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Billionaires, charter schools, and "venture philanthropy"

Oakland-based edu-blogger Perimeter Primate (Ms Primate is a school mom) brings word of a study about a new breed of charity called "venture philanthropy."

And yes, venture philanthropy all about pushy billionaires like Eli Broad who's doing his damnedest to charterize American public education.  In the process, Broad is elbowing educational professionals aside in favor of "alternative" leaders, mainly people like him from the world of business.  Bottom line is that venture philanthropists are less interested in charity than in advocacy:

"By funding charter school growth, venture philanthropies aim to radically reshape public education, especially for poor children of color, but also to change the ways that traditional foundations operate. Their vision involves philanthropy becoming aggressive in seeking out educational grantees and more engaged in advocacy; in this iteration, foundations lead educational policy change."

Read the study if you have the patience (it's a long one.)  Otherwise just read Ms Primate's post.  It contains a wealth of info.

For example, the post suggests that Washington D.C. is run not by a democratically elected Mayor and city council but an outfit of heavy hitters called the Federal City Council.  According to Ms Primate, Mayor Fenty took over the DC schools and installed Michelle Rhee as superintendent at the behest of the Federal City Council.

That sounds more than plausible to me.  Consider that one of the Council's recent "projects" was to '"spearhead"

"...the business community's support for public charter schools, as well as systemic reform of the D.C. Public Schools."

Enter Chancellor Michelle Rhee. 

Look at it this way.  Even if you support the idea of public charter schools, you have to think it odd, if not alarming, that backdoor deals hatched by the wealthy and the influential are running roughshod over democracy. 

That's venture philanthropy at work.  And that's why I wrote about the "Billionaire's Boys Club."

Why we need Steve Novick as our next governor

We need Steve Novick as our next governor for one compelling reason:

Unlike current Governor Ted Kulongoski, Novick is not averse to increasing taxes.  Oregon hasn't raised sufficient revenue to run its programs for decades --not for schools, for health care, or for public safety.  Steve Novick is just the man to fix that.

Two recent pieces he's written illustrate that point.

The first is a sort of tongue-in-cheek Oregonian op-ed entitled "Taxes and televsion --more bang for your buck!"  In the piece, Novick lists the top ten television shows "paid for by your tax dollars."  Here's an example:

"ER":  A grim, determined group of medical professionals in a County hospital fight to save the lives of their patients, many of whom are poor and/or old and whose bills are paid by Medicare and Medicaid. Paid for by County property taxes and your Federal income and FICA tax dollars, with Medicaid matching funds provided by the State.

The second is a post on Blue Oregon criticizing comments made by Allen Alley, a potential Republican gubernatorial candidate.  What does Novick find suspect?

"Mr. Alley should be aware that it is thoroughly misleading to imply that a significant portion of Oregon tax dollars are ‘redistributed’ to ‘failing businesses and individuals.’  The largest portion of Oregon tax dollars is spent on public schools. Does Mr. Alley regard Oregon’s students and teachers as ‘failing’?  Another large portion is spent on health care for poor children and families and long-term care for seniors and people with disabilities.  Does Mr. Alley consider poor children and families without health insurance, and seniors and people with disabilities who cannot afford long-term care, to be ‘failures’?"

That's the kind of campaign we can expect Novick to run against Alley or any other tax-bashing Republican candidate for governor of Oregon.  (Or weak-kneed Democrat, for that matter.)

Novick is "da man" to lead Oregon as its next governor.

School reform and the "Billionaire's Boys Club"

And speaking of the "influentia", those movers and shakers who, because of their prominence, exert so much control over educational policy, let's not forget the malign influence on that policy of the mega-wealthy.

Bill Gates, for example.

San Francisco ed activist Caroline Grannan writes that former Republican insider, Diane Ravitch, has taken to calling Gates and his ilk the Billionaire's Boys Club.  The former Assistant Secretary of Education under Bush 41 has concluded:

"It appears that the Big Money has placed its bets on dismantling public education."

Ravitch writes from New York, so when Mayor Bloomberg

"...shows up at charter school rallies and tells the parents that their local public schools are no good and that they are lucky to be in a charter"

Ravitch assumes that such a pronouncement

"...has the enthusiastic endorsement of the Billionaire Boys Club, that is, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Foundation. They know what needs to be done, and they don't see the point of listening to such unenlightened types as parents and teachers."

And how do they know "what needs to be done"?  Well, they have lots of money, don't they?  And if they're wrong (as they most assuredly are), what does it matter?  They'll lobby for their "reforms" heedless of any evidence to the contrary.

Gates, as Portlanders will recall, put up the money for the botched reconfiguration of Jefferson High School.  And the superintendent at the time --Vicki Phillips-- now works for the Gates Foundation.  So it goes.

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While we're on the topic of charter schools and billionaires, over at change.org, teacher Clay Burell takes on Obama's embrace of charters.  His main objection is that, for traditional public schools, the charter model is simply not replicable:

"...if we're going to say charters should still be supported in order to serve as those 'laboratories,' the missing link in all of this talk centers on this question: 'What's the mechanism that will allow for that "duplication of success" in traditional public schools?' ...

"...One dangerous answer to this is: Traditional public schools will have that 'flexibility' when they are able to break union-negotiated teacher protections - to be union-free - and when they submit to the meddling of Gates, Broad, and the other billionaires at the Business Roundtable when they dangle their strings-attached money."

Today's worst person in the world: Stephen Kafoury

Back in 2003, Steve Kafoury was instrumental in recruiting the successful slate of Portland School Board candidates who went on to hire Vicki Phillips as district superintendent --big mistake-- and to shut down several more neighborhood schools.

Today Kafoury, a former school board member himself, is in the Oregonian flacking for a chain of "virtual" charter high schools.  In the process he bashes the trickery of the lobbying efforts of the state's big teachers union, the Oregon Education Association. 

The OEA opposes charter schools generally, and online schools particularly.  For good reason.

Insight Schools, Inc. is a subsidiary of the Apollo Group, Inc.  Apollo (which runs the Phoenix University chain) is a private for-profit organization, and aren't charter schools, virtual or otherwise, supposed to be "public" schools?  This slippery connection between the public and private sector in education both troubles and puzzles me.  As it probably does the OEA.

Apparently Kafoury, who sat on a public school board, has no problem with the partial privatization of public education. 

But wait!  The world's BEST person also showed up on the letters page of the O this morning.  Her name is Kris Alman, a parent, retired doctor, and candidate for the Beaverton School Board (she favors higher corporate taxes to increase school funding.)

Here's what she wrote regarding charters:

...

"Charter schools in Oregon have a higher closure rate than the national average (20 percent versus 11 percent). Conversely, popular charters, which resort to lotteries, can disenfranchise children who live nearby and they burden all families with transportation requirements. To remedy these inequities, school boards and administrators should foster innovation and flexible learning environments in each neighborhood school."

Sounds like something I would write.  In fact, it sounds a lot like what I have already written. 

Yay Kris!  (If you live in Beaverton, vote Kris Alman for School Board.)

Fraud and merit pay

From EDDRA* correspondent Marc Barlow, who also saw the Bill Moyers interview with William Black:

"I was surprised by Black's comment that bonus structures create loyalty to fraudulent systems. 

 

"Of course, I immediately associated this to teacher merit pay and nclb's questionable assessment design and interpretation."

The implication of Barlow's remark is that NCLB's test-based school accountability "system" is a fraud. 

He's right.  Even more fraudulent is the drive to tie teacher pay to the performance of their students on a pair of tests.  Such an abuse --and blatant misuse-- of standardized testing is obvious to anyone who has either spent time as a classroom teacher or knows anything at all about testing and measurement.

Bottom line --NCLB must go!

*(Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency listserv)

Fraud on Wall Street

You may have read Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz' NY Times op-ed piece (carried in today's O) on the futility and foolishness of the Obama/Geithner plan to "recapitalize" banks at the expense of taxpayers.  If so, you probably recall his dire assessment:

"What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a 'partnership' in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess."

Ersatz means artificial.  In other words, Obama and team are propping up a system of phony, or bogus, capitalism.

But it's worse than that.  William Black, the featured guest on Friday's Bill Moyers Journal* (where else?), said what happened on Wall Street to plunge the economy into crisis was the result of deliberate fraud by the banks and investment houses. 

That's fight --fraud.  Deliberate fraud:

BILL MOYERS: I was taken with your candor ... to hear you say that this crisis we're going through... is driven by fraud. What's your definition of fraud?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. ... And as a result, there's no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's what we have.

BILL MOYERS: In your book, you make it clear that calculated dishonesty by people in charge is at the heart of most large corporate failures and scandals, including, of course, the S&L, but is that true? Is that what you're saying here, that it was in the boardrooms and the CEO offices where this fraud began?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

Now you can dismiss Black as a paranoid crank.  Before you do, however, you'd be wise to read the entire transcript and Black's  compelling description of "liars loans" and the complicity of ratings agencies in convincing investors that they weren't being "swindled." As it turned out, they were.  Clearly.

Black has an impressive resume, not only as Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, but also as one deeply involved in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980's.  He served as chief litigator for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, as counsel to the Office of Thrift Supervision, and as deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement.

He knows what he's talking about.

If that's not enough,  just read his book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

*(In my last post I was critical of PBS.  But public television redeems itself every Friday evening by airing Bill Moyers Journal.)

PBS sabotages single payer

While Howard Dean draws "a line in the sand" and asks the public to pressure Congress to include a Medicare-for-all option in health care reform legislation, PBS --the "Corporation" for Public Broadcasting-- used Frontline to suggest that for-profit private health insurance companies were fully capable of handling the demand for universal health care.

If that sounds fishy, well, it is.  T.R. Reid, the writer of the Frontline documentary, "Sick Around America", had argued the opposite --"don't let health insurance companies profit from selling basic health insurance."

Unfortunately, Reid's bottom line recommendation was edited out of the final product.  He refused therefore to appear on camera, and says he will not work for Frontline again.

" 'We disagreed, and we parted ways,' Reid says."

The Los Angeles Times called the show "hazy", saying that it offered "...little in the way of solutions, or even hope."  And Physicians for a National Health Program wrote a letter to Frontline decrying its failure to "address a single payer option." 

Now you know why. 

Just last week, Thom Hartmann voiced similar opinions to Reid, arguing let private for-profit insurance companies offer "boob jobs" and guaranteed "private rooms" in hospitals. Just don't allow them to profit from basic health care.

As the legislative debate over health care heats up, we'll have to wait to see what happens.  But with the insurance companies at the table, I fear it's unlikely that single payer will be given serious consideration. 

More pros and cons for charters and choice

As an advocate of public education,  I see little difference between the charter school option and school choice generally.  So for the purpose of this argument, I'll treat the two as synonymous.

For some parents, charter schools offer an alternative to what they view as the stifling orthodoxy of traditional public schools.  In districts that bow to the testing dictates of No Child Left Behind (like PPS), charters are refuges from excessive testing and the obsession with literacy and numeracy at the expense of a much broader curriculum that includes music and art and all the other areas of student learning that can't easily be assessed by a multiple choice test.

Some charters, then, --not all (like the Arthur Academies)-- are perceived as student centered.  And progressive.  That's a good thing.

Some say that charters are laboratories for innovation that can steer other public schools in the right pedagogical direction.  If true, that's also a good thing.  I have my doubts about the legitimacy of that claim, however, on two grounds.

First, to say that charters can influence what happens in traditional public schools makes no more sense to me than the notion that competition between schools results in better schools all around.  That's market ideology.  It doesn't work in the realm of education.

Secondly, as I wrote in a comment to the post on charters on PPS Equity, we already know what works to truly improve and reform K-12 education.  (Steve Rawley later noted that I "...took the piss out of that argument [labs for innovation], and I think he has a point… we already know what works; we just have to implement it.")

Here are some of the reasons why charters and choice fail the test of good public policy:

• They don't serve the common good.  They benefit some students --usually the more advantaged-- at the expense of others.

• Charters and choice concentrate good students with supportive parents in some schools, and leave others --the disadvantaged-- behind in less affluent schools.

• Despite the ruse of the "lottery", charters are selective primarily because they require a parent application.  That works to the benefit of motivated and informed parents.

• Charters can dismiss students who are behaviorally difficult.  (That may be more true nationally than in Portland.)

• Charters may be publicly funded, but they are otherwise private.  Charter school organizations are statutorily tax exempt 501(c)(3) corporations run by special interest groups, even though the groups consist --usually-- of "concerned" parents.

They are other "cons" to the charter school issue.  Suffice it for me now to conclude with a couple of quotes from Ockley Green parent, Rose, (a nom de web, I'm pretty sure, of a fairly well-known Portland writer.)  Rose has contributed much to the (again) record-breaking PPS Equity post, "Charters and PPS":

• "...you asked how charter applications are barriers to poorer families.

  "You have to think of this in terms of a parent without your resources. You clearly have a car, don’t work nights, have childcare, and speak English, and other abilities which make going to 4 mandatory meetings almost an entire year before your child might attend a given school a viable option.

  "Think about this process for a parent without those resources. There are many parents without cars, without computers, and with limited English." ...       

• "...school choice has stripped many schools of their wealthier students. Now Ockley is a largely poor minority school floating in a gentrifying neighborhood where most white parents send their kids Somewhere Else.

  "We don’t need to discuss how much this hurts a school and hurts the students left behind."

• "...I don’t see any way around the barriers imposed by school choice and charters. Someone will always be left out, and that someone will probably be brown, black or poor.

  "So the short answer is, we need to bite the bullet. We need to get rid of school choice."

What Rose says makes eminently good sense.  Let's bite the bullet on school choice.  And charters.

Charter Schools: The pros, the cons, the school board

At the Portland School Board meeting Monday evening, David Wynde pronounced that the test for any charter school application is whether the proposed school meets an obvious need. 

In the case of LEP, the charter high school under consideration, Wynde said the school was clearly serving students whose needs weren't being met by existing schools.  The school clearly passed the "need" test.

With all due respect to Director Wynde, isn't that more a commentary on the state of Portland's traditional high schools. especially the poorer schools like Jefferson, Roosevelt, Marshall and Madison, which have been so badly treated, reconfigured, mismanaged and "downsized" by top-down district mandates?  And isn't that the cause of public discontent with traditional schools?  Isn't that the impetus for the creation of alternatives like charter schools?

The small size of the Leadership and Entrepreneurship Charter High School --enrollment 217, about a third the size of Jefferson -- accounts for both its appeal and its ability to innovate, to remain flexible, and to stay student friendly.  Its tiny size also counters the notion that it meets the needs of the far greater number of students who are ill-served by traditional PPS high schools.

The eagerness of school board members to get LEP to fix its financial problems --it hasn't paid its  monthly PERS obligation since last July, for example-- so that the board could eventually re-grant its charter was palpable at Monday's meeting.  Ruth Adkins gushed that she hoped LEP would quickly get its financial troubles behind them so that it could "grow" to serve an even a greater number of students.

But there's the rub, isn't it?  As I wrote in a comment to PPS Equity,

"...if charters were to become as large and diverse as the typical neighborhood school, they would instantly lose their appeal to those –most, anyway– who seek an alternative to traditional public schools."

Charters as they now exist meet the needs of a relatively small number of students (and parents) who want out of traditonal programs.  But they do very little, by their very nature, for the vast majority of public school students.  In other words, they do little to promote the common good.  And isn't that the mission of a public school district?

As Steve Rawley, the eminence grise* of PPS Equity, said in a comment to the same post,

"...some charters might get some students access to the kind of pedagogy you passionately seek.

"I just don’t see how they advance the cause for all students."

*(By which I mean head honcho and resident genius.  Steve isn't old enough to have gray hair.  Not much, anyway.)