Charter Schools Building Big Bankrolls from Unspent Special Ed Money

No oversight, no accountability, plus corporate control: you betcha. From the Morning Call:

By Marion Callahan | OF THE MORNING CALL
July 10, 2009

Through their local school districts, taxpayers pay millions of dollars to educate special education students enrolled in Pennsylvania's increasing number of charter schools.

But state officials say a big chunk of that money is never spent on special education, a charge that some area charter schools are disputing.

Gov. Ed Rendell is now proposing to change how special education is funded for charter schools to prevent them from ''amassing reserves at taxpayers' expense,'' said Michael Race, a spokesman for the state Department of Education.

The state reports that of the $78 million set aside for the 127 charter schools for special education instruction in 2007-08, only $50 million was spent for that purpose.

''A school might get $15,000 to provide special education per pupil, but it only spent $10,000, so they are basically making $5,000 off that student,'' Race said. ''If you receive special education money for your charter school student, you either spend it on the student or you give it back to the taxpayers. . . .

Schnur (New Leaders for New Schools) Whispers in Obama's Ear; Broad and Emanuel Agree

From Politico:

Who Can Hook You Up With a White House Job?

A key voice in the Obama administration’s decisions about filling top education posts is candid about his less-than-perfect record when it comes to executive recruitment.

Back in 2000, Jon Schnur was looking for someone to head up the Chicago branch of his fledgling nonprofit for training inner-city principals, New Leaders for New Schools.

“People told me the most talented person I could find was someone named Michelle Obama,” Schnur recalled. “I was able to reach Barack Obama, who put me in touch with her,” but the future first lady couldn’t be persuaded.

“She had other engagements at the University of Chicago. It didn’t work out,” Schnur said.

A domestic policy staffer in the Clinton White House and adviser to Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential bid, Schnur later advised Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate and during his presidential campaign last year.

Schnur’s suggestions, on both education policy and personnel, are closely heeded by the Obama White House, according to administration officials. “He played an important role — from the secretary job on down the line,” one top official said. “He helped a lot of people land.”

Schnur, 43, is close to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a former Chicago schools chief, and sources said he promoted Duncan for the Cabinet job.

Philanthropist and Democratic donor Eli Broad, who funds Teach for America and Schnur’s principals program, said he considered Schnur a counterweight against the “bunch of academics” on Obama’s education transition team. Soon after the election, Broad said he told Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel that “the education secretary should not be an academic or ex-governor. ... He said, ‘I assure you. We’re going to have a practitioner.’”

“There are a number of people who could have been absolutely outstanding secretaries of education, but I don’t think there’s anybody who could have been better than Arne Duncan,” Schnur said in an interview. “He lived it. He understood what it took to move student achievement for high-poverty kids. ... The personal confidence you see the president having for Arne is just so important.”

Schnur continues to have an impact on decisions, in part because he has Duncan’s ear, officials say. Duncan touts Schnur’s “critical role” in the transition and says he expects to work closely with the education reform advocate in the future.

For his part, Schnur stresses that his main advice has been on policy issues but acknowledges putting forward names for various slots. He won’t discuss whom he’s lobbied for, but reform types continued to land top-level jobs.

Schnur’s involvement in Democratic politics has occasionally made for heated exchanges with his older brother, Dan, a prominent Republican strategist who was the communications director for Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2000 presidential bid.

“We try to keep it pretty civil most of the time,” Dan Schnur said.

Given Jon Schnur’s connections and impact, many in the education world were stunned in May when the Wisconsin native announced plans to return to his New York-based organization — passing up an offer to be Duncan’s chief of staff. Schnur said his two children — and one more on the way — with his wife, Elisa, were part of the calculus, but a bigger factor was his conviction that education reform in America will ultimately be a bottom-up endeavor.

“I can have the most impact in this path of education reform by trying, in a handful of cities around the country, to prove you can achieve exceptional results and then really transform that by scaling it up,” Schnur said.

The "bunch of academics" is presumably Linda Darling-Hammond and anyone who questioned Broad's business reform model for public education. Obama supposedly said he'll find a "practitioner" - but Duncan only has real experience in a) his jump shot, b) repeating his various lines and lies over and over, and c) working with wealthy elites to systematically privatize education while weakening public schools. Which experiences come in handy in Duncan's new role?

A Question for Arne's Army

A couple of charter school gems from Arne's recent speech to the NEA:

"charter schools they need to police themselves or their progress will be stalled"

"charter school operators and authorizers to get much more serious about accountability. They must not protect third-rate charters. Those schools need to close."

So let's see: while public schools are subject to restructuring or shutdown or charter conversion by the Federal government, charter schools, on the other hand, must "police themselves" and "get more serious." The question, then: as Duncan is extremely eager to shut down 5% of the lowest-performing (poorest) public schools, is he as eager, or even willing to entertain the idea, to shut down the 37% of bogus charter schools that are underperforming the public schools that these charter were intended to replace?

Raytheon Enters Education Research Field; Gates Provides Seed Money

Heard the line about not having enough engineers and scientists available to keep America on top in the global market? Get ready to hear it again. Raytheon - yes, the same Raytheon that is the world's leading producer of missiles - recently donated a sophisticated modeling program to help figure out how to engineer an education system capable of creating more and better STEM graduates. Raytheon makes the "staying competitive in the global economy" argument for reforming education - which they blame for not producing enough STEM workers. Question for Raytheon: are you aware of how painfully boring STEM subjects are for a large chunk of the population, particularly those who had negative experiences with math at the younger grades - like those drilled in many old school math environments seen in test prep academies and authoritarian classrooms that you're pushing in your education engineering project?). Raytheon's brand of fearmongering and bashing of public education for STEM issues is without merit, as explained by Gerald Bracey in this 2008 post.

But Bill Gates is interested. Interested enough to provide seed money for the project. Can you say education-military-industrial complex?

From the Defense News (my bolds):

New Raytheon Program Analyzes 'STEM' Candidates

By ANTONIE BOESSENKOOL
Published: 8 Jul 2009 19:03

Raytheon and the Business-Higher Education Forum unveiled an open-source computer modeling program July 8 focused on math and science education. The program is designed for use by educators, policy makers and researchers to aid education policy and planning decisions.

The defense industry is bracing itself for growing shortages of skilled engineers and scientists as older workers prepare to retire and are not replaced at a full rate. The program, which Raytheon engineers started developing in 2006, looks at roughly 200 variables to judge the likelihood a student will graduate with a degree in one of the "STEM" subjects - science, technology, engineering or math - and enter industry or become a teacher in one of those fields.

"We decided to use the same methods that had been applied to large, complex engineering systems," Swanson said. "These tools help us determine what systems designs will work and be cost-effective and which should be abandoned because they have limited capabilities or high cost or worse yet, just won't work over time." The program is intended to help effective educational methods rise to the top, said Raytheon Chief Executive Bill Swanson. Whereas a lot of ideas have worked locally, there is no "one size" for all educational systems. In looking at how to model the use of effective educational methods, Raytheon used the same systems engineering, modeling and simulation it uses for defense programs, Swanson said.

The model itself looks like a group of spiders, mapping a person's education and career from birth to retirement. It looks at the short- and long-term impacts of changing certain variables and produces a graph showing changes in the number of college graduates in STEM subjects as a result.

The model also looks at variables such as teacher pay, class size, student interest in science and math, teacher attrition rates and gender differences over the course of a person's education from kindergarten to college.

Raytheon gifted the program, called the U.S. STEM Educational Model, to BHEF. BHEF in turn launched the program into open-source use, which means users can suggest changes and research to improve the model. The model is based on research including test scores and localized studies, yet more research is needed, panelists at the unveiling said.

"There are many areas where we need much more research. … to help fill in some of the gaps. In the meantime, we often make assumptions," said Brian Wells, chief system engineer at Raytheon. Raytheon and BHEF are hoping researchers and users of the program will add research. That research, and changes suggested in the open-source environment, will be reviewed by other users, speakers at the unveiling said.

The program can be downloaded for free at www.STEMnetwork.org. Vensim Simulation Software from Ventana Systems is needed to run the software.

The program will be overseen by the STEM Research and Modeling Network, a partnership between Raytheon, BHEF and The Ohio State University. The partnership got some "seed money" from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but more funding, perhaps a few million a year, will be needed in the future, depending on what other initiatives the network decides to pursue, such as educational awards, said Brian Fitzgerald, executive director of BHEF.

The BHEF is an organization of executives from Fortune 500 companies, university presidents and foundation leaders who focus on educational issues and enhancing U.S. competitiveness.

The Only Education Reform That Matters This Year: Health Care

While Arne's army of oligarchs continues its multi-billion dollar war against the public schools, and while their insipid ideas rot into lame notions under July's Washington heat (pay per test score plans and cheap charters that make jobs for out of work corporate crooks), the only reform of the year that has a real chance of reducing the achievement gap is being hijacked by the same oligarchs who rail against socialized medicine, while cutting backroom corporate welfare deals with Big Little Man, Rahm Emmanuel.

With 72 percent of the American people are in favor of a public option like Medicare, Tough Man Emmanuel is intent on trading the welfare of the citizenry for the corporate welfare once again. If the President allows this health care plan to become another corporate feeding trough that leaves the poor without quality health care, he will have assured his legacy as the Booker T. of his generation and as the first African-American president to be a one termer. The line is drawn, and this is one that Obama cannot straddle.

Meanwhile, the utter irrelevancy of the U. S. Department of Education remains breathtaking in light of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to push for policy that will affect academic achievement more than any stupid or smart test that could be choked down the throats of sick children without health care.

From the Times:

WASHINGTON — The deals, trumpeted loudly by the White House, would each help pay for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system.

First, it was a broad consortium of health industry groups — doctors, hospitals, drug makers and insurers, all promising to slow the growth of medical spending by 1.5 percent. Then, it was the big drug makers, promising savings of $80 billion over 10 years, by lowering the cost of medicine for the elderly.

On Wednesday, it will be major hospital associations, pledging to save more than $150 billion over a decade. And a deal with doctors is said to be on tap next.

In each case, the Obama administration hailed the agreements as historic. But what has been little discussed is what the industry groups will be getting in return for their cooperation, whether or not the promised savings ever materialize.

The short-term political benefits are clear. Senior White House officials say the deals are building momentum that will help propel the health care legislation past potential opponents in the private sector and on Capitol Hill.

Rather than running advertisements against the White House, the most influential players in the industry are inside the room negotiating with administration officials and leading lawmakers, like Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee.

“The very groups we have been talking to have been the most vocal opponents of health care reform; they are now becoming the vocal proponents for health care reform,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.

But some lawmakers said the deals, while seemingly helpful, could raise false expectations by obscuring how much the industry is demanding for its concessions.

“I’m delighted to hear that people are stepping up to help reduce costs,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who is leading the Senate health committee, “but I want to know what the ask is, and the ask sometimes can exceed the value of your cost savings.”

Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, who could provide a critical swing vote, said she had not signed on to any of the White House deals. “It’s one thing for the president to reach that agreement, but it’s another thing for Congress to reach that agreement,” Ms. Snowe said. “We have yet to evaluate what are the specifics and particulars. So it’s uncertain. It could be helpful. I just don’t know.”

As part of their deal with the White House, pharmaceutical companies say they won an agreement from Mr. Baucus to oppose efforts by House Democrats to sharply reduce what the government pays for drugs for some Medicare recipients previously covered by Medicaid. . . .

Connecting the Dots: Standardized Testing and the Charter Chain Movement

There's a huge push for standards, innovation/entrepreneurship, charter school chains, and taking ideas "to scale." These ideas are tightly connected. To see how they're connected, take a peek at the NewSchools Venture Fund's 2008 annual summit (the entire thing is worth reading; Michelle Rhee and New Leaders for New Schools are both given awards). My bolds:

Audience members asked the panelists what else it would take to create a healthy [entrepreneurial capital] market. Panelists noted that K-12 public education is an enormous, fragmented, market, where ventures often take longer to mature than in other sectors. Kaplan pointed out that more effective capital markets exist in sectors where the demand is aggregated, such as in pre-K or postsecondary education. In these markets, money follows the consumer and 'you can start to build bigger, better, more professionally-run schools' that, in turn, open up access to more capital from interested investors who see the potential of these models. Conversely, K-12 education is subject to local control, which prevents aggregated demand, explained Shelton. Kaplan added that this construct leaves few incentives to invest in K-12. 'In investing, he reminded the audience, 'there are no extra points for degrees of difficulty.'

This pattern raises the question: is there a way to aggregate demand in the K-12 space? Shelton poisted that one way to go about this is to segment K-12 education into separate service markets, but that concept is undermined by the fact that vey little is known about what truly works. As a result, individual entrepreneurs and companies often are prone to building systems and structures that are highly tailored to the immediate needs of their organization and their student population. 'People legitimately believe that this little thing that they're going to do is going to make the difference,' Shelton explained. 'Even if it is not getting funded, people would rather cobble together their own customizable system, perfectly matched to their specific needs.' Cole suspected that this focus on specific details may be the result of competition among this relatively small group of entrepreneurs. 'In so many cases these leaders are seeing each other as competitors,' she said. 'Because there are scarce resources and they're going after many of the same funding sources, they can't figure out how to collaborate.'

This problem may be particularly acute among nonprofit education ventures, which do not experience the same level of competition imposed on for-profits by the market. 'In nonprofits, we don't measure each investment against results,' explained Shelton. Cole pointed out that this allows nonprofits to continue securing grants and to stay afloat even when their results are poor, which deters them from seeking mergers or alternatives business models. Kaplan noted that this is a sharp departure from for-profit space where, in his words, 'if someone knew a cheaper better way to do something, they would grab it.' The nonprofit market also fails to reward the most effective ventures. 'There's a fundamental disconnect between performance and access to capital,' Shelton explained, which means that, 'even a high-performing venture is not ensured that it will receive sufficient dollars in the current market.' What the market needs, Shelton suggested, is general agreement on the metrics and definitions of success, especially student achievement metrics and organization efficiency.

Shelton is now sitting in Duncan's Office of Innovation and Improvement, which is the "nimble, entrepreneurial arm of the U.S. Department of Education" created under President George W. Bush. Shelton's experience in education began as the co-founder and CEO of LearnNow, a for-profit charter chain that managed to be sold to Edison just before Edison's Philadelphia debacle (and the ensuing stock collapse, the Florida public employee pension fund's purchase of the stock, and Jeb Bush tomfoolery). NewSchools Venture Fund was one of LearnNow's biggest supporters, and NSVF walked away from the deal with a cool million in profits (they managed to sell their stock for a net gain around the time of the aforementioned Edison turmoil). From there, Shelton hops on at Edison, works for NSVF as their East Coast leader, jumps over to the Gates Foundation, and now lands in Duncan's DOE. I suppose we should look at what this guy said in the past - he is, after all, a public employee who just happens to be sitting on the $650 million "Race to the Top" fund. The other two panelists certainly give us some insight into how education entrepreneurs think as well.

You'll also notice Shelton's comments on local control of education, which he claims gets in the way of "aggregated demand." In other words, the corporate charter school movement has a more difficult time orchestrating their hostile takeover of public education with pesky local control and democratic forms of control over education. Mayoral control, minimizing the role of school boards, and allowing for more authorizers of charter schools (as described here by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in a report arguing for the deregulation of charter school authorizers. Notice the number of Education Sector contributors; NewSchools Venture Fund's former CEO and current board member sits on the Ed Sector board) would sure make it easier for these innovators and edupreneurs.

Shelton reveals how the standards movement is connected to the charter chain movement when describing the role of test scores: "What the market needs, Shelton suggested, is general agreement on the metrics and definitions of success, especially student achievement metrics and organization efficiency." National standards, like the ones currently being created by Achieve, the College Board, ACT, and the Gates Foundation, would sure make it easy to spread curriculum and materials to the wave of ill-prepared teachers in the various charter chains.

Shelton repeats an iteration of the privatization movement, this time targeting only part of the school system rather than the entire school (Shelton probably learned this during his experiences through LearnNow and Edison): "Shelton poisted that one way to go about this is to segment K-12 education into separate service markets, but that concept is undermined by the fact that vey little is known about what truly works." In other words, we have no idea what works - but we have the backing of various philanthrocapitalists willing to fund our experimentation on urban youth.

For all the talk of competition (between students within a school, schools within a district, and states within the nation), one presenter brings up how bad competition can be for these start-up companies. They're competing for the same resources and just cannot figure out how to work together. Education entrepreneurs consistently gripe about the lack of competition in education, but once they get their foot in the door they start whining about competition: "'Because there are scarce resources and they're going after many of the same funding sources, they can't figure out how to collaborate.'" It seems to me that if this competition for scarce resources makes it difficult for edupreneurs to collaborate (which the presenter notes is a negative), why would we want schools, students, and communities competing against each other? Collaboration is not only a highly desired ability in many areas (personal relationships, work settings, etc), it's an absolute necessity if we're going to deal with global climate change, war, poverty, etc. But we're told we need to compete. Why? Because China and India are pumping out hundreds of thousands of engineers that will be capable of threatening our reign over the rest of the globe (Bracey debunks the numbers here).

The privatization becomes a little more opaque, this time under a President who ran on a platform promising for transparency and a shift away from the policies of the Bush Jr. years. But hey - dontcha think a Palin Presidency would be a hell of a lot worse?

From the Digital Divide to the Digital Diversion

A second offer showed up in my mailbox this morning for a new book by Terry Moe and John Chubb on the glories of cyber ed, which is viewed by the financiers and lawyers in charge today of education policy as the ultimate solution to education for the poor and working class. From cyber charter elementary to cyber college, a new educational caste system has been devised that will offer two very different types of educational experiences, one grounded in the sterile isolation and alienation of the flat screen, and the other based within the warm incandescent community of other middle class minds and bodies exchanging the breaths of privilege and mutual care.

The poor rural and urban students will avail themselves of the former, and the economically privileged will continue their well-heeled traditions with the best teachers, real campuses, and the best apparatus that money can buy. Meanwhile, the poor will have laptops and modems, we may presume, provided by Gates and Dell, and charged off at an exorbitant rate to the taxpayer as part of the new world of the cyber charter and the cyber college. Think of it: following graduation, the poor will even find minimum wage jobs online, so that they may live their entire lives without having to get dressed! Think of the cost savings.

The selling of this distinctly dystopian future is something else, again. It is wrapped in the threadbare reform rhetoric that no one believes anymore, insulting as it is to the intelligence of anyone able to read. Moe and Chubb have teamed up once more to promote the Oligarchs' solution of corporate-run testing factories, the online variety no less, as the way to achieve what the Finns have achieved by honoring the teaching profession, creating world-class standards, funding their school, nurturing their students, and getting rid of high stakes testing. Finland, for instance, does not use test scores to determine how much to pay teachers.

And even though the "reformers" have wasted the past 25 years with a test-til-you-puke strategy that continues to not work, that reality is lost on these fools, who have their eye on a prize that has nothing to do with student learning or quality schools--but on filling the pockets of the ed industry leeches looking to increase their share of tax money intended for education. In fact, the continuation of the test factory failures of the past 25 years holds open the door to the continuation of another generation of reforms dreamed up by the same ad agencies that sell you all the other modern day remedies you have come to count on not to work.

From the Wall Street Journal:

. . . . In response to "A Nation at Risk," Terry Moe and John Chubb in 1990 published "Politics, Markets and America's Schools," which identified special-interest groups -- mainly teachers unions -- as the culprits in preventing the reforms urged in the report. Now Messrs. Moe and Chubb have returned to the subject with "Liberating Learning," a more optimistic sequel. The authors believe there exists a magic bullet that is capable of shattering the unions' political power and, at last, bringing the sort of reform and excellence to U.S. K-12 education that might make U.S. students competitive with Finnish teenagers. The ammunition? Technology.

Mr. Moe is an academic researcher at the Hoover Institution; Mr. Chubb, an executive with Chris Whittle's for-profit education venture, Edison Learning. They think that technology -- particularly online education -- holds two potentially dramatic benefits. One is simply a general improvement in education as students from "anywhere -- poor inner cities, remote rural areas, even at home" gain access to high-caliber instruction. More important, the authors say, is technology's ability to destroy the political barriers that prevent education reform.

Despite much public rhetoric about the urgent need to improve American education, despite the investment of billions of dollars in schools, little progress has been achieved. Why? Messrs. Moe and Chubb blame the "politics of blocking" -- the thwarting of such simple reforms as paying teachers for performance. Many states prohibit even gathering data that link individual teachers to the test scores of their students.

Technology, the authors say, may enable the circumvention of political blocking. They make their point forcefully, with copious and surprising examples. In 1995, for instance, Midland, Pa., a declining steel town on the Ohio border, launched the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School. Today the online school serves 8,000 students throughout the state. And the classes aren't just digital correspondence courses -- there are textbooks and live educators, including "synchronous teachers," who work with students through instant messaging, voice and interactive whiteboards while the kids are engaged with their lessons online. Advisers are required to communicate with students' families at least once a week by email and once every two weeks by phone. . . .

There is one thing that may get in the way of this brave new cyber world of education for the disenfranchised, and, as always, it has to do with the greedy over-reaching that has characterized this generation of corporate bottom-feeders. Here is the latest from Pennsylvania, where the lawyers of the Agora Cyber Charter School are using up the money they have taken from the taxpayers to file numerous lawsuits to block the State from bringing a halt to their corrupt gravy train. From the Inquirer:

With the state poised to pull the plug over alleged mismanagement, an online charter school based in Devon is fighting back in not just one court, but three.

One week after the Pennsylvania Department of Education began the process of revoking its operating charter, the Agora Cyber Charter School has filed lawsuits in federal, state, and county courts challenging the action and seeking the return of public money the state had diverted from Agora into an escrow account.

The litigation - filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg, and Chester County Court of Common Pleas - is the latest salvo in a dispute over the school's management contract with a company owned by Agora founder Dorothy June Brown.

Agora, which opened in 2005, enrolls 4,400 students statewide who receive online instruction at home.

The Education Department, which oversees the 11 cyber charters in Pennsylvania, alleges that Agora's board of trustees violated the operating charter by contracting out management services. To make matters worse, state officials say, the company, Cynwyd Group L.L.C., is controlled by Brown.

Cynwyd was to be paid $2.8 million from Agora's $41 million budget this academic year - although, according to the Education Department, most of the management work was performed by another company, K-12 Pennsylvania L.L.C.

On June 11, the state told Agora's board to cancel the Cynwyd contract and to resign in 10 days. When the board did neither, charter-revocation proceedings were begun and a two-day hearing in Harrisburg was scheduled for next month.

The Education Department already had started to divert Agora's local, state, and federal funds into an escrow account, to prevent money from flowing to Cynwyd.

In court documents filed this week, Agora's board contends that education officials had known about the Cynwyd contract since 2006 but raised no objections until April 29.

Joel L. Frank, an Agora attorney, is asking the courts to halt the revocation proceedings and to return the money, which he contends was withheld in violation of state law.

"We will review the complaints and respond in a timely manner," Leah Harris, an Education Department spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

School districts, she added, have been asked "to place their tuition payments to Agora into an escrow account from which the costs of the students' education will continue to be paid. All federal funds will be paid to Agora. There is no intention on the part of [the department] to withhold federal dollars from Agora."

Despite the revocation proceedings, state officials have said Agora is expected to operate in 2009-10.

Also on Monday, Agora's board sued K-12 in Chester County Court. Although the state maintains the escrow fund, the trustees contend that K-12 has had some access to the money in order to pay bills, and they are seeking an accounting.

Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., the attorney who represents K-12, said that under the escrow procedures, the state must preapprove all Agora bills paid by K-12. Any expenditures, he said, "have been for the educational needs of the students."

K-12 Pennsylvania is a subsidiary of K12 Inc., a for-profit education company in Herndon, Va.

The cyber school's finances also are under scrutiny by the Philadelphia School District inspector general and by federal investigators as part of a general criminal probe of local charter operations.

Clayton Christensen and the Innosight Institute:Fixing Public Education

Various factions of the education world are abuzz with the ideas proposed by Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen and his colleagues in "Disrupting Class," a relatively new book about education reform. Just to be clear, Christensen's background includes a previous stint in the business world, a position at Harvard's business school, and a position as an elder in the Mormon church. As far as I can tell, Christensen hasn't spent any time with children in an education setting.

Like many education reformers, Christensen is totally out of touch with both reality and good teaching. He and his colleagues believe most teachers simply stand at the front of the class and lecture. This might be the case for ill-prepared teachers, but experienced educators know students need to be involved in lessons instead of acting as spectators in the creation of knowledge. Consistently describing current teaching trends as "monolithic," Christensen believes computer-based learning is the key to education reform. In a bastardized understanding of Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences (and somehow Gardner agrees with him), Christensen believes every child could learn if we used more student-centric teaching methods (sound good, but Christensen really means plopping a child in front of a screen and keyboard in their solo experience of education. Sure, kids might interact with each other in the virtual world, but Christensen's views imply drastically reducing face-to-face interaction). I'm all for child-centered pedagogies and the reasonable use of technology in the classroom, but there is certainly reason to be skeptical of an education system that relies on computers as the primary delivery method. Christensen never addresses the potential social impacts of his take on education reform.

But computer-centric learning will not be willfully adopted by educators. Rather, online and computer-centric learning will gain strength through providing educational opportunities for students who have difficulty in traditional classrooms. Christensen and his pals suggest this new form of learning will eventually overtake traditional public education; half of all high school courses will be taken online by the year 2019 and continue to expand as the online school market thrives. For an added twist, Christensen and his colleagues repeatedly mention Apex Learning, an online learning company started by Paul Allen. Allen, in case you were unaware, co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates.

Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation suggests that teachers will never implement his concept of "student-centered learning" because it would put the teaching profession at risk. The computer-centric learning Christensen and his colleagues drool over is attractive for reasons having more to do with eliminating teachers and weakening the teachers' union than anything else. While I'm not here to criticize religious beliefs, Christensen's vision fewer teachers and student-centric learning mimics his experience in the Mormon church: there are no paid professional leaders (aka teachers), and Christensen feels sorry for religions that employ paid laborers. Everyone is expected to be both a teacher and student (great idea), but the show is not guided by someone who is specially trained (teachers). You can read more about this in an essay he wrote, "Why I Belong, and Why I Believe." Just to reiterate, I'm not criticizing religion - I'm just noting a comparison that may be relevant to Christensen's beliefs about education reform.

The following is a recent critique of the reform efforts, particularly the stimulus funding. Christensen co-wrote the piece with Michael Horn, co-founder of the Innosight Institute and one of Christensen's co-authors of "Disrupting Class." You'll notice the fawning over TFA and New Leaders for New Schools, two groups on the forefront in the corporate reform of public education. From CNN.com:

Commentary: Don't Prop Up Failing Schools

(CNN) -- Historically the federal government has been a small investor in the nation's education system. With the recent economic stimulus bill, however, this changed virtually overnight.

There is great danger in the sudden and massive amount of funding -- nearly $100 billion -- that the federal government is throwing at the nation's schools. District by district, the budgetary crises into which all schools were plunging created the impetus for long-needed changes.

The most likely result of this stimulus will be to give our schools the luxury of affording not to change. This is borrowed money that we're pumping into our schools, and it comes at a price. Charging education isn't changing it.

That our schools need to change should not be surprising. Just walk into your local school and enter a classroom. Odds are high that it won't look too different from a classroom from a generation or two ago.

Sure, there might be some computers in the back of the room and perhaps an interactive white board instead of a chalkboard, but chances are high that students will still be sitting at desks lined up in neat rows with a teacher at the front delivering the same lesson on the same day to all the students. This might be acceptable if society and the skills many people need to succeed in today's economy hadn't changed either, but they have.

While U.S. schools stand still, the rest of the world is moving forward, and this has a price tag -- not just for individual children, but also for the nation.

We urge the federal government to consider four criteria when creating new programs or grants for states and districts to help transform an outdated education system into one fit for the 21st Century.

First, don't fund technology that simply shoves computers and other technologies into existing classrooms. We've spent well over $60 billion in the last two decades doing just that, and there is now overwhelming evidence that when we do it, the current unsatisfactory system co-opts the technology to sustain itself.

Second, don't fund new school buildings that look like the existing ones. If the architecture of new buildings is the same as that of existing schools -- designed around teachers delivering monolithic, one-size-fits-all lessons to large batches of students -- it will lock students into another century in which the physical infrastructure works against the flexibility needed for student-centric learning.We should instead use technology funding to bolster new learning models and innovations, such as online-learning environments, to level the playing field and allow students from all walks of life -- from small, rural communities to budget-strapped urban schools -- to access the rich variety that is now available only to children in wealthy suburban districts.

Instead, invest in bandwidth as an infrastructure of change. The government has a productive history in investing in infrastructure that creates change and innovation -- from allocating land to those building the transcontinental railroad and the land-grant colleges in 1862 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funding the creation of the Internet.

To allow all districts to realize the power of online learning to advance us toward a student-centric system, the federal government should help deliver broadband capabilities necessary not just for today's needs, where schools already lag, but also in anticipation of tomorrow's.

Third, don't fund the institutions that are least likely to change. Our research shows that institutions are good at improving what they are structured to do, but that transformative innovations that fundamentally change the trade-off between cost and quality -- disruptive innovations -- come from start-up institutions.

This means that there is a high probability that spending money on existing schools of education will only result in their doing more of the same, for example. Meanwhile, there are a host of disruptive training organizations that are providing comparable educators at lower cost, such as Teach for America, the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, and New Leaders for New Schools.

Alternative certification, including alternative programs from existing schools of education, has grown at a 29 percent compound annual growth rate since 1997. The government must embrace this and back the winners, not defend the old institutions.

Fourth, direct more funds for research and development to create student-centric learning software. Just a fraction of 1 percent of the $600 billion in K-12 spending from all levels currently goes toward R&D.

The federal government should reallocate funds so we can begin to understand not just what learning opportunities work best on average but also what works for whom and under what circumstance. It is vital to fund learning software that captures data about the student and the efficacy of different approaches so we can connect these dots.

Transformation of any existing system isn't an easy process, but ignoring the laws of innovation, although it may be perhaps politically expedient in the short run, will only make it more difficult.

When the federal government directs future funds toward education, having these principles in place will go a long way toward making sure we're not simply charging education, but that we have a fighting chance of changing it.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn.

Christensen and his colleagues are the type of "educators" that whittle education down to a teacher, textbook, or - in the near future - software companies depositing information into the "empty" minds of students (Freire's critique of what he describes as banking theory; Christensen takes the banking theory digital). Each student, on their own path of customized education, might interact with their peers occasionally, but the majority of the time appears to be spent in solitary education confinement. Formative assessment - a wonderful idea when used properly - becomes nothing more than preprogrammed computer-based feedback loops in this technology-centered classroom (can you see how this would be a heck of a lot easier to take this "to scale" with common standards in all 50 states?). I'm all for technology use in the classroom - let's just keep it reasonable.

Jeb Bush loves Christensen's ideas (read his recent foray into education reform ideas here). So does the Gates Foundation's Education Director Vicki Phillips, NYC's Joel Klein, and Harvard MBA types. The idiots march on, this time to the tune of another questionable drummer.

Imagine, Inc. Charter Schools and Real Estate

The inherent fetidness of the charter school model is without parallel in the history of American schooling. As the economy continues to sink as a result of capitalist greed, our "leaders" continue to foist on the American people a scheme that epitomizes the corruption and reckless disregard that brought us the current Depression.

By MATTHEW HAAG / The Dallas Morning News
mhaag@dallasnews.com
The Texas Education Agency last week approved the opening of a McKinney charter school run by a company that other states rejected over concern about its tax status.

The Texas board of education allowed the for-profit Imagine International Academy of North Texas to run the school even though state law allows only nonprofit organizations to open state-funded charter schools.

Imagine argued that it would use the nonprofit status of an affiliate charter school in Indiana.

State officials said the Texas attorney general reviewed the arrangement and determined that it was allowable before the school was approved.

But school officials in Florida and Nevada have raised questions about other Imagine schools, saying they have not proved they are nonprofit and that public money should not flow into for-profit hands. The company has opened dozens of schools in 13 states.

Multiple calls to the Imagine Schools Inc. headquarters in Arlington, Va., for comment were not returned.

Florida's reaction
In Florida, Imagine intended to open 15 schools.

But the company met heavy resistance from local and state education officials, and withdrew its applications. Florida education leaders questioned whether Imagine was a certified nonprofit or a business attempting to profit from public education money.

"They cannot prove to us that they are a nonprofit. They do not have a 501c3," said Tina Pinkoson, chairwoman of Florida's Alachua County Public Schools, where Imagine applied to open a charter school this year. "They say they can prove it, but we won't believe it until they show us."

The school district's attorney, Tom Wittmer, voiced similar reservations to the school board.

The structure of the school in McKinney, and another campus approved last week in Georgetown, is similar to that of the proposed schools in Florida. According to paperwork submitted to TEA, the charters will use Imagine Schools Inc. for "the opening and ongoing operation of the Academy."

That means Imagine Schools Inc. would receive 12.5 percent of the per-pupil state funding, which is about $750,000 from each of its Texas schools, according to the TEA.

Monthly allowance
The charters would also pay Imagine Schools Inc. monthly allowances, Julia Brady said. Ms. Brady was a founding parent of the McKinney campus and was later hired as school development director of Imagine International Academy of North Texas.

The amount of the monthly allowances has not been set in Texas, but in Alachua, Fla., Imagine Schools Inc. proposed receiving $3,000 a month for 20 years, plus 1 percent to 3 percent of the charter's revenue for up to 20 years.

In return, Imagine Schools Inc. would provide the two Texas charters everything from teachers to budgeting to human resources, the charter applications state.

Both the Texas charters will lease school space from Schoolhouse, a subsidiary of Imagine Schools Inc., Ms. Brady said.

She said the Imagine charter schools are paying for services they need.

"It's hard to find a vendor to lease something or provide loans to a new charter school," Ms. Brady said. "It's essentially a way for schools to tap into an existing company with a strong credit background."

Ms. Brady said the company is not unjustly siphoning public funds.

"I don't see it that way," she said. "Essentially, the local board has contracted with Imagine Schools to set up and start up the charter, paying them for services rendered."

Ken Berger, CEO of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog group, said the setup skirts the rules.

"The charter seems like a shell corporation created for the for-profit corporation," he said. "It looks like they found a way around regulations."

According to the Internal Revenue Service, Imagine Schools Inc. is not a certified nonprofit – or 501c3. Ms. Brady said the company is expecting to receive the status soon. The company applied for it in November 2005.

Mr. Berger said the process should take months, not years.

Mr. Berger said it's fine for nonprofits to contract with for-profit corporations. But when most of the contract appears to be made with the same company, the relationship becomes "questionable," he said.

"It seems like they are giving oversight duty to Imagine," he said. "It seems like the tables have turned and Imagine Schools are managing them. But it certainly sounds like a questionable arrangement."

Report Highlights Lack of Diversity on Foundation Boards

From the Greenlining Institute:

Over the past several years, increasing national attention has been focused on the need for foundations to become more aware of the opportunities presented by our increasingly diverse nation. In this brief, we present figures on the diversity of the nation’s 46 largest foundations. Over 90% of all foundations and 20% of the largest foundations have little or no paid staff (Foundation Center, 2007‐2), which effectively delegates the ultimate decision on which proposals should receive funding to the handful of trustees that make up the board. Since foundations are most often not held accountable to any entity outside themselves for their funding decisions, most trustees will decide which causes or organizations to fund based on their own notions of which causes are worthy of funding, as well as their personal and professional networks. Having a culturally competent board of informed givers is therefore essential to increasing a foundation’s impact on communities of color.

The entire report is available here. You'll notice a number of significant education donors are given the dubious distinction of zero persons of color on their board of directors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and the Annenberg Foundation.

Racism Veiled by Testing Wins 5-4, Again

From the Chronicle:

To Test or Not to Test

A recent Quinnipiac University poll shows that 61% of Americans are against affirmative action for blacks in hiring, promotion, and college admissions. So when the New Haven fire department’s decision to stop using a written test for promoting firefighters because no African American passed the test, the Supreme Court was on firm ground in the popularity contest to overturn a lower court’s approval.

Much of the opposition against affirmative action isn’t about racism or stinginess, but about a charming belief in tests. Certainly, if affirmative action was about giving unqualified people jobs, promotions, or college admissions very few people would or should support it.

Yikes! who would want a black surgeon or, DOUBLE YIKES a female economics blogger?!

If there is a robust metric out there – an indicator that is highly correlated with success in a job or college — then, by all means, let’s use them to separate the competent from the incompetent.

Here is a test:

You are in a burning building. Do you want a firefighter rescuer (choose one:)
a. who passed a written test,
b. who has a sister-in-law on the city council member or is of a certain race,
c. who has proven on-the-job performance and successfully passed simulated fire rescues

Answer class?

The majority chooses c.

Steve Greenhouse of the New York Times reports that there are different ways to assess competency that do far better than written exams. The ability to handle an emergency, lead and motivate a group, and communicate instructions and goals are necessary firefighter captain skills. And down the street from New Haven, in Bridgeport, Conn., the fire department searches for those skills directly by using a battery of labor–intensive simulations and oral exams to promote select rank-and-file to fire lieutenants and captains.

In the labor market employers never really know what the future productivity of their employees will be, so they always search for signs, signals, and indicators to make the best selections. The upside of this Supreme Court decision, and an earlier one on the University of Michigan’s affirmative action admissions practices, could be colleges and employers moving away from test scores and innovating to find better alternatives so we find the best man or woman to do the job and the students who’ll get the most out of college.

That is the glass half full version.

The glass half empty version is that this is a sign that five members of the Supreme Court want to weaken civil rights protections, especially at the work place.

Justice Ginsburg has an opinion about that: “the Court pretends that “[t]he City rejected the test results solely because the higher scoring candidates were white.” Ante, at 20. That pretension, essential to the Court’s disposition, ignores substantial evidence of multiple flaws in the tests New Haven used. The Court similarly fails to acknowledge the better tests used in other cities, which have yielded less racially skewed outcomes.. “

Losing Ground in the Pursuit of Happiness

What does really matter? Aristotle's answer, happiness, and his road to getting there by the steady exercise of intellectual and moral virtue--has been replaced by a detour that would seem to have us decidedly lost. From The Guardian:

Costa Rica is the greenest and happiest country in the world, according to a new list that ranks nations by combining measures of their ecological footprint with the happiness of their citizens.

Britain is only halfway up the Happy Planet Index (HPI), calculated by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), in 74th place of 143 nations surveyed. The United States features in the 114th slot in the table. The top 10 is dominated by countries from Latin America, while African countries bulk out the bottom of the table.

The HPI measures how much of the Earth's resources nations use and how long and happy a life their citizens enjoy as a result. First calculated in 2006, the second edition adds data on almost all the world's countries and now covers 99% of the world's population.

NEF says the HPI is a much better way of looking the success of countries than through standard measures of economic growth. The HPI shows, for example, that fast-growing economies such as the US, China and India were all greener and happier 20 years ago than they are today.

"The HPI suggests that the path we have been following is, without exception, unable to deliver all three goals: high life satisfaction, high life expectancy and 'one-planet living'," says Saamah Abdallah, NEF researcher and the report's lead author. "Instead we need a new development model that delivers good lives that don't cost the Earth for all."

Costa Ricans top the list because they report the highest life satisfaction in the world, they live slightly longer than Americans, yet have an ecological footprint that is less than a quarter the size. The country only narrowly fails to achieve the goal of what NEF calls "one-planet living": consuming its fair share of the Earth's natural resources.

The report says the differences between nations show that it is possible to live long, happy lives with much smaller ecological footprints than the highest-consuming nations.

The new HPI also provides the first ever analysis of trends over time for what are supposedly the world's most developed nations, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

OECD nations' HPI scores plummeted between 1960 and the late 1970s. Although there have been some gains since then, HPI scores were still higher in 1961 than in 2005.

Life satisfaction and life expectancy combined have increased 15% over the 45-year period for those living in the rich nations, but it has come at the cost of a 72% rise in their ecological footprint. And the three largest countries in the world – China, India and the US, which are aggressively pursuing growth-based development models – have all seen their HPI scores drop in that time.

The highest placed western nation is the Netherlands. People there live on average over a year longer than people in the US, and have similar levels of life satisfaction – yet their per capita ecological footprint is less than half the size. The Netherlands is therefore over twice as environmentally efficient at achieving good lives as the US, Nef says.

The report sets out a "Happy Planet Charter" calling for an unprecedented collective global effort to develop a "new narrative" of human progress, encourage good lives that don't cost the earth, and to reduce consumption in the highest-consuming nations – which it says is the biggest barrier to sustainable wellbeing.