Twenty years ago, when I supported the interesting idea of charter schools, there was a clear and oft-stated purpose for them: Freedom from regulation in exchange for results and accountability.
That deal has been repudiated by the charter industry. They want freedom from regulation, freedom from supervision, and freedom from public audits with no accountability.
They want public money with no checks on what they do with that money. The most egregious examples–though not uncommon–are in Ohio and Arizona. In the latter state, charters engage in nepotism and self-dealing in plain sight. In Ohio, charter founders collect millions in profits while delivering worse education than public schools. They achieve this freedom by making campaign contributions to politicians.
Bill Phillis of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition feels sure that Ohio voters will wise up and demand accountability from charters.
He writes:
Is it possible to achieve transparency and accountability in charter schools without public governance?
The academic failure rate of a very high percentage of charter schools and the financial missteps and outright fraud in a plethora of charter schools will eventually force the education choice-minded state officials to increase the transparency and accountability of the charter school industry in Ohio. Concerned citizens, as well as the public education community, must closely monitor all legislative attempts to regulate this deregulated enterprise. There will, no doubt, be some cosmetic changes in charter school law which will be advertised by state officials as measures which make charter schools transparent and accountable.
The bottom line of the whole matter is that tinkering with transparency and accountability without making a fundamental change in governance is unacceptable. Any school entity that use public funds must be governed by publicly elected boards of education or be directly responsible to public officials.
Pure non-accountable madness reigns in the Ohio charter school arena. A private group can initiate a charter school and seek a sponsor. Typically the sponsor is a private organization. The private charter school operator, after securing a sponsor, sets up a private charter school board. The private board then may contract with a private for-profit or non-profit management company. The interaction among the charter school personnel, the board, the sponsor and the management company is a mystery to the school districts being charged for the students which they lose to this menagerie of self-serving private operations.
Since public money is being used, public governance should be required. Those who govern the sponsors, those who govern the charter schools and those who govern the management companies should be elected by the public. The roster of all these governance persons should be maintained by the Secretary of State in the same manner as members of school district boards of education.
The only way to ensure accountability and transparency is through the electoral process. If charter schools are here to stay, they must be publicly governed.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
This email was sent by ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net |
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This might be a really stupid question (in two parts), but I’m going to ask anyway.
Do non-profits (including churches) have any accountability? Is taking tax money for a purpose (like a charter) different from tax-exempt (like a non-profit) in terms of what it costs a tax payer?
If we really, truly went to a market system for education, then eventually wouldn’t all schools just be tax-exempt organizations (like churches) who have to come up their own money?
Am I making any sense?
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Nobody has taken my question yet, I see.
Think about it, though. Charters are not really a Milton Friedman thing—because they still rely on tax money.
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Give us a chance to answer.
An answer to your first question: It depends on “to whom” the non-profit is accountable. They will all have “accountability”, now whether that accountability is to the public taxpayer or to some totally different entity is the question.
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Thank you, Duane. I’m glad you are speaking to me again.
(for the record, I did wait four hours before I commented that nobody had answered). 🙂
The more I look at it, the more I see Charters as sort of just a luke warm, half-a___ band-aid. (I know there are some good ones, don’t get me wrong. . .but the concept in general).
If they want to go all Milton Friedman, then the government would not pay anything (the tax payer would not) for schools. Right? So Charters don’t really go along with the free market mentality. I get that they are supposed to offer “choice,” but if it’s funded by the tax payer it ain’t free market. Right??
And so same with vouchers. You can’t have the market and use tax payer money.
So it’s all a farce.
This is like slowly sipping Jagermeister, what we have right now. This sort of private, sort of public, private schools take public money, public schools catch the dribble. No! Slam that shot glass, if you want to feel that burn. Or order a nice cup of tea, which is a nice analogy for what public school could be.
Either have public school, or have a market system. Slam your Jager, sip your tea. This limbo, half-way, sorta kinda woulda coulda is no good mon. As they say in Haiti, “it is killing me down, father.”
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It reminds me of my favorite line in AMERICAN GANGSTER (link here, but this is a crass-mouthed link).
Skim ahead to about 1:35 , when they are cleaning up the stain on the Alpaca wool rug.
“Put the club soda on it, you simple simon. . . ”
(Diane, my apologies if the link is offensive. It is a real movie. And unfortunately, it is based on real life).
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Joanna,
Never stopped speaking with you from this side. Just picking and choosing more carefully so that I won’t be wearing the #1 collar next year at this time. Not to mention over the last two weeks the internet has been out at home since Monday, and before that I was literally off my feet with a bout of gout in both ankles and feet and could barely make it to the computer and even then my brain was searing with pain and pain meds. Talk about an alternative reality that was not planned. But getting a whole lot better and am back at it.
Duane
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Sorry to hear about this, Duane. Hope you are feeling much better.
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Thanks, Joe!!
Still a bit of lingering stiffness, pain etc. . . . I joke that it’s just my body’s way of trying to remind me of all the good times I had that now results in these many aches and pains. (I had hoped to play slow pitch till I was 60, made it to over 50.) It’s life and living, take the bad with the good, but boy I think we all prefer the good. And no, I don’t need the contrast thank you.
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If you’re going to attribute beliefs to Milton Friedman, rely on facts rather than ideologically-based assumptions. Friedman advocated vouchers – paid for by taxpayers – usable at a variety of schools, similar to what is now done with Pell Grants for higher education. He did not advocate education only for children whose parents could afford to pay for it themselves.
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Duane Swacker: cuídate/take care of yourself/ki o tsukete! [Sp/Eng/Jpn]
This blog would be much the poorer without a Quixotic Quester…
😎
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http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2011/10/18/five-common-misconceptions-about-ohio-charter-schools/
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There are various points of view in public education, as this list-serve makes clear. Many people working in and with charters are disgusted by people who don’t want to report how dollars are spent. Many working in and with charters want to see continuously low performing charters that don’t show improvements over 3-5 years, using multiple forms of measurement, closed.
The National Alliance of Charter School Authorizers has been very active around the country, pushing for higher expectations and closures of continuously low performing and/or financially irresponsible charters. More info here:
http://www.qualitycharters.org/
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Amen.
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“The National Alliance of Charter School Authorizers has been very active around the country, pushing for higher expectations and closures of continuously low performing and/or financially irresponsible charters. ”
But Joe, they’re authorizers. It’s in the name of the organization. Why are they continuing to authorize the opening of charter schools in this state when they cannot regulate the schools they have?
Closing a school isn’t “regulation”. They just closed 17 charter schools in Columbus. We were told the market was saturated. What about our investment in those schools? Those kids now go back to the public schools that have been weakened by the opening of the 17 charter schools.
These are systems, they’re in a context, in a community. Everything a charter school does in the system affects the public schools. There’s repercussions, blowback, lost opportunity costs, damage sustained, in the course of these really reckless experiments.
Public schools aren’t somehow preserved in storage, static, while this “churn” takes place. They’re bleeding.
They’re not a backup that can be ignored until they’re called into service when there’s “market failure” in the charter sector. They’re affected by decisions made in the “charter sector”.
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NACSA is not opening new schools in Ohio. NACSA has in fact criticized some of the same things in Ohio that you have criticized. And others have done some work in Ohio that convinced legislators not to approve some of the things that White Hat wants.
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I think what I resent most about the situation with Ohio charters is how we were used as an experiment and then abandoned. They left a real mess. Occasionally one of them will be quoted in media reports “demanding” more accountability, but nothing ever happens. The truth is nothing ever happens because our state politicians have been captured by lobbyists, but that’s impolite to mention although it’s obviously true.
I wish they would apply the same energy and money they used to create Ohio’s charter system to cleaning it up. Student’s First parachuted in to lobby on the last state budget, where funding for public schools was cut and funding for charter schools was expanded, so they got their wish. While they were in the state they could have insisted on regulation of the schools they’re pushing, but they didn’t.
There was a fundamentally dishonest approach used here to sell this and some of the confusion has to do with language. Ohio doesn’t regulate charter schools, they authorize charter schools. HUGE difference. Once the schools are authorized under the state code, no one has any power to regulate them other than their own charter-friendly stacked boards. This is a huge conflict of interest, but that’s another thing that’s impolite to mention. Just a head’s up to those in other states. “Authorization” does not mean “regulation”. Authorization is a deregulatory process, not a regulatory process.
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Chiara Duggan: a small thought provoked by your comments.
Steve Jobs was famous for his “reality distortion field.” The leading charterites/privatizers try to project a “Rheeality Distortion Field” to cover up their specious rationales, shameless double standards, and proven failures.
Thank you for cutting through all the spin and hype and slogans.
“Truth is powerful and it prevails.” [Sojourner Truth]
😎
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http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/07/new_charters_in_cleveland.html
This is an example of how ludicrous it is in this state:
“Mayor Frank Jackson’s new panel to provide quality control of schools in Cleveland had no say in plans to open five new charter schools in the city this fall.
All will start without any review by the newly formed Transformation Alliance — a committee of city, community and school leaders from district and charter schools — because of limitations on its powers.
Even though they acknowledge the limits, city and Cleveland school officials say the Transformation Alliance should have been able to make non-binding recommendations to the Ohio Department of Education on at least two of the schools because ODE is helping to create them.
That should have happened “in the spirit of things,” said Cleveland schools Chief Executive Officer Eric Gordon.
But an ODE spokesman says the Alliance did not have the authority to review the schools.
Of the five, four are new versions of Hope Academies run by White Hat Management. The fifth is a spinoff from one of the academies.
Jackson had sought approval from the Ohio legislature last year, as part of his broader Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools, to have the Alliance accept or deny any applications to open a charter school in the city. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run.
Legislators would not agree to Jackson’s request and instead gave the Alliance power to review just the organizations that “sponsor” or authorize the charter schools — and only when a sponsor’s license to sponsor schools is up for state renewal. Sponsors set goals and standards for the schools, then monitor their financial and academic progress.”
Go that? The elected mayor of Cleveland and the “alliance” ed reformers “gave” him have absolutely no power over the schools in that city. They were tricked. They were given phony authority and a board with no power, which they only found out after they had “relinquished” their schools. The only people who DO have power are the sponsors of the school, which is, of course, a huge conflict of interest.
I have some sympathy for the mayor, but at the same time I want to ask him if maybe “relinquishing” public education in his city wasn’t such a great idea? Now that they’ve made him completely irrelevant, I mean.
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This state will end up with a weaker public school system and an ever-expanding weak charter school system. I don’t know if we’ll also do some damage to the private schools, now that they’ve achieved their goal of vouchers, but I do know none of this has benefitted existing public schools in this state.
I don’t think that’s fair, and it wasn’t what was sold to the public. They never would have gone along with it if it had been. At the very least, there should have been some consideration given to the hundreds of thousands of kids in this state who attend existing public schools. They’ve been completely abandoned while our politicians chase charters and vouchers. I feel lucky to have a school board. At least I have 7 adults who acting in the interest of our public school system. They’re basically circling the wagons and trying to mitigate damage.
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In my view, there’s one way to automatically improve the overall quality of education in charter schools and release some pressure to ban them outright (which, if things don’t change, would be my preference regardless of a bit of “babies tossed out with bathwater”): no school receiving public funding should be run by a for-profit organization (i.e., “management company”). I’m pretty sure that if the for-profit management companies were cut out, there would be a lot fewer sleazebags and rapacious profiteers involved, and most of the really horrific charter schools would either shut down or be able to change in ways that were better for students, parents, and teachers.
Would that prove to be a draconian solution that “costs” us some decent charter schools? Perhaps. But there’s no reason to believe that if such rules were put into effect in every state that the truly good charters currently managed by for-profit groups could not reorganize under non-profit management and keep their quality (assuming that such places actually exist; my direct experience with charters in Michigan and New York has yet to turn one up, but my sample is neither random nor huge). I keep hearing about WONDERFUL charter schools (not sure about whether the management is for-profit or not) that provide superior education to local schools. However, they are invariably located in relatively affluent, and mostly or exclusively white communities. They are decidedly NOT in inner-city Detroit, Philly, NYC, LA, etc. Or, more to the point, not in high-needs districts with nearly all African-American and/or Latino students.
Again, based on my experience, the decent charter schools in, say, Detroit, are non-profit across the boards, and the for-profit managed charter schools are, across the board, very far from decent.
This is not to say that being non-profit across the board guarantees high quality. But it seems to reduce the push for the sort of corner-cutting I’ve seen at the for-profit schools, in which teachers are not allowed to unionize, are paid far below the scale of public school teachers with comparable education and experience, are routinely fired for trivial or imaginary sins (often because they are approaching some longevity bonus that the management company rarely if ever allows anyone to reach and collect), and where kids are treated simply as the fannies in the seats needed to generate that all-important profit margin. Once money is collected from the state, the kids become expendable, and since “Count Day” usually precedes “High-Stakes Test Day” in both halves of the school year, it’s not hard to imagine why it’s so easy for charters to game the system. Take as many kids as needed to fill the coffers, then kick out the uncooperative, difficult, low-testing kids before the big tests. The local public school has no choice but to take such kids when they show up at the door. What an amazing racket.
There are other steps I’d recommend to keep truly decent charters as much as possible and reasons to do so. One such reason is the original motivation that Shanker and others had in mind when they supported the charter school project: small places that can do more experimenting that might lead to scalable innovations in the larger system within a district. Seems bloody sensible, to me. Also, creating specialized schools for small but significant interest groups in a district. I would have LOVED it had Ann Arbor Public Schools decided that rather than spend a fortune on a new comprehensive high school, it would instead open some number of small specialized academies of various sizes, using existing buildings already owned or purchased by the district for such purposes at lower costs. But the community, in its collective idiocy, balked at that idea and went for a third huge, costly comprehensive h.s., mostly because of interscholastic sports. Heaven forfend that one’s child might have to bus to one of the two existing buildings after school to play football, etc.! Dumb? Well, I think so, but I’m only a professional educator with 40+ years’ experience. That over the past 22 years in greater Ann Arbor, I’ve met countless kids and parents who are deeply frustrated because the progressive high school in town (the legendary Community High School) is so small (particularly compared to Huron, Pioneer, and, now, Skyline high schools that after screwing around with various other ridiculous systems for picking which kids get into Community, went to a lottery system that leaves many, many well-suited students out in the cold. It would have been a piece of cake to have at least some of those kids’ needs met with another smaller progressive high school + a series of tiny academies, and charter schools COULD still fill that need. Mostly, however, charters proliferate in poor communities and are dominated there by the for-profit-managed sort.
I know that for good reasons and bad, teachers unions mostly oppose charters entirely. I think that’s a mistake. Instead, they should look to build partnerships with local charter groups that are strictly non-profit and willing to work with the existing community schools towards meaningful improvements of the system as a whole. Maybe that’s already happening somewhere, but if so, I’ve yet to bump into evidence.
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Michael Paul Goldenberg,
Most of the money pouring into charters comes from far-right ideologues and libertarians who don’t like the public sector and despise unions. 90% of charters are non-union. They prefer churn so their teachers will be low-wage. Many of the non-profit charters are shells for their for-profit masters. How about capping charter CEO compensation? You would see a lot of the leaders running for the exits. How about banning political contributions by charter corporations and founders and sponsors?
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So Diane would you also support banning political contributions from teacher unions and individual teachers who have created new options within public school districts?
Actually most of the money coming into charters is from the same source as that coming into district schools – tax funds from the 42 state legislatures that have approved charter public schools.
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Absolutely not. Teachers don’t teach to make millions in profit. They have a right to contribute to candidates who support public education.
Corporations out to destroy public education by creating for-profit schools or fake nonprofit schools should not be allowed to buy political influence. But since most politicians want the money from those disreputable charter operators, they will never stop them from putting money in their campaign coffers.
Joe, I know you love to tout your progressive credentials, but you are on the wrong side of history. The charters have now become the favorite cause of the far-right of the GOP, such as Eric Cantor, Jindal, Haslam, McCrory, Art Pope, Scott Walker, ALEC, etc. You have some verynon-progressive bedfellows.
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American history has been about expanding opportunity. It’s been about empowering people within some limits.
Some of us remember those who repeatedly criticized the Progressive Movement, who ignored or dismissed the “Eight Year Study” from the 1930’s and 1940’s that showed the value of innovative and progressive educational principles.
As to political allies – some of the greatest steps forward in, for example civil rights came when Republicans and Democrats joined together in Congress – not all the Dems, not all the Republicans – but some. Some of the progress around the country on early childhood education, for example, has come about from progressives who see this as expanding opportunities and conservatives who see this as a good investment.
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Nice one, Joe, except that the Republican Party of which you speak is long dead, and the Democratic one, regarding educational policy, has, by and large, been dead since the 1980 election or thereabouts. Name a current US Senator who is a true progressive or old style moderate Republican, when it comes to public education policy. Maybe Bernie Sanders, who is an. . . independent.
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Michael – You asked about progressive US Senators. I’d start with Al Franken & Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota. Both strong proponents of early childhood education. Franken, who’s on the Senate education committee, has worked hard on efforts to make colleges/universities more affordable.
Both support expansion of better, broader health care. They support extension of unemployment benefits.
When I worked with the late US Senator Paul Wellstone, he was a huge fan of Tom Harkins of Iowa…a long advocate for low income Americans and students with special needs, improving school facilities, and promoting arts in education. among things.
I’m not an expert on US Senators but those are 3 examples.
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Joe, I hope you understand that I’m speaking about K-12 public education. So Franken, heir to the Wellstone mantle or not, isn’t helping me rest any better at night with work he’d doing on college affordability, particularly as I remain skeptical that getting tons of folks to do college is the right path for the nation. Of course, I hope to see college costs reduced (and I suspect one step in the right direction would be to get rid of the glut of mid-level administrators who seem to spend inordinate amounts of time creating, implementing, and enforcing unconstitutional speech and behavior codes). And cost shouldn’t be a barrier to those who really want to go to college.
But we were discussing charter schools. How does lowering college costs inform that conversation exactly?
Similarly, early childhood education, while possibly useful and important, isn’t directly on-point either. And for what it’s worth, I worry that in the current mind-set nationally about public K-12 education, early childhood education could readily turn into more test prep. Wealthy parents in many parts of the country already spend money to prep their kids for tests their toddlers will take to get into exclusive preschools and, of course, into K-12 schools. To say that this bespeaks a diseased mindset when it comes to childhood and much else is the nicest thing I can say in that regard.
So, to reiterate: K-12 education policy seems to lack a true progressive voice in the US Senate from either of the major parties.
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We apparently disagree about what are examples of what progressive legislators work on. Incidentally, Franken is a huge fan of helping young people go to 1 or 2 year programs after high school, not just 4 year programs. I’ve also seen him a public high schools.. He really listens to kids and teachers…he does not just talk at them.
http://hometownsource.com/2013/10/23/joe-nathan-column-sen-franken-students-educators-agree-act-important-needs/
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Not necessarily, Joe. What we disagree about is what I originally claimed: that I can’t think of any US Senator other than maybe Bernie Sanders, an independent, who has said and done anything worthwhile when it comes to public education. In the context of this particular conversation, “public education” really means K-12. Or did I miss something? Charter accountability seems rather disconnected from post-secondary and pre-K education.
I think a lot of us who frequent this blog supported Obama in 2008 in no small part because we thought he would be the freshest breath of fresh air imaginable for public education. And we’ve been dealing with various negative reactions to the reality: he’s been an extension of his four immediate predecessors efforts to dismantle and privatize public education and turn it into another profit center for Wall Street and the 1%.
On the assumption that any given US Senator has the potential to influence policy over more than 8 years, I’ve been looking in vain for someone in that body other than Bernie Sanders to actually speak and work for meaningful progressive public K12 educational policies. Al Franken was certainly one guy I had hopes for but I’m not convinced yet. Wellstone’s death was a big loss in this regard. Not so Ted Kennedy, I’m afraid.
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@Dianeravitch: I’m not sure that it’s constitutional to ban political contributions in the way you suggest, but I certainly favor some sort of oversight on where the money is going (to the school itself or, as you say, to for-profit entities hiding in the shadows wherever such things are going on.
As for capping CEO compensation, I’m more in favor of seeing that happen across the board, not just with charter CEOs, but then, I’m not exactly a fan of the sort of unfettered, predatory capitalism that has been controlling things in the US and other countries for a long time.
That said, the drive and ability to game whatever system is in place runs quite deeply among humans. We’ll likely never live to see that sufficiently curtailed, stifled, or “bred out” of the species to satisfy the ideal, but we certainly could do a hell of a lot better than we do. And in this particular venue, it’s undeniable that there is corruption and profiteering going on both within the charter system and within the regular public school system. I’ve spent too much time in Detroit and a few other places not to acknowledge that fact.
One of the reasons I think it would benefit everyone for unions to work cooperatively with legitimate charters and parent groups is not only with real needs of more kids be met (as I described in my previous comment regarding Ann Arbor), but it would help undermine the usual criticism that teachers unions are only another special interest group that care nothing about kids, and that hence they oppose charters only to protect their members’ asses. That may have some truth to it, but it’s simply not a justification for unbridled profiteering on the part of charter operators/owners.
And looking at some of the excrement that comes out of the mouths of Broad-trained and/or supported public school execs like Barbara Byrd-Bennett (having screwed Detroit, she’s now screwing Chicago), I wouldn’t object to seeing a cap on executive salaries in public schools, commensurate with the size of the district AND the norms of the community.
Looking at Joe Nathan’s follow-up comment, however, I think his second paragraph is missing the point. Of course the money coming into charters is public tax dollars. The issue is where it goes and how it is spent.
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Very sorry to hear that Ann Arbor did not give local parents & educators a chance to create a 2nd (and perhaps a 3rd) Community High School. Sounds like we’re about the same age as I worked with a group of parents & other educators to start the St. Paul Open School, a k-12 district option that has been serving students since 1971.
That school is still a progressive district option, although it is now grades 6-12. Significant waiting lists helped convince the local school board to allow others to start for example, Montessori elementary schools (and now a Montessori) Middle School, as well as a Core Knowledge and other options.
But the strong arm of the district office, encouraged by some authors who dumped on progressive educators, frustrated many of the most innovative educators. That helped lead to the charter public school movement. The first charter (started by a former district teacher) open here in St. Paul in 1992.
There are progressive and very traditional parts of the charter movement. Same is true of the Democratic Party.
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First, “Ann Arbor” certainly DID give parents choice. And the most powerful voices got what they wanted. Therein lies one of the problems with choice in education (and elsewhere). Too often, majority rules is a crappy way to best serve the interests of the community. A majority may be happy, but only at the price of screwing over a significant minority. An analysis of the mathematics of elections, apportionment (both political and in terms of sharing estates, etc.) suggests that there’s no absolutely fair system, but that when it comes to the latter (apportionment), it’s possible to do better than is often done. And I think this is one of those cases where what the majority (or at least the most influential, vocal, active) wanted was both foolish and ultimately a truly missed opportunity to find reasonable compromise that might have served more than just a simple majority of interested citizens. But perhaps my viewpoint is jaded.
When it comes to public education policy, I find that even many allegedly progressive Democrats have their heads up their asses. And that the occasional self-identified conservative, libertarian, Teabilly, etc., has a better grasp of the issues than does the typical Dem. But the operant word there is “occasional.”
As for progressive elements in the charter movement, my impression is that once upon a time, charter schools were a generally progressive idea. Now, I find them mostly reactionary, particularly in the context of high-needs communities. The lip-service paid to providing a high-quality education opportunity for “all students” (meaning inner-city poor kids of color) through either vouchers, charter schools, or both is nearly almost always self-serving bullshit and hypocrisy of the worst and most transparent sort, in my experience. Your mileage may vary. Naturally, with things like NCLB and its horrid step-children under Obama and Duncan, the rhetoric has become commonplace for regular public schools as well. Heavens forbid anyone leave him/herself open to charges of “the soft bigotry of low expectations” – speaking of hypocritical bullshit. Frankly, as soon as someone starts talking to me about college for all or, say, calculus for all (I am, after all, a mathematics educator), my gorge starts to rise.
Everyone is entitled in this country to a fair shot at quality education and career. But saying that guarantees absolutely nothing for anyone who hasn’t already got a leg or two up on the system. It helps to be born white, male, and wealthy. Lacking the latter, it still helps to be white and male for the most part. But if I could get only one of those in my starter kit, I’ll take wealthy every time. As long as that is the case, policies like NCLB, RttT, and the like are nothing more than bluster and baloney.
I’m also pretty sure that there are lots of not wealthy people of any ethnicity in this country right now who would prefer a shot at a decent, meaningful career that will pay them enough to ensure they aren’t starving, left in the cold, unable to fend for their families, subject to financial and personal devastation because of lack of medical care or other aspects of the social safety net that at one point in our history seemed like a damned good deal. An education system that professes to be about college for all is not only a pipe dream, it’s not even a good pipe dream, from what I’ve seen after 40 years working in K-12, post-secondary, graduate, and “adult” education of many flavors. And frankly, I am highly skeptical that this country has a serious commitment to giving EVERYONE real options about what they get to do after they leave the K-12 system. We seem as a nation to have a commitment to a system where a few people getting obscenely wealthy, a majority work multiple jobs for pennies, a lot of people work harder and harder to get a shrinking piece of the “American Dream,” and a growing number wind up being broken and discarded by a system that is offering less and less to those it destroys. I can’t pay serious attention to rhetorical public policies: only to what’s actually going on.
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One of the reasons the charter movement was created – and is growing – is that “the majority” in many communities did what happened in Ann Arbor. They resisted the public school options that some people were looked for.
People who relentlessly promote the neighborhood school fail to recognize the value of having different kinds of options – another reason that progressives like those who started Community School, St. Paul Open School, Alternative Learning Project in Providence etc. etc. were so often frustrated.
I’m delighted to see strong options within public school districts. But that’s not enough for millions of youngsters.
As to what this country wants, it’s clearly all over the place. So I’m delighted that Obama is going to move ahead on a number of progressive ideas, whether Congress (most especially the House of Reps) is ready to agree.
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Opening new schools in the state of Michigan is a waste of taxpayer money. They do not have a growing education population. Creating new charters is just a total waste of money.
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I rarely read this blog, but I was cued into this discussion by a friend. Michael might be shocked into cardiac arrest by my comment, but I agree 100% (with a small exception) to what he wrote here. My kids have attended great charter schools that are non-profit, as it ALWAYS should be. The temptations of for-profit K-12 schools to shortchange students will always be too great for most business executives to resist, no matter how theoretically possible it is that they could stay on the straight and narrow.
The one exception: there are some charters that have done well in inner cities, serving a mostly minority student population. But again – they’re non-profit.
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No, I’m not shocked, Rodgers, since I know your views. And I think in this regard we actually agreed completely, since somewhere here I spoke of decent charters serving high-needs, inner city populations and that indeed, the ones I’m aware of have been strictly non-profit.
But I also think that some folks who advocate for charters as a panacea err in citing the results that some charter schools get with much more affluent, advantaged kids. There’s not a lot of debate out there about groups of students who are on the whole reasonably well off performing well on various measures of academic achievement, compared with groups of students living in abject poverty. And then things get messy because some people who are supporting charter schools as magic bullets start slinging irresponsible, wrong-headed charges of racism. If we’re not looking at apples and apples – similar student populations, no cherry-picking, no gaming the system when it comes to testing, etc., then all bets are off.
To be completely clear: if charters have to play by the same rules when it comes to accountability and assessment as do neighborhood public schools, and if the populations they serve are reasonably similar on key variables, then you have a basis for meaningful comparison. But if either the populations are not truly comparable or the rules aren’t the same, then most comparisons between charter schools and neighborhood public schools are propaganda.
I trust, too, that you noticed somewhere in this conversation that I pushed for teachers unions to partner with local charters and affiliated parents rather than to work against them, AS LONG AS we’re talking about charter schools that are non-profit across the board and are run with an eye towards testing out ideas that might be expanded upon and more widely implemented in neighborhood public schools. That was Al Shanker’s idea about charter schools, I think, and it was a very good one. But currently, we see a lot of profiteering, little interest in real innovation, and predictable cut-throat tactics. Detroit is a sad example: when the really decent charters are floundering because the market is glutted and they are losing significant numbers of students to lower-quality schools that dangle cash rewards and expensive sneakers in front of students and parents, something is seriously amiss.
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Oh, and to answer Diane’s headline question, I suspect that in Ohio, it will take scouring the legislature to rid it of as many bought state senators and reps currently owned by the likes of David Brennan.
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What it will take in Ohio is re-drawing the legislative districts. The way the state is divided up insures a very Republican and very conservative statehouse.
For one small example, after my district (finally) elected a Democrat, Connie Pillich, to be our state representative, the legislature re-drew our district’s boundaries so that in the next election, it would include fewer neighborhoods that tend to vote for liberals and Democrats and more that tend to vote for conservatives and Republicans.
It’s a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle and I don’t know what it is going to take to break it. The majority party has no reason to make things easier for the minority party so its hold just gets stronger and stronger.
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It isn’t just in Ohio, of course. Talk about stealing the country.
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Joe Nathan
January 30, 2014 at 11:07 am
NACSA is not opening new schools in Ohio. NACSA has in fact criticized some of the same things in Ohio that you have criticized. And others have done some work in Ohio that convinced legislators not to approve some of the things that White Hat wants.”
I don’t see any concern, or interest, even, in the ed reform “movement” in this state for what happens to existing public schools when they open and close charter schools.
I think it was astonishingly irresponsible for the federal government to condition grant funding on “lifting the cap” on charter schools with NO concern for what effect that might have on existing public schools. We’re told over and over that this is a net benefit, that we’re “adding”, as if public schools are just standing by, completely unaffected by this chaos, but that isn’t how complex systems work. Move a piece and the whole board changes.
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Chiara, I think there are a vast array of “ed reformers” in Ohio. Many care passionately about what happens in district public schools.
The ones I know most about are in Cincinnati district. They are terrific. Here’s a link to something I wrote about them.
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/11150746.html
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Joe — it’s all right if I call you Joe, isn’t it? — I thought about you last November, when middle-class parents in the City of Cincinnati started their annual TWO WEEK campout in order to be the “first come, first served” ones who succeed in signing up their kid(s) for the small handful highly-regarded magnet schools (e.g., Fairview-Clifton German, Sands Montessori) (http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20131108/NEWS/311080039/).
That’s something about Cincinnati schools I don’t hear you mention, that there is a two-tiered system, with the magnet schools that middle-class families pull all sorts of strings to get their kids into, and all the rest.
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Ohio Mom, sorry I can’t figure out how to reply directly to your comment.
Yes, I agree that Cincy has a 2 tier system. I don’t like it, anymore than I like the tiered system in NYC, Chicago and many other large cities.
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“The only way to ensure accountability and transparency is through the electoral process.”
Sounds great! Projecting the future (accountability and transparency) typically means
extrapolating the past (electoral process).
To date, the “Electoral Process” has provided the authority of Elected “Officials” to
APPOINT policy makers, that are NOT elected ( Democratic Process)
It would be a game changer if Public Education had a separate “Democratic Process”
that would ensure accountability and transparency in line with “Of, By, and For”.
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Just a few things. First, Shanker knew that what he was referring to as charters were already happening in New York City, where he was from. The East Harlem area, for example, had many small schools within schools that NYC teachers had created. So there was nothing new in what he was proposing.
Second, I think there’s nothing inherently wrong with a for profit company, or virtuous about a non-profit. Some for profit companies are very ethical, some are not. Diane’s books are published by for-profit companies. Many of us buy a variety of things from for profit companies.
Some non-profits are well run, others are not.
Consumer Reports is an example of an organization that uses multiple measures to examine the quality of products that companies produce. I think we ought to be concentrating on how well organizations serve the public.
Some district schools do a marvelous job of serving students, so do not.
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I agree charter schools must be publicly owned. Rosemary Wilson Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 14:01:42 +0000 To: rmw49high@hotmail.com
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Yes, Rosemary, and as it is now, they are publicly paid for and privately owned, even if they are “non-profit” and owned by the four people named on their 501c3 application. Comparing a charter operator who has gotten permission somehow, to operate a quasi-public school on quasi-public space to a religious organization is an interesting comparison, in that plenty of people use that tax-exempt status for enormous monetary gain, like Scientologists.
My point is, involving our system of public education in all of that scheming and profiteering is unneccesary, and a damaging distraction from what public education should do, educate our population for a better world.
School privatization is a racket, in that it is “fixing” an invented “problem”.
If people in the privatization industry want to roll back desegregation, just be honest about it.
“You’re as sick as your secrets”
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“Absolutely not. Teachers don’t teach to make millions in profit. They have a right to contribute to candidates who support public education.
Corporations out to destroy public education by creating for-profit schools or fake nonprofit schools should not be allowed to buy political influence. But since most politicians want the money from those disreputable charter operators, they will never stop them from putting money in their campaign coffers.”
Diane, everything you said is exactly what the teacher’s union has done for decades. Do the teachers really have a choice not to join a union? Do taxpayers have a choice not to fund the democrat party through union dues? Disreputable charter operators! That’s a laugh. How about fighting for a pedophile’s pay in MI, or the school principal in NY that works once a week while her school literally crumbles, NYC rubber rooms, throwing away lunches after serving them to kids, dispicable behavior by striking Strongsville teachers, six figure salaries (+) for Cleveland school superintendents, racist, gender disparaging comments from Obama’s Ed Secretary made to those who dare question the shadowy common core? This doesn’t even take into account the steady decline of our students when compared internationally.
The public sees the failures of the public schools system daily. Will democrat politicians ever stop taking tax payer money from these disreputable people? Corporations are not out to destroy public education…the democrats/teachers union have already accomplished that. The funny thing is, you still think more money somehow equates to better education.
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Bbswit,
When the AMA disbands, and the ABA disbands, and the NAM disbands, and when the Chamber of Commerce disbands, and when all the other well-funded organizations that represent those in their group dissolve, then that will be the time for unions to disappear. America is made up of interest groups–read the Federalist Papers, Madison #10.
Why should teachers alone–in contrast to other professions–be unrepresented and have no collective voice?
Why should the sole female-dominated profession–which is notoriously underpaid–be silenced?
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What is the true push for Charter Schools? http://loweeducation.com/2014/01/28/hidden-agenda-vs-public-school-education/
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