Pearson profits while parents protest N.Y. test madness

PARENTS UNITED From left, Lori Chajet, Abby Subak and Martha Foote outside Public School 321 in Brooklyn.

The New York Times reports today that many N.Y. parents are opting out of field testing the state's new round of standardized tests related to the Common Core standards.

Brooklyn parent Lori Chajet says:

“I want my school to use tests to help instruction, to help find out if kids don’t know fractions. I don’t want my child to feel like her score will decide if her teacher has a job or not.”

NUY says the tests are not cheap: Pearson, the company that creates the standardized exams and the field tests, charged the state about $7 million for testing services for the 2012 calendar year — 30 percent of that budget went toward field testing.

A group of parents talked about their concerns on the sidelines of soccer fields and during dance classes. And they came together in groups like Parent Voices, New York.

Jen Nessel leads the newly formed Community Action Committee of the P.A. at the East Village Community School in Manhattan. The group came together after the field tests in June, when nearly all parents in the school signed a letter, delivered to the principal, stating that they would decline to have their children take the test.

Officials said they weren’t concerned that large numbers of children would skip the field tests this month. “The numbers of the people who were boycotting in June were small,” Ms. Lopatin, of the city Education Department, said. But activists say that the boycott is just one step in changing the way schools approach testing and how parents and families fit into the conversation.

Foreign investment pouring in for charter schools

Reuters reports that wealthy individuals from as far away as China, Nigeria, Russia and Australia are spending tens of millions of dollars to build classrooms, libraries, basketball courts and science labs for American charter schools.

In Buffalo, New York, foreign funds paid for the Health Sciences Charter School to renovate a 19th-century orphanage into modern classrooms and computer labs. In Florence, Arizona, overseas investment is expected to finance a sixth campus for the booming chain of American Leadership Academy charter schools. And in Florida, state business development officials say foreign investment in charter schools is poised to triple next year, to $90 million.

It turns out that under a federal program known as EB-5, wealthy foreigners can in effect buy U.S. immigration visas for themselves and their families by investing at least $500,000 in certain development projects. In the past two decades, much of the investment has gone into commercial real-estate projects, like luxury hotels, ski resorts and even gas stations.

Lately, however, enterprising brokers have seen a golden opportunity to match cash-starved charter schools with cash-flush foreigners in investment deals that benefit both.

Foreign aid pouring into my Chicago neighborhood

Workmen put finishing touches on our new neighborhood soccer field built with foreign aid.

Corporations have found a safe tax haven here in Chicago and the State of Illinois. So much so that teacher retirement funds are being threatened, mental health clinics are being shuttered along with a hundred neighborhood schools, due mainly to lack of revenue. Under Rahm Emanuel's regime, Chicago is being turned into a beggar city which now operates on the charity and benevolence of the mayor's wealthy patrons and power philanthropists along with foreign aid. 

The latest example:  Down the street from a closed mental health clinic in my Logan Square neighborhood, a new astro-turf soccer field is under construction thanks to foreign aid from the oil-wealthy United Arab Emirates, the benevolence of British soccer moguls, and the Pritzkers, the billionaire union-busting family that refuses to pay their Hyatt Hotel workers a living wage.

“We have a philosophy of giving back to the community — America is a great, up-and-coming soccer market, but first we want to give back,” said Gary Hopkins, head of Manchester City’s international development team in the United States. He said that Manchester City will be providing three years of soccer programming, including training and bringing in coaches to work with kids interested in the game.

Hopkins is also author of Star Spangled Soccer: Selling, Marketing and Management of Soccer in the USA and says that interest in soccer among Americans took off after Chicago hosted the 1994 World Cup. -- Chicago Sun-Times

A non-productive prison-based economy

“With those razor blades on that fence, they’d bleed to death before they’d get out of this field,” Hebeler said.

In Illinois, when pols talk about "job creation" they probably aren't talking about capital investment in manufacturing. Big corporate investors would rather do that in other countries where labor is cheap and regulations few. Instead, the only hope for jobs in communities like Thompson, is that the feds will come in with hundreds of millions of dollars -- not for infrastructure repair, schools, or anything productive -- but for more prisons. 

This helps explain the school-to-prison pipeline. 

Latest corporate reform buzz words -- 'Portfolio Management'

The term “portfolio management” is borrowed from Wall Street, where the idea is to buy winning stocks and sell losers. -- The Notebook

It was originally an idea of early school reformers in New York and other cities, as a way to make innovative inroads into large, bureaucratically run school districts piece by piece. But like so many good reform ideas, the notion of downsizing and decentralizing has been largely taken over by today's corporate reformers bent on school privatization.

The latest plan cooked up by corporate reformers is called, portfolio management. That's where a collection of public schools are handed over to outside providers like universities or private management companies -- even the Catholic Church -- to run. Often these school are then turned into charter schools to modify or eliminate union protections completely, close schools and fire teachers in mass.

Philadelphia has now become the national model for this portfolio management approach. According to The Notebook:

The School District of Philadelphia now touts its expanding mix of traditional and charter schools as well as its Renaissance Schools – neighborhood schools run by charter management companies. The idea is to create a portfolio of school choices for parents. That array of options will grow even bigger as envisioned by the Philadelphia Great Schools Compact, which is promoting collaboration to improve all the public, charter, private, and Catholic schools in the city. Toward that end, the Philadelphia School Partnership has raised $50 million – half its goal – to fund promising programs.

Like most of these top-down reform plans, there is little mention of anything having to do with real school improvement, teaching and learning, teacher support and development, smaller schools or class sizes.

Here's Diane Ravitch's fake enthusiasm for the Philly plan:

Sign me up! 

The School Reform Commission with the guidance of its advisor the Boston Consulting Group (big proponent of privatization without unions and parent to Bain) thinks that if it can create a flexible workforce with performance pay and no job protections, this will attract better teachers.

This reader responds:
Oh boy, low pay and no protection of any kind, whatsoever. Sign me up. What is the thought process behind “better teachers without a union”? Do they truly believe those Gates funded teacher groups that claim they don’t need a union or a contract?  

The Philly reform plan is also part of an attempt to remove the district from  a 39-year old desegregation lawsuit. That suit, filed by the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission, charged that Philadelphia schools were unlawfully segregated by race and denied minority students educational opportunities equal to white students. The parties agreed to end the lawsuit in July and make the portfolio management plan, including school closures and charters, a substitute for real substantial desegregation.

Kaiser's "F" bomb on Latino leaders reveals his ties to DeVos family

Michael Kaiser

Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center, responded to criticism of the Center's anti-Latino bias by telling National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts Chairman Felix Sanchez to "go fuck yourself." While Kaiser, who fancies himself a Kennedy liberal, was forced to apologize, he remains atop the prestigious, heavily endowed, cultural awards group.

But a closer look at the Center's patrons reveals Kaiser's close ties to extreme right-wing billionaires like the Dick and Betsy DeVos who donated $22.5 million to the Center in 2010. It was this gift which allowed Kaiser to remain part of the center's leadership structure through 2017, directing what will be named the DeVos Institute of Arts Management. Kaiser will assume that role in late 2014, after his contract extension is completed.

Betsy DeVos said she was impressed by how Kaiser talked about "how we invest millions of dollars in the arts, and training artists, but how we invest very little in training the leaders who hire the artists and run the organizations. We want to help develop human capital and leverage that capital to the greatest extent possible."  

If you follow this blog regularly, you already know about the DeVos family. They are a powerful force behind school vouchers and privately-managed charter schools and corporate-style education "reform." They also finance the far-right Family Research Council, and Focus on Family as well as various white supremacist groups in their home state of Michigan. Betsy DeVos is sister to the founder (Erik Prince) of Blackwater (now Xe Corp.) the private security firm that has become one of the largest supplier of mercenary soldiers in the world. As a member of ALEC, she provided millions to anti-immigration groups in Arizona. and to the failed campaign to prevent the recall of racist pol Russell Pearce.  The DeVoses are also patrons of Wisconsin's Tea Party Gov. Walker and put millions into his campaign against the state's teacher unions.

Dick & Betsy DeVos   

Dick DeVos also owns the NBA's Orlando Magic. Read my favorite sports writer, Dave Zirin describe his own run-in with DeVos.

This is not to say that these Tea Party billionaires put those racist, disgusting words into Michael Kaiser's mouth. But when your whole career is built on currying favor from people like the DeVoses, it can't help but influence you. There have only been two Latino Kennedy Award recipients in the past 35 years, singer Plácido Domingo and Broadway performer Chita Rivera, No Latino has received the award in a decade.


Actor Jimmy Smits, one of the founders of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, told POLITICO that, upon hearing the news of the phone call between Kaiser and Sanchez, he was disappointed, but not surprised. For Smits, the current situation at the Kennedy Center reaches into the White House as well.

”The last thing you want is for the president and the first lady to find themselves presiding over an event that is locking out Latinos. You can’t leave that decision up to the producer, the White House and the board have to be involved in the final selection of these honorees. You do not want these awards to embarrass either the president or the Kennedy family again.”

Side thought: If a mayor of Chicago ever used such language to debase local black or Latino leaders (particularly a certain teacher union leader), he would certainly be run out of town. Right?

Look who paid KIPP's way to New Zeeland

Hedge-funder, Julian Robertson

Look who paid KIPP founder, Mike Feinberg’s way to NZ where he got a cool reception. None other than conservative hedge-funder Julian Robertson. Robertson's Aotearoa Foundation, is the local arm of the right wing USA-based Robertson Foundation. It was hedge-fund king Robertson who founded the now-defunct Tiger Management Fund which was mired in scandal over the collapse of U.S. Airways.

Robertson recently gave $1.25 million to  Restore Our Future, a Super PAC supporting Mitt Romney campaign. In fact, Robertson wanted Romney to run his hedge fund. But Romney has enough sense not to get involved in such a crooked organization and ran Bain Capital instead.

"I'm fortunate to be a one-percenter", said Robertson. "I put it up there as probably, if it works, as the best money I've spent -- better than for cancer or education or all these things -- because I think a President of the United States, an effective president, the leverage he has to do good is just enormous." -- Business Insider

Diane Ravitch points out in response to my blog comment, " And owns some charters too, like the one crammed into PS 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, over opposition from parents and teachers and community."

Speaking of KIPP, an arrogant Jonathan Alter  on Melissa -Harris-Perry's show last week, snorted at Texan Univ.Prof. Julian Vasquez Heilig, "I won't let you diss KIPP!" H-P responded angrily, "Yes you will. This is my show...at 5:10 on the video.

Alter yells at Texas prof, "I won't let you diss KIPP!" 

Vasquez-Heilig, rather than "dissing" KIPP, was simply revealing data on the disproportional high dropout (pushout) rate among African-American KIPP students in Texas. I think the "let you" part of Alter's screed is most revealing of the white, male entitlement syndrome which typifies the corporate school reformers.

You might remember, it was faux-journalist Alter who equated teacher unions with the Tea Party and who was Arne Duncan's spear-carrier in the personal media assault campaign on Ravitch.

Michelle Rhee writes about Chicago? Really?

I guess with all eyes on Chicago, Broom Lady Rhee just couldn't resist. But her Washington Post piece, "Chicago teachers strike underscores shift among Democrats" is so full of lies and misinformation that Rhee simply fulfills her own caricature.

You don't have to read very far to find the first lie.

Rhee's piece begins: "I am a democrat because I believe in the party's principles..." OK, that's not exactly a lie but she should have qualified that statement with, "I'm a Rahm Emanuel Democrat." Or, "I'm an Arne Duncan Democrat." Or maybe even," I'm a Tea Party Democrat," since she does most of her work these days for Tea Party guvs like the Ricks -- Scott in Florida and Snyder in Michigan or Walker in Wisconsin.. Wherever you find union-busting pols, there you will find the Broom Lady.

Instead she identifies herself as a "liberal progressive" -- BIG LIE!

Her WaPo piece is a paean to Rahm, who Rhee claims, "underscored a transformation in the Democratic Party. Increasingly, those who staunchly side with unions at any cost appear to be in the minority, while more Democrats are saying we have to look at education differently." She goes on to hail Tea-Party Democratic mayors in L.A. and Cleveland, as well as her own hubby, Mayor K.J. in Sacramento, who are taking Rahm's path against the unions the same way she hailed the Tea Party Republican guvs in Wisconsin and Ohio.

Rhee tells Dems, "I know that opposing unions on some of these policies isn't easy" but you can do it if you close your eyes, push real hard, and follow the money.

She says:

"...the more that unions continue to attack fellow Democrats, casting everyone who challenges their policies as “anti-teacher” or “anti-union,” the more they isolate themselves from the broader Democratic Party.

 Rhee is not without criticisms of Rahm's "concessions." She's upset that the union held the line on seniority rights. She's angry that Rahm let teachers get away with having less than 30% of their evaluation being based on standardized test scores. I suppose she would have liked to see it be 200%.  And mostly she's beside herself over the defeat of "merit pay" which she pushed successfully in D.C. on gullible union leadership.

Then Rhee goes right for Karen Lewis like a flea attacking a Lioness.

It was frustrating to hear Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis say toward the end of the dispute that the strike would continue to see whether there is “anything else they can get.” But at least that was clear evidence that, for union leaders, this strike was never about what was best for kids.

Yes, Rhee and the corporate reformers are all about the kids. You can tell that's true because they say so, and also because they always name their money-raising fronts with names like Students First or Stand For Children or Kids are Nice.

But before any more big city mayors  jump on Rhee's anti-union broomstick and try to fly on it, I would advise them to take a look at Rahm's current poll ratings. Remember, it was Rhee who got former D.C. Mayor Fenty run out of town and Illinois Democratic gov Quinn is almost toast for trying to pull a pension grab in his state.

Tribune reports: Rahm taking the charter route on union busting

Billionaire Rauner. His money goes to Rahm's charter expansion. (F. Klonsky toon)

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's first attempt at union busting was beaten back by the CTU strike. The union and its community supporters held the line against the assault by corporate "reformers" like Stand For Children and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Now the mayor and his patrons are coming at it another way -- with the expansion of privately run, union-free charter schools.

According to the Tribune, CPS officials expect about 53,000 of the district's roughly 400,000 students will attend charter schools this year, and the number of charters will increase to more than 100. The city is aiming to add 60 charter schools in the next five years with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is trying to expand charters across the country.

The Trib cites experts who call union's stand against privately run charter networks unique in the United States, where several big cities, including New York, also have pushed charter schools.

"What's different is this is really the first mass movement against that comprehensive strategy" for privatization, said Janelle Scott, an associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies school policy.

They also point out that charters on average, are performing no better that traditional public schools when it comes to comparative standardized test scores -- Rahm's gold standard.

Critics point out that charter schools' results may look better in part because the schools practice their own form of student selection by squeezing out students with academic or discipline problems.

For instance, Urban Prep Academy has made headlines because the entire graduating class of the all-boys charter school gained college acceptance three years in a row. But school administrators acknowledge that the 2012 class of 85 boys was half its original size by graduation day, though they say the school works hard to keep troubled students in school.

Chicago;s charters also receive hundreds of millions of dollars beyond what other public schools get, largely from power philanthropists like Republican billionaire and Rahm supporter, Bruce Rauner. 

"The private funding picture makes broad comparisons of per-pupil spending difficult," says the Trib. 

FOX News didn't reveal its ties to testing companies

In 89 segments between September 10 and 16, Fox News reported on the Chicago Teachers Union's strike without disclosing its financial ties to the educational technology company administering the standardized tests with which the union takes issue.  This according to Media Matters.

Fox News parent company News Corp. acquired a 90-percent stake in Wireless Generation in 2010. Last May, the company agreed to provide Early Mathematics Assessment Services and Early Literacy Assessment Services to Chicago Public Schools. These contracts total $4.7 million. A central reason the Chicago Teachers Union decided to strike is their objection to the school district's call for heavily weighing such standardized testing to ultimately determine teacher pay and layoffs.

 But Fox News anchors and reporters never once disclosed its parent company's ties to Wireless Generation even as the network routinely criticized the strike and the Chicago Teachers Union.

News Corp and Wireless Generation are part of the media empire owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Hedge-funders underwrite Rahm's post-strike ad campaign

DFER Board member Whitney Tilson is chief of T2 Partners and Tilson Funds . DFER is underwriting Rahm's anti-union ad campaign.

After a devastating political defeat at the hands of Karen Lewis and the CTU in last week's teachers strike and with public opinion moving strongly to the teachers's side. The mayor of Chicago has unleashed a mult-million-dollar damage-control ad campaign. 
From the Chicago Tribune

In a political-style TV and radio ad blitz launched Wednesday, Emanuel says "change is never easy" but declares the outcome "the right deal for our kids." The ads are being paid for by a nonprofit arm of a political action committee started by Wall Street hedge fund managers who believe the creation of privately run charter schools is the best avenue to reform.

The ad campaign is being underwritten by Education Reform Now, the nonprofit arm of the Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) Political Action Committee. DFER represents the interests of a group of New York investment companies who are power houses within the Democratic Party but who favor charter schools, school vouchers and anything else that will weaken or destroy teacher unions.

"Mayor Emanuel was the best person to communicate to Chicagoans all of the unprecedented wins the kids of this city received out of this contract, so he fought for them, and we believe he should be in that TV spot talking to Chicagoans about it," said Rebeca Nieves Huffman, executive director of the group's Illinois chapter of DFER.

The TV ads are being produced by John Kupper of AKPD Message and Media, the same firm used by the Chicago Committee, a campaign fund controlled by Emanuel. That firm, was started by Pres. Obama's campaign chief David Axelrod who still has connections with it and whose son reportedly still works there.

Rahm's billionaire Republican pal goes off on the CTU

"The critical issue is to separate the union from the teachers. They're not the same thing." -- Bruce Rauner 

Yesterday it was Rupert Murdoch bag man, Joel Klein hating on the CTU. Today its Rahm's billionaire Republican pal Bruce Rauner who's in a rage over the teachers' strike victory. Rauner thinks that Rahm gave away the store in his negotiations with the union.

According to the Tribune,

Rauner, a wealthy venture capitalist who is helping lead a drive for more charter schools in the city, predicted the final details of a new contract would not "end well" for critics of the teachers union because "I think we've given in on a fair number of critical issues." But he called the intense contract negotiations "one battle in a very long-term fight."

I hope the CTU has the same attitude.

More from the Tribune:

Rauner, a potential Republican candidate for governor, speaks frequently with Emanuel and was placed by the mayor on the board of World Business Chicago, the city's economic development arm. Rauner has met more than a dozen times with Chicago Public Schools officials during the initial nine-month period that new CPS chief Jean-Claude Brizard's team was organizing policy.

Rauner also is on the board of the Chicago Public Education Fund, a group advocating more teacher accountability, and New Schools for Chicago, an organization seeking private investment in charter schools. He has a charter school named after him, and his wife served on Emanuel's mayoral transition team for education.

Look who's attacking Chicago's striking teachers

No, this strike feels more about attitude—"the mayor doesn't respect us"—than substance.

It's none other than Rupert Murdoch's bag man. In an op-ed in Sunday's Wall Street Journal, News Corp. executive V.P Joel Klein attacked the ongoing teachers' strike in Chicago without disclosing his role in administering $4.7 million in educational testing contracts at the heart of the dispute.

Media Matters reports that Klein, the former schools chancellor for New York City, was hired by Rupert Murdoch to run News Corp.'s education division in July of 2010 and is now the CEO of Amplify. While the Journal -- which is also owned by News Corp. -- identified Klein as Amplify's CEO, neither the paper nor Klein himself disclosed that the company has millions of dollars in contracts for the very testing that is a central issue in the strike.

In May, Chicago Public Schools entered into an agreement with Wireless Generation to provide "math assessment services" and "literacy assessment services" to the school district. The math agreement is for "a total cost not to exceed $1,700,000" while the literacy assessment cites a cost "not to exceed $3,000,000."

Charter school mythology -- Part II, The myth of charter superiority

By Mike Klonsky

This is the second part of a two-part series of posts on Charter school mythology.

The transformation of charter schools from in-district experiments in the early 1990s, to competitive, highly-privatized alternative networks a decade later, has had a major impact on the way we think about public education as well as on how learning outcomes are reported. Networks of charter operators, cyber-schoolers, and  their allied web of charter school associations and authorizers, as well as conservative think tanks, have produced their own "studies" and have engaged in a media/advertising blitz aimed at demonstrating the superiority of charters over traditional public schools. Charters and their associations are allowed to use millions in public dollars to make such unsubstantiated claims while traditional public schools are not allowed to advertise.

Heavily financed pro-charter propaganda films like Waiting for Superman, are also passed off as research. Jeffrey Henig, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College argues that WFS "oversells charter schools."

"The film notes that only 1 in 5 charter schools are highly successful. But “it implies there’s some philosophy that unifies charters and we just need to replicate that,”

 A recent study by the pro-charter Progressive Policy Institute even earned an NEPC Bunkum Award for citing exponential growth organizations, such as Starbucks and Apple, as well as the rapid growth of molds, viruses and cancers, in order to advocate similar growth models for charter schools.

The political pressures put on charter schools and their operators to compete with outperform nearby schools have pushed charters operators to make astounding claims, such as 100% success rates. These pressures have also driven widespread cheating. The latest scandal involved the charter operators of  the Crescendo Charter chain in southern California. The cheating scandal caused one former Crescendo teacher to reflect:

"Here I had been going around bragging about how awesome our school is, and now I wonder: Are we cheaters?"

After some charter schools in New York showed higher test score results than their neighborhood counterparts, Mayor Bloomberg exclaimed,  “I think they demonstrate again and again and again that that model gives superior results.” 

“What we’re seeing, and what we’ve seen all along,” James Merriman, chief executive officer of the New York City Charter School Center, told the New York Times, “is that the longer school day and longer school year that characterizes charter schools, as well as simply a focus on instruction and the sense of having a schoolwide culture that everyone buys into, results in these kinds of achievement scores.”

But a preponderance of currently available research belies the myth of charter school superiority. Regardless of the metric being used, charter schools continue to have more or less the same variance in measurable learning outcomes as the regular public schools they aim at replacing. And in cases where charters did outscore or outpace their public school competition, it appears to have less to do with them being charters as much as it did with their smaller size, selective enrollment/attrition policies (fewer students with special needs or English Language Learners), or greater political cache and access to outside funding. These same factors however, could also account for higher measurable outcomes in public sector schools, especially in wealthy suburban schools and public selective enrollment schools.

If the difference in outcomes have more to do with who schools enroll rather than any particular "model" of schooling, the whole argument for superiority becomes invalid. Rather than being a force for public school improvement, the differential in outcomes can be seen as contributing to, rather than helping to close,  the widening so-called "achievement gap" and the growing social inequity that comes from having and reproducing  a two-tier public school system.

In fact, the very notion of charter school superiority implies a two-tier system. It implies that charters are all one thing, or at least that they have more in common with each other than they do with other public sector schools. But the original concept of charters would seem to work against that notion. Charters were first imagined as individual public centers of innovation. It was their uniqueness -- not their sameness -- that made them such. It was only with the rise of the private and for-profit  charter-management networks and their competition for the public dollar that charters began being considered as a group with common interests opposed to and competing with their public school counterparts.

The emergence of heavily financed charter networks in the 1990s also drove a certain type of academic research, based entirely or mainly on test score comparisons aimed at proving charter superiority. But so far, the effort has failed. In fact a preponderance of the research, even when carried out by pro-charter research organizations and think tanks, has shown charters, taken as a whole, to be no better, and in many cases worse than the public-sector schools they were being compared with.

The most often cited of  this pile of studies was performed by Stanford's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) in 2009. The CREDO Study compared public charter schools and traditional public schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia. The Stanford researchers tried to match up real charter school students with fictional groups of statistically similar students in the same area (“virtual twins”), and compared charter school students’ test score gains) to those of their “twins.”

The study found, among other things, that only 17% of the charters or one in six of the charters studied, had students who did better on the whole than their public school twins, and that 37% actually did worse. In the remaining 46 % there was no statistical difference.

Of course there are big problems in making such comparisons and in drawing big conclusions from these kind of statistical studies. For one thing, they don't tell us anything about what is going on in the schools that  may have led to better or worse outcomes. Secondly, the differences in measured reading and math scores may not have been very great or even statistically significant.

CREDO's finding were essentially replicated in a  study by the pro-charter Mathematica Policy Research, of Princeton, N.J.. The federally commissioned study, involving 2,330 students who applied to 36 charter middle schools in 15 states, represents the first large-scale randomized trial of the effectiveness of charter schools across several states and rural, suburban, and urban locales. The charter schools in the sample conducted random lotteries for admissions, so that only chance determined who attended. The study, also concludes that the lottery winners did no better, on average, than the lottery losers on non-academic outcomes such as behavior and attendance.

As for networks of charters, run by charter management organizations or CMOs, current studies once again find little or no measurable difference in how students do, between them and other public schools. A recent Single Study Review by the What Works Clearinghouse, of the Report “Charter-School Management Organizations: Diverse Strategies and Diverse Student Impacts, confirms many earlier findings.

The study found that, on average, CMOs did not have a statistically significant impact on middle school student performance on state assessments in math, reading, science, or social studies. Similarly, there was not a statistically significant impact of CMOs on graduation rates and rates of post-secondary enrollment for high school students.

In Chicago, the Sun-Times reports that  charter school franchises produced wildly uneven results — even among different campuses of the same chain — on state achievement test data.

Only one of nine Chicago multi-site charter operators — Noble Street — beat the districtwide average of all Chicago public schools for the percent of students passing state tests last spring on every campus it oversees. The overall passing rate at two city charter franchises — Aspira and North Lawndale — was below the city average at every campus those two groups operate. Four other chains — Betty Shabazz, Perspectives, North Lawndale and Chicago International — saw the majority of their campuses with over-all pass rates that were below the citywide average. In fact, one Shabazz high school campus — DuSable — had a passing rate that put it among the bottom 30 high schools in the entire state. One of its elementary campuses placed among the bottom 40.

Following this first-time release of Chicago charter network scores, David Berliner, education professor at Arizona State University, told the Chicago Sun-Times the results should signal to parents that not all charters are equally replicated, like a McDonalds or Holiday Inn.’

One of the major problems facing charter schools is the instability caused by the rapid turnover of faculty and staff. The  L.A. Times reports that about half of all  teachers in charter middle and high schools left their jobs each year over a six-year period studied by UC Berkeley researchers, who released their findings in July, 2011. Why such an incredibly high rate of attrition? According to the study:

• They hire heavily from Teach For America, a cadre of recent college graduates who commit to teach for two years.
• Some young teachers find the intense, demanding charter experience more than they bargained for, suggested Berkeley education professor Bruce Fuller, a study co-author.
• Leaving for better pay and benefits at traditional school districts.
• Lack of promised input into school decisions, an unceasing workload and few job protections.
• "Teachers feel so beleaguered because everything is presented to us as a problem we have to solve. But we can't fix all those problems, like when a kid misses 60 days in a semester."

One of the tactics used by charter operators to artificially drive up test scores has been exclusionary enrollment and push-out tactics. This will be the topic of  Part 3 in this series.

Philly plan to "reform" collective bargaining

The Boston Consulting Group is pushing Philadelphia's school district to "undertake comprehensive collective bargaining reform” with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and, simultaneously, “pursue legislative changes” in the school code.

According to The Notebook writer Ron Whitehorne, the “reforms” advocated in this document would roll back important protections that are afforded teachers under the school code and union contract.

Writes Whitehorne:

The attack on tenure and the call for laying off teachers based on performance rather than seniority is another familiar theme that has profound implications. “Performance” is mainly about standardized test scores, always a dubious metric, but even more so after the revelations about pervasive tampering and cheating. But putting this aside, in the context of budget austerity, administrators would be looking for way to get rid of costly senior teachers, as well as those pesky activists who might challenge their authority.

McKinsey guy picked as new deputy supt. for Philly schools

Paul Kihn, now a consultant with the firm McKinsey & Co.'s education practice, will begin work in the district by Oct. 1, when new Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. starts. Hite confirmed the appointment Thursday night. Kihn will be paid $210,000. With McKinsey, he has worked with clients including "federal, state, and local public education systems in the U.S. and abroad, as well as charter management organizations and private foundations supporting educational reform efforts," according to the company's website.  -- Philly.Com

The right-wing school privatization movement tries to change its image

In June 1995, the economist Milton Friedman wrote an article for the Washington Post promoting the use of public education funds for private schools as a way to transfer the nation’s public school systems to the private sector. "Vouchers," he wrote, "are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a market system." 

Rachel Tabachnick, a researcher and writer on issues pertaining to the Religious Right, has put together a comprehensive analysis of the current school privatization movement, "The Right's "School Choice" Scheme" on Publiceye.org.  It begins with Milton Friedman's 1995 treatise, "Public Schools: Make Them Private," and continues with the right's attempt to re-frame it's attack on public education as a civil-rights reform.

According to Tabachnick, voucher supporters recognized the need to reinvent the movement by obscuring its white, conservative support base and cultivating the support of Latino and African-American leaders as the face of the movement.

These leaders have valid complaints about inequality in public education and the failure of public schools to provide quality education to low income Black and Latino children. Having their parents support vouchers--and charters--in the name of improving education is a potent political force.

The most prominent among these leaders is Howard Fuller, the former Black Nationalist who brought vouchers to the Milwaukee school system when he led it in the early 1990s. In August 2000, he launched the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO).  Its major funders included John Walton and the Harry and Lynde Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, which also funded Fuller’s Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University, founded in 1995.

These funders, as People for the American Way commented in an extensive report on the group, are "better known for supporting education privatization and affirmative action rollbacks than empowerment of the African-American community or low-income families."   

The conservatives had found their standard bearer.

"I'm the evil billionaire Koch brother," he quipped. "You're not afraid of me?" [Updated]

David Koch 

"He wore a navy suit, red-and-blue checkered tie, and a couple of fancy-looking convention passes sure to open doors that we reporters couldn't dream of entering." -- Mother Jones reporter 

Mr. Koch spent a few minutes taking questions from reporters. “We’re in this for the long haul,” Mr. Koch said, regardless of whether Mitt Romney wins or loses in November. Asked whether there was too much money in politics, Mr. Koch, who with his brother donates almost exclusively to political organizations that do not disclose their donors, would have none of it.

“It’s a free society,” Mr. Koch said. “People can invest what they want.” -- NYT

Duncan's darling Rhee shows up at GOP convention

Duncan campaigned for Rhee and Fenty in 2010.

Arne Duncan has long been one of Michelle Rhee's ardent fans. Violating all DOE protocols, Duncan went out on the stump for her and former D.C. mayor Fenty two years ago even at the risk of offending the district's African-American voters (they can't vote in the presidential election).

So what did Obama and the Dems get in return for their unflagging support of Rhee? Her first stop after getting booted out of the district was Florida, where she became Tea Party guv Rick Scott's top ed advisor.

Now the new darling of ALEC and the right-wing union union busters has shown up at the GOP Convention in Tampa to tout “Won’t Back Down,” a film produced by gay-hating conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz. Rhee's job is to connect the film with the corporate reform fraud know as the parent trigger.

The film was shown at the convention at an event sponsored by Rhee’s advocacy organization, StudentsFirst, and the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Referring to the film's negative portrayal of teacher unions, Rhee's fellow panelist Bush commented: 

"What I love about the film is it puts a human face on nerdy policy," said Bush, the former governor of Florida.“This is the one little Switzerland where the left and the right can agree.”

As NYT's Michael Winerip reported back in February, Duncan continues to pal around with Rhee even while his own Office of the Inspector General  has been investigating whether Washington school officials cheated to raise test scores during Ms. Rhee’s tenure.

I'm not sure who Bush means by "the left" unless it's faux-Democrat Duncan who is now being mentioned along with Rhee as possible Romney choices for a cabinet post. 

In a close November race, Arne Duncan could well become a major obstacle to Obama's re-election because of negative impact on the nation's 5 million teachers, many of whom see current administration education policies as being no different or even worse than the Republican's.

Obama would do well to dump him now or at least announce his post-election replacement.

"The creep of the marketplace"

Larry Cuban was superintendent in Arlington schools for seven years, a former high school social studies teacher for 14 years and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, where he has taught for more than 20 years. Here his take on changes in market influences since his days in VA schools.

My experiences in Arlington with businesses, while revealing tensions and occasional conflict, have been bland compared to current back-and-forth criticism among policymakers and practitioners about “corporate reformers” and “privatization of public schools.” What is more disturbing, however, as I look back at my experiences as a teacher, administrator, and professor, is the gradual creep of marketplace values into schooling that go far deeper than charter schools, Teach for America, KIPP, and use of student test scores as the bottom line of schooling. --  Read Cuban's entire post on Valerie Strauss' Answer Sheet.

Charter school mythology -- Part I, The myth of authentic choice

By Mike Klonsky

This is the first part of a two-part series of posts on Charter school mythology.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." -- Anatole France

Current conceptions of school choice were originally conceived by free-market, neo-liberal ideologues like the University of Chicago's Milton Friedman. In his 1955 article "The Role of Government in Education" Friedman first proposed a system of publicly operated schools with privately run but publicly funded schools, using payment vouchers issued to parents/consumers.

Corporate school reformers have taken up Friedman's choice banner and succeeded in framing their charter school narrative as a matter of choice vs. containment. Some  go so far as to equate public education with slavery, posing "choice", i.e.,  meaning charters and vouchers, as "the underground railway" carrying students to the "freedom" of privately-run schools. Charter school management companies are offered as modern-day Harriet Tubmans. Supporters of privately-run charters, like Joel Klein, Newt Gingrich and Arne Duncan, also frame the issue of choice as the "civil rights issue of our generation."

The notion of government and public education as being an non-competitive "monopoly," put forth by business groups like the Chicago Civic Committee, is a false and misleading one.  Competition and consumer choice have their place. Already derfunded urban public schools have to compete with private, parochial and wealthy suburban districts for students, teachers and funding. But a democratic solution to the problems and challenges confronting public education is not offered by another layer of market-driven choice.

More recently, choice advocates have drummed up the so-called parent trigger, a plan that gives 50 percent of parents in a school during any one school year the power to turn that school over to a private operator. This divisive plan is being pushed hard by conservative, anti-union groups like ALEC as well as by some more liberal-leaning groups like the  U.S. Conference of Mayors as a victory for school choice. In fact, the parent trigger is just another market-driven maneuver to dis-empower teachers and bust their unions, which are portrayed as enemies of choice. In no case have parent trigger initiatives led to any measurable improvement in schools.

This framing has been rendered skillfully, and promoted through the use of major studio films including Waiting For Superman and We Won't Back Down, both bankrolled by right-wing billionaire Philip Anschutz.

Authentic individual and family choice is an important component of good and fair public education, especially when it implies an enriched curriculum filled with varied options based on students interests, potential career pathways, and different routes to successful learning. But there are different kinds of choice, just as there are different kinds of reform. The one posed by charter and voucher proponents is generally a limited kind of consumer choice, viewing public education sinply as a personal shopping mall offering parents and students options like smooth and chunky. Authentic models of  choice have more to do with democratic social ownership, participation and decision making.

In that sense, privately-run charters aren't really public schools at all, but rather, private entities run with public funds. Teachers and other public employees can be fired at will, without due process,  and have no voice or choice, except to try and find jobs elsewhere. Teachers have little say over curriculum, assessment, work environment, or other essential matters.They have no collective bargaining rights and serve only at the whim or will of appointed charter boards and the administrator. Experienced teachers are being forced out of their jobs by austerity measures as charter schools are flooded with Teach for America (TFA) recruits. With the loss of over 300,000 public school teaching positions in the last two years, the competitive pressure upon teachers to find new jobs is severe.

Students have few if any real choices since the school generally chooses them,  rather than them choosing the school. Privately-run charters have become notorious for excluding students with disabilities and special needs, English-language learners and students with behavioral problems. KIPP charters,  for example, have become notorious for their extremely hig student attrition rates. Parents in charters are often forced to contribute funds for textbooks, after-school activities, and even to pay fines for petty rules violations. At one Chicago charter network, these fines amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars taken  from needy families.

Originally, charter schools were envisioned by their founders and supportera as agents of real democratic choice. Rather than competing with traditional schools for funding and high-scoring students, the early charters, many founded and led by teachers, were seen as a small but critical force within the public school system -- an incubator for experimentation, innovation, and new options for students. Rather than being market-driven and anti-union, early charters were staffed with union teachers and backed by many union leaders, including AFT President Albert Shanker. But Shanker's charter school vision included the maxim that they “would not be a school where all the advantaged kids or all the white kids or any other group is segregated.”

A 2010 study by researchers at University of Colorado-Boulder and Western Michigan University found that most charter schools were “divided into either very segregative high-income schools or very segregative low-income schools” compared to their sending districts, and that the pattern had changed little between 2000-01 and 2006-07. They also tended to enroll a lower proportion of special education students and English-language learners. Again we see this distorted version of school choice.

The charter school ethos calls for more autonomy in exchange for higher levels of accountability. But the only way to exercise that accountability is to close a charter school, an action that even further destabilizes the lives of children. Hundreds of charter schools have been closed for being low performers, financial losers or poor recruiters. Many have been closed because of mismanagement or scandal. Nationwide, 15 percent of the 6,700 charter schools that have opened over the past two decades have closed for one reason or another. The largest proportion of those closures, nearly 42 percent, were the result of financial woes, usually related to low enrollment or lack of funding. Twenty-four percent closed for reasons of mismanagement, and a smaller share, 19 percent, were shut down for academic reasons.

What is also at play here is the consolidation of power by the big charter school operating companies and the forced closing of small, resourced-starved, teacher or community-operated charter. When that happens, any notion of student or parent choice is tossed aside and students are shuffled around to whatever school will accept them. Closing charter schools often forces students to choose from other academically struggling or otherwise unsound schools.

Next comes the question of who can choose and how. I'm reminded of that old saw about rich and poor alike having the choice to drive a Mercedes or a Chevy. Participatory community engagement and even consumer choice requires a well-informed public with access to the necessary levers of power.

Because charter school enrollment is capped, keeping schools small enough in some cases, to offer the illusion of a specialized boutique, opportunities are generally marketed only to a targeted consumer base. If a family is not in the information pipeline or a parent doesn't have the knowledge or capacity to apply, or if the child is homeless or a ward of the court, charter enrollment is only available through the bounce of a lottery ball. This kind of exclusivity is not generally available to regular public schools, who must accept any and every child who is brought to their doors. Charters can also expel students who don't achieve at high enough standards or who fit their social or cultural mold, at will. These students are then placed (without choice) back into overcrowded neighborhood schools.

Finally comes the question of whether or not this type of market-driven choice has been a force for systemic school improvement. In Chicago, where an ever expanding system of charter-school choice has been in operation for the past two decades, test scores in reading and math have remained flat. School dropout rates continue to hover around the 50% mark and the so-called achievement gap between white students and students of color continues to widen.

Under a top-down governance system where the schools are controlled by the mayor and his hand-picked school board and  maintained under the leadership of  high-profile CEOs like Paul Vallas and current Secretary of Education  Arne Duncan-- and under corporate-driven initiatives like Renaissance 2010, the number of charter schools has steadily expanded. But according to a Sun-Times report, only one of nine Chicago multi-site charter operators — Noble Street — beat the districtwide average of all Chicago public schools for the percent of students passing state tests on every campus it oversees. This, even with the benefit of added funding, both from public and private sources as well as benefit of positive media spin, political connections and social capital unavailable to neighborhood schools.

To summarize, what is being touted by charter, parent-trigger, and voucher advocates as choice, offers teachers, parents and students only the narrowest of consumer options rather than real decision-making power. This type of market driven choice is only available to the few who have access to the necessary levers to assert themselves. And most importantly, decades of choice hasn't led to measurable improvement for public schools nationwide and in fact, it has been a drain on their resources and a force for downward pressure on student achievement.

Tim Bartik, senior economist for the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research says "there's no evidence to suggest that choice works very well." The reasons for that, Bartik said, have to do with the fact that unlike judging the quality of a consumer good such as an apple, it turns out that school quality is more difficult to evaluate

As a result, school choice has become another rationale for re-segregation with those with the most power and access using the system to isolate or unfairly benefit themselves at the expense of others.

After decades of experimenting with market-based, competitive education initiatives with little in the way of measurable statewide education improvement, it’s necessary for Chicago and other urban school districts to shift their emphasis away from privatization and towards systems of support for helping improve and transform community public schools. Times call for making the proper investment in proper education offering real choices for students, parents and teachers within a framework of public ownership and public decision-making.

In the words of John Dewey from his work, The School and Society:   

"What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy."

Part 2 will deal with the myth of charter school superiority.

A great Parent-Trigger Fact Sheet

Re-posted from Parents Across America's Blog

Researched by Caroline Grannan, San Francisco Parents Across America founding member

1. There have been no successful parent triggers anywhere. Only two parent triggers have been attempted, both in Southern California. [i]

2. The organization that created the parent trigger, Parent Revolution, organized both of those campaigns.[ii]

3. Parent Revolution has been inaccurately described as “grassroots” and as founded by concerned mothers. Actually, Parent Revolution was created by charter school operator Steve Barr, who founded the Green Dot charter school chain.[iii] Parent Revolution has a $1 million annual budget and 10 full-time staff members. Its funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Wasserman Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and more.[iv]

4. In both of those two parent trigger campaigns, many parents at the targeted schools said they did not want their schools to become charter schools, and a number attempted to rescind their signatures from the petitions. [v] In both, conflict and controversy exploded among the parents at the schools.[vi]

5. In the first of those parent triggers (McKinley Elementary School in Compton, CA, December 2010), the charter school operator that had been poised to take over the school didn’t do so; instead, it opened a new charter school a few minutes away. Only a fraction of the McKinley families (apparently between 12% and 20%) moved their children to the charter school.[vii] With the charter school having opened nearby instead of taking over the school, the McKinley Elementary School parent trigger appears to have failed.[viii]

6. In the second parent trigger (Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, CA, January 2012), a July 2012 court ruling has been reported as a victory for parents. But actually, what the court ruled was that parents who wanted to rescind their signatures from the parent trigger petition could not do so.[ix]

7. The current status of the parent trigger at Desert Trails in Adelanto is that Parent Revolution is seeking a charter operator to take over the school, although many parents have said that they don’t want the school to become a charter.[x]


ENDNOTES

[i] There have been two attempted parent triggers, with petitions signed and turned in to officials. The first was at McKinley Elementary School in Compton, CA, in 2010. It has failed, with the school remaining under the same governance as before. The second is at Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, CA, in 2012. It is still being fought out among factions of parents and school and district administrators. The ultimate outcome is unknown at this point.

[ii] This is borne out by ample news coverage and other sources. Here’s what the Los Angeles Weekly reported about the Compton parent trigger (Dec. 9, 2010): Parent Revolution decided to focus on McKinley Elementary School and approach parents there after researching the worst school districts in California. … (Parent Revolution’s paid) field organizers have canvassed a large chunk of the 10-square-mile city of Compton, knocking on hundreds of doors, walking its sidewalks and driving its streets, asking people if their children attend McKinley. … [Organizing director Pat DeTemple] set up a computer program to track trends in the progress of his staff’s work. The Los Angeles Times reported (Jan. 13, 2012) on Parent Revolution’s involvement in the Adelanto parent trigger (this version of the Times article posted on the Parent Revolution website): In Adelanto, the process has been transparent and fair, said Gabe Rose of Parent Revolution, the Los Angeles educational reform group that helped train and organize parents in both cities.

[iii] This Los Angeles Times article (May 11, 2009) describes how Steve Barr, founder of the Green Dot charter school chain, created Parent Revolution in 2009.

[iv] The Los Angeles Weekly (Dec. 9, 2010) described Parent Revolution’s funding: Parent Revolution, with 10 full-time staff members and a $1 million annual operating budget, is funded by blue-chip philanthropic endeavors, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wasserman Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.

[v] Los Angeles Times: Some parents are rescinding their signatures to convert McKinley Elementary into a charter school. Dec. 11, 2010) See also: San Bernardino County Sentinel (April 7, 2012): [A]t least 97 parents rescinded their signatures [in the Adelanto parent trigger].

[vi] The Los Angeles Weekly live blogging, Dec. 14, 2010: “We’re reporting live from the [Compton Unified School District] board meeting, packed with press and hundreds of angry parents — many of whom say they were tricked into signing the Parent Trigger petition without understanding its gravity. Above all, the air is buzzing with confusion. … More and more, the crowd reveals itself as anti-Parent Trigger.” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 2012: “Some parents say the Desert Trails campaign has divided the campus, destroyed friendships and given rise to charges on both sides of harassment and deceit.”

[vii] The Los Angeles Times reported on Nov. 14, 2011, that 1/5 of the families at McKinley Elementary had transferred their children to the new Celerity Sirius charter – amounting to 1/3 of the families who had signed the petition. But actually, California Department of Education data show a drop of considerably less: McKinley enrollment dropped 12.9% when the charter opened – from 426 students to 371.

[viii] The Los Angeles Times (Nov. 14, 2011) described the outcome of the Compton parent trigger as “legal defeat when the petition was found lacking on largely technical grounds.” The Times editorial added: “Ultimately, the charter operator, Celerity Educational Group, decided to open a school a few blocks away instead, to predictions that this would wipe out McKinley by drawing away most of its students. But that’s not what happened.”

[ix] Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2012: Ruling supports Adelanto charter school effort: Judge rules that California’s ‘parent trigger’ law does not allow signatures to be revoked, meaning Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto could become a charter.

[x] KABC Los Angeles, July 23, 2012: Superior Court Judge Steve Malone ordered the Adelanto School District to accept the petition filed by the Desert Trails Parents Union within 30 days and to immediately seek proposals from charter school operators to take over Desert Trails Elementary School. Natasha Lindstrom, the local reporter who has been covering the Adelanto parent trigger issue, July 23, 2012. Many (parents) told me they didn’t want a charter. Both sides of Parent Trigger like the current principal, who only took (the) helm in October.

This fact sheet is also available as a downloadable pdf.

Indy is Vallas' latest privatization target

Legendary Ownership Society hustler Paul Vallas is at it again. His high-profile, high-profit target this time is Indianapolis. Here's a re-post of Diane Ravitch's August 13th post: "Saving School Districts Is Not a Full-time Job."

Paul Vallas is superintendent of schools in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He is paid more than $200,000 a year. He also runs a private consulting business that just landed an $18 million contract to reorganize the Indianapolis school district even as he remains full-time superintendent in Bridgeport. The board that appointed Vallas has been declared illegal by a court in Connecticut, but they extended Vallas’ contract so he will be superintendent even if a new school board with a different majority wins.

I know that Vallas saved Chicago, and saved Philadelphia, and saved New Orleans, but it is astonishing that he is able to work full-time in Bridgeport and save Indianapolis at the same time.

Klein back to pimping Murdoch's Amplify program

Murdoch & Klein

"What we're trying to do is really become a hub for serious thinking and trying to make sure that technology is a positive force," Klein said in an interview. "Because I've long said that just giving a kid a computer isn't going to change the game."

Now that Rupert Murdoch has hired the best criminal defense lawyer money can buy, former NYC Chancellor Joel Klein is freed up to do what he does best -- hustling Murdoch's products back to the public school system.

While the criminal investigation into the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal continues, Klein is back in New York to launch Amplify, News Corp.'s digital learning program. Amplify and AT&T will fund a pilot project that will put tablet computers in students' hands in order to "track student progress."

Klein said he has been working full-time at Murdoch's Amplify since mid-June after News Corp. hired general counsel Gerson Zweifach to focus on continuing fallout from the hacking scandal, which broke about six months after Klein started working at Amplify.

Given the ongoing investigation, we're not exactly sure what tracking their progress means. NYC would do well to track Murdoch's progress with a digital ankle bracelet.

Hedge-fund vultures circling public ed

"This is a new frontier. The private equity guys and the hedge fund guys are circling public education." -- Diane Ravitch 

Stephanie Simon at Reuters reveals profiteers waiting in the wings to cash in on Common Core Standards. About 100 of gathered in a meeting last week at the University Club in Manhattan, billed as a how-to on "private equity investing in for-profit education companies." 

If they're as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They'll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it. 

"You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up," said Lytle, a partner at The Parthenon Group, a BostoThe conference last week at the University Club, billed as a how-to on "private equity investing in for-profit education companies," drew a full house of about 100.n consulting firm. "It could get really, really big."

In the venture capital world, transactions in the K-12 education sector soared to a record $389 million last year, up from $13 million in 2005. That includes major investments from some of the most respected venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, according to GSV Advisors, an investment firm in Chicago that specializes in education.

Education entrepreneur John Katzman urged investors to look for companies developing software that can replace teachers for segments of the school day, driving down labor costs.

"How do we use technology so that we require fewer highly qualified teachers?" asked Katzman, who founded the Princeton Review test-prep company and now focuses on online learning.