To mark National Charter School Week, President Obama issued a proclamation hailing charter schools as “incubators of innovation.”
I began wondering what exactly he was thinking about.
I wonder if he ever visited the website http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/.
I wonder if he knows about the nation’s largest charter chain, the Gulen network, run by associates of a Turkish imam. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/largest-charter-network-in-us-schools-tied-to-turkey/2012/03/23/gIQAoaFzcS_blog.html); (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/world/middleeast/turkey-feels-sway-of-fethullah-gulen-a-reclusive-cleric.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all).
I wonder if he was thinking about the “no excuses” charter schools, where mostly black children are taught obedience, conformity, and docility.
I wonder if he was thinking about the studies showing that charters are even more segregated than their host districts.
I wonder if he was thinking about New Orleans, where charters have displaced the public education system, and the district is the lowest, or next to the lowest performing in a low-performing state.
I wonder if he was thinking of the for-profit charters, which are making a bundle.
I wonder if he was thinking of the for-profit online corporation, whose CEO was paid $5 million last year.
I wonder if he has heard of the many studies showing that charters on average don’t get better results than public schools.
Or maybe he was thinking about the campaign cash of the Wall Street hedge fund managers who love charters.
Diane
Why do we even have Charter School Week? And the odds are Ms. Ratvitch, he either has heard those stats and does not care, or worse he has heard those stats, and does care.
Ms. Ravitch, the odds are he has heard those stats and does not care, or worse, he has heard them and does care.
Literally makes my stomach turn. So depressing …
I doubt the President has given much thought at all to any but your last question. And regarding getting paid by Wall Street, I doubt it had much to do with the fate of education, especially those children who suffered so at the hands of neglected public schools or the profits of charter school networks. The sad truth, Dr. Ravitch, is that the charter schools are the frying pan (or one of them), but the fire is the primary role that a school system plays in the inculcation of children, the disengagement of working class parents and parents of color, and establishment of class, race, and gender privilege that powers the continuation of a society based on capitalist profit (plunder) and war. Charter schools are the worst example and are only eclipsed by the neglect of true public education whose promise of class freedom is but a fig leaf for the reality of class warfare against the toilers (more aptly, their minds) in this society. We will not end such a travesty until we end the reasons for its existence. I support your fight against the intellectual thuggery reflected in charter schools. But we will never make any headway there until we challenge the reason why charters now exist; the tragedy of “commons” that is sad state of our education system as a whole and the class whose interests it is designed to protect.
Texas tracks student outcomes after high school. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating board makes the data available online for students attending colleges within Texas. They reported on a cohort of students who graduated from 2002-2004 [combined] and gave the number of students who obtained degrees or certificates within 6 years after high school graduation. The report included 121 charter campuses.
At 9 of 121 campuses, 10% to 50% earned bachelors degrees, At 8 of 121 campuses, 5% to less than 10% of the charter school graduates earned degrees. For a group of 47 campuses, although almost 25% of 753 high school graduates enrolled in a 2-yr or 4-yr college or university immediately after high school, no student had earned a bachelor’s degree in the six years following!!
Everyone uses the few promising charters as examples of what can be possible, but ignores the fact that there are many, many more charters in Texas where the kids are not getting a high school education that prepares them for college. I would say that many students are not even prepared for the workforce. These stats only pertain to the students who actually graduated from their charter high schools. There are many more students who were enrolled in a charter high school, but left the program without graduating.
A dismal track record in Texas!
“Incubators of segregation.”
In all forms!
Interesting choice of words by our chief executive. “Incubators”. Now where have I seen that word before??? Hmmm….. Got it!!
“Dreams from My Father”, p 58: “Punahou had grown into, a prestigious prep school, an incubator for island elites.”
He then goes on to describe how the family schemed ( *cheated* in other words) to get him in a ahead of the long wait-list.
Ahhh… such integrity. And that oh-so-common-it’s-UNcommon touch. Wattaguy!