The best investigative reporter in New York City–and possibly in the nation–is Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News.
Gonzalez writes about politics and occasionally writes about the politics of education. He has written some of the biggest scoops about the inner workings of the New York City Department of Education. He won the George Polk Award in journalism for reporting about the Citytime fraud, a giant high-tech scam in which a contractor ripped off the city for years and eventually agreed to repay almost $500 million.
This morning he revealed that Eva Moskowitz is seeking a big increase in her management fees from the state because she claims to be running a deficit. Today, he writes, the State University of New York is likely to approve “a huge 50% increase in the per-pupil management fee of one of the city’s wealthiest, biggest-spending and most controversial charter school operators.”
Gonzalez writes that “The Success Network, in fact, is a fund-raising colossus, having received $28 million from dozens of foundations and wealthy investors the past six years, and millions more in state and federal grants.” It has reported huge surpluses to the IRS, currently $23.5 million.
Last year, it spent more than $3 million on marketing and recruitment to drum up applicants for its much-ballyooed lotteries. The more applicants for every seat, the more Success Academy looks “successful.” It is a marketing tool in which people and their children are used to get more charters for Success Academy.
Whenever there is a public hearing about closing schools, hundreds of Success Academy children and parents are bused in–all wearing identical T-shirts–to insist on closing more public schools so that Success Academy can take their space and open more charter schools. Why would charter students demand more charters? They are already enrolled in one and they can only attend one school. They are used. You can imagine the opprobrium that would be heaped on a public school principal if he or she hired a bus to take children to public hearings to demand more space or more funding. The principal would be called out, rightly, for using the children and would be fired.
Today Success Academy will appeal for more public funding. It gets whatever it wants from city and state officials (Eva’s charter PAC–called Great Public Schools– made a $50,000 contribution to Governor Cuomo’s campaign).
This is how charters get a bad reputation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
$850 per student on marketing, at time when schools around the nation are cutting spending. It is probably about 4 times that amount per open slot.
NO disparagement of this reporter but the Daily News has made a point of villifying teachers and public education at possibly every turn. I applaud that the reporter and I deplore the newspaper that he happens to work for.
Her network of public schools doesn’t seem to be too public to me.
It also appears she is very good at promoting herself and that is the top priority. Similar to the Harlem Village Academy and Deborah Kenny…high attrition rates and counsel out the problems and low performers.
http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2012/06/12/it-takes-a-village/
They can rattle off testing results, print flashy brochures, raise money and promote themselves because you know the mantra….we can’t wait and it is all about the children.
cc: I certainly agree with you about the Daily News. and that Juan Gonzalez is the rare journalist these days with the integrity and chops to expose corporate scandals. I strongly urge everyone to watch Mr. Gonzalez on Democracy Now, a fine independent media outlet:
http://www.democracynow.org
From time to time, Diane, Karen Lewis of Chicago, and Leonie Haimson make appearances, too.
thank you, I am glad to have a different media outlet for educational reporting worth paying attention to. I hate how media outlets have been hijacked into this mess. Murdoch’s long reach perhaps.
Hi Diane,
I am a doctoral candidate in education leadership and policy at a major university in the Boston metro area. I have studied what makes schools work, what motivates parents and teachers to change, and how and why charter schools get started. I have been in both the best and worst Boston public schools, and I have been in both the best and worst public charter schools in the Boston area.
I also have an 11 year old child who will be entering sixth grade in the fall.
I understand the logical, philosophical, and political arguments both for and against charter schools. In an ideal world, I believe that charter schools would be unnecessary. However, this is not an ideal world. Too many parents and students are assigned to a local school that is a failure. I cannot look a parent in the eye and tell them that they must send their child to the under-performing, poorly managed, decrepit, under-resourced, unsafe public school when they can opt to attend a charter school that has better results, an excellent principal, a new building, up-to-date materials, in a safe learning environment. I would be honest and tell that parent to enter the good charter school lotteries.
You see, for the end users – the parents and children – this is not a political choice about the future of American public education. It is a logical choice: which school offers a better educational opportunity for my child? It is a philosophical choice: if I am responsible for my child’s education, how can I best provide for it?
I am very fortunate. My son attends an excellent public middle school. The local high school, however, is of suspect quality. If it does not improve in the next three years, then I will be forced to decide what is best for my child. I will not hesitate to choose a charter school if that is his best opportunity to grow and learn.
I want to see the public school system improved, and I have dedicated my career to making that happen. But I cannot in clear conscience take the position that charter schools are bad or that they do not serve a need in our communities. They are for many parents the only realistic alternative to get their children excellent education now.
Do you tell parents that the odds of getting their child into a bad charter school are about the same as the odds of getting into a bad public schools?
I understand your point – several studies have shown that the average charter school is slightly worse than the average public school. But parents have a choice; if the local charter schools are worse than the local public schools, then don’t apply to the charter schools!
But what about the spin and hype? What about the constant prattle that public schools are “failing” and charter schools are miraculous? How can parents know? If they look at test scores, they compare a school with the power to exclude low-performing kids and a school compelled to accept all. Where does this lead?
I agree with you that public schools in general are getting a bad rap; public schooling, started in Massachusetts in 1647, is undoubtedly one of the greatest success stories of the United States of America. In fact, most of our nation’s schools are good. I am proud that I am a product of public schools and that I taught in the public schools.
We do, however, have some bad schools and bad school districts, and for the most part this is where charters have flourished. In many of these cases, the charters do look like they have performed miracles – not because they are special, but because the public schools were bad for so long. And you are right, they have promoted themselves as the saviors of public education while some of them (not all of them) have counseled out students just because they are low performing, and others (not all of them) have counseled out students with special needs.
Even if charter schools are not actively counseling out poor performers, the rigors of some charter schools cause some students to leave on their own and go back to the public schools. A charter school can afford to take the attitude of “excellence for all, take it or leave it” and allow students who do not want to perform at that level to “leave it.” Some education writers, thinkers, and policy makers express the view that this, too, is inherently unfair because the public school must then take back these students who don’t want to perform at a high level.
I am not sympathetic to this view. This view essentially endorses mediocrity. Why can’t the public school adopt the same “excellence for all, take it or leave it” philosophy? Many of our best public schools DO adopt this philosophy – our friend Deborah Meier did so inside the public school system in New York City. What separated Ms. Meier from other public school leaders is that she was gifted at helping all students see that “take it” was so much better than “leave it”.
In my view, the real pathway to fixing our troubled schools and districts is through rehabilitation of the cultures within these schools and districts. There are always plenty of reasons why reforms won’t work, and funding being drained off for charter schools will always be one of the reasons mentioned. But while changing attitudes and culture is often very difficult, it is not usually particularly expensive: it requires finding a visionary leader who can sell the message to faculty, students, and parents.
Don’t get me wrong – money can help make things easier, can provide new books, better facilities, and new technology. But change starts within the heart. I have visited 36 schools in the past year. The successful ones almost all had visionary leaders who inspired teachers to do their best, to keep their eyes on the big picture while sweating the small stuff. In almost all of the unsuccessful schools I visited, the leadership was suspect or even downright incompetent. I would walk the halls with these leaders and watch them ignore paper on the floor and students in the hallway. They would tell me about the difficult populations they had to somehow educate with the parents fighting them all the way. I *never* heard such a thing from a successful leader.
Charters are meant to be alternatives when a school and/or district is unable or unwilling to fix itself. I hope the need for charters goes away, and it will if we help the traditional public education system find the talented leadership it needs to succeed. Until then, charters will give parents and students alternatives.
You raise not just one question but many, more than I can answer in the few minutes that I have to reply.
Deborah Meier certainly did not run a school that was anything like a “no excuses” school. That would be completely contrary to her progressive philosophy.
You seem to harbor a notion–naive in my view–that charters are providing better education than public schools, and I haven’t seen evidence for that. There are many truly dreadful charters, and some of them get high test scores. It is unfortunate that our only measure these days of quality is test scores. I think you need to broaden your vision to think about what is good for communities, what is sustainable over time, what kinds of schools can flourish without kicking out low-scoring kids or kids with disabilities. And if we continue on the current path of privatization for the motivated, public schools for the remainder, where will we be in 20 years? A two-track system, dividing the top and the bottom; separate and unequal? What do you think?
Boston, sounds like you are listening to the “research” your advisors and faculty members are handing you and then justifying your own existence through it. You talk about having the “fortune” to be in a “good” public school and somehow that excuses the so-called need for charter schools. It’s a crock. Somebody with privilege is always going to uphold the status quo as some great “choice” so that others can become “fortunate”; after all, education is surely just about “good fortune” and “trying hard”, and advocating for your individual child. But then, that is the point, isn’t it? “Getting mine” and wringing our hands over the plight of the “other”.
You really haven’t done much research if you think that charter schools are “just as good” (or “just as bad” as Dr. Ravitch likes to argue). If you do your research accurately and with scientific rigor, you will examine (a) all the motives about schools (not just “results”–as bad as those are for charter schools or public schools) including how school systems engage in creating the egalitarian ends they are supposed to engender, (b) examine all issues that all schools must address including their responsibility for serving historically under-achieving students with disabilities, English learning needs, a social curriculum, among others and (c) ask the hard social–not simply economic–questions whether after all that expense–both in actual product and in how charter schools funnel ever more funds from public schools–Was It Worth It? Not just for “you”, but if you are truly an Educator, was it worth it for the education of children? I think if you look beyond your own myopia, you will find a different appraisal. Or, at least, you can walk that Primrose path toward privilege that a doctorate is all too often designed to create with the knowledge that you indeed made a “choice”; to grab “your own”.
Hi Manuel,
Oh, how little you know about me. I worked for everything I’ve ever gotten, especially my education. I have paid my own way through school with money I have earned through hard work educating students in our public school system. It is certainly not now, and has never been, a life of privilege but rather a life of service. I’m sure Dr. Ravitch and others will attest, a doctorate is earned with hard work and any privilege that comes with it (little though it might be) is the result of that labor.
You are also being mislead if you believe that the average education faculty at universities are strong supporters of charter schools. They are not. Most education faculty oppose charter schools, oppose Teach for America, oppose NCLB and Race to the Top. There are some exceptions, of course, but they are much fewer than you imply.
I have read the research on charter school performance, and I have read most of the charter school statutes in this nation. I have toured many of them, particularly here in Boston but also elsewhere. I have directly spoken with 20 or so of their founders, both of large for-profit charter school chains and also of small schools founded by teachers for their local communities. I know what motivates many of them, and it ranges from true altruism to true profit and everywhere between. I have read financial statements, cross-referenced lottery results to school enrollments and IEPs, and reviewed charter authorization reports. So while I certainly respect your opinion, I am quite comfortable asserting my rights to my own.
I will not make any assumptions concerning your education, background, or attitudes toward schools and children. And I won’t imply that any attempt you make to better yourself or your education is simply to attain more privilege for yourself. After all, drawing such conclusions without meeting you, asking in depth questions, and doing research would be very non-rigorous and non-academic. So please be more considerate and attack the substance of my comments, not me.
Hi Diane,
First, I need to totally own my poor choice of words saying that Deborah Meier ran a “no excuses” kind of school. That term, unfortunately, has become synonymous with “look kid, you’re going to study and do problems until you are blue in the face and you learn the material. If you don’t get it, you are obviously not trying hard enough.” Deborah Meier certainly did not run a school like that and would never suggest that those kinds of methods – often associated with the current “reform” movement – were effective.
Deborah Meier I think would agree, however, that she has a “never give up, keep trying” attitude that was reflected in her persistence and determination to make her schools someplace special, and she expected the same attitudes from her teachers – but they were all kind, gentle souls. Like I said, “mea culpa.”
Now, to your point: I am not saying that charters are providing better education than other public schools in general. In fact, I acknowledge the research that shows that on average charters are marginally worse than other public schools. And there have been studies that have been done using test scores (value-added models) and also using other measures of quality, such as Danielson’s effective teaching rubrics, outside evaluations by state DOE’s, the AASC assessments of school climate, and even parent satisfaction surveys.
That does not mean, however, that all charters are worse at educating students than all other public schools – we’d all be lying to ourselves if we asserted such things. And my original point was that if parents are faced with a choice between putting their child in a regular public school that is likely to give the child a bad education (because they have a history of poor performance, however you choose to measure it) or a charter school that is likely to give the child a good education (because they have a history of good performance, however you choose to measure it) , then the parents are making a good choice for their child to put the child in the charter school.
My secondary point is that many charter school operators do have the best interests of children at heart – the folks here at City on a Hill charter school in Boston are excellent examples. The school was founded by classroom teachers who wanted better education for their students than the district was providing at the time. They have always been focused on what is best for the children. While one may or may not agree with their choice to start a charter school, they do are not evildoers intent on privatizing education and subverting democracy – they just wanted to help kids learn.
What I am NOT saying is that the charter school model is good for public education long-term. You are absolutely correct: one of our strengths as a nation is that ALL of our children, rich and poor, have gone to the same public schools. This kind of egalitarianism is good for our democracy as it helps both the rich and poor, black and white, Latino and Hmong see each other and learn from each other, and this inevitably generates more respect for each other and bonds us together as one. Our problem, then, is to help the public schools improve their quality so that no one has the need to send their child to a charter school to get a good education. If we need to do it one school at a time, then so be it – we move mountains with a teaspoon. I’m ready to work for this vision…we just need more of us, and we need to better articulate our case to the public.
There are some good charters that are trying to collaborate, and that don’t skim the best and forget the rest.
Sorry to offend, but these are a small proportion of the charter sector, which is increasingly dominated by the charter chains who lack your sensitivity.
Diane
Hi Diane,
You haven’t offended at all. I would agree that the expansion of for-profit charters and non-profit charters that look and act like for-profit charters are problematic at best. While schools need to manage their costs responsibly, schooling is not meant to be a profit-making enterprise. In schools, the profit is generated by educating our kids, not by filling up the pockets of stockholders.
I don’t think Diane is referring to all charters. It seems there is a proliferation of charter management companies like Achievement First which creates a layer of bureaucracy and huge salaries for more managers and they have an extremely high attrition rate among teachers. They are very good at creating adminstrative and consultant positions for former TFA types who taught for a few years and then became “education consultants”.
I don’t know if they really mind teachers leaving and new recruits coming in. Stepford test prep drones are easier to control. I can’t imagine how this is good for the kids. Yes, there are some good charter schools, but there are many bad ones that spend lots of money on PR and promoting their head honcho and the management company. They also have far less sped, especially more involved disabilities, and ELL
But when you hire teachers with experience at AF schools, who do these teachers turn to for help? Not managers because they went straight through from TFA and have very little experience to offer help and advice. The managers have less experience than non-TFA teachers. That’s why there is a constant turnover of teachers. The experienced ones leave and you are left with people you must train who have most likely have never been around children. It is run like a business instead of like a school.
How about magnet schools and simpler reforms of accountability measures. Why does it have to be privatization and corporate control?
Boston Doc, if I were in the position of having to choose between sending my child to an “under-performing, poorly managed, decrepit, under-resourced, unsafe public school” vs. a “charter school that has better results, an excellent principal, a new building, up-to-date materials, in a safe learning environment,” my kid would most likely end up in the public school.
That’s because I doubt any charter would want him or keep him very long if they did accept him. He has significant challenges and the IEP to go with them.
I understand your point that some charters are currently serving as a stop-gap measure for some families, and as a middle-class parent who has been able to choose a school district that has been a good fit for my child, I can hardly fault those families.
My question to you is, where does the civil right for children with disabilities to recieve a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment fit into your world view? Once charters skim off the top students with the most responsive families, is the public school student body that has been left behind truly the least restrictive environment?
Hi Barbara,
I have no sympathy for charters who are shirking their responsibilities to educate special education students. If they are counseling out these students or otherwise making it difficult for them to attend, then their charters should be revoked.
It is unfair to both the student who is being pushed out and also to the public school who is being asked to carry the load. And it is also a violation of the law in every state that has a charter authorization law, as far as I know.
Hi Diane-
Your hypothetical about a principal taking students to a public hearing played out in reality in Philly last year. A teacher gave students tokens to get to a hearing about handing over the school to a charter organization. She also was a vocal opponent of the takeover. Days later, she was removed from the classroom and sent to one of the district “rubber rooms”.
Despite efforts to silence and intimidate her, she refused to back down, serving as an inspiration to teachers in the Philadelphia and nationwide.
http://thenotebook.org/blog/113371/audacity-hope-moffett
There have also been countless cases of impropriety in the growing numbers of charter schools here in the city of brotherly love… everything from charging admissions fees, to “counseling out” special ed students, to running a night club out of the cafeteria on weekends. It’s wild how the “rules” are selectively enforced.
Have to keep fighting the good fight though. Thanks for providing a refreshing and logical voice.
I see too many parents who have the know-how and resources using the guise of “school choice” to eliminate any responsibility to actively engage their “underperforming” local public schools and force needed changes. It’s easier for many (not all) to simply cut and run, leaving the staff and kids at the neighborhood school to fend for themselves, usually with declining financial resources because the state is mired in an inequitable funding scheme that favors schools in more affluent communities.
The charter and choice movement has duped our society into thinking that K-12 education is now just another winner-take-all competitive process where the families with the financial resources get the prize. And if eventually, the urban underperforming school is closed, the “lesser kids” move out to the next ring of schools and the more affluent kids move out even further. If this sounds familiar, public education has taken on the same pattern of the 60’s and abandoning core cities to poverty and crime.
I realize I may have used a number of generalizations, above, but that’s what we hear every day now when folks accuse public education of failure.
No, they get a bad reputation because they don’t improve the education of children and only result in further segregation of students and their communities. Why would anyone be surprised that a for-profit business will use its advantages to improve the bottom line at the expense of its customers. Success students are part of a privileged community engendered by Success corporation’s marketing plan, a privilege that many of communities have never had, so, it is not surprising historically under-privileged people would “fight” to defend their newly gotten “privilege” albeit a sham. Academic results are completely immaterial when your self-esteem–albeit a false self-esteem–is at risk. For charter schools–the one salient concept that they have learned from public schools–children are capital, their value is the money that can be taken by their filling of seats, their education is a by-product that matters little to charter schools once children come of age and can no longer be used to funnel state and federal money into private coffers. The Only advantage–the most crucial–of public schools is that working people and communities of color can engage in pressuring government, or overtaking it, to make schools what they should be. Charter schools are a dead end precisely because they lead communities, especially communities of color, to try to defend them as if they would defend having a grocery store in their neighborhood; even if that “store” has the shoddiest produce and minimal products available.
Diane- What percentage of public and private funds does the New York City Department of Education take off the top to support its own bureaucracy? Is it less than 15%? Without that information you can’t make an intellectually honest critique of a charter management organization’s fee structure. Do you know? When I’ve tried to figure it out, it’s been really difficult, because the system is so opaque. Please post that information, or describe your efforts to find it.
Also, are you suggesting that parents who are enrolled in charter schools check their citizenship at the door? They can’t advocate for something unless it’s in their immediate self interest? What about their friends, family, and neighbors who are trying to find public education options? What about their own kids, who may not have a great middle or high school option when they graduate from their current charter school? Are they also being used? Or are you suggesting that Success invites children to rallies without their parents’ knowledge or consent? You may disagree with the solution they propose, but to diminish them as citizens and suggest that they are simply being used is the height of condescension.
If you read Juan Gonzalez’s article, then you would conclude that Success has millions to spend on marketing and doesn’t require a higher management fee.
Next, no one checks his or her citizenship at the door.
Charters, and Success is the most egregious, hire buses to bring children and parents to public hearings to demand the closing of neighborhood schools so that Success can expand. The children and parents are given a script. They are not freely and independently exercising their free speech rights. They are organized, put on buses, and told what to say. They are acting not in their self-interest but to advance the corporate interest of the organization. They are used not for their purposes but for the corporation’s. Lobbying to close down someone else’s school is, frankly, repellent. It’s sad, mean, and selfish. Get my drift?
Diane
I am a parent that has supported the expansion of Success Academy in my local neighborhood and can attest that I WAS NOT given a script, put on a bus or stripped of my own free speech rights. For you to imply is simply a blind accusation based on unfounded facts and quite frankly embarrassing to hear from someone that is supposedly “in tune” with education in America. Day be day it becomes more maddening to listen to your rhetoric. I am surprised to think that more people are not aware of what seems to be your own self interests when writing and speaking on the subject.
AS it happens, I was at a public hearing when hundreds of Success Academy children and parents arrived on rented buses with identical t-shirts and identical signs. At another rally, as I read in the newspaper, one of the parents left behind the script he was given. Any public school principal who did the same would be fired.
Don’t you think it strange that Success Academy has millions to spend on marketing and still needs more money from the state per child?
And odd that its management fee will be double the fee of other nonprofit charter schools?
Other charters change 7%. Success wants 15%.
Maybe they should set a good example and use some of the marketing money to pay for classroom needs.
Diane
YET, it is ok and an accepted practice to have the UFT (and other organizations) bus anti-charter supporters who are handed puppet propaganda and signage to appear at the same hearings? As it happens, I too have been to several public hearings where anti-charter organizations managed to supply the same level of “convenience” for its supporters (and their voices to be heard) with similar transportation options. To you it’s ok for it to be facilitated on one side but not the other??? Perhaps it’s just that the anti-charter supporters do not adhere to the same color coordination with attire at these hearings which makes it seem less of an issue to you.
To nanookwood:
I can attest that teachers, parents and students who attended a rally in support of their teachers and schools in our state could speak quite eloquently without a script or a tshirt and many provided their own transportation. So we gather in masses to support our cause as do many other protests in US history, however some are closely scripted and some are not. Some are being used and manipulated for corporate profits and some are not. I think the article investigated and written by Juan today is quite revealing about Eva’s motivation$.
Evidently you were one of the select few they didn’t need to or want to manipulate. I have seen similar shenanigans during our reform hearings. Students for Education Reform were bused into our state capitol for a rally and when a reporters tried to get quotes from these college students (they had matching tshirts and free subway sandwiches) they were unable to answer basic questions. One stated they didn’t know why they were there. Also, during our Governor’s staged town hall meetings to discuss the reform proposals the ConnCan rep. was handing out matching tshirts to charter parents and students. They said something to the affect that charter schools are public schools, however he recently released all the data for each town’s teacher contracts but failed to include the charter data. Evidently, they are public only sometimes.
Why does Success and Eva need a larger management fee? Can you answer that for her? It doesn’t appear she has been able to articulate that very well.
Boston, if only it were really a real choice. I know here in New Orleans, we don’t get to choose to stay in our neighborhood schools, or choose a charter school. We are forced to apply to charter schools or failing district schools. If we don’t get into our choice of charter school, we don’t even get to choose which failing school, we simply get assigned based on what’s left. Some of the charter schools don’t even having ratings, so we don’t even get to know it’s performance level in the first couple of years. Now that we have vouchers entering the scene, we don’t get to know the quality of those schools either. If I’m forced to used a failing school, shouldn’t I have the choice of using the school in my neighborhood? Sadly, the machine that charter schools have become makes it impossible for communities to work to fix their neighborhood schools. We are forced out of our schools to make room for charters. Now we have charters that are failing after they’ve displaced whole communities of children, and our kids are still stuck in failing schools. This time failing charter schools. The fallacy that closing a school is an effective reform measure must be dispelled. Closing schools to charter them hurts children. We need to end this idiocy.
Hi Karran,
I really don’t like what is going on in New Orleans with schools. When Al Shanker and Ray Budde came up with the idea for charter schools, they intended for them to be small, independent laboratories of innovation. They were never intended to be scaled up to include 70% of a school district’s children, which is what is happening in New Orleans.
I am fairly certain (although I can’t find it right now) that Budde once said something to the effect that charters were “last resorts” when the public school district was unresponsive to the need for change. Shanker’s point of view was perhaps slightly different, but he saw charter management as a partnership between the district and the union. Niether is happening in New Orleans, and I worry about the effects of this fragmented education on the children.
Best of luck to you and your family. Don’t give up trying to get a good school for your kids.
I am coming from a school that was deemed failing and set for closure in NYC. I am listening to the noise about higher standards, unfunded mandates, and shifting expectations constantly. I just can’t seem to get a grip on the unreality of it all.
Then, I see a story like this and it leaves a horrible taste in the back of my mouth. I get the distinct impression that Ms. Moskowitz’s idea of operating at a loss is distinctly different than anyone else’s.
Given more time and more transparancy (which is not expected at charters yet should be considering they have far more suspect motives than public schools but are required to disclose far less financially in NY) – I think we’d find that while their administrative budget as she claims is at a loss – it would be because the money was shifted away from that division into other things in their network to manufacture that loss artificially.
I want to hear what her charter network would do with that administrative money that they are not currently doing – and why their current budgets are not sufficient – and I mean throw the books WIDE open – publish them online so they can prove to the world with all the accounting genius in it, that they cannot continue to operate “successfully” without taking more money from students to pay their administrators.
SUNY needs to stand up to her though and ask these questions and do these analyses. Otherwise the charters are using those public funds to subsidize lobbying for their own increases by donating a portion of public funds they are given back to the politicians helping them.
Diane – what sort of system is this where the public could be subsidizing reductio ad absurdum their own marginalization?
The SUNY Charter Institute gave Success Academy the 50% increase they sought. It will need get a fee of $2,000 for every student enrolled, far more than other charters in New York City. Remember the days when advocates predicted that charters would cost less because they would have a lean administration and less overhead? Those days are gone.
That’s interesting Boston Doc. The Charter School you touted as a model hasn’t had a single special ed or ELL student since 2006. During that year (2006), their performance index scores for both math and ELA were in the low 80’s out of 100. Their index scores improved dramatically ranging as high as 98 out of 100 from 2007-2012 without a single ELL and special ed students during that time. Enjoy the link folks!!!
http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/ayp/ayp_report/school.aspx?linkid=31&orgcode=04370505&orgtypecode=6&&fycode=2006
Charter schools are a joke. Many of them hire family/friends and it becomes nothing but a high paid “family business.” The ones I have seen are not really doing anything new in the classroom. Teachers live year to year on contracts and are treated poorly and threatened with their jobs every day.
The Charter school idea is good. However, the results don’t show that they are really any better than public schools on the average. It is funny how public schools get blasted for having “bad schools” and yet there are plenty of average to below average Charter schools that stay in business due to the “appearance” of being a better place for kids.