How to defend our public schools -- and our students -- from Trump's attack

With their permission, adapted from the excellent summary from IL Families for Public School posted here.

Is your Congressperson pushing back on vouchers?

February 21, 2025

The attacks on public education—and public goods of all kinds—by the Presidential administration continue and continue to escalate. We’ll cover a few of these below,but also include ways you can pitch in to the fight.

Congressional Reps demand President withdraw EO on school privatization

Forty-five US representatives sent a letter to President Trump in response to last month’s executive order (EO) on school privatization, which ordered various federal departments to devise ways for states to divert federal dollars meant for public schools to private school coffers.

The push to support school vouchers in this EO is independent of the proposed creation of a federal voucher program by Congress, something that could be snuck into a budget bill later this year.

The letter from members of Congress calls on Trump to withdraw his order, saying: “The federal government should be investing in robust funding to support and strengthen our public schools rather than redirecting resources to unaccountable, privately run secular and religious schools.” You can read the full letter here.

Here’s a press release, listing the signers.  Among the members from New York: Yvette Clarke (NY-09), Jerry Nadler (NY-12), and Nydia Velázquez (NY-07). Is your rep on this list of signers? If so, call and thank them for defending public schools and urge them to oppose the passage of a federal voucher program, known as the Educational Choice for Children Act. Find your US Rep here.

If your rep is not on that list of nine, find out where they stand on the policies pushed by the EO and the proposed Educational Choice for Children Act. Urge them to oppose any diversion of federal tax dollars to private schools.  

Calls are best, but you can also send an email via this link. (We recommend the 5 Calls app as a quick way to find your US Rep and Senators’ phone numbers at multiple office locations; you can use your own issue/script when you call.)

These calls continue to be important whether you have Republicans or Democrats representing you. We know that vouchers aren’t popular with voters in either party based on polling and ballot referenda. And recent fights at the state level show this too:

NBC News: Trump is pushing 'school choice,' but some Republicans aren't on board

Make sure you identify yourself as a constituent and are specific about the issue you are calling about: Public dollars must be for public schools, not vouchers to bankroll tuition at private schools. Here’s some more good tips for communicating with your reps.

Learn more about the Trump administration's plans and how to counter them

If you’re feeling bewildered by the day-to-day and hour-by-hour developments on the federal level and want some bigger picture context, there’s a virtual event this Wednesday, February 26th that we recommend:

DePaul College of Education’s 2025 Winter Forum "THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S PLANS FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION"   Wednesday, February 26 at 5:30-7pm (CST) Register here

Two education policy experts will discuss the new administration’s policy agenda for public schools and the future of public education in this country—Dr, Carol Burris, executive director of Network for Public Education, and Dr Julian Vasquez Heilig, professor of education leadership at Western Michigan University. They will also explore advocacy efforts to protect public education—what you can do!

US Department of Ed weaponizes the Office of Civil Rights

Along with the EO on education privatization, last month the President also issued an EO threatening funding of schools that are striving to welcome and educate all kids, no matter their racial, cultural or gender identity. This EO is an attack on our children’s freedom to learn.

Last Friday the US Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor sent a follow-up "Dear Colleague" letter to all educational institutions receiving federal funds. The letter makes sweeping—and legally-dubious—threats to investigate schools and withhold federal funding for implementing nearly any race-conscious policies or programs.

Inside Higher Ed Trump admin threatens to rescind federal funds over DEI

Trainor’s letter goes far beyond the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that essentially ended affirmative action in college admissions. Unfortunately, even without legal weight or enforcement, this letter can have a chilling effect on K-12 public schools that have made deliberate choices in recent years to address the long shadow that structural racism and other forms of discrimination have cast on our public school system.

You can read critiques of the legal claims in Trainor’s letter below. The first one listed is authored by 17 law professors and deans, experts in the areas of “antidiscrimination law, education law, employment law, constitutional law, and civil rights.”

Memorandum: DEI Programs Are Lawful Under Federal Civil Rights Laws and Supreme Court Precedent

Julian Vasquez Heilig - Cloaking Inequity blog U.S. Department of Education’s 14-Day Ultimatum on Equal Opportunity: Will Universities Surrender or Resist?

Chronicle of Higher Education In Sweeping Letter, Ed. Dept. Says SCOTUS Ruling Applies to All Race-Conscious Programs

US Senator Patty Murray (D-OR): Senator Murray Slams Trump & Elon Threatening to Rip Away Federal Funding for Public Schools & Colleges Over Political Crusade: “Do Not Be Intimidated”

Here is a  statement from the NY State Education Department on the recent Trump Executive Orders:

The President cannot decide which laws to enforce or funds to distribute.  It’s also why two federal courts immediately enjoined the President’s attempt to “freeze” federal funds.

The Board and the Department remain committed to the inherent dignity and worth of every child.  As such, we denounce the intolerant rhetoric of these orders.  Our children cannot thrive in an environment of chaos; they need steady and stable leadership that we will endeavor to provide.

What should public school parents and advocates be doing in response to this letter? Make sure your local school leaders hear from you: Public schools must be welcoming places where all kids in our community have the freedom to learn and thrive.

Julian Vasquez Heiling, one of the speakers at the Depaul College Of Education Forum next Wednesday has compiled a good list of questions and answers on how to resist and maintain educational institutions as “a space of intellectual freedom, critical inquiry, and equity for all students, staff, and faculty.”

The grassroots group Honest in Ohio Education also has a great to-do list for standing up for schools and policies that serve all our kids.

Here’s some of the other developing threats to our schools and students from the federal executive branch, along with actions you can take to oppose them:

• Oppose unqualified US Secretary Of Education: Linda McMahon's nomination was approved by the Senate HELP Committee on Thursday by the narrowest margin 12-11, and will now require a full Senate vote. McMahon admitted that the federal government doesn’t control public school curriculum in her testimony to HELP, but wouldn’t say whether teaching Black history could risk a school’s federal funding by violating a presidential executive order on “indoctrination” in schools. Write and call your US Senators and urge them to oppose McMahon’s appointment.
• Protect civil rights of students with disabilities: A group of 17 state attorneys general are suing the federal government and attempting to overturn Section 504, a crucial federal law protecting people with disabilities from discrimination, including students in public schools. Illinois’s AG is not part of this lawsuit. The Network for Public Education has an action alert where you can send a letter to Gov. Pritzker asking that Illinois file in support of Section 504.
• Protest ending important education research: Elon Musk’s DOGE has claimed responsibility for the Department of Education (USED) terminating hundreds of millions of contracts for research under the Institute of Education Studies, including collection of data that informs the National Assessment of Educational Progress and work undertaken at Regional Education Laboratories (REL). Here’s a list of reports in recent years from the REL Midwest to give you an idea of the type of research on schools here in Illinois that is being obliterated by DOGE and USED. The Council on Exceptional Children has an action you can take to oppose gutting USED's research arm.

Save the Date: March 4th Day of Action to Protect Our Kids

Several national organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers, Moms Rising and the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, are planning a day of pro-public school actions on March 4th to protest the presidential push to defund public schools and dismantle the US Department of Education. We’ll keep you informed about events planned for Illinois, but you can also organize your own local activity and register it to connect with others in your school community.

Thanks for continuing to stay informed and take action in these very trying times!

Imagine schools: corporate-style reform in NYC rearing its head once again

On Thursday, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza announced a new $32 million initiative, called “Imagine Schools NYC”, described as a “Public-Private Challenge to Open 20 New Schools and Transform 20 Existing Schools Across 5 Boroughs”.  A competition was announced for teams to submit their ideas for new or redesigned public schools, with winners to be announced in May 2020 and these schools to open in 2021 or 2022. 

According to this press release from the Mayor's office, the Robin Hood Foundation will contribute “up to $5 million to support the creation of up to 10 new Imagine Schools”  and the XQ Institute  will contribute another $10 million to create 10  new or redesigned public high schools.  Presumably, this means DOE will itself be putting in an additional $16 million to create or restructure another twenty schools. 

Robin Hood is also spending $1M to expand the  DOE’s District-Charter Partnership work, “centered on proven, effective professional development,”  as well as spending up to $10 million for 18 new charter schools, as mentioned in the NY Times, which is twice as much as they’re paying for new public schools.

The XQ Institute, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, focuses on questionable “competency-based learning” and spent a boatload of money on promoting itself, first via a flashy 2017 TV prime-time special, replete with celebrity performances, and then unsuccessfully pitching the show to be nominated for an Emmy via a national bus tour. 

The DOE press release describes the XQ Institute as “a national leader in transformational high school design…Based on research and expert practice.” Yet the schools that the Institute has helped launch so far have not had an impressive record of success. Four of the first ten high schools that were awarded $10 million each by XQ in their 2016 “Super School” competition  either never opened, failed to expand as planned, or have already closed. 

In addition, one of the schools awarded $2.5 million in a second round of funding, Crosstown, a new high school in Memphis, experienced a student walk-out this fall, to protest how the tenth grade had apparently been separated into two cohorts; one composed of mostly white students and the other black students, with the first group provided with extra attention.  Just last week, the school lost its principal for the second time since it opened last year.

Over the last decade or so, the Robin Hood Foundation has primarily supported charter schools in its education portfolio, as might be predicted considering it was founded by hedge funders and its board is still composed largely of corporate executives and financiers.  According to Wikipedia, its board chair, Larry Robbins, is also the board chair of KIPP NY charter schools, and board chair of the Relay Graduate School that trains teachers in the charter school “no excuses” regimented style of instruction. Robbins is also a member of the NY Board of Teach for America.

Robin Hood’s co- founders have a spotty record.  One co-founder, Paul Tudor Jones, who still sits on the board, also was a board member of the Weinstein Company and continued to support Harvey Weinstein even after the stories of his numerous sexual assaults were exposed in the NY Times. 

Another Robin Hood co-founder and board member, Glenn Dubin, was a close associate and business partner of Jeffrey Epstein, even after Epstein served time for the sexual abuse of minors. Economist Roland Fryer, board member, was suspended in July from the faculty at Harvard for two years and lost his research lab for repeated instances of sexual harassment.

The DOE application form to submit an idea for a new or redesigned ImagineNYC school is here.  Among the information required are the members of the school design team, a theme for the school, several essays and a video. And yet the application is due on Nov. 6, only one month from now.

While the DOE press release claims that this will be a community driven process, and that "Department representatives have attended community events and distributed flyers in neighborhoods across the City to raise awareness,” I have yet to hear from any parent leader or community member who had seen any such flyers. 

The press release also indicates that some design teams “have already begun forming across the City,” which suggests the entire competition may be an inside job, with the administration giving a head start to certain favored groups or individuals. Indeed, the release discloses that “through the spring and summer, the DOE has invited principals to attend design day sessions."

Given that these two private funders will help select the winners, or as Robin Hood put it, “will partner with the Department of Education on a rigorous selection process”, that means DOE will be sacrificing control for the design of these public schools to these two organizations for a relative pittance, compared to what it will cost to operate them.

But an even greater concern, as I expressed it to the Daily News, is that every new school will likely take space and funding away from our existing public schools, which are already underfunded and in many cases squeezed for space. Every new school makes overcrowding worse by eating up classroom space with the need to carve out new, replicated administrative and cluster rooms. 

We already have seen how worse inequities have resulted from the expansion of co-located charter schools in our public school buildings, as well as how the Gates-funded small schools initiative led to many of the remaining large high schools becoming even more overcrowded with the high-needs students that the small schools refused to enroll.  
Many of the disadvantaged students at the large schools ended up more likely to be discharged, enrolled in low-quality credit recovery programs, or graduate without a Regents diploma  -- all of which served the purposes of the organizations running the show as their small schools data appeared better in comparison.  Another piece of evidence that DOE is caught in an infinite feedback loop: the Senior adviser to the XQ Institute is Michele Cahill, who ran the small schools initiative for Chancellor Klein when she was at DOE. 

One of the proposed XQ “Super Schools” awarded $10 million in 2016 was later rejected by the Somerville school board in Massachusetts, because the district Superintendent and school board realized that even with these funds, starting yet another school would cause  big cuts to their existing high schools, and that “opening the new school would force the district to cut at least 20 teacher or counselor positions and to eliminate most before- and after-school programs districtwide.”

As the Somerville Superintendent was quoted in the Boston Globe:

“As someone who believes in and has championed the power of new ideas my whole career, it pains me deeply to not be able to solve this problem,” she said. “In this case, the investment to create something that may only add an unknown amount of benefit to 2 to 3 percent of students, at the expense of the remaining 97 to 98 percent, is one I cannot recommend making at this time.”

NYC already has more than 1800 schools, as a result of the mistaken notion that constant “innovation” (meaning experimentation) and “choice” will raise all boats. Under Bloomberg, 500 new, mostly small schools were created, in addition to 210 new charter schools. How many more do we need?  Instead, it would be better if the Mayor and the Chancellor would focus their attention on making real improvements in the schools we already have, with reforms that have been proven to work, like reducing class size. 

This new “competition” seems like a vanity project and an attempt to enhance the image of Mayor de Blasio, who after coming back from a failed run for President is suffering from a 33% approval rating, and whose sole school improvement effort so far, the Renewal schools, is widely recognized to have failed.  Instead of forging a different and more progressive path, he and Carranza are following in the corporate-style footsteps of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein in outsourcing of decision-making to private foundations with problematic records and vested interests, in addition to their other recently-announced plans to impose a new system of  interim standardized testing on the schools and create yet another new data system. 

Sure enough, Ray Domanico of the right-wing, pro-privatization Manhattan Institute recognizing this when he applauded the-new initiative, writing that "this approach is built on the same valuable concepts de Blasio’s predecessor embraced, which have been missing from the mayor’s agenda until now."

Another deeply concerning development was the concurrent Robin Hood announcement that they intend to fund 18 new charter schools, when NYC reached the cap on charter schools last year.  According to this NYSED chart, there are already 281 charter schools in NYC, with 25 more already  approved and due to open from 2020-2023. 

Does Robin Hood expect to fund 18 of these already-authorized charter schools, or do they plan to use  their billionaire bucks to try to lobby the Legislature to raise the charter cap once again, as they did in 2010? Let’s hope not the latter.  Only time will tell, I suppose.

More sloppy & non-fact based journalism from NY Times on charter schools

David Leonhardt

David Leonhardt's latest NY Times column touting charter schools is full of bogus claims and sloppy journalism.  He inveighs against progressive critics, writes that he wants a fact-based debate over education reform “in a more nuanced, less absolutist way than often happens" but then adds: "Initially, charters’ overall results were no better than average. But they are now." The link is to a CREDO website that doesn't show this.

The most recent CREDO national study of charters from 2013 examined charters in 26 states plus NYC and found significant (if tiny) learning gains in reading on average but none in math.  CREDO is generally considered a pro-charter organization, funded by the Walton Foundation and many independent scholars have critiqued its methodology.

Moreover, the main finding of the 2013 study was that the vast majority of charter schools do no better than public schools, as Wendy Lecker has pointed out.  In 2009, CREDO found, 83 percent of charters had the same or worse results in terms of test scores than public schools, and in 2013, about 71-75 percent had the same or worse results.

Finally, to the extent that in some urban districts, there are studies showing that charters outperform public schools on test scores,  there are many possible ways to explain these results, including an overemphasis on test prep, differential student populations, peer effects, higher student attrition rates and under-funding of most urban public schools.

Leonhardt also writes that "The harshest critics of reform, meanwhile, do their own fact-twisting. They wave away reams of rigorous research on the academic gains in New Orleans, Boston, Washington, New York, Chicago and other cities, in favor of one or two cherry-picked discouraging statistics. It’s classic whataboutism. "

Yet three out of these four links have nothing to do with charter schools, nor are they peer-reviewed studies. The NYC study by Roland Fryer instead focuses on which attributes of NYC charter schools seemed to be correlated with higher test scores compared to other NYC charter schools.

The Chicago link goes to a NY Times column Leonhardt himself wrote on overall increases in test scores and graduation rates in Chicago public schools that doesn’t even mention charter schools.  The DC link also is far from “rigorous research,” but sends you to a DCPS press release about the increase in 2017 PARCC scores, with again no mention of charter schools, or even “reform” more broadly.  

 

If there is indeed “reams of rigorous research” supporting charter schools, one might expect that Leonhardt would link to at least one actual, rigorous study showing this. 

Leonhardt's previous column on charter schools discussed this recent report from Doug Harris of Tulane's  Education Research Alliance on the improved results of New Orleans charter schools.  Others including Mercedes Schneider have critiqued the Harris study.  I immediately focused on the section of the report in which Harris mentions possible alternative explanations for these schools' academic progress, including their substantial increased funding after Katrina.  

After citing the the abundant research that spending matters when it comes to student outcomes, and admitting that the NOLA schools saw a $1,358 funding increase per student after privatization, Harris then argues:

It is questionable, however, whether the results from these studies provide a valid indication of the counterfactual in this case. First, the corruption and dysfunction in the Orleans Parish School Board prior to the storm implies that the additional resources would not have been used to generate better outcomes to the extent that the average district did in the above school funding studies. Second, the city’s spending increase, which came mainly from local funding and philanthropists, may have been partly caused by the reforms. The same inefficiencies that led to public disenchantment with the local OPSB pre-Katrina led to a widespread perception in the city that the reforms improved schools (Cowen Institute, 2016). This increased public support likely contributed to political support for local property tax levies and the backing of philanthropists that produced the spending increase. Any effect of spending on student outcomes, in this sense, may not be just an alternative explanation, but rather an indirect effect of the reforms. Therefore, while spending almost certainly contributed to the overall effect, it is unclear whether it was a substantial cause.

Here Doug Harris maintains that he doesn't even have to attempt to disentangle the differential impact of increased funding in NOLA schools on student outcomes from their charterization, since in his estimation, it was unlikely that philanthropic support or increased local spending would have occurred without privatization happening first.  Thus he posits that the political will to fund schools properly was an effect of charterization, and thus not a possible cause of their academic improvements - a speculative argument at best.

One could study whether increased funding for schools has occurred primarily in those school districts that charters have taken over.  One could also analyze the degree to which public support for public schools has become dependent on their privatization.  Harris doesn't attempt either, as far as I know.  In any case, if either statement is true, this says more about the weaknesses in our political system than the inherent quality of charter schools.

Leonhardt, of course, doesn't mention this weakness of Harris' argument in his column on the NOLA report, nor does he mention any of the evidence that the growth of charter schools nationally has also been associated with reports of corruption, increased segregation, suspension rates, abuse of student rights, and loss of funding for democratically-governed public schools, as the recent NPE/Schott report card points out, among others. 

Research studies focusing on other aspects of the corporate “reform” agenda more generally, including the implementation of the Common Core, teacher evaluation linked to test scores, more closures of public schools, and expansion of online learning, have shown generally dismal academic results.  It is indeed time to engage in more “fact-based” discussions of these trends, and I would urge NY Times columnists like Leonhardt to start doing so.  

Brooke Parker exposes the sham of Century Foundation report on "diversity by design" & Citizens of the World charter schools

Here is a column by Brooke Dunn Parker, Brooklyn parent activist, about a recent controversial report by the Century Foundation, which identified 125 charter schools that are supposedly “diverse by design” – though on the whole, most analysts find that charters have  had a segregating effect, according to the AP, NBC News, and the UCLA Civil Rights Project.

Moreover, this list of 125 schools was selected from 5,692 charter schools – only a tiny number.  The methodology is also questionable.  The authors identify these schools by analyzing their enrollment, websites and survey responses from school leaders.  Though the Century Foundation sent their survey about diversity to 971 charter schools, only 86 responded – which means that nearly 40 schools were put on the list even though the school leaders couldn’t be bothered to answer their survey.  

Several Success Academy charter schools were included on their list, including Success Academy Upper West, which has had multiple civil  rights complaints lodged by parents against it.  Finally, the report was financed by the Walton Foundation, the largest private funder of charter schools, who no doubt would like to whitewash their poor record of civil rights abuses.  Please read  the Network for Public Education and Schott Foundation report on how many charter schools violate students’ civil rights.

Check out Brooke’s dive into the issue, informed by her experience with one of the supposedly “diverse by design” charter networks highlighted in the report, Citizens of the World Charter Schools. Brooke has previously written about these schools on our blog, here and here.

I’m always disappointed and baffled when self-described “progressives” support charter schools. These same people and organizations often implicitly understand the serious problems related to privatizing prisons or the military yet offer their unquestioned support to privatizing schools.  They rarely hear, let alone seek out, voices that might contradict that support. The Century Foundation is, sadly, a perfect example of this disconnect as shown by their recent report, “Diverse by Design Charter Schools ” that claims that charter schools, with their lack of regulation or “flexibility,” are ideally positioned to create integrated schools.

The “Diverse by Design Charter Schools” report describes a growing movement of intentionally diverse charter schools that the researchers, Halley Potter and Kimberly Quick, believe are leading the charge to school integration in our nation’s segregated school districts. Much like the promise that charter schools will share their academic best practices with neighborhood public schools, they argue that “diverse by design” charter schools will show us all how to undo segregation. Leaving aside that public school students, parents, teachers, and taxpayers are still waiting for those charter schools whose “best practices” aren’t marketing, creaming, suspending, or cheating their way to high profits and test scores, the Century Foundation’s report on integrated charter schools is poorly researched and its policy recommendations are irresponsible.

Notably, the only data that the Century Foundation gathered was the “racial and socioeconomic demographics of schools, school leader responses on a survey, and analysis of charter schools’ websites.” Can you imagine if one tried to assess the safety and efficacy of a pharmaceutical drug by a select sample of users, the website of the drug manufacturer, and the CEO’s responses to a survey?

In contrast, a recent report by the New School, “How School Choice Divides New York City Elementary Schools” (see also this NY Times article about its findings) supports what many others have found: the overall pattern of choice (public and charter) in NYC increases segregation and concentrates the effects of poverty in zoned schools that would otherwise be less segregated had parents enrolled in them.

The “Diverse by Design Charter Schools” report was followed up with separate studies on four individual “diverse by design” charter schools and/or networks.  The study of Citizens of the World Charter Schools (CWC), was truly rankling. My community’s experience with CWC bears witness to the gross inaccuracies of the Century Foundation’s report and the hazards of believing in the claims of charter schools, rather than listening to on-the-ground voices and other research that may contradict the story they want to tell.

The author of the report, Haley Potter, relates how CWC charter network staff, headquartered in Los Angeles, “began meeting with a group of parents in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn,” but the truth is a lot more complex.  In Williamsburg and Greenpoint, gentrification was gradually desegregating our schools, but instead, charter school carpetbaggers attempted to exploit some of the fears of white parents moving into an area with public schools composed of mostly Black and Hispanic students.

In early 2011, Eric Grannis, husband of Success Academy Charter School’s CEO Eva Moskowitz, ran a real estate website called “School Fisher,” which described itself as helping “parents find great schools in affordable neighborhoods.”  He began soliciting advertising from landlords and developers, and said, "Anyone who has something for sale or rent in the zone of one of these schools is our target.” Real estate brokers are prohibited by the Fair Housing act from explicitly steering clients to certain neighborhoods based on their schools:

Discussions about schools can raise questions about steering if there is a correlation between the quality of the schools and neighborhood racial composition--or if characterizations such as “a school with low test scores” or “a community with declining schools” become code words for racial or other differences in the community. Similarly, making unspoken distinctions by promoting a school in one district while keeping silent about the quality of another school can have the same effect. These become fair housing issues.

Yet brokers could advise clients to refer to Grannis' website for the same purpose. When someone plugged in rental figures, certain neighborhoods and local schools would pop up with school grades, based on their test scores.  Rather than controlling for the background of the student, as the DOE school grades attempted to do, the grades were solely determined by the raw test scores, which would tend to steer parents to schools with white or Asian students and wealthier socio-economic backgrounds.  Grannis explained the system on Fox News.
His website also had a special page promoting charter schools , including his wife's Harlem Success Academy charter,  calling it  an "incredible school", and Girls Prep charter, on whose board he sits, without disclosing his personal connection to either. (The site went defunct sometime between March 2012 and June 2013 according to the Wayback Machine.)

Grannis also formed an organization called Tapestry Project, to bring more charter schools into NYC.  He began posting on a local neighborhood listserv for Williamsburg parents of young children, inviting them to be a part of an opportunity to create a “progressive” new public school. He brought in CWC network staff, who met with families in baby boutiques, yoga studios, and in new luxury condominiums along the waterfront.  The announcements for these meetings were made on a private listserv.  If you weren't part of a particular network of parents, you would never know about them. That’s how it started.

Grannis himself lived in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and had never visited any of our schools to assess whether we needed a new one. We already had several neighborhood “Blue Ribbon” public schools, some of the best in New York City, that were slowly becoming more integrated, as white families were moving in.  Still, most of our schools were under-enrolled because there had been a sharp decline of about 3,000 in the number of children under the age of five between 2000 and 2010.

CWC claimed that there was a need for their “diverse” charter model in Williamsburg because the community was majority white, and our schools didn’t reflect that. This was implied in their proposal to the SUNY charter institute, one of the two charter authorizers in New York state.  Their proposal included a graphic showing that the neighborhood was 55% white, though the schools were only 8% white, and then added: "We hope to offer families a public school option in CSD 14 that more closely mirrors their neighborhood composition."

While it is true that our schools are less white than the overall population of Williamsburg, this was due to two factors: a large Hasidic Orthodox Jewish community that isn’t interested in enrolling their children in public schools, and many young single “hipsters” without any kids at all.  If CWC had achieved its goal of 55% white students, this would have drawn so many white parents out of our public schools to make them even more segregated.  We also were aware that there were not enough students of any background to open two new charters without hurting enrollment and thus funding at our neighborhood public schools. It just wasn’t smart planning.

Considering that the Citizens of the World network at that point had only a single charter school in Los Angeles for one academic year, we questioned why they were trying to expand across the country so quickly.  They didn’t have any record of success to build on. And though CWC boasted of “a progressive learning model, including project-based learning, a focus on social-emotional development, and a robust arts program”, when we looked at the proposed curriculum in their charter application, our public schools were using similar programs and curriculum.  The plan for the CWC charter wasn’t any more progressive; they just had a larger marketing budget to try to convince parents that it was.

In May 2012, our parent organization, Williamsburg and Greenpoint Parents: Our Public Schools (WAGPOPS) sent a detailed letter to the SUNY board, urging them to reject the CWC application. We brought up many of the points made above.  Among the questions we asked were how important diversity could be for the charter network, if, as the packet given to new parents at their proposed Hollywood charter school at the time said:  “CWC depends on significant support from families to sustain our program of small class sizes, teachers’ assistants for every class, art, music and p.e. CWC asks all families to pledge at whatever level they can. CWC depends on an average family contribution of $1,300 a year per child recognizing that some families have the ability to give substantially more and others are not able to make a pledge of this size.”

Precious few public school families in Williamsburg at that time could have contributed anything near $1,300 a year per child to their public school.  In the end, CWC was only approved by SUNY to open one school in Williamsburg, and another one in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.  Both schools were designed to share an Executive Director and a Board of Directors. A diverse group of public school parents from across the district launched a lawsuit in January 2013, ultimately unsuccessful, to prevent SUNY from authorizing CWC. When the schools we send our children to and love are under-enrolled and underfunded, why should the state require the city to expend additional resources to open a charter school?   We also pointed out that its proposed co-location with JHS 156 and Northside Charter School would deprive the other institutions of resources and space.

In our lawsuit, we cited Education Law section 2852, which requires the charter authorizer to consider the demand for charter schools in the community when deciding whether to approve new schools, and yet SUNY had ignored how little demand there was in our district.  In fact, SUNY had completely ignored the overwhelming opposition to this charter school among public school parents, community-based organizations and all our elected officials.

We further questioned the sincerity of CWC’s interest in desegregation after we discovered their recruitment and enrollment plan. For all their talk of diversity, their internal leaked “marketing plan” identified their primary targets in Williamsburg as “Middle/Upper income/predominantly White” and in Crown Heights, “middle/upper income" parents.

We started to investigate who these CWC charter people were, and, armed with Google, we quickly found seemingly serious problems with CWC and their board. Kriste Dragon, the CEO of the Citizens of the World charter network, and Board member Chris Forman were involved in the Wonder of Reading, an organization that had been contracted to renovate public libraries in the Los Angeles public schools.  Yet Wonder of Reading hired subcontractors were found to have engaged in kickbacks, leading to huge cost overruns. It also appeared that when Wonder of Reading closed, they funneled all its money and resources into CWC. Both organizations used the same address and were run by the same executives and board members. Yet none of these problems were mentioned by Potter in the interviews with Dragon that make up the bulk of her reporting on her schools.

There were many former employees and CWC families who were concerned about questionable practices by the Board and neglect of students within their Los Angeles schools.  They sought us out, some risking violation of the non-disclosure agreements that CWC had made them sign. (Seriously. why would any school need NDAs?) We soon discovered that Dragon had planned to expand the school to targeted cities from the beginning and to become a franchise operation.  

CWC registered as a charitable corporation in California  and promised that they would  facilitate the creation and operation of  nonprofit  charter schools through planning, fundraising, academic support” and “to provide its services at no cost.“ Yet as soon as their non-profit status was granted, they quietly pushed through an exorbitant “licensing agreement” that would enable millions of dollars to flow directly into the hands of its California corporation.

Almost immediately after registering as a nonprofit, in November 2012, a leaked document shows they had specific plans to expand to expand to four districts across the country between 2012 and 2017, with four schools in each district, including NYC (with two schools listed as “public” and two as “private”, whatever that means), Nashville, Los Angeles and Washington DC.

Each planned school was listed as a “high ADA”, “marginal ADA” or “low ADA” – with the acronym presumably standing for Area Development Agreement, which is a term used for the fees paid by franchises of a commercial operation.

NYC was the one district listed as providing a “high ADA” or management fee charged per school, starting at 8% in 2013, declining to 6.5%-7% in 2016 and to 1.5% in 2017.  In contrast, the Citizens of the World CMO intended to charge their schools in Los Angeles a “Low ADA” ranging from 1.7% to 1.3%, depending on the year.  They planned to charge their four DC charter schools a “Marginal ADA” ranging from 5% to 2.5%, and their Nashville schools a “Marginal ADA” with a management fee of 5% declining to 1.5%.

In all, the corporation was projected to receive a total of about $5.6 million dollars by 2016, with more than half of these funds to be provided by NYC taxpayers. 

Why the fees would range so widely from own district to another is unclear; perhaps these were the fees they felt they could get away with from their authorizers.  What is evident from this document that NYC was projected to be the “cash cow” for the entire franchise operation, with by far the largest percent fees per student, multiplied by the greatest per student amount that NYC allocates to charter school students.

In October 2013, the Citizens of the World Charter Management Organization subsequently raised these projected fees in NYC for year five in their licensing agreement with the schools’ local  boards. Instead of charging fees of only 1.5% of revenue in year five, the fees would remain at 5.5% per student, for a total of nearly three million dollars flowing from their NYC franchises over five years alone.  

How did they get away charging such exorbitant fees?  Perhaps a clue is the fact that Hillary Johnson, the “Founding Chief Learning Officer / Chief Academic Officer” of the CMO, had previously worked as a consultant for the SUNY Charter Institute, their authorizer in New York”, according to her Linked in profile.  (After leaving the CMO in 2016, Johnson continues to work for SUNY CSI as a consultant, evaluating schools for their charter renewal recommendations and reports.)

In short, the CWC push for establishing schools in New York City seems less about encouraging diversity, and more about amassing revenue that would accrue to their network. By July 2013, we had discovered enough incriminating information on CWC that Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez sent a request to the IRS to investigate their finances.  

When their charter schools did open in NYC, they had trouble attracting enough parents.  Most students who attended their Williamsburg charter school lived outside the district, with the city, again, paying the bill for their busing. The schools’ under enrollment put CWC on probation with SUNY, with a deadline for improvement that was continually pushed back.  Yet they continued recruiting without telling any of the parents that they were at risk of closure.

In 2014-2015 school year, CWC Williamsburg suspended 5% of their students, more than twice as high as the district average, and CWC Crown Heights suspended 10% of their students, five times as high as the district average, according to figures compiled by the United University Professions from state data. Note that these two charters schools only had enrolled K-2^nd grade students at that time.

As Potter relates, CWC was able to open another charter school in Kansas City in the fall of 2016.  In  March 2017, they also applied to open a charter school in DC.  A few months later, in June 2017, the DC Public Charter School Board rejected their application, explaining  that the network’s “growth plan” was excessively “aggressive,” there was “inadequate support from the school management organization,” no “history of strong academic results with student populations … in NY and Kansas City,” and no “consistency in instructional approaches and implementation of the CWCS 'diversity by design' model."  The Board also found that CWC had an inability to articulate the “non-academic benefits of this model.

The DC charter board recommended that before re-applying, Citizens of the World  should have “demonstrated indicators of improvement in CWC New York and success in CWC Kansas City.”  Even more critically, the board wrote:

DC PCSB also had concerns about CWC DC’s governance structure. Based on the proposed governance structure, CWCS, CWCDC’s management organization and sole member, would have significant power over the local school that does not strike the right balance between local board authority and necessary control by the school management organization to ensure fidelity to the model. After submitting the application, CWCDC agreed to certain revisions to its governance structure that would afford more power to the CWCDC board. Had DC PCSB approved CWCDC’s application, such approval would have been conditioned on CWCDC agreeing to these and other revisions to its governance structure.

Finally, in December 2017, five years after opening their doors in NYC, CWC was told by their authorizer, the SUNY Charter Institute, that they would not recommend the renewal of their NYC schools.  CWC decided not to fight SUNY’s recommendation. Let’s be clear: CWC New York schools did not “decide to withdraw their charter renewal application,” as Potter puts it, out of generosity to the parents or the children they promised to serve. Their schools were forced to close. Despite all the promises that CWC would be a superior school, based on their “model” leadership, skills, and supposedly progressive curriculum, test scores at both New York City schools were abysmal.

According to Potter, Kriste Dragon claimed the poor results were because their NYC local staff “did not fully implement the CWC model, in large part because they struggled to hire teachers and leaders with experience in project-based learning.” Yet what were those millions of dollars in licensing fees meant to accomplish, if the fault of the schools’ dismal performance lay with an inexperienced NYC school staff?

Potter glosses over the “sobering” experience of the CWC experiment in New York, claiming that “network leaders learned from that challenging experience and have shown a promising start to their second attempt at expansion, in Kansas City, Missouri.”

What Potter doesn’t mention is that their Kansas City charter school was started with the help of a cool million dollars donated by the Walton Family Foundation, which also helped paid for the Century Foundation report.  Neither does she report that one of the main reasons the Citizens of the World application for a charter school in DC was rejected was because of the inconsistent implementation of its “diverse by design” model, and the questionable relationship between the proposed DC charter school and the charter management organization, headquartered in Los Angeles.

In the wake of their failed NYC experiment, hundreds of Citizens of the World students had their lives disrupted, and millions of city tax dollars were funneled out of our neighborhood public schools into their California organization.  Unless someone stops them, more CWC charter schools will likely open throughout the country, with the story of their NYC experiments hidden from view, just as our community’s voice was ignored when we correctly warned that these schools would fail our children, while allowing the CMO to financially profit from them. Instead, this Century Foundation puff piece will be used to promote the network’s further expansion.

In a related report by the Century Foundation, “The Good Kind of School Choice: When Public Schools Integrate by Race and Class,” Richard Kahlenberg refers to the “good” charters that seek to end segregation through “a commitment to school integration by race and socioeconomic status.” Kahlenberg claims that these “diverse-by-design” charters demonstrate “small but important efforts are sprouting to show that it is possible to create integrated environments in public schools that provide what the authors of Brown (of Brown v. Board of Education) called “the very foundation of good citizenship.”

In other words, CWC, along with other examples that Potter and Quick profile, are “good” charters. I have to doubt their judgement about the other “good” charters if they consider CWC one of them.  I’m also concerned that if the Century Foundation is truly a “progressive, nonpartisan think tank that seeks to foster opportunity, reduce inequality, and promote security at home and abroad,” as they advertise themselves, why do they insist on promoting the privatization of education. There may be a small number of “good” privatized prisons, but one example doesn’t justify the existence of the rest. After all, as many of the parents of CWC New York charter schools have learned, a “good” charter school may be merely a matter of marketing and hype.