We talked about how Louisiana is a school reform success story, earning a high grade from both reform industry insider Michelle Rhee and the voter suppression law lobby-shop, ALEC.
We also talked about this innovative reform industry plan for Excellence in Profiteering. It’s called Course Choice in Louisiana (but was recently revealed as Value Vouchers in Michigan). Innovation is like lightening. It can strike in two places at exactly the same time, as it obviously did in the case of Course Choice/Value Vouchers/Whatever They Will Call It In Your State.
We talked about the exciting 21st century career opportunities Course Choice is already creating in Louisiana in the vital door-to-door-sales sector of the economy:
“Help change the landscape of public education in Louisiana!
On your own time! With the potential to make $75k+ in 6 months or less!
Company Description: SmartStart Virtual Academy (“SVA”) (a division of SmartStart Education) is a state-approved Course Choice provider. This means that SVA has been authorized to offer FREE courses to high-school students in the state of Louisiana for graduation credit. SVA is offering 22 approved courses — both core-classes (such as reading, math and science) and career-ready courses (such as web-design and publishing).”
In the interest of accountability, let’s see how this reform industry experiment is going so far:
Southwood High School junior Randall Gunn is a straight-A student.
So when the school’s principal saw his name come up as registering to retake several courses online, it immediately raised a red flag. Gunn was called into a counselor’s office and told he was enrolled in three Course Choice classes — all of which he already had passed standardized tests with exceptional scores.
“I had no clue what was going on,” Gunn said. “I have no reason to take these classes and still don’t know who signed me up.”
More than 1,100 Caddo and Webster students have signed up to participate in what some say are questionable Course Choice programs. According to parents, students, and Webster and Caddo education officials, FastPath Learning is signing up some students it shouldn’t — in many cases without parent or student knowledge. A free tablet computer is offered to those who enroll, and some educators believe that’s all the potential enrollees hear. Money to pay for the courses comes from each school district’s state-provided Minimum Foundation Program funding.
Half of the money — courses range from $700 to $1,275 each — must be paid to FastPath and other providers up front. Neither students nor their parents are responsible for the tablet devices if they are lost or stolen. And they can keep them even if they don’t pass the course.
“This all goes back to all of the education reforms that were passed within eight days during last year’s session. This is what you get,” state Rep. Gene Reynolds, D-Dubberly, said of the apparent lack of oversight.
“I have graduating seniors signed up for math classes,” Roberts said. “I have even seen kids, sophomores, enrolled in second-grade math and reading classes. There’s no rhyme or reason to who these companies are signing up or for what classes.”
One example is freshman Shakelvin Calhoun. Calhoun was signed up for junior- and senior-level classes, and said he still is unsure how he was enrolled.“ It was a complete surprise to me,” he said. “We still can’t figure out how I was signed up or why I was put in those classes, but I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”
At least 104 Webster Parish students, mostly elementary age, were signed up for 208 classes when the company’s representatives went door to door over a 10-day period last month in Minden’s housing projects and densely populated neighborhoods.
Here’s the best part:
If Course Choice moves forward and all of the 104 students participate, that would take more than $250,000 from the district’s MFP funding. Continuing to deduct from the district’s allocation ultimately will put a strain on the ability to keep teachers in the classrooms, Busby said.
Just Some Fuckhead
Sounds like the invisible hand of the market is up to its usual hilarious hijinks!
dollared
OK. So this is a jobs plan. After all, what happened to all those travelling World Book and Encyclopedia Britannica door to door salespeople after Wikipedia put them out of work?
Anybody remember Tin Men? Still one of my favorite movies.
negative 1
Oh yeah, as it turns out they don’t really care about education. Just money. Who would’ve thought? Of course only unions are greedy. This is the future.
Suffern ACE
Hmmm. I too would have liked to take 7th grade algebra four times to meet my mathematics and science requirment in high school but the stupid school kept making me take different classes. I like this choice idea.
schrodinger's cat
Now now peasants, be appreciative, our betters are just looking out for us.
Mudge
Grifters comes to mind.
Phylllis
This is just like the Supplemental Educational Services that were foisted onto schools that didn’t make Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB. Unknown, uncredentialed, free-market ‘tutoring’ providers who were guaranteed $700-800, or even a $1000 bux per pupil, turning in recruitment forms with their program names pre-printed ‘to help the parents’, handing out flyers promising bikes, laptops, and even cash awards for completing their programs, and those were the least egregious abuses I saw.
Richard
Corporate parasites.
rikyrah
it’s nothing but a damn GRIFT
keep on exposing the light on these GRIFTERS, Kay.
some guy
one word: ASSHOLES
MomSense
Now this is a scandal.
low-tech cyclist
It’s good to know that this is the sort of program Michelle Rhee gives high marks to.
Kay
@Phylllis:
I got a direct mail piece for a charter last week. The school is 70 miles away. I guess my fourth grader is supposed to board there or something, because that is going to be a long bus ride :)
It’s the first time I’ve seen that. I’d love to know where they got the mailing list, because it was addressed to me.
gene108
I don’t see the problem. Course Choice seems like a good business model.
The more people, who use Course Choice means less money for the competition to poach away your revenue centers by depriving them of money to offer competing/similar services.
I mean, imagine if for every dollar someone spent for cable TV, NetFlix would lose a proportionate amount of revenue. That’d be a dream to have such a lucrative elastic business model, where one dollar spent on your product automatically robs the competition from getting any money.
This really is a beautiful example of a great free-market/capitalist business model, which I’m sure other businesses would love to emulate if they could.
What a wonderful example.
Thank you for bringing it out attention Kay.
grape_crush
Fucking unbelievable.
Even worse when you realize that this makes families unintentionally double-dip into educational tax dollars; once for the course these educational grifters are ‘selling’ and another because these kids are still using public school services.
quannlace
Hadn’t heard about this till today. A priceless quote from louie gohmert at yesterdays’ Holder hearings.
“”The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus,” said Gohmert, in a malapropism for the ages.”
Making Texas proud yet again.
gene108
@Kay:
Listening to a local Philadelphia NPR radio program this morning. Ed Rendell opened an office of Open Records, so PA could be more transparent for its citizens. The director is appointed to a six year term. The first director’s term is coming to an end.
She was on the show.
She said 87% of complaints/violations of open record laws are from charter schools.
Thought you’d get “kick” out of that.
Petorado
Please, can we cease using the term “student”? “Profit center” would be more appropriate, as in, “If Course Choice moves forward and all of the 104
studentsprofit centers participate, that would take more than $250,000 from the district’s MFP funding.”YellowJournalism
So when is CNN going to spend hours covering this story? Oh, that’s right! These children aren’t stuck on a poop ship. They’re just getting treated like shit.
jibeaux
@quannlace: I heard this, but I don’t know what he was trying to say. Cast aspersions on my ass?
Forum Transmitted Disease
Free tablet? Sign me the fuck up!
Seanly
What’s the problem? Grifters gotta grift. Since the 99% ain’t got no money for them to grift one family at a time, why not let them take tax dollars?
Roger Moore
@Richard:
Nah, they’re predators, not parasites. Parasites have an interest in keeping their hosts alive for as long as possible.
Kay
@gene108:
I’m glad. It doesn’t get enough attention.
Fort Wayne Indiana has a really lively opposition movement. This reporter is their main source of information.
Look at all the different entities that launder.., oh, sorry, HANDLE the real estate/facilities side of the charter in question. Now imagine your state legislature following all that.
We need a LOT of lawyers, gene. Each parent may need one or possibly two, for a back-up :)
PaulW
Considering there’s $250,000 at least at stake here, isn’t this fraud? If I were those kids or their parents getting wrongfully signed up for classes they 1) don’t need and 2) didn’t sign up for, I’d be calling the FBI on these jokers. What happens if those kids’ names are on classes they’re not taking, and they get hit for “absentee” or “incomplete”, what the f-ck happens to their GPA, their scholarships, their college enrollments?!
cvstoner
The madness will run its course in due time, the grifters will sail away on their tax-funded yachts to their next scam, and the rest of us will have to pick up the pieces. Same story, told over and over. They don’t even bother changing the characters anymore.
Zifnab
@PaulW:
Nope. Just savvy business.
madmommy
Thank you for continuing to bring these articles to our attention, Kay. I am a parent of 2 kids in Louisiana public schools (one in 3rd, one in 6th). The crap the Governor and others are pulling with the public schools is maddening. Where we live the public schools are quite good, but there is still not a regular librarian at the middle school, and funding for arts & music is nearly non-existent. There are Parishes who are in much worse shape, without a doubt. Those seem like the Parishes where this Course Choice BS is being targeted. I know it’s only a matter of time before it comes to our Parish. My fear is that by the time my youngest graduates from HS his diploma won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on. The hubby is born&bred Looziana, and will never ever leave. He gets really mad when I tell my boys I want them to go away to college, because I know if they stay in state & meet their future partner here they will likely never get away. I guess it’s because I’m not originally from here, but it seems to be like a sickness-no matter how bad the environment, how poor the job prospects or how bad the education system gets people just dig their heels in and start ranting about how great the food and culture is and how they will never leave. If I could I’d shake the mud of this 3rd world wannabe off my shoes and never look back.
Kay
@madmommy:
This thing you wrote is every governors nightmare. I’m serious. If you want Jindal to look bad, tell everyone your kids are leaving the state for a better state the MINUTE they reach their majority. The big competition right now is for young people. Governors are all terrified of “brain drain.”
Mnemosyne
Feature, not bug. Teachers are (theoretically) way more expensive than a $150 tablet computer.
? Martin
@PaulW:
Fraud? No, it’d only be fraud if it was the company doing it. Since these are poor black people, it’s obvious that this is some kind of scheme by parents to get
free cell phonesextra votest-bone steakswhite people’s moneyeducation that they don’t deserve without paying.I think the only solution here is to ban ACORN.
Tone In DC
@? Martin:
And arrest Julian Bond for slander and/or telling the truth.
madmommy
@Kay:
I have, they look at me like I just grew another head. Jindal is VERY popular here-there are still yard signs up for him all over, along with tea party signs. This is a very red Parish, and it seems that if this is on their radar at all it is as a situation that only affects the poors and so is not their problem. The fact that a white, southern gal would think like I do is so foreign to them they cannot process it. We moved here after Katrina specifically for the good public schools, and bought a house in what’s considered a high-end zipcode. We are not, however, within shouting distance of well-to-do (we live in the sticks-cows & horses all around). There must be some people who feel like I do but they’re rare as hens teeth and harder to find. The worst part is listening to co-workers & neighbors who are at our economic level or lower spewing the Faux News talking points verbatim-you cannot budge them no matter what. They’ve bought the lies and are convinced to their bones that Obama is the worse socialist/marxist/nazi evar and if only Romney were President everything would be unicorns and rainbows. It’s quite depressing.
? Martin
@Tone In DC: Of course. Might even need to invade Iran. You never know how far this conspiracy might go.
Villago Delenda Est
This sounds like the sort of fraudulent enterprise a guy like Neil Bush would be involved in.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@PaulW: I’m sorry, what does this have to do with profit?
Comrade Dread
Feature, not a bug. Less public schools means more money flowing into their coffers, which is exactly why the law was written that way. It truly galls some people that all that money is being spent on education and the ‘free’ market is locked out. Randian purists will never be happy until the idea of a community or a shared society (and social obligations) dies.
And I’m also guessing if you dug into the people making money off of this ‘reform’, you’d probably start to find more than a few ties to the state political apparatus. Because whenever you see government privatizing services, it always means funneling money to their friends and giving them a sweetheart deal that ultimately costs more than the public service did to begin with.
ET
I am from Louisiana and I have to say that fact that someone or someones are scamming this does not surprise me at all. Particularly when that was the intent in the first place. This is a state that excels at this sort of thing. If stories are already coming out about this image what is going to come out in 2 or 3 years.
cckids
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
No lie. I can pass 2nd grade math.
MattR
@cckids: That puts you ahead of 27% of Lousiana’s adult population
/notmeanttobeafactualstatement
Hoodie
@Kay: Well, if her kids come to NC, they won’t have to worry about Sharia Law bombs. Crap like this is occurring all across the south.
UncommonSense
One Course Choice provider appears to be signing up phantom students.
gene108
@madmommy:
At some point in the past the proponents of the idea of “social justice”, like the Great Society programs and the War on Poverty, were considered to be examples of American Exceptionalism.
Somewhere along the way, the whole idea of “social justice” has been conjoined to the notion of “hating America”, “surrender monkeys”, and “being effeminate”, while pushing for the rich to get richer is now the calling card for those, who “put America first” and “patriotism”.
I really don’t know how to get social justice relinked to patriotism, but if this could be done it’d be the end of Fox News and the modern Republican party as we know it.
In short, we’re still paying for the image problems liberals got from the Vietnam war and I really don’t know how to change this. I just know it wasn’t always like this.
the Conster
Good grief I’m so glad I’m from Massachusetts.
mrsmarks
I have a friend who lives in New Orleans. Her youngest son has attended some of the charter schools. If a student’s grades falls below a certain level, as her son’s did, he’s out. Can’t reapply to the same school – has to apply to another. In the meantime, kids are encouraged to sign up for web courses.
Kay
@UncommonSense:
They’re incredible.
kindness
How do these people get elected down in Louisiana?
Do the give them free tablets with their vote?
Tone In DC
@Kay:
He and Michelle Rhee must have separated at birth.
Kay
So I’m not familiar with the new Balloon Juice format, it looks different, and when I was getting ready to post this I saw the words “too close together” at the bottom of the screen.
It’s the title of DougJ’s post, but I thought “oh, it tells us now when we’re stepping on the prior post”
Yatsuno
@kindness:
They’re the right kind of people. They don’t support hippies or Communists and make sure the wrong kind of people don’t get any benefit they don’t deserve.
gene108
@gene108:
Just want to add, 13 years ago Bush, Jr. had to run as a “Compassionate Conservative”, because voters still expected government to do something other than make laws so the rich can get richer.
Something’s really fucked up, when Bush, Jr.’s too liberal for modern conservatives, who have basically embraced a policy of IGMFY and what’s worse voters are willing to vote for the IGMFY ideology because of some visceral dislike of the alternatives.
piratedan
sorry to be OT but IE10 the site formats just fine, only when I come in with Firefox is it still borked. How strange.
LT
Why are there no space breaks between paragraphs?
Comrade Dread
@gene108: Self-centeredness and individuality are cardinal virtues now.
Thus the individual feels no obligation to his community unless it affects him, the corporation has no loyalty to its community unless it affects the owner’s bottom line, and talk of a shared social responsibilities and communal solutions to communal problems is anathema.
This is why Randian economics fails, by the way. If the individual is sovereign and has a moral obligation to do whatever it takes for his own success, then free market economics fails, as people make decisions that benefit them at the expense of the long term economic health of the companies they work for or companies make the best short term decisions to maximize profit for the next quarter irrespective of how that will affect them in 20 or 30 years.
srv
America is going to be the most glorious Banana Republic ever.
danielx
@quannlace:
Not a huge Eric Holder fan, but anything that has Louie Gohmert howling in rage* is what Martha Stewart used to call a Good Thing.
*Not that it takes much – sonofabitch ought to be tested for rabies.
bemused
@UncommonSense:
FastPath should be called FastGraft.
gogol's wife
@danielx:
I think “casting aspersions on my asparagus” should be a tagline.
MomSense
@gogol’s wife:
I know!! The MomSense progeny and I have been laughing about this.
The Fat Kate Middleton
I haven’t read any of the comments, but will say this:
1.http://www.dianervitch.net
2. lightning
3. Why isn’t what’s happening in the Michigan public school system being plastered all over the front pages of every newspaper in this country?
4. Thank you so much, Kay, for bringing what’s happening in public education to the awareness of all of us.
Signed, A Public Education Schoolteacher
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@PaulW: That’s exactly what I was wondering – presumably they’d get Fs in all the courses they were signed up for unbeknownst to them, because how can you complete a course you didn’t know you were taking? Quite the unpleasant surprise on your transcripts.
Also, if they’re signing up fake students, does Course Choice get fake public school money, or real public school money? Because the public school only gets money for real students. That’s why they have those census days at public schools – to get an accurate student count to provide accurate per-student funding.