Tennessee grows closer to allowing unlimited expansion of charters in its two biggest cities by negating the power of local school boards to grant charters. This, remember, is the ALEC plan for privatization of public resources.
In Nashville, the Metro Nashville school board is worried about whether the growth of charters will bankrupt the district. Charter advocates, unsurprisingly, say don’t worry.
But pay attention to Inglewood, California. Only a decade ago, conservatives said tat Inglewood was a miracle district and hailed the success of its public schools in producing high test scores despite high poverty. Then the charters began opening and 6,000 students enrolled in charters. That was 1/3 of the district’s students. The district laid off teachers, cut programs, increased clas sizes, an finally collapsed into bankruptcy.
Last December,the state took over the no-longer-miraculous Inglewood district.
That is how public education dies. While vultures fly in from other states to fleece taxpayers and turn a profit.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Inglewood, though not a major urban area, deserves more scrutiny. My worst-case fear for charters is that they simply split up kids by parent-involvement/poverty level (since, virtually by definition, “good choices” are exactly what poor parents locked in multi-generational poverty do not make.) It is easy to imagine a privatization outcome where affluent kids flock to charters, street kids are left in our neighborhood schools, and that our elected government is left only with the easy final job of turning off the lights on the way out. Do we know of _any_ cases where charters have taken over schools, not required parent choice, and showed repeatable, bankable, improved student outcomes? If Charter operational policy, and not “choice”, were the “success” driver, surely we’d have hundreds of these examples by now….
Sadly, all national data shows that average scores, and standard deviations, for charter-rich districts are no better than those that are less so….. In fact, when we look at Phoenix Arizona, my impression is that average scores are lower than cities with more unified districts, and their lack of commitment to educating all kids is taking a real toll on the community. And, so, I will keep asking why we are so enamored with splitting our kids into “good ones” and “bad ones” via choice…
21st Century carpetbagging at its worst.
Exactly! It’s no accident that, for example, Arkansas now enjoys its first Republican-controlled legislature since Reconstruction. The first time, it was African Americans controlled by their old masters. This time, term limits cleared out all the old Democratic landowners, who simply latched on to the new Republican bucks like Jason Rapert to advance their elitist, racist, & discriminatory causes.
When it comes to fleecing the US Treasury, nobody holds a candle to the Southern planter class. This round, the South is winning because Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc., etc. have taken up the Southern way of genteel social suicide.
Charters are popular with parents precisely because they do split kids by parent-involvement/poverty level — parents are happy about the exclusionary practices. Because parents like them, politicians like them, but there are not enough people who think about the overall impact on the community and our society of splitting up kids in this manner.
They’re happy until they get into the charter and find that they have no voice.
I’ve noticed that they are more popular with minorities. It is strange. Not that many white parents are as interested. I think Diane is right when she says they are actually segregating education more than previous years.
Is there a citation for the statement that 6,000 students are enrolled in Inglewood charter schools, or that one-third of Inglewood’s district students left district schools for charter schools?
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_21548079/state-takes-over-financially-strapped-inglewood-unified-school?source=email
Story of Inglewood
This just says that “the district lost 900 students last year, many of them to nearby charter schools, leaving it with a total enrollment of about 12,000.”
Or this story of Inglewood…
“But only six of 18 campuses hit the 800 goal on state exams last year, all elementary schools. At the district’s two high schools, only one-third of students were proficient in English and math.
Such academic performance, demographic trends toward fewer children and a recession that has pushed younger families to more affordable neighborhoods are believed to be major factors behind Inglewood’s steady loss of students.”
“Since 2005, the district’s enrollment has dropped by nearly 3,000 students, to 12,500. That includes a loss of 1,000 students this year from last, one-third of whom moved to charter schools…
More than 2,300 students attend eight charter schools in Inglewood”
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/18/local/la-me-inglewood-20120218
“When it comes to this particular school board, they have mismanaged the school district,” said Inglewood City Councilman Mike Stevens, a product of Inglewood public schools. “They have run this school district into the ground.”
Inglewood school board member charged with embezzlement
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/11/inglewood-embezzlement.html
Audit Blasts Inglewood’s School District
April 12, 1996
The Inglewood Unified School District is plagued by fraud and mismanagement and has become a “dysfunctional organization in severe danger of both operational and financial collapse,” according to an independent audit by a financial consulting firm. The Inglewood Board of Education ordered the investigation after it began to question how its former custodian supervisor managed to accumulate a $1.2-million deficit over a five-year period without raising suspicion.
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-04-12/local/me-57767_1_inglewood-unified-school-district
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Seem like charter schools are the symptom not the cause.
When Inglewood was the toast of the Heritage Foundation and the Bush administration, it had 18,000 students.
Then charters began opening.
Enrollment is down to 12,000, somewhat less.
Read the Daily Breeze articles.
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_21548079/state-takes-over-financially-strapped-inglewood-unified-school?source=email
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_22802988/inglewood-unified-begins-making-deep-cuts-amid-howls?source=email
You are clearly conflating the financial and academic performance of the unified public school district with charter schools in the area. That’s just a bad argument based on sloppy “logic.” If Inglewood’s charter schools were forcing the district into bankruptcy, there might be a leg to stand on. But the case is that the district in Inglewood is going bankrupt and showing poor performance, not the charter schools. What these parents are doing is participating in a free market, and if that means fewer federal dollars for the public schools, that just means public school is a terrible product, which it is. In my opinion, and speaking as a teacher, the whole system needs to be trashed and started over. What it’s delivering to poor kids is an absolute tragedy.
Can you explain how Inglewood went from being “the Inglewood miracle” in 2000 to a bankrupt terrible district by 2012?
Did competition help the district or destroy it?
One thing that appears clear is that most of the students leaving the district aren’t leaving to go to charters. Inglewood’s also lost population in the last decade, particularly among households with children. Charters may have hurt the district’s finances, but they don’t appear to be the only thing that did. Yet another complicated story oversimplified.
Sucking out the most motivated students didn’t help Inglewood schools.
How did Inglewood go from “miracle” to failing in 12 years?
Was the miracle a hoax?
Maybe test scores fell (you don’t note how much they’ve fallen). Or maybe test scores were inflated to begin with and in reality there were serious problems that motivated parents to move out of Inglewood. Maybe Inglewood schools were already a few years away from a financial meltdown in 2000. Maybe all of the above. I don’t know.
Moral of the story.
Beware of “miracles”
Inglewood was one of the first miracles
The Bennett-Kew elementary school in Inglewood was one of the schools in the very first “No Excuses” book published by the Heritage Foundation.
Where are those schools today?
The one in NYC was identified recently as very low performing. May have been closed.
Having been hired by a charter one-upon-a-time it appears they mostly make money by eliminating pensions. The pensions are awful. Which means these charter teachers are going to need additional state support when they retire.
So charters make money like any business ! By creating an externality.
Oh yes, and they require 2-4 years experience. (No old people) Another externality, a group of 50 year olds without jobs and medical coverage.
I’m sorry, you cannot possibly care for the kids if your are simultaneously screwing over the worker.
Diane asks: “Can you explain how Inglewood went from being “the Inglewood miracle” in 2000 to a bankrupt terrible district by 2012? Did competition help the district or destroy it?”
While I am very cautious about believing what I read in a variety of publications, did competition force either of the following that are presented as facts in the Daily Breeze?
1. Financial records in disarray: Daily Breeze reports “The takeover provides an emergency $55 million loan to the 58-year-old institution, whose books were in such disarray that the district was expecting to run out of cash by March, according to the state Department of Education.”
2. $18K raise for an employee? “Chris Graeber, field representative of the classified union, ” accused the board of making decisions based more on vendettas than on what’s best for students. As an example, he cited the board’s July decision to approve an $18,000-a-year raise for the district’s No. 2 man, Chief Operations Officer Glenston Thompson. At the same meeting, the board officially requested the emergency apportionment from the state. ”
If true (and that’s an important if, doesn’t this sound like questionable district leadership and financial management?