According the article, “The three rules challenged by the career college group have also generated their share of concern among some nonprofit college officials, since they apply broadly to all institutions whose students receive federal financial aid.”

The lawsuit asks the courts to block the federal agency from enforcing three regulations that it claims “go far beyond lawful regulatory efforts.”

Federal plans to require vocationally oriented colleges to prove that they prepare students for “gainful employment” will likely be opposed in future lawsuits when those rules are released.

Related Posts:

• Privatization of Public Higher Education Will Not Solve Any Problem!
• Evidence on the quality of for-profit higher education?
• Teachers have a right to unionize
• Alan Singer: Charter Schools Don’t Do Miracles
• Broad Foundation: Facts on the Wrecking of Public Education

From Alan Singer’s July 2 piece in The Huffington Post, a few important trends are noted. For example:

But a closer look at the Locke [highschool] miracle, way down in the Times article, exposes what has actually taken place there. In 2007, a former principal complained that Locke was the Los Angles dumping ground for problem students. Only 15% of its students could pass the state standardized math test. The first thing Green Dot did was get rid of all the troubled students and bring in a fresh supply. It also dumped most of the teachers – keeping those prepared to work longer hours for less pay, what it defined as enthusiasm. Locke reopened in Fall 2008 with a new freshman class. Green Dot also fixed up the place to make it attractive for the photo ops.

The big problem was cost, although Green Dot is a non-profit company, its administrators do get paid. The four year turnaround at Locke was $15 million over budget. This does not include part of a $60 million grant from the Gates Foundation to support state development, which makes the actual cost of the turnaround much higher. Unfortunately, the federal government has set a $6 million cap for the reorganization of an individual school. Green Dot is now more than 150% over budget. The rest of the money, $9 million, was covered by donations from foundations, supposed charities, but often business groups hoping to make lucrative profits from the dismantling of public education.

Locke is actually a good model of what educational change will really cost. The school now has additional administrators, security, two psychologists, busing, and health services for students, in addition to staff development provided by the Gates Foundation. None of this has anything to do with being a charter school. This is just the real cost of educating inner city children.

I think that any school would show improvement wtih the extensive investment of those kinds of resources — except for the reportedly aggressive use of force.

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, New York questions have been raised about another miracle charter school, the Hebrew Language Academy. While 15% of the students in New York City are white, white children make up two-thirds of the students attending this school. This is essentially a private religious school for white Jewish families financed with government money. The parents have made this very clear, explaining in a New York Times article that if it were not the Hebrew Language Academy they would be paying $20,000 a year to send their children to private religious schools. Additionally, the curriculum is chauvinistically pro-Israel. There are Israeli flags all over the building and children sing songs about Israeli pioneers who built homes on empty land, the area’s Arab population conveniently ignored.

This school also receives outside money to operate, from a Jewish philanthropist named Michael Steinhardt who also happens to be a hedge fund manger and a big financial supporter of Israel. The school’s organizers, using Steinhardt’s money, plan to open a string of similar charter schools around the country.

So, not only are charters associated with increasing segregation by class and race, we here too see the ideological sifting and public support for religious instruction that will take place.

And finally, the last part is suggestive an all too common connection between charter operators, fraud and abuse.

This superhero principal actually grew up in this Bronx neighborhood and has an understanding of the life faced by these kids. However, he is in constant trouble with school authorities and has bounced from school to school. He is now under investigation by the Department of Education for three serious rule violations and was suspended at least once.

Related Posts:

• Are Charter Schools Public Schools?
• Inside Higher Ed: For-Profit Colleges Open Another Front
• Charter Schools/Market Violence/Disruptive Innovation: Student Beating, Paying the Rich, and the Irrelevance of Facts
• Think Tank Review: Report on Impact of Charters Overstates Results
• “Best Urban School District in America” Blocks Access to Websites Critical of “Education Reform”

The first site known to be blocked is that of Susan Ohanian. A veteran teacher and author of 23 books, Ohanian has been an active and vocal critic of high stakes testing, the No Child Left Behind legislation, and what she describes as the “politico-corporate takeover of curriculum” (http://susanohanian.org). In 2003, Ohanian reported concerns of teachers from more than one Aldine High School “that some administrators are manipulating testing criteria for students taking the state mandated TAAS and TAKS examinations for the purpose of achieving Recognized or Exemplary ratings which affect the amount of bonus and promotion opportunities for administrators within the district.”

The second site blocked by Aldine is that of the Institute for Language and Education Policy, a “newly formed nonprofit organization,” which describes itself as “dedicated to promoting research-based policies in serving English and heritage language learners…We are teachers, administrators, researchers, professors, students, and others who believe that the time for advocacy is now.” The organization openly challenges the direction the Obama administration is heading, including what they describe as the “test-and-punish approach”. The organization challenges visitors to think about the impact of this direction: “Reform, change, innovation, and other pleasing generalities are in the air and on the lips of the President and his education advisers. Virtually no one on any side of today’s policy debates would oppose these goals in principle. But what will the words mean in practice?” (http://www.elladvocates.org/)

The message received by those attempting to access either of these websites from computers on Aldine’s network reads: “Access to this web page is restricted at this time. Your attempt to access the requested site may be in violation of Aldine ISD policy and has been restricted by the Technology Services Department. Site Category: ‘Education;Political/Activist Groups’”

Participants on the email listserv have challenged Aldine, raising important concerns about the responsibility of government to the public. “This may be [the result of] some site-blocking software, but it seems highly unlikely. Let’s not forget that Aldine ISD and all the other public schools are formally arms of the local governments (and, it could be argued, the state governments). They cannot censor wily-nilly. In this case, I would very much want to know their formal reason for blocking “Education; Political/Activist Groups”, in general, and for classifying any particular site under that label, specifically,” writes Victor Steinbok.

According to Ohanian, Aldine was one of six districts selected in 2007 by the Center for Reform of School Systems to participate in Reform Governance in Action (RGA), described as “a comprehensive two-year training program for school boards and superintendents…. The RGA program is an effort underwritten by the Eli Broad Foundation and the Meadows Foundation to support and encourage reform-minded leadership in school districts across the country. School Boards enrolled in RGA will study ways to better serve their constituents’ needs, how institute effective policy, and how to create and implement a cogent transformation plan.”

Education Week described the school as follows: “Aldine is striking because the district leaves so little to chance when it comes to student success…. It takes little time for a visitor to Aldine to see the heavy emphasis that is placed on preparation for state tests. Computer programs scroll through lists of practice questions. Printers spit out scores for teachers to review. Timed practice quizzes help students prepare for the real thing.”

Related Posts:

• The Common Core: Whose Standards Are They?
• Are Charter Schools Public Schools?
• Bruce Baker: Smart Guy (Gates) makes my list of “Dumbest Stuff I’ve Ever Read!”
• Teachers have a right to unionize
• Inside Higher Ed: For-Profit Colleges Open Another Front

In April, three-quarters of the Civitas teachers and staff at the three schools signed cards stating they wanted the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Chicago ACTS) to represent them as a union. Under state law, that was enough for the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board to automatically certify Chicago ACTS as the union representative, which the board did. But school officials filed a petition with the NLRB, claiming Civitas was a private entity that required an NLRB-supervised election.

“We continue to believe that these charter schools are public schools because they are funded with taxpayer dollars,” said Brian Harris, a special education teacher at CICS/Civitas Northtown Academy and a member of Chicago ACTS. “We are prepared to proceed with an election as soon as possible and are confident that our union will prevail.”

Civitas argued that its charter schools are essentially private schools not accountable to the public, despite receiving taxpayer dollars. In the brief Civitas submitted to the NLRB, it claimed it is a for-profit company not required to provide any type of annual presentation to any government body to justify its annual expenditures, and that it has no “direct personal accountability” to any government public officials.

“We urge Civitas administrators to work with the teachers and staff at the school to ensure the election is conducted fairly and quickly,” said Martha Biondi, chair of Chicago Workers’ Rights Board and an associate professor of African American studies and history at Northwestern University. “We applaud the teachers and staff at the school for working to have a say in their school in order to improve learning and teaching conditions that will ultimately benefit the children.”

Chicago ACTS is a joint project of the American Federation of Teachers, the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union. Chicago ACTS is an affiliate of the IFT.

Links:

Chicago ACTS brief to National Labor Relations Board

CICS/Civitas brief to National Labor Relations Board

Related Posts:

• Are Charter Schools Public Schools?
• Teachers have a right to unionize
• Stephen Sawchuk: States Aim to Curb Collective Bargaining
• Anthony Cody: Teachers Beware — They are Coming for Our Pensions
• Inside Higher Ed: For-Profit Colleges Open Another Front

Yet recent reports point to the complexity of this trend. One example involves efforts of teachers to unionize at an Illinois non-for-profit charter school, who in turn hires for-profit EMOs to run some of their campuses. In response to the formation of the union, the charter company claims they are “private” when it comes to employment law. Thus the rules of the NLRB, as opposed to state law regulating public sector unions, apply. NLRB regulations mandate a formal vote among teachers, and not just completed union cards. The election would delay union formation and provide a chance for the company to “persuade” teachers not to unionize.

Another example is found in higher education. Recent reports in the Chronicle of Higher Education point to open discussions among state legislatures, higher education executives and various think tanks about “loosening the bonds between state governments and public colleges to save money and give colleges the freedom to bolster their bottom lines in new ways.”

These examples are of interest because they highlight crossing the public/private division as a strategy used by both private and public entities to either secure or expand their position.

In the first case above, public funds are given to a private company, who wishes to be treated as a public or private entity depending on the circumstances of its choosing. It wishes to receive the benefit of public finance, but rejects public oversight as a hindrance, in this case, in the regulations of public sector unions. This feature of adopting different standards for different purposes harkens back to the feudal practice of adopting different weights and measures for buying and selling, a practice which invariably favored lords and became a symbol of arbitrary power during the period leading up to the French revolution. Standards were often the property of the reigning lord, and in that sense, privately controlled. This private control over something that so greatly affected the extant public was soon to be rejected, and this rejection of arbitrary power was fostered by the emergence of a public sphere and a self-conscious public outside the subjectivity of kings, etc.

Yet, in the second case above, public status is to be reduced as state funding is reduced: states issue budget cuts and students attending public higher education are forced to pay not only more, but also a higher percentage of the total operating cost. Privatization here is generally equated with downloading the responsibility for funding education onto individuals and their families. To “save money” and “bolster the bottom line” public higher education must break bonds with state governments, and move toward becoming private institutions, so the argument goes.

Thus, much of the debate about privatization is rendered as economic in nature. Evidence of this exists in the fixation on the economic category of efficiency, of which private, for-profit firms are unquestioningly presented as the model; talk of “the bottom line,” and other for-profit imperatives dominate the discussion.

Yet, what is significant is the confused standard for determining public or private status: institutions that receive public funds are somehow more public than those that do not. Yet, in the past, public funding was directly linked to public control. On the other hand, there is the present trend to break in thinking and practice any assumption that with a transfer of public funds, an organization is to admit public oversight.

Many things that are in fact against the public interest (such as aggressive wars or handouts to fraudulent banks) are accepted nonetheless as public because they are actions of the government, carried out with public funds. So the existence of public funds itself cannot be the criteria of what is public.

The division between public and private has historically centered on justifying who decides what in a specific context; who has what rights, both in terms of limiting the power of state, but also in terms of claims of individuals. The claim individuals have to education is premised on education being a requirement, necessary for the public well being. In order for the public/private distinction to have meaning and be able to provide coherence to discussions about education and society a standard is required that does not rely on the source of funds nor the status of government or non-government.

This standard must begin by elaborating and renewing the conception of the public good or well being. What is at stake in the current move to privatize education is not simply the increased burden for individuals or instigation of more inequality through more “choice”. What is at stake is a sharp political shift, where demarcations of private or even not-for-profit (yet private) are used to eschew public oversight of that which broadly concerns all, standing against public opinion.

Related Posts:

• Clever rhetoric won’t save your undemocratic reform from failure: An open letter to Arne Duncan on the occasion of teacher appreciation week
• Inside Higher Ed: For-Profit Colleges Open Another Front
• Alan Singer: Charter Schools Don’t Do Miracles
• Clifford Adelman’s “White Noise of Accountability”
• Is Thinking a “Skill”? Values and Problems in Thinking About the “Liberal Arts”

She writes:

The state has certified the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff as the bargaining unit for teachers at three campuses of the Chicago International Charter School, which would seem to make it the city’s first unionized charter.

The union is calling on Chicago International Charter School management—which is handled at the three unionizing campuses by Civitas Schools—to sit down with teachers and start hammering out a contract.

Not so fast, Civitas says.

Election vs. card check. The nonprofit management group is arguing that the feds should have jurisdiction over the union certification, not the state. So it’s filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board. A decision is expected this month.

Civitas’ motivation? Under federal law, the three charter campuses fighting for union representation would have to hold an election to determine whether teachers want the union.

State law doesn’t require an election at the schools, because a majority of teachers have already signed union cards. The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board says it received 91 signed and dated cards; organizers say that’s about 75 percent of employees at the three campuses.

Civitas’ CEO Simon Hess says he wants teachers to be able to make a “private, informed decision” about whether to join the union. The union says Civitas is stalling and would love to buy time to pressure teachers not to join the union.

Standing behind the fight over unionization is the distinction between public and private. Lutton writes:

The legal fight has forced Civitas to make a prickly argument: Charter schools have worked hard to emphasize they are public schools, funded with public dollars. But in order to fall under the jurisdiction of the NLRB, you’ve got to be a private firm, and that’s what Civitas is arguing. The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board has jurisdiction over public educational employers.

“I wouldn’t be so certain that you’ve got a bargaining unit there in that charter school as long as there’s a question about whether the employer is a private firm,” said Robert Bruno, a labor expert at UIC.

Then again, arguing you’re a private firm just because “the place is being managed by some private management firm, that’s not gonna wash. They’re still a public entity,” Bruno told me. It’s not a clear-cut case.

Civitas CEO Simon Hess said Civitas is essentially a private vendor. Just because you receive public funds doesn’t mean you’re a public entity, Hess told me.

This raises a key problem: why would public funds be given to a private entity in the first place? The original arguments for what the right-wing calls “government schools” is that public funds should serve public purposes and to ensure public purposes are being served, public oversight is required. That “private vendors” receive public funds under the guise that “charter schools are public schools” yet demand regulations consistent with private not public entities suggests not only a self-serving agenda, but more importantly, a broad shift in the public/private distinction.

Lutton continues, summarizing legal precedent:

There’s been one other case like this, which might give us some idea of how things will turn out. A year ago, teachers at Cambridge Lakes Charter School in Kane County formed a union. Their employer, the Northern Kane Educational Corporation, also argued that the NLRB should have jurisdiction in the case, using the same private employer argument. But the state IELRB ruled otherwise. In a decision issued in November 2008, the IELRB determined that Northern Kane should indeed be considered a public employer subject to the state public educational employer act.

The school’s administration appealed the decision to the appellate court, which is where the case remains.

Who is our boss? That’s one of the first questions Chicago International Charter School teachers faced when they began organizing.

The Chicago International Charter School has 12 campuses—they’re run by four different educational management organizations: two for-profits (EdisonLearning and Victory Schools, Inc.) and two non-profits, American Quality Schools and Civitas.

Civitas was started by Chicago International Charter School in 2002 and is described on the Web site as a “wholly owned subsidiary” of CICS. For you business maj0rs out there, Hess told me that technically Civitas is a limited liability corporation whose sole member is CICS. The Civitas name is on teachers’ paychecks at the campuses it manages, so “we decided they were the employer,” says Northtown Academy teacher Eric Levy.

Related Posts:

• Alan Singer: Charter Schools Don’t Do Miracles
• “Best Urban School District in America” Blocks Access to Websites Critical of “Education Reform”
• “Uncommon Schools” Charter School Executive Will Be NYS Education Deputy
• NLRB Declares Civitas Teachers Private Employees
• The Common Core: Whose Standards Are They?

As state tax revenues plummet, some lawmakers and higher-education leaders are once again looking at loosening the bonds between state governments and public colleges to save money and give colleges the freedom to bolster their bottom lines in new ways.

In light of the recent bailout of Wall Street, I wonder what kind of brain can propose more “market” as any sort of “cure”. In fact, privatization of the type discussed in the articles creates more problems, increasing inequality being only one.

But a key problem originates in the further blurring of the line between public and private, and in particular, the assumption that private entities can easily and naturally serve the public ends. Found in the article is the assumption that the purpose of education is unrelated to how society organizes its provision.

Those who seek to bring “market discipline” to k12 or higher education, argue, as the Frederick Hess (2002) does in his Progressive Policy Institute brief “Making Sense of the ‘Public’ in Public Education,” that:

Defenders of the status quo are often able to successfully attack choice-based reforms as “anti-public education” because Americans by and large believe that the public has some legitimate responsibility to ensure all children receive an adequate and appropriate education. Even such noted public critics as libertarians John Stuart Mill and Milton Friedman have always conceded there is some component of public good to education, and have argued for state funding and/or monitoring of educational mastery to ensure that all children are adequately served. However, this agreement poses a new challenge by demanding that we first determine what constitutes an adequate education and then consider, separately, how it ought to be provided. It is important to recognize that, in multiple sectors, legislators routinely craft policies intended to address public needs, but then rely upon a variety of public agencies and private firms to execute these policies. In such cases, we generally accept that a public service is being rendered regardless of the agent providing the service. For instance, we typically consider community bus services as public even if operated by a private vendor. Such reflection suggests the poverty of current conversations about what it is that makes public schools public. Simple-minded proclamations on the topic have encouraged would-be reformers and their critics to squabble over the symbolic banner of “public education” while shortchanging the public’s substantive concerns. (p. 3-4)

Kelderman continues:

Operating more like private institutions not only would be a buffer from the recession and the volatility of state budgets, some college officials argue, but also may well be vital to the survival of many public colleges.

Insisting that the governance and manner of securing funds for education will somehow not impact “quality” we read: “Those that seek to thrive in the future must earn money from a variety of sources and continually cut costs in ways that don’t harm the quality of instruction, says Philip J. Hanlon, vice provost for academic and budgetary affairs at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which gets just 7 percent, or $320-million, of its revenue from the state.” Instead of demanding that public funds be used for the public good and that funding for public higher education be increased, “leaders” offer the view that since things have degenerated to the point where much of the revenue for higher education comes from other sources, why not remove the limits of public oversight?

Some factual claims cited in the article:

“Public research universities in Colorado, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Vermont are so reliant on tuition that students are paying, on average, for more than 70 percent of the cost of their education, compared with a national average of 51 percent, according to the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability, a nonprofit group that studies how colleges spend their money. Students at private research universities pay, on average, nearly 56 percent of their educational costs, the project reported.”

After the 2001-2 recession, public universities in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Virginia exchanged operational freedom for reductions in public aid.

“While no public college is likely to free itself entirely from fiscal ties to its state, many of the nation’s largest public institutions, like Michigan, have evolved to operate nearly like private colleges,” Kelderman observes.

According to Kelderman, “the trend toward privatization has been widely discussed by public-college officials since at least the early 1990s, especially during nationwide recessions when state revenues have plummeted.” During that time “spending on health care and prison costs has climbed rapidly.” Even as public funding for public higher education has increased “in real dollars, it has diminished as a proportion of most state budgets.”

Now, with states facing budget shortfalls totaling as much as $350-billion in the current and coming fiscal years, lawmakers are looking hard for ways to trim spending on higher education. Even the federal stimulus package, which includes nearly $40-billion to offset cuts to education, has not done much to ease the pressure, which has prompted some lawmakers in Colorado and Michigan to suggest cutting flagship universities loose from state budgets entirely. While those ideas have not gained much traction, they reignited discussions about whether it was desirable, or even possible, for large universities to maintain their public status.

[...]

At the same time, some state lawmakers question why they should still underwrite the university at all as it raises more private dollars and increases tuition. A nine-member legislative panel [in Michigan] created last year to suggest major budget cuts included a recommendation to turn the university into a private institution, although some panelists thought that was not a realistic option. Similarly, a Colorado lawmaker proposed this year that the four public research universities there would perform much better if they were off the state dole. But that proposal, too, died quickly.

Later on, Kelderman writes: “While privatization has occurred in an ad hoc fashion in most of the country, a few states have moved purposely down that path, with mixed results.” He cites the example of Virginia, which initiated a program in 2005 that “gives its public colleges varying degrees of fiscal and administrative autonomy in exchange for agreeing to hold down tuition for resident students and to meet benchmarks in areas such as retention and graduation rates.”

It seems worth studying the trends pointed to in this article in relation to Obama’s plan for financing student aid. See his recent speech.

Related Posts:

• Inside Higher Ed: For-Profit Colleges Open Another Front
• Evidence on the quality of for-profit higher education?
• Teachers have a right to unionize
• Alan Singer: Charter Schools Don’t Do Miracles
• Broad Foundation: Facts on the Wrecking of Public Education