Thomas Ultican teaches high school mathematics and physics in San Diego, in a school where more than 50% of the students are English language learners and 75% are Title I. In this article, he calls for a moratorium on the expansion of the charter sector in California. That state happens to have more charter schools and more students in charters than any other state. This is no accident. The charter school legislation is extremely permissive. If a charter applicant is turned down by the local district’s board of education, he can appeal to the county board of education. If he is turned down by the county board of education, he can appeal to the state, which does not review the reasons that the local board rejected the application. If the applicant has trouble writing his application, he can turn to the California Charter Schools Association, one of the most powerful lobbies in the state. Its staff will help newcomers develop a proposal that it is likely to get adopted somewhere along the line.
California has had many charter scandals, financial and academic. The charter schools are virtually unsupervised, as the state lacks the administrative staff to watch what they are doing. The charter schools claim to be “public schools” when they seek funding but they are exempt from many laws and regulations that apply to public schools. When a couple of charter operators were indicted for misappropriation of funds, the California Charter Schools Association filed an amicus brief, which contended that charters are not really public schools and not subject to the same criminal laws as public employees. The charter operators are “private entities.” Their plea failed; the couple were convicted and sent to jail.
Ultican lists the reasons why a moratorium is past due. The sector is growing “explosively,” without transparency or accountability. Schools open quickly, but at the same time, other charter schools fold, creating instability in the lives of their students. The charter industry is riddled with fraud and profiteering.
Ultican quotes distinguished professor Gene V. Glass, who wrote:
“A democratically run public education system in America is under siege. It is being attacked by greedy, union-hating corporations and billionaire boys whose success in business has proven to them that their circle of competence knows no bounds.”
Ultican concludes:
Let’s heed the words of real experts. It is time to put a halt to the privatization of public education long enough to see what we have wrought before we do further damage.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I disagree. It is not time for a moratorium. It is time to to stop using public funds to financially support private sector schools of any kind. We must stop this fraud by forcing all publicly funded private sector schools to support themselves just like Lakeside School supports itself. Lakeside is a private school where Bill Gates went to school and where he sends his children.
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I agree. Unfortunately, the genie has been let out of the bottle. He is smart, evil and wants to consume us. How do you put him back in the bottle?
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We call the Winchester brothers (from the TV series Supernatural) to not only put the genie back in the bottle but to get rid of the genie totally. There can be no compromise with these monsters because they will use that compromise to stay in the game so they can come back in another guise at a later time to achieve all of their goals. The leaders of this movement are psychopaths and/or fools. They worship at the alter of avarice. I do not think there is any middle ground. It is all out war until they are eliminated legally or otherwise.
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Does anyone in government work on public schools anymore? It’s as if we’re only allowed to discuss public schools in the context of charter schools, unless of course we’re talking about testing public school students.
Ohio just hired a state ed director. Every single newspaper piece discussed his opinions on “choice”- don’t worry! He’s lockstep with Obama/Kasich. Check that box and get out the rubber stamp! He’s a “choice” fan!
Once again “ed reform” neglected to mention 93% of students in the state. They should really drop the pretense and stop opining on public schools completely. We’re clearly an unfashionable after-thought in policy circles.
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Here’s the Gates twitter feed. I can’t find any public schools. Are they gone in ed reform world and DC? They seem to have disappeared our schools outside of ‘testing season”.
Seems like a remarkable omission- 95% of public school are excluded from a “movement” that is supposedly “about” improving public schools but what do I know about high level policy circles?
Can I safely ignore these people? They don’t seem much interested in my “sector”.
https://twitter.com/gatesed
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How about simply ending any reform policy or program or product that fails to work.
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Political spending needs to be regulated. The California Charter Schools Association should not have more power than students, parents, and voters.
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The main problem with “reform” is that the decisions made rarely involve the public. Reformers buy the influence of democratically elected leaders, and then they make all the decisions behind closed doors away from the public. A big problem is that there are too few politicians that are incorruptible.
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Politicians like Ohio’s Senators Sherrod Brown (Dem.) and Rob Portman (Repub.)
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Time for California Congressional hearings. Citizens deserve to know oligarchs, some, in-state, some out-of-state have captured political and economic education policy. The long term plot is big box retailing, of schools-in-a-box. When a Gates-funded organization says its “goal is to develop charter management organizations that produce a diverse supply of different brands on a large scale” and, he funds both the Pahara Aspen Institute (David Koch is on the Aspen Institute Board) and, the “Senior Congressional Education Staff Network”, taxpayers and communities deserve to have a clear picture about what their futures will look like. (The for-profit Bridge International Academies, owned by Gates/Z-berg/Pearson, illustrates the future.)
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Here are twenty of the favorite things that charter schools want to see in state laws.
The pushers of this industry want the legal right to create a separate system of education that steals money from communities that have invested in their true public schools.
This wish list of charter laws shows that charter schools want to be “public in name only” (PINO) operations, with autonomy and exemptions from as many state laws as they can persuade state legislatures to give their industry. I use the label “industry” in a manner congruent with the US Census North American Industry Classification System, Code 55, and the promotion of charters and charter management organizations within the Education Industry Association since 1990.
This list of preferred stipulations in state legislation from the charter industry shows that these schools have no legitimate claim to be “public institutions.” They want to be governed by independent boards and have private contracts that by-pass public discussion and debate.
The charter industry has no qualms about taking over schools and public properties they have not paid for.The industry does not want to pay a fair share of the costs for using public school sports facilities for free. The industry wants perks associated with tax-exempt school financing but will not participate in contributing to the taxes that pay for public schools. Here is the list Source http://www.publiccharters.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Model-Law-Final_2016.pdf –
1 –Unlimited expansion: No caps on the growth of charter schools. (The logical outcome of this could be that states have no public schools, only privately controlled, tax-subsidized schools, with private contracting by independent boards, as much or as little accountability as the state law allows).
2 –Specifically allows new start-ups, public school conversions, and virtual schools.
3 –Multiple authorizers, including nonlocal school board authorizers, to which charter applicants may directly apply.
4 –Authorizers must: (a) affirm “interest to become an authorizer” (except for authorizers created by state legislation) and (b) participate in state reporting program for authorizers, with “objective data,” overseen by some state-level entity with the power to remedy. (Remedy is left handing in the air.)
5 -Adequate and guaranteed funding from state or authorizer fees, and public accountability for such funding. (Guaranteed funding is not even availble for public schools).
6 –Transparency in requirements for authorizer applications and decisions (academic, operational, governance, and performance) following professional authorizer standards. (See http://www.qualitycharters.org/for-authorizers/principles-and-standards/)
7 -Performance-based charter contracts between authorizers and charter schools that detail at least: academic performance expectations, operational performance expectations, and school and authorizer rights and duties.
8 -All authorizers can verify charter public school compliance with applicable law and their performance-based contracts. ( Control of the “appicable law” is what the charter industry wants).
9 –All authorizers use a clear and standardized decision-making processes for charter school renewal, nonrenewal, revocation, including school closure and dissolution procedures. (Notice that the desire for “clarity” come with not an ounce of accountability for the costs to public schools and the public for nonrenewals, revocations, closures, and dissolution.
10 – A clear performance contract with no conflict of interest between educational service providers and the independent charter school board.
11 -Charter schools are created as autonomous entities, fiscally and legally, with their own boards having most of the powers granted to public school district boards. (The legal and fiscal separation removed charters from public oversight).
12 –All charter schools have and follow clear procedures for recruiting, enrolling, and using a lottery.
13 -Automatic exemptions from many state and district laws and regulations except for those covering health, safety, civil rights, student accountability, employee criminal history checks, open meetings, freedom of information requirements, and generally accepted accounting principles. (Note that teacher qualifications and certifications within state laws and regulations can be by-passed).
14 -Automatic exemption from collective bargaining agreements while not interfering with laws and applicable rules that protect the rights of employees to organize and to be free from discrimination. (This pre-emptive language has become a major strategy in model legislation from the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council).
15 -An independent charter school board is permitted to oversee multiple schools linked under a single charter contract, or may hold multiple charter contracts. One reviewer of applications for US Department of Education grants for charter schools called this policy “ the “franchising deal.”
16 –Participation in sponsored interscholastic leagues, competitions, awards, scholarships, and recognition programs to the same extent as traditional public school students and employees; and (b) students at charters that do not provide extracurricular and interscholastic activities have free access to those activities at traditional public schools, via a mutual agreement. (An informed agreement would include a calculation of fair-share fees for charter school use of facilities that they did not pay for and are not obliged to maintain year to year, including costs of liability insurance, and so on. The devil is in the detail but freebies like this should not be hard wired into state legislation).
17. Clarity on which local education agency is responsible for special education and how such services are to be funded, especially for low-incident, high-cost cases. (Charter schools have a perverse incentive to inflate reports on the number of special education students they serve, and to exclude the “high cost cases” so that these are not part of their costs).
18 -Equitable operational funding and equal access to all state and federal categorical funding—in the same amount and timely fashion as district schools, following eligibility criteria similar to all public schools.
19 -Equitable access to capital funding and facilities, such as (a) a per-pupil facility allowance (equal to statewide average per-pupil capital costs), (b) facility grant and revolving loan programs, (c) a charter school bonding authority (or access to all relevant state tax-exempt bonding authorities available to all other public schools), (d) the right of first refusal to purchase or lease at or below fair market value a closed or unused public school facility or property, and (e) clarity that no state or local entity may impose any facility-related requirements that are stricter than those applied to traditional public schools. (This wish list for state laws ignores the proven record of charter school scandals that should cause severe limitations on taxpayer guarantees for direct or indirect charter school financing).
20 -Access to relevant employee retirement systems, with the option to participate in a similar manner to all other public schools. (These systems are often the result of collective bargaining agreements in which charter schools played no role in negotiating, but feel entitled to join. The “entitlement “mindset should not be considered or formalized as legitimate).
The wish list for charter-friendly state legislation is designed to improve the reputation of charter schools while perpetuating the myth that they are public institutions. I have lightly edited the information in this source:
Source http://www.publiccharters.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Model-Law-Final_2016.pdf –
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Two other relevant facts- Cal charter law is extremely permissive. The authorizing agency must approve the charter unless the authorizing agency finds that the program fails to present a sound educational program or demonstrate financial viability. Thus the burden is on the authorizing agency to show the petition is deficient. As far as the final appeal to the State the appeal is handled by the Advisory Commission on Charter Schools – most of whom are charter industry leaders. So you get stuff like this:
http://www.alternet.org/education/california-board-ed-tramples-local-control-pushes-charter-school-poor-community-doesnt
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