Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools
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9. Stephanie Simon, “The New U.S. Visa Rush: Build a Charter School, Get a Green Card,” Reuters, October 12, 2012.
10. Valerie Strauss, “The Big Business of Charter Schools,” Washington Post, August 17, 2012. See also Stephanie Strom, “For Charter School Company, Issues of Spending and Control,” New York Times, April 24, 2010.
11. Center for Media and Democracy, “ALEC Exposed,” http://alecexposed.org/w/images/5/57/2D4-Next_Generation_Charter_Schools_Act_Exposed.pdf; see also http://www.edreform.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/NextGenerationCharterSchoolsAct.pdf.
12. Http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/05/09/how-alec-is-quietly-influencing-education-refor/184156; Salvador Rizzo, “Some of Christie’s Biggest Bills Match Model Legislation from D.C. Group Called ALEC,” Star-Ledger, April 1, 2012.
13. Lindsay Wagner, “Senate Considers New Public Charter School Board,” The Progres-sive Pulse (blog), March 27, 2013 http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2013/03/27/senate-considers-creation-of-new-public-charter-school-board/; http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/SB-337-NC-Public-Charter-Schools-Board.pdf.
14. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Caviness v. Horizon Community Learning Center Inc.; Lawrence Pieratt, January 4, 2010.
15. Preston C. Green, Erica Frankenberg, Steven L. Nelson, and Julie Rowland, “Charter Schools, Students of Color, and the State Action Doctrine,” Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice (Spring 2012): 254–75. See also Julian Vasquez Heilig, “Why Judges Say Charters Are NOT Public Schools—Students and Parents Should Be Nervous,” Cloaking Inequity, January 2, 2013.
16. New York Charter Schools Association, “Charters Prevail over State Comptroller,” Chalkboard, June 25, 2009.
17. Martha Woodall, “Phila.’s New Media Charter School Contends It’s Not a Public School,” philly.com, July 2, 2011; Julie Shaw, “Two Ex-Charter Officials Accused of Taking Money from School,” philly.com, April 15, 2011; Martha Woodall, “Former Head of Philadelphia Charter School Admits Fraud,” philly.com, April 4, 2012; Martha Woodall, “Charter School Founder Gets 2-Year Term for Fraud,” philly.com, July 14, 2012.
18. Becky Vevea, “Chicago Charter School Subject to Private-Sector Labor Laws,” WBEZ, January 2, 2013, http://www.wbez.org/news/chicago-charter-school-subject-private-sector-labor-laws-104660; National Labor Relations Board, “Chicago Mathematics and Science Academy Charter School, Inc., Employer and Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers & Staff, AFT, AFL-CIO,” Petitioner, Case 13-RM-001768, December 14, 2012 (359 NLRB No. 41).
19. Bruce D. Baker, “Charter Schools Are … [Public? Private? Neither? Both?],” School Finance 101 (blog), May 2, 2012; Bruce D. Baker, Ken Libby, and Kathryn Wiley, “Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations: Comparing Charter School and Local Public District Financial Resources in New York, Ohio, and Texas” (National Education Policy Center, May 2012); KIPP challenged these findings: http://www.kipp.org/news/kipp-statement-nepc-report-by-bruce-d-baker-on-spending-by-the-major-charter-management-organizations.
20. Gary Miron, Jessica L. Urschel, Mayra A. Yat Aguilar, and Breanna Dailey, Profiles of For-Profit and Nonprofit Education Management Organizations, Thirteenth Annual Report, 2010–2011 (Boulder, Colo.: National Education Policy Center, 2012), i–ii.
21. Julian Vasquez Heilig, Amy Williams, Linda McSpadden McNeil, and Christopher Lee, “Is Choice a Panacea? An Analysis of Black Secondary Student Attrition from KIPP, Other Privately Operated Charters, and Urban Districts,” Berkeley Review of Education 2, no. 2 (2011); KIPP, “Statement by KIPP Regarding Report: ‘Is Choice a Panacea?’ by Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig and Colleagues,” April 12, 2012, http://www.kipp.org/news/statement-by-kipp-regarding-report-is-choice-a-panacea-by-dr-julian-vasquez-heilig-and-colleagues.
22. Sharon Higgins, “Largest Charter Network in U.S.: Schools Tied to Turkey,” Washington Post, March 27, 2012; Greg Toppo, “Objectives of Charter Schools with Turkish Ties Questioned,” USA Today, August 17, 2010; Dan Bilefsky and Sebnem Arsu, “Turkey Feels Sway of Reclusive Cleric in the U.S.,” New York Times, April 25, 2012; Stephanie Saul, “Charter Schools Tied to Turkey Grow in Texas,” New York Times, June 6, 2011; Stephanie Saul, “Audits for 3 Georgia Schools Tied to Turkish Movement,” New York Times, June 5, 2012.
23. Matthew Di Carlo, “The Evidence on Charter Schools and Test Scores,” Albert Shanker Institute, December 2011, http://shankerblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/CharterReview.pdf.
24. David Arsen and Yongmei Ni, “Resource Allocation in Charter and Traditional Public Schools: Is Administration Leaner in Charter Schools?,” National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, March 2012, http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP201.pdf.
25. Miron, Urschel, Yat Aguilar, and Dailey, Profiles of For-Profit and Nonprofit Education Management Organizations, ii.
26. Erik Kain, “80% of Michigan Charter Schools Are For-Profits,” Forbes, September 29, 2011.
27. “A Political Education,” Toledo Blade, July 9, 2006.
28. “White Hat Management: Ohio Charter School Giant,” State Impact Ohio, http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/tag/white-hat-management/; “Judge Says White Hat Must Open Its Books,” State Impact Ohio, http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2011/12/28/judge-says-white-hat-must-open-its-books/; Ida Liezkovsky, “Making Money on Education: The For-Profit Charter School,” State Impact Ohio, http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2011/10/12/charters-schools-part-iii-cashing-in-on-education/.
29. Http://www.plunderbund.com/2012/02/24/white-hat-management-nears-one-billion-dollars-in-charter-school-funding-in-ohio/.
30. Stephanie Strom, “For School Company, Issues of Money and Control,” New York Times, April 23, 2010; A. D. Pruitt, “Entertainment Company Is Tested by Charter Schools,” Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2012; Elisa Crouch, “Shuttering of Imagine Charter Schools in St. Louis Is Daunting,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 20, 2012.
31. Office of the State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, “Oversight of Financial Operations: Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School,” New York State Division of State Government Accountability, Report 2011-S-14, December 2012; Yoav Gonen, “Charter Management Firm Charging Huge Rent Markups to Charter Schools,” New York Post, April 30, 2012.
32. Julie Dunn, “Agassi Hopes Charter School Will Be a Model,” New York Times, April 21, 2004; Bryan Toporek, “Billionaire Donates $18 Million to Andre Agassi’s Charter School,” Education Week, October 31, 2011; “Andre Agassi Launches Charter School Building Fund,” Huffington Post, June 2, 2011.
33. Amy Kingsley, “Learning Curve,” Las Vegas Citylife, March 14, 2012; Adrian Arambulo, “Agassi Prep Cheerleading Coach Charged in Prostitution Sting,” KLAS-TV, Las Vegas, http://www.8newsnow.com/story/6634246/agassi-prep-cheerleading-coach-charged-in-prostitution-sting; Gary Rubinstein, http://miracleschools.wikispaces.com/Agassi+Prep; “Cheer Coach at Agassi’s Academy Charged in Prostitution Sting,” USA Today, June 8, 2007; Alan Dessoff, “High Stakes Cheating,” District Administration, April 1, 2011. For the school’s report card, see http://www.nevadareportcard.com/.
34. “New York Success Academy Network to Receive 50 Percent Increase in Per Student Payment,” Huffington Post, June 25, 2012.
35. Anne Ryman, “Insiders Benefiting in Charter Deals,” Arizona Republic, November 17, 2012.
36. Mitchell Landsberg, “Spitting in the Eye of Mainstream Education,” Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2009; Jill Tucker, “Oakland Charter School Accused of Fraud May Close,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 3, 2012; Jill Tucker, “Oakland School Official May Face Criminal Probe,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 14, 2012; Ellen Cushing, “Are American Indian Public Charter School’s Scores Inflated?,” East Bay Express, June 13, 2012; David Whitman, Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism (Washington, D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2008), 71; Katy Murphy, “High-Scoring Oakland Charter Schools Facing Growing Threat of Closure,” Contra Costa Times, January 24, 2013; Oakland Unified School D
istrict Report, Superintendent’s Recommendation to Revoke American Indian Model School (AIMS) Charter, March 20, 2013, http://www.ousd.k12.ca.us/Page/10160.
37. John Merrow, “Can Rocketship Launch a Fleet of Successful Schools?,” NewsHour, PBS, December 28, 2012, http://learningmatters.tv/blog/on-pbs-newshour/watch-rocketship-schools/10645/.
38. Matt Richtel, “A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute,” New York Times, October 22, 2011.
39. Benjamin Herold, “ ‘Significant Barriers’ to Entry at Many Philadelphia Charters, District Report Says,” Notebook, July 31, 2012; Benjamin Herold, “Questionable Application Practices at Green Woods, Other Philly Charter Schools,” Notebook, September 14, 2012.
40. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Charter Schools: Additional Federal Attention Needed to Help Protect Access for Students with Disabilities (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GAO, June 2012).
41. Matthew DiCarlo, “Do Charter Schools Serve Fewer Special Education Students?,” Shanker Blog, June 21, 2012, http://shankerblog.org/?p=6107; Alleen Brown, “Cityview Leaves Special Education Students Behind,” Twin Cities Daily Planet, July 24, 2012; Cindy Chang, “New Orleans Special Needs Students File Federal Lawsuit Against Louisiana Department of Education,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 29, 2010.
42. Sean Cavanaugh, “Catholic Schools Feeling Squeeze from Charters,” Education Week, August 29, 2012; Who Will Save America’s Urban Catholic Schools?, ed. Scott Hamilton (Washington, D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2008); Scott Waldman, “Parochial Schools Feel Pinch,” Albany Times-Union, September 24, 2012. Abraham Lackman, a scholar in residence at Albany Law School, studied the effect of charters on Catholic schools in New York. He concluded, “We’ve wound up replacing a good system with a system that is inferior, and it’s cost the taxpayer a good deal of money.” Lackman found that “for every charter school that has opened in New York in the past decade, a parochial school has closed.” Lackman served as chief of staff for the New York State Senate Committee on Finance at the time that charters were authorized in 1998. Abraham Lackman, “The Collapse of Catholic School Enrollment,” http://www.scribd.com/doc/106930920/Abe-Lackman-Draft.
43. Samuel Casey Carter, No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 2000), 43–46; Lance T. Izumi, They Have Overcome: High-Poverty, High-Performing Schools in California (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 2002); Rob Kuznia, “Inglewood School District Teeters on Verge of State Takeover,” Daily Breeze, November 3, 2011; Rob Kuznia, “State Takes Over Financially Strapped Inglewood Unified School District,” Daily Breeze, September 14, 2012; Rob Kuznia, “Inglewood Unified Begins Making Deep Cuts Amid Howls of Protest,” Daily Breeze, March 15, 2013.
44. Keystone State Education Coalition, http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2011/06/follow-money-contributions-by-vahan.html, last updated June 28, 2012; Tony West, “Charter Schools: A School for Scandal?,” Philadelphia Public Record, August 3, 2012.
CHAPTER 17 Trouble in E-land
1. Stephanie Simon, “Private Firms Eyeing Profits from U.S. Public Schools,” Reuters, August 2, 2012; Rick Hess, “The Common Core Kool-Aid,” Education Week, November 30, 2012.
2. John Hechinger, “Education According to Mike Milken,” Bloomberg Businessweek, June 2, 2011; Alexandra Starr, “Bill Bennett: The Education of an E-school Skeptic,” Bloomberg Businessweek, February 13, 2001. Bennett resigned as chairman of K12 in 2005 to avoid causing problems for K12 after he made racist remarks on his radio show.
3. Stephanie Saul, “Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools,” New York Times, December 12, 2011.
4. Jeb Bush and Bob Wise, Digital Learning Now! (Foundation for Excellence in Education, December 1, 2010), 10.
5. Barbara Means, Yukie Toyama, Robert Murphy, Marianne Bakia, and Karla Jones, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2010). The study team found no studies between 1996 and 2006. “By performing a second literature search with an expanded time frame (through July 2008), the team was able to greatly expand the corpus of studies with controlled designs and to identify five controlled studies of K–12 online learning with seven contrasts between online and face-to-face conditions. This expanded corpus still comprises a very small number of studies, especially considering the extent to which secondary schools are using online courses and the rapid growth of online instruction in K–12 education as a whole. Educators making decisions about online learning need rigorous research examining the effectiveness of online learning for different types of students and subject matter as well as studies of the relative effectiveness of different online learning practices” (53).
6. Center for Media and Democracy, “ALEC Exposed,” http://alecexposed.org/w/images/4/4a/2D23-Virtual_Public_Schools_Act1_Exposed.pdf; Center for Media and Democracy, PR Watch, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/07/11652/energysolutions-and-connections-education-are-27th-and-28th-corporations-leave-al.
7. Lee Fang, “How Online Learning Companies Bought America’s Schools,” Nation, December 5, 2011.
8. Gene V. Glass and Kevin G. Welner, Online K–12 Schooling in the U.S.: Uncertain Private Ventures in Need of Public Regulation (Boulder, Colo.: National Education Policy Center, 2011), 3.
9. Saul, “Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools.”
10. Colin Woodard, “Special Report: The Profit Motive Behind Virtual Schools in Maine,” Maine Sunday Telegram, September 3, 2012.
11. Lyndsey Layton and Emma Brown, “Virtual Schools Are Multiplying, but Some Question Their Educational Value,” Washington Post, November 26, 2011.
12. Ibid.
13. Fang, “How Online Learning Companies Bought America’s Schools.”
14. Hechinger, “Education According to Mike Milken”; Jack Wagner, “Charter and Cyber Charter Education Funding Reform Should Save Taxpayers $365 Million Annually,” Pennsylvania Department of the Auditor General, June 20, 2012.
15. Hechinger, “Education According to Mike Milken.”
16. Saul, “Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools.”
17. Ibid.
18. Jason Tomassini, “Virtual Ed. Company Faces Critical Press and a Recent Lawsuit,” Education Week, February 22, 2012.
19. Layton and Brown, “Virtual Schools Are Multiplying, but Some Question Their Educational Value.”
20. Gary Miron and Jessica L. Urschel, Understanding and Improving Virtual Full-Time Schools: A Study of Student Characteristics, School Finance, and School Performance, in Schools Operated by K12 Inc. (Boulder, Colo.: National Education Policy Center, 2012), v–vi; press release.
21. Burt Hubbard and Nancy Mitchell, “Troubling Questions About Online Education,” EdNews Colorado, October 4, 2011.
22. “Tuning In, Dropping Out: Online Schools Troubled?,” Denver Post, October 9, 2011.
23. Charter School Performance in Pennsylvania (Stanford, Calif.: CREDO, April 2011).
24. Http://www.pacyber.org/about.jsp?pageId=2161392240601291297846033.
25. Http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/fbi-agents-raid-office-of_n_1671829.html; Rich Lord and Eleanor Chute, “Cyber Charter Is a Magnet for Money,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 17, 2012; Rich Lord, “PA Cyber Condo Deal in Florida Defies Math,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 12, 2012.
26. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Charter School Founder Dorothy June Brown Charged in $6 Million Scheme,” U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, July 24, 2012, http://www.fbi.gov/philadelphia/press-releases/2012/charter-school-founder-dorothy-june-brown-charged-in-6-million-fraud-scheme; Damon C. Williams, “Fraud Case Proceeds Against Charter School Founder,” phillytrib.com, July 27, 2012; Betsy Hammond, “Oregon Charter School Founders Charged in $20 Million Racketeering Lawsuit,” Oregonian, January 4, 2013.
27. “Ohio’s E-schools: Funding Failure;
Coddling Contributors,” Innovation Ohio, May 12, 2011, http://innovationohio.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/IO.051211.eschools.pdf.
28. German Lopez, “School’s Out: Data Suggests Internet-Based Education Isn’t Living Up to the Hype,” CityBeat, August 1, 2012.
CHAPTER 18 Parent Trigger, Parent Tricker
1. California Charter School Association, “California Charter Schools Grow to Over 1,000 for the 2012–13 School Year,” press release, October 12, 2012. When Jerry Brown was elected governor in 2010, he replaced several of Schwarzenegger’s appointees to the state board of education who had not yet been confirmed, including Ben Austin of Parent Revolution.
2. Http://parentrevolution.org/content/passing-parent-trigger.
3. “Lessons of ‘Parent Trigger,’ ” Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2011; Caroline Grannan, “Beyond the Parent Trigger Hype and Propaganda: Just the Facts,” Parents Across America, August 13, 2012.
4. Teresa Watanabe, “Ruling Supports Adelanto Charter School Effort,” Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2012; Mark Gutglueck, “Adelanto Charter School’s Demise Involved Postmus and DeFazio,” San Bernardino County Sentinel, May 27, 2011.
5. Http://www.commoncause.org/atf/cf/%7BFB3C17E2-CDD1-4DF6-92BE-BD4429893665%7D/ed_35daymailing-dc.pdf; http://www.prwatch.org/node/11612.
6. Http://parentsacrossamerica.org/2012/01/parents-watch-out-for-parent-trigger-proposals-in-your-state/.
7. Steve Bousquet, “Legislature Approves $70 Billion Budget,” Miami Herald, March 10, 2012.
8. “Promote Charter Schools, but Don’t Stack the Deck,” Orlando Sentinel, March 10, 2012.
9. Http://www.usmayors.org/80thAnnualMeeting/media/proposedresolutions2012.pdf.
10. Stephanie Simon, “Mayors Back Parents Seizing Control of Schools,” Reuters, June 18, 2012.
11. “No Magic Bullet for Schools,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2012.
12. Bill Berkowitz, “Meet the Christian Right-Wing Billionaire Out to Frack Our World,” AlterNet, May 13, 2012.