DOE Gladly Accepts $10.4 Million For Charters While They Allowed The DAPSS Collapse

The Delaware Department of Education announced Delaware won $10.4 million dollars from a federal grant.  What is the innovative use for this whopping amount of money?  Absolutely nothing new.  Everything that charter schools are supposed to be doing already based on Delaware state code.  This is just U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s way of screwing traditional school districts by siphoning more money off to charter schools under “education improvement”.

Meanwhile, our Delaware Department of Education didn’t have enough oversight to do anything about Delaware Academy of Public Safety and Security and watched them shut down a month into the school year.  They could have taken off their “do-nothing see-nothing glasses” and gotten some strong meds for their scorching case of Pretendonitis and actually shut down the school earlier this year.  But why do that when closing the school will actually disrupt students, families, and staff?

Does this grant money mean the DOE gets to keep some of this money?  Haha! Of course it does.  Maybe they can actually get a Charter School Office leader who can actually lead that office instead of covering stuff up for the charter schools!

Delaware wins $10.4 million federal grant to strengthen charter school system

Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018 – Delaware has won a $10.4 million federal grant to strengthen the state’s charter school system, including improved collaboration with other public schools.

Funds from the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter School Program will be distributed over four years to support:

• Sharing best practices between charter schools and other public schools;
• Evaluating and enhancing the impact of charter schools on student achievement, families and communities;
• Strengthening the charter school authorization process; and
• Providing subgrants for the planning, program design and initial implementation of new charter schools and expansion and replication of highly effective existing charter schools.

Secretary of Education Susan Bunting said the state always is looking for effective practices that can be used in schools across the state. The state’s role is to help share what is working across district and charter lines.

“Delaware designed charter schools with the legislative intent to improve education. This grant will assist the Delaware Department of Education in leveraging best practices and innovative ideas to help all Delaware students, regardless of zip code or socioeconomic status, to have access to a high-quality education,” she said.

The grant also will help the Delaware Department of Education to improve its charter authorization process by enhancing reporting to include additional measures, providing technical assistance to charter school stakeholders and addressing policy to strengthen authorization practices.

Delaware charter schools applying for subgrants from the state must show how they will use the funds to:

• Increase academic achievement for all students in the school as well as educationally disadvantaged students;
• Collaborate to share best practices with district and charter schools;
• Engage the families of educationally disadvantaged children on school choice opportunities with a focus on Delaware’s rural and urban areas;
• Leverage partnerships with local agencies (i.e. social services, behavioral health, mental health, educational support, job placement, before/after care) to enhance school services and ensure sustainability.

“Schools seeking subgrants must demonstrate that they have a proven track record of success in providing a quality education to all students and supporting the achievement of educationally disadvantaged students,” Bunting said.

Kendall Massett, executive director of the Delaware Charter Schools Network, said Delaware’s charter school community is excited for the opportunities this federal grant will provide.

“I have been advocating for an increase in the U.S. Department of Education Charter School Program Fund for the past six years,” Massett said. “I saw how previous grants from this fund positively impacted the lives of children in Delaware, and when the federal funding ran out, I knew we needed to get it back. Charter schools are an incredible choice for our children, but the funding challenges to open, expand, or replicate highly effective charter schools can sometimes be too much. The Delaware Charter Schools Network is excited to partner with the Delaware Department of Education on this grant that will open opportunities and provide more choice for students throughout the state.”

Hey Secretary Bunting!  How does pouring more money into charter schools help ALL Delaware students?  I just thank the good lord you don’t have Patrick Miller on the payroll at the Delaware DOE.  Cause if he pulled the stuff he did in Indian River with grant money, he would get to keep $24,000 of that money just for his own personal oversight of those funds.  But you didn’t know about that, right?

And no doubt the Delaware Charter Schools Network will partner with the DOE!  It is kind of their purpose! Mo money for mo charters!  Meanwhile, Rome burns…

Longwood Foundation Giving Millions In Grants To Charters, TFA, and ISI

Last fall, I started seeing more and more comments in charter school board minutes (I know, an oxymoron in itself) about charters submitting grants to the Longwood Foundation, the charity arm of DuPont.  After seeing one charter school put in their board minutes how they received $1.4 million dollars, I thought I might want to check the Longwood Foundation out, and I found this on their website:

“The most recent opportunity to emerge is in leadership development. After grants made to Teach for America (TFA) and Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), we have discovered that Delaware has a growing annual cohort of leaders in their twenties (it will grow to be over two hundred people each year) – most of whom are here in short term programs (two years or less) and most of whom will leave us if we don’t make a concerted effort to keep them. We have partnered with the Delaware Business Roundtable, TFA, ISI, Public Allies, and others to develop an annual program called Delaware Talent Live (DTL) designed to attract, develop, and retain these great young leaders. It’s our hope that we can convince many, if not most of them, to stay in Delaware and accelerate their growth into leadership positions in the nonprofit, for profit, and government sectors.

We remain committed to improving Delaware’s educational opportunities — with emphasis on the K-12 system. Specifically, we want to see the academic achievement gap closed and all of our students learn in a system that seeks results that are excellent on an international scale. We are honored that Bank of America chose to work with us to develop the Community Education Building in Wilmington and have designed it to serve low-income Wilmington children – closing the achievement gap for them and pointing them towards international excellence. Separately, we recognize that there are just as many low-income children in Delaware’s southern two counties as there are in Wilmington and seek to support schools there that align with these same objectives.”

Does the DOE have a contract with this Intercollegiate Studies Institute? I’m sure they will soon if they don’t already! I bolded the part about them wanting to see the achievement gap closed. I would like to see that too. But the way I want it is for all this standardized testing crap to end so kids aren’t measure for their proficiency on these horrible assessments.   Close the tests, close the achievement gap!  Cause if I hear one more discriminatory person say all special needs kids can do as well as their peers, they are living in dreamland!  If I haven’t said it today, OPT OUT OF THE SMARTER BALANCED ASSESSMENT NOW DELAWARE PARENTS!

Oh wait, which beloved Delaware charter got the cha-ching from the Longwood Foundation?  This one:

Does the DOE