Maine’s Governor Paul LePage is really upset. The state’s charter school commission turned down four out of five applications. Two that were rejected were online schools. LePage has benefited in the past from campaign contributions from this sector.
If you really want to know why the governor was upset, read this expose published last year about ties between the LePage administration and the online charter school industry.
But the state commission did due diligence and reached its decision based on what they saw as the best interests of children in Maine. What a novel idea!
Governor LePage has called on them to resign (he did not appoint them), but they are standing fast.
Good for them.
Imagine: people who think for themselves and do what’s right for kids.
Let’s hope to see more of that approach in other states.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think there must be a place for online courses, especially in states with many rural school districts. This is the only fess able way to give students a variety of classes. Online Schools may be appropriate for some students in some situations, but probably require a higher level of scrutiny than a bricks and mortar school.
LikeLike
TE, I don’t think you understand that for-profit corporations are reaping public tuition dollars for home-schooling of inferior quality. There is zero evidence for its efficacy.
LikeLike
I agree with you about the possibilities of fraud in online learning, but I just don’t want to through the baby out with the bath water. On line courses may be the only way to provide a broad curriculum to the small rural schools that dominate my state.
LikeLike
No one opposes online courses.
No one opposes online courses.
How many times should I say that?
LikeLike
You talked about these schools as “online schools”, not “for profit on line schools”. If you mean to oppose only on for profit on line schools, the distinction should be made.
LikeLike
Full-time online schools are not good education, except for a tiny number of students, such as those whose disabilities are so grave that they cannot physically go to school; those who are training for the Olympics; and others in unusual circumstances.
You may know that the big online corporations are marketing their schools to all families, for children as young as five. Even nonprofits are raking in outrageous amounts of money for inferior quality point and click courses.
LikeLike
Are county high schools with 80 total students going to provide the rich curriculum that those students deserve?
LikeLike
TE:
Will those rural schools with 80 students do a better job if a charter opens and their enrollment falls to 60? Or if 20 of their students sign up for an online charter school (where one teacher monitors 100 screens) and the school for 80 suffers a dramatic loss of revenue?
I am not an economist like you, TE, but I can see tharpt competition in a small district will destroy public education.
Do you think that is a good idea?
LikeLike
Two points:
1) you criticized on line education as not being “good education” in general. I have claimed that tiny high schools are also not “good education” in general. If you agree, the decision we must make is between two poor ways of education students. Do you agree that tiny high schools are not “good education”?
2) Will the 20 students get a less bad education from the online school than they get from the tiny high school? If the answer is yes, I would not sacrifice their education to help the remaining students. That would treat those twenty students as a means, not an end.
LikeLike
The high school with living human beings as teachers who are able to access technology as needed is far superior to online schools.
LikeLike
I don’t think it is true for all students. As an example, here is my son’s schedule from the fall of his senior year:
Vector Calculus
Linear Algebra
Physical Chemistry
AP US Government
Fourth Year Spanish
English
Trying to come even close to replicating his schedule in a small rural high school would have required him to work online through almost all of the courses. Even in the relatively large high school he attended (a little over 1,000 students) he was only in the building for the last two classes.
Would the English class have been worth the back and forth commute to the county seat over gravel roads in the harsh winters of the Great Plains?
LikeLike
Wow, the governor really is having a hissy fit! A state commission does its due diligence and makes a professional judgement. And he’s ticked off. Guess what he wanted was a rubber stamp collection of yes men.
Online schools and services have proven to be among the most unreliable of those seeking to provide charter schools services. It make good sense to be particularly wary of them.
LikeLike
One of the rejected schools, Queen City Academy Charter School, was a Gulen charter school. It did not take long after Maine established its charter school law for Gulenists to try to open one of their charter schools.
Click to access QueenCityAcademyCharterSchool.pdf
The Gulen movement advanced their US activities into Maine last year. They hosted their first state capitol event for politicians last spring and have already taken at least one group of Maine lawmakers (plus spouses) to Turkey for their standard dog and pony show — a complementary trip that delivers a sustained dose of biased information delivery, concentrated lobbying, and constant ingratiation mixed with sightseeing and periodic visits to Gulenist institutions.
http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index.php?topic=Portal+News&id=368790&v=article2011
http://tinyurl.com/anw59r9
The lead applicant for the QCA charter school was also the outreach coordinator for the organization that sponsored the capitol event and who met with Governor LePage last spring. Other QCA founders have been involved with a Gulen charter school in Massachusetts for the past six years. There are lots and lots of the usual Gulen movement “web of organization” connections.
Very, very heavy marketing on behalf of Turkey and Turkish culture has been taking place all across the US for the past 13 years or so (including at the Gulen charter schools). It is definitely not by happenstance and is not being done by just any group, nor by any random assortment of Turkish people. It is the coordinated work of individuals who are Fethullah Gulen “inspired.”
http://turkishinvitations.weebly.com/gulenist-non-profits.html
Members of the Gulen movement are heavily involved with trying to help advance Fethullah Gulen’s vision of Turkey becoming a powerful global figure once again. One of Lesley Stahl’s interview subjects in her 60 Minutes report — and the only Gulen movement observer/critic in Turkey who wasn’t too afraid to be interviewed — assessed this group as a personality cult.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57433131/u.s-charter-schools-tied-to-powerful-turkish-imam/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
Whichever way the Gulen movement should be most accurately classified, at the very least it is a group which is widely acknowledged to be secretive as well as extremely controversial in Turkey. Oh yeah, and it is operating the largest network of charter schools in the United States with taxpayers’ money (over $400M/year at this point). If efforts in Maine and Virginia are eventually successful, two more states will be added to the 26 where Gulen charter schools are operating. Hizmet (how members refer to themselves) constantly talks about the importance of “dialogue” but it will NOT engage in a frank one with the American public. A broader exposure, full recognition, and a solid grasp of this situation, along with a heightened level of discussion and analysis, is needed asap!
LikeLike
We’re used to LePages rants here in main. As one of the Portland Press Herald’s commentators wrote, LePage’s four-year term seems endless. What’s really interesting about the votes, and perhaps part of the reason for LePage’s outburst, is that while he didn’t appoint the commisision, they were well disposed towards charters. As I recall, the char is also a Tea Partier like LePage; so the failings of the applicants had to be pretty big.
Nothing hurts like betrayal. Now he’ll have to tell ‘ol Jeb he couldn’t get the job done.
Of course, the outburst has a very stong anti-democratic slant. It’s pretty sad when a disappointed governor threatens to “remove” a committee that votes against him; they work for the public, not the governor.
LikeLike
Gov. LePage submitted his proposed budget for the next two years, and an interesting line in it requests $70 million for Maine’s school laptop program, known as the Maine Learning Technology Initiative program. LePage did not make a similar request two years ago.
So I think it’s safe to assume that had these two virtual charter schools been approved, the laptops necessary to make them actually work would have been paid for by the Maine taxpayers.
LikeLike
Yes, of course the taxpayers of Maine would pay for the laptops. That is what is behind the initiative. Follow the money. Always a good principle.
And don’t forget that Governor LePage cozied up to Jeb Bush (aka Mr. Digital Learning).
LikeLike
At a public forum in Camden in May 2011, I asked Steve Bowen, Maine’s Commissioner of Education, if an existing private school could be transformed into a charter. His answer is fascinating:
LikeLike
Hundreds of “charters focused on small slivers of students according to needs”….HA! just like that huh? HA! ” Those who do not learn from history will be forced to repeat it!” This oldie school marm remembers all to well…..Hundred’s of Schools for the deaf and hearing impaired were shut down during the 70’s because they ‘isolated’ the special education stiudents from the mainstream of education. The courts (state and federal) ruled that state DOE’s could not sustain dual funding for duplicate service delivery…state schools for the deaf vs public programs for the HI. What happens when this small speciality can not be serviced by charters ?….Will states approve special schools to serve l Hearing impaired students (Deaf to Hard of Hearing) such as existed in the 70’s….? Can states ignore Supreme court rulings as they isolate catagories of special needs back into their specialized schools which were once deemed an unconstitutional use of public money and effort? Something in my gut tells me it will be the Specual Education issue that will blast the reformers out of the education game. IEP’s are written based on the least restrictive environment for each special student…surely lumping all according to disability and educating separately is just as repugnant today as it was in the 70’s. I think the winds are blowing towards the courts as the ultimate show down! (oh I do believe, I do, I do, I do)
LikeLike
I have always been curios about students with IEPs. I have sent two students through public schools, one with a IEP because of a large number of learning disabilities, the other because of academic talent. Is special education for the gifted unconstitutional because it does isolates those students?
LikeLike
from Mark Naison
Can you imagine how much better off the nation would be if our national priority was raising wages rather than raising test scores?
LikeLike
Thne hard question is how to increase wages without reducing the number of people who work.
LikeLike
The commission did not rule out online schools. They just didn’t want bad ones. The statistics the online schools provided were horrible. It is not want I would want for any Maine child. They have acted honorably in their charge. I am thankful for their thoughtful and careful consideration.
Mary in Maine
LikeLike
That seems to be the correct point of view. Poor schools, no matter public, private, charter, virtual, or bricks and mortar, should not enroll students if a better alternative exists.
LikeLike
We need education and a strong Military in the United States and “jobs that people are proud to work at and be part of. We need to manufactor products to sell too the world no more products coming into “THE UNITED STATES of America today! Buy American made by America not “CHINA” ! China’s debt needs to be “SQUASHED to 00.00% across the Board on the “NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE” as we “SPEAK!! “GET RID of “CHINA” Products once and for all on “UNITED STATES soil”!! “WE THE PEOPLE for THE PEOPLE of THE UNITED STATES of AMERICA”!! “GOD BLESS AMERICA 2013!!
LikeLike