Advocates of charter schools can’t understand why anyone questions the purity of their motives or the excellence of their results. When there are scandals, they brush them off as mere anecdotes. When a charter operator steals millions, that’s an anecdote too. Nothing interferes with their belief that deregulation and lack of oversight is the right formula for school success.
In Chicago, we learned recently that the second-ranking official at the UNO charter chain resigned after awarding millions of dollars in contracts to family members or politically connected individuals.
Here is another. Chicago plans to close 129 elementary schools because of “underutilization,” even as they open 60 new charter schools, some in the same neighborhoods where enrollment is allegedly low. Here is an interesting web woven around a new charter:
“Jeannie Kim is employed by the Board of Education, where she works as an instructional effectiveness specialist for the Pershing Network. Her job, like her 17 other counterparts citywide, is to work with principals to evaluate teachers from an administrative perspective, and make sure CPS’s official Teaching Framework is being enforced. In fact, according to several people from the Chicago Teachers Union we spoke to on background, people like Kim have the power to get tenured teachers terminated, or at least put on a remedial track, if not reassigned to a different school altogether.”
“Besides being a member of the Board of Education’s administration staff, Jeannie Kim is also a founding member of the design team for the proposed Be the Change Charter School. In fact, Kim’s name appears in fundraising emails obtained by Chicagoist, and on the charter school’s not for profit incorporation papers as the organization’s agent. And on the not for profit’s most recent annual report, as filed with the State of Illinois, Kim is listed as the organization’s secretary. These documents list a condo in the West Loop owned my Kim and a man named John Bang.”
To understand these relationships, it is important to ponder these words: Chicago, power, politics, money.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” the Trojans said. The story of the Trojan Horse, whose voracity is in question, has prevailed until today due to its level of verisimilitude. Put simply, we don’t know if the story is true, but it rings with truth in our hearts. So why the metaphor of the Trojan Horse? The Greeks wanted to get inside the walls of Troy, much the same way private companies want to get at the potential profits that are inside the walls of our public education system. Our walls were actually built to keep private enterprise out but that hasn’t stopped the proliferation of charter schools. Not all charter schools have bad intentions, and not all are for profit, but I don’t think how much the CEO is paid has anything to do with whether or not they are non-profit. http://goo.gl/0jLaz
Let’s get back to our story. The Trojan War went on for 10 years as the Greeks drove their troops forward against the walls of Troy, but the walls held. Then in a last ditch effort, the Greeks found a way in. The Greeks decided that if you couldn’t beat down Troy’s walls, you would have to trick the Trojans into letting you in. So the Greeks appeared to withdraw, leaving behind a gift of a giant horse. The Trojans foolishly dragged the horse inside the gates as they didn’t see its true nature. They couldn’t believe anyone would hide such trickery inside something that was obviously a peace offering. Once inside, the Greeks waited until nighttime, escaped from the belly of the beast, and pillaged the Trojan City.
I worry that the business and free market system that we have dragged inside the walls of our education system does not always have our best interest at heart. Many of them might be trying hard to help students, or at least raise test scores, but if just one was in it for the money, that would be too much if it were my child’s school. They gained entrance in the same way as the Greeks, cloaked in a Trojan Horse of propaganda. A gift to education of money and ideas after voucher laws failed to breach the walls time and again. Businesses and entrepreneurs may have obscured their true intent in order to get the American people to drag their Trojan Horse inside the gates, but we did bring it in. We let them in just as the Trojans did, and despite all the evidence to the contrary, we threw caution to the wind in our glee to celebrate the presumed end of our war with ignorance and failure. Our partnership with free enterprise was sure to succeed as the free market is the solution to absolutely everything, except the global economic crisis of 2008. In the original story, just as in our education scenario, there were Trojans who said not to trust the Greeks, but they were over ruled.
As the Greeks poured out of the wooden statue, the Trojans were overcome and could not defeat the army that they had invited inside their own protective walls. Will it be too late for education? There is no City of Troy today; it has been wiped off the map, pillaged out of existence. It is said that the Greeks didn’t even prosper long after the sacking of Troy as they had angered the gods. Few of the warriors made it home to Greece, their own greed had done them in along with Troy. I remember charters being sold as experimental schools whose successful ideas would be shared with public education. The only sharing I have noticed in my 3 decades in education has been the public funds sent to private companies who don’t seem to be able to do better on average than public schools. In the process we are re-segregating our schools, driving our public schools into financial hardship, and hiding the facts time and time again. It seems that every time the Greeks in our education story are asked a question, they run back inside the horse and hide behind skewed data. I found this quote the other day which summarizes the effect of too much data. “There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the facts.” But that was before the age of instant digital communications, sound bites and Citizens United. Now, it seems, there are just two sides: your facts and my facts. And anything, repeated often enough, now takes on the feeling of fact.” David Bergman. http://goo.gl/LrSJz
The story of the Trojan Horse is meant to instruct humanity to be cautious, to not believe their eyes, to doubt that their enemy has become their friend. Will we repeat the same error? Have we already? Let’s not turn our backs on anyone who wants to participate in the public education discourse, but let’s remember that once we let down our defenses without caution, we will never be able to regain them. What we have to lose is our children’s and our nation’s future for the sake of saving a buck or making a buck. Check this link, and see what you think from one of the many stories that oddly receive almost no press. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204652904577197550308368954.html
Whether this story true or fictional depends on whose “facts” you look at. History will be our judge.
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Great look at this problem with privatization of Chicago. If I remember correctly a few months ago the Sun-Times had an article that showed that only one of the over 100 charter schools in Chicago did better than the regular Chicago Public Schools. If so, a total failure, and then why replicate failure. Sounds like LAUSD to me and N.Y. and D.C. other of their failures.
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George, What about the Green Dot schools in LA? Are they doing worse than the traditional public schools there?
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Last time I checked, Green Dot spent $15 million and scores remained very very low. I don’t put much stock in scores but that’s the charter claim, not mine.
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Diane, if Charter schools are so bad, then why do the Unions support them IF they unionize the teachers?
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MomWithBrain: I can’t answer for the unions. I don’t belong to one. I am fine with charters that help solve problems that public schools can’t. I am fine with charters that are nonprofit and community-based and not skimming the easiest to educate. I am opposed to charter profiteers who boast about their test scores and demand public space while paying the CEO $300,000 a year.
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