State Senator Barry Finegold has thrown in his lot with the powerful charter school industry.
Some charters get high test scores; some get low test scores.
Some skim off the best students in the poorest communities. Some have few or no disabled students, and few or no ELLs.
What is Senator Finegold doing to support public education, where 90% of the children are enrolled? Does he know that the public schools in Massachusetts will have a disproportionate number of the children with the greatest needs as charters proliferate?
Knowing that Massachusetts is the #1 state in the nation on NAEP, why mess with success?
Please, Senator Finegold, explain your logic. Are you following the ALEC playbook and you don’t know it?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Knowing that Massachusetts is the #1 state in the nation on NAEP, why mess with success?”
Because successful public schools defeat the privatization model, which has now become assumed to be always true. Neoclassical economics has become dogma.
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Is Massachusetts allocating enough money to follow disabled students and ELLs? Even if there were no charter schools, Districts with more ELLs get penalized. Can’t blame this one on the charters, this is a problem with the system. How much does it cost to fund a disabled student or an ELL to the standards that are expected? Is society willing to stomach that number, because I bet the cost per year in some cases, could easily exceed the best Ivy League tuition.
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I live in his district. The parents in Lawrence (poorest city in MA) which he serves, want charters. As representative for them, it is hard to fault him.
The City of Lawrence is incredibly corrupt ( just google it). In an ideal world they would have a great public school system, but they don’t.
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I was just about to say ‘neoclassical economics has become dogma’ myself, except I probably would have said ‘neoliberal economic theory.’
But isn’t the other factor pressure from DC? Yes, it may be dogma, but it is being pushed by the Obama administration and Arne Duncan for reasons that escape me.
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I was thinking the same thing. Education Privatization is often referred to here as radical right wing, but an increasing number of Democrats are pushing it, thanks to Obama’s own right wing education policies. President Obama, Secretary Duncan, and Dennis Van Roekel are no doubt grinning ear to ear at the news of a new convert.
Of course Finegold has nothing to worry about, as he will lose no votes over this. Teachers will still vote for him, as they did Obama, telling themselves that since he is a Democrat, he is the lesser of two evils.
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This makes absolutely no sense. He’s been bought.
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