I don’t know if you’ve seen the “signature” A-F school grading system yet, but it’s probably coming to your state. We have it in Ohio, but we blindly adopt every school reform gimmick and fad that comes down the pike:
Former Indiana and current Florida schools chief Tony Bennett built his national star by promising to hold “failing” schools accountable. But when it appeared an Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might receive a poor grade, Bennett’s education team frantically overhauled his signature “A-F” school grading system to improve the school’s marks.
Emails obtained by The Associated Press show Bennett and his staff scrambled last fall to ensure influential donor Christel DeHaan’s school received an “A,” despite poor test scores in algebra that initially earned it a “C.”
The emails, which also show Bennett discussed with staff the legality of changing just DeHaan’s grade, raise unsettling questions about the validity of a grading system that has broad implications. Indiana uses the A-F grades to determine which schools get taken over by the state and whether students seeking state-funded vouchers to attend private school need to first spend a year in public school. They also help determine how much state funding schools receive.
Bennett, who now is reworking Florida’s grading system as that state’s education commissioner, reviewed the emails Monday morning and denied that DeHaan’s school received special treatment.
However, the emails clearly show Bennett’s staff was intensely focused on Christel House, whose founder has given more than $2.8 million to Republicans since 1998, including $130,000 to Bennett and thousands more to state legislative leaders.
“The fact that anyone would say I would try to cook the books for Christel House is so wrong. It’s frankly so off base,” Bennett said in a telephone interview Monday evening.
Bennett rocketed to prominence with the help of former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and a national network of Republican leaders and donors, such as DeHaan. Bennett is a co-founder of Bush’s Chiefs for Change, a group consisting mostly of Republican state school superintendents pushing school vouchers, teacher merit pay and many other policies enacted by Bennett in Indiana.
But trouble loomed when Indiana’s then-grading director, Jon Gubera, first alerted Bennett on Sept. 12 that the Christel House Academy had scored less than an A.
“This will be a HUGE problem for us,” Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12, 2012, email to Neal.
Neal fired back a few minutes later, “Oh, crap. We cannot release until this is resolved.”
By Sept. 13, Gubera unveiled it was a 2.9, or a “C.”
A weeklong behind-the-scenes scramble ensued among Bennett, assistant superintendent Dale Chu, Gubera, Neal and other top staff at the Indiana Department of Education. They examined ways to lift Christel House from a “C” to an “A,” including adjusting the presentation of color charts to make a high “B” look like an “A” and changing the grade just for Christel House. Over the next week, his top staff worked arduously to get Christel House its “A.” By Sept. 21, Christel House had jumped to a 3.75.
Bennett was chased out of Indiana in an upset election:
“This [race] is definitely being watched nationally as a referendum on reform,” Mike Petrilli, the executive vice president of the right-leaning Fordham Institute and Bennett ally, told the Associated Press. “If Tony Bennett can push this kind of aggressive reform agenda and win, it will give a big lift to other politicians eager to enact similar reforms.”
The campaigns and the messages they delivered couldn’t have been more different. Bennett raised more than $1.5 million in campaign contributions, with some of that money coming from prominent outside sources, including Walmart heiress Alice Walton, who donated $200,000 to Bennett’s campaign. Ritz, meanwhile, raised only about $250,000. In contrast to Bennett’s campaign ads, which started back in September, and were seen around much of the state, Ritz’s campaign didn’t start running TV ads until just days before the election and they were run in a handful of media markets and targeted cable TV stations.
His loss meant absolutely nothing going forward, and the race wasn’t taken as a “referendum on reform.” Bennett simply moved his “signature” school reform circus from Indiana to Florida, where he’s pursued exactly the same privatization agenda that we’ve been subjected to for more than a decade now, nationally.
Maybe we could launch a nationwide search and find some people who actually support public schools to run public schools. Continuing to hire people who seek to dismantle, defund and privatize public schools probably isn’t the Path To Excellence.
Baud
Looks like the people who ran the credit rating agencies on Wall Street have moved into the education field.
patroclus
Monkeying around with individual grades for schools is typical of those who do not wish to engage in actual education but are instead concerned with building their own political careers while purporting to be engaging in helpful meaningful reform. “Charter” schools are fine if it means that corporations are going to pump money into schools in order to improve facilities and salaries and educational materials, but they are not beneficial if it means an essential privatization where management and decision-making are ceded to corporations whose profit-motive is not compatible with educational objectives.
Kay
@Baud:
This is actually, literally, close to accurate.
Walker
Having worked with admissions at my uni several years now, I am convinced that charter schools are just one big grade inflation scam.
In one metropolitan area, we have seen charter schools suck up all the best talent from inner city schools. In the “poor” schools, they would have had okay but not great grades, but they have incredible, off the charts grades in the charter schools.
But they students in these charter schools cannot handle college. They are lucky if they last a semester. They would have been better off if they stayed in their “failing” public school.
Manyakitty
I’m in Ohio, too. Surely you’ve seen this giant scam: http://www.whitehatmgmt.com/
red dog
@patroclus: Right on. just “FOLLOW THE MONEY”
Hungry Joe
Now, what’s the penalty for cheating on a test? Expulsion? But maybe charter schools are exempt.
PeakVT
“High stakes” testing will corrupt the whole education system eventually.
Kay
@Manyakitty:
I have! I’ve written about it here before. I’m trying to get the actual court documents.
I cannot believe our (current) Ohio supreme court didn’t bail the crooks out. That’s new and refreshing!
TG Chicago
Check out the legitimately awesome news reporting in the AP story:
They quote Bennett’s denials, as they should. But then they immediately follow it by stating the truth in plain English. Nothing like “the emails seem to suggest” or “calls into question the accuracy of his claim” or whatever mincing of words you might see.
It just comes out and says that Bennett is “clearly” not telling the truth.
(and amusingly, later in the story Bennett actually admits to lying in one of the emails)
Manyakitty
@Kay: Ha! Give them time. BTW, I’m in the Akron area–feel free to let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist you from here.
scav
Grade inflation, well well well. In favor of the well-connected legacy students / shysters no less? Aaahhhhh, but clearly no calls for reform in this particular instance, nor for the similar naughty pomo rarissima in Atlanta? The magic of testing.
Davis X. Machina
@Hungry Joe:
By law, at least here, every school board’s expulsion resolution needs to have a re-entry plan attached to it. Bennett’s in Florida, so this seems to be the case elsewhere.
Nah. Not even Chicago has that many union thugs.
GregB
I thought these assholes were one the merit bandwagon and hated the fantasy caricature of liberal teaching wherein every gets a gold star or a trophy?
Now of course, a little affirmative action for the conservative viewpoint is only fair!
Davis X. Machina
@GregB: In liberal teaching, everyone gets a star. In their education model, you want to get a star, you pay for it.
Is anything more American than that? I don’t think so.
Kay
@Manyakitty:
I will.
The White Hat case has been going on for 3 years. They’re still stonewalling. I’m not sure what they’re on about now, because the supreme court should be the last stop in the “we won’t reveal where the taxpayer money went” game. I guess they’re asking for reconsideration. You know Kasich just gave a bunch more public money to White Hat, right? We put them in charge of the most vulnerable students in the state, the high school drop outs.
$tudent$ Fir$t! That’s our motto.
Cap'n Billy
I’m on a public school board in Maine for a system that’s making significant forward progress; the teachers and administrators are working their butts off.
Our tea party Governor convened a conference on education last year; there were no public school representatives on any of the panels even though the audience was probably 90% public school people.
The keynote address was given by this Tony Bennett who touted privatization and little else. He seemed sleazy and I was disgusted at the time. My instincts were spot on, as it turns out.
Sad_Dem
“They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work.” Can everyone involved have that quote follow them around for the rest of their lives, please?
Monkey Business
So, fun story. Glenda Ritz, the woman that beat Tony Bennett, despite being massively outspent, was my fifth grade teacher. Amazing lady, and I was thrilled to vote for her.
catclub
@Manyakitty: I am not in Ohio and I know about that one!
They refused to reveal their finances for auditing, and claimed that everything bought for school operation belonged to the company, not the school.
Not sure if they were completely successful in stealing, or only partially successful.
Roger Moore
@PeakVT:
It certainly appears to have corrupted all the parts it’s come in contact with so far. I guess Michelle Rhee just made the mistake of cheating by correcting individual students’ papers, rather than just adjusting the grades after they came in.
Manyakitty
@Kay: Yeah, I used to teach freshman composition at both the University of Akron and Stark State. The students coming out of the White Hat schools could barely write their names, let alone a coherent sentence. Shame, shame, shame.
Manyakitty
@catclub: It might have something to do with David Brennan’s connection to a big law firm in town.
Roger Moore
@GregB:
They are. They just understand “merit” to depend on who you know, not what you know.
Kay
@Monkey Business:
That’s nice. She has an appointed state school board of “free market reformers”
They won’t work with her. Send her a note! She’s probably regretting running by now :)
kindness
I’m curious about how the folks in Florida are taking this news. Haven’t seen any of this coverage shift to them yet even though I’ve seen this on 5 blogs today.
Kay
@Manyakitty:
Reformers like “churn”, ya know, “creative destruction”, which probably isn’t the best thing for drop outs who lead chaotic lives anyway:
The new scam in Ohio is to set up a “new school” in the old location, except it’s the old school, because they’re all the same people.
PaulW
Anyone who thinks that campaign financing is NOT a form of bribery is deluding him/herself.
This is a perfect example of a Quid Pro Quo of a political ideologue twisting the system to benefit a “patron” who needs that system rigged to make more money. With some of that money going back to that politico in the form of
kickbacksuh FREE SPEECH MONEYS.To hell with Citizens United: charge Bennett with bribery.
PaulW
@kindness:
It’s a cover story on the St. Pete uh Tampa Bay Times website. Tampa (Bay) Tribune has it as a main story as well. Considering the issues we’ve got in the state with crappy charter schools and questionable school gradings, this could grow into a huge scandal for an unloved governor’s office.
Sasha
And we got stuck with him in Florida.
scav
@Kay: Creative Amnesia when it comes to longitudinal rating! Rather reminds me of all those handy bankruptcies where vulture-led companies ditched the debt they’d been forced into by the feathered briefcased ones and then rolled on with everything else exactly as was (but with a cleared financial books), until there was nothing left to squeeze out of the shell and that final bankruptcy was real, only with all the worst bits on the non-vulture side.
Violet
@Kay:
Isn’t “churn” how stockbrokers make money off their clients? Buy! Sell! Commissions every time! Sounds a little too familiar.
Kay
@Violet:
I’m not an expert, but I don’t think kids like “churn.” I don’t know any kids who say “please let me change schools every year” Maybe the kids I know aren’t “innovative cage-busters.” They better straighten up and fly right, or no 21st century job for them!
RSA
I was talking about this story with a friend in New Orleans, who tells me that Capital One is in charge of four charter schools. A recent article, One-third of staff in four Capital One-New Beginnings schools won’t return in fall, suggests how well it was working out: “…a school year in which three of four principals resigned.” “…staff did not learn their fate until the last day of work.”
Baud
@RSA:
Do the students get No Hassle Rewards miles based on their grades?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@PaulW: It’s not a bribe, it’s free speech.
Thank God for FREEDUMB!
Villago Delenda Est
All the heirs of Sam Walton should be hunted down and put to death.
Southern Beale
Charter schools cannot fail, they can only be failed.
Like conservatism.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
Randolph Duke: Good, William! Now, some of our clients are speculating that the price of gold will rise in the future. And we have other clients who are speculating that the price of gold will fall. They place their orders with us, and we buy or sell their gold for them.
Mortimer Duke: Tell him the good part.
Randolph Duke: The good part, William, is that, no matter whether our clients make money or lose money, Duke & Duke get the commissions.
Mortimer Duke: Well? What do you think, Valentine?
Billy Ray: Sounds to me like you guys a couple of bookies.
Randolph Duke: [chuckling, patting Billy Ray on the back] I told you he’d understand.
Gene108
What is strange to me and what should be intuitive to others is that professions where you are ” performance based” usually have a pretty high upside for good results.
Even with bonuses for good test scored, teachers upside reward was not significantly better than base pay.
The flip side is one of the selling points of teaching as a career was job security and a pension, when you retired. The profession might not make you rich, but job and retirement security was something folks in the private sector did not have.
Take away the job security and retirement security, with no real upside for good performance and why in world woul anyone want to be a teacher anymore?
This should just be obvious.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, of course not. It would only have been a “referendum on reform” if he had won, and “reform” was therefore vindicated. It’s like that Congressional special election in upstate NY four years ago that was a “referendum” on Obama, and a test of the power of the teabaggers, until it was won by a Democrat for the first time since the fucking Civil War, and then it totally forgotten by the the vermin of the Village, who focused instead on Chris Christie’s victory in New Jersey.
Only if the preselected narrative is supported do these elections actually “mean something” as far as the scum of the Village are concerned. Otherwise, they are at best outliers, or better yet, they’re consigned to the memory hole.
Davis X. Machina
@Cap’n Billy: LePage has already announced that he’s not so much running for re-election as against the MEA.
Kay
@RSA:
I saw that. I saw the first one. I guess they’re expanding. Growing their market share in future high interest borrowers, we should say.
The public elementary school here is called “Lincoln” Obviously we’re behind the times. Maybe we’d get more state funding if we privatized, and named it after, I don’t know, a subprime lender.
PaulW
Anyone naming their elementary schools after a college bowl sponsor deserves an automatic F grade.
Chris
Unrelated:
A Republican friend from college is mad because the guy who tried to rig the College Republicans election in favor of his frat buddies a few years back is now the Digital Communications Director for the Office of Speaker Boehner. Haven’t quite had the heart to tell her that pulling that stunt, in all likelihood, made his current employers more impressed with him and eager to have him on the team.
pseudonymous in nc
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s a bit harsh. I’d just take all their money, distribute it among bottom-tier Walmart employees, and have the parasites work as greeters on 12-hour shifts for the rest of their lives.
pseudonymous in nc
@Gene108:
That’s the upshot in NC, which will now put teachers on short-term contracts, dump a bunch of money in the hands of private schools, and retain the 47th-lowest starting salary and the lowest prospects of salary increase in the US.
Teachers are simply going to pack up and leave.
PurpleGirl
@Chris: And probably counted more than his grades in making the decision to hire him.
Churchlady320
@Baud: Started with the South using these schools to thwart integration. Downhill from there.
RSA
@pseudonymous in nc:
The turnover rate among teachers is more than 15% nationally (compared with 3.2% over all occupations), and it’s around 50% for new teachers before they reach the five-year mark. No one should seriously believe that this is a good thing, or that eliminating tenure/longer-term contracts would improve the system. (Aside from those opposed to public schools entirely–but I don’t take them seriously.)
What also bothers me (and has for years) is the entire idea of short-term contracts for teachers. Short-term contracts should be for short-term activities. I don’t know the history behind this, but I can’t see why public school teachers aren’t treated as ordinary state employees.
Kay
@RSA:
The nerve of these people just amazes me. Bennett landed a better job after voters fired him. The Chicago reformer the mayor put in had failed in 3 cities prior to her current gig. She “reformed” Cleveland. They’re reforming Cleveland again, right now. The guy in Connecticut brags about Chicago and Philadelphia, incredibly enough, considering that both city systems are in melt-down. No one ever says “Chicago and Philadelphia are your success stories?”
Reformers have iron clad job security. They fail, and the next place hires them. I read once that radicals have no “institutional memory”. In the case of school privatizers, I would say they have no memory of any kind.
RSA
@Kay:
Yes. In Bennett’s case it seems pretty clear his connections helped, what with his supporter Mitch Daniels becoming president of Purdue University the same year Bennett was picked for Florida. (Daniels is not covering himself in glory either, with his comments about Zinn going public, and recent accusations of plagiarism against him.) These reformers are moles, Grover Norquists in the public education sector.
Kay
@RSA:
Right, but Bennett’s real backer is Jeb Bush, hence the soft landing in Florida. At this point Jeb Bush absolutely disgusts me. He cannot possibly believe these crappy online programs he’s selling are good for “education.” It’s just pure profiteering. He was in Michigan at some privatizer industry convention and out of the media eye, and he was ranting about “government schools”. These folks have about as much interest in “improving” public schools as Grover Norquist. I mean, really. Who are we kidding with this? They see a huge pot of public funds and they’re salivating.
danielx
Bennett is a Grade A doucherocket, which goes a long way towards explaining how he got his ass handed to him in an election which he was favored to win by an overwhelming margin….and this at a time when wingnut sentiment was at its highest here in My Fair State…
And now Bennett’s been caught redhanded, just like Michelle Rhee. I can’t wait to hear Hoosier Napoleon’s – er, Mitch Daniels’ – defense of this. Amazing how the usual suspects – Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, etc – keep showing up in affairs of this nature. Corporate Republicans all, meaning that they’re somewhat less crazy but just as or more corrupt than Republicans of the Teadhadist/wingnut variety. And Bennett ends up as education superintendant in Florida under the benevolent administration of somewhat more corrupt dickhead Rick Scott…color me shocked and amazed.
*Christel DeHaan is a cofounder of Resort Condominium International (RCI) and consequently has money falling from her bodily orifices, which by definition makes her a ‘person of interest’ in Hoosier Republican circles – having contributed $150,000 to Bennett’s re-election campaign (bad investment, Ms DeHaan!).