Arthur Goldstein, who teaches English language learners in a high school in Néw York City, realized he is missing out on the way to get very rich in Mayor Bloomberg’s education system.
Certainly not by teaching because the mayor doesn’t care for teachers.
It is not by teaching in a charter but by operating a charter like Eva and Geoffrey. The teachers turn over rapidly but the CEOs do very well indeed.
They have figured out that the secret to success is not accepting many ELLs or kids with disabilities.
Works like a charm.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
take a look at this Diane:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4qKWprpeak&list=PLcqw1jHO-pivx5cUKlmXHSoPqQZJHk_ZT
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The sad thing is, many parents are fine with this. They don’t want their kids around the SpEd kids, or have their learning “slowed down” by the ELL kids, or even have them around kids from lower income families. I was talking to a woman a couple of days ago whose 3 kids are all in a charter in Utah. One of the reasons she put her kids there – they wouldn’t have to be around the riff-raff, meaning the brown-skinned children and those from lower income families. She was proud of “advocating” for her children by getting them out of the public school where she felt they were being exposed to “trash”. Even a couple of my professors (Ed department, no less) had their kids in charters and didn’t see an issue in the fact that charters in Utah don’t provide transportation, hence only those in upper income levels can attend unless they happen to live close to a charter, thus even though they were spouting the “teach all children” rhetoric in their classes, they did not want their own kids exposed to the “riff-raff”. But then, Utah is quite well known for its hypocrisy….
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The way to undermine the weaponizing of charters as a profit-generator is to fight the perception that charters are like fancy prep schools – but for free. That is how people are sold on them. I suspect this is part of the appeal, and the exclusivity of them, through hard selection processes and underserving certain populations, is part of that. Exposing the conditions of bad charters as test-prep mills that do not provide an intellectually nourishing experience is what will help win people over.
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I teach in Utah, and I’ve seen the same things.
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Sadly, because of the awful test-prep factories that some public schools have become, some see charter schools as a way to get what the public schools used to be: arts, music, p.e., etc.
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It’s not confined to Utah.
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A couple years back, Stephen Colbert hit
the nail on the head with his satirical skewering
of the Tea Party’s takeover of the Wake
County, North Carolina schools—those
candidates funded and controlled by the
Koch Brothers. They immediately took
steps to reverse decades of racial and
economic integration… a system that polls
said Wake County parents were 94.5% of
Wake County parents—again, made
up of all racial and socio-economic
groups—were “highly satisfied” with.
The Tea Partiers couldn’t live well
enough alone as…
“What the use of living in a gated
community if your kids to go school
and get ‘poor’ all over them?”
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/371414/january-18-2011/the-word—disintegration?xrs=share_fb
Colbert ridicules the following:
Integrating and providing greater
serves for disadvantaged kids hides how
bad things are for these disadvantaged
kids by increasing their academic
achievement and future opportunities…
Therefore…
The best way to address the problems
of poor kids—and special ed kids, for that
matter—is to IGNORE THEM, so when
they get really, really bad, people will
notice them more, and THEN fix them.
“Y’all got that?” (I’m saying that in an
Andy Griffith-ish North Carolina accent.)
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Can a politician who believes this look a poor mother and child in the face and say this?
Hard times can fall on anyone.
What happened to “there but for the grace of god go I?”
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The traditional way to deal with poor students was to carefully draw district and zone boundaries.
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And??
(I think I know where you’re going to go with this, TE-ha ha!!)
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I just want to remind folks that segregation by race and class is not unique to charter schools.
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And then the courts got involved and forced the public schools to integrate.
http://www.civilrights.uga.edu/cities/atlanta/school_desegregation.htm
Wonder if they will do the same for the charters?
Not holding breath, somehow.
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It took a while for the courts to get their orders enforced with traditional public schools. If I had to guess, it will be faster with charter schools.
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You think public schools aren’t still segregated?
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FLERP, I don’t think anyone says that there is no segregation in public schools. There is far too much. But you should know that even in districts with high levels of racial segregation, the charters in those districts are even more segregated than the surrounding public schools. See UCLA Civil Rights Project.
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FLERP @ 8:23 am:
Straw man much?
Exactly where did anyone say public schools are not segregated?
However, living in the deep south, we are very familiar with the courts at least trying to do something about it.
We have a great deal of experience down here with court ordered busing, and teacher transfers as well as magnet and theme schools to attract different races to cross neighborhoods, etc.
Not holding my breath for the courts to do something about the even greater segregation of charter schools, though.
TE (@ 11:21 pm), however, seems certain that the courts will intervene sooner rather than later on that front.
Hope he is correct.
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While Eva and Geoffrey have certainly done well I don’t think you can beat the scam originated by the Bakkes for Imagine Schools and Schoolhouse Finance.
Their 8-Step Enron-Style Road to Riches Through Edupreneurship
1. Buy property from cities for next to nothing or with money obtained through charter-friendly governments and corporations, often accompanied by lucrative tax breaks and incentives.
2. Sell that property to a shell company and pay another shell company to renovate that property so that you maintain ownership but can claim non-profit status and tax breaks while continuing to pay yourself with tax dollars.
3. Rent that property to a charter school at a very high price and start raking in millions in tax dollars.
4. Simultaneously charge that charter school a high “management” fee to rake in more tax dollars.
5. Wait until that charter school has big budget shortfalls due to the high rent and management fees paid to you and then loan the charter school money at a high interest rate.
6. Receive more tax breaks, incentives, and kickbacks from charter friendly legislation.
7. Make a few political donations to purchase more charter-friendly legislation that ensures that your shady dealings remain legal and the oversight murky, minimal, or non-existent.
8. Count your ill-gotten millions and laugh all the way to the bank on the backs of poor families, their children, and taxpayers across the land.
I know White Hat and a few other for-profit charter management firms have tried this model with varying degrees of success but the Bakkes had amassed over $400 million back in 2010. I don’t know their current wealth created from tax dollars but I hear it’s closer to a billion dollars. Now that’s big $$$. . . .
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Most disgusting and yes…that’s why money is the source of ALL evil.
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Have to disagree with you on that one Yvonne.
Money is an inanimate object and has no designs on anything. Evil is considered to be an attribute of human intent/heart/soul/being. And although money and evil are generally quite banal only one, evil, is a human attribute.
It is the “love” of money that is the root of all evil. And that love takes many a low and barely noticeable track (banal) to cause harm (evil) to others.
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You keep saying that, don’t ya Duane.
Tis true.
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I blame the Serpent, Adam, and Eve.
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FLERP!
I don’t put much worth on ancient Mid-East desert tribal origin myths.
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They have a job for life too. They don’t have to worry about being fired. It is a great racket. I remember watching Oprah Winfrey when she had Michelle Rhee on talking about teacher reform and the billionaire Winfrey and lobbyist Rhee were both emphasizing the need for reform because teachers have a “job for life”. What a joke. The charter CEOs have a job for life and a fortune built through taxpayers. Sickening.
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Alabama does not allow charter schools, thank heavens. Allowing them is one of the few mistakes in the area of education that the state has not yet made. On the other hand, the Alabama Accountability Act was passed. Even as an educator in a Cathoilc school, I neither agree with it nor do I care for the manner in which it was passed.
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Alabama doesn’t have a state lottery either, does it?
Nobody but me sees the connection there.
I trace the downfall of schools back to state lotteries.
Maybe I should research it.
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Joanna, I think you may be onto something there. That’s how Jeb Bush began his long quest to become an educational reformer. He bragged incessantly about how many millions of dollars he put into the schools through the Florida lottery. What he didn’t share, however, was the sleazy way he took money out of the general budget for schools equal to the amount of lottery dollars put in. Great scam! Then he went for the vouchers, school grades, and ending tenure.
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Yep, state lotteries/gambling was another of the great scams of the last thirty years as far as public education is concerned.
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No, Alabama does not have a lottery. That has been voted down in statewide votes by our citizens twice that I can recall. However, most of the voters were not thinking the destuction of public education if a lottery was established; they were thinking along the lines of too much gambling, sin, etc. I will have to remember that point the next time we have a vote for a lottery; probably as soon as we have a new Governor.
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To me it is a downward spiral. First of all, the state does not need to be in the gambling business, in my opinion. Let Indian reservations have casinos if they want them (or use parameters for gambling and then tax it, but the government in on it is just not a good idea). Bible Belt or not, the state being in the gambling business represents fast easy money that legislators don’t have to figure out and we all know who typically buys lottery tickets. From there the easy money ideas just begin to flow (and the exploitation of those with very little too). I know the argument people are going to gamble, and I am sure that is true. So let them. But don’t make the state “the house.” It’s cheap politics. It’s sketchy.
I had uneasy feelings as a child during the Cold War. As an adult I have had uneasy feelings about three things: WalMart, state lottery, education reform. I am an artist–I am perceptive far earlier about things than I can articulate. But my unease on these things seems to be pointing to some type of correlation.
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You are right!
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