Next U. S. Secretary of Education: Michelle Rhee????

Okay. Time to face reality. Mr. Donald J. Trump is going to be the 45th  president of these great United States. 

If nothing else, we know the KKK is happy. “Make American Great Again!” Overturn Roe v. Wade! Also, maybe: overturn Brown v. Board of Education.

Now we hear that Michelle Rhee might be in line to become the next U. S. Secretary of Education. If you have forgotten who Rhee is, or was, a brief refresher course will be offered momentarily.

First, let’s consider two more Trump choices who have said they are not interested. Dr. Ben Carson said no thanks—but would have been a “perfect choice” in a bi-partisan list of “perfect choices” to head the Department of Education. That is: presidents from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush to Barrack Obama have seemed constitutionally obligated to select individuals who lack all experience in education. 

I think Mr. Trump should make me Surgeon General. I mean, I watch a lot of TV shows about doctors and hospitals.

Anyway, it could be worse. I wonder if America’s four million front line educators were really ready for Ms. Eva Moskowitz to head the Department. Moskowitz was also under consideration, but informed the president-elect that she had no interest in the cabinet position. This is true even though Mr. Trump wants to push school choice even farther and even though Moskowitz believes every child should be allowed to attend an elite charter school—unless that child has serious behavior issues or crippling handicaps.

Those kinds of children, if they manage to get through the doors of Success Academy at all, should all return to the regular public schools.

Meanwhile, like so many leading advocates of school reform, who only care about the children, Moskowitz piles up the dough. I can’t find current figures; but she made $567,500 for the 2012-2013 school year, running Success Academy Charter Schools, an operation serving 11,000 students. Not bad, considering school superintendents in  large urban, public school districts with a hundred times as many students make half as much.

Then again, what did anyone expect when American education has been turned into a get-rich-quick, money-making scheme? Didn’t we realize shady operators would focus only on the money?

Exhibit A: Trump University!

Our normally litigious president-elect settled a series of fraud cases this week, aimed at his famous university, first denying fraud had been perpetrated in his name, and then coughing up $25 million to pay the claims of thousands of students who were prepared to argue in court that they had in fact been…um…defrauded. I realize many Trump fans don’t believe anything they read except what can be found on the backs of cereal boxes; but even Fox News couldn’t help reporting the Trump University debacle.

And if you haven’t noticed, you can pretty much shake any for-profit education tree and money-grubbers and even outright crooks will rain down round your ears. I’ve previously highlighted K-12, Inc., another stellar charter operation, where five top executives paid themselves a total of $35.4 million in salary and bonuses for 2013 and 2014. I’ve focused on Corinthian College. There, too, five top college officers took $22 million in salaries and bonuses over a two-year period. Sadly, once the U. S. Department of Education started investigating—citing high pressure recruiting tactics to juice enrollment—the Corinthian enterprise came unraveled and the school went belly up.  

(The money continues to roll in for the top officials at K-12, Inc. This chart shows compensation for Fiscal 2016.)

Too bad students, lacking preparation to do real college-level work, had been tricked into enrolling. 

To bad they had to borrow 86% of all money used to attend Corinthian. 

Too bad they agreed to pay interest rates as high as 17.9% for those very loans, nicely set up for them and payable to...Corinthian.

Good news? 

The profiteers profited. 

Now thousands of young Americans are stuck with those loans—and stuck with college credits from Corinthian of such dubious value that reputable institutions of higher learning won’t accept them for transfer.

And now, speaking of money, we come to the matter at hand: the potential elevation of Michelle Rhee to head up the U. S. Department of Education. 

Perhaps the most famous graduate of Teach for American, Rhee labored three long years in a real classroom, at which point she realized she knew everything there was to know about fixing the nation’s schools. Quickly, she rose through the ranks of educational bureaucracy and took control of the Washington, D. C. Public Schools. As chancellor, Ms. Rhee stressed improving math and reading scores in keeping with dictates of No Child Left Behind.

That law is now defunct; but raising scores in accord with that law was, according to Rhee at the time, really important.

What happened when Rhee pushed administrators and staff to improve test scores? As anyone could have predicted, successful schools raised their scores! If scores didn’t rise, Rhee fired staff and administrators. Typically, she fired one principal while cameras were rolling, filming a documentary about the wonders of Michelle Rhee. In just three years as head of Washington schools, Rhee managed to terminate hundreds of educators because scores on standardized tests mattered—as long as those particular tests were being pedaled by politicians and school reformers.

All the while, Ms. Rhee was making her name in education. She gave speeches and charged colleges $35,000 to impart her wisdom. She wrote books about how to fix education and they sold wonderfully. Even Oprah gave her love on her program. But Rhee’s abrasive style was also rubbing people the wrong way. 

True. There were educators who loved her. Those who raised test scores (and many did so with great gusto) got fat on bonuses. 

Unfortunately, for Rhee, reporters also started digging. 

At one school, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus, test score improvements were stunning. In 2006 only 10% of students at Noyes scored “proficient” or “advanced” in math. Two years later 58% did. It was amazing; and Rhee basked in the admiration of the leading school reformers. In 2009, Noyes was one of 264 schools nationwide to win a prestigious National Blue Ribbon School award. Twice, in 2008 and 2010, Ms. Rhee awarded teachers at Noyes (which served preschoolers through eighth grade) $8,000 bonuses. Wayne Ryan, principal at the school, was awarded $10,000 on both occasions. 

Unfortunately, a 2011 report by USA Today revealed that high-performing schools in Rhee’s district had “extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.” The pattern showed up in 103 schools, more than half of all buildings in the D. C. district. 

In 2009 seventh-graders in one class at Noyes averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures on the reading test. 

The average, citywide, was less than 1. 

What transpired in the meantime? The D. C. schools won another $75 million in the “Race to the Top” program run by Arne Duncan, then U. S. Secretary of Education, because Duncan also loved standardized testing. Principal Ryan was featured in a series of recruiting advertisements, calling him “one of the shining stars of DCPS” and a man known for his “unapologetic focus on instruction.” 

The Office of State Superintendent of Education also began to notice all the fishy smells and ordered an investigation. Top D. C. school officials dragged their bureaucratic feet. The State Superintendent’s office asked McGraw-Hill to examine test results at 96 D. C. schools, including 8 of 10 buildings which won TEAM awards from Rhee “to recognize, reward and retain high-performing educators and support staff.” Based on rising scores in 2007 and 2008, more than $1.5 million in bonuses had been paid. Now McGraw-Hill found that three award-winning schools had wrong-to-right erasure rates that raised red flags in 85% of classrooms. After 2009, the district hired an outside investigator to examine eight schools, including Noyes. Just like that, test scores plunged in 2010. A second investigation, after tests were completed that year, found 41 schools, including Noyes again, had at least one classroom with unusually high numbers of erasures. 

When Rhee was reached by phone in 2011 she reminded reporters she was no longer chancellor of the D. C. schools and passed on chance to comment. D. C. officials also refused to comment at the time—refused to let reporters visit schools—refused to let them talk to principals, including Adell Cothorne, the new leader at Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus. 

And now we discover that Michelle Rhee might be our next U. S. Secretary of Education.

I can’t say where we’re headed in the future; but I am ready to make one bold prediction. If President Trump selects Rhee—and the Senate confirms her—we can expect one dramatic change in U. S. education. 

Test scores are surely going to rise!

(Eraser sales will also skyrocket.)

Privatizing Public Schools and the Loch Ness Monster Bonus

IF YOU ARE AN EDUCATION NEWS JUNKIE, and who isn't, you've probably heard Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Governor "Candy Bar" Chris Christie in New Jersey talk about problems in education. Usually, when they mean "problems," they mean teachers and unions. Their favorite solution? Let's privatize America's public schools. It's the Tea Party Holy Grail. If we are to believe what they say we would know that government is always bad and business is pure and good. So let's see how privatizing schools is working in that place we liberals call "reality."

Frontier Virtual Charter High School (based in Philadelphia) closed down this week after Pennsylvania State Education Secretary Ronald Tomalis revoked the school's charter less than one year into "operation." Authorities said they had no choice but to take drastic measures, "citing an astonishingly long list of academic and financial problems."  Most of those problems came to light in March when John Craig, Frontier CEO, laid off the teaching staff and principal.

Minor details.

At that point the school year came to a grinding halt. Parents reported that kids sat around for weeks, pretty much doing nothing. Frontier failed to provide promised computers. Minor details. And failed to provide...classes. Minor, minor details. It gets even better. When school leaders, those still left, realized everyone was going to fail for the year they created "Save-My-Year" credit packets to stave off academic disaster. Meanwhile, authorities reported, the people who ran Frontier "spent a 'significant' amount of money on things that weren't related to the cyber school."

Next, let's give it up for Pennsylvania Cyber School! If you're a foe of privatization this one is almost too good to be true. On July 12, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported:

Federal agents executed a series of search warrants today at Pennsylvania Cyber School offices in Beaver County and several other locations in Pennsylvania and Ohio in connection with an ongoing investigation.

It's safe to say that any time the words "federal agents" and "series of search warrants" appear in a sentence about schools, well, we're not having the best educational day.

On July 15, the Post-Gazette added details. PCS, is the largest internet school serving Pennsylvania and Ohio, enrolling 11,300 students and raking in $103 million from local school districts last year. The school was founded by Nick Trombetta, 57, who announced in May that he was leaving the field to "try something else."

Read about all the spinoffs PCS created if you'd like details. Read how one "education" company begot a second and then a third and fourth, how different executives and boards at all these various entities, filled with ex-PCS executives, pocketed millions. Read how Trombetta held several paying positions at once. You might be excused if you suspected he was leaving education to try his hand at bank robbery.

Or:  working for J. P. Morgan.

STILL NOT CONVINCED THAT BUSINESS HEROES, aided and abetted by politicians like Governor John Kasich here in Ohio, can save our children? Or that they'll really care??? How about K-12, Inc. an online school operation, which owns Ohio Virtual Academy? The company spends $6,108 per pupil vs. $10,660 at traditional brick and mortar schools, mainly because K-12 pays teachers half what regular public schools do. This means...um... huge savings for taxpayers! Ohio Virtual Academy has only one building and 7,277 students (although numbers do fluctuate wildly) and a student-teacher ratio of 56-1 vs. a state average of 16-1. Assigning each teacher three-and-a-half times as many pupils and paying them less, allows K-12, Inc. to make tidy profits and...um...give taxpayers a fantastic deal. What? Not such a deal? The school's own website admits to a yearly dropout rate of 14.9%.

The average for the rest of the state:  4.3%. Really. You can look it up.

What about ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow)? According to education reformer Diane Ravitch the school enrolled 12,000+ Ohio students in 2010-11. Sadly, 6,738 satisfied customers...we mean "students"...withdrew in a period of nine months. Another 3,045 dropped out. A turnover rate of 81% in a single year! So what do you do when private enterprise really sucks?

You cover up a staggeringly bad graduation rate, 35% as recently as 2009, by donating $220,000 to leading GOP politicians.

If paying off politicians doesn't work do what Success Academy Charter Schools Inc. does in New York. The company operates ten schools and is headed up by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, who knows a money-making scheme when she sees one. Moskowitz is demanding an increase in funding of $1,350 to $2,000 per child from the state, preferably the higher figure, citing an "unsustainable" deficit. Juan Gonzalez, writing for the New York Daily News paints the picture in slightly different colors. On its annual tax forms, SAC has consistently reported year-end surpluses, $23.5 million last time Gonzalez checked.

You don't want to run a privatized school on the cheap, not when you know the State of New York is footing the final bill. So why not spend (tax dollars) to advertise?

As Gonzalez notes:

Last year alone, the [SAC] network spent an astounding $883,119 on "student recruitment"--much of it for glossy flyers mailed to hundreds of thousands of parents; bus stop and Internet ads and an army of paid recruiters to go door-to-door soliciting student applications...It paid $243,150 to SKD Knickerbocker, a high-powered public relations firm, to supplement its own in-house press people, and another $129,000 to a Washington consulting firm...But that wasn't all that Success Academy spent on marketing itself. The network's first seven schools incurred an additional $912,000 "student recruitment" expenditure last year, most of it going to big advertising and branding companies.

And how does Moskowitz do helping students? She do nicely, herself, yes she do. In 2006-2007, for example, when her network ran four schools and enrolled 1,000 students, Eva raked in a healthy $371,000 in salary.

Business people. Always putting kids first and profit second. Not like all those greedy, greedy teachers.

In related crazy-town news, lawmakers in Louisiana passed legislation three weeks ago to expand a school voucher program, "allowing educational funds to be used to send students to schools run by religious groups." Republican Valarie Hodges put up a valiant, highly unexpected, last-ditch effort to halt the move. Hodges was gung ho and ready to vote "yea," until some random thought started rattling around inside her head and she realized such legislation might mean the little Louisiana boys and girls might attend...Muslim schools!

You can't fool Valerie Hodges! No, mam, no way. The woman knows her U. S. Constitution and her Bill of Rights. “I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” Hodges assured reporters. “I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school.”

Only...not so much if parents were Muslim...or, we can probably safely assume, Jew.

(This is why many thinking individuals, such as those who cherish First Amendment rights, tend to believe we should keep the Bible, both King James and Latin Vulgate versions, the Koran and the Book of Mormon out of public schools.)

Hodges went on to sound a typical tocsin (or might "toxin" work better) of right-wing alarm: “Unfortunately [the expanded voucher program] will not be limited to the Founders’ religion.” The danger was clear. All you had to do was look under the bed and there was that terrorist Boogie Man, sort of a paranoid Tea Party person's version of the imaginary friend. "We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools," she continued. "There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

Good save, heroic defender of liberty! Honor the freedoms you supposedly cherish by imposing your ideas about religion on fellow citizens.

Finally, if you're going to fund religious schools, you have to have standards. So, we save the best for last. According to the HeraldScotland (which follows all Loch Ness-related stories, even in this country) Louisiana taxpayers' support for religious schools will include...well, not those dirty Muslims...but vouchers for "private schools [that] follow a fundamentalist curriculum including the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme to teach controversial religious beliefs aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism." Those who teach ACE science like to believe "that if it can be proved that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man then Darwinism is fatally flawed."

According to Scottish reporters, who have to be scratching their heads, ACE textbooks are also "hostile towards other religions and other sectors of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism; and present a biased version of history that is often factually incorrect."

No problem so far! The story continues:

One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: "Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.

If you're a liberal you don't think Nessie appears to be anything. You think these right-wing crackpots who want to privatize public schools and spend taxpayer dollars to support all kinds of religious schools are nuts.

Use a little imagination and you can hardly wait to see what kind of science they'll be teaching at Scientology High, perhaps coming soon to Shreveport, Opelousas or Baton Rouge.

Coming soon to a taxpayer funded school near you!