I was kicked off the Washington State PTA listserv

Was I using inappropriate language? No.

Was I being rude and derisive in my remarks? No

Was I stating the truth? Yes

Let’s begin this post with one fact, that the WSPTA received in March of 2011 $191,424 “ to assist with technology communications infrastructure to push for key policies in Washington” from the Gates Foundation.

And what are Bill Gates’ “key policies”? Charter schools and teacher evaluations based on test scores.

And what has the WSPTA been doing? Well, first there was the charter school plank that was quietly slipped in by the League of Education Voters (LEV) “Key Activists” and Stand for Children (SFC) members Alison Meriwether and Chad Magendanz last fall. You can read The Washington PTA Stacks the Deck Towards Charter Schools for additional information on the WSPTA charter school maneuver.

Chad Magendanz, by the way, is now running for state legislator in the upcoming election and backed by LEV/SFC. First the PTA, then SFC backed his successful bid as school board director in Issaquah and now he is running for state legislator. Some say that he is being brought in by Nick Hanauer/LEV et al, to support the passage of the charter school bill that will undoubtedly return next year in Olympia. We will be following that campaign.

Getting back to the charter school plank that was voted into the WSPTA platform, we have yet to find out whether there was a quorum for this vote that occurred during the WSPTA legislative assembly and what schools and districts were represented. We can’t even get the minutes from the WSPTA although several PTA members have requested the information. One PTA member is concerned that no minutes were taken during that legislative assembly session and that is why there are no minutes forthcoming.

Now back to being kicked off of the WSPTA listserv, it actually began when I first got onto the listserv a couple of months ago. It was a very clubby group with Kelly Munn, State Field Director for the League of Education Voters, and several other LEV activists basically providing their take on all issues related to education. Truth be told, that’s why I joined. I had heard that several SFC and LEV activists had basically taken over the listserv, a message group that is made up of legislative representatives from schools around the state.  I wanted to see for myself if this was the case. It was. Ramona Hattendorf, WSPTA Government Relations Coordinator and LEV “Key Activist”, would basically provide what the WSPTA was doing and everyone would read it as if taking their marching orders. Kelly Munn would add her two cents with her LEV cadre of ed reform soldiers applauding her every word. Others would try and question the directives but they were usually slammed down.

So after I got on and began to share my viewpoints and opinions, there was a challenge as to whether I was a member of the PTA  because the chatter on the list serv was starting to take on a different tone, a tone of questioning and dissent. Hmmm. So at that point I had to verify that I was actually a PTA member. Then I was able to join the listserv again. After another week or two, the same challenge came up for several other members of the listserv. So a directive went out to all members of the listserv. Whoever wanted to remain on had to prove that they were a member of the PTA and sign onto a set of rules.

At this point, just about everything that the LEV activists were saying was being challenged, from charter schools to teacher evaluations, how “bad” the teachers’ union was and how great online learning was so this group was starting to feel a little uncomfortable.

I signed on to follow the rules as did everyone else who wanted to participate. But that wasn’t enough. Kelly Munn chirped in one day that the charter school bill was about to be dropped that Thursday and someone asked who wrote the bill. At that point I provided the information that in fact  LEV was involved in creating the bill and posted excerpts from the Seattle Ed blog regarding that. You can read my response at the end of this post.

At that point all hell broke loose. Now before this I had my hand slapped for even mentioning Alison Meriweather or Chad Magendanz as writing up the charter school plank and their involvement with SFC and LEV and almost got kicked off once because I forgot to “erase” my signature as editor of Seattle Education. One of the new rules was that we were not to mention other organizations although LEV and SFC seemed to be OK to bring up on occasion.

Then when I posted who was involved in the charter school bill, Kelly Munn contacted me directly and stated that if I didn’t have anything nice to say about LEV and SFC then I shouldn’t say anything at all. Humph. It started to feel like the same bullying tactics that Hanauer uses with the state legislators or WEA.

In her own words Kelly wrote:

I ask you to refrain from posting about LEV or Stand unless you have something positive to say.

Well, that would have been a stretch.

I answered that I was just stating the truth and it didn’t have anything to do with being nice or not, I was stating the facts and let the chips fall where they may.

In the last of our exchange of e-mails I wrote:

I will continue to provide information that I believe to be accurate. How others receive the information is up to them.

Kelly’s one line response was:

Understand that you are choosing to not respect my wishes.

Because I chose not to “respect” her wishes,  I was voted off the island.

Bill Williams, Executive Director of the Washington State PTA, and Ramona were copied on this e-mail exchange and at the end Bill Williams said that I was off the listserv.

Does this have anything to do with “communication infrastructure to push for key policies in Washington”? Was the attempt to tightly control the message also include what PTA members say and share on the WSPTA listserv?

I am on several listserv’s and generally communication is free and open as long as what we say remains in the realm of “civil discourse”. Why was this listserv different? Is this just supposed to be a method to issue directives from on-high from Ramona and Kelly and simply be accepted and not challenged?

Fortunately, as I was rejected from the listserv, others took my place. They might not be hearing it from me anymore but now they are hearing it from many others.

If you are a PTA member in the state of Washington, I would recommend that you contact Melissa Anderson, manderson@wastatepta.org, and request to be a part of the listserv. Let your voices be heard.

To follow is the listserv post that I wrote that got me kicked off the WSPTA listserv. I was answering the question as to who wrote the charter school bill:

(name omitted),

It is public information.

Before I get into who the authors are, you need to understand some background of Stand for Children. For that see: The Truth Behind Stand for Children, http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/the-truth-behind-stand-for-children-a-video/ and Stand for Children Stands for the Rich and the Powerful, http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/stand-for-children-stands-for-the-rich-and-the-powerful/.

Their agenda is charter schools, charter schools and charter schools. They are back by the Waltons as in Wal-Mart and Gates, both big proponents of guess what…charter schools!

Edelman, the President of SFC stated in a video that after their big win over the teacher’s union in Illinois that they were headed to our state to basically bust our teacher’s union. It is shown in the video that is part of the post Stand for Children Stands for the Rich and the Powerful shown above.

Now, an excerpt from http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/tag/chad-magendanz/:

Prior to this assembly, a proposal had been sent out to the PTA legislative chairs and/or presidents of all schools that have PTA organizations. This proposal was basically out of the blue not only for me but also to all of the PTA members that I communicated with. See Whoa! Where did that come from Washington State PTA? Charter schools? Part 1. After further research, it was discovered that the primary writers of this one-sided proposal were also Stand for Children members. Stand for Children (SFC) is all about union busting and thereby creating a cheaper workforce to staff charter schools. One of the writers of the proposal, Chad Magendanz, is referred to as a “Stand Leader” by the SFC organization. Mr. Magendanz was supported through funding and hands-on support as described by SFC during his successful bid for School Board Director in Issaquah, WA.

And in another post, http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/stand-for-children-school-board-races-and-the-washington-state-pta/

So, who is Chad Magendanz and what does he have to do with Stand for Children and charter schools? Apparently a lot. It might have happened innocently enough for Mr. Magendanz who received campaign funding from SFC and endorsements from Kelly Munn and Lisa MacFarland both with the Gates backed League of Education Voters during his campaign in 2008 when he ran for the Issaquah School board and again in 2009 when he ran for re-election. Even before that he was a member of SFC but this boost to school board member seemed to help him rise up through the ranks of SFC and become a spokesperson for the organization during the last legislative session.

According to SFC 2009 report, as one of their achievements they state that they:

Helped elect four strong school board members in two districts: Marnie Maraldo and Chad Magendanz in Issaquah and Catherine Ushka-Hall and Kurt Miller in Tacoma.

And at a statewide SFC conference it is noted in their handout that one of their accomplishments was the:

Election of strong school board candidates:

– We endorsed and campaigned for four successful school board

candidates; Marnie Maraldo (Issaquah), Chad Magendanz (Issaquah),

Catherine Ushka-Hall (Tacoma) and Kurt Miller (Tacoma).

And now Chad is referred to as a “Stand leader” in the SFC Olympian Connection news update on legislative action in a committee meeting with our representatives in Olympia.

At Wednesday’s committee meeting Stand leaders from Issaquah, School Board members Chad Magendanz and Marnie Maraldo, shared a Board resolution that opposes removing the 2018 dates and did a great job fielding questions from committee members.

So, where did that name just surface again? As one of the PTA members involved in developing the proposal for charter schools that will be introduced in the Washington State Legislative session this week. The same session where one of the Gates backed organizations, LEV, an organization that is pushing charter schools in our state will be speaking. See So much for fair and balanced with our Washington State PTA. The speaker is George Scarola and he is a lobbyist for LEV.

I believe that the WSPTA has been heavily influenced by LEV and SFC and that we need to begin to have a frank conversation about what the PTA does and should stand for and how careful should we be with our alliances with outside affiliations. Even Ramona is an “LEV Key Activist”. Could that be at times a conflict of interest? I believe it can.

And speaking of teacher evaluations see: Stand for Children, School Board Elections, Washington State PTA and Charter Schools, http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/stand-for-children-school-board-races-and-the-washington-state-pta/.

As I previously posted in Stand for Children Stands for the Rich and Powerful, Stand for Children (SFC) has proudly declared by way of its’ co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Jonah Edelman, that he was successful in busting the teachers’ union in Chicago and he plans to do that again in the state of Washington. He has led the fight in other states by his own admonition in a video taped session during a seminar at the Aspen Institute, for “pension reform”, meaning cutting back on pensions or eliminating them altogether, and a teacher’s evaluation based on a student’s test scores.

The entire transcript will provide insight into how the 1% thinks and how they operate politically from backing state representatives to school board members

As Edelman says:

I’m being quite blunt here, the individual candidates were essentially a vehicle to execute a political objective…

And after the successful election of the SFC backed candidates, Edelman says that now he could go back to the governor, with his newly found political clout.

After the election, Advance Illinois (another Gates’ backed organization) and Stand had drafted a very bold proposal we called Performance Counts. It tied tenure and layoffs to performance…It streamlined dismissal of ineffective tenured teachers substantially, from 2+ years and $200, 000 in legal fees, on average, to three to four months, with very little likelihood of legal recourse, and, most importantly, we called for the reform of collective bargaining throughout the state.

In Edelman’s words:

“We’re already getting going. We’re doing this level of work in every state. In Washington state, same goal. We could readily outspend the WEA. Massachusetts, very similar. It might be a ballot measure in Washington. It might be we have a ballot measure on the ballot in Massachusetts, and we use it as a lever.”

After reading the transcript or watching the tape you wonder just how SFC’s involvement with union negotiations particularly because they were negotiating basically against teachers and not in support of them helps our children in any way.

And where did Edelman get the money to successfully wage this campaign against teachers? From the wealthy few including hedge fund millionaires. See Emanuel’s billionaire donors also bankrolling “Stand for Children”, pushing union-busting organizations in Illinois.

Last year Bill Gates, a big promoter of charter schools, gave Stand for Children $3,476,300 in funding.

And then there’s PIE, another moneyed group, who is also funding SFC and is a big proponent of charter schools.

Dora

It’s time to take our PTA back in the state of Washington. And…don’t forget the charter school debate tonight sponsored by the Seattle PTA.

Dora Taylor

Co-editor: Seattle Education

Founding Member: Parents Across America

PTA Member in good standing (so far)

Post Script:

You can view the correspondence between me and Kelly Munn and my letter from Bill Williams at this Google website. Please note the 18 minutes between Ms. Munn’s last e-mail to me and when I received my “off the island” e-mail from Mr. Williams. Coincidence? I think not.

An Open Letter to Nick Hanauer from Bill Lyne, President of United Faculty of Washington State

This post has been burning up the internet and I finally slowed down enough to read this brilliant piece thanks to my co-editor Sue Peters who suggested that we publish it.

To follow is an open letter written by United Faculty of Washington State President Bill Lyne titled Who Breaks a Butterfly Upon a Wheel to Nick Hanauer, founder of the League of Education Voters and financial backer of all things ed reform in the state of Washington.

An Open Letter to Nick Hanauer

Our friends over at Publicola have recently been hosting a rousing debate between big bucks Democrat Nick Hanauer and WEA President Mary Lindquist on teachers’ unions and K-12 schools.  Here at the blog, we have a hard time resisting sticking our nose into issues we don’t know much about, so we decided to join the fun with our own open letter to Mr. Hanauer:

Dear Mr. Hanauer,

I’ve been reading your recent Publicola colloquy with WEA President Mary Lindquist with interest.  I appreciate the way that you have genuinely engaged the question of what you call school reform and that you took the time to respond to Mary’s letter to you.  That’s unusual—most rich people who appoint themselves experts in something don’t usually engage with the people they criticize.  You seem like a guy who might be willing to listen, so I’d like to take the presumptuous step of joining the discussion.

In the full disclosure department, I am a professor at Western Washington University and the president of the United Faculty of Washington State, which represents the faculty at Washington’s four regional comprehensive universities.  We are affiliated with WEA and I sit on the WEA Board of Directors.  But, while I have learned a lot about K-12 education from the teachers and staff at the WEA, my union work deals almost exclusively with higher education, so I’m probably as much out of my depth as you are when it comes to K-12 education.  This letter is from one uninformed outsider to another and is not in any way an official response from the WEA.

In your letter to Mary you say that it’s not the hard-working, dedicated teachers who are ruining education but rather their nasty, child-hating union.  I grew up as an upper middle class white boy in the American South, where all of the white grownups had their favorite Black people—the cook, the person who looked after the kids, the guy who took care of the cattle for a share of the corn crop.  But God forbid that one of those favorites be seen gathering on a street corner with Black people from out of town, or at an NAACP meeting, or having coffee with a union representative.  At the first hint of any organized activity, our grownups would turn on their favorite Black people faster than a summer squall could dump an inch of rain on the pasture.  Suddenly the individuals who had been so tender, wise, and trustworthy were scary, too stupid to know better, and not to be let into the house.  Everybody loved the solitary black person, nobody liked it when they started to bunch up and talk crazy.

That’s kind of the way it is with teachers.  Everybody loves a teacher, nobody likes the big, bad teachers’ union.  As long as they’re staying after school to give the extra help to the kids who need it or reaching into their own pockets to pay for the supplies that the state doesn’t anymore, teachers are saints.  But when they collectively advocate for decent wages, adequate health care, and working conditions that don’t erode by the minute they’re a threat to the moral fabric of the state.

Perhaps it is this construction of a teachers’ union that isn’t composed of teachers (the same way my southern relatives always believed that organized black people were put up to it by uppity Northern Blacks or communists) that leads to some of the difficult constructions in your letter to Mary.  You say that “the vast majority of Washington’s teachers care deeply about student outcomes, work incredibly hard, and are constantly working to improve their instructional practices.”  But in the very next paragraph you talk about the “elements that are largely missing from our State’s public education system: relentlessly high standards, a culture of excellence, and a systemic commitment to innovation.”  For both of these things to be true, you have to imagine the deeply caring, hard working, forward looking teachers you describe coming together in their democratically elected union and suddenly losing all interest in excellence and innovation.

The truth is that teachers in this state and across the country are concerned about the “reforms” so relentlessly pursued by well-funded corporate interests (from Arne Duncan to the Gates Foundation to the League of Education Voters) because many of them will do to public education what the same kind of privatizing “reform” did to health care.  Education is what Wall Street has called “the big enchilada,” the last big public sphere (after health care) available for private exploitation and profit.  And if we privatize education while trotting out euphemisms like reform, efficiency, and excellence, we’ll get exactly what we have now with health care.  Rich people will have access to the best education in the world and everybody else will get education that is extremely profitable but below the standards of many developing countries.

There is something deeply disingenuous about the arguments that you and other business elite school reformers make when you say things like “I am not a teacher and would not presume to tell you how to teach . . . but in my experience as a business leader and entrepreneur . . . .”  The education foundations and leagues and task forces that people like you fund are full of non-teachers who are constantly telling teachers how to teach, but even if that weren’t true, the evidence of your steel-eyed business sense is hard to see in the education “reforms” you’re pushing.  I’m not a business leader and entrepreneur, but it isn’t a stretch to imagine that if education were a company you were trying to turn around, you wouldn’t be focusing on the stuff that’s always a part of education “reform.”

• If you had a company that was as desperately underfunded as public education, you probably would make that funding your first priority.

• If you had a company that needed more workers as desperately as public education needs more teachers, you wouldn’t spend all your time worrying about the order in which you were going to lay off the workers you have.

• If you had a company that desperately needed the most trained and qualified workers the way that our schools need the most trained and qualified teachers, you wouldn’t turn to a temp agency like Teach For America (whose freshly scrubbed and earnest young charges make up for their lack of qualification with lots of well-meaning white liberal racism).

• And you certainly wouldn’t spend your time writing complicated and lugubrious evaluation policies that only the most committed HR bureaucrat could love.

If a smart business person like you were running public education and looking to genuinely succeed, you would hire the very best people you could find, you would hire enough of them, you would pay them very well, you would get out of their way and let them do their jobs, and you would fire them if they didn’t get that job done.  The only thing that the education “reform” movement seems to be genuinely interested in is the firing part.

In your letter to Mary, you tell the world that “my record as a proponent of more funding for our public schools is unassailable.”  Bully for you.  The fact that you and everybody else has failed in the quest for adequate funding (as even the State Supreme Court has acknowledged) should not lead you to abandon your progressive values.

You shouldn’t fall into the trap of scapegoating teachers for American racism and class inequality.  A UW Philosophy grad like yourself should know that a teacher evaluation bill isn’t going to make a dent in the alloy of democracy for white men, capitalism, and racialized slavery that coalesced in the 18^th century and created the backbone of American inequality that persists to this day

You should get out of the weeds of charter school statistics and Bellevue anecdotes and recognize that the assault on teachers’ unions has nothing to do with education and everything to do with the further erosion of public infrastructure and what few collective bargaining rights remain.  Most school reform policies come from a very unprogressive playbook and most of the bills you support get their templates from ALEC.

You should recognize that public school in the United States has never been pure.  The two big forces behind creating and mandating public schooling have been anti-Catholicism and child labor laws.  Nineteenth-century Protestant elites, fearing that Catholic schools were creating a populace more loyal to the Pope than the President, were the driving force behind the public school system. And in the twentieth century, mandatory public schooling to the age of 16 went hand in hand with the outlawing of child labor and the need to create a warehouse for the suddenly unemployed and unruly mob of children of the laboring classes.  School is as much about learning to pledge allegiance, line up, and respond to Pavlovian bells as it is about education.  Teachers work in a context that is usually completely antithetical to the creativity and innovation you talk so much about.  Insofar as you’re interested in public schools as something more than a factory that produces semi-skilled workers for businesses, you should focus on reforms more fundamental than busting teachers’ unions.

Maybe you should have tried to have a cup of coffee with Mary Lindquist before you made a big public show of chatting up Rob McKenna—another guy who, like you and me, doesn’t really know anything about K-12 teaching.

The WEA has its problems—it’s almost as white as you and me and it has all the usual inefficiencies that come with a big democratic organization.  But the WEA is not education’s problem.

I hope you’ll consider that.

Sincerely,

Bill Lyne

Who tried teaching high school for one year before moving on to the much less difficult job of college professor.

A must read: Mass hysteria in New York City after test scores are released

I cannot believe that the ed reform movement has come down to this, releasing teacher evaluations based on test scores and then the New York Post selecting one teacher as the worst teacher in NYC and posting her photo and information on the cover of their rag. Is this what education is supposed to be about?

There is a post in Living Beyond the Gates that is a must read and describes what led up to this unfathomable situation and what the fallout is now and will continue to be. The post is The Crucible – NYC and The Department of Education’s Mass Hysteria.

Dora

Video: The Occupy Seattle Public Education Work Group Invites the Gates Foundation to a Policy Throwdown

Seattle Protest and March for Public Education

March 1 National Day of Action for Education

Banks got bailed out, students and teachers got sold out!

Thursday, March 1

2:45pm – Gather at Westlake Park

3:30pm – March to the Gates Foundation Headquarters (5th & Mercer)

4:15pm – Rally, teach-in, and grade-in led by the Seattle Education Association and UW professor Wayne Au

4:30pm – ‘Policy Throwdown’ with the Gates Foundation (if they have the guts to show) – a General Assembly style open discussion of education and charter schools facilitated by Garfield High teacher Jesse Hagopian

RSVP on Facebook

Students and teachers should not have to pay for the crisis created by the 1%. We refuse to accept the dismantling of our schools and universities, while the banks and corporations make record profits. We refuse to accept budget cuts, educational re-segregation, attacks on teacher unions, rising class sizes, massive tuition increases, outrageous student debt, and increasing privatization and corporatization.

They got bailed out and we got sold out – but through nationally coordinated mass action we can and will turn back the tide of austerity.

The Washington State Supreme Court recently ruled that the State is out of compliance with its “paramount constitutional duty” to fully fund education. K-12 education’s share of the state budget has been in decline since 1981. Since the “Great Recession”, Washington State has cut $10 billion from public education and social services, with over $3 billion slashed from K-12 funding alone. Washington State now ranks 42nd in the nation in per-pupil spending and has the 3rd highest class sizes in the country. State universities have raised tuition by over 47% in the last three years.

But rather than devote more funding to providing quality public education, state politicians are putting forward legislation that would open the door to charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately owned and run. These unaccountable schools are exempt from state standards and union contracts. The Gates Foundation is a leading backer and promoter of charter schools nationwide, despite the fact that their own Stanford University study showed that charters, on average, perform worse than public schools. Charter schools are nothing more than a stepping stone toward privatization of education.

This article in the Washington Post, Gates spends millions to sway public on ed reform, and the leaked secret memo it excerpts, describe the Gates Foundation’s plans to secretly manipulate public opinion by taking advantage of the dire financial condition of the national school districts.

We call on all students, teachers, workers, and parents from all levels of education — pre-K-12 through higher education in public and private institutions — and all Occupiers, labor unions, and organizations of oppressed communities to mobilize on March 1st to tell those in power:

The resources exist for high-quality education for all.

We demand:

- Full funding for public education and social services

- Tax the 1%

- No budget cuts

- No tuition hikes

- No attacks on teacher unions

- No privatization of public education

Organized by the Occupy Seattle Public Education work group. For more info, contact ospubliceducation@gmail.com.

Endorsed by:

Occupy Seattle Labor Caucus

Parents Across America

Parents for Skateparks

Social Equality Educators

To get involved in helping to plan and organize the Seattle day of action, come to an OS Public Education work group meeting — every Tuesday, 6pm, east-side of the 2nd floor of the Washington State Convention Center, Pike between 7th & 8th.

Hope to see you there!

Please RSVP on Facebook

Flyer available here

To endorse the Seattle day of action, please contact: ospubliceducation@gmail.com.

Teacher Evaluation Bill SB 5895 and why it should be opposed vehemently

There is a Teacher Evaluation Bill SB 5895 which ties test scores to teacher evaluations. At this time the teachers union in the state of Washington has been working with OSPI on an evaluation system that was set forth to be developed in last years legislation. Now certain legislators want to ratchet it up a notch and tie a large percentage of the evaluation to student test scores.

Let’s start with a great video that distills this issue down to the point where even a politician who knows nothing about public education could understand it. This video describes why merit pay isn’t a good idea but more importantly describes why the idea of teacher evaluations based on test scores is flawed.

In Seattle we have the MAP test that was instituted at the cost of millions of dollars thanks to our former Broad superintendent who was on the board of directors of the NWEA which produces the MAP test. This test, as NWEA has stated, was not designed to be used to evaluate a teacher’s performance but that is exactly what the intention is or at least was when Goodloe-Johnson was our superintendent.

Since the pilot program that all the ed-reformers in our state applauded, it has now been instituted in our schools. Then last month NWEA “re-calibrated” all of the test scores that had been taken for the last year and guess what? The administrators within SPS stated to use the term “negative growth” when describing test scores. Now I don’t know about you but, I have never seen anyone have “negative growth” in terms of a knowledge base unless there was an unfortunate accident or disease affecting mental ability but that’s how it was phrased. All test scores went down. Hmmm. Now if this was New York City today, everyone would be blaming the teachers and starting the witch hunt of who should be placed on the pyre first.

To read a discussion regarding this testing snafu, check out Seattle Schools Community Forum.

In New York a similar teacher evaluation bill was passed last week to the applause of corporate ed reformers. Diane Ravitch termed it firing our way to the top in her article A Dark Day for New York:

In New York, the politicians, the union leaders, and the media are all exchanging high fives over last week’s agreement about teacher evaluation. Gov. Andrew Cuomo took credit for forcing the parties to settle. But it’s a dark day when politicians impose an untested scheme on educators, despite a wealth of evidence that these schemes are inaccurate, unstable, and have negative consequences and no evidence that they improve education. See this and this. If we were serious about improving education for all children, we would take a broader view of the causes of and remedies for low achievement.But the politicians have decided to solve our education problems not by looking at root causes but by firing teachers. They feel certain that we can fire our way to the top. In 2010, New York won a Race to the Top award of $700 million. To obtain this money—very little, if any, of which will ever reach any classroom or student—New York said it would devise a teacher evaluation plan that was based in part on student test scores. Although this idea finds little support among testing experts, it is an obsession with the current U.S. Department of Education. The winning New York proposal, in order to get the support of the teachers’ unions, said that 20 percent of teachers’ evaluations would be tied to student scores.

When states determine that test scores should count for 20 percent or 40 percent or 50 percent or some other percent, this is a purely arbitrary decision. There is no research, no experience, no evidence whatsoever that identifies what portion, if any, of a teacher’s evaluation should be based on the increase in their students’ test scores.

And then this:

But back to the politics: In addition to the parties involved, charter school supporters hailed the agreement, which was odd because teachers in charter schools will not be subject to its provisions.

The New York Principals, a group that formed in response to the ongoing emphasis on test scores as an evaluation tool, responded with this position paper An Open Letter of Concern Regarding New York States APPR Legislation for the Evaluation of Teachers and Principals. Many of the points in this paper can be used to explain to our legislators exactly why SB 5895 is not what we want for our children.

This testing mania and basing teacher ratings on student test scores has gotten out of control as in New York City where teacher’s ratings based on test scores has been released in the New York Times and other news outlets. Mass hysteria has broken out in New York where parents are already wanting to take their children out of classrooms and schools. One interesting point in all of this is that the test scores of teachers in charter schools have not been published. Hmmm.

The ratings of public school teachers were released on Friday and already, there is talk of releasing teacher ratings based on test scores throughout the state. Will charter schools be included in this McCarthy era witch hunt? Inquiring minds want to know.

Is this the sort of insanity that we want in Seattle or in our state?

There are a few articles that I would like to draw your attention to in terms of this ultimate form of teacher bashing. The first article is A principal at a high performing school explains why she is “absolutely sick” about the public release of the TDRs”. Here is an excerpt:

Having seen the TDRs when they first came out, I can say that they are extremely inaccurate, both in terms of actual mistakes and in how data is interpreted, particularly for teachers of high performing children.   Here is some more detail on that:

                1.       The amount of data that is simply wrong is staggering.  In my school alone, the first year of the TDRS, for just two grades (since of course that is all we have getting TDRs) 4-6 teachers have inaccurate data as follows:
·         One teacher who taught in 08-09 but was on child care leave for years before that time has data for a previous year-impossible…it must be data from someone who was in that same room the previous year.
·         For both of my upper grade CTT (inclusion) classes, the special education teacher has a data report that is for all 29 kids; the general education teachers in those classes have no TDRs. (This does appear to be corrected for 2010.)

And on the blog With a Brooklyn Accent, Shame of a Nation:

 This morning, when they return to work after vacation, teachers at more than twenty New York City public schools will face a gauntlet of reporters asking them about the Teacher Data Reports that were published during their winter vacation. Some will be singled out for personal humiliation, others will be asked to comment on their colleague’s abilities. What began as effort to quantify teacher performance has ended up as a spectacle of public humiliation of individual teachers unparalleled in the City’s history, the moral equivalent of the Salem Witch Trials or the purge of Hollywood Communists, with all the power and ruthlessness of commercial media unleashed. Some of the city’s best teachers – whom this ridiculous system assigned low scores-are going to be treated as though they were politicians caught frequenting Hookers or baseball stars caught using steroids, all in front of the children they teach.

Again, is this what we want for our teachers in Seattle or our state? Or for that matter, anywhere!? And don’t think for a minute that this couldn’t happen here. It occurred in Los Angles last year which was hailed as a real step forward in education reform by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama. It has now happened in New York City and will continue until enough parents, students, educators and concerned citizens stop this test crazed teacher evaluation insanity.

Call or write your legislators today and let them know what you think about this bill.

Dora

Parents Across America on corporate interests in education: One year ago

Early last year the Founding Members of Parents Across America met in New York City for the first time together in one place to begin the task of organizing Parents Across America.

We will be celebrating our first year as an organization in March and I am thrilled to say that in the state of Washington we now have four chapters and one affiliate as well as a new chapter in Oregon.

We are growing literally everyday. People are joining via Facebook or contacting us on an individual basis just asking how to join or what they can do in their communities.

This is an exciting time for the organization. The more we grow, the more there is to share in terms of information and support. We are truly a grassroots organization made up of parents, teachers and students committed to keeping public education public and strengthening our educational system.

I wanted to share with you interviews that were done last year when we all met for the first time in NYC.

You might recognize Sue Peters, Parents Across America Founding Member and Founding Co-Editor of this blog.

Dora

PAA Founding Member and Founding Co-Editor of Seattle Education

March 1st National Day of Action for Education in Seattle

Seattle Protest and March for Public Education

March 1 National Day of Action for Education

Banks got bailed out, students and teachers got sold out!

On Thursday, March 1st, Seattle will join cities across the country taking action to support Public Education.

The Seattle events will start with a rally at Westlake Center at 2:45 p.m., followed by a 3:30 p.m. march to the Gates Foundation to support a Grade-In conducted by teachers from the Seattle Education Association and a Teach-In about charters by UW Professor Wayne Au. At 4:30 p.m., members of the group plan to challenge Gates Foundation policy analysts to a Policy Throwdown — a General Assembly style open discussion of education and charter issues facilitated by Jesse Hagopian.

Thursday, March 1

2:45pm – Gather at Westlake Park

3:30pm – March to the Gates Foundation Headquarters

4:15pm – Rally, teach-in, and grade-in led by the Seattle Education Association

4:30pm – ‘Policy Throwdown’

Students and teachers should not have to pay for the crisis created by the 1%. We refuse to accept the dismantling of our schools and universities, while the banks and corporations make record profits. We refuse to accept budget cuts, educational re-segregation, attacks on teacher unions, rising class sizes, massive tuition increases, outrageous student debt, and increasing privatization and corporatization.

They got bailed out and we got sold out – but through nationally coordinated mass action we demand FULL PUBLIC FUNDING and FULL PUBLIC CONTROL.

The Washington State Supreme Court recently ruled that the State is out of compliance with its “paramount constitutional duty” to fully fund education. K-12 education’s share of the state budget has been in decline since 1981. Since the “Great Recession”, Washington State has cut $10 billion from public education and social services, with over $3 billion slashed from K-12 funding alone. Washington State now ranks 42nd in the nation in per-pupil spending and has the 3rd highest class sizes in the country. State universities have raised tuition by over 47% in the last three years.

But rather than devote more funding to providing quality public education, state politicians are putting forward legislation that would open the door to charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately owned and run. These unaccountable schools are exempt from state standards and union contracts. The Gates Foundation is a leading backer and promoter of charter schools nationwide, despite the fact that their own Stanford University study showed that charters, on average, perform worse than public schools. Charter schools are nothing more than a stepping stone toward privatization of education.

This article from the Washington Post, Gates spends millions to sway public on ed reform, and the leaked secret memo it excerpts, describe the Gates Foundation’s plans to secretly manipulate public opinion by taking advantage of the dire financial condition of the national school districts.

We call on all students, teachers, workers, and parents from all levels of education — pre-K-12 through higher education in public and private institutions — and all Occupiers, labor unions, and organizations of oppressed communities to mobilize on March 1st to tell those in power: The resources exist for high-quality education for all. We demand:

- Full funding for public education and social services

- Tax the 1%

- No budget cuts

- No tuition hikes

- No attacks on teacher unions

- No privatization of public education

- Full public control of education policy

Organized by the Occupy Seattle Public Education work group. For more info, contact ospubliceducation@gmail.com.

Endorsed by:

Social Equality Educators

Occupy Seattle Labor Caucus

Parents Across America

Parents for Skateparks.

To get involved in helping to plan and organize the Seattle day of action, come to an OS Public Education work group meeting — every Tuesday, 6pm, east-side of the 2nd floor of the Washington State Convention Center, Pike between 7th & 8th.

To endorse the Seattle day of action, please contact ospubliceducation@gmail.com.

Washington State Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz speaks up on ed reform

To follow is an open letter from Washington State’s Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz:

A Democrat For Education

Count me as a Democrat opposed to the most strident elements of so-called Education Reform. Let me be clear that I am not opposed to high standards, high achievement, or accountability. What I reject is the culture of scapegoating teachers for the failures of society to protect families and kids, the hypocrisy of defunding schools while corporations bank record profits, and the focus on the latest fads instead of long term, structural improvements.

MY WIFE THE TEACHER

First, let me point out that my wife is a teacher. She leaves the house every morning at 5:30 and comes home around 4:30. She works every Saturday. She teaches in an alternative Seattle Public High School, with two teachers and 50 students. Three years ago they had three teachers, but with budget cutbacks, her class size is now much higher.

My wife saves lives. She is a nationally recognized teacher. Her students are a wonderful mix of kids who have left the traditional high schools. Many have tough home lives, learning disabilities, jobs, and/or substance abuse issues. She nurtures them to graduation – for many their greatest success in a difficult life. (For some of these kids, graduation is the first time their parents have attended a school event.) For some graduation will be the sole success they might have for some time, as they go out into a world of limited job opportunities and unaffordable college.

Some recently adopted reforms limit my wife’s creative teaching to inflexible standards and inflexible curricula, as she focuses on the tests which will now measure her students, and purportedly measure her effectiveness as a teacher. This “accountability” means more paperwork, so that my wife can document her children’s success and her performance. A major part of her time is now committed to data collection, test preparation, and test taking, which means less time for teaching. Since teaching is really her job, some have chosen to increase her accountability but reduce her productivity.

She is expected to deliver higher test scores at the same time the Legislature delivers less support to our schools. My wife is facing a classic “industrial speed-up” at work due to the reduction in school budgets. The Seattle School District is doing its best, but forced to make tough budget decisions. In addition to a 50% increase in her class size, she has fewer support services such as counseling or health services for the students. School lunch has been reduced, so some of the kids are hungry during the day, and bus passes have been reduced, so attendance becomes more sporadic.

My wife is expected to achieve more each year in terms of student achievement. We don’t hold Congress, corporations, the Legislature, or parents accountable for supporting student achievement – just teachers. Many Ed Reformers would have us believe that the weak link in public education is the teachers – those adults who have committed their careers to their students.

There are clearly teachers who should not be in a classroom–most teachers will tell you there are weak links in their schools in need of professional development, mentoring, or outright removal. The current evaluation bill–a compromise that only proves the point that Democrats can and do lead collaboratively on reform measures–is a good step forward, assuming funding is available to make it work.

HB 1209 – THE WASL

My other vantage point is that in 1993 I was Chair of the Senate Education Committee, and current Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn was Chair of the House Education Committee. Together we wrote HB 1209, the Last Great Education Reform Bill, the one which created the WASL.

I was, as many are today, a legislator with ZERO understanding of the classroom who was challenged to reform public education. Kerry Killinger would lecture us on how to run the schools like a business. (Perhaps we were supposed to securitize the kids and sell their education futures on a secondary market?) I remember one business leader who sat in my office, looked me coldly in the eye and asked, “Do you have the courage to change public education?”.

The problem is that it does not take courage so much as knowledge and humility for a Legislature to change public education. I now know that too many of today’s “reforms” are short term fads, fueled by poorly understood clichés, supported by well-meaning individuals, intent on revolutionizing our education system, at no additional cost.

In 1993 we said that not every child should attend college. This year every child should be college ready.

In 1993 we acknowledged that poverty and hunger influenced child learning and promised a package of wrap around social services for at-risk students. This year citing poverty is cynically considered an excuse put forward by poor teachers.

Critics dismiss a child’s race or poverty background with the cliché “nothing influences a child’s learning within the confines of a school more than his or her teacher and principal”. In other words, great teachers can transform children with tough home lives, learning disabilities, jobs, and/or substance abuse issues. If the child falls asleep during class because her alcoholic parents are fighting each night, the teacher will be fired if the child does not show academic progress.

As a nation we have abandoned the fight against poverty, but some would promise that all poor children can go to Harvard if they just have a great teacher.

In the 90′s, one prominent ed reform fad was to have higher standards for teachers: “Science teachers should have science degrees.” We told teachers to get Masters Degrees and advance credits, but then Bill Gates decreed in 2010 that master’s degrees are unrelated to teachers’ ability to teach. Gates says class size does not affect student learning – my wife does not agree.

Congress loves fads, and passed the bi-partisan No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, and decreed, incredulously, that by 2014 every child would be proficient in reading and math by 2014. This led one observer to say, “The United States Congress, acting with large bipartisan majorities, at the urging of the President, enacted as the law of the land that all children are to be above average.” President Obama just granted ten states waivers from these requirements, calling NCLB an admirable but flawed effort that hurt students instead of helping them.

Ed Reform is like the weather, if you hang around, it will change. A teacher with a 30 year career will find the Legislature coming around every eight or ten years knocking on the classroom door, saying the teacher does not understand teaching, and that they have to follow the latest edicts. Senator Dwight Pelz did it in 1993. Shame on Senator Pelz for his hubris.

REPUBLICANS LOVE ED REFORM–BUT FOR THE WRONG REASONS

In the ’60′s when I was in high school America had the strongest middle class and the greatest public education system in the world — K-12 and higher ed. Americans loved their schools, took pride in their government, and the ultra-wealthy paid their fair share in taxes.

In 1980 Reagan said in his Inaugural Speech, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Grover Nordquist famously said in 2001, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

Republicans understood that a government the public mistrusted was a government that did not deserve their taxes. Reagan said that the best way to control the government was to starve it. Over the past 30 years Republicans have been attacking government at all levels, and slashing taxes in America, with the benefit accruing to the top one percent.

The assault on public education is a corollary to the Republican assault on the government. Schools that you do not trust do not deserve your taxes. Schools do not need more funding, they need reform, or they need to be privatized as Charter Schools, dissolved into voucher subsidies for religious schools, or abandoned as simply failing. This narrative plays perfectly for Grover Nordquist, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, John Boehner, and Rob McKenna.

Recently, Republican Senator Steve Litzow and Democratic House member Eric Pettigrew signed onto a formulaic op-ed in the Seattle Times that unfortunately reinforces the Republican narrative that schools can be improved with no increase in funding.

“Without breaking the bank, can the Legislature do anything during its 60-day session to move toward the world-class K-12 system. . . “

“A pair of bipartisan bills filed last week would, at relatively little cost, help state government comply with its constitutional mandate to “make ample provision” for basic education — which includes but is not limited to funding.”

“Senate Bill 6203 recognizes that, and would cost taxpayers nothing while offering a return that is incalculable.”

“SB6203. . . . should lead to a great teacher in every classroom. . ” (If every teacher is great, then what does “great” mean?)

Democrats support efficient, accountable government and the services that maintain and enhance our communities. We support higher taxes on wealthy families and corporations, we support funding education, we support teachers, we support unions, and we think that it is our society that is failing low income and minority students, not their teachers. A fair discussion about education in America — which many Democrats in Olympia and Washington, DC are helping lead– will make long term progress by holding Congress, corporations, the state legislatures, and maybe even parents accountable for supporting student achievement – not just teachers.

THE TRUE CRISIS FACING EDUCATION IN AMERICA

I beseech the Ed Reformers to turn their focus from short term, and largely unproven “fixes” like charter schools and merit pay to join Democrats at all levels willing to address the true crisis facing public education in America: In a global economy, the United States has no national commitment to fund quality education.

While China and India and other competitors are investing massively in their education systems, the United States is openly allowing our schools to deteriorate. We had the world’s best education system in the 30 years after the War, when ironically we did not need it as much as we do in today’s highly competitive global economy.

We need a federal policy that guarantees that education funding maintains and grows despite economic cycles. Today the 50 states fund K-12 and their public universities. Thankfully state governments cannot borrow money. Congress can. If we are to have a national commitment to quality education we need to hold Congress accountable for a federal policy to fund education in America, particularly during a recession. Rick Santorum said in the Arizona debate “I believe the federal government should get out of the education business. . . and put it back to the state.” Education must not be a local issue, but rather one of our highest national priorities.

Republicans oppose this, because lower taxes for wealthy people are more important to them than quality schools and universities. In 2010 Barack Obama and Patty Murray led the effort to appropriate stimulus money to backfill state revenues for teachers and classrooms. Republicans opposed it in 2010 and stopped it in 2011.

A national commitment to funding quality education will not receive bi-partisan support. Republicans, corporations, and well heeled lobbyists will support education reform if it does not require higher taxes and if it accelerates attacks on the teachers union. Until we expand the definition of true education reform to include a financial commitment to strong schools and universities nationwide, in good times and bad, then Democrats will have to go it alone.

You can contact Dwight Pelz at chair@wa-democrats.org.

What would you ask Bill Gates?

Ask Bill

Recently CNN asked their viewers to submit questions for Bill Gates for an interview that he was giving on Africa. Remember now, the more money you have, the more you know…right!?

I thought that I would pose that question to this “audience” in terms of education or any other subject for that matter since Bill does seem to know a lot about a lot of different subjects.

So think about it for a minute then ask away. Some questions might be posed at the March 1st Seattle Day of Action for Public Education event culminating at the Gates Foundation.

Dora

This Goes Under “Cashing In On Ed Reform” : K12 Inc.

I am posting this article, Virtual ed. company faces critical press and a recent lawsuit, in full because you will not be able to read it otherwise unless you subscribe to Education Week. If they sue me, I’ll start asking for donations. This kind of greed and self-interest just can’t go unnoticed.

By the way, do you think that  this guy’s son goes to a charter school?

And one other thing, this is the League of Education Voters next push. Don Neilson is waiting in the wings as well.

Dora

Ronald J. Packard, center, the chief executive of K12 Inc., and his son Chase celebrate the company’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2007, along with John F. Baule, the chief operating officer of K12. Don't they look happy.

In a scant few months, K12 Inc. and its fluctuating performance on Wall Street are proving that the combination of being a publicly traded company and operating in the school marketplace can lead to heightened levels of scrutiny in a growing but controversial sector of education.

On Dec. 12, the common stock price for the company, the nation’s largest for-profit operator of online K-12 schools, sat healthily at $28.79 per share, a dip from highs of $39.37 earlier in the year but a $10 increase from two years before.

The following day, The New York Times published a front-page article casting K12 Inc. as the center of a broken for-profit online school movement. K12, the newspaper said, yielded big profits despite data suggesting its students were performing well below average.

K12 Inc. has been able “to use education as a source of government-financed business, much as military contractors have capitalized on Pentagon spending,” the article said.

Three days later, K12 Inc. stock, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, had plummeted 34 percent, to $18.90 a share.

K12 at a Glance

Founded: 2000

Public Offering: 2007

New York Stock Exchange Symbol: LRN

Founders: Ronald J. Packard (formerly of Knowledge Schools, McKinsey & Co., Goldman Sachs), William J. Bennett (former U.S. Secretary of Education; no longer with the company)

FY 2011 Revenue: $522 million

FY 2011 Net Income: $12.8 million

Outstanding Shares: 36,381,336 (as of Dec. 31, 2011)

Current public school enrollment: 105,070

States with operations: 29, plus the District of Columbia

Employees: 2,500 (as of June 30, 2011)

SOURCE: Education Week

Some education experts excoriated the company, for-profit education, and online schools. Others have picked apart the criticism as one-sided and unempirical. Either way, the company occupies a complex space in education. K12 and other education providers can find it especially tricky to operate as public companies. (“Publicly Traded Ed.Companies Are Rare,” this issue.)

The Business Model

K12 Inc.’s contracts with school districts are paid for with public dollars. It must answer to taxpayers and navigate the increased focus on accountability and performance data in public schools. But as a publicly traded company, it also must answer to shareholders and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Just over a month after the New York Times article was published, a K12 Inc. shareholder filed a federal lawsuit against the company. The suit claims its executives, specifically Chief Executive Officer Ronald J. Packard and Chief Financial Officer Harry T. Hawks, pumped up stock prices by misleading investors with false student-performance claims.

Company officials say the criticisms are exaggerated.

“I’m a big believer in transparency and accountability. I do think the more visible you are, the easier it is to try and attack you,” Mr. Packard said in an interview last week. “For reasons I don’t fully understand, there are a lot of people who don’t like for-profit companies in education.”

K12 Inc. is expected to generate around $680 million in revenue this year, from a variety of sources. It sells K-12, college-preparatory, and foreign-language curricula to school districts, individual schools, and home-schoolers; operates online and blended-learning private schools domestically and abroad; and sells education software and learning-management systems to schools.

Recently, the company has bought all or part of companies that provide similar products, including online schools operator Kaplan Virtual Education, education software maker American Education Corp., and Web International Education Group, a China-based provider of English-language courses.

But its management of public online charter schools is by far its most-scrutinized line of business. K12 Inc. is the rare company where the performance of its end-users—students—can have an impact on the bottom line. A significant portion of the income for online school operators is tied to enrollment, and if student-performance numbers are down, parents may be less likely to enroll their children and the virtual schools could risk being shut down.

Legal Claims

According to the lawsuit filed against K12 Inc., the Herndon, Va.-based company misled shareholders and inflated stock prices by not disclosing data showing that K12 Inc. students perform below state averages and by not being truthful about student-to-teacher ratios and student-recruitment practices.

“I’m more convinced than ever that there are valid claims against the company, but also the business model has questions that need to be answered,” said Richard Gonnello, a lawyer with the New York City-based firm Faruqi & Faruqi LLP. Mr. Gonnello represents David Hoppaugh, a K12 Inc. shareholder from Cado Parish, La., who filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. After a 60-day window for other shareholders to join the suit as part of a class action, a lead plaintiff and trial court will be determined.

The suit says that “additional facts supporting the allegations” will be submitted after that window.

“K12 disputes the claims and will vigorously defend itself,” company spokesman Jeff Kwitowski said about the lawsuit. He and Mr. Packard declined to comment further on the suit because it is ongoing.

Most of the allegations in court documents center around the New York Times article, but specific instances in which Mr. Packard allegedly misled investors about test scores stand out.

In separate instances in February and March of 2011, Mr. Packard told investment analysts that K12 Inc. students’ performance exceeded state averages in terms of proficiency and test scores.

In a presentation given to investors at that time, a bar chart, titled “Academic Performance Relative to State Average Across Six States,” shows a purple bar with +18 next to it and “Math” beneath it, and a green bar with +20 and “Reading.” No source is listed for the data.

Mr. Kwitowski said he could not comment further on the data because that information is related to the lawsuit.

The suit also says that in October 2011, on a conference call with investors, Mr. Packard said the Agora Cyber Charter School in Pennsylvania (mislabeled in the suit as “Aurora Virtual Charter School”) produced test scores “higher than the typical school on state-administered tests for growth.”

The New York Times article that caused stock prices to drop precipitously cited data that Agora students performed well below the average for Pennsylvania students in reading and math. Agora enrolls more than 8,000 students and, in fiscal 2011, accounted for 13 percent of K12 Inc.’s overall revenue.

“Plaintiff would not otherwise have purchased or acquired K12 stock had plaintiff known the truth,” the suit says.

Following each of the February, March, and October 2011 instances cited in the suit, K12 Inc.’s stock prices improved negligibly.

In a Dec. 13 response to the Times article, the company said the student-performance measurement used for Agora—adequate yearly progress, or AYP, mandated under the No Child Left Behind Act—was “broken” and not representative of online schools that enroll large numbers of students across states.

In an interview with Education Week, Mr. Packard admitted that test scores had slipped. But he also pointed to data showing that arriving K12 Inc. students, typically from relatively low socioeconomic backgrounds, perform better on proficiency exams the longer they enroll in its schools.

A common criticism of online schools, however, including those run by K12 Inc., is high student-turnover rates.

In individual states, the company points to the K-12-operated Florida Virtual Academy’s rating of A on its state accountability report between 2006 and 2009. (That school is not to be confused with the Florida Virtual School, the largest state-sponsored virtual school.)

K12 also cites the above-state-average proficiency levels of most grade levels at the company-run Ohio Virtual Academy last year, though the school did not make AYP.

And University of Arkansas researchers found that a cohort of about 180 students at the K12-operated Arkansas Virtual Academy achieved larger performance gains on Arkansas Benchmark exams between 2008 and 2011 than a similar group of students in traditional schools.

But in Agora’s case, the school performed poorly on the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System for 2011. The school’s average growth index, which measures performance on state tests, is minus 12.1, among the lowest in the state.

More Contracts Signed

K12 Inc. has signed 200 local contracts nationwide since December, Mr. Packard said during a conference call with analysts Feb. 7, following the release of the company’s quarterly financial report. The company reported a 29.1 percent increase in revenue from the same quarter the previous year and an increase in enrollment from 98,300 students to 143,900, but a 50 percent decrease in operating income, attributed to increased costs.

In addition to the article by The New York Times, recent reports by The Arizona Republic, the Detroit Free Press, the Tampa Bay Times, and CNN have questioned the effectiveness of virtual schools.

“Do we see questions about it? Yes,” Mr. Packard said on the conference call, referring to the bad publicity. “Is it affecting us? I think it’s too early to tell.”

Mr. Packard was asked if the company would do more to seek out independent data to counteract poor performance numbers for online schools that have been reported recently.

“We’re planning to work more with outside researchers than we’d done previously,” Mr. Packard said.

On the Feb. 7 call, analysts also focused on an $8 million reduction in fiscal 2012 expected revenue (down to $680 million in revenue), related to potential budget cutbacks and policy changes on the state level.

Mr. Packard would not disclose details on the measures, including in what states they may occur. He did say the measures were not related specifically to K12 Inc.

Trend Eyed Warily

Overall, states are cautiously embracing online schools, including those with for-profit management. Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Oregon, and Tennessee recently passed measures making virtual schools more easily established, helping to spur K12 Inc.’s enrollment growth. Mississippi is considering a virtual charter school bill.

But other states are beginning to grapple with some of the ethical considerations that come with for-profit and virtual schooling.

In Pennsylvania, superintendents are asking the state legislature to examine the per-student costs being paid to cyber schools run by management organizations versus the costs of cyber schools run by districts.

Thomas Seidenberger, the superintendent of the 8,000-student East Penn school district, in Lehigh County, said his district pays $8,800 for each student who attends a cyber school, including Agora, despite “dismal” test scores. Twenty-six East Penn students attend Agora, he said.

Along with neighboring districts, East Penn offers its own cyber school with an in-house curriculum and technology services contracted to a Pittsburgh company. Thirty East Penn students are enrolled at the school at $4,400 per student, Mr. Seidenberger said.

“I’m not opposed to choice, but we think we’ve designed a model that’s fair to parents and students and fair to taxpayers,” he said.

In response to Mr. Seidenberger’s information on costs, Mr. Packard said: “My guess is they aren’t counting all of their costs.”

In Franklin County, Ohio, Judge John F. Bender made a potentially precedent-setting ruling on Feb. 6 that White Hat Management, a for-profit, privately held operator of online schools throughout Ohio, must disclose financial records with information on how it manages its schools. Ninety-six percent of White Hat’s payments derive from public funds, the ruling says.

Many of the schools that are plaintiffs in the lawsuit against White Hat have struggled academically, and a few of them have closed, said James D. Colner, a lawyer representing the Ohio schools.

Charles R. Saxbe, a lawyer representing White Hat, said the company plans to appeal the judge’s order, which he described as using “tortured reasoning.”

Judge Bender’s ruling that “the White Hat defendants are public officials” is a “groundbreaking decision” that could serve as a model in other states, Mr. Colner said. K12 Inc. must disclose its financial documents because it is a public company, but the Ohio order may have broader ramifications.

In Michigan, a bill that would remove a cap on online schools and enrollment has narrowly passed at the committee level in the legislature, but could stall before a full vote, according to local reports.

Post Script: I have just been informed that K12, Inc. has a full-time paid lobbyist who haunts the halls in Olympia.