Cheaters Prosper: Disgraced Crescendo CEO Wins $240,000 Settlement

The Crescendo cheating scandal in Los Angeles is old news (see here, here, and here). All of Crescendo’s schools have since been closed, their teachers let go, and their 1,400 students forced to relocate as a result of the 2010 scandal in which teachers were given advance copies of the state standardized exams to help better prepare their students. However, two separate investigations have now blamed the organization’s founder and CEO, John Allen, for ordering his schools’ principals to implicate the teachers in the scam.

The Los Angeles Times quoted an anonymous former Crescendo administrator who said, "He [Allen] said anyone who doesn't get with the program, this will be their last day at Crescendo." The Times article went on to say that most principals complied, according to an unreleased internal Crescendo report. The scandal broke when teachers reported the cheating attempts to LAUSD officials.

Despite LAUSD’s knowledge of the scandal, Allen was kept on as head of the charter network due to the help of Marguerite Poindextor LaMotte, a friend of Allen’s and a member of the Los Angeles School Board. LaMotte even got then Supt. Ramon Cortines (who is now enmeshed in his own sexual harassment scandal) to back Allen and keep the Crescendo schools open. However, once the scandal became public, LAUSD had to do damage control and gave Allen a 6-month, unpaid suspension, while still allowing him to come back as an administrator. The principals received wrist slap suspensions of 10 days.

While Allen supposedly admitted his guilt to a Crescendo trustee, he apparently did not admit guilt publicly and has since sued for wrongful dismissal, arguing that the allegations of testing irregularities were "unfounded." In April, he settled with Crescendo for $245,000 of their remaining assets.

Why I Hate Charter Schools

Educational Cash Cow? (Image by the kirbster)

The California state charter school association just received a $15 million grant from the Walton family with the goal of adding 20,000 new charter school students in Los Angeles and 100,000 statewide, the Los Angeles Times reported this week.

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) already has more charter schools (183) than any other school district in the country and is poised to add many more with the infusion of funds. And the corporate education vultures are already circling, hoping to grab a piece of the carrion.

My niece once asked me why I am so critical of charter schools and I suppose now is as good a time as any to answer her question:

Let’s start with the funding. Why is it that the Waltons have $15 million to give away to private entrepreneurs so they can start private schools funded by taxpayers, but nothing for traditional public schools?

The Waltons are worth $26 billion, according to the latest Forbes 400 list, making them the 10^th wealthiest family on the planet. They benefit from some of the lowest personal and corporate tax rates in history, a taxpayer giveaway that not only increases the wealth gap, but starves states of revenue that could be used to improve public schools. Instead, the Waltons can wave their fingers at the “failing” public schools, and appear like generous saviors when they give away a tiny fraction of this wealth to private charters.

Charter schools are often created, funded and run by private corporations with the primary goal of turning a profit, even if that comes at the expense of school safety, supplies, curriculum, pedagogy and teachers’ working conditions. In order to turn a profit, the funding they get from school districts, the state and philanthropies must be greater than their expenditures. In order to make this happen, they generally pay teachers less than district schools pay. However, they also often cut back on academic resources, equipment and infrastructure.

Charter schools receive funding from the districts in which they operate, yet they are allowed to follow different rules than traditional district schools, with less oversight by parents, teachers and community. This sucks money away from districts at a time when they are seeing declining revenues from states and local property taxes. They can (and often do) cherry pick students who they think will perform better on standardized tests to boost their image so they can attract investors and new students. Many push out or block special education students and English Language Learners from enrolling. Traditional public schools must accept all students, regardless of socioeconomic status, ethnicity or physical or mental ability.

Charter schools are used as a wedge to justify the defunding of traditional public schools. As the state of California and city of Los Angeles continually cut education funding, charter schools continually receive large infusions of cash from billionaires like the Walton Family, Eli Broad and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, making them seem more appealing to parents who are frustrated with the crumbling, underfunded traditional schools. As their children transfer from traditional public schools to charters, the public schools lose even more funding, since their funding comes from the state on a per pupil basis, thus further whittling away at their viability.

Charter schools are an ineffective solution to the pseudo-problem of failing schools. First, there have been several studies that indicate that charter schools do not perform any better than traditional public schools and many perform much worse. However, it is also simply untrue that we have a failing education system. What we have is a failing socioeconomic system in which a tiny minority is allowed to possess the overwhelming bulk of the nation’s wealth, while millions are allowed to live lives of privation, want and misery. This is particularly true for children, who are bearing the brunt of the recession. In California, for example, 25% of all children live in families that are suffering food insecurity. Poverty is the single most significant factor in determining academic success (see here, here and here). If we want to end the achievement gap, we must end poverty and close the wealth gap.

Charter schools are exempt from closed-shop policies that exist in many school districts, allowing them to hire nonunion teachers at lower wages. This is not only abusive to their own teachers, but it places a downward pressure on district and community wages, too, as the percentage of higher wage district jobs are replaced by lower wage charter school jobs. Charter schools also tend to hire less experienced teachers and place greater demands on them than other district schools, resulting in higher rates of attrition.

Because charter schools typically operate without union contracts, employees can be fired much more easily and arbitrarily, even for trivial issues like having a political bumper sticker or because an administrator dislikes a teacher’s hair style. This increases the likelihood that teachers will go along with ill-conceived school policies, even when they undermine student success or safety, out of fear of being reprimanded or fired. We can presume that the teacher whistle blowers who spoke out against cheating administrators at Crescendo schools in Los Angeles were particularly courageous. However, they were also unique in that they were members of United Teachers Of Los Angeles (unlike the majority of LA charter school teachers) and had union backed due process protections.

As the number of nonunionized charter schools increases, the percentage of union jobs decreases, thus weakening the labor movement and the collective strength of workers. This is significant not only in terms of the downward spiral of wages, but also in terms of the ability of teachers to fight for the best academic conditions for their students. For example, when teachers unions fight for safer working conditions, they are necessarily fighting for safer learning conditions for students, as well. When teachers unions win higher wages, they make it easier for their districts to hire and retain the best teachers, since teachers will want to work and remain at jobs in which they are well paid.

It is no coincidence that the Waltons are big backers of charter schools. Wal-Mart opposes unionization of its own business and has vigorously resisted organizing efforts at Wal-Mart stores. The same is true for Gates and Broad, the other largest backers of charter schools and privatization. The Times notes that roughly 60% of the state charter association's annual $15-million budget comes from the Michael and Susan Dell, Bill & Melinda Gates, Fisher and Broad foundations.

In other words, the charter movement is largely a billionaire-funded cash cow that has much more to do with corporate profits and union busting than the improvement of educational outcomes for children. Even Goldman Sachs, hedge fund managers and other Wall Street financiers have been getting in on the game, not just for the potential profits to be made, but also to take advantage of the lucrative New Markets tax credit.

Deasy: Cheaters Welcome, But Liars Feel My Wrath

LAUSD unexpectedly revoked the charters of two schools involved in last year’s cheating scandal, and could shutdown all six schools in the Crescendo organization. The vote by the Los Angeles Board of Education came in the wake of revelations that a principal implicated in the cheating scandal had been rehired by the “outside” organization that had been brought in to manage the Crescendo schools, in flagrant violation of LAUSD’s directive no former Crescendo principals could work for Crescendo or Celerity, the “outside” manager (from the Daily Breeze).

The Face of a Sucker?

LAUSD superintendent John Deasy had given Crescendo a reprieve last month and accused the organization of lying to him. Celerity said that the principal, Sheryl Lee, was hired before they agreed to manage the Crescendo schools and argued that they could not retroactively terminate her. Then Deasy accused Celerity of lying to him, saying that they’d be the only people in LA who didn’t know about the ban on Crescendo principals.

 

Perhaps a better question is why did Deasy think that Crescendo or Celerity were trustworthy in the first place? Getting rid of a few principals is like busting a few corporals for the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. The cheating scandal at Crescendo was the direct result of an entirely corrupt system in which test scores have become so crucial to a school’s reputation (and profitability, in the case of private charters) that administrators can often be counted on to jook the numbers, either by request or by their own initiative. Cheating by schools and administrators might even be considered epidemic if we assume that Crescendo, Atlanta, Houston, Baltimore, D.C. and the entire state of Michigan are just the tip of the iceberg, which they probably are.

Corporate Cheaters Always Prosper—Deasy Offers Crescendo a Reprieve

Crescendo Charters has continued running its six schools in LAUSD, despite the fact that their boss had directed teachers and principals to help students cheat on state standardized exams. The scandal led the state education department to invalidate the schools’ results. In March, the school board voted to shut down the schools, allowing LAUSD to take the campuses back and start collecting the state funding that had gone directly to Crescendo’s corrupt bosses (See LAUSD Changes Course, Modern School). All this is set to be reversed (again), this time by charter-loving Superintendent John Deasy, who has never met a charter (or profit-based reform) he didn’t like.

Deasy told the board Tuesday he's leaning toward a reprieve after seeing strong reforms at the charter in the wake of the 2010 testing scandal, the Sacramento Bee reported today. The school board would still have to approve Deasy’s recommendation. However, contrary to Deasy’s claims of reforms, six of the principals involved in the cheating are still on the job (they have terminations scheduled for the end of June), but two are being allowed to reapply for their jobs. Furthermore, members of the Crescendo governing board are still on the job.

Under Deasy’s logic, a bunch of education profiteers who cheat to appear more effective than their public counterparts, but then apologize and promise to be good, are entitled to a second chance. However, teachers who work hard, play by the rules, but happen to teach in low performing schools could get permanently fired, regardless of their skill and ability in the classroom. Worse, a mother returning from maternity leave could find she has been forever nixed from LAUSD for having the audacity to exercise her rights under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. (See Gates and Villaraigosa: Screw Family Leave! Screw the Feds! Fire 25% of All Teachers!)

Cheating in order to look effective and boost profits is fine if you apologize and make a few cosmetic changes. It certainly worked on Wall Street. And let’s not forget that it really was not the corporation or its board that caused all these problems, but just a few rogue elements. The fact that Crescendo is a profit-driven Educational Management Organization (EMO) certainly had nothing to do with this scandal. So why not allow them to continue to exist and continue to make a profit?

On the other hand, when the Crescendo board found out about the scandal they initially denied that any wrongdoing occurred. Then they downplayed the naughtiness. Then they gave the founder, John Allen, a love tap on the rear and asked him to go home, but not without first giving him a generous severance package (See 4lakids blog).

Charter School Fires Founder, Threatens to Sue LAUSD

Slap on Wrist or Decertification for Crescendo?

Crescendo Charter Schools, embroiled in a scandal over it administration’s mandate for teachers to cheat on state standardized exams, has fired its founder, John Allen, and threatened to sue Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in order to keep its six schools open. Last week, the Los Angeles School Board voted to close the schools. John Allen had ordered principals at the schools to require teachers to open the sealed exams in advance and allow students to study them before taking the exams in earnest. Several teachers risked retaliatory actions and reported the corruption to authorities.

Crescendo had been making miraculous, unbelievable gains on its exam scores, which had originally prompted LAUSD to recertify their charter. However, when it became clear that faculty had cheated, these miraculous gains became suspect. As a result of the cheating, there was no way to know if Crescendo had been making any real progress at all.

Anthony Handy, chair of the Crescendo governing board criticized LAUSD for “acting prematurely,” and in violation of California’s open meeting law (the decision to revoke all six charter was not included in the board’s published meeting agenda). One should wonder why Crescendo should get a second chance? They initially gave Allen a slap on the wrist (a six-month suspension, with his job preserved for him upon his return) and the guilty principals only received ten-day suspensions. It seems that LAUSD is only guilty of waiting too long to revoke their charter and doing so only after public outrage became more damaging than the guilty administrators.

In a calculated and cynical move, incoming LAUSD superintendent John Deasy lauded the firing of Allen, saying it was “a long time coming.” Deasy was hand-picked for the job of superintendent by pro-charter school billionaires and had served as head schools official at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a pro-charter school philanthropy. Deasy’s criticism was damage control, an attempt to show that the system is self-correcting and fair, that charter schools are essentially wholesome and good, and the occasional bad eggs are quickly removed.

LAUSD Changes Course: Revoke Crescendo's Charter!

Yesterday I wrote that the Los Angeles Board of Education was considering allowing Crescendo Charters to continue running its six schools in LAUSD, despite the fact that their boss had directed teachers and principals to help students cheat on state standardized exams. Perhaps due to public outrage, or possibly due to budget desperation, the Board voted yesterday to shut down the schools. (By closing the charter schools, LAUSD can take the campuses back and start running them as part of LAUSD, receiving state funding for each of their students that had gone directly to the Crescendo company.)

The original decision to keep the schools open was based on their high test scores and the sense that they had taken adequate steps to reform their naughty ways. However, the LA School Board ultimately recognized that those test scores were useless as indicators of school progress, considering that students had been given the tests in advance to study before taking the exams for real. Why it took the school board so long to recognize this obvious bias is an indication of its own incompetence and lack of integrity. Perhaps they, too, should have their credentials revoked and be forced to vacate the premises.

Revocation of charters is a relatively rare occurrence, especially for LAUSD, one of the most charter-friendly districts in the country. The board voted 6 to 1 in favor of the revocation, with only Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte dissenting. She continued to cling to the delusion that the improved test scores were an indication of academic success.

In another pathetic move by United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), outgoing union president A.J. Duffy called for the schools to stay open “for the kids” (and the teachers, who recently joined UTLA). Duffy correctly acknowledged the risks Crescendo teachers took to blow the whistle on their bosses. However, allowing the schools to remain in the hands of Crescendo is neither a service to students nor their teachers. If converted back to district-run schools, the teachers should stay on as members of the union, with all the contractual rights and protections of their colleagues in LAUSD.