Last year, the Metro Nashville school board rejected Great Hearts Academy four times because it insisted on locating its charter school in the city’s most affluent neighborhood, with no plans for diversity. The rejection was entirely appropriate inasmuch as the new charter would be the equivalent of a publicly-funded private school for affluent white students.
In Arizona, Great Hearts was known for high test scores, but also for expecting parents to contribute $1,200-1,500 annually to defray school costs and keep classes small. For parents thinking of private schools, that’s a bargain, but it’s not public education. Last year, Great Hearts acquired a certain notoriety when the Arizona Republic wrote about how the school directed $1 million in textbook purchases to a board member, who gave generously to the school.
The Arizona Republic wrote:
“The 15 schools under the non-profit Great Hearts Academies offer a college-preparatory curriculum that stresses classic literature. That means students get an intensive reading regimen.
“To supply the books, the schools have been making regular purchases for at least the last three years from a Tempe-based textbook company called Educational Sales Co. Daniel Sauer, the company’s president and CEO and a shareholder, is also an unpaid officer of the Great Hearts Academies non-profit.
“Since July 2009, the schools have made $987,995 in purchases from the company.
“Great Hearts also gives parents the option of buying books directly from the company. Six of the Great Hearts school websites feature links only to Educational Sales’ website for parents who want to buy a second set of books for use at home.
“Great Hearts CEO Dan Scoggin said he doesn’t believe there is a conflict of interest because Great Hearts has no mandates on where its schools buy books. Many Great Hearts schools use several vendors based on pricing, service and availability, he said.
“Great Hearts schools are exempt from state purchasing laws.”
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State Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman (Michelle Rhee’s -ex, whose sole previous education experience was TFA) was furious that Metro Nashville turned down Great Hearts. He withheld $3.4 million in state funds owed to the children of Nashville to punish the board for defying him.
Why such fierce devotion to this particular charter operator when there are so many other charter chains? It is a puzzlement.
Then House Speaker Beth Harwell (R) expressed her displeasure by introducing ALEC legislation to create a state charter commission to authorize charter schools at will, without regard to the wishes of elected local school boards. This made other Republican legislators uncomfortable, some because they remembered that local control is (or used to be) a conservative idea, others because they worried that charters for inner-city kids might open in their own neighborhood.
So the legislators dropped Harwell’s ALEC proposal and shifted to a bill saying that the state board of education should have the power to override local school board decisions.
That way they can protect their own neighborhood schools from those “poor kids trapped in failing schools,” while making it possible for the state board to open publicly financed private schools in white neighborhoods.
The bill seems sure to sail through the legislature. Great Hearts will get its charter, maybe several charters, and local control in Tennessee will be eviscerated in the service of corporate chain schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
People who remember the aftermath of of the Bussing-For-Integration versus Separate-But-Equal-(Wink-Wink) wars will recall that Local Control was a conservative idea that won general acceptance as a way to end the chaos of those days. In essence, our conservative brethren and sistern said, “Just give us community control and we promise no one will get hurt.”
But now it’s clear that this com-promise is no longer good enough for the extremists. They don’t want community control. They want nothing short of corporate control at every level they can get it, local, state, federal, or global.
I don’t understand something. So, for example, as bills are put in like in NC for no caps on class size and no tenure to enable more local control, then the next step is to take that away too? What is the desired outcome? Is it that leaders of this movement do not believe in community? That community is just a loose conglomeration of people vastly divided by income? So you end up with pockets of community?
I have always presumed “conservatives” we’re just more concerned with tight purse strings, but I don’t get where the vision of cohesive community fits in? Is it irrelevant?
Were just concerned. Not we’re.
Autocorrect is a pain.
The conservatives just want to run the schools like a for profit business, which is where their experience lies. Students are products and teachers are labor. The teachers are expendable just like the undocumented worker hired to fix the roof and then let go because the boss can always pick up another one in front of Home Depot.
This is a blatant effort to re-segregate the schools, not so much by race as by class. And you can bet that whenever a minority child attends these class charters, even if that child has wealthy, highly educated parents, he or she will be highlighted in the charter’s advertising. What they need to have forced on them is the old M to M desegregation tactic. And make the charter group pay for the bussing. Old tactic, but it works.
If anyone does not believe me, click on the website. I saw one African-American child in their student pictures. He was front and center. One who might have been Hispanic, a few Asians and one who appeared to be bi-racial. All the rest were lily white. You know who they are marketing to.
One of the interesting things I noticed in Mich. is that charters are causing more segregation. Minorities are going to charters and white people stay in their public district. It is a strange phenomenon.
they want what they want and that is it. Read the DOE OIG audit on the total lack of accountability of charter schools in Florida,ARIZONA and California. Did you all see ARIZONA where Great Hearts comes from? This study is available on the DOE OIG website at DOE-OIG/A02L0002. That is if you really care about stopping charter schools. So far in more than 3 months I have been the only person talking about this devastating report on charter schools. My question is “Do you really want to STOP THEM?” Talk without information is useless. I am in the middle of stopping them by action, are you?
They really need to start looking at Michigan too.
Carver Neblett/Traditional: “If you miss me from the back of the bus, and you can’t find me nowhere. Come on up to the front of the bus, I’ll be sittin’ up there.”
Michigan Skunk Works …
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130419/SCHOOLS/304190361/Education-reform-group-forges-voucher-like-plan-Michigan