Charter Schools USA took over some low-performing schools in Indiana, and its three schools are still low-performing.
The state paid out $30 million to five so-called “turnarounds,” but none has turned around.
The chief academic officer for Charter Schools USA, which operates Emma Donnan, Manual and Howe, says turnaround is not “a quick fix.”
“What is encouraging about our results as we’ve been tracking them,” Sherry Hage wrote in a statement, “is that while we may have received an ‘F,’ our schools are most definitely not failing any longer.
Ex-State Commissioner Tony Bennett’s wife works for Charter Schools USA.
The corporation donated to Bennett’s failed re-election campaign.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How quickly do they kick out “failing” teachers in public schools? And do they kick out teachers at charters?
To answer your question….the best teachers…the ones willing to make next to nothing to work in one of these schools…..the projects would be a proper likeness….are targeted and alienated. ..if I didnt have a whole career ahead of me I would tell my story…It is so bad….unbelievably bad..and until someone uncovers what is really going on inside the walls of these schools and allows the bright light of accountability to work its magic…they will continue to work from methods that ignore research…promote inexperience and thrive on delusions of grandeur (sp?)….
Who covered up the investigation into Christel House – Tony’s favorite school and owner/donor? The state legislators must explain how Christel House moved from A to F. Also, Tony and his pal Jeb have some explaining to do.
Actually the DEformers did predict a quick fix if they had their way.
Very consistently we see that when you actually look at their results, as measured on their own terms, they do NOT produce better results with the same kids.
Another BOONDOGGLE at the cost of kids. OY!
If you run and work for a charter school and get an “F” [or its equivalent] you have “good” reasons for keeping your charter and continuing along.
If you run and work in a public school and get an “F” [or its equivalent] and you have the exact same “good” reasons for continuing your work, you are lazy LIFOs making excuses for running a “dropout factory” and being educators who have “low expectations of their students” and exhibit a “fear of excellence.”
The cognitive dissonance is stunning…
Except if you realize it’s all about $tudent $ucce$$. Then it makes a lot of ₵ent¢…
😎
So true! The double standards- told with a straight face- continue to amaze me. But, of course, I am (whisper) ” a public school teacher.”
Cognitive dissonance indeed! “while we may have received an ‘F,’ our schools are most definitely not failing any longer.” REALLY?! Tell that to the schools that were closed & the kids/families who had to re-arrange their lives because their schools had an “F.” Just goes to show you, the “righteous” state comes in to prove how wonderful their turn around is going to be (after all, no one ELSE can make a difference), and they swoop in to “save” the children… and NEWS FLASH!!!! The kids still struggle!!! WOW! Maybe they can’t do a better job of “saving” the children, because they’re attacking the wrong problem! The level of dysfunction is beyond disgusting!
The dysfunction is connected to greed and financial quid pro quo relationships among certain foundations, chiefs for change, lobbyists, legislators and for-profit charter owners. Tax funded reformers like Duncan and King are their front men.
“because they’re attacking the wrong problem!”
And what, pray tell, Ms. Hannah is the correct problem to be attacking, and how do we KNOW it is the cause of the problem, and how would you go about attacking it?
Are you going to offer me the “poverty” explanation for “the . . . problem”? Are you going to offer me the “not until income is equalized” answer?
I’d like to know what your assumptions are.
Correct assumptions? In depth research identifies the problems consistently. If you follow Dr. Ravitch blogs these would be apparent. Assumptions? The “philosophies” followed by the Tony Bennetts are based on assumptions. I personally saw Bennett in Gary, IN. where he promoted a book by a Chinese immigrant on how bad our schools were. He seemed to be unaware of the research of Dr. Ravitch. How many Nobel prizes have the Chinese won – in contrast to the U. S., how many patents? Etc, ad nauseum.
If the correct assumptions are so obvious and apparent, put yourself on the line and say what YOU think they are. I’ve already posted my critique of what I take to be Diane’s position, a fairer system of taxation in which the rich are taxed way more than they are now.
It is SO easy to say, “poverty is the problem,” but no one ever comes forward to explicitly say what the solution is economically to poverty. Oh, we hear “compassion,” and “comprehensive services” and “art,” but no one explains HOW they are to be paid for.
Taxation does not create wealth. Only work does. Poverty is a function of jobs. Who creates jobs? Oh, my goodness, it’s those nasty old businessmen and capitalists. But we couldn’t support THEM. Because then we’d be sneeringly shouted down by the commies in the faculty room and we wouldn’t have the “respect” of our colleagues. We’d be identifying with the “owners” rather than the “workers.” What stale, desiccated marxism.
When you criticize business in general because some businesses (e.g. Enron) are corrupt, you betray an unseriousness in the face of the real problems of educational funding. You’re like evangelicals promising pie in the sky by and by, only this pie is an elite education for every child in America. Yes, they SHOULD have it, but they can’t even have a reasonable minimal opportunity education with you holding out for heaven or nothing.
No wonder Bush and Gates want to take away your power if they can. You’re getting in the way of what’s possible.
I offer you absolutely nothing Harlan. You deserve no more of my energy.
Understandable. Pity though.
Harlan,
I dare you. One week. New York City ghetto (or equivalent scenario). Elementary school. All day. Do not bring your own lunch. Yes, volunteer. Get off your comfy computer chair. Live in reality for 1 week as do thousands of dedicated teachers. Then you can pontificate how “lazy and worthless” our public school teachers are, and how poverty doesn’t affect children.
You are just another “armchair educator” who apparently has never dealt with issues that teachers in the real world do. Go troll some other site. We are tired of your bullying.
A valid proposal, but what is the relevance? I KNOW teachers work hard. I KNOW poverty generates a lot of ignorant children unready to learn in a regular school. I don’t dispute the facts. I do dispute the too easily proposed remedies.
It’s REALLY undemocratic of you to try to shut me up. Is that they way they do it in the union?
I must point out in my defense that I never said teachers were “lazy and worthless,” but your using double quotes for emphasis implies that you are quoting me. Bad scholarship there. Likewise “armchair educator” which you also put in double quotes for emphasis when double quotes implies a direct quote. I didn’t put in my 42 years as a classroom English teacher for nothing.
I know the conditions are terrible and comparatively speaking I had an easy teaching life, BUT a communist/socialist solution I just don’t think is going to work. Revolution— French, Russian, Chinese—just has a very bad reputation and I think teachers WEAKEN their own credibility by spouting off about how a revolution is necessary for justice.
No communist or socialist actually can explain justice anyway. There’s lots of emotion about justice for the workers, but is it real justice? And besides, it’s the kids who are the ones needing the justice, not the teachers.
I don’t mean to bully or divert the blog from effective action in the least. I do see a lot of self-indulgent posturing which deserves puncturing.
Of course, I may be completely wrong in my analysis of both causes and remedies of the general, national educational problem. Public education seems to be working pretty well in my own small city—not great, but well enough—except that the district is running out of money slowly. Why? Top heavy administration and a history of defined benefit pensions.
THAT’s not the tax payer’s fault.
Routing tax money to cronies is what education reform is all about. This is another clear example.
Pretending poverty isn’t an issue helps nobody. Pretending the best indicator of success is bubble-test scores is delusional. Pretending schools serving the rich are not better funded and more well-rounded than schools serving everyone else is convenient. Why are hedge-fund scammers & corporate tycoons investing in education reform? We all know why. And we fully understand their sales pitch. Both parties are contributing to this scam because they have financial connections to the scammers.
Ed reformers could enhance their credibility if they “turned over” a failing charter school to the public school system. Why doesn’t that ever happen?I was told they were “agnostics”.
You can choose any school you want in a district, state, city (or country, like ours) run by ed reformers, except a public school. No public schools need apply!
How have existing public schools fared under ed reform leaders in Indiana? Are they defunded and abandoned like public schools under ed reformers in Ohio?
I’m so glad Indiana has at least one elected state leader advocating for public school kids. I wish we had one in Ohio. To listen to the ed reform dominated “debate” in Ohio, one would never know that 90% of our kids attend existing public schools.
I could live with it if we were truly “on our own” but of course we’re not. We have to comply with endless ed reform mandates that apply only to public schools. It’s truly the worst of both worlds for public school kids, ed reformers in government. They have no advocates for their schools, but they have a huge group of regulators.
How did Bennett benefit public schools in Indiana? As a public school parent, that’s my measure. As far as I can tell they’re closing weak schools and weakening strong schools. There is no upside for public schools with ed reform. None. I think it’s too much to ask for me to “relinquish” my public school so they can close or ruin it, no matter what Grand Unified Ideological Theory they’re operating under or how well-intentioned they are.
The key is not to hire them. You’ll regret it if you’re a public school parent. Trust me. I have a decade of experience in Ohio. Not going well for public schools. You’ll need an advocate for your kid in government.
They turn over students to the public schools each year beginning
November 1st in my urban school district.
(You know why, of course.)
Read the Bennett emails that were released and remind yourself that these are STATE officials running BOTh charter school systems and public school systems.
You’ll have to remind yourself, because any concern for the public schools in Indiana is completely absent.
The ed reformers are frantic. not because public schools might be harmed by their ridiculous “grading system” but because CHARTER schools might.
It’s as if 90% of kids in that state simply don’t exist.
The same is true when you read the emails the ACLU sued and won in NJ, where they were wheeling and dealing for billionaire dollars. The entire focus was how they could make the promotion of charters appear “grass roots”.
And we’re paying them for this? They supposedly work for ‘the public”?
This is 1984 on roids: We received a F, but that means we are making tremendous progress. How do you carry on a serious conversation about how to improve a child’s experience in school, when some semblance of evaluative criteria vanishes in the middle of the conversation.
The charter school proponents are saying that schools are more than test scores. True, too.
Voucher proponents make the same arguments, for religious schools.
You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. We’ve come full circle! They’re just like public school parents now.
My hope, as with all school reform efforts in the last three decades, that at some point we will end up full circle back to the schools Dewey tried to design — we could call it race to sanity.
Opponents of the closings say officials with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the school board have essentially sabotaged neighborhood schools by starving them of resources, claiming the mayor’s appointed school board has served as enforcers for the mayor’s pro-business agenda to privatize public education. As the district has been active in closing and defunding public schools, a flurry of new charter schools has sprung up across the city. Just last week, CPS proposed the addition of 21 new charter schools.
“They are choking these schools out and they know exactly what they are doing,” said Steven Guy, a member of the Local School Council at Dyett. “This slow death does more damage. It’s psychologically damaging to the children. We’ve already lost one generation, and we’re about to lose another.”
I almost fell off my chair. A major media corp writing about what ed reform does to EXISTING public schools!
It’s like there are kids and neighborhoods and communities involved in this, or something.
Someone should tell Duncan this is what public school parents are afraid of, and with good reason. We think they’re slowly killing off our schools. We’re not “agnostics”, and this isn’t abstract. We expect state actors to support our public schools. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Do you think Newark will retain a “public option” in K-12 education when the “reforms” are completed? I’m betting “no”. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
I have no earthly idea why we’re turning our universal public education system into our broken, fragmented, health care system. Has privatization EVER benefitted poor or middle class people? Why would this be different?
So EdisonLearning, a for profit charter school that took over a failing school in Gary, didn’t do the grade raising that the sales department had promised?
You could have asked me, a retired teacher, and I could have told you that no ‘turn around’ would happen at ‘failing schools’ for much less than $30 million.
Ms. Hage states that that the schools are no longer failing. Were they really failing in the first place?
I have to wonder if this revelation, along with Christel House’s “F” grade, was what Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was trying to suppress by going after Glenda Ritz.
The double standard when it comes to public and chrter schools is sickening, and the stenographers who pose for journalists do our public education system no favors.