K12 Inc. Data Breach Puts thousands of students at risk

It's hard to believe school districts are still contracting with this horrible company.

K12 Inc. is the largest for-profit online alternative to actual public schooling. Trump's Ed Secretary Betsy DeVos touts the company and other for-profit cyber charter schools as a viable alternative to public schools. But her support for K12 Inc. and other private companies that run them, may have more to do with her and her husband's investment portfolio than with any positive results for students.

The company has been rocked with scandal and has long been under investigation for its shady business dealings. Here's the latest...

A K12 Inc. company database that included information for 19,000 students was available for anyone with an internet connection to see for at least a week, according to a report from Comparitech, which describes itself as a pro-consumer organization that offers security services.

It's not clear that anyone with ill intentions accessed the information during the data exposure, which lasted from June 23 until July 1.

The data came from the for-profit virtual education provider's A+nyWhere Learning System, a software package used by more than 500 school districts, according to K-12 Inc. Students' names, genders, birthdates, school names, and more were visible. In all, there were over 7 million records available. -- Digital Education

K12 Inc. says the breach is no big deal. Goes on about its business.

MEANWHILE...Ron Packard, the founder and former CEO of K12 Inc. who now runs Accel Charter Schools, is buying up closed public schools.

The Accel chain already has 41 schools in Ohio, including 14 in Cleveland, after starting business here just four years ago. Those include schools once run by the former White Hat, I Can and Mosaica networks, which Packard took over to launch Accel.

Bill Daley gets big money from school privatizer Finnegan

Paul Finnegan

Bill Daley, who recently jumped into the Chicago mayor's race just received $200,000 from Paul Finnegan, co-CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners investment firm (net worth $1.8B). Through his Finnegan Family Foundation, he's been a major underwriter of Chicago's privately-run charter schools and school privatizers.

He's been one of the biggest donors to the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS). He sits on the board of Teach for America, Inc. and has given millions to KIPP, Noble and other Chicago charter school networks. He's also a big backer of the union-busting group, Stand For Children.

Madison Dearborn had been among Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s most reliable campaign contributors for years. Three executives, including Finnegan, dumped $705,000 into Emanuel’s campaign in June, three months before Emanuel chose political retirement over the uphill battle for a third term.

Finnegan's support for Daley could spell trouble for candidate Paul Vallas the other big charter supporter in the race.

Billionaire charter backers clash. Broad vs. DeVos

Billionaires DeVos vs. Broad

Power philanthropist Eli Broad is urging senators to vote against confirming fellow billionaire and right-wing school "choice" advocate, Betsy DeVos.

The growing grassroots resistance to Trump's choice for Ed Secretary has split the charter/voucher movement and its wealthy backers. Pro-choice groups and think tanks have been thrown into a dither with some like BAIO's Howard Fuller endorsing DeVos while others, distance themselves for fear of being associated with Trump and the Alt-Right.

According to EdWeek:

In comparison to DeVos' philanthropic work, the Broads belong to a class of donors that prefer a much more managed approach to school choice, investing in charter school models that can scale up and measure their performance. They are strong supporters of charter management organizations—nonprofit networks of charter schools (think KIPP)—whose rapid growth has been propelled by the federal government and a handful of wealthy donors. 

Eli and his wife Edythe Broad are among some of the most influential backers of charter schools nationwide. Their foundation has given over $150 million to charter schools nationally. Of that, $79 million has gone to charters in Los Angeles. He's also used his money to influence local school board elections in favor of pro-choice, anti-union candidates.

He's also a big Democratic Party campaign donor who personally bankrolled many of Arne Duncan's ed initiatives and currently is underwriting Education Post, the pro-charter, anti-teacher union project run by Duncan's former assistant, Peter Cunningham.

But Broad has no real problems with Trump or the Republicans. In 2013 he was exposed for secretly funding a right-wing, anti-union group connected with the Koch Bros. He formerly helped run the failed giant AIG Corp., once the world's biggest insurer, into the ground.

DeVos and her husband Richard on the other hand, are free-market evangelical conservatives who favor vouchers and for-profit charters as opposed to, what she calls, "government schools". Her appointment has far less to do with her competencies or lack thereof as a department head, but rather as an ideologue and an important piece of the Trump/Bannon move to take over and demolish the institutions of government, including the Dept. of Education.

Broad's letter to McConnell and Schumer urging them to dump DeVos, came on the same day as two Republican senators announced that they plan to vote against DeVos' confirmation. Both Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska hail from rural states. Both raised concerns over DeVos' hyper-focus on school choice and her overall knowledge of public schools.

Only one more Republican needs to break with the party to sink DeVos' nomination, but GOP leaders say they are confident DeVos will ultimately be confirmed as the next secretary of education.

We'll soon see if Broad has enough juice to swing one-more Republican vote away from DeVos. I doubt it.

Billionaire pipeline investor Hamm is also a big charter school backer

Billionaire Hamm is Trump's main energy advisor. 

Billionaire Harold Hamm is the founder CEO of energy giant, Continental Resources. Continental is the largest leaseholder in the nation’s premier oil play, the Bakken Play of North Dakota and Montana. Based in Oklahoma City, the company also has a leading presence in the Anadarko Woodford Play of Oklahoma and the Red River Units Play of North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana.

Hamm recently announced to investors that oil it obtains via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale basin is destined for transport through Standing Rock Sioux territory via the Dakota Access pipeline.

MORE ABOUT HAMM... He's Donald Trump's energy adviser and a likely pick for U.S. Energy Sec. should Trump be elected.

As you might have already guessed, Philanthro-capitalist Hamm is also a big player in the world of school privatization and charter schools. His favorite seems to be ASTEC charters, the first charter in Oklahoma.

He's also appealing his divorce settlement which called for him paying out $1B to ex-wife Sue Ann. He claims a drop in oil prices negatively affected his finances. It seems that $18 billion doesn't go as far as it used to.

Will ASTEC be next on the chopping block?

Another 'shift' at the Gates Foundation. More mea culpas.

“I want the foundation to be the neutral broker...” -- Melinda Gates

I suppose this means that the power philanthropists are now projecting themselves as disinterested reform partners rather than who they are -- the most powerful, top-down, non-governmental (unelected) shapers of global social/economic policies in history. Not to mention, being a shell for tax avoidance for the world's richest man. 

Melinda's quote comes from yesterday's Washington Post, supposedly signaling some introspection and a strategic adjustment of Gates Foundation investments in Common Core. The changes come in the face of mounting criticisms of corporate-style school reform and of the foundation itself. Much of that criticism is coming from black community organizations, the opt-out movement, and from within oppositional forces within the Democratic Party as election time draws near.  

Some are anticipating a shift away from current reform policies with the election of Hillary Clinton. I'm not counting on it. 

It seems like every five years or so, faced with stinging criticism from those most affected by their reform interventions, Gates Foundation leaders go through similar self-adjustments while sticking to their same overall theory of change.They tweak their top-down reform funding strategies, admit they've bet on the wrong horse, leave old projects hanging, and promise next time, to be "better listeners". But how real is their self-crit? It's usually limited being "too impatient" or "too naive" about great amount of time it takes to bring the uninsightful, unwashed masses to buy into their interventions. 

And here's the latest:

CHICAGO — Melinda Gates said she and her husband, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, learned an important lesson from the fierce pushback against the Common Core State Standards in recent years. Not that they made the wrong bet when they poured hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting the education standards, but that such a massive initiative will not be successful unless teachers and parents believe in it.

“Community buy-in is huge,” Melinda Gates said in an interview here on Wednesday, adding that cultivating such support for big cultural shifts in education takes time. “It means that in some ways, you have to go more slowly.”

 That does not mean the foundation has any plans to back off the Common Core or its other priorities, including its long-held belief that improving teacher quality is the key to transforming public education. “I would say stay the course. We’re not even close to finished,” Gates said.

In the past, some within the philanthropy community have charged that Gates has effectively bought the silence of would-be critics. 

Seattle Times addressed the issue in 2008:

“The danger isn’t in what people do tell you—it’s in what they don’t,” departing foundation CEO Patty Stonesifer warned in the 2007 annual report.

In other words, Stonesifer says, the Gates Foundation needs honest feedback and criticism to help it figure out how best to improve the health of the world’s poor, boost food production in Africa and improve schools in the U.S.

Honesty can be hard to come by, though, when you’re handing out staggering amounts of cash. And some question how sincere the foundation is about listening to critics.

“They’re not really fostering tough debate,” said Pablo Eisenberg, a columnist for The Chronicle of Philanthropy and senior fellow at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. “They have not solicited and gone after people who will tell them the truth.”

Last year, Bill Gates himself acknowledged the foundation’s struggles in a speech at an event in Seattle, marking the 20th anniversary of its Global Health initiative. He said, that on the measure of “which of these inventions would go on over time to actually save lives, I have to say at the time I was pretty naive about how long that process would take”. 

Gates pushing Common Core in Honduras.

Faced with increasing criticism of their health investments in third-world countries, Gates copped to "underestimating the effort required to implement new technologies in countries without basic services, including clean water and reasonable medical care".

But that hasn't stopped the foundation from pushing Common Core in underdeveloped countries like Honduras. 

Naive? Really?

Remember when they ditched their $2B investment in high-school reform and small schools, claiming that their pet projects didn't produce fast enough results (standardized test scores)? Bill Gates' 2009 letter, which was posed as a self-critical evaluation, actually blamed the Gates-funded schools themselves for not being "radical" enough and indirectly, the teacher unions for not being faithful to his top-down model. 

These tended to be the schools that did not take radical steps to change the culture, such as allowing the principal to pick the team of teachers or change the curriculum. We had less success trying to change an existing school than helping to create a new school.

The letter marked the foundation's shift away from public school reform to a one-track strategy of underwriting privately-run charters and the management organizations that run them. It's a strategy that ultimately helped widened educational inequality and accelerated school re-segregation.

After that it was on to "teacher quality" and the pushing teacher evals based mainly on test scores. But then...

The foundation... publicly acknowledged pitfalls in overemphasizing test scores and argues that while test scores should play a role in teacher evaluations, those evaluations must also give teachers the feedback they need to improve through classroom observations, student surveys or other subjective methods.

It seems that now the foundation is trying to adapt it's investment strategies to the new reform environment under the new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) which shifts more decision-making power from the federal level, back to the states. Now, along with pouring dollars into national Common Core efforts and placing foundation people inside the D.O.E., Gates will have to push reform interventions state by state making it that much tougher to gain quick results.

Gates said the foundation also will work to persuade states to invest in databases that gather information about students, tracking their backgrounds, experiences and performance from preschool to college and career.

But Gates self-critique misses the mark. It's not about you going more slowly so that school community folks can finally get it. It's not about teachers and parents "believing" in Gates' initiatives. Gates-ism is not a religion. Neither is it about getting a "buy-in" for reform products -- in this case the aforementioned "big cultural shift". BTW, the term buy-in should be banished forever from reform lexicon along with every other cliche that sees reform as a commodity.

But are they betting on the right horse?

Not buying-in is Black Lives Matter

This from EdWeek:

Organized under the Movement for Black Lives, the agenda also targets some of the most powerful philanthropic backers of the charter school sector—the Walton Family Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—for bankrolling what it calls "an international education privatization agenda".

According to WaPo:

Last week, the Movement for Black Lives — a coalition of dozens of black-led organizations, including the Black Lives Matter Network — released a policy platform that decried the Gates Foundation as part of a “systematic attack” on public schools that “strips Black people of the right to self-determine the kind of education their children receive.” It called for an effort to invest in, not close, struggling schools serving black children, and it accused education policymakers of listening to unelected philanthropists instead of students, teachers and parents.

That critique will be a tough one for Gates to tweak.

For more background, take a look at this WaPo piece by Lindsey Layton from 2014: "How Bill Gates pulled off the swift Common Core revolution." Here my favorite line from Layton's piece...

Gates grew irritated in the interview when the political backlash against the standards was mentioned. “These are not political things,” he said. “These are where people are trying to apply expertise to say, ‘Is this a way of making education better?’ ”

The one thing you don't want to do is get this man "irritated".

UNO corruption just the 'tip of the iceberg'. Billions lost to waste, fraud and corruption annually in privately-run charters

UNO boss Juan Rangel was Rahm Emanuel's campaign chairman in 2011.  

Chicago's $80-million/year UNO charter scandal, adds significantly to the estimated $200 million which will be lost this year alone to charter school waste, fraud, and corruption. That estimate is only "the tip of the iceberg" according to a report issued last April, by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools. It based on a study of only about one-third of the states with charter schools.

According to the report:

The number of instances of serious fraud uncovered by whistleblowers, reporters, and investigations suggests that the fraud problem extends well beyond the cases we know about. According to standard forensic auditing methodologies, the deficiencies in charter oversight throughout the country suggest that federal, state, and local governments stand to lose more than $1.4 billion in 2015.

In 2014, the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged UNO Charter School Network with defrauding investors in a $37.5 million bond offering for school construction by making materially misleading statements about transactions that presented a conflict of interest. According to the SEC’s complaint, UNO failed to notify the state of two construction contracts totaling $12.9 million with the brothers of one of UNO’s top executives. Additionally, the charter school operator failed to notify bond investors that the state could take the loan that the bond was assured with back for the non-disclosure of the contracts.

Call it the charter corruption tax. We all pay it every year and it's money taken right out of our public school classrooms.

President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2016 includes $375 million specifically for charter schools (a 48% increase over last year’s actual budget).

Wizzards owner Leonsis underwrites D.C. charters. Then gets a new practice arena from taxpayers.

"...we in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we're talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, we talking about practice." -- Alan Iverson

D.C. billionaire venture capitalist/philanthropist Ted Leonsis helps bankroll all of the district's privately-run charter schools through his Venture Philanthropy Partners. That includes more than $5.5 million to KIPP DC. But there's a catch to his generosity. 

You see, Leonsis has an interesting philosophy. He believes that instead of paying taxes on his investment profits, taxpayers ought to pay him. This year the payment comes in the form of a new $55 million basketball practice arena for his Washington Wizzards. Taxpayers are picking up most of the cost. 

According to CSN:

The project will cost an estimated $55 million... The Wizards' lease with the city is for 19 years and involves a $23 million investment from the government... Events D.C. [the city's official convention and sports authority] is contributing about half of the total cost for construction.

The latest on D.C. charters... The attorney general has filed two lawsuits alleging that D.C. charter school leaders used for-profit companies to divert millions of taxpayer dollars into their own pockets. The D.C. Public Charter School Board, which oversees all city charter schools, has no legal right to examine the books and records of those private companies, and says it therefore has little ability to monitor how those dollars are spent. -- Washington Post

As if KIPP DC needed the $$$... They just received another $4.2 million gift this week, from Joel Smilow, the president and chief executive of Playtex Products. Obvious connection there.

Bye bye low-income housing! https://t.co/vVgIXF6ljl

— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) September 16, 2015

Svigos buys another closed Chicago school

Svigos Assets bought Peabody. Put a charter in it. 

After they sat as empty blights on the community for nearly three years, the sell-off of closed CPS neighborhood schools has begun in earnest. Board members on Wednesday approved the sale of three vacant schools that were shuttered in 2013, providing "a small windfall of cash for its struggling budget".

Liza Balistreri is in charge of real estate at Chicago Public Schools and is running the sales of Near North Elementary in Noble Square, Overton Elementary in Bronzeville, and Von Humboldt Elementary in Humboldt Park.

Among the developers looking to make a profit on CPS real estate is Svigos Asset Management Corp. based in suburban Buffalo Grove. Svigos specializes in developing and managing commercial and residential properties, and owns apartment buildings in Lakeview, Logan Square and Albany Park.

Svigos is buying Near North for $5.1 million and plans to turn the school into "residential and commercial development". His company previously purchased the old Peabody Elementary for $3.5 million in 2014 only to turn around and sell space back to Rowe Charter School. Previously, district officials had said no closed school would be used as a charter school. The former Peabody was also developed as market-rate housing.

Paul Svigos has been a regular campaign contributor to Rahm Emanuel. The well-connected Svigos family has also made big contributions to the Daley's and other Democratic Party candidates.

Svigos was a former top Merrill Lynch stockbroker who the firm fired in October 1992. He hasn't been allowed to practice brokering since. But he recently won a huge settlement in his court battle with Lynch over the firing.

Svigos also runs the Fresh Farms grocery chain.

Charter billionaires buy L.A. school board election

Charter billionaires Walton, Hastings, Bloomberg & Broad buy school board election in L.A. 

"We've sunk to a level where there is no viable discourse and no moral conscience when it comes to public education and control of the school board." -- LAUSD board member Steve Zimmer

It's happened again. A PAC of billionaire charter patrons spent millions and virtually bought a school board election. This time in L.A. According to the L.A. Times,

Contributors to PACs that took part in the campaigns on behalf of charter supporters included Netflix founder Reed Hastings, $1.5million (to the charter group only); former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, $550,000; Walmart heir Jim Walton, $375,000; and philanthropist Eli Broad, $205,000.

The victory of charter school co-founder Ref Rodriguez over progressive Bennett Kayser, gave charter privateers the seat they needed to open up the district to what they hope will be unfettered charter expansion. Rodriquez also had the backing of anti-union groups like Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst. His endorsement list includes the operators of charters that L.A. Unified tried to close because of low test scores and other problems. The charters appealed to other agencies and were able to remain open. No district in the nation has more charters, or more students enrolled in them, than L.A.

But despite spending millions on L.A. board campaign, they fell short of a clean sweep. In the west San Fernando Valley, incumbent Tamar Galatzan, who had been a close ally of disgraced former Supt. John Deasy and had the support of charter advocates and other well-funded groups, lost to challenger Scott Schmerelson, an ally of the teachers union.

Adding charter schools to their investment portfolios

There's a couple of good Schooling in Ownership Society pieces in the media today. The first comes from my favorite education writer, Valerie Strauss (The Big Business of Charter Schools) in her Answer Sheet column, in today's Washington Post. 

Valerie Strauss

She has a link to one of my favorite headlines of all time at The Motley Fool investment blog. 

From Waterparks to Charter Schools, EPR Properties Has You Covered

 Are you looking to invest in giant water slides or movie theaters? How about charter schools and wineries? EPR Properties (NYSE: EPR  ) owns properties in all of these businesses and more.

Valerie helps make my case that public education has been a profitable business for the charter profiteers at the expense of students, families, communities and taxpayers.

When I first offered up that notion a decade ago, I was ridiculed by the very profiteers themselves.

"Trying to make a killing in the charter school business"?! Yeah, that's right, the charter school business is so profitable that I'm telling all my friends in the hedge fund business that they're in the wrong business. My message: "If you really want to make a lot of money, start a charter school!" LOL! -- Whitney Tilson 

LOL! indeed. In 2007, hedge-funder Tilson chided me for implying that there was a profit to be made in the charter school market while he and his group DFER were pursuing exactly that course.

Then there's the story of former football great, "Neon Deion" Sanders who tried to make a killing in the charter school business with Prime Prep Charter only to fail, fall into disrepute, and disgrace the once viable brand he worked so hard to create. Prime Prep was recently named by non-profit Children at Risk as the worst academic institution in North Texas. Don't miss this excellent piece (The Miseducation Of Deion Sanders) on his fall from grace, by Caleb Hannan at DeadSpin.

Rangel interview paints clearest picture yet of UNO and their machine charter school patrons

Chicago Magazine ran an interview this week with UNO's “Patron 2” Juan Rangel. It paints the clearest picture yet of the corrupt political sewer that is Chicago's system of privately-run charter schools.

Meanwhile, the school network was handing out its own contracts to more familiar names. Monterrey Security, a firm that was previously co-owned by Danny Solis’s brother Santiago, won a $75,000 security contract. Phil Mullins’s wife, Mary Quinn, came away with an HR contract; so did firms that had contributed to Burke and Madigan. Says an UNO insider who spoke on the condition of anonymity: “There was a point where I began to wonder, Is it about the schools? Or are the schools the means to another end?”

Former schools CEO Huberman bellies up to the Chicago charter feeding trough

You might remember Ron Huberman. He was the former CTA chief bureaucrat  who ran the system into the ground and who then replaced Arne Duncan as Chicago schools CEO (why not?) under Mayor Daley and went down aboard Daley's sinking ship.

He is notable for little else besides his "data-driven" reforms -- like claiming he could predict in advance, which CPS kids would likely be murdered and which ones wouldn't. He was also the guy who cut foreign language programs (they weren't on the test) and who called in the police to bust the parent protests to save Whittier School's field house.

Most importantly, Huberman was a dear friend of the city's aspiring privately-run charter networks, like UNO, Noble Street, and Chicago International. And after his dismal tenure at CPS, things began looking up for Huberman. He was able to parlay his school system connections and knowledge of procuring insider contracts into an executive position at Chicago Growth Partners and Prairie Capital. Then he started his own firm, and began reaching for some payback in the form of contracts from some of the same government-financed charter-school operators he championed as Daley’s schools chief.

According to today's Sun-Times:

Huberman, who is a member of Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner’s transition team, founded TeacherMatch LLC in 2011.

The company has since gotten contracts worth a total of more than $200,000 from two of the largest Chicago Public Schools-funded charter operators — the Noble Network of Charter Schools and the United Neighborhood Organization’s charter network — and also has gotten work from some schools in the Chicago International Charter Schools network.

TeacherMatch, which provides software to help schools screen job applicants, reported total revenues in 2013 of more than $286,000, according to school contracting records.
That same year, it got an infusion of nearly $1.9 million from investors, the records show — a sign of confidence in its future growth.

Huberman continues to serve as the company’s executive chairman, though records list its primary owner as Prairie Capital, the Chicago private-equity firm where Huberman has been a top executive since 2011.

In 2013, Huberman lobbied UNO’s then-CEO Juan Rangel and other officials, who say they had reached a “preliminary agreement” with TeacherMatch. But Rangel quit in December 2013 amid a scandal prompted by Sun-Times reports on millions of dollars in government-funded deals given by UNO to two brothers of Rangel’s top aide.

Asked how its charter network ended up doing business with TeacherMatch, an UNO official said, “It is not known who initiated those conversations.” Noble officials and Rangel declined to comment.

Huberman says, Charters “help provide options for families". He might have added the words, "especially mine".

Dope farming, a new source of revenue for charter schools?

John Loevy

Let me begin by saying that I have long favored the total and complete legalization of marijuana. I see it as a a potentially huge source of public revenue and a way to radically decrease the prison population. Sales revenues could help restore state dollars to the pension fund which has been badly depleted through years of the state neglect. All this, not to mention removing a part of the market fueling international drug wars which have killed hundreds of thousands.

But as legalization becomes a reality in several states, as always, the devil's in the details. In Illinois, the prospect of even partial legalization for medicinal purposes has opened up a new gold rush of venture capitalists, political cronies, profiteers and other assorted quick-buck hustlers.

Today's Sun-Times reports that attorney Jon Loevy hopes to get his plan approved to open a marijuana farm downstate. Loevy pitch is that he's different that the other dope privateers in that he's getting into the business, not to make a buck, but to support education.... Sorry, it took me a minute to stop laughing and climb back onto my chair.

“Illinois has created a real opportunity for profits, and a lot of the groups chasing this are hedge funds and private equity firms trying to get rich,” Loevy said. “We see this as an opportunity to reroute millions of dollars to education in Illinois when it’s really needed.”

By supporting education, Loevy means that instead of paying taxes, he may funnel a chunk of his tax-exempt profits into the state's networks of privately-run charter schools which he claims will,  "improve educational quality.”

Loevy’s partners include Michael Kanovitz, Loevy’s partner at the Loevy & Loevy law firm, and Rich Silverstein, a real estate developer. Following the lead of the privatized prison industry, they plan to open a $5 million to $7 million, 20,000-square-foot medical marijuana farm in Edgewood, a town of just over 400 people in Effingham County.

A trustee in Edgewood, Ervin Yocum, said the town is looking at the proposal as if it were a regular business. “We need the jobs down here,” said Yocum, who owns the plot of land the cultivation center would be on and would sell it to the group if they get the state license. “It’s a medicine.”

Yes, it's a medicine and will ultimately be part of big pharma. But the thought of public schools, or even  privately-run charters, being dependent for funding on the good will and political orientation of drug privateers is antithetical to democratic education.

If Loevy and his investors are allowed to grow marijuana in Edgewood, there needs to be strict control over conditions and pay for labor on their farm and their profits should be taxed appropriately with funding for education and other public needs being directed by public decision making.

Handing all York, PA schools over to right-wing charter privateer

KYLE STOKES / STATEIMPACT INDIANA

Charter Schools USA president and CEO Jon Hage 

Florida-based for-profit, Charter Schools USA is moving on poverty-stricken York, PA and now threatens a takeover that would turn the entire school district into privately-run charters.

The York School Board vote on charterizing all district schools was tabled yesterday until December 17th in the face of parent and community protests. Many have threatened to boycott the district if the vote passed.

According to ABC27 News,

While many students who spoke at the meeting focused on losing the programs they love, the harsh reality of the situation exists in its own back story . Struggling test scores and dwindling finances forced the district into state receivership more than two years ago. Back then the state agreed to an internal recovery plan and standards that were not met since then. 

Without improvement and lacking a contract agreement with the state teacher's union, becoming the first city in Pennsylvania without traditional public schools has become a real possibility in the past several months. 

Charter Schools USA is based in Ft. Lauderdale and is one of the biggest for-profit operators. It's founder and CEO, Jon Hage comes out of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch Bros., as well as the  Foundation for Florida Future, another conservative group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Charter Schools USA currently generates revenue of $285 million, operating 70 schools across the country and is also affiliated with Chicago charter operators Chicago International Charter Schools.

Everywhere CSUSA has gone, the company has left a trail of conflict and law suits. More here.

The Indy Star reported in July that troubles are emerging just two years after the Indiana State Board of Education — spurred on by then-Superintendent Tony Bennett — turned four persistently low-achieving Indianapolis Public Schools and one in Gary over to independent operators including Hage's CSUSA's,

Hage’s Charter School USA adventure into Indiana hasn’t gone well from the start, according to Florida-based blogger, Scathing Purple Musings.

York, PA parents protest charter takeover. 

The three schools received an “F” in their first year of operation,  prompting Sherry Hage to outrageously claim that “while we may have received an ‘F,’ our schools are most definitely not failing any longer.” Moreover, a December 2012 story reported that the Hage’s received $6 million more than they should have from then Superintendent of Public Education Tony Bennett. Just six month after the Hage’s deal with Bennett for Charter Schools USA was revealed to have no profit limits nor minimum classroom expenditure levels, Red Apple Development, the real estate development arm of Charter Schools USA donated $5000 to Bennett’s campaign.

Hage's company was sued by Principal Katherine Murphy of the Aventura City of Excellence School and awarded $155 million in damages by a jury for wrongful termination, only to have Judge Rosa Rodriguez reversed the Jury's verdict, finding in favor of Aventura and CSUSA.

The Destabilizing Affect of Charter School Closings

"A lot of people in the school choice movement like the idea of accountability, but when accountability hits home, it's really hard to maintain your focus on results," said Brandon S. Brown, the director of charter schools for the Indianapolis mayor's office. "It's the authorizer's responsibility to hold an absolute bar for performance, which means that, sometimes, low-performing schools will not continue to operate." -- EdWeek

Privately-run charter school networks try and operate on a corporate business model, even though they are supposedly public entities, supported with public funds and accountable to public oversight. While their original charge was one of collaborating with their public school cousins to drive innovation and school improvement, their business model is one that puts competition ahead of collaboration and market measures ahead of public good.

In order to attract both public and private investment, charter operators need to manipulate competitive market measures, such as test scores and other comparative indicators of school success to show that they are supposedly outperforming, not only public schools, but competing charter chains as well. This high-stakes competitive drive has often led to a lack of transparency, test cheatingas well as cooking the books and other forms of financial mismanagement.

Such market competition requires a continuous process of weeding out "low performers" in order to boost average measurable outcomes, gathered in various research studies and performed by willing academic or private research organizations. In the process, overseen by so-called authorizers,  thousands of children's and families' lives are disrupted as schools are closed and teachers fired (without due process) and new ones open. These children and families are often the ones most in need of stability. Teachers and students (overwhelmingly poor and students of color) become the flotsam and jetsam of charter school failure.

In 2011, conservative pro-charter Center for Education Reform reported: " Of the approximately 6,700 charter schools that have ever opened across the United States, 1,036 have closed since 1992."

It's a system that operates much like giant retailers Wal Mart, Target and Starbucks, which turn over their entire work force on average, nearly every six months. 

Edweek reports that in cities like Indianapolis, "failing charters closing abruptly, blindsiding parents and sending them scrambling to find new schools" has become a major problem.

The charter sector has long stood by the premise that if the independently run public schools fail to perform, they are shut down—an idea often referred to as the "charter bargain." But as the movement matures, it increasingly faces the messy reality of closing schools—a situation that could become more common.

In Ohio, according to the report, when the time between the announcement of a charter closing and the actual shutdown stretches the full academic year, it is referred to as a "zombie year." Teachers and administrators learn as early as September that their school—as well as their jobs—will cease to exist come May or June. That situation is generally a product of Ohio's closure law, which mandates the automatic shutdown of the state's poorest-performing charter schools, as well as the timing for when student-assessment data gets released.

The most telling piece in the charter school-closing puzzle is, that despite all the intentional disruption and churn, the great majority of privately-run charters fail to out-perform traditional public schools on every important measure.

A similar version of this commentary is cross-posted at Mike Klonsky's Small Talk blog. http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2014/11/charter-school-churn-leaves-students.html

Tri-Star charter hustlers banned in N.J., welcomed with open arms in Florida

Gallon, Kemp and Kelly in 2010 court hearing where they are banned from operating charters in N.J.

Former Plainfield superintendent and current charter school hustler Steve Gallon III's company, Tri-Star Leadership has been banned in the state of New Jersey. That in itself is no easy task to accomplish in the state where Gov. Christie has never met a corrupt charter operator he didn't adore. But not to worry for old Steve. Five months later, he and his company were welcomed with open arms in Florida where anyone with a pulse, no matter how corrupt or incompetent, can operate a chain of charter schools and receive millions in support from crony-corporatist Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott's regime.

In May 2010, Gallon was arrested and charged with hiring unqualified friends Angela Kemp and Lalelei Kelly and then lying about their residences so their children could attend schools outside their district. The charges brought against Gallon, Kemp and Kelly were dropped in January 2011 after the three agreed to serve probation and to never work in the New Jersey public school system again.

Just over a year after Gallon was hired to operate schools in South Florida, he rehired Kelly to work as a consultant and then hired Kemp to be the principal at Excel Leadership Academy in Palm Beach County.

Gallon then took up where he left off in N.J., making payroll decisions without prior authorization from the charter schools’ governing boards, drawing rebukes from the schools’ financial consultants. He hired a $40,000-a-year consultant who listed her residence as a Georgia home owned by Gallon. He launched a business venture with one of the volunteer board members responsible for overseeing Gallon’s work for the charter schools. The venture was later deemed a conflict of interest by Miami-Dade school district investigators. At least three consultants contracted by the governing boards warned their bosses of inappropriate actions under Gallon, records show. Yet Gallon stayed on as those who complained quit — or were fired.

Excel Leadership Academy in Palm Beach

Success Leadership Academy in Ft. Lauderdale and Excel Leadership Academy in West Palm Beach closed in the summer of 2013. Stellar Leadership Academy in Miami faced financial struggles but rebounded and continues to employ Gallon’s company. All three high schools for at-risk students were already reeling when their boards hired Gallon. The schools opened in 2005 under a private management company that selected the original board members and handled all school operations, from real estate and payroll to busing and curriculum. That company, White Hat Management, the most corrupt of a host of Ohio-based charter management companies, had operated a number of charter schools throughout Florida until they began pulling out of the state in 2011.

According to the Sun-Sentinel:

State statutes governing the conduct of public officials do not apply to the private operators that often gain power at charter schools, even though public money is at stake.
Both traditional public schools and charter schools receive public dollars based on their enrollment, and don’t charge tuition. Administrators at traditional public schools are accountable for every penny spent. But the private companies hired by many charter school governing boards don’t have to open their books.

And so it goes.

Zuckerberg's Latest 'Gift'

Fred Klonsky

Vast private donations have brought public dollars with them, giving America’s wealthiest people power over the  public agenda that some don’t think is healthy. -- Washington Post

I was interviewed this morning by CSM reporter Stacy Teicher Khadaroo about FB founder Mark Zuckerberg's latest $120M "gift" to San Francisco Bay Area Schools. What is it about the Billionaire Boys Club? They just can't seem to keep their grubby mitts off of public education. I wish they would stick to buying basketball teams.

Zuckerberg, the world’s 21st richest person, has a net worth that Forbes pegs at $28 billion. He claims that his $100M "donation" to Newark's public schools schools raised graduation rates by 10%. What horsecrap!
Where's the evidence?

We still don't even know exactly how that money was spent except that it was used to create a couple of new privately-run charter schools and that about a third of it was used to pay political and educational consultants and contractors through a slush fund set up by former mayor Corey Booker and Gov. Christie and provided a nice tax haven for MZ.

Maybe with Booker gone, new Mayor Ras Baraka can get to the bottom of it.

I told Khadoroo how Zuckerberg's 2010 "gift" helped set the tone for the continuing national erosion of public space and public decision making. I told her how the ACLU had to file a suit in 2011 to help local parents get records on how the money was spent. I told her how all over the country, power philanthropists are using gifts to resource-starved school systems, and in return, they reserve the right to effectively set education policy and funnel money to politically-connected consultants and for-profit programs.

I also told her to read our book on the topic. I hope she gets it.

IL Senate votes to kill Charter Commission. Bad news for Gülen charters?

Fethullah Gülen

The IL Senate voted to abolish the State Charter School Commission which had the power to override school district decisions to reject charter applications. The bill to abolish was sponsored by Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood and passed the Senate 34-22. It now goes back to the House for possible action next week.

This watered-down version of the bill still leaves rejected charter operators a way into to local school districts. It would shift the Commission's authority to a newly created board to be impaneled by Gov. Quinn appointed Supt. Christopher Koch, with final decisions on rejected charter-school applications resting with the State Board of Education.

The Commission seems to have crossed the line when it overrode a CPS Board vote and cleared Des Plaines-based Concept Schools to open two new charter campuses in Chicago. The Sun-Times reported in December that Turkish billionaire and political intriguer Fethullah Gülen, who essentially owns Concept Schools and runs the biggest network of privately-run charters in the U.S., hosted House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) and many other Illinois lawmakers on trips to Turkey in recent years.

And records show the state charter commission’s Springfield lobbyist is Liz Brown-Reeves  —  a former Madigan aide who accompanied lawmakers on their trip to Turkey in 2012. The Commission also received big funding from Walton and other private, pro-charter foundations.

I suspect this move is an attempt to clean up the the Gülen connection and create a buffer between the corrupt charter operation, Madigan and Gov. Quinn. Nevertheless, a win for school districts and the teacher unions who stood in opposition to the Commission. We'll see what happens in the House.

Wal Mart special on charter schools

New York Times education writer, Mokoto Rich reveals the extent to which the billionaire Walton Family underwrites the entire national charter school enterprise. For example, in Washington D.C....

In effect, Walton has subsidized an entire charter school system in the nation’s capital, helping to fuel enrollment growth so that close to half of all public school students in the city now attend charters, which receive taxpayer dollars but are privately operated.

Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton gave $1.7 million to a Washington D.C. charter schools initiative alongside fellow billionaires Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer.

The Waltons are right up there with Gates and Broad.

 Walton’s investments here are a microcosm of its spending across the country. The foundation has awarded more than $1 billion in grants nationally to educational efforts since 2000, making it one of the largest private contributors to education in the country. It is one of a handful of foundations with strong interests in education, including those belonging to Bill and Melinda Gates of Microsoft; Eli Broad, a Los Angeles insurance billionaire; and Susan and Michael Dell, who made their money in computers. The groups have many overlapping interests, but analysts often describe Walton as following a distinct ideological path.

According to Rich, they are also the money behind many of the right-wing think tanks like the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, as well as ALEC.

AND...Walton money also played a role in a recent attacks on N.Y. Mayor Bill de Blasio after he resisted the charter operator's rent-free incursions into public school buildings.

Charters in the 'Era of Accountability'

More than $900 million in state and local tax dollars, some of it approved by local voters, will be transferred this school year from local schools to nonprofit, publicly funded Ohio charter schools that did not exist 20 years ago. Who is watching how all of that money is spent? -- Columbus Dispatch

I'm just reading one of those tracts, attacking the idea of elected school boards, from a right-wing think tank, the Fordham Institute. The tract refers to this as "the era of accountability" and in this particular report uses the word accountability no less than 14 times or about twice per page. Another of Fordham's anti-school board screeds is actually called: Governance in the Accountability Era.

Coming from them, that phrase always makes me laugh. Why? Because the think tank also doubles up as as a school voucher proponent and one of the main sponsors of privately-run charter schools in the state of Ohio. And as I have pointed out before, here, here, and here, Ohio is the state with arguably the worst charters in the nation and the ones with the least public accountability. The Institute itself, has even referred to Ohio charters as "a laughing stock". And while Fordham talks a lot about Public accountability & private-school choice, they have also provided cover for some of the worst operators in the state, like White Hat's David Brennan. 

Part of the problem is that there's no school board oversight of privately run charters and the think-tankers want to keep it that way.

SEE HOW THEY RUN...Watch how operator Jim Sinclair of Lorain Preparatory Academy of Excellence, practically goes underground when a reporter tries to find out some basic information about his school. And...

That was not out of the ordinary in calls to nearly 300 Ohio charter schools — funded with state and local tax dollars and, by law, subject to the same transparency rules as traditional schools. The calls were made as part of a school-choice project by the Akron Beacon Journal and the News­Outlet, a consortium of journalism programs at Youngstown State University, the University of Akron and Cuyahoga Community College.  

Tea-Party Gov. John Kasich, speaking at the February meeting of the Ohio Newspaper Association, responded to a Beacon Journal editor’s question about inability to obtain basic information from charter schools.

“We’ll work with you any way we can. I’m not going to hide from you,” Kasich said. “In terms of this specific information, where you can’t get anything about these charters, we have to dig into that."

But why do we have to "dig", Governor? Isn't this the era of accountability?