action by her chum, Lamar?

Whatever the reason for her shabby reporting, later yesterday she posted this:

The U.S. Department of Education may pull this off its website.

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/essa/essaassessmentfactsheet1207.pdf

Download it now. These are John King’s accountability regulations, based on FLORIDA accountability, including A-F ratings for every school!

The Senate voted to revoke them by 50-49.

Farewell and good riddance!

Apparently, someone tipped off Diane to the fact that Alexander's resolution, which passed both Houses and is now headed to Trump for his signature, is to discard the guidance in the USED Regulations for implementing ESSA.  

ESSA stays intact, with all the requirements for annual testing and required shuttering of the lowest 5 percent of schools, along with gargantuan charter school grants, relaxed oversight for charters, and all the huge new incentives for more screen-based schooling for kids.

Also staying intact, too, in the ESSA are requirements for school rating systems, even though they may not be “A-F.”

As she waves a “farewell and good riddance” to the guidance contained the Regulations, Ravitch does not tell her readers that ESSA remains entirely intact, which is to say, it is the same piece of dreck that she and her pal Lamar pushed through in late 2015.

In fact, there is reason to believe that that the removal of federal regulations could escalate the move to state voucher programs that hand over cheap vouchers to the poorest children to “choose” a charter school or a below-average private school.  States will be free to make it up as they along, as long as they stay true to privatization intent and methodology within ESSA.

There is also reason to believe to that the removal of federal guidance for ESSA may result in more special needs children and ELL students going unidentified and unserved.

In fact, there are some former Obama officials who point out a host of things that will be lost by losing the federal guidance.  

No doubt I and everyone else will find some elements of the trashed guidance as awful as the ESSA itself, but I would argue that some guidance is better than none, especially when you have Trumpists ready to burn down all public institutions, without forethought of consequence.  

Here's a few aspects of the trashed guidance that might have helped provide consistency, transparency, or clarity:

States must develop a uniform procedure for reporting per-pupil expenditure data, ensuring uniformity in how this new information is conveyed across all districts in the state. Similarly, each must develop a common way for reporting of new educator data, defining terms like “inexperienced” and “out of field” teachers.

Each state’s accountability system must be statewide—in other words, a single system used throughout the state, with a uniform methodology for differentiating and identifying schools for improvement.

Any state choosing to include former English learners and/or students with disabilities in its accountability system cannot cherry pick which students to include; all former students in those subgroups must be captured.

States must identify all schools with a subgroup performing similarly to the lowest-performing 5 percent of the Title I schools for “additional targeted support” in 2018–19, but states do not have to begin annual identification of schools with consistently underperforming subgroups of students for targeted support until 2019–20—clarifying the two distinct kinds of targeted support schools, with different identification and exit criteria.

States must make their exit criteria for identified schools transparent and publicly available, just as districts must ensure that school improvement plans are publicly posted to build awareness and understanding among the local community

.

States that permit students in comprehensive support schools to transfer to another school must ensure that the receiving school is higher-performing—that is, that it is not (1) among the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools in the state or (1) a high school with graduation rates below 67 percent.

States must identify low-graduation-rate high schools using the four-year adjusted cohort rate; the statute is silent on the graduation rate measure that should be used here even though the four-year rate must be used for goal-setting under the law.

In addition to identifying the local education agency for each charter school on its district report cards, report cards must also indicate the relevant charter authorizer for the school to provide greater transparency in states with multiple authorizers.

States must communicate with parents and other stakeholders in a manner that is accessible, including by providing written information in languages that parents can understand and, where practicable, by providing information in alternate formats for parents with disabilities.

States must develop their state ESSA plans by conducting meaningful stakeholder engagement with a broad array of groups (beyond those listed in the statute) and take into account feedback at all phases of the process—planning, drafting, implementation, and revision (which the rules clarify must occur at least once every four years). Furthermore, many of these principles also apply to the collaborative process districts and schools must use to develop school improvement plans in partnership with their local communities. 

And here are a few flexibilities that will no longer be afforded, as Diane “waves farewell and good riddance” to ESSA regulations:

States can stagger their implementation timelines so that they use indicators based on the 2017–18 school year to identify their first cohort of low-performing schools in 2018–19. States may also have a planning year so that interventions in these schools must fully kick in by the 2019–20 school year.

States can use the Academic Achievement indicator to give schools partial or extra credit, via an achievement index, for students that are either approaching or exceeding proficiency.

States may develop varying methodologies to differentiate and identify low-performing schools in order to include special kinds of schools in their statewide system (such as newly opened schools, very small schools, schools with non-traditional grade configurations, schools without tested grades, and schools designed to serve unique populations like newcomer schools).

States may use graduation rate data for accountability purposes (especially identification of low-graduation-rate high schools) that lag a year behind other accountability data to account for summer graduates.

States can use a hyperlink to another part of their state website to provide parents and other users with a full description of their school accountability system on district and school report cards, enabling states to reduce the length of their report cards and preventing duplicative information.

States must ensure that at least one intervention in identified schools will be evidence-based, but all activities in the school’s improvement plans do not need to be supported by evidence (as defined in ESSA).

States may provide school improvement funds under section 1003 funds to any school identified for comprehensive or targeted support and improvement, even if the identified school is not a Title I school.

States may create lists of evidence-based interventions to better support school improvement plans developed by districts and schools; use of the list may be optional or required, depending on the state’s policy preference.

While comprehensive support plans must be approved by the state, district, and schools, the regulations provide states the final authority to ensure these plans pass muster, are completed, and can be implemented, particularly if districts or schools disagree on elements of the plan and are at an impasse.

States can tailor their English language proficiency (ELP) goals for different groups of English learners, rather than setting a single timeline for achieving ELP that all students must meet; the timeline applied to a particular group of English learners can vary depending on the characteristics of those students.

States can include the test scores of former students with disabilities in subgroup data for up to two years for accountability purposes.

States can include both former English learners and students with disabilities in the respective subgroups for any indicator that is based on state test scores, rather than only the Academic Achievement indicator.

States may include both former English learners and students with disabilities in calculating graduation rates if they were part of the subgroup at any point during high school, even if the student exited during high school.

States can take advantage of both statutory exemptions for including recently arrived English learners in accountability systems, using student-level characteristics to determine which exception is appropriate for which students.

States may use a composite score within their accountability systems in order to include English learners with disabilities in cases where students cannot be tested on all four ELP domains.

States may count recently arrived English learners in participation rate calculations if that student is included in the accountability system by using an exception where they take the state’s ELP test instead of its English language arts assessment.

Sanders on "Enormous Neglect" and "Ultimate Failure" of Democratic Party

Please share with the BATs and NPE and AFT and NEA and FairTest and Basecamp bloggers and all the other pathetic asshats and hangers-on who have supported the demise of teaching and public education by loyally supporting the failed policies embraced by the DNC and the Clintons. 

No more complicity, collaboration, or compromise.  Your way has brought us the horrors of Trump, and your day is done!

Sen. Huffines: Businesses Should Decide How Inadequately to Fund Public Ed

Here is a great example for students and parents all over the nation to see what political enemies of public education really have in their hearts, once the politeness is brushed away.  

This Texas senator is incensed at the suggestion that school vouchers, if offered, should be large enough for students to attend high quality private schools.  

Turn up the volume and listen to the name-calling,berating, and haranguing of students and parents seeking answers from someone who does not care what these folks think.



More on the story from Texas Monthly.

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Dem Epiphany: Public Education Under Siege

In 2001, Democrats joined Republicans to create a massive school privatization corporate welfare plan known as No Child Left Behind.  With fanciful performance targets and unbending rules, which every education policy person knew would detonate thousands of the poorest public schools over the coming years, NCLB ushered in the charter school era in a way that allowed the gradual ramping up of the paternalistic "no excuses" corporate reform school industry.

It wasn't until 2008, however, that privatization via charter school really took off.  When Obama was first inaugurated, U. S. schools had about 1.4 million students in charters.  By the time Obama left office in 2017, the charter population had more than doubled to 3.1 million students, and the federal commitment, alone, to charters was over $250,000,000 per year.

During the steady build-up of the charter industry before and during the Obama Era, the corporate teachers' unions continued to lend support for segregated charter expansion and discredited value-added evaluation schemes.  

The strategy of gradual privatization was cemented by the bipartisan reauthorization of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which replaced NCLB with Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  ESSA serves as a multi-billion dollar charter stimulus, while magnifying the power of charter school support groups and the charter industry, by making sure that 5 percent of the lowest-scoring schools are turned over for charter conversion each year.

None of this was troubling to Democratic think tanks until Hillary Clinton lost the election.  Within a couple of weeks, however, the Dems had rallied the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) to begin publicizing research on the horribly-negative effects of the charters that had been ignored for the past decade and a half.  

In November, EPI published research that Bruce Baker had been doing for years on the damaging effects of charters, and most recently EPI has joined other corporate Democrats to publicize research on the failed voucher experiments.

If Dems could have continued to oversee, at their own pace, the privatization of schools to benefit their own band of underemployed Teach for America (TFA) Ivy Leaguers, we never would have come to share the corporate Democrats' blinding insight as to the moral repugnance and anti-democratic nature of school privatization.

"I wanted to shake her, like I like to shake my wife"

From Eclectablog:

Gary Naeraert is the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP). GLEP was founded and largely funded by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to influence policy and law in Michigan with the aim of promoting charter schools and the elimination of traditional public schools. The group consists of a PAC, a foundation, a 501(c)(3) group, and a 501(c)(4) group. 

While giving testimony before a Senate Education Committee meeting yesterday, Naeyaert revealed that he likes to “shake” indecisive women, including his wife. It was an astonishing moment:

DeVos Takes Racist Stupidity to New Heights

White lady billionaire, Betsy DeVos, has moved beyond grizzly bears and guns to explore a whole new territory in the Trumpist landscape of racist delusion.  In describing the origins of historically black colleges and universities as an example of "school choice," DeVos shows that, 1) she is as ignorant as most people suspect, or 2) she is ideologically driven to turn a huge element of the historic black struggle for education into a minstrel sideshow to mis-educate an audience stupid enough to believe what she says.  This is from the Press Release yesterday:

. . . .A key priority for this administration is to help develop opportunities for communities that are often the most underserved. Rather than focus solely on funding, we must be willing to make the tangible, structural reforms that will allow students to reach their full potential.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have done this since their founding. They started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education. They saw that the system wasn’t working, that there was an absence of opportunity, so they took it upon themselves to provide the solution.

HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish. . . .

What DeVos and the Trump crumbs demonstrate is a clear attempt to justify segregation as a choice that existed when segregation was the only choice.  One option a choice does not make.  

In pretending that Jim Crow Era black citizens preferred segregated schools, DeVos attempts to rationalize the expanding resegregation of the poor, black, and brown in corporate welfare reform charters, or private schools desperate enough to accept a cheap voucher that no quality private school could accept as payment.

Such a public statement shows in ghastly detail what a civil wrong looks like when painted as a civil right.