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Admissions Data: the key, missing data to exposing charters

Finally, finally, finally…

The front door clear advantage awarded to charter schools by the Deformists in charge is city wide admissions. [The ejector seat advantage allows them to “counsel” ahem force out low performers.]  Charter schools can selectively admit from a disadvantaged demographic - not freely admit and act as a dictionary-definition neighborhood school.  They aren’t like a magnet school quite yet.  I like the term “privilege school” like “your attendance here isn’t a right it is a privilege.”

Here is an Alderman in Chicago who used a political moment - where UNO needed his support to obtain a zoning change - to extract a commitment that UNO would act more like a neighborhood school and less like a privilege school.  Now let’s see how it plays out.  I suspect The Friends of Juan (Rangel) was the determining admissions factor…not neighborhood address.  Joravsky won’t let this story go I’m sure.

Well, the last year hasn’t been so glorious for UNO. In February, Sun-Times reporter Dan Mihalopoulos began breaking stories showing that companies owned by the brothers of UNO’s former chief financial officer had received no-bid contracts for school construction.

With each new Mihalopoulos exposé, UNO became an embarrassment to the charter school community. Quinn temporarily suspended state funding for their projects. The Tribune wrote a critical editorial. Emanuel backed away a bit. And, ironically, Rangel agreed to let his teachers organize.

Moreover, Sposato was still on the case. Based on calls from constituents, he started to doubt that UNO was living up to its agreement to give local applicants the first stab at seats in the school. “Constituents told me they never got in even though they lived very close.”

So over the spring and summer he began asking UNO officials to meet with him. Specifically, he asked that they bring the addresses of applicants for this year’s kindergarten class so he could compare them to the addresses of the kids who got in.

"They said no problem," says Sposato. "But it took forever for them to meet."

And when they finally did show up to his office on August 16, they didn’t have the information he’d requested. “They gave me a piece of paper that said something like 45 kids out of 160 who applied came from the neighborhood,” Sposato says. “This wasn’t what I asked for or what they said they’d bring. It’s just numbers on a piece of paper. Bring me the proof. They said they’d come back for another meeting with what I wanted.”

Sposato suspects that UNO has gone back on its promise. He suspects it gerrymandered its admissions lottery to make sure that a favorite few got in.

At the very least, he vows to press on until UNO opens its books.

"It’s stall, stall, stall, stall," he says. "First they stalled before we met. Then they didn’t bring what they said they were going to bring. And now they’re stalling on another meeting. I just want to make sure they’re living up to their deal. What’s wrong with that?"

This is an inside joke that may reveal too much about my sense of humor.

"The World's Most Influential Public Intellectual"

Joshua Hendrick’s new book on Gulen - Gulen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam in Turkey and the World - opens with an introduction with that title.

Teasers:

In a 2005 poll administered to determine “the world’s most influential public intellectual,” the U.S. political magazine Foreign Policy (FP), together with its British affiliate, Prospect, published an unranked list of one hundred people whom their editors believed to be the most impactful opinion makers, political leaders, policy advisers, activists, and scholars in the world…After four weeks and more than five hundred thousand votes, Fethullah Gülen was named “the world’s most influential public intellectual” by a wide margin (Nuttal 2008). The July 2008 edition of Prospect magazine subsequently published a series of articles asking the question—who is Fethullah Gülen?

More relevant to the charter school finance theme of this blog:

Indeed, access to public funding via the expanding “school choice” system in the United States has produced an environment whereby, with approximately 130 schools as of March 2012, the United States hosts more “Gulen-inspired schools” than does any country in the world outside Turkey.

This book is worth the money no matter the price.

I wrote the other day that “there is no conspiracy" when it comes to the school privatization forces in the United States.

In the English language only the word “conspiracy” applies to what Gulen’s adherents have - shockingly, shamefully, successfully - set up in their network of charter schools here.  

The more important question is: what are we prepared to do to force the necessary public debate about this conspiracy?

The wellspring of "Follow the Money" research

This is a long post but bear with me…

There is no conspiracy: the privatization crowd meets openly and publishes much of its playbook.  The moneyed advocates for privatization are secure in their world of beach houses, gated mansions, in-breeding and tax avoidance lawyers.  They hire  (“slummin’ til my real job prospects improve or daddy takes back his Cayenne”) white, black and brown strivers to carry out the privatization agenda in town after town after town.  Sometimes an independent journalist (rarely one at the corporate newspapers or news stations) writes a piece stringing it together and following the money back to some foundation.

But where to start?  Which foundation?  What city?

I go back to the Philanthropy Roundtable.  I would follow any group from your home town or state that donates any of its tax exempt money to this pro-privatization outfit.  If a corporate, (traditional) community or family foundation gives to the Philanthropy Roundtable, they have been hooked/lined/sinkered into the deform agenda.

How bad is Philanthropy Roundtable?

In 2013, where would you expect the deformers to hold a group hive five and congratulatory road show?

In Philadelphia of course.  To wit:

September 30 – October 1

Union League Club – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Co-hosted by Delaware Valley Grantmakers
and Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust)

How can a philanthropist increase the number of great K-12 options in their city? Join donors from across the country as we examine the most promising strategies to grow what works in all of a city’s schools—charter, district, and Catholic/private—and explore the challenges and benefits of a city-based, multi-school sector strategy. How can donors increase a city’s total number of high-quality K-12 seats, regardless of the school sector(s) they fund? We’ll discuss investments that hold the promise of improving multiple types of schools and learn how donors are uniquely positioned to accelerate city-wide student achievement.

Discussions Include:

• Incubating and attracting top school providers


• Can school choice benefit private and public schools?


• Building teacher and leader pipelines that serve all schools


• How can blended learning be used in a purposeful city-wide strategy?


• What does each sector— charter, district, and Catholic/private—do best, and what can each learn from the other?

Speakers Include:

• Katherine Bradley, president, CityBridge Foundation


• Mark Gleason, executive director, Philadelphia School Partnership


• Scott Gordon, CEO, Mastery Charter Schools


• Ethan Gray, executive director, Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust)


• H. Edward Hanway, chairman, Faith in the Future Foundation


• Jeremy Nowak, president, J. Nowak and Associates


• Don Shalvey, deputy director, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation


• Andy Smarick, research fellow, Bellwether Education

Schedule:

Monday, September 30

12:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m.: Site Visits*

Schools Include:

• Mastery Charter Schools


• Mercy Vocational High School

These school visits will feature an interactive, donor-led conversation of how philanthropists can grow and replicate high-quality schools to achieve major student performance gains in cities.

*Roundtrip transportation will be provided from the Union League Club

4:15 p.m. Special Session (optional):

Not Business As Usual: How Executives are leading Catholic School Reform
This special session will feature prominent business leaders who will explore the role of lay leadership in developing new and innovative Catholic school models.

6:00 p.m. Opening Reception

Tuesday, October 1

8:00 a.m. Breakfast Roundtable Discussions

9:00 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Conference

A significant portion of the conference will give attendees the opportunity to engage in intimate, topic-specific working sessions and discussions about different investment options for accelerating city-wide student achievement.

Meeting Location:

Union League Club of Philadelphia
140 S Broad St.
Philadelphia, PA 19102
(215) 563-6500

<END>

So clear so far…

In 2009, Philanthropy Roundtable released a paper (here in large pdf) still on their web site titled, “Investing in Charter Schools: A Guide For Donors.”  This doesn’t actually mean “invest” as in “earn a direct monetary return” but close enough to not be totally misinterpreted by the vulture capitalists.

This report had a subsection titled “Funders Referenced” that will tell you exactly for each city or state who is the primary ‘wellspring’ for deform activity in a locality.  [New York excepted because that’s where all the smarmiest, richest investors are and they can “invest” anywhere.] You’ll recognize some of these names more than others.  This coven of deformers has certainly spread since 2009. 

• Achelis & Bodman Foundations (New York, NY)


• Ahmanson Foundation (Beverly Hills, CA)


• Amar Foundation (San Jose, CA)


• Beginning with Children Foundation (New York, NY)


• Brighter Choice Foundation (Albany, NY)


• Boston Foundation (Boston, MA)


• Bradley Foundation (Milwaukee, WI)


• Broad Foundation (Los Angeles, CA)


• California Community Foundation (Los Angeles, CA)


• Annie E. Casey Foundation (Baltimore, MD)


• Challenge Foundation (Dallas, TX)


• Charter School Growth Fund (Broomfield, CO)


• CityBridge Foundation (Washington, DC)


• Cosmos Foundation (Houston, TX) [Gulen shout out!]


• Daniels Fund (Denver, CO


• Dell Foundation (Austin, TX)


• Richard M. Fairbanks Fdn (Indianapolis, IN)


• Doris and Donald Fisher Fund (San Francisco, CA)


• Ford Motor Company Fund (Dearborn, MI)


• Gates Family Foundation (Denver, CO)


• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Seattle, WA)


• Greater New Orleans Foundation (New Orleans, LA)


• Charles Hayden Foundation (New York NY)


• Heinz Endowments (Pittsburgh, PA)


• Hewlett Foundation (Menlo Park, CA)


• Houston Endowmennt (Houston, TX)


• Jaquelin Hume Foundation (San Francisco, CA)


• Hyde Family Foundation (Memphis, TN)


• James Irvine Fdn (San Francisco, CA)


• Joyce Foundation (Chicago, IL)


• Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (Kansas City, MO)


• Kern Family Foundation (Waukesha, WI)


• Marcus Foundation (Atlanta, GA)


• MCJ and Amelior Foundation (Morristown, NJ)


• Newark Charter School Fund (Newark, NJ)


• Newschools Venture Fund (San Francisco, CA)


• Prudential Financial (Shelton, CT)


• Pumpkin Foundation (NY, NY)


• Riordan Foundation (LA, CA)


• Robertson Foundation (NY, NY)


• Robin Hood Foundation (NY, NY)


• Rodel Charitable Foundation (Scottsdale, AZ)


• Rodel Foundation of Delaware (Wilmington, DE)


• Rogers Family Foundation (Oakland, CA)


• Ronald Simon Family Foundation (Newport Beach, CA)


• Sallie Mae Fund (reston, VA)


• The Reinvestment Fund (Philadelphia, PA)


• Tiger Foundation (New York, NY)


• Victoria Foundation (Glen Ridge, NJ)


• Walton Family Foundation (Bentonville, AR)


• Weingart Foundation (LA, CA)

Happy fishing!!!

Orrick and Bond Buyer Charter School Bonds Presentation

The slides speak for themselves but are probably the short version of what the July 10 event at the Hahvahd Club in NYC covered.   LISC was involved in both. The smug comes through exceptionally well with Billy “Its all for the benjamins I mean kids” Wildman.

Note that one of the “Exemplar Transactions” is for New Plan Learning, the land-owning wing of Gulenists’ chain Concept Schools.  It would have been a much bigger deal if it hadn’t have been for those meddling kids. Fitch downgraded these bonds in March 2013 but it was a mixed assessment with bleets of increasing enrollment supporting increasing revenue (note the absence of the “best practices” supporting academic performance that LISC feels necessary).

It will be interesting to see how the interest rate shock impacts the deals in the pipeline.  This year’s first six months saw 26 issuances close compared to 28 in same period in 2012 and 22 in same period in 2011.

Walton money for "Advocacy" Exceeds $100 million

The Walton family foundation was in news recently as Valerie Strauss published her annual accounting of WFF education donations.  Strauss focused on the recent WFF donation to Michelle Rhee, and rightly since her DC readership will always chime in on news about Rhee.

But the Walton’s tenticles go all over the country.  So this coverage made me revisit my data.

I am struggling with how to make tumblr do what I want it to do so I had to load this table to google docs as a workaround.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AmQmVjgMAh5EdFJvSU1xT0ptQ0VLNnVUOUNhV0RhSWc&output=html

I’ve added a set of categories to the full database and just labeled the most deforminess groups as EdAdvocacy even though the WFF made another hundred million or so in contributions to other orgs like state “charter school associations.”  This subset for EdAdvocacy has 161 contributions totaling $108 million since my data started in 1996.

The exercise we did way in the past was a calculation of the WFF contribution as a percentage of the total revenue for that group in that year (assuming that the reporting years for WFF and the recipient lined up).

To take an example, the Walton Fam Fdn gave the WI outfit “Milwaukee Charter School Advocates” a grant of $235,027 in 2012.  Milwaukee Charter School Advocates in its IRS Form 990 in 2011 reported total $150,000 in contribution/grants.  Is it fair to say that MCSA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Walton Family Foundation?  If one looks at who runs MCAS on its web site - besides the Waltons’ man in Wisconsin Howard Fuller - one sees that Tim Sheehy, President of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, is on the board of directors.  Lo and behold, the Walton Fam Fdn has given the “MMAC Community Support Foundaton nearly $10 million since 2001 with $7.6 million alone in 2001.

This is how the Waltons can stay in the shadows while buses carry unknowing parents to rallies on capital steps year after year.