Wendy Lecker, civil rights attorney and director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, read an opinion article in the New York Times and was outraged by its recommendations. Here is her analysis:
It seems like these days, one has to be wary of anyone claiming to “help” poor neighborhoods.
An oped in the New York Times on July 13 by Michael Rubinger extolled the virtues of federal “new market tax credits” to “fix” neighborhoods in decline. Among the “valuable” neighborhood investments Rubinger mentions are charter schools.
Anyone paying attention the past year knows that expanding charter schools has been a weapon to destroy neighborhoods, not revitalize them. In Chicago, officials funneled public money to charter schools while defunding public schools. Then, declaring public schools “underutilized,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed an unprecedented number of neighborhood schools. These neighborhood schools were the anchors of their communities and parents and children vigorously protested their closure. A similar tragic story played itself out in Philadelphia, another city and state that starved the city’s public schools while funding charters, then closed a record number of neighborhood schools, despite strenuous protests by parents and children.
These new charters very often fail to serve all the children in those neighborhoods, regularly excluding ELL students and students with disabilities.
Not much of a neighborhood revitalization plan.
Although I am not much of a tax maven, I heard that term “new market tax credits” before. In 2010, Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News wrote about their connection to charter schools. It turns out these federal tax credits are a vehicle for banks and hedge funds to make enormous profits on the public dime. As Gonzalez explained:
“the investors who put up the money to build the charter schools get to basically virtually double their money in seven years through a 39 percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they’re lending, so they’re collecting interest on the loans, as well as getting the 39 percent tax credit. They piggyback the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits, like historic preservation or job creation or Brownfields credits. The result is, you can put in $10 million and in seven years double your money. And the problem is that the charter schools end up paying in rents the debt service on these loans.”
And that debt is paid, of course through taxpayer funds.
These credits help destroy neighborhoods but they certainly revitalize the balance sheets of these crafty banks and hedge funds!
And surely Michael Rubinger knows it. Just last week, he was a featured speaker in a symposium instructing Wall Street how to cash in on charters, entitled: Bonds and Blackboards: Investing in Charter Schools (New York, NY).
If the wealthy want to make a difference, they should pay their fair share in taxes so that public schools and communities can have the resources they need to provide the supports to combat the effects of poverty, help overcome the challenges of language barriers and provide the special education services to ensure that every child is provided the education they deserve and need to achieve her greatest potential.
The return on investment for those children and our society would be greater than the hedge fund managers could ever achieve.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The trends should be no surprise to anyone. Real democracy and true community schools are the underpinnings of what was once the true strength of our nation. Those institutions, though, restrain the greed of those in power and seeking more. The pundits will still paint the pig-speak of “American Exceptionalism”, individual choice, freedom…but only as a sales pitch to herd the lemmings. The truth (that the real benefits of current policies are MEANT to have narrow and limited benefit) will remain unspoken, and the GOAL (an underprivileged and dis-empowered citizenry to fuel the economy those in power want) will stay hidden.
We have known this for a long time and the hedge funds have bragged about it for a long time. This is how those people in Florida are worth $150 mill. With this methodology you double your money in 7 years instead of 12 years. Any wonder why all the attention and push for more charter schools? More is more. And you get the asset in the end for free courtesy of the taxpayer. And there is a reason that Obama and Duncan always agree with the republicans on education.
Once again, follow George!
There is no difference in the politics. This is only about a return on the dollar or any other global currency with investment of the control/power over the coffers of the public and the minds of the children. The enormity of this movement of betrayal is flowing and crashing destructively over and on the innocent children, their families, and our nation, like the waters of Niagara Falls. The flood gates have been allowed to be opened for quick and final destruction so that there is no going back. A final solution! (harsh unforgivable words!!!!!!)
The disabled, poor, disenfranchised, immigrants have little to no appreciable value (except for the backs of some). And so, they are not part of big return but to be buried over as the concrete repaves the recaptured urban centers for the elite who will then have the charter/private schools with the value added children without having to pay for them as they will be paid for by the taxpayer. Sweet! As the song goes “Nice work if you can get. And you can get it if you try!”
The bigger army of these parasites (by the way they think we are the parasites) really believe themselves to be the saviors of the planet. The “honest” ones know themselves to be nothing more then narcissistic egomaniacal power mongers who believe they have inherited the Earth for their own use/ownership or destruction. Evil!
I am trying to stay positive but after a twelve year old committed suicide this week out of her hopelessness I am today treading water.
The American Dream seems distant and for some a bold faced lie!
As an advocate for the disabled I am seeing my learning disabled kids thrown into the lions den of measuring for the thumbs up or down, life or death decision by the outside forces of the For Profit
Emperors.
The fact is public schoos have failed America and, particular, have failed minorities in the inner cities. Those trapped in those districts cannot wait two or three more generations for the publc schools to get their act together. Regardless of one’s position on charters–and I agree that are not necessarily a panacea absent substantial curricular and other reforms–citizens should have a right to take their tax dollars and spend them where they choose. Good teachers are wirth thir weight in gold, but the teacher’s unions are a cancer oin the body politic. No one should be forced to join a union as a condition of employment and, particular, pay dues to support candidates with whom they disagree. This is un-American and immoral. The most self-serving and corrupt organizations in th United States today are public employee unions that have a vested interest in growing government, and doing it, ultimately, with our tax dollars..
I do not know anything about unions, because we do not have them in my state. I know people who would tend to agree with you on your assesment of them. But your sweeping assesment of schools seems a little broad to me. The words “take their tax dollars and spend them how they choose” does not sound like democracy, or well, tax dollars.
The way we choose how to spend our tax dollars is by voting. Otherwise it is every man for himself.
Were the schools supposed to get people out of poverty? That’s a mighty tall order for any single institution, particularly when they were busy hosting integration and helping states balance budgets through cuts.
Furthermore, that might not be a fact at all. That might be spin. Like teeth whiteners. 89 cent bottle of peroxide and some baking soda makes a nice teeth whitener. But if you are surrounded by hype about teeth whiteners, you begin to buy into it (some people at a hefty price tag).
Who told you the schools had failed? Did they first tell you that schools never professed to being able to end generational poverty on their own?
Otherwise it would be every man for himself, I should have said. That is not democracy. Choosing how to spend “your” tax dollars is not democracy. Tax dollars are for the good of the common welfare. And we elect people who choose how to spend them. When elected officials forget to preserve institutions that will not turn children away, and instead wave it around for private companies to take and build schools that will turn people away, then that is not democracy.
Our country has failed our public schools. Twinkies, Honey-Boo-Boo and baubles and games are brainwashing, and “choice” and “competition” are code words for divisive greed and self interest. Unions are vital to protecting us from the walmart-ization of everything that is only building the steep mountain of wealth on the backs of the labor of the lower classes in the U.S. (and in overseas third-world nations when nature and humanity lovers are likely to interfere here). Conquer and divide. Distract the sufferers of job-market free-market exploits with the barely median wages and due process rights of teachers. Increase the stock of cheap expendable labor to power the military intrusions that pave resource acquisition around the world. Self serving and immoral? Unions and public schools-more so than the corporate and financial giants intruding, setting us upon each other while they cash in? Already having milked the private sector they now turn to the commons to push us down farther into their service. But maybe you’re right. Teachers must have done it.
+1
Kenyboy, Kennyboy, Kennyboy, Kennyboy (said in a teacher’s flabbergasted voice), indeed public schools have failed us if your way of thinking (parroting?) is any indication. Opinions do not a good logical argument make.
Don’t feed the trolls.
Michael Fiorillo: you, sir, offer wise counsel.
May I offer a dollop of [twisted] Lewis Carroll in tribute to your apt admonition?
TITLE: You are old, Sir Troll
FIRST AND SECOND VERSES:
“You aren’t old, Sir Troll,” the young man said,
“Yet your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly hammer your head—
Do you think, for your sanity, that is right?”
“In my sanity,” Sir Troll replied to the young’un,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”
My add: “laughter is poison to the pompous.”
🙂
Also, if the wealthy want to make a difference, why do tax dollars have to fund the benevolence?
Gates: build a school. Hire the teachers. Pay for it. If it works, may e states will follow. But don’t fund companies that will seduce states into paying for things that have never been piloted and then get them to pay for it.
At the expense of tax payers and public institutions.
“If the wealthy want to make a difference, they should pay their fair share in taxes so that public schools and communities can have the resources they need to provide the supports to combat the effects of poverty, help overcome the challenges of language barriers and provide the special education services to ensure that every child is provided the education they deserve and need to achieve her greatest potential.
The return on investment for those children and our society would be greater than the hedge fund managers could ever achieve.”
The wealthy want to make more wealth. Period. There are some that care about the children and society, but they aren’t among these bankers and hedge fund managers.
They call those who have no money to give the takers. All the while they are taking tax money away from those who have the least.
By saying the schools are failing, it is music to the ears of some who are frustrated with their own lives, and they want a quick fix. It isn’t going to happen as long as we fail to address the needs of people WHERE THEY ARE.
I get the idea that some of these “do-gooders” want to control whatever is taught and to remold all kids to become “like them” not to bring the children into a life worth living while they are children.
The middle class is a threat to these corporate leeches, so they are silencing them day by day.
This blog is the congregated efforts of those who need a place to organize.
You say the wealthy want more wealth, period, except some, who are certainly not bankers and hedge fund managers. How many bankers and hedge fund managers do you know?
In one post here I had my head handed to me by a frequent poster for making an unwarranted generalization when I said there were great teachers, terrible teachers, and most of us are somewhere in between.
“…there were great teachers, terrible teachers, and most of us are somewhere in between.”
Sounds like the normal curve to me…
To me to, but I was roundly criticized for making an unwarranted generalization. There is very little middle ground allowed here.
No one knows this. Charter school proponents never mention that a lot of the schools are for-profit, let alone the elaborate financing and tax credits used to expand them.
State legislators are expected to regulate this “school sector”, this “portfolio of schools”?
What a joke. The finance sector will roll them every time.
I believe that about 35% of charter schools are for profit.
I believe it’s 80% in Michigan.
The non-profits can be deceptive, too. It’s a non-profit structure, but services are contracted out to for-profits.
Reformers tried to pass a deregulatory provision in Ohio where teachers would be independent contractors, so not even “employees” of the educational management entity that controls the school.
It failed, but I’m sure that’s the eventual goal.
They’ll be absolutely impossible to regulate as they become more and more sophisticated and national.
The figure I cited was a national.one. I did not know you were only talking about Michigan when you said “a lot of the schools are for profit”.
What do these masters of finance think happens to these communities when they fire all the middle class public employees and replace them with temps or contract employees?
Charter schools in Ohio pay the front-line employees much less than public schools. Where are they re-allocating those public funds? Ifcit isn’t going to
pay teachers, where is it going?
Does it not pay the overhead and go into the pockets of the private owners or LLCs? People would not be getting wealthy from these schools if that were not the case, would they?