Cloaking Inequity

Today I was invited by Senator Royce West to give testimony on charter schools at the Texas Senate Committee on Education for the proposed SB2. You can see the full hearing here. My testimony begins at about 2:29. See Cloaking Inequity’s full thread on charters here. Here is original text of my testimony: First I […]

Reblogged: How to Tell if Your Local Charter School Is Avaricious.

http://app1.kuhf.org/articles/1360863414-Houston-Charter-Schools-Plan-to-Grow.html My (brief) thought on charter school success aired in a story today on KUHF Houston public radio. See Cloaking Inequity’s full  thread on charters here.

When you think of school choice, what comes to mind? Vouchers? Charters? Intra- and Inter- district choice? Magnet schools? Today I received a forwarded email request from a senator that was gathering information in response to pressure for “school choice” bills at the Texas Legislature. I have been pondering “school choice,” and why it is […]

Choice=grow=good? is the reasoning of a top ten of “Fast Facts on School Choice” recently released by the House Education and the Workforce Committee (see list below). Let’s test their “moving in the right direction” logic. I choose to spend money=my credit card bill grows=good? I eat too many calories=I become overweight and my waist grows=good? […]

Reblogged from Crazy Crawfish's Blog: Recently we’ve seen a rash of publicity coming out of New Orleans and from Leslie Jacobs about the New Orleans turnaround miracle. According to her press releases and op-ed pieces in the Time Picayune and Baton Rouge Advocate, New Orleans leads the both the state and nation in graduation rate. […]

Today I will profile Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools on The Teat. The Teat is an ongoing series on Cloaking Inequity (the protuberance through which milk is drawn from an udder or breast) that seeks to trace financial support which various entities receive that are involved in current educational policy debates. The Teat Cow Haiku […]

Reblogged from Larry Miller's Blog: Educate All Students!: Do Milwaukee’s children deserve art and music classes? By Barbara Miner Jan. 5, 2013 View from the Heartland MJS Blog Do young children deserve art and music classes? Or, instead of art and music, should kindergarten and first-graders spend two hours a day in Dilbert-like cubicles, keyboarding […]

Do I believe all charters are doing spurious things? Of course not. But, we do know that some charters avoid special education and ELL students. But, we do know that some charters are segregated as a function of their business plan and seek required donations from their families. But, we do know that some charters […]

The common refrain is that charter schools are public schools. Critics, such as Diane Ravitch, have said that charter schools accept public money but act private. I have levied a variety of critiques at charters (Even made Jonathan Alter a little bit mad) despite the fact that I was an instructor at an Aspire charter […]

Unbeknownst to some, current “reform” efforts are interconnected. One example is Teach for America and IDEA charter schools (KIPP is another corporate charter management organization started by former TFAers). IDEA was founded in 2000 by Tom Torkelson and JoAnn Gama, TFA corps members. How about a little nepotism for TFAers at IDEA? TFA also gave out awards to IDEA’s TFAers. IDEA is often in the […]

Reblogged from A "Fuller" Look at Education Issues: IDEA Charter School markets itself as a college preparatory education organization with goals of enrolling 100% of graduates in four-year universities and have 100% persistence and graduation rates in college.[1] Indeed, in the introduction of the most recent annual report, Dr. Tom Torkelson, CEO of IDEA Public […]

With nearly 1,000 hits and counting, my post “Why do hedge fund ADORE charters?” was surprisingly popular. One of the issues raised by commenters on the post was the New Markets Tax Credit. It has been discussed elsewhere (here and here). We thought we would add more hard numbers to the discussion. This post was […]

A few day ago I spent the afternoon in an Education Summit hosted by the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute. The entire afternoon I wished I could respond to the discourse, so here are the top five most innane things I heard and my brief thoughts (not in any particular order). 1. Reduced funding to […]

During Thanksgiving week, Cloaking Inequity’s visitors voted on the 1st Annual Educational Policy Turkey of the Year. One of the contestants was Great Hearts Academies charter management organization. I wrote: Recently granted a new charter in Texas. Discussed on CI here and here and here. (An interesting book about Great Hearts entitled It’s All About the Information: What Great Hearts Academies Doesn’t Want You to Know) Innocuous […]

In a recent San Antonio Express New article outgoing Texas SBOE member Michael Soto stated : There’s pretty solid support for efforts to raise the bar academically on the board and throughout the state because these charter applications significantly raise the academic bar. Dr. Soto, I am disappointed. In response, Diane Ravitch stated on her blog […]

An “oldie, but a goodie” article from the New York Times about charter schools and at-risk students. An excerpt: … Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor at the University of Texas College of Education who studies how incentive systems affect student achievement, said his research had found a higher dropout rate for all charters — not just those that […]

If we are to believe Jonathan Alter and others, hedge funds like loaning to charters because it is just the right thing to do and they have big hearts. I took issue with this off-stage at MSNBC’s Education Nation and Alter was dumfounded that hedge fund managers might actually be investing in charters because they […]