School For Profit
School For Profit. K12 Inc., K12.com
2011-09-05: Education Report
there are still 20 states that we are not allowed to have public virtual schools.
IVY LEAGUE
FOR PROFIT
iVy League
a for-profit university launch
Apr 4th 2012
"THE first elite university to be launched in America in over a century.” Ben Nelson, who cut his entrepreneurial teeth as chief executive of Snapfish, a photo website, does not shy away from making big claims. But he has every reason to boast. On April 3rd Benchmark Capital announced that it will fund Minerva, which plans to welcome its first class of students in September 2014, to the tune of $25m—one of the biggest seed investments of a leading Silicon Valley venture firm ever. What is more, the new university’s advisory board will be chaired by Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard University, and count among its members Bob Kerrey, a former senator and head of the New School in New York, and Pat Harker, president of the University of Delaware and a former dean of the Wharton School."
Currently, America’s 30 or so elite universities turn away over 90% of applicants (the vast majority of whom meet the qualification standards) as the result of a process he describes as a “lottery”. In particular, Minerva is aiming to tap into the demand for an elite American education from the developing world’s rising middle class—for the “children of a Wipro middle manager from India, or a Foxconn line operator from China,” in the words of Mr Nelson.
1st Sino/US University Business
OUTSOURCE AMERICAN EDUCATION
East China Normal University, the Chinese partners with New York University Shanghai, the first Sino-US joint higher education institute, will have a high requirement for language skills, as English will be the language of instruction. Non-native English speakers will need to provide an English language proficiency certificate either IELTS, TOFEL or Chinese College Entrance Exam's English test score.
NYU Shanghai's campus will be built in downtown Lujiazui area in 2014. Jeffrey Lehman, previous president of Cornell University and the founding dean of the Peking University School of Transnational Law, will be the university's vice chancellor. The future students will be able to spend one to three semesters at NYU's 10-plus campuses or overseas study centers in New York, Abu Dhabi and other countries, the university announced yesterday. Chinese mainland students will account for 51 percent while international students will account for 49 percent. The mainland students have to take the national college entrance exam, which will be a major reference for the university to choose students. International students will be recruited through the admissions system of NYU. It plans to set up seven majors including physical science, mathematics and engineering.
K12 for profit
WARNING THE
AMERICAN SHEEPLE
We don't have competition for police and fire services, which are required to be uniformly excellent and equitable. When they're not, they're improved directly, not by siphoning funds for alternatives. Departments of education in every state should uphold every child's right to a free, appropriate public education, he says. Unless we change direction, the combined impact of these proposals will do for public schooling what market reform has done for housing, health care, and the economy: produce fabulous profits for a few and unequal access and outcomes for the many.
educRATS Walton Foundation Ed Reform goal: insert competition into public education. $157,220,283 in 2010 alone.
THE K12
REPUBLICAN LOBBY
Organizations employing lobbyists in 2011-2012
K12 Inc. is a company that develops curriculum for elementary and secondary education and provides school management services to charter and other schools.
K12 may lobby on matters related to school choice, public school funding, virtual learning, open enrollment, student transfers, special education, limited English proficiency education, standards and accountability, charter schools, and technology.
Bryan Flood, Vice President, Public Relations & Government Affairs
Phone (703) 483-7135 Fax (703) 483-7010 bflood@k12.com
2300 Corporate Park Drive, Ste 200 Herndon, VA 20171 www.k12.com
K12 Inc., A private FOR PROFIT online education company provides virtual education to children in 28 states had a net income of $21.5 million IN 2010.
NO REGULATION LOOPHOLE
(K12 inc. PARTNERS) with Carroll County (WHICH IS POOR) as its public-school intermediary to provide virtual education through eighth grade for students across the state, and MAKES AS MUCH AS $3,700 per pupil in STATE AID.
The state provides $5,612 for each student in Carroll County – including those in the virtual academy. These children in the virtual academy are considered Carroll County students. The students enrolled in K12 log in from their homes across the state. They never have to step into a Carroll County school. Their parents rarely speak to Carroll County teachers. Most of the contact is with K12's certified teachers, who work from their homes. The state spends more on some of them than it would if they attended brick -and-mortar schools in their hometowns.
NO REGULATION TO CAP PUBLIC PRIVATE FOR PROFIT BUSINESS
REPUBLICANS oppose the cap and any regulations.
K12 INC business model is to go to the poorest district where the state gives the most money per student and use them to steal money from the whole state. Local divisions, including Carroll County, do not have to contribute any money to the K12 virtual academy, and the program is essentially free to parents. Carroll County does charge out-of-district parents a $500 enrollment fee, but there are waivers for low-income and military families. During 2008- 09, the most recent year that data were available from the Virginia Department of Education, the state contributed $5,612 for each Carroll County student. During that time, the state spent $1,885 per pupil in Fairfax County, $4,459 in Virginia Beach and $5,521 in Norfolk.
Under Carroll County's contract with K12, the division gets 6.5 percent of what the state pays for the program. A division employee helps coordinate the program, along with handling other responsibilities, Carroll County Superintendent Greg Smith said. This year, the system expects to get just under $100,000 through its partnership with K12, he said. Virginia's current policy encourages private online companies to partner with rural or poor school divisions that get more state funding because doing so maximizes their profits, said Rob Jones, a lobbyist for the Virginia Education Association.
2011 System for virtual Virginia academy flawed, critics say
By Deirdre Fernandes (757) 222-5121, deirdre.fernandes@pilotonline.com The Virginian-Pilot © February 21, 2011
Religious group has entered the charter school industry.
10/20/10 This The first time the religious group has entered the charter school industry. ~ Rev. Reginald Jackson executive director of the Black Ministers Council.
Two virtual schools, a Hebrew language high school and five schools proposed by New Jersey's Black Ministers Council are among 50 charter school applications under consideration by the state Department of Education. The Rev. Reginald Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council said his organization has applied for five charters — one in East Orange, one in Linden and three in South Jersey — that would feature longer school days and additional instruction in "character development." http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/10/nj_charter_applications_await.html
Fcat owned by the Bush family Jeb Bush, Neil Bush who make money from K-12 Testing.
Sandy Kress, the architect of Bush's old high-stakes testing model in Texas and the overhaul of ESEA in 2001. Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB. Sandy Kress White House senior education advisor's turn from public servant to corporate lobbyist, having crafted George W. Bush's signature education plan's "No Child Left Behind" which was a rewrite of Lyndon Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act and was all about making a profit.
Corporations specializing in standardized testing and in "supplemental education services," the same ones now lining up to expand their profit margins during the next six years, as NCLB is being re-authorized by this Congress.
While Bush's longtime friends like Sandy Kress and Harold McGraw have made a killing from the implementation of Bush-Kress's "No Child Left Behind," they're not the only ones, by a long shot. The story of NCLB's most amazing success story didn't begin in any school building, anywhere in America; it began with the failure of the Silverado Savings and Loan of Denver, Colorado, in 1988.
WHY IS THIS? Can it be Racism, Cultural Confusion and Ignorance? Can it be a Culture of Corruption in Education and Politics?
The Tail Wagging the Education Dog
SCHOOL FOR PROFIT - The Bush Family.
- THE BUSINESS OF EDUCATION - FOLLOW THE MONEY IN GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS
- READING FIRST AND VOYAGER EXPANDED LEARNING "READING FIRST UNDER FIRE"
- HOW PHONICS WAGGED THE DOG- School For Profit Scam.
K12 Virtual School GuiDe for Parents
A Parent's Guide to Choosing the Right Online Program
K-12 online learning is growing at 30% annually. Thirty-four states have state-led virtual school programs, eighteen states offer full-time online learning programs, while 70% of school districts offer at least one online course to students.
National Standards for Quality Online Programs.
This publication is designed to provide states, districts, online programs, accreditation agencies and other organizations with a set of over-arching quality guidelines for online programs in several categories: leadership, instruction, content, support services and evaluation.
National Standards for Quality Online Teaching
A publication designed to provide states, districts, online programs, and other organizations with a set of quality guidelines for online teaching in February 2008.
National Standards of Quality for Online Courses
The standards selected are based on the results of a research review and survey of online course quality criteria. These quality standards were evaluated and assembled into an easy to use document for evaluating online courses with common benchmarks.
Marion Brady
Explore K-12 State and National Curriculum Teaching Standards history of failed reform.
Whatever the reason for the congressional mandate requiring the 50 states to test, those tests are now the tail wagging the education dog. And they're all but useless. Their fans refuse to admit it – refuse even to debate the matter – but the incontrovertible fact is that the only thing standardized, machine-scored tests can measure with precision is a kid's short-term memory. That particular thought process has some obvious uses, but none that would justify either the billions of dollars being funneled to the testing industry to measure it, or the time that teachers and learners are wasting getting ready to be measured.
What's true for the FCAT will be equally true for end-of-course exams. An education is supposed to help kids learn to think better, and learner ability to think, really THINK, can't be measured by standardized, machine-scored exams. Period. Full stop. No exceptions. No computer-graded test can determine the relative merit of a kid's inferences, hypotheses, generalizations, value judgments, or any other important, real-world thought process. Second-guessing what was in the head of whoever wrote a particular multiple-choice question isn't higher-order thinking.
If Florida joins 17 other states and switches from a single test to end-of-course exams for every subject, the only beneficiaries will be the testing companies. Their executives, anticipating big boosts in bonuses, think the switch is a great idea. “But!” the reader protests, “without the FCAT or end-of-course tests, how can kids, teachers and schools be held accountable?”
We're big into international comparisons, so we should learn from them. Currently, Finland is at the top of the international academic-performance heap. A few years ago, that wasn't true. How did they do it? They used a pretty simple strategy. They hire teachers from the cream of the academic crop, train them well, and leave them alone.
Revolutionary!
Marion Brady is a retired high school teacher, college professor and district-level administrator, and the author of textbooks, professional books, and journal articles. He is a frequent contributor to the Washington Post newspaper as a guest blogger. His website is www.MarionBrady.com.
Tweedledee to Tweedledum: From FCAT to End-of-Course Exams By Marion Brady
Maybe it's because just about everybody older than 5 has been to school. Whatever the explanation, most people have an education-reform theory, and many aren't reluctant to share them. Controversies about educating probably generate more letters to editors, more friction at school board meetings, more editorializing, and more pontificating by politicians and syndicated columnists, than any other single issue.
Interestingly, most of those myriad theories are valid. Given the size, complexity and diversity of school systems and the populations they serve, it's possible to find evidence to support almost any reform proposal.
Yes, the “turnaround” approach used in Chicago by Arne Duncan, the new U.S. secretary of education – shutting down whole schools, or firing and replacing all the teachers and administrators – sometimes works. But it also often leaves an underlying nonschool problem unaddressed, or even makes a bad situation worse by seriously destabilizing a community.
Yes, replacing history, civics, art and other classes with hours of intensive reading drills may improve scores on reading tests. But if, as many teachers have discovered, those nonstop reading drills make kids hate reading, a battle has been won and a war lost.
Yes, lengthening the school day and year increases instructional time. But if that time is spent doing more of whatever brought the school to crisis, or if it screws up families by reducing employment opportunities for kids who are contributing to a marginal family income or caring for younger siblings, the lengthened school schedule can trigger a different set of problems.
Choose a Reform Strategy — Any Strategy
Choose any random education reform strategy. Sometimes it will work. Sometimes it won't. Sometimes it will make a bad situation worse.
Everybody has a theory, but the ones that count are those in the heads of legislators, few of whom know much about educating.
An editorial in the Feb. 15 Orlando Sentinel reflects the current thinking on school improvement by Florida legislators:
“If a bill backed by a bipartisan group of state legislators gains steam, high-schoolers soon could say goodbye to the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. But they'd also say hello to new mathematics and science tests that they'd need to pass certain classes and earn course credit.”
The problem with most reform proposals is that they address effects rather than causes, symptoms rather than underlying problems. That's what's wrong with this particular proposal.
What was the problem the FCAT was originally put in place to address?
The least-charitable answer is that it was a back-door strategy to privatize public education. By setting in motion a process that required “annual yearly progress,” the math says that by 2014 the “failing” label could be hung on just about every school in Florida and the rest of America. That would “prove” that public schools couldn't educate, and the general public would then be willing to hand them over to corporations (a process already well under way).
The most charitable explanation for adopting the FCAT is that it was a sincere effort to find out how well learners were learning, enabling educators to decide what to do next.
Related Articles:
- Tax-Credit Scholarships for At-Risk Students Extend Civil Rights
- Firing Silver Bullets or Blanks to Improve Schools?
- Another Lesson from China for Florida's Schools
- Wrong Answers from Business Groups on Education Reform
Diane Ravitch:
A Union of Professionals
Why Teacher Unions Are Good
for Teachers
and the Public
UNIONS Protect Teachers' Rights, Support Teacher Professionalism, and Check Administrative Power
We live in an era when leaders in business and the media demand that schools function like businesses in a free market economy, competing
for students and staff. Many such voices say that such
corporate-style school reform is stymied by the teacher unions,
which stand in the way of leaders who want unchecked power to
assign, reward, punish, or remove their employees. Some academics
blame the unions when student achievement remains stagnant. If
scores are low, the critics say it must be because of the teachers'
contract, not because the district has a weak curriculum or lacks
resources or has mediocre leadership. If some teachers are
incompetent, it must be because of the contract, not because the
district has a flawed, bureaucratic hiring process or has failed to
evaluate new teachers before awarding them tenure. These critics
want to scrap the contract, throw away teachers' legal protections,
and bring teacher unions to their collective knees.
It is worth recalling why teachers joined unions and why unions
remain important today. Take tenure, for example. The teacher unions
didn't invent tenure, despite widespread beliefs to the contrary.
Tenure evolved in the 19th century as one of the few perks available
to people who were paid low wages, had classes of 70 or 80 or more,
and endured terrible working conditions. In late 19th century New
York City, for example, there were no teacher unions, but there was
already ironclad, de facto teacher tenure. Local school boards
controlled the hiring of teachers, and the only way to get a job was
to know someone on the local school board, preferably a relative.
Once a teacher was hired, she had lifetime tenure in that school,
but only in that school. In fact, she could teach in the same school
until she retired--without a pension or health benefits--or died.
One problem with this kind of tenure was that it was not portable.
If a teacher changed schools, even in the same district, she would
lose her tenure in the school where she was first hired, and she
would have to go to the end of the line at her new school.
Pay for teaching was meager, but it was one of the few professional
jobs open to women, and most teachers were women. Pay scales were
blatantly discriminatory. Teachers in the high schools were paid
more than those in the elementary schools. Male teachers (regardless
of where they taught, though almost all were in high schools) were
paid more than female teachers, on the assumption that they had a
family to support and women did not.
I would like to remember some of the forgotten heroes of the
movement to establish fair and equitable treatment of teachers in
New York City.
First, there was Mary Murphy. She started teaching in the Brooklyn
schools in 1891. Ten years later, in 1901, she got married. That was
a mistake. When she got married, the Board of Education charged her
with gross misconduct and fired her. Teachers were not allowed to
marry. She sued the Board. She lost in the lower court, but then won
in the state court of appeals, which ruled that marriage "was not
misconduct" and ordered the Board of Education to reinstate her.
Second, there was the Interborough Association of Women Teachers.
They started a campaign in 1906 to wipe out the salary differentials
between male and female teachers. Their slogan was "equal pay for
equal work." When the state legislature passed the Association's
bill for equal pay, it was vetoed by the governor. These stalwart
female teachers finally won pay equity in 1912.
Then there was Bridget Pexitto, a veteran teacher of 18 years in the
Bronx. She took advantage of the new right to get married without
losing her job. But then she got pregnant. That was a mistake. The
Board of Education fired her on charges of "gross negligence by
being absent to have a baby." Not only that, the Board ordered the
superintendent of schools to discover whether there were any other
pregnant teachers in the city's schools. He somehow did a visual
inspection of the city's teachers and found 14 of them, and they
were promptly suspended from teaching. Bridget Pexitto fought the
decision in state court and was eventually reinstated with back pay
by the state commissioner of education.
The forerunner to the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) was the
New York City Teachers' Union, which was founded in 1916. It was
known as Local 2 of the American Federation of Teachers. Its
purposes were to fight for improved salaries, to fight against
"oppressive supervision," and to defend the rights of teachers like
Mary Murphy and Bridget Pexitto.
* * *
Today, the UFT and other teacher unions around the country continue
to play important roles in protecting the rights of teachers,
especially in the current climate of school reform. There's a common
view among corporate-style reformers today that the way to fix
low-performing schools is to install an autocratic principal who
rules with an iron fist. Many new principals have been trained in
quickie programs of a year or less, which try to teach them to think
like corporate leaders. Many of the graduates of these new principal
programs have little classroom experience, and some have none at
all. Many of them lack the judgment and knowledge to make wise
decisions about curriculum and instruction or to evaluate seasoned
teachers.
When experienced teachers must work under the control of an
inexperienced principal, they need the protection of their union
against arbitrary and unwise decisions.
Furthermore, to the extent that New York City, where I live, is the
wave of the future, then teachers will need their unions more than
ever. In New York City, under mayoral control, the mayor--a
businessman--and his chancellor--a lawyer--selected a new curriculum
in reading and math. They also insisted that all teachers across
this system of 1.1 million children adopt exactly the same
pedagogical style (the "workshop model"), and they micromanaged
teachers' compliance with tight, sometimes daily supervision.
Teachers found that they were in trouble if they did not teach
exactly as the mayor and chancellor dictated, if they did not follow
the scripted cookie-cutter format of mini-lessons, if their bulletin
boards did not meet detailed specifications, or if their classroom
furniture was not precisely as prescribed by regulation. In these
past few years, I have often been confronted by teachers who asked
what they could do when their supervisors and coaches insisted that
they teach in ways they (the teachers) believed were wrong. I could
only answer that they should be glad they belonged to a union with
the power to protect them from "oppressive supervision," to use the
term that was familiar to the founders of Local 2 of the AFT.
As it happened, in the contract negotiations of 2005, the UFT
successfully added language to the contract that specifically
protected teachers from being punished because of: "a) the format of
bulletin boards; b) the arrangement of classroom furniture; and c)
the exact duration of lesson units."
The union is thus necessary as a protection for teachers against the
arbitrary exercise of power by heavy-handed administrators. In our
school systems, as in our city, state, and federal governments, we
need checks and balances. Just as the executive, legislative, and
judicial branches of government all act as checks on each other, we
need checks and balances in our school systems. It is unwise to
centralize all power in one person: the mayor. We need independent
lay school boards to hire the superintendent and to hold open public
discussions of administrative decisions, and we need independent
teacher unions to assure that teachers' rights are protected, to
sound the alarm against unwise policies, and to advocate on behalf
of sound education policies, especially when administrators are
non-educators.
In the current climate, when it is in vogue to select non-educators
to administer school systems, it is vital that teachers have a
voice. School reform cannot possibly succeed when teachers--who are
on the frontlines of implementation--are left out of the
decision-making process. If there is no "buy-in," if teachers do not
willingly concur with the orders handed down from on high, then
reform cannot succeed. If administrators operate by stealth and
confrontation, then their plans for reform will founder. They cannot
improve what happens in the classroom by humiliating and bossing
around the teachers who are in daily contact with the children. Only
in an atmosphere of mutual respect can administrators and teachers
produce the kind of partnership that will benefit students. And
administrators cannot achieve this collaborative atmosphere unless
they are willing to talk with and listen to the leaders chosen by
teachers to represent them.
The essentials of good education are the same everywhere: a rigorous
curriculum, effective instruction, adequate resources, willing
students, and a social and cultural climate in which education is
encouraged and respected. Teacher unions today, as in the past, must
work to make these essentials available in every district for every
school and every student. They cannot do it alone. They must work
with administrators and elected officials to advance these goals.
The unions will continue to be important, vital, and needed so long
as they speak on behalf of the rights and dignity of teachers and
the essentials of good education.
Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York
University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University and the Brookings Institution. She was Assistant
Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush. Her latest
book is The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs to
Know, which she edited with her son Michael, Oxford University
Press.
2011-09-05: Education Report
INTERVIEWWith The CEO And Founder: K12 Inc. (LRN) - Ron Packard
September 7, 2011 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published Education Report offering a timely review of the sector. This Special Report contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. Please find an excerpt below.
4 leading Analysts; and top management from 5 Sector Firms examine this vital industry in this 36 page report from The Wall Street Transcript. Order this Report
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A Focus on Brand Recognition & Value in For-Profit Education Amy Junker - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.
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Consumers Chase Value in Education Companies Brandon Dobell - William Blair & Company, L.L.C.
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Enrollment Trends in For-Profit Education Robert Wetenhall - RBC Capital Markets
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Macro Factors Pressure For-Profit Education Robert Craig - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Jerry Herman - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.
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CEO Interviews (average 2,500 words): top management from 5 Sector Firms examine the outlook for its company and its sector. Firms interviewed include: Archipelago Learning, Cambium Learning Group, Inc., Grand Canyon Education Inc., K12 Inc., and Noah Education Holdings Ltd.
Topics covered: Gainful Employment Clarification - Decreasing Pell Grants - Enrollment and Retention Trends - Value Propositions in For-Profit Education
Companies covered: American Public Education (APEI); Apollo (APOL); Archipelago Learning (ARCL); Blackboard (BBBB); Bridgepoint (BPI); Cambium Learning Group, Inc. (ABCD); Capella (CPLA); Career Education (CECO); Corinthian (COCO); DeVry's (DV); Education Management (EDMC); Grand Canyon (LOPE); ITT (ESI); K12 Inc. (LRN); Kaplan (WPO); National American University (NAUH); New Oriental (EDU); Noah Education Holdings Ltd. (NED); Strayer (STRA); Zappos (AMZN).