This report on charter schools in North Carolina was written in 2015 by three members of the Duke faculty. It was cited in a summary written for the Legislature by the Department of Public Instruction. The DPI summary is being withheld by the Lt. Governor Dan Forest because it is too “negative.”
The original report on charters was written by Professors Helen Ladd, Charles Clotfelter and John Holbein of Duke University. It will be published in the Journal of Education Policy and Finance.
What it shows, among other things, is that charter schools are less diverse than public schools as a sector and are more segregated than public schools. Charter schools are facilitating the resegregation of the schools in North Carolina.
You can download the report here.
Sorry, Governor McCrory and Lt. Governor Forest: You may bully the DPI, but you can’t suppress the work of distinguished academics. They don’t work for you. They have tenure.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The fact that a tenured professor can speak the truth openly is one reason ALEC is working so hard to eliminate tenure at all levels.
All too true.
And it’s also a good thing that they work for Duke, a private university, rather than UNC, where McCrory really would be their “boss,” at least to a certain extent. Even if they had tenure at UNC, McCrory could make it uncomfortable for them and the administration.
That’s a pretty bad mistake. I would think you should let Diane know that the report was done by DPI itself — which in a way makes the situation worse.
NCDPI is out to protect NCDPI.
If you don’t have the time to read it in total, Peter Greene has written a good summary, with relevant quotes here:
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/01/nc-covering-charter-butts.html
Jack: I agree—Peter Greene’s posting is spot on.
And it highlights one of the most toxic and self-wounding features of the purveyors of so-called “education reform”: those wrapping themselves in the cloak of 3DM (Data-DrivenDecisionMaking) despise those“hard data points” they like to use as bludgeons against public school staffs and students and parents and their associated communities.
When push comes to shove, the heavyweights of corporate education reform prefer “happy thoughts” to reach their “inner Rheeality” and ensure their benefactors and sponsors can achieve less ethereal “$tudent $ucce$$.”
Skipping the [painful] humor: how is this different from the apparatchiks of the now-vanished Soviet Union spinning the numbers for their Potemkin Villages and declaring dissidents are all dangerous mentally ill criminals and proclaiming the numbers of believers to be small & soon to vanish and asserting the almost total absence of racial prejudice & violence?
I have said this before and repeat it here: anyone that argues for charters & privatization & vouchers and such on this blog, this is a direct challenge to you to prove your “platform-agnostic” cred. Y’all should be whooping and hollering louder than anyone else in a denunciation of this blatantly immoral and unethical attempt to lie.
😎
Or, if you download, look at pp.12-13 for how charters sort students without seeming to. Also note that only 25% of the charter mission statements indicated an intent to serve low income “disadvantaged” students.
Just curious, what percentage of current/retired public teachers and public employees are aware, troubled or active in opposition, to the privatization movement?
I don’t know about the total percentage, but I’m a retired public school, special education teacher, and I’m certainly aware of and troubled by the privatization movement, and I do what I can, in my limited way, to contact my local and state representatives about my concerns.
Make that two of us Linda!
Since I’ve been retired, I’ve made raising awareness of and actively opposing the destruction of our public school system my almost full-time job. Not waiting on an VAM evaluation, either.
Wow, who would have ever thought that when a group of billionaires effectively takes over education policy, under the guise of “the civil rights movement of our time,” that it would result in even more segregation and inequality?
At this stage of our language-impaired, Plato’s cave version of Democracy, whenever we hear the word “Reform,” we should hold on to our wallets and rush to defend whatever institution is the target .
“At this stage of our language-impaired, Plato’s cave version of Democracy,”
That’s a good one! Hope you don’t mind if I use it-Plato’s cave version of Democracy!!!
Feel free, brother!