Wednesday, September 30, 2020

AV #216 - Part 2- Candidates for Colorado State Board of Education - concern regarding charters and "privatization"

 

“Are charter schools public schools? Yes, charter schools across the state are tuition free public schools.”[i] (CDE)

 

We do not ask the men and women running for the State Board of Education to pass any litmus test to see if they qualify to serve. A range of views is welcome. But we do expect them to understand the education laws in our state.

Val Flores: “I just wanted to remind this board that when we heard from those stakeholders at the very beginning from Adams 14 as a whole… they didn’t want charters. They wanted public schools.” [Board member Joyce Rankin, sitting to the left of Flores, seemed to whisper “charters are public schools,” or something to that effect.] Flores raised her left hand and continued: “You’ve said that, but I just want to use the terminology that I know and that the public knows and they call charter schools one thing and they are private, they’re 501c3s, and then there’s public education, and that is a different thing. And so I support public education and I heard from the community that that’s what they wanted.”  State Board of Education, May 9, 2019.

In following the deliberations of the State Board of Education the past few years, I found it astonishing to see Board member Val Flores give her definition of charter schools (see box). Here is where a litmus test might be necessary. A member of the Colorado State Board in 2019 implicitly questioned whether the (then) 255 or so public charter schools in our state, or the 50 or so public charter schools in her own Congressional district, were public schools. As if she did not know or accept our own state law.

Are charter schools public or private? Are we really not clear about this in 2020? Is the intent of the Colorado charter school law—more specifically, of charter school operators—to privatize public education? Anyone willing to take on the incredibly important (and unpaid) job of serving for four years on the State Board should assure us—whatever their opinion about the pros and cons of charter schools—that they understand that charter schools, in our state, are public schools. (True for local school boards too – see Addendum A, DPS and “for profit charter school.”) 

I present statements from Lisa Escarcega and Karla Esser, candidates for the State Board of Education, that leave me uncertain of what they believe about charter schools. I sent questions to both by emaiI; there has been no response. I write this (and suggest five specific asks, Addendum B) in hopes that voters and the media will seek clear answers from Escarcega and Esser before the Nov. 3. election. Their two Congressional districts host over 90 charter schools.[ii] How fairly will they represent these schools—and our state law?

 Without evidence 

It is common now for the media to report news from the White House this way, “President Trump said, without evidence, that…” I read statements from these two candidates for the State Board and want to understand what they seem to suggest, without evidence, about charter schools in our state. Is this model, are these 261 schools in our state, all about profits and privatization? Ten summers ago I challenged one national proponent of the “privatization” charge: AV #64, “Responding to Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” (2010). Excerpt - Addendum C. As I did four years later in AV #107: The hoax behind The Hoax in the Privatization Movement - A look at Diane Ravitch’s work of fiction, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (2014). Excerpt - Addendum D. If anyone wishing to serve on our State Board is now making this claim, apparently about Colorado schools, we should expect them to present clear examples. No innuendo, please. Evidence.

 

                              LISA ESCARCEGA, candidate for Congressional District 1             (Bold mine)

1.    From “Primary Preview: State Board of Education for Congressional District 1; Democrat,” Colorado Politics, by Michael Karlick, June 16, 2020 – updated, June 30, 2020.- https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/primary-preview-state-board-of-education-for-congressional-district-1-democrat/article_fca098b0-affa-11ea-b4c6-27c75500d4ae.html      

                                                   

NOTE: Congressional District 1 has the highest number of charter schools—58—of any Congressional District in the state.

 

   “Escárcega does not support putting public schools under private control.”



2.   From Ballotpedia - https://ballotpedia.org/Lisa_Escarcega

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

The current State Board is moving our state education system into one that … is creating a business model of competition for public education... I see two competing issues for the top spot of the most pressing issue for education in Colorado - Public Education funding and the privatization of Public Education.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

Our lack of funding for PK-12 public education is starving our schools and educators. This is on many levels, by many people, intentional. By not adequately funding our PK-12 schools, the narrative of 'failing public schools' gives the cover and support to the need for alternative, choice programs. The privatization sector has used this narrative to funnel money into the alternative, choice sector. Profit is the ultimate motivation which is achieved by the selling of services and investment of real estate. Our challenge is to secure increased funding that is directed to traditional public schools and to expose the outside funding by those that want to privatize education.

 What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Sound familiar? From CEA Policy Guide, 2017-18: “The CEA opposes: utilizing for-profit charter school management organizations; weakening public education funding through vouchers, private school tax credits, and privatization of any public education services; privatizing public school jobs.” https://www.coloradoea.org/wp-content/uploads/PolicyGuide2017-18.pdf

I am passionate about policy that gives control of our schools back to the communities. We need to stop the privatization push in our districts.                              

 





3.        From “Lisa Escarcega for State Board of Education”

 

MY PRIOR EXPERIENCE

Prior to my current position, I worked for Aurora Public Schools as the Chief Accountability and Research Officer. I worked with the local board and superintendent on how to apply data and assessment issues. This work also involved charter school authorizing and innovation zone development. I saw first hand how the corporate charter system worked to privatize our public schools. This is why I have pledged that I will never vote for the privatization of our public schools. https://www.lisaescarcega.com/about

 

KARLA ESSER, candidate for Congressional District 7


NOTE: By my count, 34 charter schools operate inside Congressional District 7.

                                                                                                                                                                   


From "Karla Esser for State Board of Education"                                 

     Neighborhood schools

     Education should be about kids, not profits. Charter schools can fill an important need in communities that are lacking strong neighborhood schools, but we have a responsibility to make both neighborhood and charter schools as strong as they can possibly be. https://www.karlaesser.com/karla-esser-priorities/

 

**

 

Addendum A – “False statement about ‘for-profit charter school’”

 

“Denver school board election mailer’s false statement about ‘for-profit charter school’ draws criticism,” by Eric Gorski, Chalkbeat Colorado, Oct 25, 2017.  (Four excerpts)

School board elections, like all elections, brim with harsh accusations, cherry-picked data and political posturing.

An election mailer from an independent committee trying to influence the outcome of a hard-fought race in northeast Denver goes a step further, falsely stating that the school district is “ceding space to a for-profit charter school” on one of its campuses.

**

The mailer was paid for by Brighter Futures for Denver Students, an independent expenditure committee that is supporting the candidacy of Jennifer Bacon, who has worked as a teacher, administrator and lawyer. As of the last reporting deadline, the group had brought in $139,000 from the Denver teachers union and the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

**

In Colorado, charter schools are required to be run by nonprofit boards. Charter school boards are permitted to contract operations and management to for-profit companies, often known as education-management organizations or EMOs, but that is rare in Colorado. DSST operates its own schools.

**

Bill Kurtz, CEO of DSST, which operates some of the city’s highest-performing schools, criticized the mailer’s language about a “for-profit charter school” in an interview with Chalkbeat. “As adults in this country, we have an obligation to model integrity, and to model truthful discourse,” Kurtz said. “It’s disturbing that the adults in Denver are modeling for our young people in a school board race factually untrue, categorically untrue statements in the name of trying to elect adults in the city to lead our school system.”

 

 

Addendum B – To ask of the candidates for the Colorado State Board of Education

 

For Lisa Escarcega

Please give an example of anyone a) who supports the charter school law in Colorado and b) who wishes to put “public schools under private control.” 

Please give examples you have seen of “the privatization of Public Education” in Colorado.

Please give examples from Colorado and tell us of whom you are speaking when criticizing “those that want to privatize education.”

It sounds like this answer (under "My Prior Experience") - “I saw first hand how the corporate charter system worked to privatize our public schools” - referred to your experience in Aurora Public Schools. Please give examples.

Please provide examples from Colorado to support this claim: “the privatization sector has used this narrative to funnel money into the alternative, choice sector.”

For Karla Esser

Please explain if you are suggesting charter schools in your Congressional district, or in our state, are about profits, not kids. If that is what you mean, please provide examples and evidence.

 

 

Addendum C – From AV #64   (July 18, 2010)

 

Responding to Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System

 

But in this chapter—and in recent statements and speeches—she harps on the theme that charters are part of a movement to “privatize public education.” By the end of this chapter, she says charters now “are supposed to disseminate the free-market model of competition and choice” (146). 

In a recent interview on “Democracy Now” with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez she went further:

(The Obama Administration has) said to the states in the “Race to the Top” … that the requirements to be considered are, first of all, that the states have to be committed to privatizing many, many, many public schools. These are called charter schools. They’re privatized schools…. And I think that with the proliferation of charter schools, the bottom-line issue is the survival of public education, because we’re going to see many, many more privatized schools and no transparency as to who’s running them…. (March 5, 2010)

She is wrong; charters are not privatized schools. Were the parents overseeing the charters I taught in “privatizing public education”?

 

Addendum D – From AV #107  (Jan. 7, 2014) 

 

The hoax behind The Hoax in the Privatization Movement - A look at Diane Ravitch’s work of fiction, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools

 

Colorado – if there’s a privatization movement afoot, it’s not working here! 

If Ravitch and company have a plausible case to be made about for-profit companies swooping in and pervading the charter school world in other places, say New York, Illinois, or Michigan, I trust those states will refute her accusation. Here in Colorado, it is not hard to poke holes in her charge.

 

If there is some stealth campaign to privatize public education through charter schools, it is not working here.   To begin, one need only look at our state law.  Furthermore, note that out of this year’s 198 charters, only thirteen are managed by for-profits—less than 7%.  I asked Nora Flood, president of the Colorado League of Charter Schools, to comment on this issue.  She writes:

 

   The “private” charter school simply doesn’t exist. This is a myth.  And, Colorado takes this issue a step further… by law, charter schools cannot exist in this state unless they are non-profit entities. Charter schools, traditional public schools, and school districts may contract with for-profit organizations to manage all or part of a school’s operations if they wish. Very few of Colorado charter schools contract with for-profit management companies, and if anything, that trend is shrinking in our state. Last year alone, two charter schools parted ways with their for-profit management companies.

 



[ii] Over 90 charter schools in Congressional Districts 1 and 7. Figures taken from:

1) The Colorado Department of Education – Sent me an updated list of schools in each Congressional District. https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeboard/congressional_district_map - scroll down to – “The Colorado State Board of Education is composed of seven elected officials representing Colorado's congressional districts.” - Schools and School Districts Within Each Congressional District

2) http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdechart - Colorado Department of Education - go to link for List of All Charter Schools (2019-2020)

3) List of DPS charter schools, 2020-21, provided by Colorado League of Charter Schools, Sept. 28, 2020.

Thursday, September 24, 2020

AV #216 - Candidates for the Colorado State Board of Education – Fact checking and concerns - Part 1

Part 1


Though seldom a high-profile campaign, the election of new members to the Colorado State Board of Education deserves greater attention than it receives. I will offer two short newsletters which might encourage others to take a closer look at two candidates: Karla Esser and Lisa Escarcega. I hope it will lead to a better understanding of where these candidates stand. Both are likely to win their respective races; nothing I write will alter that. And yet, given the critical role the State Board of Education plays in determining education policy, there is still time for voters to ask about key points they have made.

Neither has responded to questions I have emailed to them. I trust others will find ways to ask them to address questions and concerns raised here.

This week, two points taken from the website for Karla Esser, who is running in the 7th Congressional District, Denver’s “northwest suburbs,” as Chalkbeat Colorado puts it—from Lakewood to Commerce City.

1.)    Open to Esser’s website and we see an error in the first full sentences under this heading:

REAL CHALLENGES CALL FOR BOLD LEADERSHIP.

Colorado, we have a lot to do.

Colorado’s teacher pay ranks 51st in the nation including Washington D.C.

https://www.karlaesser.com/karla-esser-priorities/

 

Dr. Karla Esser recently retired from her role as the Director of Graduate Programs for Licensed Teachers at Regis University, so I expect she followed the recent discussion to get beyond exaggerated claims and establish the facts about Colorado’s teacher pay. (See Chalkbeat Colorado, “Colorado was never ranked 46th for teacher pay. Does this change the debate?” Opening paragraphs quoted in Addendum A.)

It is surprising, then, that she would say we are dead last. Although the Colorado Education Association has endorsed her candidacy, the National Education Association’s own annual reports— its figures nearly match those produced each year by the Colorado Department of Education—say nothing of the kind about Colorado’s teacher pay ranking 51st. (For details, see Addendum B)

Year

From National Education Association

From Colorado Department of Education

 

National Rank

Average Salary

Average Salary

2015-15

30

$51,223

$51,204

2016-17

30

$51,808

$51,810

2017-18

32

$53,301

$52,728

2018-19

26

$54,935

$54,950

2019-20

 

 

$57,746

 

2)  At Esser’s website, under Karla’s Priorities for Colorado, we see this statement.  (Bold mine.)                                                                                                 

Accountable Education - It is important that we have rational metrics for success to ensure that our schools are performing well and giving our kids the tools they need to succeed, but the current system of pitting school against school and child against child for limited resources is unfair and wrong. It propagates unequal education and simply doesn’t work. With more and more parents opting their students out of CMAS testing, it is time to bring stakeholders together to determine a better form of accountability. The sole purpose of accountability should be collecting data so students, parents, and educators can determine what next steps are needed to further student success. Today, CMAS is used as a tool to compare, praise, and punish disparate schools.

In fact, as the Colorado Department of Education has shown, opt out rates are declining and participation rates have improved steadily the last few years.

From CDE’s New Release – Colorado’s 2019 State Assessment Score/Growth Release (Aug. 15, 2019)

Participation improves
Participation in the 2019 CMAS assessments continues to show improvement with grades three through five all above 95% participation. There was relatively no change in participation in the middle school years of six, seven and eight grades compared with 2018. But all grades have shown increases in participation from 2015, ranging from 1.6 percentage points in grade five English language arts to 4.3 percentage points in grade seven math.
http://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/20190815assessmentrelease

Below you see the increasing percentage of students participating in CMAS, more specifically, from participation on the English Language Arts/Literacy portion of the test. The rates were nearly identical on the Math portion for each grade, each year. This data, covering 2015-16 to 2018-19, is taken from CDE’s annual summaries of CMAS results.

Grade

2015-16

2016-17

2017-18

2018-19

Change from 15-16 to 18-19

3

95.6

96.4

97.2

96.9

+1.3

4

95.0

95.7

96.7

96.7

+1.7

s

94.2

94.3

95.9

96.2

+2.0

6

91.6

92.3

94.2

94.7

+3.1

7

88.0

89.1

92.0

92.4

+4.4

8

83.5

85.2

88.7

88.7

+5.2

http://www.cde.state.co.us/assessment/cmasparccstatesummary2016

http://www.cde.state.co.us/assessment/2017cmasstatesummarymathela

http://www.cde.state.co.us/assessment/2018_cmas_ela_math_state_summary_achievement_results

http://www.cde.state.co.us/assessment/2019_cmas_ela_math_statesummaryachievementresults

 

This is not to say parents—or teachers—believe our accountability system is perfect. The State Board of Education can and should work to make it better. Many of us share this goal. But let’s be accurate: the opt out movement has not grown. On the contrary, we see a greater acceptance of CMAS as a key component of accountability for K-8 schools. And at the high school level, after switching to PSAT/SAT assessments, we also see more buy-in: in 2019, the participation rate for grades 9, 10, and 11 exceeded 92% (http://www.cde.state.co.us/assessment/2019_psat_sat_statesummaryachievementresults).

 **

 

Addendum A – Not 51st, or 46th - not even close

“Colorado was never ranked 46th for teacher pay. Does this change the debate?

A series of unfortunate events led to an inaccurate statistic being spread far and wide.”

By Melanie Asmar, Chalkbeat Colorado, May 2, 2018

As a rallying cry, “We’re 30th in the nation for teacher pay!” doesn’t quite inspire outrage.

But that is, in fact, where Colorado ranked in 2016, despite reports to the contrary.

A series of unfortunate events led to an inaccurate statistic being spread far and wide — that Colorado ranked 46th in the U.S. in teacher pay.

The eye-popping number in a state with a booming economy found its way onto social media posts and signs at last week’s massive teacher rallies in Colorado, as well as into stories in Chalkbeat and manymany other media outlets. But it was wrong.

Here’s how the mistake happened — and how groups with different agendas have seized on the snafu to score points:

The Colorado Department of Education changed its data collection system during the 2014-15 school year and built a new data query system from scratch, officials said. Some teachers were left out of the system, resulting in artificially lower average salaries for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years.

When the nation’s largest teachers union was preparing its 2017 state rankings, it used the 2016 average teacher salary provided by the Colorado Department of Education. That was $46,155.

Officials in Colorado later realized the actual average salary for the year in question was $51,204. They informed the National Education Association in May 2017, but the report had already been published. The union didn’t update the number until it released its 2018 state rankings, which came out shortly before thousands of teachers rallied at the Colorado State Capitol.

The revised figure meant Colorado ranked 30th in 2016, not 46th, and 31st in 2017.

The average annual salary for last year was $51,810, according to the state education department, and the average annual salary for this year is $52,728. Colorado teacher salaries were 15 percent below the national average of $59,660 in 2017.

 

Addendum B - Figures on Teacher Pay in Colorado from CDE and NEA

A.      Figures from the Colorado Department of Education

The above article provided updates on these three years (in bold):

2015-16 - $51,204

2016-17 - $51,810

2017-18 - $52,728

Those figures are supported at CDE’s website – “Historic data for average teacher salary corrected in May 2017” -http://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/20180427datacorrexrelease


Here are the figures from CDE for 2018-19 and 2019-20

2018-19 - $54,950 – 

http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdereval/2018-2019averagesalariesforteacherspdf

 

            2019-20 - $57,746     - Charter schools- $44,172

                  - Non-charter schools - $59,889

http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdereval/2019-20averagesalariesforteacherspdf

 

B.      Figures from the National Education Association

Education Week releases the NEA results each year. The 2015-16 to 2016-17 figures, below, come from these same Education Week reports on the NEA results. The 2019 report for all 50 states, and the District of Columbia (website below), had the final numbers for 2017-18.

COLORADO

2015-16 - $51,223 - ranked #30

2016-17 - $51,808 - ranked #30

 

2017-18 - $53,301 - ranked #32

https://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2019/04/which_states_have_the_highest_and_lowest_teacher_salaries.html

 

2018-19 - $54,935 - ranked #26

From the National Education Association - EDUCATOR PAY AND STATE SPENDING - https://redforedmap.nea.org/?_ga=2.52225961.1866930269.1599755598-1831559579.1594660938