Two Democratic party groups in California have publicly protested the use of the word “Democrats” by the hedge-fund managers’ charter advocacy group Democrats for Education Reform.
The Los Angeles Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of San Fernando Valley have complained that the Wall Street group–whose education policies are indistinguishable from those of the GOP–should cease and desist using the word “Democrats” in their name as it confuses voters. Here is the LA complaint: http://www.lacdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/LACDP-2012-DFER-Cease-Desist-Final.pdf.
The Democratic Party of San Fernando Valley distributed a flyer, but I don’t have a link for it.
The complaint is the same. DFER is supporting conservative candidates who are not the candidates of the Democratic party. DFER, of course, advocates for charter schools and for evaluation of teachers by test scores. The Democratic party has traditionally supported public education, not privately managed charters (of course, President Obama has broken new ground by endorsing GOP education policy).
But what is clear in these complaints is that the grassroots Democrats are not yet ready to embrace, as the President has, the Republican program of testing, accountability, and school choice.
Not all charters are privately managed. Most are not. Yet, in the usual discourse surrounding charters (and school choice in general), the term “charters” is used very broadly without distinction between privately run or district-authorized, for example. It would be advantageous for both charter advocates and detractors to draw distinctions between the different type of charter schools.
Mark, I don’t know of any charter school that is not privately managed. Please explain. That’s pretty much the definition of a charter school these days.
Diane
In Wisconsin, most charter schools are authorized and employed by the district. There are charters authorized by universities or municipalities, and these are considered “independent” rather than “private”–they are not run by EMO’s or CMO’s. If you feel that “private” is synonymous with “independent” then yes there are quite a number of private charters. But because a school is not run by a local school district, does that make it private?
If the charter is run by a private board, it is a private school receiving public funding
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In my opinion the battle over school choice is over. While public school advocates successfully fought against vouchers, charter schools sneaked in like foxes into the hen house. TFA members were trained in public schools and then opened charters draining students and funds from public school districts. Today I cannot think of a single major city in which test early, test often, charters schools do not operate.
Instead of fighting this lost cause, I believe it is more important to win the battle over these charter schools. Prove that the method of rote learning, poor teacher preparation and draconian discipline policies do not work.
I heartily agree. Until the ” reformers” realize that the only way to truly make any significant change in education is to abolish the test score madness, there will be no true reform, I don’t care what euphemism you use for the school. Only for- pay private schools, at this moment, have the ability to withdraw from this mentality. At least these schools don’t pretend to be public.