Bruce Baker of Rutgers University here analyzes the claims of a charter advocacy group called “Families for Excellent Schools.” Its latest “study” argues that New York City wastes money on low-performing schools as compared to high-performing schools. Baker points out that the “low-performing schools” have higher proportions of children with disabilities and others with high needs, as compared to the high-performing schools to which they are compared. Baker says the FES “study” is “totally bogus.” He has a few other choice phrases to describe this politically motivated analysis.
It is useful to bear in mind who the “families” for excellent schools are. Last year, this group spent $5 million or more to attack Mayor Bill de Blasio while demanding legislation to protect charter schools and to open more. This suggests that these are not your ordinary charter-school families. It is not that easy to raise $5 million in a few days or weeks. The “families” are the Walton family, the Eli Broad family, and the families of other extremely wealthy people. One may safely assume that none of these families has their own children in public schools or in charter schools.
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I know it can feel as if people are talking to a wall, but all the work people like Baker are doing eventually (slowly!) does reach a kind of critical mass and it breaks thru.
This editorial board piece would have been unimaginable in Ohio even 5 years ago:
“There has got to be a better way to fund K-12th-grade charter schools than Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s latest budget proposal that would further rob traditional public schools of millions of dollars in order to subsidize poorly regulated charter schools. The governor’s plan would continue the cannibalization of Ohio’s public schools.
That’s especially so since the Ohio General Assembly itself has been all too willing over the years to pick the pockets of public schools to pad the pockets of the private interests behind for-profit charters and the lobbyists who represent them — and far too unwilling to tighten Ohio’s shamefully lax regulatory framework for charters.”
Those wild-eyed conspiracy theorists at the Cleveland Plain Dealer! 🙂
They are finally, finally, looking at how ed reform is damaging existing public schools. It took 17 years for them to notice, although 90% of kids in Ohio attend public schools.
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/02/ohio_must_stop_increasing_taxp.html
“Families for Excellent Fools”
“Families for Excellent Fools”
For folks who buy the claims
About the charter schools
From Broad and Walton names
I just read about Michelle Obama’s speech yesterday on education where she called it the “civil rights” issue of our time and decried the lack of technology and college prep courses in the public schools. No mention of the lack of books, librarians, nurses, counsellors, certified teachers, food services, custodians, security, gun control. No indication of any understanding that standardized testing is destroying learning.
Her message to young people: “Go to the bad school that you have. Go to school.”
So much for the audacity of hope. So much for yes we can. She sounds a lot like her friend Rahm Emanuel, except that his message is more nuanced: go to your bad school, but not the one in your community that I closed, go to the one several miles away that you need to cross dangerous streets to get to.
I wish they would stop selling ed tech. Government has a role. They can fund the infrastructure for schools to gradually and organically adopt the best of this stuff, but the hard sell really, really bothers me.
I don’t know why they feel they have to sell product for these companies. I have absolute confidence in the ability of the tech sector to sell their wares. They’re good at that. The idea that public schools need a full-court sales pitch is just inappropriate. I cringe when I hear it.
A good part of the country thinks DC is 100% captured and corrupted. They do themselves no favors when they appear to be selling product. They harm their own credibility, and that makes them less effective. Do they not realize how this sounds? It sounds like they’re selling screens.
“gun control” = the ability to hit what you are aiming at.
I’ve got a student that ranks in the top three teenage competitive shooters in the state. She (yes, she) works hard at “gun control”.
Had another student who when looking for a recipe spotted one from Spain with rabbit. He said “I’ll make that one, I’ll go out and get me a half a dozen rabbits this weekend”. And he did!! Now that’s gun control!! (he was also a competitive shooter)
I teach in Pennsylvania and have many students who hunt and fish.
But I was thinking of the other definition of gun control: the regulation of the use, sale and ownership of guns, or what President Obama and what passes for our legislature, promised to, and failed to, accomplish after 23 children and teachers were murdered at Sandy Run.
Received this excellent post today regarding Detroit Public Schools and the slight of hand being delivered by our own Gov. Rick Snyder. Our public schools are certainly swimming against the tide in Michigan too. Bill Boyle at Educarenow http://we.me/plb3UM-RD