Earlier I posted President Obama’s proclamation on National Charter School Week, which happens to coincide with Teacher Appreciation Week.
A charter school teacher responded with this comment:
“I’ve been an educator in Columbus, Ohio since university. In my 8th year, I currently earn 34,000 before taxes at a 9-12 charter school. I can be fired at any time. I have no tenure, no union, and scarce resources to teach. I also act as a librarian, though I wear no such title nor do I earn pay for wearing this hat. Students come in and depart through a revolving door of enrollment procedures I am not privy to. I’ve seen two administrators at two different charter schools resign because they were stealing. One continues his work at another charter in the city. My family needs the money I earn, so I must teach, but I just pray a public school gives me a chance.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is actually a comment for the post below this (about product placement in Pearson tests), but I can’t seem to get into the comments for that post.
Anyway, every day I think that sooner or later you’re going to run out of new things to write about. And every day you amaze me. Or, rather, the depravity of our Brave New World amazes me. Or, rather, depresses me.
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Captive labor, can’t speak up or talk back or organize a union, totally dependent on management of the charter for employment, the ideal employee from corporate pt of view which is hostile to democracy, equality, and citizen rights. In search of more defenseless, compliant, needy labor, major corps just wrote the new regs for the H1B guest worker program demanded by high-tech firms, giving them control of 110,000 work permits to import cheap college labor from India instead of employing the many ready-and-able US grads who must be paid more for such work than foreign labor accepts.
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Ah, but that’s because those foreign workers have superior educations! The fact that they cost less is pure coincidence! What are you, some kind of conspiracy theorist? Everyone knows that America’s problems were all caused by public school teachers and their unions!
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A good number have US college educations.
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Obama is a corporate man who knows who butters his toast.
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Is next week National Boutique Week or National Fast Food Week? I lost track now that the Executive Office is on this trend.
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Meanwhile, this is what Slate decided to run on Teacher Appreciation Day:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/05/_badteacher_readers_tell_us_their_worst_teacher_stories.html
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Oh, that’s disgusting! To hell with SLATE!
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Obama likes charter schools because he knows he’ll never be asked to put on comfy shoes and march with their employees. It must have been so awkward for him when he left Wisconsin public employees high and dry while Walker was screwing them over.
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I don’t believe he cares at all about working families who need stable, union employment. He was selected for glory by the mega-wealthy. Democrats sought and found the ideal candidate to run for President precisely because he is black, of middle class means, and would appear to be a leader for the people. He is not. He is a bundle of corporate interests wrapped in a beautiful suit.
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I’m not really sure why some believe charters deserve less accountability when there is so much evidence that there needs to be same oversight as those in public school positions.
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There are two broad reasons why choice schools are likely to require less regulation than traditional public schools.
First, traditional public schools give local politicians the opportunity to use those control over the local public system to their own political ends. This is much less important with individual indipendent schools.
Comming from the other direction, choice schools will face the possibility of loosing students. That will serve, to some degree, as a substitute for regulation.
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Google UNO. UNO is a chain of only 13 schools. It has run through all but $15 mln of a $98 mln state grant, and construction had to be halted b/c of relatives getting contract after contract.
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No doubt there is unethical behavior in every human activity, and there needs to be some regulation. In situations where families can choose schools, there would need to be less than in situations where famalies can not choose schools. In situations where school superintendents employ only the folks working in a single school there need be less than when a school superintendent employs 50,000.
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Families choose private preschools/child care centers and those are highly regulated by cities AND states. That is because it’s in the best interests of children to provide regulatory oversight of the people who provide programs for minors.
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TE,
Is “choice schools” the new marketing strategy for the private for profit edu-operators who wish to suck as much money out of the government as possible?
Duane
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I am using that term to refer to any school that does not use all and only geographic admission requirements like traditional zoned public schools.
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Duane: TE is a one trick pony and “traditional zoned public schools” is his ongoing single-minded, self-serving beef. Never mind the fact that, for decades, many other parents have actually liked that there are public schools that will accept all kids in their neighborhoods, and that magnet schools and magnet programs offer choices within school districts.
Why bother to advocate for choice within districts when you can rid the nation of all “traditional zoned public schools,” make parents jump through hoops to get their kids into “choice schools” that may not be any better, or near their homes, or obligated to accept neighborhood kids? But then you can try to get your kids into schools in other school districts altogether, without having to move and pay higher property taxes. (As if most affluent suburban communities would be willing to accept them.)
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How is my advocating for choice self-serving?
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I think you are playing dumb, like you don’t know about ALEC and what economist Milton Friedman et al. unleashed on our country http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/07/10903/alec-exposed-milton-friedmans-little-shop-horrors or about how his privatizatin of public education in Chile has played out, where students have been protesting and demanding free education for the past two years, including thes week: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/05/08/607391ltchilestudentprotests_ap.html
If nothing has sunk into your one-track mind,from this blog about the damage that is being done to public education and other people’s children by “choice,” then read the intent of the neo-liberal agenda to privatize public education by Milton Friedman http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html and consider how our country is MORE stratified today, not less as he claimed. And read Diane’s book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and CHOICE are UNDERMINING EDUCATION.”
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I’m a little afraid for this person’s job now. They’ve made themselves very easy to identify.
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I sent a note to the white house on this same topic as to what an insult it was to Public school teachers, though I wasn’t quite as nice! I’ve been a democrat all my life but I think that will be changing next election! (sadly)
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You could be a progressive and vote for the Green Party. I know they won’t win now, but at least you won’t sell out your principles…
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Nothing but the work of the “Privatizer in Chief.” They want to bring back “Indentured Servants.” Remember that? Just one step above a slave. This is all a part of what I call “Permadebt.” More to come if we do not fight back. Thank you CTU for doing what has to be done. Wasn’t Duncan just booed? More to come. Hopefully, that is.
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Arne was booed by college professors at the American Educational Research Association annual convention. And people say we don’t speak up. Nope, we speak plenty, but Arne and his highfalutin neo-liberal hoops buddy, et al. have no interest in listening to genuine educators. Hence, the jeers were earned.
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Charter Schools are a rip-off. For-profit institutions should only complement, never replace, free public education.
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They should be banned.
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Would you make exceptions for non profits or. charters serving special populations?
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