A school district review in Philadelphia determined that many of the charters set up significant obstacles to students who want to enroll.
In one school, applications are available only one day in the year. “Another unnamed charter required applicants to complete an 11-page application, write an essay, respond to 20 short-answer questions, provide three recommendations, be interviewed, and provide records related to their disciplinary history, citizenship and disability status.”
When the School Reform Commission imposes its massive privatization scheme, there will be many more hoops and hurdles, leaving the public schools with the students who couldn’t figure out how to get into a charter school. A system of haves and have-nots. Winners and losers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That sounds like a college application!
We have HUGE waiting lists to get into our Charters. IF that’s not a cry for help, I don’t know what is.
some of our local charters spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in marketing to generate waiting lists, to prove that more charters are needed.
“We have HUGE waiting lists to get into our Charters”.
Yes, marketing is meant to create a desire first, to eventually sell a product. As long as you can make people think they need your product (see bottled water, soda/pop or even “organic”) you will have demand. The product you offer may be of lesser quality and cost more but if you can create the desire then the masses will buy.
The charters spend a lot of money on marketing. Does anyone know what the average charter spends in marketing?
From the Michigan Education Association:
“Charter schools spend less on students, the classroom
Posted on 10/04/11 at 4:19pm
Charter schools spend more of their budgets on administrative and maintenance costs instead of in the classroom. Robert Burgess, the former president of the Michigan School Business Officers Association, presented the data from the 2009-10 school year which shows 22.5 percent of charter school budgets is spent on administrative costs while public schools spend 11.5 percent on the same costs.
Burgess estimated that charter schools spend $1,360 per student more than the public schools. In addition to administrative costs, that figure also includes the 14.9 percent of budget spent on school maintenance by charter schools in comparison to the 9.8 percent spent by public schools.
Burgess wants his numbers factored into the discussion of SB 618 which lifts the cap on charter schools.
“If the legislators truly believe in ‘best financial practices’ and in reducing administrative and non-instructional costs, why are they considering lifting the cap on charter schools?” Burgess asked.”
Notice the 11% more administrative costs. You can bet your booty that a good chunk of that goes towards “marketing” (and another good chunk to higher administrator salaries).
Absolute cost is not really the issue of course. The issue is value for money. Administrative costs may be 11% higher, but perhaps administrators are 50% more effective. Or perhaps not. The same is true for maintenance. Perhaps the charter schools have far more extensive laboratory areas. Perhaps not. Reporting the cost alone is not informative.
As for marketing, it is possible that your product is of lesser quality or it might be the best quality. The fact that they spend more on marketing doesn’t tell you about the quality of the product. Apple spends a great deal on marketing, for example, and makes excellent products. Perhaps the charter schools are like Apple.
Calling charter schools “public” has always seem to me to be a bit of Orwellian spin. Yes, they are funded by public monies but that’s it. Unlike real public schools, they are not governed by a democratically-elected body; their records and meetings are not open to the public.
If I don’t like something my real public school is doing — and I can find out exactly what they are doing because, as just mentioned, their records and meetings are public — I can make my displeasure known in a number of ways. I can write my school board, or attend and speak at a school board meeting. I can work to recruit others who feel the same way I do and we can lobby the board together.
I can support the campaigns of individuals I think would do a better job than the current school board members are doing, or I can support any of the incumbants I think are doing good jobs. I could even run for school board myself. Or I can support or campaign against school levies whenever one is up for a vote (please note, this is not an endorsement of the way we fund public schooling).
I don’t even have to be a parent of a child enrolled in the school. Just being a citizen, that is, a member of the public, who resides within the school district gives me the status of a stakeholder in the school.
Here is an analogy. My city out-sources trash collection. That is, we pay some of our local government’s money to a private company to do a job that could be done in-house — just like other levels of government pay private companies to do the job of schooling. No one has ever described the Rumpke garbage company a “public” entity, however.
Ironically, I probably have more of a say in my city’s privatized trash collection than I would in any “public” charter school. I can imagine that if Rumpke started to do substandard work — say they kept leaving spilled garbage behind or skipped whole streets on their routes — the citizens of my city would be angry and would make their displeasure known to our city council. Council would have to find a way either to get Rumpke to improve or to replace them, or they would face the wrath of the voters. Does a similar path of accountability exist for “public” charters? No.
The accountablity lies in the market. If you don’t like they way your charter spends money or operates, you can CHOOSE to send your child to the traditional public school. If no one enrolls, the charter goes away. That’s ultimate accountablity.
Conversely, there is no mechanism to deny a traditional public school students, or force closure in most cases, so regardless of performance they are all but guaranteed a customer base.
Which school is more accountable?
Using public monies does not a public school make. As long as a charter can “opt out” of enrolling students because they “can’t meet their needs,” and parents have no seats at the budget and decision making tables then these schools are nonpublic in every other way.
“… leaving the public schools with the students who could figure out how to get into a charter school.”
Did you mean to say “couldn’t figure out how to ….”
Charter schools that are excused from so many of the same accountability standards of the public schools and can select their students either initially or by subtle measures after they have been admitted ( counseling them out, etc.) and yet use the taxpayers money is in my opinion not a public school.
= The public ed analog of a poll tax.