Charter Schools & "Choice": A Closer Look

By James Hoover

"What can be more important to save in a viable democracy than education and the assurance that it is easily accessible for all, whatever your skin color or financial means? Unfortunately the best vehicle for that endeavor, public education, has figured prominently in quick-profit schemes of private investors, some stemming from honest attempts to improve education, but many motivated by pure greed.

For the latter, it’s beginning to take the character of the Wall Street frenzy that passed off toxic securities as AAA rated, and sold them full price to unsuspecting buyers. For the most part, Wall Streeters, having a culture of entitlement, gave no apology for their greed.

On the other hand, for-profit education defenders tend to peddle what they call education reform in the guise of superior for-profit charter schools using public money. They tend to obfuscate the “for-profit” motives in the process. While corporate-run schools do provide somewhat comparable student success rates, it’s usually at a higher cost, even though they pay lower salaries to inexperienced teachers, who have a higher turnover. Furthermore, they cherry-pick students, teach to tests, winnow out the most intractable students, and provide little accountability to the community.
 

In states like Arizona, some of the same investors run state prison systems whose lobbyists work overtime to augment prison populations, even supporting harsh imprisonment laws to boost their prison profits and keep penitentiaries full. Public records, for example, show that the so-called “war on drugs” aggressive policing, supported and exploited by corporate interest running privatized prisons, quickly drove up the percentage in state prisons for drug offenses from 6.4% in 1980 to 22% in 1990, with that higher percentage only now declining nationwide.
 

Somehow, the taxpayers seem to pick up the tab for profit-driven enterprises, whether new sports stadiums, privatized prisons, for-profit health care costing double that of other advanced countries, bailed-out banks, and now education.
 

Education Reform Only for the Poor

Wisconsin is another state taken over by Republicans. Scott Walker was elected governor in 2010, intrinsically connected with Koch brother funding and programs. He oversees the usual regimen of cutting spending in education, privatizing so-called low-performing schools and dismantling public unions.
 

Granted a contract by a GOP majority, Rocketship Education has a contract to open schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of several other large cities. Its model has four principles: 1. Cut costs by eliminating teachers and computerize instruction; 2. Hire inexperienced low-cost teachers; 3. Focus on math and reading; 4. Teach to the test. These are the schools for poor kids.
 

Rich people send their kids to the top ten elementary schools in Milwaukee. These schools look nothing like Rocketship Education schools. They have twice as many licensed teachers per student; offer music, art, libraries, foreign languages and guidance counselors. Students are taught by experienced teachers, not through programmed learning on computers.
 

Rocketship has contracts in several large cities, and like other charters pushes teaching-to-tests in its schools, seeing it as reform. Charter advocates promote themselves as education reformers, civil-rights crusaders, who challenge failed traditional schooling. They blame teachers, teacher unions, bureaucracy, and bloated budgets for claimed failures. They promise to empower parents in low-income minority communities, citing teachers and administrators as the heavies. These promises and claims turned out to be bogus, and the reforms self-serving."...

For full post, click on title above or here: 

http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/scam-goes-education/ 

By Donald Cohen

"Did you know that one of the fastest growing sectors of the charter school industry are ‘virtual’ charter schools, where K-12 students learn from home in front of their computers? No school buildings, no recess with friends, no shared learning. It’s true. The largest virtual charter company, a publicly traded corporation called K12, Inc., provides education to over 120,000 public school students across the country. Last year, they made more than $900 million in revenue, most of it taxpayer money earmarked for public education.

But virtual charters are starting to pile up bad news and serious questions about their priorities.

A study released last week by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found that students attending virtual charters learn significantly less in math and reading than similar students attending brick-and-mortar schools. So significantly less that the Washington Post’s Lyndsey Layton wrote, “In other words, when it comes to math, it’s as if the [online] students did not attend school at all.”
 

This week, news broke that California’s Attorney General is investigating the entire virtual charter industry. And for good reason. Earlier this year, we looked under the hood of California Virtual Academies (CAVA), the state’s largest provider of online public education, and what we found was clear: CAVA’s manager and primary vendor, a subsidiary of K12 Inc., has put their responsibility to maximize profits for shareholders above investing in educating children.
 

Virtual charters are starting to pile up bad news and serious questions about their priorities.

While the overall percentage of U.S. students who attend online schools is small, in some states—like California, where CAVA teachers are organizing to serve students and families, not corporations—online education has become yet another path towards the privatization of public education. Online charters are a significant issue in Pennsylvania’s ongoing budget standoff between legislative leaders and the governor, as the state has the second-highest online enrollment in the country.
 

An increasing number of charter schools are using ‘blended learning’ models, where students go to school but spend lots of time in front of keyboards and screens. A former executive of the charter school chain Rocketship—which is one of the largest users of online learning—called blended learning “stripped-down efficiency model.”

Along with a growing crowd, we have concerns about an overreliance on technology in the classroom, but fully online schools go too far. While high quality virtual charters can be useful for certain students, like actors, artists, or Olympic hopefuls, the majority of kids need teachers to interact with and classmates to socialize and study with. And a pro-charter think-tank (CREDO), California’s attorney general, and many others, including teachers, seem to agree.
 

To follow up our CAVA report, we’re going to be looking even harder at virtual charters. Let us know if companies like K12, Inc., are recruiting students in your community.

We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email: info@inthepublicinterest.org"...

For full post, click on title here: http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/yes-virtual-charter-schools-exist-and-theyre-growing/

By Barbara Miner
"Like most principals, Brittany Kinser is a cheerleader for her school. “I just want to make sure you’ll be positive,” she says when I visit the Rocketship charter school in Milwaukee. 
 

Looking younger than her thirty-seven years and with the physique of a long-distance runner, Kinser has a seemingly endless supply of energy and enthusiasm. It’s hard not to like her. Following one of the school’s axioms—Dress for Success—she is wearing a magenta pencil-skirt that nicely sets off her black sweater, tights, and four-inch stiletto heels. Her Dress for Success message is clear: I am competent and I am in charge.

At the same time, Kinser is nervous about my visit. It’s understandable.  For almost a quarter century, I have criticized using public tax dollars to fund private voucher schools and privately run charter schools. Rocketship, an entrepreneurial network of charter schools based in the Silicon Valley, has become a national poster child for the privatization of public education. It is particularly known for its bare-bones curricular focus on standardized test scores in reading and math, its use of computer-based “learning labs” that cut down costs, and its promotion of the Rocketship brand—including a daily pep rally where students chant that they are “Rocketship Rocketeers.”

After visiting Rocketship Southside Community Prep, as Milwaukee’s K4 through fifth-grade school is formally known, I could see why some people might react positively. Students were well behaved. Parents were welcome. The young teachers were energetic.

But as I left the school, I couldn’t help thinking: Can young students dress their way to success? Or chant their way to academic achievement? Are computerized worksheets the answer to reducing the achievement gap?

Rocketship opened its Milwaukee school in 2013, serving overwhelmingly low-income, Latino students on the city’s South side. The local chamber of commerce raised $2.5 million in private contributions to help fund Rocketship’s expansion to eight schools in Milwaukee by 2017.

Just inside the main entrance, there are banners from various universities hanging from the ceiling—part of the school’s message that students should be thinking about college. At the students’ eye level are Dress for Success posters featuring young children wearing the school uniform of khaki pants and a blue polo shirt with the Rocketship logo.

I’m not opposed to uniforms. I wore them throughout high school and appreciated that I didn’t have to figure out every morning what to wear. But the nuns never told us that our uniforms were the key to success. The policy was based more on a Catholic school philosophy that worried about the sin of pride and that discouraged too much attention to individual appearances.

At Rocketship, I couldn’t quite figure out the laser-like focus on Dress for Success. They don’t take it lightly. The school handbook notes that students who do not wear their uniform “may lose recess, lunch or other privileges.”...

For full article published on "The Progressive", click on title or image above or here: http://www.progressive.org/news/2010/12/187931/rocketship-lands-milwaukee#sthash.YGLtwC0G.dpuf

For recent news related to the illegal forced parent work policies that are central to Rocketship's parent engagement model (revealed by the Public Advocates report) please visit: http://sco.lt/9FGAkr

For other Rocketship related posts: 

http://www.scoop.it/t/charter-choice-closer-look?q=rocketship&nbsp

and www.stoprocketship.com.

By David Bacon  (Image by Ethan Heitner)

"Nearly every metropolitan area these days has its own wealthy promoters of education reform. Little Rock has the Waltons, Seattle has Bill and Melinda Gates, Newark has Mark Zuckerberg, and Buffalo has John Oishei, who made his millions selling windshield wipers.

Few areas, however, have as concentrated and active a group of wealthy reformers as California’s Silicon Valley. One of the country’s fastest-growing charter school operators, Rocketship Education, started here. A big reason for its stellar ascent is the support it gets from high tech’s deep pockets, and the political influence that money can buy.

Rocketship currently operates nine schools in San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It opened its first school in Milwaukee last year and one in Nashville, Tennessee, this fall. Its first two schools in Washington, D.C., where almost half the students already attend charters, open next year. Rocketship plans include running eight schools in Milwaukee, in Nashville, and in D.C. in the near future.

Rocketship also proposed a charter school in Morgan Hill, just south of San Jose. But there they ran into resistance from parents, teachers, and the teachers’ union. That successful campaign to block Rocketship and protect local public schools highlights the importance of confronting charter chains as they try to infiltrate school systems across the country.

For full post, click on title above or here: http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/29_01/29_01_bacon.shtml 

Picture caption: "In the center of the room, a software program delivers lessons tailored to the individual skill levels of a second group of Mateo Sheedy students. An hourly-rate aide oversees the students."

by Rahim Rahimian of EdWeek 

Article by Benjamin Herold of EdWeek

Selected quote: 

"...Although test scores have steadily declined as the network has added schools and students, Rocketship has maintained its voracious appetite for growth. Rather than resolve that tension, the new flexible classrooms have, by Rocketship’s own admission, further strained the organization and exposed underlying problems glossed over during the group’s ascent.

Some Rocketship leaders, for example, now acknowledge that their original blended learning model—which powered the organization’s initial growth, to nine schools and 5,200 students, before its impact could be rigorously studied—may be more effective at teaching students to follow directions than to think for themselves."...

For full story, click on title above or here: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/01/21/19el-rotation.h33.html?tkn=RRYF1gcvzhe8L6wfH%2F0k64DTHTNJY48UkPQP&cmp=clp-edweek

[Selected quote] ..."as Rocketship has pushed to expand, some parents, teachers and community members have objected in public meetings, raising concerns about the school's tech-heavy instruction model, student-teacher ratio, and student health and safety.

In interviews over the past two months, current and former employees at Rocketship Schools emphasized the pressures on employees and students. They recounted instances of inadequate supervision, bathroom accidents and even infections due to denial of restroom visits.

And they voiced concerns about a disciplinary measure the company calls Zone Zero. Several current and former staffers said this practice, in effect, amounted to hours of enforced silence."...

For full post, click on title above or here:

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/06/24/477345746/high-test-scores-at-a-nationally-lauded-charter-network-but-at-what-cost 

For subset of articles related to Rocketship on Charters and Choice: A Closer Look collection here: 

http://www.scoop.it/t/charter-choice-closer-look?q=rocketship 

[3/10/16  Update]: Despite strong community opposition and unanimous denials by district and county level school boards, the State Board of Education voted to allow Rocketship to expand their corporate charter school chain to the Monument Corridor in Concord, California.  For more background on how decisions like these are set in motion, see here.

##

Why is there so much controversy surrounding the proliferation of Rocketship Schools?  A brief glance at their website wouldn’t hint at any problems, and may even sway critics to want to join the team. The marketing is stellar, pitching the “rethinking [of] elementary schools from the ground up” in order to “eliminate the ‘achievement gap’ in our lifetime.”  Their promises go straight to our visceral wish for the new, the shiny, the forward reaching.  I know current and former teachers, parents, administrators, and community members, all of whom are hard working people who want the best for their children.  Perhaps bearing witness to the community fracturing with the expansion of the schools locally (with nine campuses over the past nine years) is what makes this post both difficult and necessary to write.

So many questions abound. Do Rocketship’s claims of positive outcomes actually match reports of what’s happening on the ground? Might a narrow focus on test scores in a tech-heavy environment carry social, emotional, or physical costs that aren’t being considered? And why does the organization move with such an aggressive press for expansion when they are already struggling with such serious, ongoing (and unaddressed) issues at their current sites?

Since corporate and tech-billionaire led foundations fund the proliferation and marketing of the schools, it’s rare for the public to hear voices expressing ground-level concerns (unless one happens to follow stoprocketship.com).

In much the same way that controversies surrounding Teach For America are emerging with counter-narratives getting more airtime, concerns regarding Rocketship appear to also be growing in parallel with their expansions.  The following letters and documents were among many sent to the California State Board of Education to recommend denial of the Rocketship Mt. Diablo appeal petition. They are shared with permission from the authors."...

For full post, click on title above or here: http://eduresearcher.com/2016/03/09/rocketship-pushes/ 

By Valerie Strauss

“No excuses” charter schools have become a prominent feature of modern school reform. What exactly are they? This is how Joan Goodman, a professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the school’s Teach For America program, defined them in this post:

These schools start with the belief that there’s no reason for the large academic gaps that exist between poor minority students and more privileged children. They argue that if we just used better methods, demanded more, had higher expectations, enforced these higher expectations through very rigorous and uniform teaching methods and a very uniform and scripted curriculum geared to being successful on high-stakes tests, we can minimize or even eradicate these large gaps, high rates of drop outs and the academic failures of these children. To reach these objectives, these schools have developed very elaborate behavioral regimes that they insist all children follow, starting in kindergarten. Submission, obedience, and self-control are very large values. They want kids to submit. You can’t really do this kind of instruction if you don’t have very submissive children who are capable of high levels of inhibition and do whatever they’re told.

Here is an open letter from Ramon Griffin, the former dean of students at a New Orleans “no excuses” charter school, who urges teachers and staff at such schools to question the model’s social and emotional costs on young people. Griffin was also a charter school teacher and a juvenile probation and detention officer. He is currently working on his doctorate in educational administration at Michigan State University. Contact him at griff519@msu.edu, or visit his website.

This appeared on the website of Jennifer Berkshire, freelance journalist and public education advocate who worked for six years editing a newspaper for the American Federation of Teachers in Massachusetts. She gave me permission to run this post. Here is Ramon Griffin’s open letter to teachers and staff of no-excuses charter schools:

Dear You:

You were selected to teach at your school because of your intelligence, spunk, tenacity, vigor and, most of all, your passion for public education. You are a risk-taker. You have a can-do attitude with swag to match. You believe that every child has the capacity to achieve academically and are committing your life to ensuring that you affect change in every student you encounter. Your dedication to ensuring that traditionally marginalized students receive a first-class education is commendable. But do you know how much power you hold? Do you truly understand the “no excuses” school culture that you are part of? Do you know the psychological and emotional costs that the “no excuses” model has on students of color? Furthermore, do you care to know?

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post entitled “Colonizing the Black Natives: Reflections from a former New Orleans Charter School Dean of Students.” I started the piece by asking if some charters’ practices were new forms of colonial hegemony. It is vital to add that while I was employed at the school, this thought never crossed my mind. My writings were taken by some charter management administrators and staff as an “attack” instead of an opportunity critically engage and refine, deconstruct and reconstruct practices that are doing more harm than good. This time around, I’m hoping to encourage teachers and staff at “no excuses” charter schools to acknowledge what is transpiring in their schools so that we can begin to push back against these practices and transform our schools.

I’ll start by offering a few examples of my own. When I chased young black ladies to see if their nails were polished, or if they had added a different color streak to their hair, or when I followed young men to make sure that their hair wasn’t styled naturally, I could have been critically engaging my administrative peers on why these practices were the law at our school—and how exactly they contributed to getting students into and through college.

When my school punished young people for not having items school leaders knew their families couldn’t afford, I could have been pushing back against policies that effectively punished students for being poor.

When we pulled students out of their classrooms for countless hours for minor infractions even as we drilled them constantly on the importance of instruction time, we could have been taking our own advice.

Or when we suspended students from school for numerous days, we could have been providing alternatives that disciplined them but kept them in school.

I recently spoke on a panel in Nashville about the psychological and emotional costs that “no excuses” school cultures have on students of color. Afterwards, I was approached by a young white male who told me that he couldn’t understand why parents of color complained about “no excuses” school cultures when they’d chosen to enroll their children in the schools. But the idea that parents should not complain because they purposely enrolled their children in these schools is flawed.

Parents, whether they’re in Nashville or New Orleans, desire that their children attend schools that will provide them a rigorous and first-class education. They’re sold a school culture “package” that claims to bring out the best in every student, challenging them to be creative, take risks and think critically. Yet too often, once the package is unwrapped and a culture of compliance is unveiled, students and families feel that they have been sold a dream.

Is it realistic to expect parents to inherently grasp the psychological and emotional costs of the “no excuses” model when many of the teachers and school disciplinarians who enforce these policies don’t have a deep understanding of their effects either? In my experience, staff members are trained to follow the rules regarding discipline and school culture without questioning school leaders about why rules and practices exist in the first place. The idea of critically engaging administrators at these schools seems to intimidate staff, who fear potential backlash for speaking out against culture and disciplinary practices they don’t agree with. They don’t know how to push back critically and meaningfully without being disciplined or even losing their jobs.

Whatever the reason, the lack of inquiry by and pushback from highly educated professionals regarding the questionable socialization practices and disciplinary policies of “no excuses” schools is striking. Even more astonishing is that the same things young people of color are punished for in these schools, their teachers were probably raised and encouraged to value. As students themselves, they were probably given the opportunity to be critical, to take risks, to disagree, to not conform, to ask for clarity, to push back, to show emotion and to be relentless about finding their own truth.

Many of these educators are no doubt raising their own children to do similar things. But as teachers and staff at
“no excuses” charter schools, they are trained to instill the opposite values in youth of color, even punishing students for being critical or showing emotion. Why? I ask this question, not as a researcher or as a doctoral student, but as a colleague who has navigated the same terrain that you are currently treading. I understand—trust me. I am truly concerned that we are not asking the right questions. Why has “no excuses” been celebrated, packaged and sold to people of color as the prescription for educational and career excellence? Why is it “no excuses” for some and not for all?

Ask yourself if you would allow your own children to be treated the way that some of your students are being treated. If the answer is “no,” then there is no excuse for complying with rules and policies you’d never tolerate where your own children or loved ones are concerned. Your students are young people, not robots. They are human children and sometimes their circumstances do warrant exceptions to the rules. Sometimes their excuses are legitimate.

For example, a student who shows up out of uniform because he doesn’t have a washer/dryer at home has a legitimate excuse.

A kid whose family has been transient and is currently homeless has a legitimate excuse to not be in proper uniform. The school should be aware of the situation and at least attempt to provide clothing for the young person.

A kid who has three younger siblings he has to care for, clean up, help with homework, protect and teach because they live with their elderly grandmother who was thrust into legal guardianship because his mother was abusive and they never met their father has a legitimate excuse.

A kid who has witnessed his mother being shot by his father has a legitimate excuse to not want to walk on a line, talk to anybody or participate in class.

A kid who hasn’t eaten a nutritious meal in weeks, but makes it to school every day has a legitimate excuse to feel tired, to not want to participate in an activity or to look at an adult in the eye while shaking their hand. But what happens at most “no excuses” schools is that students get detention or worse because there are no excuses.

Is this what John Dewey meant when he described school as “the social center” of the community and as a site for building a democratic society? Are “no excuses” schools preparing citizens, training workers or preparing individuals to compete for social positions? If the answers to these questions aren’t clear, it may be time to seriously re-evaluate the goals of your school.

Lastly, I believe that it is time for a thorough examination of the psychological and emotional impact of “no excuses” policies and school cultures. It is time for everyone involved to start asking some critical questions. Stop being fearful. Let your voices be heard.

Ask questions, push back, critically engage, and transform your school and your workplace."...

For full post, click on title above or here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/01/26/former-dean-questions-costs-of-no-excuses-charter-schools-on-students-of-color/ 

"By Ruth Conniff 
"This animated video by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore looks at school privatization through the eyes of little Timmy, a kindergartener who likes his public school.  Timmy gets a confusing lesson in corporate education reform, starting with the rightwing mantra: “Public schools have failed.” 

“But I like my public school,” Timmy protests.

A top rightwing think tank has devoted more than $30 million to spread the message that public education is failing. According to a report by One Wisconsin Now, the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation is a major underwriter of this propaganda effort. Bradley spent millions on shoddy research, media punditry, and a lobbying campaign to promote the idea that public schools have failed and to push school vouchers and other privatization schemes as the “solution”.

Large, national charter-school chains have been major of the beneficiaries of the campaign to fix “failing” public schools. Among them, Rocketship––“a low-budget operation that relies on young and inexperienced teachers rather than more veteran and expensive faculty,” according to a report by economist Gordon Lafer for the Economic Policy Institute.

Not all charter schools are bad. Some offer high-quality, alternative models classrooms that are enriching for kids. But over the last decade, the charter school movement has morphed from a small, community-based effort to foster alternative education into a vehicle for privatizing public education, pushed by free-market foundations, big education-management companies, and profit-seekers looking for a way to cash in on public-education funds."...

For full post on The Progressive: 
http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/12/187929/profitship-learning#sthash.dnE8ChWh.dpuf

For Mark Fiore's animated video, click here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opcHQ_v6PuU

For additional articles related to Rocketship: 
http://www.scoop.it/t/charter-choice-closer-look?q=rocketship&nbsp

and www.stoprocketship.com 

"Public Advocates researched 555 charter schools in California and found that almost one-third of them (30%) require parents to do work at the school for a set quota of hours. This practice is illegal under the California constitution and the Education Code. In our report, we expose the extent of the practice and explain why it is illegal. We have sent a demand letter to the California Department of Education and the State Board of Education urging them to take immediate steps to abolish the practice. At our online appendix, we provide a list of all the charter schools we found that have such a practice, with a link to their policy documents." [Emphasis added]

Read the report Charging for Access: How California Charter Schools Exclude Vulnerable Students by Imposing Illegal Family Work Quotas

• Appendix A: Methodology & Results
  
• Appendix B: Policy statements from selected charter schools
  
• Appendix C: Charter Schools with Forced Labor Policies by County
  
• Appendix D: Hersher Memorandum

By Dr. Gordon Lafer -  Economic Policy Institute

"During the past year, Wisconsin state legislators debated a series of bills aimed at closing low-performing public schools and replacing them with privately run charter schools. These proposals were particularly targeted at Milwaukee, the state’s largest and poorest school district.

Ultimately, the only legislation enacted was a bill that modestly increases school reporting requirements, without stipulating consequences for low performance. Nevertheless, the more ambitious proposals will likely remain at the core of Wisconsin’s debates over education policy, and legislative leaders have made clear their desire to revisit them in next year’s session. To help inform these deliberations, this report addresses the most comprehensive set of reforms put forward in the 2013–2014 legislative session.

Backers of these reforms are particularly enamored of a new type of charter school represented by the Rocketship chain of schools—a low-budget operation that relies on young and inexperienced teachers rather than more veteran and expensive faculty, that reduces the curriculum to a near-exclusive focus on reading and math, and that replaces teachers with online learning and digital applications for a significant portion of the day..." 

For full report, click on title above or here: http://www.epi.org/publication/school-privatization-milwaukee/

For EPI's reply to Rocketship response: http://www.epi.org/blog/epi-stands-rigorous-methods-findings-report/