Transcript of school staff meeting.
Principal: We've been handed a small pile of money, and I thought we'd meet to discuss what best to do with it.
Ms. Wattlestop: Well, we haven't replaced the textbooks in the science department for a decade. It might be time to get the students some books that aren't falling apart. And maybe we could get enough of them so that all students can have them.
Miss Bowenflava: The heat in my room doesn't work. The faucets in the student restrooms don't turn all the way on or off. There's a leak in the roof over the west hall. We need to get some repairs done around the building.
Mr. Jones: How big a pile are we talking? Because we could add a couple of staff people, we could get class sizes down below thirty, and that would be a huge help to the students.
Mrs. McSmith: We haven't put a new book in the library in fifteen years. Let's buy books.
Mrs. Galumpke: There are so many cool new programs out there that would really be exciting and helpful for our students. Maybe we could get one of those...?
Mr. O'Plenty: Our computer system is dependent on servers that are held together with duct tape and bubble. Let's strengthen our tech system
Ms. Stengle: Hiring some to run an after-school intervention program would really help our students who are behind.
Ms. Flex: You want to help me out with some of the $1,200 I'm spending to get my classroom necessary resources?
Miss Fleagle: There are only two certified people who will even think about substituting here. Maybe we could raise sub pay.
Miss Arbuckle: We could pilot an home and school visiting program, to help give at risk students a little more support.
Ms. Swayne: We could hire a counselor.
Mr. Flurgle: I don't want to sound selfish, but we don't even pay teachers a living wage any more, and I think it's beginning to affect the hiring possibilities[indicates the forty-three empty chairs at the meeting]. Maybe it's time to look at that.
Ms. Teanuttle: Really, it's the whole package. Our students are dealing with a wide variety of traumas and issues that they bring into the building, and we need to be doing more to help them both academically and emotionally. The building is falling down around our ears, and we desperately need more and better resources. The staff is being eroded by the lack of support and the absence of resources. And we are consistently underfunded because the state doesn't even want to give us enough money to keep up with providing the basics for our students. I hope you've been given enough money to do all of this, but if you haven't-- well, I really don't envy you this difficult decision.
Principal: Those are all very good ideas, and after careful consideration, I've decided we need to spend the money to buy some guns.
Staff: What?
Principal: Yup. Of all the things we could do, I think arm a couple of you guys would be the best possible use of the money. Thanks for coming.
Mr. Flurgle: Money for training us, too?
Principal. No. No, just the guns. Just point and shoot. How hard can it be?
Ms. Flex: But what about all these other ideas?
Principal: Trust me. Once you've got that gun in your hand, you won't even care about the rest of this stuff.
Mr. Jones: The opportunity cost here is just so tremendous!
Principal: The what now?
Mr. Jones: Never mind, Principal DeVos.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
ICYMI: New School Year Edition (8/26)
In my neck of the woods it's that time again, and my wife is all set and ready to go. But in the meantime, here's some reading for you today.
Mission Accomplished
Privileged policies to privilege the already privileged. An important read.
Vouchers Are a Failed Experiment
I always appreciate it when someone outside the education debates world figures it out.
Success Academy Slashes Special Needs Classes
Oh, those pesky students with special needs. Leonie Haimson spots Eva Moskowitz cutting corners again
How Newarks Former Schools Chief Used a Victory Lap and Paid Consultants To Secure His Legacy
From Chalkbeat, a look at how a reformster used a pile of money to do PR for himself.
Mainstream Journalism Can't Handle the Truth
Paul Thomas explains how journalism is doomed to fail in covering education.
Response To Intervention's Role in the Texas Special Education Scandal
I definitely don't say it often enough-- you should read Nancy Bailey regularly. Here she drills down and looks at some of the detail behind the Texas plan to cut special ed costs by just not giving services to students who need them.
Beware Rich People Who Say They Want To Change the World
From the New York Times, a blistering look at the modern world of fauxlanthropy-- and yes, that includes education.
Mission Accomplished
Privileged policies to privilege the already privileged. An important read.
Vouchers Are a Failed Experiment
I always appreciate it when someone outside the education debates world figures it out.
Success Academy Slashes Special Needs Classes
Oh, those pesky students with special needs. Leonie Haimson spots Eva Moskowitz cutting corners again
How Newarks Former Schools Chief Used a Victory Lap and Paid Consultants To Secure His Legacy
From Chalkbeat, a look at how a reformster used a pile of money to do PR for himself.
Mainstream Journalism Can't Handle the Truth
Paul Thomas explains how journalism is doomed to fail in covering education.
Response To Intervention's Role in the Texas Special Education Scandal
I definitely don't say it often enough-- you should read Nancy Bailey regularly. Here she drills down and looks at some of the detail behind the Texas plan to cut special ed costs by just not giving services to students who need them.
Beware Rich People Who Say They Want To Change the World
From the New York Times, a blistering look at the modern world of fauxlanthropy-- and yes, that includes education.
Friday, August 24, 2018
Can Scott Wagner Buy PA?
We'll be talking about Scott Wagner often in the months ahead, because he's running for Governor of Pennsylvania, and it would really be better for the Commonwealth if he did not succeed.
There are many things to know about Scott Wagner. People like to note that he has explained global warming-- it's either that the earth is moving closer to the sun, or possibly all those humans giving off body heat. He's a wealthy business man who has launched several businesses, but it's the trash biz that really made him wealthy. He's anti-union, and pretty sure that poor people are poor because they're lazy.
He recently made it clear that he would not be releasing his financials. His reason is simple-- he doesn't want his employees to know how much he makes because they might get the crazy idea that they should be paid more.
Wagner is a Cinderella story of sorts-- he made it to the PA Senate by beating both the GOP and Democratic candidate with write in votes. Granted, the voter turnout no more than 17%, but the GOP went from trying to box him out of the race to embracing him as a powerful new voice, and he quickly acquired clout in Harrisburg.
Some folks attribute that to a "no-nonsense style" with pronouncements like:
I'm gonna be sitting in the back of the room with a baseball bat. And leadership is gonna start doing things for [sic] Pennsylvania needs done.
Comments like that strike me as all-nonsense, but Wagner is one more millionaire who sells his common touch. It's part of his package, along with his multiple marriages and rocky personal history that his opponents have tried-- and failed-- to use against him (e.g. Wagner once had a protection abuse order brought against him by a daughter for choking her-- they are now tight and she works on his campaign).
But Wagner has another not-so-common touch feature-- he throws around a lot of money.
Wagner may seem like a political novice, but he was in the game well before he ran for Senator. The York Daily Record (his home town paper) figured in 2016 that since 2007, Wagner had spent more than $3.2 million dollars on political races. The 49th state Senate race in Erie County resulted in a seat flipped from Democratic to Republican; Wagner was the single largest contributor with a whopping $595,250 spent on the race. And he has spent aggressively on primary races, to make sure that the Right Kind of Republican is elected.
Wagner has spent more than $100,000 on several causes, including individual campaigns and to several PACs, including one that he's set up on his own and another that aims specifically to end teacher pensions in PA (you'll be unshocked to know that Wagner also opposes teacher tenure and other job protections). He hates taxes, and he wants Pennsylvania to be organized around what businesses want, and he has thrown a lot of money at campaigns for those causes.
At the same time, Wagner has become more pragmatic. Where he once railed against lobbying firms-- particularly those that served as PR firms for the campaigns of officials they would later lobby-- he now employs exactly that kind of firm. If you want to take over the state government, you have to be willing to pay up. Wagner promised he would throw seven figures worth of his money at the campaign, and there's no reason to doubt him.
Wagner is as clear an anti-labor, pro-rich guy candidate as you're going to find. He's a fan of Trump and Scott Walker. He hates unions, particularly the teacher union, and would like to gut them from every possible angle. He's a very rich guy who thinks that his money should give him the power to reshape the state to suit his own preferences. If you care about teachers or public education, it is not too early to start working to support Governor Tom Wolf.
There are many things to know about Scott Wagner. People like to note that he has explained global warming-- it's either that the earth is moving closer to the sun, or possibly all those humans giving off body heat. He's a wealthy business man who has launched several businesses, but it's the trash biz that really made him wealthy. He's anti-union, and pretty sure that poor people are poor because they're lazy.
 |
| This frickin' guy |
He recently made it clear that he would not be releasing his financials. His reason is simple-- he doesn't want his employees to know how much he makes because they might get the crazy idea that they should be paid more.
Wagner is a Cinderella story of sorts-- he made it to the PA Senate by beating both the GOP and Democratic candidate with write in votes. Granted, the voter turnout no more than 17%, but the GOP went from trying to box him out of the race to embracing him as a powerful new voice, and he quickly acquired clout in Harrisburg.
Some folks attribute that to a "no-nonsense style" with pronouncements like:
I'm gonna be sitting in the back of the room with a baseball bat. And leadership is gonna start doing things for [sic] Pennsylvania needs done.
Comments like that strike me as all-nonsense, but Wagner is one more millionaire who sells his common touch. It's part of his package, along with his multiple marriages and rocky personal history that his opponents have tried-- and failed-- to use against him (e.g. Wagner once had a protection abuse order brought against him by a daughter for choking her-- they are now tight and she works on his campaign).
But Wagner has another not-so-common touch feature-- he throws around a lot of money.
Wagner may seem like a political novice, but he was in the game well before he ran for Senator. The York Daily Record (his home town paper) figured in 2016 that since 2007, Wagner had spent more than $3.2 million dollars on political races. The 49th state Senate race in Erie County resulted in a seat flipped from Democratic to Republican; Wagner was the single largest contributor with a whopping $595,250 spent on the race. And he has spent aggressively on primary races, to make sure that the Right Kind of Republican is elected.
Wagner has spent more than $100,000 on several causes, including individual campaigns and to several PACs, including one that he's set up on his own and another that aims specifically to end teacher pensions in PA (you'll be unshocked to know that Wagner also opposes teacher tenure and other job protections). He hates taxes, and he wants Pennsylvania to be organized around what businesses want, and he has thrown a lot of money at campaigns for those causes.
At the same time, Wagner has become more pragmatic. Where he once railed against lobbying firms-- particularly those that served as PR firms for the campaigns of officials they would later lobby-- he now employs exactly that kind of firm. If you want to take over the state government, you have to be willing to pay up. Wagner promised he would throw seven figures worth of his money at the campaign, and there's no reason to doubt him.
Wagner is as clear an anti-labor, pro-rich guy candidate as you're going to find. He's a fan of Trump and Scott Walker. He hates unions, particularly the teacher union, and would like to gut them from every possible angle. He's a very rich guy who thinks that his money should give him the power to reshape the state to suit his own preferences. If you care about teachers or public education, it is not too early to start working to support Governor Tom Wolf.
Where Are The Russian Ed Bots?
So it turns out that the Russian bots haven't just been messing with us politically; according to research from George Washington University, the Russian bots have been busy trying to sow discord among US citizens on the subject of vaccinations.
If you've never wandered into the middle of a bot attack, well, all you really need to do is log in to Twitter and shoot your mouth off to someone with a high profile about a hot political topic. I don't know for certain that I've been a guest at a bot party, but once, after I posted about the need to abolish ICE in a conversation, my feed was flooded with aggressively attacking tweeters about half of whom had only been on Twitter for a day or two.
As our understanding of Russian bot farms grows, it becomes obvious that they are playing both sides of any topic that Americans like to argue about. Some folks argue that the Russians wanted to elect Trump President. I don't know if that's true; I suspect they mostly just wanted to make the election as divisive as possible. So it makes sense that they would also try to aggravate other contentious issues, because social media have made us cranky (I once received Very Cranky comments for making fun of Flat Earthers). Every one of us has had that kid in class-- he doesn't care what side wins, but he's going to jab folks into arguing just so he can spread chaos and keep class from happening.
But if the bots are everywhere, where is education's share?
Where are our Russian ed bots?
I know plenty of cranky posters from all sides of the debate, but I have ample evidence that they are real people. I've actually met some of them. I've seen them on videos. And they manage rants far longer than 280 characters.
So why aren't the education debates being goosed by the Russians? Why aren't we a sufficiently agitating wedge issue?
There are a couple of answers, all a little depressing.
One is that they're here, and we just haven't noticed. I'll bet they were humming for a while back in the crazy Common Core debate days. I guess I'm going to start paying closer attention.
Another possibility is the educational debates are so arcane and wonky that bots just can't handle them.
Yet another possibility is that the Russians themselves have decided that education just isn't a very big issue. They've looked and all they see is a handful of people who really, really care about this stuff, while the vast majority of the US population continues to not bother with education all that much. This is sadly possible. Education is no longer a "topic" in news media, and folks who have tried to launch super-influential websites (like Campbell Brown) or Presidential campaigns (like Jeb Bush) based on education issues have been disappointed and largely ignored. Yes, Betsy DeVos is widely known and belittled, but mostly all anyone has absorbed is the idea that she's rich and dumb; vanishing few mainstream critiques of DeVos include any intelligent observations about her actual education policies.
We all kind of know this. Whatever side of the education debates you're on, you know that huge numbers of people aren't that concerned, that to even have the conversation you're going to have to explain all sorts of things because they haven't been paying attention to education for the last decade. It becomes really striking when an education story actually flares up, and suddenly people are noticing state-wide teacher strikes.
The explanation that I'll cling to is that most education issues can't be easily reduced to snappy tweet and dumb memes. "We're just too smart for those dumb bot farms" is better for the self-esteem. But the vaccination story is a reminder that any debate in the US is susceptible to being blown up by folks who just want to watch the world-- or at least one hemisphere of it-- burn. It's a reminder that in any online debate, it's best to think before you engage. Not every comment deserves a response.
If you've never wandered into the middle of a bot attack, well, all you really need to do is log in to Twitter and shoot your mouth off to someone with a high profile about a hot political topic. I don't know for certain that I've been a guest at a bot party, but once, after I posted about the need to abolish ICE in a conversation, my feed was flooded with aggressively attacking tweeters about half of whom had only been on Twitter for a day or two.
As our understanding of Russian bot farms grows, it becomes obvious that they are playing both sides of any topic that Americans like to argue about. Some folks argue that the Russians wanted to elect Trump President. I don't know if that's true; I suspect they mostly just wanted to make the election as divisive as possible. So it makes sense that they would also try to aggravate other contentious issues, because social media have made us cranky (I once received Very Cranky comments for making fun of Flat Earthers). Every one of us has had that kid in class-- he doesn't care what side wins, but he's going to jab folks into arguing just so he can spread chaos and keep class from happening.
But if the bots are everywhere, where is education's share?
Where are our Russian ed bots?
I know plenty of cranky posters from all sides of the debate, but I have ample evidence that they are real people. I've actually met some of them. I've seen them on videos. And they manage rants far longer than 280 characters.
 |
| I'm not sure they're always clearly labeled. |
There are a couple of answers, all a little depressing.
One is that they're here, and we just haven't noticed. I'll bet they were humming for a while back in the crazy Common Core debate days. I guess I'm going to start paying closer attention.
Another possibility is the educational debates are so arcane and wonky that bots just can't handle them.
Yet another possibility is that the Russians themselves have decided that education just isn't a very big issue. They've looked and all they see is a handful of people who really, really care about this stuff, while the vast majority of the US population continues to not bother with education all that much. This is sadly possible. Education is no longer a "topic" in news media, and folks who have tried to launch super-influential websites (like Campbell Brown) or Presidential campaigns (like Jeb Bush) based on education issues have been disappointed and largely ignored. Yes, Betsy DeVos is widely known and belittled, but mostly all anyone has absorbed is the idea that she's rich and dumb; vanishing few mainstream critiques of DeVos include any intelligent observations about her actual education policies.
We all kind of know this. Whatever side of the education debates you're on, you know that huge numbers of people aren't that concerned, that to even have the conversation you're going to have to explain all sorts of things because they haven't been paying attention to education for the last decade. It becomes really striking when an education story actually flares up, and suddenly people are noticing state-wide teacher strikes.
The explanation that I'll cling to is that most education issues can't be easily reduced to snappy tweet and dumb memes. "We're just too smart for those dumb bot farms" is better for the self-esteem. But the vaccination story is a reminder that any debate in the US is susceptible to being blown up by folks who just want to watch the world-- or at least one hemisphere of it-- burn. It's a reminder that in any online debate, it's best to think before you engage. Not every comment deserves a response.
Running Them In
After a baby-induced sabbatical, my wife has returned to running. Her first post-baby 5K was a couple of weekends ago, taking us back to a world we've spent lots of time in. And yes, she ran pushing the twins, because she's that adorable.
Many of the same old faces were there. We don't live in a huge area, and if you run the 5K circuit, you see many of the same runners race after race (you also, if you're the guy who waits supportively for his spouse, see many of the same supportive faces race after race). I ran years ago, but plantars facitis sucks, so I stopped.
There's one runner I've watched for years who I find fascinating and inspirational. He usually finished toward the front of the race, though he doesn't win often. But as soon as he crosses the finish line, he circles around and goes back up the course. He'll meet other runners as they approach the final stretch, and he'll run with them (he's not the only person to do this, but he's the one I see always doing it). He may shout encouragement at them, he may cheer for them, he may just run silently beside them. But he runs them the rest of the way in.
Over and over and over, until I swear he has essentially run the whole race twice, he runs out, looks for someone who can use a hand, and runs them in. And he seems to be able to gauge what sort of coaching do they need-- support? a little kick in the butt? silence? chatter? a boost to come in strong, or just enough support to make it across the line?
I'm always moved by this display. Running is a tough sport, but every race is a reminder in many ways that competition doesn't have to be cutthroat. And in the average 5K, you'll see everything from people who train relentlessly and seriously to people who are just giving it a try. This guy runs with all of them.
It's not a perfect analogy for teaching, but it still strikes a chord-- reaching out to help people who are trying to meet their own personal goals, whether it's to beat their own personal best or just to finish. There's no judginess at these events; spectators and finished runners don't stand on the final stretch and holler "Loser!" or "Sad!" or "You need a remedial running class" at people who are struggling to some in at the back of the pack. The assumption is that everyone is just trying to do the best they can, and that making the attempt is deserving of support and a cheer. It's not that the race doesn't separate folks into winners and losers-- it absolutely does-- but it doesn't make winning and losing indicative of anything else. Maybe you ran the 5K in more time than another person did; that doesn't mean anything about your worth as a human being or your right to take up space on the planet or how deserving you are of help or support or love. I can't imagine that the races would better or faster if the runners and the crowd were harsh, cruel, trying to threaten runners with dire consequences if they didn't hit the mark.
The race is hard. You ran the best you could. Good for you.
And at the end, we cheer you on, maybe even run you in so that you cross that line with someone by your side, because runners run against each other, but they run with each other, too. They work to make the mark, to overcome the obstacle together, all the way to the end. School, I think, ought to feel more like that.
Many of the same old faces were there. We don't live in a huge area, and if you run the 5K circuit, you see many of the same runners race after race (you also, if you're the guy who waits supportively for his spouse, see many of the same supportive faces race after race). I ran years ago, but plantars facitis sucks, so I stopped.
 |
| My wife and the Board of Directors get ready to roll. |
Over and over and over, until I swear he has essentially run the whole race twice, he runs out, looks for someone who can use a hand, and runs them in. And he seems to be able to gauge what sort of coaching do they need-- support? a little kick in the butt? silence? chatter? a boost to come in strong, or just enough support to make it across the line?
I'm always moved by this display. Running is a tough sport, but every race is a reminder in many ways that competition doesn't have to be cutthroat. And in the average 5K, you'll see everything from people who train relentlessly and seriously to people who are just giving it a try. This guy runs with all of them.
It's not a perfect analogy for teaching, but it still strikes a chord-- reaching out to help people who are trying to meet their own personal goals, whether it's to beat their own personal best or just to finish. There's no judginess at these events; spectators and finished runners don't stand on the final stretch and holler "Loser!" or "Sad!" or "You need a remedial running class" at people who are struggling to some in at the back of the pack. The assumption is that everyone is just trying to do the best they can, and that making the attempt is deserving of support and a cheer. It's not that the race doesn't separate folks into winners and losers-- it absolutely does-- but it doesn't make winning and losing indicative of anything else. Maybe you ran the 5K in more time than another person did; that doesn't mean anything about your worth as a human being or your right to take up space on the planet or how deserving you are of help or support or love. I can't imagine that the races would better or faster if the runners and the crowd were harsh, cruel, trying to threaten runners with dire consequences if they didn't hit the mark.
The race is hard. You ran the best you could. Good for you.
And at the end, we cheer you on, maybe even run you in so that you cross that line with someone by your side, because runners run against each other, but they run with each other, too. They work to make the mark, to overcome the obstacle together, all the way to the end. School, I think, ought to feel more like that.
Thursday, August 23, 2018
IL: Another Voucher Program Launched
This fall, Illinois is launching a hot new neo-voucher program. The Invest in Kids program is a tax credit shell game that allows the state to funnel public tax dollars to private religious schools. This was Governor Bruce Rauner's idea of how to fix Illinois's school funding, which is a little like fixing your house by moving into an apartment. Rauner is not a friend of public education.
The program is somewhere between the standard voucher set-up and the upper-voucher system of an Education Savings Account. In Illinois, people can contribute money toward a school "scholarship," which counts as a 75% tax credit for the donor. If I owe the state $1,236 dollars in taxes and I give $1,200 to a "scholarship" fund, I now owe the state $336 in taxes. Under this system, the money is never in the state's hands, so the program is safe from that whole church-state separation thing. The state, however, does end up with less money, so public schools still come up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop on this deal.
The whole business has been controversial (it took three roll call votes to pass the measure). But while voucher schemes have been regularly struck down, tax credit systems (Illinois actually already has one for school supplies) have held up well in court under multiple challenges. Studies so far show that voucher systems (whatever they're called) actually provide poorer results, but as usual that's using test scores as the measure, so honestly, we don't really know, and many Reformsters have shifted from "vouchers will get better results" to "freedom is the most important thing." And controversial or not, at $75 million it appears to be the biggest launch of such a program (Florida's tax credit voucher dodge is now huge, but it started at a modest $50 million.)
Last week WBEZ took a look at the private school scholarships and discovered "12 Things We Should Have Known..." as a way to see exactly where Illinois has now landed. Some of these are "should have knowns" in the sense that, yes, if you had been paying attention, you would have known this before now. For instance, there's really no excuse for only now realizing that tax credits are a way to get around the law against state-funded religious schools. The law has also been pretty clear that these "scholarships" are not just for poor kids-- a family of four at 300% of the poverty level ($75,300) are eligible for up to $12,973 (that's a very hefty sum compared to most voucher and neo-voucher programs. But some of these details show how Illinois is growing this beast.
For one thing, the cap on how big a credit taxpayers can take is huge. Huge! Illinois taxpayers can get up to a cool million in tax credits.
As has been the case elsewhere, some number of voucher-- I mean, "scholarship" recipients were enrolled in private school anyway. In other words, some of the money drained from public schools had absolutely no corresponding reduction in enrollment or expenses. But it's hard to know exactly how many because...
The organizations granting these scholarships are allowed to operate with zero transparency. There's some basic info they must report (which is good-- the last time an expansion of this sort of thing was proposed in Pennsylvania, nobody had any oversight over any part of the whole business), but donors remain secret, and even basic information about students like where they live is also hidden. In Illinois, even charter schools are subject to FOIA-- but scholarship organizations are not.
24% of the money in the program came from eight donors. 73% of the money will be funneled through a single organization (Empower Illinois). It's only fair that Empower Illinois has the majority of the business, because they wrote the law in the first place, having gathered up some clout partnering with the Catholic Church, which, of course, gets a huge windfall out of this whole system. What does Empower Illinois get out of this? Well, they get to keep 5% of all donations. WBEZ says the group has taken in $30.8 million on contributions, which means a $1.5 million payday for them. Ka-ching.
Interesting detail-- the donor can designate the school for the "scholarship." That means that a family might have their eye on one particular school, but there may be limited scholarship money for that particular school. That also means that as the owner/operator of a particular private school, you could use this system to pump up your own school's finances while giving yourself a tasty tax break. Or, if you were a staunch Catholic, you could pump up your favorite parochial school (while tax breaking yourself). At any rate, Catholic schools are enjoying a big windfall thanks to these "scholarships." But I'm wondering which rich people would earmark their scholarship money for schools serving the kind of poor neighborhoods they would never set foot in.
Finally, no state that instituted a tax credit program like this has ever ended it-- but education could be an election issue in Illinois, where Democratic candidate for governor J. B. Pritzker has said he would put an end to the program. Which means that Pritzker has made an enemy of the Catholic Church, and Chicago Cardinal Blasé Cupich, who backed this program big time.
Time will tell just how much damage this program will do to public schools and the students who need to get an education there. Or maybe it will just drain enough resources from the public system that developers can get their hands on more upscale apartment real estate conversion material in Chicago.
The program is somewhere between the standard voucher set-up and the upper-voucher system of an Education Savings Account. In Illinois, people can contribute money toward a school "scholarship," which counts as a 75% tax credit for the donor. If I owe the state $1,236 dollars in taxes and I give $1,200 to a "scholarship" fund, I now owe the state $336 in taxes. Under this system, the money is never in the state's hands, so the program is safe from that whole church-state separation thing. The state, however, does end up with less money, so public schools still come up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop on this deal.
Last week WBEZ took a look at the private school scholarships and discovered "12 Things We Should Have Known..." as a way to see exactly where Illinois has now landed. Some of these are "should have knowns" in the sense that, yes, if you had been paying attention, you would have known this before now. For instance, there's really no excuse for only now realizing that tax credits are a way to get around the law against state-funded religious schools. The law has also been pretty clear that these "scholarships" are not just for poor kids-- a family of four at 300% of the poverty level ($75,300) are eligible for up to $12,973 (that's a very hefty sum compared to most voucher and neo-voucher programs. But some of these details show how Illinois is growing this beast.
For one thing, the cap on how big a credit taxpayers can take is huge. Huge! Illinois taxpayers can get up to a cool million in tax credits.
As has been the case elsewhere, some number of voucher-- I mean, "scholarship" recipients were enrolled in private school anyway. In other words, some of the money drained from public schools had absolutely no corresponding reduction in enrollment or expenses. But it's hard to know exactly how many because...
The organizations granting these scholarships are allowed to operate with zero transparency. There's some basic info they must report (which is good-- the last time an expansion of this sort of thing was proposed in Pennsylvania, nobody had any oversight over any part of the whole business), but donors remain secret, and even basic information about students like where they live is also hidden. In Illinois, even charter schools are subject to FOIA-- but scholarship organizations are not.
24% of the money in the program came from eight donors. 73% of the money will be funneled through a single organization (Empower Illinois). It's only fair that Empower Illinois has the majority of the business, because they wrote the law in the first place, having gathered up some clout partnering with the Catholic Church, which, of course, gets a huge windfall out of this whole system. What does Empower Illinois get out of this? Well, they get to keep 5% of all donations. WBEZ says the group has taken in $30.8 million on contributions, which means a $1.5 million payday for them. Ka-ching.
Interesting detail-- the donor can designate the school for the "scholarship." That means that a family might have their eye on one particular school, but there may be limited scholarship money for that particular school. That also means that as the owner/operator of a particular private school, you could use this system to pump up your own school's finances while giving yourself a tasty tax break. Or, if you were a staunch Catholic, you could pump up your favorite parochial school (while tax breaking yourself). At any rate, Catholic schools are enjoying a big windfall thanks to these "scholarships." But I'm wondering which rich people would earmark their scholarship money for schools serving the kind of poor neighborhoods they would never set foot in.
Finally, no state that instituted a tax credit program like this has ever ended it-- but education could be an election issue in Illinois, where Democratic candidate for governor J. B. Pritzker has said he would put an end to the program. Which means that Pritzker has made an enemy of the Catholic Church, and Chicago Cardinal Blasé Cupich, who backed this program big time.
Time will tell just how much damage this program will do to public schools and the students who need to get an education there. Or maybe it will just drain enough resources from the public system that developers can get their hands on more upscale apartment real estate conversion material in Chicago.
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
The City Fund Plans To Conquer The Market
What happens when a bunch of Reformsters decide to get the band back together to see if they can't privatize public ed more successfully this time around? You get The City Fund, a group that has just inadvertently leaked its plans for a hostile takeover of 5% of the US education system.
For a thorough back-ground on this hot new reform group, check out this piece by Thomas Ultican. I'll hit the highlights, and then we'll talk about the big scoop that Matt Barnum tossed out into a giant shitstorm of a new cycle this afternoon.
The City Fund is collecting a giant pot of money to help launch more "educational opportunity for all children." Specifically, they want to boost the portfolio model of ed reform on several cities. It's a bold choice, because not everybody thinks the portfolio model is a great idea, and that includes plenty of people in the reform camp. The portfolio model is basically an approach that throws together public, charter, and even private schools that want to play. All these schools get tossed into one super-district that is under the watchful eye of a centralized quality control system. Periodically the portfolio managers dump the losers and beef up the winners and let some more join the gamer. That's right- "portfolio" here is not borrowed from the world of art so much as the world of investment management.
Reformsters like the model because it replaces the locally elected school board with a Portfolio Manager, and it essentially puts the public schools on equal footing with charter schools. Free market fans think this is a great way to put everyone under the thumb of the invisible hand. But other Reformsters see the portfolio as working pretty much like a school district, which they already don't like. And centralizing all that oversight in a PM runs the risk of getting someone in that job who is not a big charter and choice fan. And, of course, the whole structure depends on the same old crappy test score system to identify good schools and bad schools.
Nevertheless, The City Fund is banking on that model. Who are the players making this bold choice? There are lots of familiar names here.
There's Neerav Kingsland, the Yale Law School grad who oversaw the conversion of New Orleans into a charter district (as you may have heard, there's some debate over just how successful that really was). Since then, he's become an education investment guru for various big money funds.
Kevin Huffman, who went straight from Teach For America to running the school system of Tennessee.
Chris Barbic (also TFA) was brought into Tennessee by Huffman to run the Achievement School District. The promise was that the bottom 5% of schools would become part of the top 25% in just five years. They did not even come close, and Barbic left the job having concluded that "achieving results in neighborhood schools is harder than in a choice environment."
David Harris previously led the Mind Trust in Indiana, a charter school incubator. And Ethan Gray is the head of Education Cities, another choice promoter with affection for the portfolio model.
Kicking in some big bucks are one of Kingsland's current employers, the Arnold Fund. Reed Hastings has also kicked in. The Netflix mogul, like Kingsland, has argued that elected school boards need to be eliminated so that schools can be run more like a business. The Hastings Fund and the omnipresent Gates Foundation have also kicked in. All the sources have not yet been revealed, but City Fund has raised a whopping 200 million. And as of yesterday afternoon, we have a clearer picture of what they have in mind.
While the rest of the country was watching the latest episode of "That Darn President," Matt Barnum was revealing that he'd gotten his hands on a City Fund presentation for investors. You should read the whole thing, but here are the broad strokes.
They want to spread the Denver, DC and New Orleans model. This is problematic; DC and New Orleans are not exactly synonymous with unqualified reformster success.
They reject many reformy standard ideas. "Very little work in education reform," Barnum says is the first line of the presentation.
But most extraordinary is their goal. Remember when Eli Broad announced he was going to take over half the LA school system? City Fund wants to move its charterized system into forty cities over the next ten years, grabbing 30-50% of the students in each city. "Our goal," Barnum quotes the presentation, "is to make the model normal."
Barnum lays out their ambitious timeline:
Between 2018 and 2021, it hopes to have success in at least 20 cities, affecting around one million students. Specifically, their goal is for 10 cities to have fully adopted the model, and 10 more to be making progress.
From 2022 on, the group hopes to influence “every major city in America,” growing by a couple of cities each year, the presentation says. (“If I had to rewrite that slide I would say, ‘if evidence and demand follows,’” Kingsland said in an interview. “We really aren’t going to expand if the evidence isn’t there.”)
How to do it? The City Fund plans to use speakers, blog posts, "partnering" with groups, and lots and lots of money-- as much as $15 to $20 million over the first three years.
The City Fund is a new organization (still without a web site) but they have the players and the money to become a major factor in ed erform in the forty targeted cities. Do you want your city's ed system remade in the image of New Orleans or DC? Keep your eyes peeled.
For a thorough back-ground on this hot new reform group, check out this piece by Thomas Ultican. I'll hit the highlights, and then we'll talk about the big scoop that Matt Barnum tossed out into a giant shitstorm of a new cycle this afternoon.
The City Fund is collecting a giant pot of money to help launch more "educational opportunity for all children." Specifically, they want to boost the portfolio model of ed reform on several cities. It's a bold choice, because not everybody thinks the portfolio model is a great idea, and that includes plenty of people in the reform camp. The portfolio model is basically an approach that throws together public, charter, and even private schools that want to play. All these schools get tossed into one super-district that is under the watchful eye of a centralized quality control system. Periodically the portfolio managers dump the losers and beef up the winners and let some more join the gamer. That's right- "portfolio" here is not borrowed from the world of art so much as the world of investment management.
Reformsters like the model because it replaces the locally elected school board with a Portfolio Manager, and it essentially puts the public schools on equal footing with charter schools. Free market fans think this is a great way to put everyone under the thumb of the invisible hand. But other Reformsters see the portfolio as working pretty much like a school district, which they already don't like. And centralizing all that oversight in a PM runs the risk of getting someone in that job who is not a big charter and choice fan. And, of course, the whole structure depends on the same old crappy test score system to identify good schools and bad schools.
Nevertheless, The City Fund is banking on that model. Who are the players making this bold choice? There are lots of familiar names here.
There's Neerav Kingsland, the Yale Law School grad who oversaw the conversion of New Orleans into a charter district (as you may have heard, there's some debate over just how successful that really was). Since then, he's become an education investment guru for various big money funds.
Kevin Huffman, who went straight from Teach For America to running the school system of Tennessee.
Chris Barbic (also TFA) was brought into Tennessee by Huffman to run the Achievement School District. The promise was that the bottom 5% of schools would become part of the top 25% in just five years. They did not even come close, and Barbic left the job having concluded that "achieving results in neighborhood schools is harder than in a choice environment."
David Harris previously led the Mind Trust in Indiana, a charter school incubator. And Ethan Gray is the head of Education Cities, another choice promoter with affection for the portfolio model.
Kicking in some big bucks are one of Kingsland's current employers, the Arnold Fund. Reed Hastings has also kicked in. The Netflix mogul, like Kingsland, has argued that elected school boards need to be eliminated so that schools can be run more like a business. The Hastings Fund and the omnipresent Gates Foundation have also kicked in. All the sources have not yet been revealed, but City Fund has raised a whopping 200 million. And as of yesterday afternoon, we have a clearer picture of what they have in mind.
While the rest of the country was watching the latest episode of "That Darn President," Matt Barnum was revealing that he'd gotten his hands on a City Fund presentation for investors. You should read the whole thing, but here are the broad strokes.
They want to spread the Denver, DC and New Orleans model. This is problematic; DC and New Orleans are not exactly synonymous with unqualified reformster success.
They reject many reformy standard ideas. "Very little work in education reform," Barnum says is the first line of the presentation.
But most extraordinary is their goal. Remember when Eli Broad announced he was going to take over half the LA school system? City Fund wants to move its charterized system into forty cities over the next ten years, grabbing 30-50% of the students in each city. "Our goal," Barnum quotes the presentation, "is to make the model normal."
Barnum lays out their ambitious timeline:
Between 2018 and 2021, it hopes to have success in at least 20 cities, affecting around one million students. Specifically, their goal is for 10 cities to have fully adopted the model, and 10 more to be making progress.
From 2022 on, the group hopes to influence “every major city in America,” growing by a couple of cities each year, the presentation says. (“If I had to rewrite that slide I would say, ‘if evidence and demand follows,’” Kingsland said in an interview. “We really aren’t going to expand if the evidence isn’t there.”)
How to do it? The City Fund plans to use speakers, blog posts, "partnering" with groups, and lots and lots of money-- as much as $15 to $20 million over the first three years.
The City Fund is a new organization (still without a web site) but they have the players and the money to become a major factor in ed erform in the forty targeted cities. Do you want your city's ed system remade in the image of New Orleans or DC? Keep your eyes peeled.
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