Aspire Charter Schools will open in Memphis, its first venture outside of California.
It comes with a big wad of money to guarantee success. The perks are munificent, since the chain has set aside $100,000 for marketing before the school opens this fall under private management.
Philanthropists–eager to prove that privatization works better than public schools–have pledged $28 million to help Aspire take over ten public schools in Memphis over a five-year period. The federal government–eager to support Secretary Duncan’s belief that private management is always superior to public control–has awarded Aspire a tidy $800,000.
You do have to wonder how long that kind of money will be available as new charters open and multiply, or is this just a very high-priced marketing gimmick to sell the idea.
Meanwhile, Aspire is wooing children and parents with games and free trips to California.
One inducement for Aspire to enter the Tennessee market is that Tennessee pays more state tuition per pupil for public schools than California, an amazing fact. Also, Tennessee is a welcoming state for privatization, since far-right Republicans have a super-majority in the legislature and there is a compliant state Commissioner, Kevin Huffman, who is not only Michelle Rhee’s ex-husband but former communications director of TFA.
Last year, Chris Barbic (founder of Yes Prep Academies) moved from Houston to Tennessee to take over the state’s Achievement School District (the usual euphemism for the lowest performing schools) and pledged that all would be in the top 20% in five years. In four years, we will check up on his pledge.
Meanwhile, what is getting firmly rooted is the belief that schools can and should be run like chain stores, with headquarters in another state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I sometimes feel as though charters are the 401K of education. The 401K was created to be a replacement for the pension system that was the norm, not the exception, back in the last century. Businesses thought that shedding pensions from the employer’s ledger would be good for business. Problem is it is bad for people.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-callahan/401k-a-perfect-failure_b_1574834.html
Here’s a new book, “Trusting Teachers with School Success,” that’s relevant to this conversation. The book has been recommended, by among others, Linda Darling-Hammond, Deborah Meier, the president of the NEA, and presidents of local teachers unions in Minneapolis and Rochester NY. Also endorsed by Tom Vander Ark, formerly of Gates, and Michael Petrelli. It describes 11 district & charter public schools, from Washington and California to Connecticut and Massachusetts, that are the result of local teachers creating public schools that they think make sense.
Linda D-H wrote, in part, “Trusting Teachers with School Success shows us hat can happen when authority and accountability are brought together and teachers have a seat at every table.”
Deborah Meier wrote, “This lively account of what it looks like in schools that have tried trusting teachers is a must read.” (Mission Hill in Mass, which Deborah helped start, is one of the 11 schools discussed in the book. Here’s more info:
http://hometownsource.com/2013/03/06/a-book-about-trusting-teachers-draws-praise-from-educators-and-activists/
Joe — I think the model of having experienced educators spin off a school makes sense. But it does not have to be a charter. Similar institutional structures can be part of a district system.
Examples, as I’m sure you know, include Mini-Schools and Schools-Within-Schools. The latter are usually formed when a group of teachers within a larger school get some of the space and form a distinct educational environment, usually with a separate budget, control over curriculum, etc. In NYC we had a flourishing alternative HS district — one that Bloom’n’Klein reduced to a 20th its former size — which allowed for small schools to be created at a pace that allowed experienced educators to apply the lessons they had learned.
As opposed to the present version of charters, where there is a break neck pace to create a parallel system, we need, as you say, “local teachers creating public schools that they think make sense.” It always amazes me that these people who say they are following business models and best practices fail to recognize that expansion at too great a rate is one of the chief causes of business failures and declines in quality control. But quality is not their mission.
There is no reason dedicated educators cannot be given space to work within the district system. Or, if we had Charters that had to have an educator with at least 10 years experience as a principal and had to abide by the district’s salary scale, that might be something to think about. But, right now, we are seeing a recklessly rapid expansion of the charter system in which the quality of the education is of secondary or tertiary concern.
Instead, the primary concern is control. As our friends Chubb and Moe have advocated, they want autonomy for administrators, the ability to fire at will and hire cheap. Trusting Teachers with School Success is the last thing on their minds.
Brian, we agree that these schools could be run by district. A few districts have reached out to teachers and encouraged them to do this (examples are in the book).
I agree with you that NYC had a thriving New Visions sector.
Some teacher union leaders have encouraged districts to do this (Boston Teachers Union is a great example. The School Committee there agreed to do the Pilot Schools.
One fact that can’t be overlooked in all of this analysis: if 10 schools are splitting 2.8 million from “philanthropists” (aka potential investors) and $800K from USDOE, they would have a supplemental budget of $3.6 million per school. To make the math easy, lets suppose that each school enrolls 500 students. That works out to $7,200 per student in ADDITIONAL funding. When that amount is added to the TN state per pupil costs, I would guess it is twice as much as the public school can spend on each student. If money doesn’t make a difference, as many privatizers contend, maybe they should share their funds with the public schools. And the prizes and $100,000 for PR, get real! Can you imagine the scandal if a public school system spent $100,000+ on prizes for registrants and PR?
Per pupil spending in TN is just over $8,000.
Just a few things about Aspire’s co-founder, Don Shalvey.
In 1992, Shalvey sponsored the first charter school in California as Superintendent of the San Carlos School District.
In 1998, Shalvey and Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix, major supporter of Green Dot, etc.), co-founded Californians for Public School Excellence, the organization that sponsored the bill that raised the cap on the number of charter schools in CA (California Charter School Initiative ).
Also in 1998, Shalvey and Hastings co-founded Aspire Public Schools.
In 2009, Shalvey left Aspire to go to work at the Gates Foundation. Just one example of how this benefited Aspire was that, the following year, the Gates and Schwab Foundations backed Aspire’s efforts to secure $93 million in tax-exempt bonds for new school buildings.
Shalvey is a board member of the California Charter School Association, as is Reed Hastings. Hastings sat on Microsoft’s board for nearly six years, stepping down last November to deal with his wobbling company.
Aspire’s new community outreach director, Mr. Manning, has his child at a nice private school in midtown.
Are they they slumlords of the charter world? Paying for trips? How bad does all this get? Can you imagine sending your kid to a school run like this? The Dept. of Ed. is promoting this stuff?
The comments under the article are very revealing. “Transparency issues”, poor work environment ratings,(They received federal money for this garbage!). It is unbelievable how people keep going around the country exploiting minority children. Unreal.
Diane wrote, ” Secretary Duncan’s belief that private management is always superior to public control” Does she have a quote to support that assertion? I’ve heard the Secretary speak several times (most recently when he was in Minnesota to salute a collaboration between a pubilc school district and a local college). I’ve never heard him make the assertion that “private management is always superior to public control.”
If you can supply documentation, I’ll stand corrected.
As to visiting schools, When we worked with Cincinnati Public Schools and St. Paul Public Schools, we took parents, students, and educators to see some outstanding district public schools in NYC (such as the Julia Richman complex, and El Puente). Taking people to see schools can be valuable.
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You need to see the Times editorial praising Aspire’s teacher evaluation model. Ay yi yi!
http://waynegersen.com/2013/04/14/nytimes-editors-shoddy-research-yields-bad-conclusion/