Stan Karp of New Jersey, who taught for 30 years, here explains the long-term impact of charter schools on public education. He understands that the original idea of charters was progressive: they were supposed to be teacher-run schools that reached out to the neediest students.
But now they have become a means of privatizing the schools.
As Karp writes:
“It has become impossible to separate the rapid expansion of charter networks from efforts to privatize public education. Commissioner Cerf has spoken of replacing the current “school system” with “a system of schools.” Former deputy commissioner Andy Smarick campaigned to “replace the district-based system in America’s large cities with fluid, self- improving systems of charter schools.” Governor Christie, a longtime supporter of private school vouchers, was once a registered lobbyist for Cerf’s former company, Edison, Inc., then the largest private education management firm in the nation.”
And more:
“Our country has already had more than enough experience with separate and unequal school systems. The counterfeit claim that charter privatization is part of a new “civil rights movement” addressing the deep and historic inequality that surrounds our schools is belied by the real impact of rapid charter growth in cities across the country. At the level of state and federal education policy, charters are providing a reform cover for eroding the public school system and an investment opportunity for those who see education as a business rather than a fundamental institution of democratic civic life.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is an excellent reason why the NEA and its state affiliates should be pushing hard to get more teacher-run district schools. The goals of the original charter movement remain the same:
-Colleagues with a shared vision of teaching and learning
-Freedom from central office bureaucracy
-A welcoming school culture that reflected the lives of our students and families
-Professional autonomy that nourished innovation and individual and collective growth
-School-based decision-making that pushed choices about resources, priorities, time and
staffing closer to the classrooms where it matters the most.
Recently, the NEA held a webinar on teacher-run schools that clearly demonstrate how these goals can be achieved when teachers are in charge.
http://www.educationevolving.org/blog/2013/02/upcoming-nea-webinar-on-teacher-leadership
It’ll never happen. NEA and AFT need to fight against education privatization instead of making deals with the devil.
Al Shanker came up with the stupid idea of “charter schools,” and all it did was help destroy public education in the United States when the far right Bradley Foundation got hold of it.
Watch Glen Ford’s lecture about the story of public school privatization, and then you will dispense with your pie-in-the-sky nonsense that teachers will EVER be allowed “run” public schools.
My first year and a half teaching was in one of the nightmare charters run by someone seeking profit. The sad part was that the teachers DID work together like a progressive, teacher-run, student-focused school. It didn’t matter much when the guy at the top was stealing the money.
Me too. I think that is happening in virtually every charter. The best con in America. Wouldn’t you like to buy property using other people’s tax dollars??? Disgusting.
That is exactly what happened in 2007 and 2008, which brought on the housing crises. The government was forcing banks to lend to uncreditworth borrowers, and insuring the loans. The banks loved it. They sold the loans to wall street bundlers, who then sold “tranches” all across the globe. But when the borrowers stopped making payments (defaulted), the whole house of cards came down, and the government choose to bail out the banks. It’s the common pattern in this country. The government uses tax money to “stimulate” segments of the economy it wishes to be winners (green energy=Solyndra), and charges we tax payers when those companies go bankrupt. They don’t go bankrupt, however, before their principals (in the general sense) have bundled contributions for candidates. Thus the politicians figure out how to buy elections using taxpayer money. That is deeply corrupt and both sides do it. BOTH sides do it. The Democrats do it; the Republicans do it. BOTH. Even Ryan’s new budget only slows growth. It doesn’t cut spending. It does project a balanced budget in ten years. One can only hope. Charters are how the Republicans are paid off. Public education is doomed.
African American Kenneth Clark is an interesting person on many levels, including the fact that it was his “doll-test” that was used by the US Supreme Court to help justify “Brown V. Board of education.”
Here’s what African American psychologist Kenneth Clark wrote in 1968, in the Harvard Education Review
“Alternatives – realistic, aggressive, and viable competitors to the present public school systems must be found. The development of such competitive systems will be attacked by the defenders of the present system as asttempts to weaken the present system and thereby weaken if not destroy public education. This type of expected self-serving argument can be briefly and accurately disposed of by asserting and demonstrating that truly effective competition strengthens rather than weakens that which deserves to survive.
I would argue further than public education need not be identified with the present system of organization of public schools. Public education can be more broadly and pragmatically defined n terms of that form of organization of an education system which is in the public interest….alternative forms of public education must be developed if the children of our cities are to be educated and made constructive members of our society.
Regiioal State schools, college and university schools, industial demonstration schools, labor union sponsored schools, army schools.
With strong, efficient and demonstrably excellent parallel systems of public schools, organized and operated on a quasi private level and with quality control and professional accountability maintained and determined by Federal and State education standards and supervision it would be possible to bring back into public education a vitality and dynamism which are now clearly missing.”
Karp’s history is not always accurate. Shanker never criticized the multi-tiered system of school choice that developed in NYC and other school districts (with elite schools allowed to pick and choose students, and neighborhood schools taking the rest.) What bothered him was that charters were developing outside the existing public school system.
In fact, one of the things that helped produce charter laws was the frustration of some inner city educators and families that millions of dollars of federal “magnet school” money was being spent to create and operate elite quasi-private magnets that many inner city kids could not get into, because they could not pass the admissions tests.
So ironically, cross district magnet school programs ended up giving new options to suburban kids who could pass the admissions tests.
I’m guessing that if “African American Kenneth Clark” were still alive in 2013 to see the uses charters have been put to, he might change his mind – in fact, I’m pretty sure that the current system of “no-excuses” schools for poor black kids is not what he had in mind.
BTW, what’s so important about him being African American that you needed to mention it twice?
Dienne, In his article Clark mentioned giving both unions and the military the option to create new public schools. I can’t be sure but I think he would want to see more schools where inner city students are developing strong skills and a belief that that they can and should help build a better world. That’s what I see that happening in the best of the nation’s district & charter schools….including some charters that are criticized here as “no excuses.”
I agree that mentioning Kenneth Clark’s race once would be enough. I was putting together several comments and forgot to take this out in the 2nd paragraph.
Alternatives can be found in many shapes and guises.
When Joel Klein took over the NYC school system he, for all practical purposes, eliminated District 79, the Alternative HS district.
It existed in name, with about 10% of the schools it had five years earlier. The other schools were then put into a confusing set of new educational networks, where they were not seen as alternatives, but one more school in the network.
Alternatives can be provided for within a public school system, but that is not the aim of the current charter movement.
Charters are not public schools, they are private schools that receive public monies and have little public oversight. Blackwater might be an example from another field. There is less accountability and less quality control.
Charters in small amounts might have been beneficial, but the current movement is not to provide alternatives, it is to replace the public school system.
The first step is to get all the better students –the students whose parents support them — in one place. Then we will have an enclave environment, one in which the peer effects are positive. Then these ‘high performing charters’ can boast of test score gains and less truancy, never mentioning that they achieved this in greatest part by selectivity in admissions.
Here are examples of district & charter educators who have created new options, often with parents, that are helping a variety of youngsters. The book mentioned below has endorsed by people ranging from Linda Darling Hammond, Deborah Meier, the president of the NEA, president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, plus a number of people who advocate charter public schools.
http://hometownsource.com/2013/03/06/a-book-about-trusting-teachers-draws-praise-from-educators-and-activists/
In the more than 40 states that have charter laws, they are legally charters. I understand some of you don’t like that. And to answer Mr. Ford’s question, yes I was an urban (district) public school teacher and administrator for more than a decade. My wife just retired after 30 years as a urban public school teacher. All 3 of our children attended and graduated from urban public (district) schools.
Because chartrers rip-off minority children.
One thing that I’ve always admired about you Diane was your courage to change your mind on a topic. That’s not easy, and few people do it frequently enough. Totally sincere.
That said, you offer a chiding rhetoric of “investment opportunity.” If Bloomberg invests in Yamaha and gives his children music lessons, is he advancing the instrument-corporate complex that’s pop-ifying music (and giving him a small potential ROI)? We should of course pay attention to who is funding what, but you offer your rhetoric without facts. Investment doesn’t imply intent de facto. Have you shared your earnings and funders? Surely everyone has motivations.
I’m not all that bright about a lot of things.
I keep on making the same points about a lot of things:
1) Charters are not public schools — they are private schools that receive public money with minimal oversight. Sort of like Halliburton.
2) People who run schools really should have worked in schools, usually as a teacher, but possibly as a social worker or a counselor, for at least 8 years, probably 10, before they get into an administrative position.
2a) Then they should spend some time in that administrative position for a while before being considered as a principal.
3) Charters were a reasonable idea when they were few and the people who were running them were educators who had already learned their trade over time. I don’t know much about Joe Nathan, but maybe he is one.
3a) But to expand them at the rate we have seen for the last dozen years is reckless and only serves the needs of investors.
The efforts to eliminate caps on charters is evidence of this.
4) The argument in favor of charters is based, in most cases, although not all, on the idea that you can gather up the deserving poor in one school, create an enclave in which they are protected from the outside world.
Correct. Charter schools aren’t public schools. Private businesses also get public dollars, yet they aren’t called “public.” So, too, are charter schools private schools set up to rip off taxpayers with utterly no oversight whatsoever.
They are a form of grand larceny, and they need to be banned.
Brian – your argument that the effort to eliminate caps equates to “serv[ing] the needs of investors” is unclear. Do investors “profit” from charter growth? Do you have data to support how much they “profit”?
I’m not saying that all this outside money from so few sources is necessarily good. It’s probably not. However, you need to back up your claim. If a charter (or large group of charters) has strong positive impacts for a group of kids, would that investment, even if from, say, China, still be worth it? See Shanker blog for recent, well balanced discussion on the topic: http://shankerblog.org/?p=7874
To SciTeacher —
In short, Investors profit from a non-regulated system.
Hope that is more clearly stated, but let me expand.
My point was not that all charters are bad,
but that expanding them at this rate is reckless and
is probably indicative of other agendas.
It is not going to improve the school system. It will do the opposite and one should question the motivations behind this.
Maybe this was too broad a point —
I was reading about Eli Broad at the time http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/)
But I don’t think so.
It is not that investors will necessarily profit from
running charters — at least not at first —
but the rush to have as many charters up and running
in as little time as possible is part of an overall effort
to rapidly privatize the system.
Lifting caps on charters is a way of deregulating the system and opening in up to different forms of private enterprise.
Running a school is only one form and hardly the most important one. Data services, on-line curriculum, testing and assessment are all areas in which the private sector — including the non-profit, but revenue generating organizations, such as ETS — expanded.
(I go into this at length in my book, Respect for Teachers
— https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475802078)
Moreover, you cannot look only at the successful charters and say ‘they have strong positive impacts for a group of kids.’
This is Whitney Tilson’s argument, but you have to also ask the question of what effect such ‘high performing charters’ have on the rest of the schools.
Are they high performing because they get the students who are more likely to preform well and group them together?
Many, if not most, high performing charters are, in essence, a variation on a magnet school. It is not that the students are in the top 10 percent –although many of them are — but that they attract families who are willing to make a major commitment, inculcate their children with respect for education and place a high value on academics. .
Maybe ‘magnet school’ is not the right term, but there is an even better analogy. It occurred to me as I read Matt’s post on KIPP schools, with their emphasis on discipline and longer days, that what they resemble most of all are Parochial schools.
It is no accident that Catholic schools have been disappearing as Charters have exploded in size.
As for KIPP schools, I don’t want to detract from anyone’s efforts, but I believe a large part of their success comes from filling the role that Catholic schools played in prior decades.
Another large part, however, comes from the equivalent of ‘angel investors’ who are putting extra money into the schools. Some, I am sure, do so out of the purest motives an extremely rich person can have. (If you recall, to be both rich and pure is as likely as being able to get a camel through the eye of a needle.) But others, like Mr. Broad, have an agenda. Set up a few examples of high performing charters for public consumption and then push, push, push to expand the other charters.
And we don’t need to demonize China.
Our investors here, along with Mr. Murdoch, are doing enough harm as it is.
Yes. If charters were really public they would openly publicize the earnings of their CEOs and families. But, conveniently that is PRIVATE info. !!!!
Those matters are public. Non-profits have to file taxes and must list the top 5 salaries in their annual IRS filings. (Form 990)
Kim Gittleson did some research a couple of years ago which i piggy backed on. found that, Geoffrey Canada aside, most charter principals and CEOS were not making a lot more than the average principals. Mr. Canada was paid $494,269 in salary in 2007.
My research was based on Harlem Children’s Zone, “Return of an Organization exempt from Income Tax,” IRS Form 990, 2007, p 18; posted by Kim Gittleson to Gotham Schools website, The same form (p 10) indicates that HCZ paid its VP of development, COO, CFO and two senior managers (the five highest paid employees “other than officers, directors and trustees”) salaries that average close to $210,000. The board members, other than Canada, receive no compensation, but the chess consultant was paid $66,400. Kim Gittleson and Ken Hirsh’s full data base at http://www.box.net/shared/4sx9plxqnr contains PDFs of the 990 filings of 64 charter schools in New York City.
The next after Canada was Deborah A Kenny, Chief Executive, of The Village Academies Network who made $396,750 for what is listed as a 40 hour week. They had a top five that includes the Principal, a VP, an ELA coordinator, Director of Operations and a Director of Compliance who together earn about $440,000. But that seemed unusual — most other charters had directors or CEOs who earned between $100,000 and $200,000.
By the way, I’m not a big fan of KiPP, but their distribution did seem to be fairly equitable and the highest salaried employees seemed to be working pretty hard.
In any case, this was just a brief glimpse and was limited to New York, so don’t make any generalizations. My findings were very tentative and can be found in my Respect for Teachers (Section G), https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475802078.
Al Shanker and his ilk were out of their minds even dreaming up such a stupid notion as “charter schools,” since teachers and parents don’t have control over the education process and never have.
All Shanker, etc., did was fuel the likes of the Bradley Foundation to take the idea to destroy American education to further its own far right ideology.
The problem is not the idea of a charter school —
the problem is opposing that idea to the idea of a public education system
and thinking a system of charters could replace it.
Even in the business world, this should be seen as flawed.
Think of this in terms of ‘best practices’ and one sees two glaring errors:
First, among the greatest challenges of any enterprise is expansion.
Schools are not businesses, but the analogy may fit in this case.
One of the greatest cause of business failure is the inability to manage
a rapid expansion. Organization is in adequate, quality suffers,
the business goes down hill. This also applies to charters as they have
been recklessly expanded at a break neck pace.
Second,
Second —
Ah, I forgot the second point.
Maybe it was
the idea that charters can improve the system when most of them are trying to get the less problematic students
but I think it was more eloquent than that.
Wait I just remembered —
Second, no effort is made to look at how policy plays out and how educational reforms of all sorts have worked (or not) in other countries. We have a world of examples to choose from, yet we are so insular.
Whatever the organizational form of the educational institution, whether it be public, charter, independent, parochial or home-study you will find individual examples of highest quality as well as some of absolute dysfunction.
I suggest that the key results area in the determination of the quality of the student outcomes is the effectiveness of the management by the principal.
The exception that proves the rule in this case is that of the Hobart Shakespeareans, which has delivered virtually unbelievable outcomes among a dire poverty student population for over a quarter century due to a ) superlative program and b ) incredible dedication by the teacher. The level of support for this program appears to be consistent with the level of effective support for any of the teacher initiatives by the administration of the highly publicized Los Angeles Unified School District. Rafe Esquith is among the very lowest paid teachers at this second largest elementary school in the nation.
Dormand, I completely agree that a terrific principal and faculty, working together, can make a huge positive difference. They will not eliminate all problems associated with poverty, but that can make a huge positive difference with young people.
One flaw in all of this discussion about charters is the assumption that we have a public school system that provides an equal opportunity to children raised in poverty and we have enough money available to solve any problems created by poverty. We don’t have a fair and equitable school system today and we haven’t had one in the history of this country. One reason we love Horatio Alger redemption stories is that they “prove” anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they only try hard enough. As long as ONE child can succeed despite the daunting challenges of being raised in a poverty stricken area we don’t have to address the longstanding disparity between urban schools and their affluent neighbors by raising more money. Charter schools are tantalizing because they reinforce the notion that all we have to do solve our problems is take what we have and spread it around differently WITHIN each district instead of spreading it differently among school districts.
Thank you — it is an excellent point.
The way in which our school districts are divided is a type of educational Gerrymandering in which those with more influence secure better education for their children.
Often times the charter is an attempt to create an educational enclave — sort of like a doorman building in an otherwise tough neighborhood.
We don’t have a fair and equal society. How will any charter solve that problem? They don’t- they just pretend they have the answers. The biggest disparity is the surrounding community. Solve the problem of poverty and then maybe you will eliminate the achievement gap. Educational opportunities are available in urban environments. The question is why the achievement gap still exists. Public schools were made scapegoats. The education is available but something is creating the gap.
Geoffrey Canada calls the KIPP model the ‘quarantine model.’
Well, of course, education is a business, and has to be run well to succeed and thrive, just like other service businesses like restaurants and plumbers. Whether traditional public schools are genuinely a “fundamental institution of democratic civic life” could perhaps be argued. I see churches as such fundamental institutions but no one expects the government to pay for them beyond property tax breaks and clergy status income tax filings. Police forces and fire departments are indeed fundamental institutions of democratic civic life,” and we gladly pay for them. Likewise city and county clerks, zoning boards, city councils, bus transportation authorities, water treatment departments, and public lighting commissions, and of course the courts. All fundamental institutions of self-governing civic life. But education? I don’t think so.
Of course we want a literate electorate, and we also want productive citizens. That’s the point of good government, to continue good government, and otherwise to get out of the way of the people making and saving money and taking care of their families. But should the civic authority have a responsibility for running schools.
The best schools in the country have always been private schools, and some of the worst schools in the country have been private schools too, often charters run by scam artists. Likewise public schools, some of the best are and some of the worst are. “Publicness” does not appear to guarantee excellence any more than “privateness.” Some public schools are indeed failing, but not because they are “public.” It’s because the students aren’t up to the intellectual demands of schooling.
Perhaps it would be best if the states got out of the business of running schools altogether. That they have failed as schools of citizenship, the usual argument in favor of them, seems manifest to me by the last two elections where a majority of ignorant, low-information voters put a feckless, spend-thrift, arrogant person in charge of the federal administration. But then, so many public school teachers think the same way he does, like the clergy of old, entitled to a job at good wages because their mission is to promote democracy. But you broke it, you own it. When you peel your obama stickers off your bumpers and recognize that you yourselves (i.e. public school teachers) are part of the political and economic problem, I expect Jesus will return to earth. Until then, we must make do with inadequate substitutes like Mitt Romney, John Boehner, and Paul Ryan instead.
Harlan, of course, starts with the idea that education is a business.
Of course, once one starts there, one can get to whatever conclusion one wants.
No, education is not a business. It is not like plumbing or running a restaurant. It fundamentally involves the shaping of character and the valuing of the individual in a way that no service business approaches.
As for the best schools having always been private schools, it depends on what you mean by ‘best.’ If you mean grouping together children of the extremely well-to-do, then I guess you’re right. If you mean by ‘best’ helping to bring out the potential of children who would often otherwise be neglected, then they are far better candidates.
I must dissent. Any entity, public or private, has to pay its bills, even cities. In the larger generic sense they are “businesses.” I don’t think it helps any discussion to demonize entities just because they must match income and out go. Even non profits run “fund balances” if they can. It’s not profit, but it is putting things away for a rainy day. What makes a business a business is not its higher moral purpose. I would claim that the Catholic Church is a business, just like any other. It provides certain products to its members who pay its bills.
However, I do agree, that by “best” private schools, I mean grouping of the children of the relatively rich so that they can learn efficiently. The public schools of Washington DC spend per pupil about what a good private rich kids school costs, which suggests to me that the cost of bringing opportunity to neglected kids is probably north of $100,000 a year, maybe more, if it can be done at all, which I suspect it can’t.
Equal opportunity THEN, would require unequal costs.
The society eventually decides, and I think it will decide it won’t pay.
Would you?
I remember the Little Hoover Commission’s report on charter schools. 1992, I think. According to the latest info at that time, charters were not just for the neediest kids, but for those who were possibly needy in that they and their parents were looking for options to the local schools’ district curriculum. My son attended a charter school in Avila Beach, CA. Santa Fe Charter School. The purpose of the charter was to provide increased depth and enrichment to curriculum and related activities.
Of course, add politics, money, vulture capitalism, corporate extractionist policy, and attorneys and you get today’s charter schools, in the main. Most of today’s charter schools are far removed from the original intent and purpose of development of flexible curriculua and operation.
Of course, I am basing my comment on one school, a few reports, and a specific geographic and socio-economic environment. But, I would argue that the original intent might have provisioned for the more needy school aged population, needy in terms of needing remedial intervention, opportunity of access to other unique programs, as well as providing other support that was insufficient for the local community’s and students’ needs.
The two I’ve worked in are all about one family making money. Also, NCLB and RTTT limited any school’s ability to actually enrich the learning process.
The charter my son went to was non-profit and a part of the public school system. And previous to NCLB and RTTT.
Currently, I am developing a learning center. The following is a guiding asseveration of vision.
We partner with local public schools, receiving accreditation, and enjoin the sponsorship by others in the community. We focus on offerings that have been reduced or dropped from the public school curricula, and offer study and enrichment in additional areas not offered elsewhere in the community and its public schools. We also maintain a priority to enrich the learning process through bringing all into each one’s optimal literacy, as well as offering open, articulated or discovery programs in the find arts.
I am the owner and sit with our foundation members in unpaid positions as an open-ended guidance group in conjunction with the whole community as to the purposefulness of our center. Our incorporation ensures salaries for the center’s staff members only. All other ancillary services are contracted and funded through our foundation.
By the way, our entrance requirements are not based upon test scores or ability to pay. Any previous testing or other historical information is considered only so that the student might engage in our program in such a way that optimizes their learning experience. Entrance fees are considered on a sliding scale and full scholarships are available for those who show themselves to be legitimate candidates for attendance at our center, but who might lack funding provision from other sources.
Our success is based upon maintaining a diverse population of staff and students. In fact, our greatest challenge is staffing such that it meets the needs of an increasingly ethnically diverse population of students.
Our purpose, is to give back to our communities, to all, that which we have received and are now able to provide in return. After all, our animus, our determinate, is to leave the world a better place.
Just to be learn, Kuhio Kane, am I correct that what you are describing that you would like to create is a new organization that is not a charter public school. Is that correct? Neither district nor charter public schools may charge entrance fees.
To Joe Nathan —
This original post was about the rapid expansion of the charter system and the idea that a system of charters could replace traditional public schools.
That is much different from the idea that experienced educators such as yourself (I have looked at your links previously and have generally formed a quite favorable impression) should be able to run schools. It opens up the system to all sorts of abuse. My daughter attended a teacher run school that was set up as a ‘school within a school’ in one of our urban districts. I thought it was a great school and a great model, but it was within the traditional district.
It is approaching its 20th year in operation and what does the district suggest? The teachers tell me that again and again they have had pressure put on them ‘to go charter.’
Why would a district want an award winning school to become a charter school?
I stand my my statement that charter schools are not public schools,
but privately run schools which receive public monies.
I don’t think that is a bad thing in small doses, but to think a system of charters should replace the public schools is a slippery slope to inequity, the use of standardized mass education products and the eventual elimination of teaching as a career, to be replaced by part-timers, the equivalent of adjunct lecturers at a university.
Maybe that is overstating the case, but I don’t think so.
Let me offer an anecdote. At least since the mid-1990s, investors have believed that the “fundamentals are all aligned for a great number of people to make a whole lot of money in this sector.” (That was according to former Massachusetts Governor William Weld. ) The scent of profit is what worries me. Once, while working in a public place with a pile of books on privatization and charters, a 30-ish local MBA candidate approached me and asked me if I was planning to start a school. “It’s going to be lucrative,” he said as his eyes widened, “very lucrative.”
One of the books was yours, Charter schools: creating hope and opportunity for American education. If it were actually the case that charters were the result of “thousands of educators and parents . . . . taking matters into their own hands and obtaining charters,” I might feel differently. They are not Blackwater or Halliburton and I genuinely do not want to say negative things about people who are putting a lot of work into building up schools. But the rush to expand charters is crazed and the Halliburton and Blackwater equivalents for education are out there.
I am curious about one statement above where you say “…charters should replace the public schools is a slippery slope to inequity, the use of standardized mass education products….”
My town has no charter schools, but it does have a private Montessori school, a private progressive school, and a private Waldorf school. Do you think a traditional zoned school system could create that variety?
Teaching economist. St. Paul Minnesota has public Montessori schools, some progressive schools, a Spanish Immersion, a French immersion school, etc. These are all district schools.
Traditional zoned schools?
School districts are in a stranglehold by RTTT.They really can’t do much these days.
There was a rich diversity of immersion, Montessori, Waldorf, and progressive zoned public schools before before RTTT?
Yes, and more options have developed over the last 10 years. St. Paul is not alone. Boston has developed a range of options, known as Pilot Schools. This idea was brought to LosAngeles, where teachers have started developing new options within the district.
St. Paul and Minneapolis have some of the nation’s most segregated charter schools. Very innovative.
Diane – You continued to equate giving African American and Latino students no choice – and forcing them to attend clearly inferior schools…
with giving those families extensive choice, including the option to select schools founded by highly respected people in their communities.
Just as Howard, Morehouse, Spelman, and Maharry are highly respected options for some families, the charters that you describe so negatively are highly valued by some low income and families of color.
Absolutely. It is just a matter of deciding to do so and getting away from this stultifying tests.
They are not usually zoned schools, however. Most parents do not know what a Montessori school is and would probably have doubts, so it would probably be an inappropriate choice for most zones.
School choice of this type does not have to involve charter schools —
alternatives can, if the district is of sufficient size, be created that run parallel to the zoned neighborhood system.
Charters might even be a part of this is the idea had not been usurped by those who see investment opportunity in dismantling the public education system.
See Who is Eli Broad and why does he want to destroy public education?
http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/
Some buildings have two or more schools within them. Building does not have to equal school. This is true from International Falls Elementary in far northern Minnesota to NYC. International Falls District elementary teachers offer families either the traditional self contained classroom, 1st grade in one room, 2nd in another, etc. or a cross age option. Both created by district teacher, both available as an option.
Forest Lake Minnesota has a building that includes both a traditional self contained school and a Montessori school.
I’ve mentioned the Julia Richman complex in NYC. Eight different schools, plus a health clinic and day care center, all in the same building.
I agree that it does not have to involve charter schools, but it can and often does involve charter or private schools. It is the choosing of a school that is criticized here as the destroyer of neighborhoods and the perpetuators of unfair advantages.
The Julia Richman Complex on the upper east side of Manhattan and Monroe HS in the Bronx both pursued the idea of turning a single school into small autonomous learning communities.
They had much different results, with Julia Richmond, in one of the more affluent Manhattan districts, gaining a reputation as someplace that worked, while Monroe, located in one of the poorer districts in New York gaining a reputation as a place to avoid.
The Bloom’n’Klein transformation of the NYC school system began by breaking down large comprehensive high schools into these education campuses; as was their wont, they selected out the cases that supported the policy they wanted to implement and ignored those that did not. So, Julia Richmond, yes, Monroe we won’t talk about.
At this point I do not know how many comprehensive high schools are left, but the point to be made here is that the transformation pretty much removed that option for students and parents. What we are left with is a bunch of small schools, some good, some bad, all limited in what they can offer. There are also, for the most part, much better situated to turn charter or become private if circumstances allow.
When will someone bring a Civil Rights lawsuit against a charter school in order to make these schools obey the law. The law is simple, if you accept government money, you cannot discriminate–and they do–especially against disabled students.
When will someone bring a law suit against exclusive “magnet” schools which use admissions tests to determine who can get in (thus, in many cases, screening out students who can not pass the standardized test)?
Joe, do you know of any for-profit magnet schools? Any magnet chain schools?
Charters have legitimated some very ugly innovations.
So it’s ok to exclude students on the basis of tests (which you’ve criticized) as long as the schools that exclude students are run by school boards?
It’s ok for school systems to be set up that only allow children of the very affluent to attend so long as they are non-profit?
It’s ok for school systems to hire detectives to keep poor people out as long as those school systems are non-profit?
One of the reasons the charter movement has spread is that some people think the answers to those questions is “no.”
These are schools open to people in various parts of the city.
I thought that would be the case. Though it has died down a bit, the orthodox opinion on this blog is that allowing students to choose a school is in itself bad. Allowing parents to choose a school would open up the possibility of specialized schools to the children of families who are not willing or able to afford private schools.
I am not sure what the orthodox opinion on this blog is, but certainly there are dangers to school choice. You have indicated one danger, that specialized schools would be created that were, in effect, private schools receiving public funds. There is — and always has been — a tension between what each child wants for his or her child and the public system that would be best overall for all concerned. This has never been an easy question to resolve.
First thing to note is that this is one of the compellingreasons for regulation and over sight. It is also a reason to have an incentive structure that discourages schools from siphoning off the best students and most supportive families and concentrating them in a relatively few schools.
These are areas in which the public schools have never been perfect, one readily admits, but it is an area in which charter schools are utterly lacking.
Do you think these things are zero sum? That the more able students would be better off in schools filled with more able students than in schools with only a few able students, while the less able students would be better off in schools with a few able students than in schools without able students?
A related question is if more able students should be allowed to take classes that fit their educational needs even if those classes are not offered in the public school building. What do you think?
What’s your basic assumption, then, about what is truly best for society as a whole? Does free choice, with concomitant abuses, qualify? Do public schools, often with top heavy administration (47% of budget in my district, and that’s a really good district), qualify? Which side do you come down on, more freedom or more monopoly? That’s not quite a fair way of putting it, I guess, but I’ll work on the phrasing of the dilemma.
A question for this community on the business of Charters. I’m a Charter School parent. In its 2nd year of operation, our non-profit, Title 1 school XX informed us last year that they would be “merging with a XX National Network,” basically becoming a chain, rather than the boutique charter we thought it was. It sounded fishy, but they assured us nothing would change about our school.
Now, 3rd year operating, XX presented the parent-body with a Licensing & Servicing Agreement between the XX Network and its regional schools. Parents had anticipated that the XX Network (also non-profit) would develop a CMO to manage all the schools it (very aggressively) intends to open. Instead, they have opted for a Licensing Agreement for intellectual property (marks & materials) and a Servicing Agreement to “collaborate” and “support” for certain services such as, marketing, academic framework, political advocacy, Board talent, interface with Charter Authority, vet vendors and provide a 0% interest start up funds. In the event of a “set back” they offer schools no remedy other than “best efforts to support the Licensee” on school site issues. For this, they charge 1% of pupil revenues. However, in NYC, they will charge 9%.
No where in these agreements is the word “manage” found. It is expressly stated that the Agreement “does not create a relationship of managment.”
When questioned, administrators said that “schools dislike CMO’s, principals want autonomy to run individual sites as they choose. We are giving them more freedom by being hands off.” Then who is accountable, if no one is managing? Do principals really want this “autonomy?” Doesn’t this just give the XX Network the right to shut down a school if anything gets ugly? This franchising of XX’s regional schools and the hands-off relationship is making parents suspicious. The district chartering authority is nothing but a data depository, ensuring KPI’s are met, and never visiting the site. Compliance with XX school Charter provisions is self-reported to the Authority, making oversight a joke. There are many violations of the Charter provisions and Title 1 requirements. XX school has over 900 API, assuring that no one will dig further.
The Servicing Agreement says that a XX Network employee may sit on the Board of a Licensee school. Is this even legal? (CA)
We are very suspicious. Network CEO has shady past of kickbacks and bid rigging, was a Broad cohort and Paraha Aspen Fellow. Any advice? Can stakeholders reject the appointment of a shady CEO? Agreements still have not been signed. What are our options? Can parents do anything?
Thanks for any input you may offer.
In the narrow sense you aren’t a stake holder because you hold no financial stake. In the broader sense, as someone whose life might be affected by policy decisions, you are a stake holder. I hate that term “stake holder” because it is a cliche and a metaphor, both of which always lead to sloppy thinking.
Diane’s basic position is that if an option excludes union bargaining, it’s bad. Thus she only criticizes charters, vouchers, online schools, among which there is a great deal to criticize, but some to praise. Maintaining the public school monopoly on publicly funded education is her highest priority. I suspect that is gone forever. But what kind of private chaos is slouching toward America waiting to be born remains to be seen. Such a confusing mix. Snyder in Michigan is implementing privatization of education, but also implementing publicization of medicine by setting up an insurance exchange. Craaaazy.
I am not a teacher so I’m on the outside looking in. I just wanted to share that our small Northern Wisconson town just started a grade 9-11 charter school for the 2012-2013 school year. Their initial plans are to add grade 12 at the start of the second year.
The started the school with something like 45 kids….had 50 spaces to fill. It is being held in a building about 2 miles from our local High School. Some of the very best and brightest teachers from our High School opted to put their time into this charter school, or at least share their schedule with it.
After the first 1/2 year, 9 kids left the charter school to come back to the High School. Reason being in talking to their parents was two fold. In some situations, their kids just missed the social interactions at the High School with the other 700+ students. Other kids thought the charter school would be ‘an easier ride’ and get them to graduation easier. Definately two types of students here.
Like I said, I’m from the outside looking in. But it seems that perhaps the charter school was somewhat misrepresented or that we simply cannot forget the amount of socialization that most kids this age require.
Do any of you have children in public schools? I find it odd that these discussions rarely include a parent of a student. Until you see what options you have for your child don’t judge.
That number will be ykur new 6 week cycle initial weight.
Nowadays, most children prefer outdoor activities in school such
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readin and solving math problems. Hence, downloading Scrabble Blast would be one
of the more convenient ways to reminisce of times when you used to
be tension free.