Public School Profiteering in Stockton

21 Feb

By Thomas Ultican 2/21/2026

There is always drama in Stockton, but the public schools are doing surprisingly well. The latest tempest in a tea pot involved Stockton Unified School District (SUSD) approving the Amelia Ann Adams Whole Life Center’s $130,000 contract for student trauma counseling. SUSD Trustee Kennetha Stevens who also serves as an unpaid board member for Amelia Adams voted for the contract. Davina Hurt at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics stated, “Even when conduct is technically legal, undisclosed dual loyalties can create the appearance of hidden influence, which erodes confidence in democratic institutions.” This complaint looks a little weak in comparison to billionaires funding a multidecade long effort to privatize public education in Stockton. However, if she did not do it, Stevens should have noted her board participation at Amelia Adams.

Stockton, founded in 1849, is California’s farthest inland deep-water shipping port. It was named after famed Mexican-American War Commadore, Robert F. Stockton, and was the first city in California whose name is not either Spanish or Indian in origin. The city is located on the northern end of the San Joaquin valley and is home to about 325,000 people of surprisingly diverse races; 16% White, 11% Black, 23% Asian, 45% Hispanic, 5% Other. Originally established to supply gold rush miners, it is now where produce and grains from America’s largest agricultural valley start their trips into local and world markets.

Stockton’s Public Schools

Almost 83% of Stockton Unified’s students are listed by the state of California as “Socioeconomically Disadvantaged.” Standardized testing results are significantly tied to the economic situation of the students’ families, so it is not surprising that most Stockton Unified schools do not test well compared to wealthier communities. However, the multiple evaluations presented on the California Department of Education dashboard paint a picture of Stockton’s schools being successful in their mission.

This dashboard shows that Stockton is struggling with chronic absenteeism and they have horrible results in mathematics. On the other hand, the 25% of students who are English language learners are making good progress. Having a graduation rate of 88.9% means that over the 12 years students spend in these schools, they graduate at a rate that is 1% better than California’s average graduation rates. SUSD gets high marks for meeting all of the state’s professional standards. With their large number of language learners and socioeconomically disadvantaged students, these are results for which teachers and school administrators can legitimately take pride.

SUSD has been doing a professional job of educating students for a long time, but the district has struggled with top management turnover. Between 2012 and 2023, John Deasy was the longest serving Superintendent in Stockton. He served for two years and two weeks.

Today, it seems this administration turnover problem has been righted. The 2023 hiring of Michelle Rodriguez has put a professional star in charge. She is in the midst of her third year leading Stockton’s schools. Not only have many nagging management issues disappeared, Rodriquez has been gaining positive national notice. Last year it was reported by Stocktonia News, “Michelle Rodriguez, who has served as Stockton Unified School District’s superintendent since July 2023, took home two national awards celebrating her more than three decades as a school administrator: Finalist for Superintendent of the Year and the Power Leadership Award.”

Rodriguez studied at Chico State University and upon graduation went to Spain for further study. She is fully bilingual. Rodriguez earned a PhD from University of Southern California, was a principal in San Diego, became chief academic officer in Santa Ana and was Superintendent of Pajaro Unified School District in Watsonville for 7 years prior to accepting the Stockton job.

Unfortunately, this stellar public education district is being torn apart by ruthless billionaires.

Charter Schools in Stockton

Understanding the impact of charter schools on the local public schools takes a little digging. From San Joaquin County’s list of schools, it can be learned by checking with the state of California’s school profiles that there are 23 charter schools in Stockton. There are also three school districts operating in the city; Stockton Unified, the much smaller Lincoln Unified and four schools from Manteca Unified. Eighteen charter schools were authorized by SUSD, one by Lincoln, three by San Joaquin County and one by New Jerusalem school district in nearby Tracy, California.

Putting all of this data together produces the following table.

The table above shows that of the 38,452 students that are served by SUSD and the charter schools it authorized there is a 17.9% charter school going rate. However, when the charter schools authorized by San Joaquin County and the New Jerusalem school district are taken into account, the percentage of charter school going students in SUSD jumps to more than 34%. In all of Stockton, the charter school going rate of students is 28% or put another way, 28 of every 100 students are attending privatized schools.

This is egregious. Many young parents in Stockton have been fooled by the billionaires funding public education privatization. Instead of enrolling their children in professionally run and stable public schools, they are putting them in risky schools that are known for instability and profiteering.

Data drawn the state of California’s Department of Education Data Quest is aggregated above. It shows the billionaire path to excess profits. They dump the most expensive students — the students with disabilities — on the public system. SUSD educates 5.2% more disabled students than the local charter school industry. This pattern is repeated everywhere charter schools exist. They do not just take fewer students with disabilities, but some of the more profoundly disabled students are extremely costly and charter schools notoriously do not take any of those students.

English language learners harm test scores while they are mastering a new language. Charter schools that claim to have superior education proven by test scores avoid them. The table above shows that SUSD educates 7.1% more language learners than the privatized schools.

The areas where charter schools significantly outperform public schools are marketing and administrative pay.

The city of Stockton has an excellent public education system but that system is being destroyed. In Oakland, California they previously had very convenient elementary schools in every neighborhood. With the influx of charter schools, some neighborhoods in the flats have lost that easy access to public schools. This is likely happening now in some Stockton neighborhoods.

The state of California should take over all charter schools and task the local school districts with managing them. The present charter school system has become a greed infested and destructive failure.

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Homophobic President Attacks Transgender Students

5 Feb

By Thomas Ultican 2/5/2026  

With our lying President, we don’t know if he is actually a homophobe or just plays one on TV. His Department of Education recently reported finding San Jose State University violated Title IX regarding a transgender volleyball player. The transgender player, Blaire Fleming, was on the San José State roster for three seasons after transferring from Coastal Carolina. Her status as transgender apparently became known when Southern Utah forfeited its match against San Jose State in September, 2024. It was Flemming’s third year on the team.

Shortly after this came to light, San Jose State co-captain Brooke Slusser and two former Spartans were incensed by the new knowledge about Fleming and sued the Mountain West Conference over its policies they claim muzzled them. While Slusser was the central figure among the three players that were outraged, it is very likely that a lot of that outrage was fueled by Brooke’s Christian Nationalist mother, Kim Slusser.

A dive into Kim’s Facebook page, shows that she is much more focused on being a mom supporting her kids than she is politics. However, she did recently post to Facebook “Let’s go Leigh Wambsganss for Texas Senate.” Leigh is the wife of a former Southlake mayor, co-founder of Southlake Family PAC and Leader of a Patriots Mobil PAC designed to take over public schools. Mike Hixenbaugh quoted Wambsganss in his book They Came for the Schools:

“… Leigh Wambsganas … said there was no hope of changing the minds of any Black Lives Matter activists. ‘Sadly, they need to die.’” (Pages 108 and179)

Besides politically supporting crazed right-wing religious zealots, Kim Slusser also posted a graphic encouraging people to listen to the Megyn Kelly show.

A Post in Kim Slusser’s Facebook

The President’s attack on transgender people is fueled by bigoted ideology.

Transgender Reality

A 2022 study by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute shared that of the 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender, 38.5% (515,200) are transgender women, 35.9% (480,000) are transgender men, and 25.6% (341,800) reported they are gender nonconforming. The LGBTQIA WIKI defines gender nonconforming:

“Gender non-conforming is a term describing people who do not follow gender stereotypes and differ from their society’s conventional binary expectations of masculine men and feminine women. Gender non-conformity can encompass many things, such as gender expression, gender roles, or another aspect of gender. It is typically apparent in people whose gender identity is a binary gender, whether they are cisgender or transgender; for instance, a feminine trans man and a feminine cis man are both non-conforming with expectations of masculinity.”

From the 2022 study cited above, about 700,000 transgender people are between 13 and 24. Extrapolating from these numbers, I would expect less than 400,000 of them to be transgender women. It is a small but not insignificant number of people considering that there are about 350 million people in America.

The bottom line is that a small subset of human beings is born with gender-dysphoria, a mismatch between gender identity and their own personal sense of gender. Scientific American reported almost all major American medical groups have “policy statements and guidelines on how to provide age-appropriate gender-affirming care” and “find such care to be evidence-based and medically necessary.”

Columbia University Psychiatry reports:

“It is well documented that TGNB [transgender non-binary] adolescents and young adults experience anxiety and depression, as well as suicidal ideation, at a much higher rate than their cisgender peers. According to The Trevor Project’s 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, 54 percent of young people who identified as transgender or nonbinary reported having seriously considered suicide in the last year, and 29 percent have made an attempt to end their lives.”

Both homosexuality and gender dysphoria are naturally occurring phenomena. They are not a mistake and they are human beings worthy of maximum respect.

The PBS article “Why is the GOP Escalating Attacks on Trans Rights? Experts say the Goal is to make sure Evangelicals Vote” reports that “Survey after survey show that Americans support LGBTQ+ equality, and Republicans are no exception.” When Donald Trump first ran for office, he briefly vowed to be an ally to queer Americans. “In office, his administration made so many policy moves against LGBTQ+ Americans that advocacy organizations branded his leadership ‘The Discrimination Administration.”’

Even though the Evangelical community is a minority in the Republican Party, their strong unity on cultural issues has made them a must get for victorious GOP candidates. Our President quickly realized he needed them and apparently had no problem abandoning his vow to be an ally to queer Americans.

Respecting Life and Protecting People

Sixteen-years-old trans-student, Nex Benedict, was attacked in the girl’s bathroom at her Oklahoma high school. The attack was severe enough to require some medical attention, but she was well enough to go home that night. The next day she committed suicide. Caught in a web of ignorance and bigotry she was convinced that life was not worth living. She would be about the same age as San Jose State’s volleyball player, Blaire Fleming, if she had lived until today.

A new law, that took effect January 2025 in California, says teachers, counselors and schools are not to disclose a student’s apparent gender-dysphoria to parents without the student’s permission. The arguments in the Bill noted, “Unfortunately, not all young people are able to be their authentic selves at home safely, and, in those cases, schools can be a critical source of support.” It also highlighted the large tendency for trans students like Nex Benedict to engage in suicide. The bill claimed that students with “access to affirming homes, schools, community events, and online spaces reported lower rates of attempting suicide.”

The same January that the California bill was signed, President Trump signed many executive orders including:

“This executive order directs federal agencies and federal employees to interpret “sex” solely as an immutable binary biological classification determined at conception. The order also requires all federal agencies to enforce sex-based rights, protections and accommodations using this definition of “sex.”

A few months before Trump became President, a symposium organized by the National Human Genome Research Institute, an institute of the US National Institutes of Health completely rejected the Trumpian view. “Throughout the symposium, many speakers argued that any attempt to categorize sex runs into the same issue—human variation always provides an exception to the rule.”

An interesting case was presented by Physician Tucker Pyle, from Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. A person who was born in the 1980s was raised as a girl but felt like a boy. As a teenager, the patient received feminizing hormones but still experienced dysphoria. Years later, he learned doctors performed surgery on him as a baby to make his genitalia, which weren’t clearly a penis or a vulva, look like a vulva. But he ultimately identified as male and socially and hormonally transitioned.

A Personal Opinion

In a dialogue with youth, Daisaku Ikeda said:

“Everyone has a right to flower, to reveal his or her full potential as a human being, to fulfill his or her mission in this world. You have this right and so does everyone else. To scorn and violate people’s human rights destroys the natural order of things. We must become people who prize human rights and respect others.” (Faith into Action page 276)

This current attack on gay people is evil. Some gay people are not the sharpest tool in the woodshed and some are possessed of brilliance, but more importantly they are all human beings with a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They all deserve respect.

I think trans kids in sports is a made-up issue. Participating in sports with their preferred gender should be accommodated. There are more gender nonconforming females whose male side leads to sporting victories than any unfairness caused by the few transgender participants.

Should someone disagree with this position, we should listen if they have valid points. However, I do not think transgender athletes are the problem that needs reforming.

It is benighted bigots who must be reformed; whose ideology must be shunned.

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Bellwether and K12 Coalition Published Misleading Report

22 Jan

By Thomas Ultican 1/21/2026

Bellwether’s report is called “How We Solve America’s Math Crisis: A Systemwide Approach to Evidence-Based Math Learning.” The title signals that this is not a serious report. Rather, it is a polemic created with K12 Coalition to sell products. Just like there is no reading crisis in America, there is also no math crisis. However, if these companies can convince enough people a crisis exists, then a pathway for profits opens.

Andrew Rotherham, the founder of Bellwether, is a very energetic and engaged writer who has worked at Time magazine and US News World Report. He was a domestic policy adviser during the Clinton administration and like many Democrats of that era, he bought into the Republican ideology that claimed private business is always superior to any government enterprise. That is why they believe that privatizing prisons and public education is good policy.

Rotherham has served on many boards including The Mind Trust in Indianapolis and ‘The 74’. He has been an advisor to several companies looking to profit from education spending including Whiteboard Advisors; Upbeat, a data analytics company focused on teacher engagement and retention; ClearForce, a security and threat prevention company; and several nonprofit organizations.

Joining Rotherham’s Bellwether to write the “Math Crisis” report is K12 Coalition. The Coalition is one of more than 80 companies owned by the Private Equity firm Quad-C. K12 Coalition recently acquired Keys to Literacy and Professional Development Institute to add to its other organizations like Teaching Channel and Lavinia Group Instructional Support.

These are the companies claiming there is a crisis in math education and that they are the solution.

Not a Crisis

There is not a math crisis and to demonstrate this, let us turn to some national math data available from the federal government.

Since 1990, we have been testing fourth grade math. In the early years, schools and teachers gave the tests but were not too concerned about the results. That changed in 2002 with the passage of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In 2003, the punishment aspect of NCLB caused schools and teachers to focus on improving scores which did dramatically improve.

Most of the gains can be attributed to improved test taking skills and a narrowing of the math curriculum to just items being tested.

In 2022 and 2024, the average scores went down a few points. This is probably the result of two COVID era phenomena. Many schools were closed which meant numerous children missed significant time from school. Once schools were all up and running again absanteeism spiked. Rand corporation recently reported, “Chronic absenteeism in the 2024–2025 school year remained above prepandemic levels.”

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) assigns levels to the testing scores; below basic (dark blue), basic (orange), proficient (green) and advanced (light blue). According to Diane Ravitch, basic is about the same as being at grade level and proficient is akin to an A. The advanced level is at the extreme top of the scoring range. Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institute noted, “Even students in private schools, despite hailing from more socioeconomically advantaged homes and in some cases being selectively admitted by schools, fail miserably at attaining NAEP proficiency.”

Since 2003, fourth grade math students have continuously had more than 75% of students scoring at basic or higher.

The average NAEP math data for eighth graders showed scores dropping about 7-points from the 2019 results in both 2022 and 2024. Where the fourth graders showed some gain in 2024, the eighth graders did not. A big difference between these two grades is absenteeism. Fourth graders absentee rates for both 2022 and 2024 was about 16%. The eighth grade rates of absenteeism were 23.2% in 2022 and 22.3% in 2024.

If there is a crisis in education, it is not because of the teaching. It is absenteeism which has been a more severe lingering problem since the pandemic.

The chart of eighth grade NAEP levels highlight where the drop in scoring is occurring. Basic level is almost unchanged but below basic has zoomed to levels not seen since the first two administrations in the 1990s. I speculate that the growth in below basic scores ties directly to the students who are not coming to school.

Looking at this data, it becomes very clear that there is no math education crisis in America but there is an absenteeism problem.

 The Report

The first line of the report says, “Math achievement across the United States is in crisis, with too many students leaving school without the essential math skills they need to thrive in adulthood.” (Crisis Page 2) This is followed up with their claim that effective math education has three components:

“(1) build educator and student math identity and a shared belief that math is doable, (2) balance conceptual understanding and procedural fluency while also creating meaningful opportunities for real-world application, and (3) ensure that learning progresses logically and cumulatively to deepen knowledge over time.” (Crisis Page 2)

For any math teacher from the last fifty-years and probably more, these three components are old news.

The report claims, “Data demonstrate that when high-quality materials, intentional instructional practices, and strong teacher support are combined, students’ math proficiency can improve significantly.” (Crisis Page 3) Most teachers know that whenever the term “high-quality” is broached, something fishy is afoot. Mostly it indicates marketing is ahead. Reinforcing that marketing is ahead are the following buzz words claiming good math education requires “strong instructional vision, high-quality instructional materials, curricula, professional learning and coaching, and data-driven decision-making.” (Crisis Page 3) The report reader will soon learn where all of this can be purchased.

The report authors sully themselves by stating, “Despite the importance of math, over half of America’s students are not proficient in the subject.”

The report is 34-pages in length. Page 2 which is the first page opens with the claim cited above and Page 3 introduces their three components for effective math education. For pages 3 to 22 the paper is nothing but repetition and obfuscation.

The reader is treated to statements like “The 1983 report A Nation at Risk, commissioned by the Reagan administration, highlighted that a lack of rigor in math education threatened national security and economic strength.” (Crisis Page 8) The reality is that A Nation at Risk was a complete fraud and the National Commission on Excellence in Education knew the answer they wanted before any research was attempted. They believed, with no evidence, that public schools were failing and needed reform.

Finally, we reach the purpose of the report:

“Illustrative Math and ST Math are designed to enhance math instruction with high-quality instructional materials. K12 Coalition’s Lavinia Group Instructional Support offers a comprehensive professional development program designed to help educators foster a culture of excellent math teaching.” (Crisis Page 22)

K12 Coalition and the Lavinia Group Instructional Support are in the business of selling curriculum — which they designate as high-quality — and professional development. From here to page 28, the report is nothing but advertising for these companies. The remainder of their report ends with a short conclusion and the appendix.

Conclusion

It seems alright that a company creates materials to sell its wares. What is not alright is undermining public schools and their legions of fine math educators for that purpose.

Lavina Group sells instructional support, however, the only demand for their product should come from private and charter schools. Privatizing teacher training in the public sector is a bad idea. School districts and local universities have, for more than a century, done this job very well and provided much more value than any private company can afford.

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Racist President Attacks Head Start

12 Jan

By Thomas Ultican 1/12/2026

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” created Head Start to mitigate the negative effects associated with children living in poverty. At the time, nearly half of the nation’s poor were young children. The initiative started with eight-week summer sessions and after developing strong bipartisan support it was converted into a year-round plan. Today, “Project 2025” calls for ending Head Start which has President Trump mindlessly attacking the program.

On January 20, 2025, the ground work for these attacks was laid in one of Trump’s many day-one executive orders, “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.” The order states, “The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military.”

This claim is a total lie. There was nothing illegal about the DEI order and it was certainly the opposite of immoral. DEI is an attempt to end the ravages of racism in America. However, today’s president seems intent on implementing a Whites run everything agenda.

It is difficult to perceive the administrations move against “diversity, equity and inclusion” as anything other than overt racism. Illinois Head Start Association Executive Director Lauri Morrison-Frichtl reports that the Trump administration is requiring that anything related to DEI by removed from federal grant applications. Morrison-Frichtl claims this is a big problem because “DEI is core to our mission.”

The Heritage Foundation declares that the Head Start program affords no monetary worth as it provides “little or no long-term academic value for children.”  The National Head Start Association disputes the claim, noting that participants are 12% less likely to live in poverty as adults and 29% less likely to receive public assistance. This is an example of using testing data to support a claim that the data is not capable of discerning one way or the other.

The ultra-right has always opposed public education and will use any malarkey — true on not true — to undermine free public schooling. They believe that parents should pay to educate their own children and evidently do not perceive there is any public benefit accruing from all children being educated.

Trump Signing an Executive Order in 2025

Trump’s January 29th executive order, “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families”, is another misleading attack on public education. It stated:

“Parents want and deserve the best education for their children.  But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.  According to this year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.”

The order goes on to state, “Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Education shall issue guidance regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives.”

The National Center for Education Statistics, a part of the Department of Education, states emphatically, “Proficient is not synonymous with grade level performance.” One of Tom Loveless’s Brookings Institute articles notes, “Even students in private schools, despite hailing from more socioeconomically advantaged homes and in some cases being selectively admitted by schools, fail miserably at attaining NAEP proficiency.” Education historian, Diane Ravich writes:

“NAEP proficient is not grade level! NAEP publications warn readers not to make that error. NAEP proficient is equivalent to an A. … NAEP Basic is akin to grade level.”

The executive order is clearly about privatizing public education; not improving it.

Child Care Cliff

October 4, 2025, the remainder of Biden’s American Rescue Plan containing $24-billion in child care funding was due to expire. According to the Biden administration this funding allowed 80% of child care centers to stay afloat. It was the largest investment in child care in US history.

In addition to this big loss, child care is facing other large headwinds in 2026. Trump’s budget bill signed into law July, 2025 significantly cuts Medicaid and SNAP benefits. The cuts shift costs for these programs to the states. If states decide to makeup for the losses, they will need to find other areas of cost savings; meaning they will need to pull back on other services like child care support. Head Start is a significant component of child care in America and it will be fighting for survival.

Intensified immigration enforcement is also hitting child care. One in five early educators are immigrants and in large urban areas the rate approaches one in two. New America released a report in December which found that between February and July, 2025 there were 39,000 fewer foreign-born child care workers than the same period in 2024. “Immigration enforcement, to me, right now, is the number one disruptor both to parent behavior and provider behavior,” claimed Natalie Renew executive director of Home Grown. “It is hugely disruptive.” 

On December 31, 2025, the Public Broadcasting Service reported, “The Trump administration has said it is freezing child care funds to all states until they provide more verification and administrative data about the programs in a move fueled by a series of fraud schemes at Minnesota day care centers run by Somali residents.” All 50 states will be impacted by the review, but Trump is focusing most of his ire on Minnesota and its Somali (not White) community.

January 6, 2026, CNN reported that the Trump administration is freezing $10 billion in funds for social services and child care in five Democratic-led states. The freeze will impact California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, according to the department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Reporting for Reuters, Nate Raymond shared that on January 8th five states sued over Trump freezing $10 billion in childcare and family assistance funds. California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York filed in Manhattan after HHS on Tuesday said it had restricted their access to the funds pending further review. The lawsuit alleges the agency lacked ⁠a legitimate justification for the freeze, provided no evidence supporting fraud concerns and infringed on the ‌Constitutional power of Congress over spending.

Will 2026 be Worse than 2025?

The lunatic in the White-house is a racist who only cares about his fellow billionaires and enriching himself. The attacks on Head Start and child care in general are more proof of this. The only thing to be done now is loudly demonstrate and in November take away the protection he is getting from spineless Republican legislators.

The truth is the Somalis are a wonderful addition to the American mosaic. Of course, Trump is disgusted by the color of their skin; they are not white. Anyone who disagrees with Trump’s self-centered agenda is not a radical leftist that hates America. Many of us are war veterans who, unlike dear leader, put our lives on the line to protect the American democracy he has set out to destroy.

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Charter School Flimflam Documented

31 Dec

By Thomas Ultican 12/31/2025

Charter schooling has a 33-year history. In 1992, the first one opened in Minnesota and it was exactly the kind of school American Federation of Teachers President Al Shankar envisioned when he promoted the idea. It was small, teacher-run within a public district that tested innovative strategies to reach hard-to-teach kids. Almost immediately, that model was highjacked by profiteers. The Network for Public Education (NPE) has published two parts of their planned three-part series. “Charter School Reckoning: Decline” came in July. It details the harm charter schools are doing with their legacy of waste, fraud and abuse.

The late Al Shankar’s wife, Edith, claimed,

“Al became increasingly critical of charter schools as they moved further from their original intent. He warned that without well-crafted legislation and public oversight, business interests would hijack the charter school concept, ‘whose real aim is to smash public schools.’”

The reality is that nearly all attempts to create “well-crafted legislation and public oversight” has been thwarted by the industry. More than 50 national and state-based trade associations have lobbied aggressively against reform and oversight. The latest tax filings from 2023 show that the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) reported over $26.5 million in income and they have $28 million in assets. The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) reported nearly $13 million in new revenue and more the $17 million in net assets. These charter school advocates are powerful lobbyists working for unlimited charter growth, while fending off oversight and protecting existing charter schools. (Decline Page 2)

Founded in 2003 by Caprice Young and Steve Poizner, the older of the above-mentioned organizations is CCSA. Poizner is a wealthy technology guy from San Jose who as a Republican along with Arnold Schwartzenager was one of the last two Republicans to win statewide election in California. Caprice Young grew up in a foster home in Los Angeles but made her way to Yale. She worked 3 years for LA’s billionaire mayor, Richard Riordan and followed that with serving on the Los Angeles Unified School District board. Since leaving CCSA in 2008 she has been involved with several questionable charter school organization including the Gulan movement’s Magnolia schools.

The foundational years for both CCSA and NAPCS have a surprising number of billionaires and political leaders on their boards. At CCSA the early boards included John Walton (Walmart heir) and later his niece Carrie Penner plus Reed Hastings founder of Netflix. NAPCS, formed in 2004, had on its founding boards Caprice Young (Co-Founder CCSA), Fernando Zuleta (Charter school magnate), Joel Klien (Bloomberg’s education leader), Ted Michelle (New Schools Venture Fund), Whitney Tilson (Co-founder TFA and Democrats for Education Reform) and Margarete Spellings (George W. Bush’s Secretary of Education).

Decline

Released in July, the first NPE report subtitled “Decline” states, “A program originally intended to foster innovation became a vehicle for waste, mismanagement, and fraud.” As a highlight, the paper reports that of the 50 charter schools that have closed in first half of 2025, almost half of them received federal charter school funding as start-ups. That funding totals to $102 million. (Decline Pages 5 and 6)

The history of the federal charter schools’ program (CSP) is a history of failure. Beginning in 1995, CSP’s original funding was $5.4 million for creation of new charter schools. By 2011, CSP funding had rocketed to $226 million and the grift was on.  (Decline Page 6)

Audits confirm that Between 2006 and 2016, 11% of CSP-funded schools never opened. In 2022, the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General found that 51% of schools promised by grantees between 2013 and 2016 never opened or expanded. (Decline Page 7)

As the federal government has increased its priming of the charter school pump, the charter growth rate has declined for both new school openings and enrollment. Between 2020 and 2023 charter school enrollment only increased by 0.1%, from 7.5% to 7.6% of total school enrollment. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, the number of charter schools increased by only 11 schools between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. (Decline Page 8)

Even as charter schools are losing their appeal, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, in conformity to Trump’s anti-public education agenda, pushed the CSP funding to a half billion dollars. It appears lying comes easy to billionaires. In defending this indefensible action, McMahon claimed, “We’ve got about a million students on charter school waiting lists.”

This is a very old lie. In a 2014 policy brief titled “Wait, Wait. Don’t Mislead Me“ scholars Kevin Welner and Gary Miron of the National Education Policy Center identified at least nine reasons to be skeptical of such numbers. Among them: the absence of standardized data, duplicate counting, and self-reported, unaudited figures from charter operators themselves. Texas — one of the few states with detailed charter enrollment data — reported in 2025 that its charter schools had 120,826 vacant seats. (Decline Page 10)

In 2023, NPE produced Doomed to Fail: An Analysis of Charter Closures from 1998–2022, which found that 47% of charter school closures were due to insufficient enrollment. Of the 50 charter schools that announced closures in the first half of this year, 27 (54%) cited low enrollment as the primary reason. (Decline Page 10)

Disillusionment

The second part of the three-part series, “Charter School Reckoning: Disillusionment” was released in December.

For-profit charter school management corporation, Leona Group, founded by William Coats, opened in Michigan in 1996 then rapidly expanded to Arizona where most of its 28 schools are today. Jon Hage founded Charter Schools USA soon after Florida passed its charter law, creating a related real estate company, Red Apple Development. Red Apple builds charter schools and collects the rents. The nation’s largest for-profit management company, Academica, opened its first school inside a real estate development owned by the Zulueta brothers, its founders and owners. (Disillusionment Page 4)

The makeup of boards for some of America’s largest charter school companies include many billionaires who would never consider sending their children to one of these schools. For example, KIPP board members include Emma Bloomberg, daughter of billionaire Michael Bloomberg; Reed Hastings, the billionaire founder of Netflix; and Carrie Walton Penner, the billionaire heiress to the Walmart fortune. (Disillusionment Page 5)

When scandals came to light at the Texas Idea charter chain, CEO Tom Torkelson was fired but still rewarded with a $900,000 buyout. His successor, Joann Gama, was soon ousted as well and she walked away with a nearly half a million dollar golden parachute. (Disillusionment Page 6)

In 2023, Eva Moskowitz, who runs New York City’s Success Academy schools, took home $1,018,977 in compensation. With 15,500 students under her management, Moskowitz took in more than twice that of the Chancellor of the city’s public schools with almost a million students. (Disillusionment Page 6)

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reported this year that the nation’s largest charter chain, KIPP, disclosed over $52 million in unexplained spending in its 2023 IRS filings. The disclosure was buried in the vague category of “all other expenses.” (Disillusionment Page 6)

This Disillusionment paper asserts, “Corruption and mismanagement in charter schools have cost taxpayers nearly one billion dollars in the past few years alone.” By collecting data from news reports between September 2023 and September 2025, the National Center for Charter School Accountability found $858 million that disappeared due to fraud, theft, profiteering or incompetence. (Disillusionment Page 8)

A related-party transaction is a financial transaction between either individuals or corporations with a preexisting business relationship. Public school boards and managements are strictly prohibited from entering into these transactions and they are monitored. In the charter industries these kinds of business practices are common place and mostly legal. (Disillusionment Page 10)

To cite one example, Charter Schools USA (CSUSA) has a complex web of related nonprofit and for-profit entities, including its affiliated real estate arm. It employs Red Apple Development to manage schools and extract profits. By controlling both school operations and property leases, CSUSA sets lease terms, charges inflated rents, and structures agreements that benefit Red Apple and CSUSA. These practices should be illegal but the charter school lobby has so far fended off most common-sense legal oversight. (Disillusionment Page 11)

Final Words

The conclusion of NPE’s three-part series coming in 2026 is called “Charter School Reckoning: Cost.” I am guessing the costs exposed will include monetary, emotional and educational costs.

My personal opinion is that there are some good charter schools out there but their governance should include democratic control by communities. All charter schools within a public-school district’s boundaries should be governed by that elected school district board. Profiteering, theft of public tax dollars, huge management salaries and self-dealing is costing too much for this failed education experiment to continue under its present structure.

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The EdReports Scam

19 Dec

By Thomas Ultican 12/19/2025

In order to monetize public education, billionaires started creating both for-profit and non-profit businesses to advance their agenda. ‘The 74’ recently wrote about changes at one of these organizations. EdReports was established in 2014 by Bill Gates associate, Eric Hirsch, and was fully funded in 2018. It masquerades as an independent non-profit that evaluates curriculum materials. It rates these materials based on their fidelity with the common core state standards and the science of reading (SoR).

During the Obama administration, billionaires became frustrated because teachers and friends of public education were destroying their messaging on social media. To counteract the success teachers were having, the super wealthy started creating new on-line media and liberally funding them. Their biggest success has been ‘The 74’ established by former CNN news anchor, Campbell Brown, and Michael Bloomberg’s education advisor, Romy Drucker. Its original funding came from, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, theWalton Family Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies, all of which are owned by multi-billionaires.

Education focused organizations are given legitimacy when ‘The 74’ writes puff pieces about them. A recent example is the October 2nd article, “Eric Hirsch, EdReports’ Founding CEO, to Step Down – The next decade, one expert said, should consider the role of AI in curriculum and making materials more useful.” It is a glowing account of how Eric Hirsch was able to “change the way school districts and parents think about curriculum.” The mention of AI in the sub-title is a timely promotion of the technology industries latest harmful edtech offering.

Eric Hirsch and EdReports

Hirsch earned a bachelor’s degree (1992) in political science and government from Tufts University, a medium sized liberal arts and research school in the greater Boston area. He went onto the University of Colorado in Boulder where he obtained a master’s in political science and government (1997). His first job out of college was in Denver working for the National Conference of State Legislators from 1997-2002.

After 4 years there, he went to work at the Alliance for Quality Teaching in Denver as executive director for a year and a half. He then spent four years in North Carolina as executive director of the Center for Teaching Quality. From there, he went to Santa Cruz, California for seven years working as chief officer, external affairs at the Bill Gates established New Teachers Center (NTC). His total earnings during his last year in Santa Cruz (2013) was reported to be $175,000 (TIN 26-2427526).

In 2014, Hirsch left NTC and traveled to Durham, North Carolina to found EdReports. It is unknown how or if he was paid. During the first four years from 2014-2017 EdReports (TIN 47-1171149) filed non-profit tax form 990N which indicates they had less than $50,000 in revenue which only required a post card tax filing. In 2018, EdReports took in over $15 million in contributions. They had to file an IRS form 990 and Hirsch’s declared income and benefits were reported exceeding $300,000.

EdReports claims it is:

“funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Gates Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, Overdeck Family Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.” The 2018 donation of $15 million included giving by Carnegie (TIN 13-1628151) $200,000, Overdeck (TIN 26-4377643) $390,000, Gates (TIN 56-2618866) $1,500,000 and Schusterman (TIN 73-1312965) $5,689,700.

It is very clear that EdReports, based on its funding, is a billionaire sponsored organization.

EdReports rates curricula for their alignment to Common Core and (SoR). In 2021, they gave both Lucy Calkins’s Units of Study and Fountas and Pinnell’s reading curricula, which were the most widely used reading curricula in America, its lowest ratings.

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) is another billionaire funded organization selling SoR. Among their 5 action plans they highlight EdRepors in plan four. NCTQ claims it addresses “the use of high-quality curricula aligned to the science of reading.” They advise schools to sign on with EdReports which reviews reading materials and lets client schools know about their alignment with SoR.

The NCTQ report declares that “only nine states require districts to select high-quality reading curriculum materials” (HQIM) and noted that forward-looking states, like Arkansas, partner with EdReports. This is a really strange claim. Arkansas students were 42nd of 52 states in fourth grade reading on the 2024 NAEP testing and their 8th graders were 37th of 52. Nothing wrong with these scores but they do not scream “forward-looking.”

For the billionaires this is all about monetizing education and controlling the source of curriculum. A key driver for this corporate takeover is their creation of “High Quality Instructional Materials” to be certified as such by EdReports. Whenever the words “high quality” are used to promote something in education, it is a good bet that swamp land is being sold.

Amplify is an edtech company controlled by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs. On the Amplify website the HQIM rating is described:

“States and districts across the country are focusing on materials that have been rigorously reviewed and deemed high-quality by EdReports.org, the leading third-party curriculum reviewer (or, in Louisiana, by a Tier 1 designation). EdReports defines high-quality instructional materials as materials that are closely aligned to rigorous standards and easy to use.”

A strange attribute of the EdReports saga is they are good at making pretty reports but do not have nearly the expertise many districts have for evaluating curriculum. Besides districts, many university education departments are much more qualified to evaluate curriculum. Here in my hometown, San Diego, we have at least three universities whose education departments fit the bill, but when there is enough money behind a company, reality becomes less significant.

One big problem facing public schools is people like David Steiner of Johns Hopkins University. He knows better but purposefully misleads people to sell HQIM. For example, in his recent article in ‘The 74’, he wrote:

“In 2022, 26% of eighth-graders performed at or above proficient on the NAEP in math, and 31% in ELA. While NAEP standards are more demanding than those in most states, what this means (conservatively) is that more than half of the students in an average American public-school classroom lack grade-level skills and content knowledge.”

By implying that a proficient score which generally is seen as equivalent to B+ or A- is grade level instead of basic which is about the same as a C, he claims “that more than half of the students in an average American public-school classroom lack grade-level skills and content knowledge.” In addition, he says that is a conservative estimate. The NAEP tests actually show more than 70% of America’s students are at or above basic which is grade level.

Some Final Words

David Steiner was supported into a leadership position in New York by billionaire Merryl Tisch. While at Hunter College, he was instrumental in establishing Relay Graduate School and served on its board of directors.

All of these billionaire lapdogs, support SoR. The reality is there is no science involved with science of reading. It is based on a 1997 document search that did not include any original research and did not include all of the known reading domains.

SoR is mostly about privatizing and controlling curriculum.

Eric Hirsch in addition to leading EdReports (he plans to leave in July 2026) sits on the board of TPI-US. It is a private company selling teacher preparation as well as SoR. Their web site links to Emily Hanford’s 2022 “Sold a Story” here.

This is only a small slice of the billionaire spending to undermine and monetize public education.

We have a big problem in America. Billionaires have shown themselves unable to rationally, democratically and wisely administer their extraordinary assets. We need some form of tax driven redistribution of wealth if America is going to remain a democracy and save its treasured institutions like free universal public education. I suggest the top tax rate be raised to at least 65% and a wealth tax be applied; 5% (over $500 million in assets), 10% (over $1 billion in assets), 15% (over $50 billion in assets) and 20% (over $100 billion in assets). 

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Charter Schools in a Racist Big Easy

8 Dec

By Thomas Ultican 12/8/2025

New Orleans was the site of the largest slave market in America. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, more than 135,000 slaves were purchased in the Big Easy. This racist legacy has survived up until today in many of its White citizens, business leaders and politicians. The book William Frantz Public School states, “By the 1920s, Orleans Parish School Board members and district administrators vehemently voiced their belief that White supremacy should guide public policy and stated their willingness to employ any means, including the use of force, to maintain inequality between the two races.” (William Frantz Page 4) After the Supreme Court’s Brown decision, long-time state senator William Rainach headed a strategy committee that condemned integration as the work of communists and created the all-White Louisiana’s Citizens’ Councils (Overturning Brown page 34). Leading up to hurricane Katrina, many White citizens continued working to maintain the ideal of White supremacy.   

This summer, Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance (ERA) created and published “The New Orleans Post-Katrina School Reforms: 20 Years of Lessons.” This report was published June 2, 2025 by authors Douglas Harris and Jamie Carroll. In an alliance with Network for Public Education (NPE), Kristen Buras PhD, who has been studying New Orleans schools since the hurricane, wrote a paper countering many of the claims made in the ERA paper.

There is reason to believe the two ERA writers are incapable of doing unbiased research in the education realm.

In 2023, Diane Ravitch disclosed that while serving as Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos gave $10 million to establish a research center on school choice. The longtime advocate of school choice was not apt to give the money to academics likely to throw cold water on her life’s work. The grant went to Tulane University in the only American city that has no public schools. Ravitch noted, “The organization she funded is called the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH), led by economist Douglas Harris.”

Jamie Carrol who attended an all-girls high school in Maryland was a Teach for America (TFA) teacher 2008-2010 in New Orleans. She went on to earn a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Texas. Today, she works as a researcher for Betsy DeVos’s REACH.

In her Paper, “The Stories Behind the Statistics: Why a Report on “Large Achievement Gains” in Charter Schools Harms New Orleans’ Black Students”, Kristen Buras shares that the amazingly pro-charter school Arnold Foundation has spent lavishly to advance charter schools in New Orleans; in 2012 $15 million for “education reform” in New Orleans, then another $25 million to be managed by the Charter School Growth fund and New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO), and 2014-2017 grants to Tulane University and ERA of more than $5 million. Buras comments, “Grants from this consistently pro-charter foundation helped launch and sustain ERA’s work.”  (Buras Page 17) 

Recently, two of America’s most active funders of charter schools awarded nearly $1 Million to REACH: the Walton Foundation and the City Fund (Buras Page 18). The Walton family, who owns Walmart, is the wealthiest family in the world and the largest private funder of charter schools in the US. The City Fund was created by billionaires Reed Hastings and John Arnold. They each put in $100 million to create an organization specifically for spurring the spread of charter schools.

Do Not be Naïve

Even before hurricane Katrina, there were efforts for the state to take over New Orleans’s public schools. Tulane University President Scott Cowen was quite influential in the development of the state of Louisiana’s education policies. In 2003, Cowen was involved in the creation of the Recovery School District (RSD) that was to take control over “failing schools” in New Orleans and reform them. After Katrina, Cowen headed the education committee of Mayor Nagin’s Bring Back New Orleans Commission. In early 2006, Cowen’s committee released a report recommending that New Orleans become the nation’s first all-charter school district (Buras Page 18). 

Scott Cowen established Tulane University’s Cowen Institute, a predecessor of ERA. Buras reported on conducting interviews with Cowen’s staff in 2009 noting:

“I asked about the institute’s mission. Like ERA, they characterized their work as neutral. One staff member shared: ‘We don’t advocate for an all-charter system because we don’t feel there’s adequate research [at this point] to indicate that charters will outperform non-charters.’ Instead, the staff portrayed the Cowen Institute as an ‘honest broker’ and ‘objective observer.’ Yet, NSNO, TFA, and other pro-charter school groups were given free office space in the same suite as the Cowen Institute.” (Buras Page 18)

To this day, ERA shares office space on the seventh floor of 1555 Poydras Street with NSNO.

Since its inception, NSNO has been all about building the all-charter school system in New Orleans. A peak at their tax records (EIN: 02-0773717) shows Neerav Kinsland appearing on the board in 2010 and earning $117,000 as chief of strategy. In 2011 he became CEO earning $146,000 and over the next two years he was paid $207,000 and $223,000 as CEO. But that wasn’t good enough. Since then, he has worked for billionaires John Arnold and Reed Hastings, served on the California Charter School Association board and is now leading the City Fund.

After Katrina, Black teachers decreased from 71% in 2005 to 49% in 2014, then rose to 56% in recent years. They were paid less than white counterparts in the same teaching and administrative positions (Buras Page 13). Experienced Black teachers were replaced by mostly White college graduates from TFA with just 5 weeks of training as an educator.

Students in the Big Easy are forced to take long bus rides often past, within walking distance neighborhood schools, to get their assigned charter school. It is not unusual for them to soon be traumatized by one of New Orleans multiple school closures. Somehow, white children in New Orleans rarely experience school closures.

Ashana Bigard shared in her book “Beyond Resilience Katrina 20” about the racist enrollment process in the all-charter school system. To enroll children, parents must use OneApp. It runs the school choice algorithm but strangely only white children get into the best schools, not even if you’re a Black family in the upper middle class do you get a seat. It is common to see White people move to the city and magically get their children into schools with 100 children on the waiting list. Ashana notes, “They didn’t even know the school existed prior to moving to the city, but racism and classism still existed heavily within the new system.” (Bigard Page 268)

Cheating Charters

The state cheated to create the conditions for developing the all-charter school system. Before Katrina, the cut point for school failure was 60 on a 200-point scale. After Katrina, through Act 35, the state legislature raised the cut point to 87.4, which was just below the state average. This maximized the number of public schools that the RSD could seize. Then, as charter schools were opened, the cut point for failure was lowered back to 60 (Buras Page 19).

The Times-Picayune reported that “data published by the Louisiana Department of Education vastly underreported the number of expulsions in charter schools.” For the 2007-2008 period, state data from a sample of 19 RSD charter schools listed only 4 students as having been expelled. The Lafayette Academy admitted to the Times-Picayune that 14 students were expelled that year; the state reported zero for Lafayette. (Buras Page 16)

In 2011-2012, 34% of schools in New Orleans had an out of school suspension (OSS) rate at or above 20%. Since 2009, charter schools have suspended students at rates sometimes double and triple the state average which was not that great to begin with. (Buras Page 15)

In 2015, SciTech Academy allowed students to take tests for one another, at home or multiple times (Buras Page 21).

Students coded as “transferred out of state” are excluded from the state’s metric. The inordinate use of the out of state code by charters seemed to be masking the true dropout figures which improved their state ratings (Buras Page 21).

At Landry-Walker, 78% of students scored “good” or “excellent” on the biology EOC and 78% on the geometry EOC. Only “good” or “excellent” scores earn points on the state’s metric. Yet, 52 of the 257 students who scored “good” or “excellent” on the EOC exam received a D or F in the class. By 2017, the Louisiana inspector general’s office had uncovered enough evidence of criminal wrongdoing at Landry-Walker that the local district attorney was alerted (Buras Page 21).

In her report, Buras says these are likely just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to charter school test cheating. Yet these inflated scores and school ratings are used by ERA to claim good academic results in New Orleans’s charter system. The willingness to ignore the cheating problem is appalling.

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Just Finished Diane Ravitch’s New Book

25 Nov

By Thomas Ultican 11/25/2025

An Education; How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else, is highly recommended especially for the thousands of us who consider her a friend. Diane is a very generous person with both her time and resources. I first met Diane through her blog in 2014, then in person at the 2015 NPE conference in Chicago. It was in this time period that she started posting some of my articles on her blog while simultaneously informing me about who was working to destroy public education. At the time, I did not realize what a privilege this was. Her latest book is an intimate memoir that introduces us to Diane Rose Silverstein of Houston, Texas born July 1, 1938. It tells the story of a Jewish Texan from of large struggling family becoming politically influential and a national treasure.

On a page following the dedication page, she quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and devines.”

I knew that Diane had made a big change and reversed herself on test based accountability and other school reform agendas driven by conservatives and neoliberals. However, the courage this change took and the depth of her reversal were profoundly illuminated by reading this book.

Although growing up in a Roosevelt supporting family and being a registered Democrat, she became deeply conservative. Diane served on the board of the Thomas B. Fordham foundation, contributed to the Manhattan Institute and was a member of the Koret Task Force with the likes of Eric Hanushek and E. D. Hirsch Jr. Her best friends personally and politically all supported the ideas she abandoned. By reversing herself, she walked away from professional security and long held personal friendships. It was courageously principled but must have been a personally daunting move.

Me and Diane

The best part of “An Education” for me was Diane’s recounting growing up in Houston and going to a segregated public school. Her experience was just so relatable. She liked all the music my oldest sister liked. Cheating was rampant in her school just like mine and like her; I let my classmates copy my work. My rural Idaho school was kind of segregated but that was because only white people and a few Mexican families lived in the community. The Mexican kids were very popular in our school. I never met a Black person until I was a senior in high school and had only seen a few through a car window when vacationing in Kansas City. It was wonderful to find some commonalities.

I had studied engineering, worked in Silicon Valley and pretty much ignored education. But I did hear from Diane and her friends about what a failure public education had become. By 1999, I became tired of hearing about people becoming rich off their stock options, working on the next greatest hard drive or dealing with the atrocious San Jose traffic. I decided to return to San Diego and do something to help public education by enlisting in a master of education program at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).

The UCSD program was oriented toward constructivist education which I really liked. I read books by Alfie Kohn and papers by Lisa Delpit and was ready to revolutionize public education. Then I got to my first job at Bell Jr. High School and discovered that the teachers there were well informed pros with lots of experience. By comparison, I was not nearly as competent as most of them.

It was then that I started to see that I had been bamboozled about how bad public schools were and began looking for like minded people. Two books, David Beliner’s and Eugene Glass’s “50 Myths and Lies that Threaten America’s Public Schools” and Diane Ravitch’s “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” were like water for the thirsty. Soon after that, I found Diane’s blog and joined the Network for Public Education (NPE) along with many other public school advocates.

I saw Diane at the 2015 NPE conference in Chicago’s Drake Hotel. It was an absolutely inspiring event with a keynote by the amazing Yong Zhao. Although we started communicating a little by email, I did not meet Diane personally until NPE 2016 in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was there that the Reverend William Barber gave a truly inspiring speech.

Tom Ultican and Diane Ravitch in Raleigh (by Ultican)

Over the years since, I have developed an ever growing admiration for this woman. She outworks everyone and never gives up. In 2021, Diane had a really difficult open heart surgery. In the book, she notes going into surgery on April 7 and waking up a week later. I wrote her that my chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for her health and recovery had saved her life but she foolishly gave some credit to the other hundreds of people who were sending prayers and to her skilled doctors.

A year later, we had an NPE conference in Philadelphia. Diane was there and leading the proceeding but she was still weak. It was hardly noticeable but when she went to conduct an interview with Little Steven Van Zandt, he had to help her negotiate the two steps up to the platform.

Diane and Little Steven Van Zandt (by Ultican)

During my several trips to NPE conferences, I have met a Baptist preacher from Texas named Charles Foster Johnson. Charles has been a tireless fighter protecting public education and has developed an organization called Pastors for Children. I remember asking Diane if she ever thought she would be a friend and political ally with a Baptist preacher? She said, “No, never!” Earlier this year at NPE 2025 Diane and Charles asked me to take their picture. So there it was a Buddhist, a Jew and a Baptist working together and sharing friendship.

Diane Ravitch and Charles Foster Johnson 2025 (by Ultican)

Conclusion

Like I noted above, I had not paid any attention to public education so when I became aware of Diane, her blog and her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”, I was surprised to find how much seasoned educators despised Diane and could not trust her. Still to this day, I see education professionals taking shots at her and NPE. It is impossible for them to believe she changed her mind which brings to mind the words of Emerson, “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” They just cannot accept new evidence.

I really enjoyed Diane’s latest book and encourage everyone to read it. She probably thinks this is her last book a sort of swan song. Somehow, I don’t think so. She is relentless and will almost certainly want to teach all of us about something in the future. I expect that in two or three years we will see another powerful book by Diane Ravitch.

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Crazy-Pants Makes Crazy Prediction

19 Nov

By Thomas Ultican 11/18/2025

A propaganda rag, ‘The 74’, reported, “[R]esearch from Stanford estimates learning loss over the past decade has cost our country over $90 trillion in future growth.” The article was written by Eric Hanushek, a Stanford University economist, and Christy Hovanetz, an education researcher from Jeb Bush’s pro-school choice and pro-education technology organization, ExcelinEd. Unsurprisingly, the article linked above is a paper Hanushek wrote. Crazy-pants Eric has a long history of using his own papers to support new research which is typically long on assertions and short on convincing analysis.

Last year, he claimed COVID-19 “learning-loss” could cost America $31 trillion in future economic development. Hanushek’s latest paper asserts, “The present value of future lost growth would be approximately three times current GDP (which is $30 trillion).” The justification for this new assertion is more than uncertain. The new paper refers to a model from his 2011 paper written with Ludger Woessmann­ for the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development. That paper was long on Arithmetic with several assumptions short on common sense. In his latest paper and this article, he is claiming that a small drop in the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores added to what he calls “Covid learning loss” will cost America $90 trillion in future growth.

Eric Hanushek first gained notoriety with his 1981 paper, claiming “there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such traditional remedies as reducing class sizes or hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters.” This claim attracted conservative billionaires but had little relationship with reality. When providing solutions in ‘The 74’, Hanushek and Hovenetz contradict his 1981 paper writing:

“First, states need to invest in effective personnel. They can do this by incentivizing strong teaching and by supporting strong teaching through professional development in evidence-based practices such as use of high-quality instructional materials and assessment data to inform instruction.”

A few decades ago, a friend gifted me the book “An Incomplete Education” by Judy Jones and William Wilson. After my 1987 edition, Jones and Wilson have updated the book and republished several times. I fondly remembered their description of economists:

“Economists are fond of saying, with Thomas Carlyle, that economics is ‘the dismal science.’ As with much that economists say, this statement is half true. It is dismal.”

“Where once rulers relied on oracles to predict the future, today they use economists. Virtually every elected official, every political candidate, has a favorite economist to forecast economic benefits pinned to that official or candidate’s views.” (Incomplete Page 120)

It just so-happens that Eric Hanushek is an MIT trained economist who is good at creating reports that conform to the beliefs of conservative billionaires. His work is scientific propaganda masquerading as academic excellence.

Notices from Hanushek and Hovanetz

“No single event over the postwar period has had an impact on our educational system that comes close to that of the pandemic.” This statement from their article is hyperbole not fact.

The impact of vouchers in Washington DC and Ohio were worse than COVID-19. In his book, “The Privateers”, Josh Cowen shared that the losses due to COVID-19 were around -0.25 standard deviations while losses in DC due to vouchers were around -0.40 standard deviations and in Ohio they were as high as -0.50 standard deviations. (Privateers Page 6) However, these were not nationwide results. Unfortunately, we don’t have much information about the mumps, measles, flu and polio epidemics of the 1950s but there is every reason to believe their impact was close to that of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The authors hold up Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana as examples to emulate stating:

“Some states made noteworthy progress on NAEP this year: Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. Each has a track record of high expectations and strong accountability.

“These states use an A–F school rating system that puts reading and math achievement front and center. They measure what matters — proficiency and growth — and they report results in a way families and educators can understand. Transparency and rigor are fueling their progress.”

The A—F school ratings system is worthless because it only measures parent income. As Diane Ravitch wrote on her blog:

“The highest rated schools have students with the highest income. The lowest rated schools have students with the lowest income.”

I wondered what Hanushek and friend were alluding to, so I graphed the average NAEP data for 4th and 8th grade reading and math since 2015 to see if it provided a clue.

NAEP Data for Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee

I added a bar indicating the NAEP cut scores for the 2024 NAEP designations of basic, proficient and advanced as a reference. It is well known that NAEP’s proficiency level is set well above grade level which means 70% of students not being rated proficient is not a bad score. Furthermore, writing in Forbes, Peter Greene shared, “An NCES report back in 2007 showed that while NAEP considers “basic” students not college ready, 50% of those basic students had gone on to earn a degree.”

The data graphed here indicates to me that all three states have solid public education programs. It is noteworthy that in reading their 4th graders only averaged basic but by 8th grade their average results were above basic. However, all three states are among the bottom 15 scoring states in the US and as we would expect are in the bottom 15 states in family income. What I do not see is why they are held out by Hanushek and Hovanetz as exemplars.

Concluding Remarks

The first blogger to label Eric Hanushek crazy-pants was Peter Greene. I have found Peter’s creativity worth stealing.

Let’s be clear, there is no such thing as “learning loss” involving students. This is a complete misnomer. Students may not achieve some state provided targets but they are always learning; maybe not what we want them to learn but always learning.

Eric Hanushek is a huckster for conservative billionaires. This latest claim is beyond farcical. Claiming to have knowledge of economic development in 40 years is fantasy and then tying that fantasy to NAEP testing data is bizarre. His $90 trillion claim for loss of future economic development would embarrass a carnival barker.

Hanushek is the guy who thinks education can be measured in days of learning which means that students learn in a near linear fashion. They absolutely do not but even this bogus claim would seem prescient when compared to this latest assertion.

Standardized testing only correlates with family income. To evaluate education based on this fictitious instrument is fraudulent. By extension, this makes economist Eric Hanushek a con artist.

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California Charter Schools Heading for 2026

11 Nov

By Thomas Ultican 11/11/2025

There was another major effort in Sacramento to reform charter school laws in order to head off a repeat of the A3 disaster. In May 2019, the San Diego District Attorney charged 11-people with scheming to use non-classroom based charter schools to steal more than $400 million from the state education budget. Eventually the A3 grifters all plead guilty, but shockingly no-one spent a day in jail. This year, state legislators failed again to reform purposefully weak charter school laws meanwhile the privatization movement is still infested with graft.

Billionaires have been the wind beneath the charter school movement’s wings.

The first California charter school was authorized in 1994. The original charter school law capped the number of schools at 100; however Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, successfully campaigned to end that limitation.

The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) was founded in 2003. John Walton, a billionaire member of America’s richest family, was on the first CCSA board. He died in a plane crash in 2005 and his billionaire niece, Carrie Walton Penner, assumed his seat on the board. She served on the CCSA board from 2005-2015. (TIN: 51-0465703)

Billionaire Reed Hastings was a CCSA board member from 2007 until 2015.

In Executive Director of the Network for Public Education (NPE) Carol Burris’s yearlong study of charter schools, she admits not knowing how much billionaire money goes to the CCSA but noted:

“The 2017 Board of Directors include New York’s DFER founder, Joe Williams, a director of the Walton Education Coalition; Gregory McGinty, the Executive Director of Policy for the Broad Foundation; Neerav Kingsland, the CEO of the Hastings Fund; and Christopher Nelson, the Managing Director of the Doris & Donald Fisher Fund. Prior Board members include Reed Hastings of Netflix and Carrie Walton Penner, heir to the Walmart fortune.“

Other billionaires were also busy supporting the charter school movement. The history tab at the NewSchools Venture Fund (NSVF) website states:

“NewSchools Venture Fund was created in 1998 by social entrepreneur Kim Smith and venture capitalists John Doerr and Brook Byers.” (Byers and Doerr are colleagues from the Kleiner Perkins venture fund.)

“We were among the first and largest investors in public charter schools and the first to identify and support multisite charter management organizations, which launch and operate integrated networks of public charter schools.”

At the time, “entrepreneur Kim Smith” was a graduate student at Stanford. She was co-chair of the Stanford business school’s entrepreneur club and wanted to get Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as a speaker for the club. She asked an acquaintance, John Doerr, to help and he agreed on one condition. In an education session at Al Gore’s house, the name NewSchools had been created. Doerr wanted her to come up with a use for the name.

Bezos spoke at her club and she wrote a two page paper outlining NSVF.

The push by billionaires to privatize public education using charter schools has become clear. It makes little sense for the future of education in America but billionaires don’t care. Bill Gates and the Walton Family Foundation are the largest individual donors to NSVF totaling $226,881,394 in grants as documented in the 2020 article Organized to Disrupt. However, this is only a fraction of the total billionaire largess. Over the last 20 years, billionaires John Doerr, Laurene Powell Jobs and John Sackler have served on the NSVF board.

The billions of dollars invested in growing the charter school movement has lead to steady growth.

However, the rate of growth is decreasing. From 2014 to 2020 the California charter school growth averaged 5% a year. From 2021 to 2025 the growth has fallen to 1% a year.

Research by NPE revealed the Achilles heel plaguing charter schools; they are not stable. In the first three years of operation, more than 15% of charter schools close their doors and eventually half of all charter schools go out of business. Charter promoting organizations like CCSA and NSVF counter that charter schools get better test results, but testing by California’s Department of Education shows the opposite.

Results Posted by California Department of Education

Reforming the Charter School Law

More charter schools appear to be following the A3 path. Highlands Community Charter and Technical schools received the results of a scathing audit on June 24 this year. Auditors found that the school improperly received over $180 million in state funds. The entire 7-person board has resigned or been forced out.

The audit identified millions of dollars in over-payments stemming from inflated attendance figures. Investigators noted conflicts of interest, questionable expenditures, gifts and the hiring of unqualified individuals. A high-ranking employee earned $145,860 annually but lacked an expected bachelor’s degree. She is alleged to have secured the position through her mother, who served on the board at the time.

Inspire, another non-classroom based charter school system using a similar model to A3, was the subject of a state audit in 2019. The founder and CEO, Nick Nichols, had to resign and pay back $1,055,834 for advances he took. The 12 charter schools, which made up the system, all remained in business independently after the demise of Inspire.

Required 2022 tax forms show that at three former Inspire schools, 15 people are averaging $157,000 in salaries to supervise 7806 students. When I asked what has changed, a teacher at one of the schools responded, “Now we have multiple Inspires with each school being a location where families and friends are being hired into high paying jobs that they are not qualified to hold.”

Chair of the California Assembly Education Committee, Al Muratsuchi, introduced Assembly Bill 84 in response to the reports about charter school fraud. The Torrance Democrat, who intends to run for superintendent of public instruction in 2026, declared he has no intention of “going after the charter schools that are acting responsibly and providing good educational services for their kids.” He added, “AB 84 is about going after the bad actors that are committing fraud and engaging in corruption through the current lack of transparency and accountability that we have with our statewide charter oversight system.”

CCSA CEO Myrna Castrejón came out swinging. She claimed the anti-charter school forces have brought a “bare-knuckle” fight. The highly paid Castrejón asserted, “Make no mistake, we still have opponents who are not going to stop until they strip out our autonomy entirely and/or cripple us.”

I noticed when looking through CCSA tax documents that Castrejón received $199,128 in total salary and benefits in 2009. Since then she has continued to make huge money fighting to advance charter schools and keep them as unregulated as possible. She set out to destroy AB 84.

Muratsuchi introduced AB 84 on December 20th, 2024. In February 2025, Castrejón’s launched her counter attack. She got Sacramento Democratic Senator Angelique Ashby to introduce Senate Bill 414, which claimed, “This bill makes a broad set of changes to charter school law related to audit procedures, financial oversight, governance, and funding determinations.” The political fight became about which reform bill is better, with the charter school industry supporting SB 414 and public school educators supporting AB 84.

Interestingly, a perusal of Ashby’s campaign contributions listed Reed Hastings and his wife, Pat Quillin as big donors. It also shows a large contribution from a charter school PAC belonging to the California Charter Schools Association Advocates, the political arm of CCSA.  

After a protracted fight, Muratsuchi withdrew AB 84 with the expectation that Ashby would withdraw SB 414. However, there was a feeling among legislators that they needed to deliver something for the governor to sign. On 9/13/2025, SB 414 achieve final passage with 22 Democratic senators not voting.

In an email to EdSource, California Teachers Association President David Goldberg declared:

“SB 414 not only fails to address the issues that have led to massive cases of fraud in some charter schools, but it also significantly weakens existing requirements for non-classroom-based charter schools to prioritize spending on student learning. We urge the governor to veto this legislation and are dedicated to our fight for meaningful reform next year.”

Governor Newsom concurred. In his veto message, the governor wrote:

“I deeply appreciate the efforts of the author and the negotiating parties to develop legislation that builds on these recommendations and the findings from the State Controller. However, this bill falls short. While the oversight and auditing provisions are meaningful, other sections are unworkable, would face legal challenges, and require hundreds of millions of dollars to implement. Additionally, provisions added late in the legislative process undermine important agreements my Administration made during my first term.”

Myrna Castrejón and her billionaire supporters won this round and California’s charter school laws remain extremely vulnerable to the scofflaws that she represents.

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