As reported earlier, Rupert Murdoch is pulling out all the stops to tear down New York City’s new Mayor Bill de Blasio.
De Blasio okayed 36 of the 45 co-locations he inherited from Bloomberg; he approved 14 of the 17 charter proposals. But Murdoch insists de Blasio is closing charters and throwing minority kids out on the street. In fact, Murdoch’s favorite charter operator Eva Moskowitz won five new charters, not the eight she wanted. But you would never know that by reading the editorial rant in the Wall Street Journal. The writer really, really despises de Blasio, even throwing in an irrelevant reference to Zimbabwe’s dictator Robert Mugabe. Which means? I don’t know.
The WSJ can barely contain its admiration for Governor Cuomo, who boldly stood up for the 3% of children in charter schools as he continues to disregard the basic needs of the 97% in the state’s public schools, whose education is crippled by the budget cuts caused by the governor’s 2% tax cap. Even as taxes are capped, the public schools are compelled to spend more money on Common Core and testing, which Cuomo supports. Cuomo never tires of bashing New York state’s public schools. He thinks they cost too much. Someone should tell him that Eva Moskowitz’s charters spend $2,000 per pupil more than neighborhood public schools.
This puffed-up controversy over Eva Moskowitz’s charters demonstrates the inherent divisiveness of charters. They are not public schools. As the charters say in every court proceeding, whether in federal or state courts, they are private corporations with a government contract. As they said to the NLRB, they are not public schools and not subject to NLRB regulations. As the California Charter School Association said in an amicus brief last fall, charter operators should not be convicted for misappropriating $200,000, because charter schools are not public schools and are not subject to the same laws as public schools.
So the billionaires have a chance to smear a popular new mayor, because he gave Eva Moskowitz only five charter schools instead of eight.
Murdoch is outraged that the mayor asked charter operators to pay rent. They can’t cry poverty. Eva Moskowitz is paid nearly half a million each year. She pays the powerful D.C. political lobbying firm Knickerbocker more than $500,000 each year to tend her chain’s image; it must have cost much more this year. In addition, Eva’s Success Academy spends hundreds of thousands each year on marketing to parents, to create demand. In the current battle with the mayor, someone came up with millions of dollars for television and full-page ads. Yet they claim they can’t pay the city for the space they take away from the other 94% of students in New York City. Don’t buy it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How many schools did Bloomberg close? How many students were affected?
Apparently, “war” has been declared. The “parents” of Success Academies are filing a civil suit against DiBlasio. They are claiming that DiBlasio is violating their children’s civil rights to have the co-located space that Di Blasio didn’t approve. One of the schools is a middle school of 196 students that is already operational. They wanted to move to a bigger space. Hmmm… I wonder who is funding the parents’ law suit. I don’t for one minute believe that the parents are footing the bill.
Here’s the link to the article. http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/03/09/charter-school-parents-say-de-blasios-plan-will-violate-kids-civil-rights/
DiBlasio says the co-location will hurt the special ed students in the school and the space they need.
I was initially indifferent to charter schools. Now I am really outraged. These charter schools don’t give a darn about the public school students and how they are hurting them. They don’t care about the spaces they will take from the public school. They don’t care about the defunding of the public school and the lack of supplies, materials. programs and spaces that go into a creating a viable school. Their kids civil rights are violated! I’d say it’s the other way around. The kids in the public school are the ones whose rights are being violated except there are no deep pockets to fund those law suits.
Flmlk,
Eva thinks her kids should get the space and kick out the kids with profound disabilities because her kids have higher test scores.
I agree.
If the 70,000 NYC students in charter schools returned to the traditional public schools, would the education they receive be better than what it would be if they remained in charter schools?
Until it can be proven traditional school provide superior education charter schools should be allowed to be an option for parents who want their children educated in them.
Critics of charters should think of the children being educated not the lose of “customers”.
ajbruno, what about the children in the schools that are co-located with charters? How would you feel if a politically powerful, corporate-funded school pushed into your child’s school, against the wishes of the parents and the community, and made your child feel like a second-class citizen?
Please don’t say “think of the children” if you really just mean “think of the children chosen by the charter schools.” The people fighting charter schools are thinking of ALL the children, not the chosen few charter students.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-usa-charters-admissions-idUSBRE91E0HF20130215
A well written message.
I see that point to some extent. But, there is the issue of using standard funds per pupil, and then culling a select population of students. For a fair system, you either have to have standard funds and then enforce the average homogeneous population, or, have a select population and assign a select funding on each student based on the degree of difficulty to educate. So if a student gets kicked out, maybe that is an admission that they are harder to educate, and the public schools of last resort should get double the per capita funding to take them in.
Ajbruno, most of the kids in charters would get the same quality of education if they enrolled in build schools and some would get a better education.
“build” schools?????
This blog is really—not rheeally—the “no spin zone.”
Every parent should have the option of a well-funded and supported public school that is treated with the same respect and consideration with which charters are treated.
And it is precisely the leading charterites/privatizers and their edufraud enablers and edubully enforcers who think of students as “customers.”
After all, where is all that $tudent $ucce$$ going to come from?
😎
Until it can be proven that charter schools can provide superior education and not just test prep than they shouldn’t be allowed favored status to take away from the local public schools. An education isn’t just a test score.
Critics of the public schools should think of the vast majority of traditional public school children who are being hurt by the loss of space and funding given to the charter schools.
The charter movement is all about the money. They don’t care about the children in public schools.
I agree.
It was proven years ago that the students “performance” in AP and honor classes in a diverse (not magnet) public school equal and sometimes excel students in top private schools. Stop raising old beaten arguments.
I don’t believe your so called “fact” here. Would you please provide a link to the study from which you take your information.
Generally my impression is that NO ONE beats the top private schools, and your data may be old as well. SOME public schools (e.g. New Trier) clearly equal and exceed most other schools, whether public or private.
I agree.
Actually, “ajbruno14”, the ONLY people who think of children as “customers” are the people who operate charters.
Charter operators are the ones who call their principals “CEOs”. Charter backers are the ones who canvass neighborhoods, handing out flyers door to door, or at bus stops, or at along the route that parents take while walking their children to school, egregiously spinning a deceptive and misleading narrative about this new, “free school for smart kids” that they can enroll in if they’re lucky enough to submit to the Las Vegas type “lottery” that determines admission.
Public schools don’t do that. They don’t intentionally try to break up school communities and neighborhoods. They don’t deliberately pit one group of parents against another, often destroying friendships in the process.
Charter Shills are the ones with big advertising budgets to siphon off as many students from public schools as possible. And, in order to “prime the market” they have to make up egregious lies about the existing public schools in order to reduce public confidence in public schools with the mendacious, manipulative promise that their “Magical Charters” will somehow be “so much better.”
They’re not. They never have been. And they never will be.
Their own definitive study—the expensive and comprehensive CREDO study of 2009—that the Charter Industry paid for themselves, affirmed that only 17% of charters were superior to public schools; slightly less than half were no better, and almost 40% of charters were, in CREDO’s own words, “significantly worse” than public schools.
So don’t try that song and dance routine around here. We can’t be “sold” with some nifty slogan developed over the weekend by your PR and advertising lackeys.
If charters were legitimate “schools” then why are they paying their leaders like Eva Moscowitz the salary of a corporate executive, out of public dollars?
And how can they afford such a heavy advertising campaign, not to mention what they’re apparently spending to fund trolls like yourself?
Testing isn’t learning. And sadly the kids that come from all of the snappy, clappy charters will have difficulty in higher education, unless of course, the reformers get their way and destroy higher ed too.
What else can, would you expect from a person, I will not even use the term man, like Rupert Murdoch?
Yes, he’s in business, so he must be some sort of lower life form, like a pig, or a rat, or an ape, as Herr Gobbles used to say about certain other people, some often in business, whom he wanted to stigmatize for his own political purposes.
The liberal bigotry against people in business never ceases to amaze me. And it is hypocritical too, because we all, liberal and conservative alike, love our cars, our homes, and abundant food, and retirement funds, and general prosperity (at least for the educated).
You’ve paid your dues today, Gordon Wilder, to the Church of Anti-Capitalism.
He’s a sleazebag that hacked a murdered girl’s phone and others as well. You wanted someone to provide a link to a previous claim, yet, you provided a claim with no link.
Harlan, there are many wonderful businesses that provide much needed goods, services, and jobs.
All businesses are not created equal. Businesses that are designed to exploit children and suck unearned profits out of public education deserve to be vilified.
Are you following the Pink Hula Hoop scandal in Newark, NJ? A charter school set up a series of legal entities to get undeserved tax credits and buy publicly owned real estate, way below market value, which it will lease back to the public school district at a profit. This is corporate welfare and graft on a grand scale.
Just because someone is “in business” doesn’t mean they deserve to be defended.
“Murdoch is outraged that the mayor asked charter operators to pay rent.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe the Mayor has, in fact, asked any charter operators to pay rent.
I actually see an opportunity for those of us who are members of the Democratic Party as well as liberals and progressives in general.
For several years, after I caught on to this movement, financed by billionaires, to gradually, over time, phase out our public schools and replace them with private companies that claim to be “schools”, I’ve been frustrated with my fellow Democrats and progressives who are, for reasons ranging from ignorance to confusion, completely backing the wrong side when it comes to education.
I think we’re making progress however, as my friends are beginning to realize that the people most supportive of charters are conservative Republicans, including current and former reactionary governors like Chris Christie, Rick Scott, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, John Kasich, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, George W. Bush and many others like them.
And they’re also seeing that the “Democrats” who are prominently supporting charters almost always have one thing in common: they are beholden to a small, vastly wealthy Wall Street elite that has given them Legal Bribes (A.K.A. “campaign contributions”) in return for their agreement to back charters over public schools. A classic Quid Pro Quo that characterizes this form of political corruption.
When you have the detestable Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing propagandist and owner of Fox “News”, launching an all out attack on NYC’s newly elected mayor, it’s hard to deny the obvious.
When you see Murdoch preparing his plans for “inbloom”, a comprehensive “Cradle to Retirement” database of every single public school child in the United States—which will include medical data, work history, family history and everything else that can possibly be recorded—and follow each child for life, and when you learn that Obama and Duncan jettisoned the long-standing regulations that allowed parents to opt out of such data collection and compilation, and that Murdoch’s company will own this data and will have the right to sell or rent it for commercial purposes, for the rest of your child’s life, people begin to pay attention.
So, I’m actually happy that Murdoch and his lackey Roger Ailes, the former Nixon ad man who runs Fox “News” are attacking Mayor deBlasio so savagely, so crudely, and so publicly. It reveals them for who and what they are, and underscores what so many of us have been saying for so long: Charters are NOT a “progressive” idea; they are a very conservative idea that strikes at the very heart of a democratic republic and a free, universal education system for ALL children, regardless of their family’s wealth, connections and status.
Spread the word to your progressive and moderate friends—and even some of your more astute and aware conservatives: Charter “schools”, Education “reform”, Common Core, vouchers or “opportunity scholarships” and “virtual schools” are the darlings of right-wingers who ultimately want to do to public education in ALL 50 states, what they’ve succeeded in doing to it in Louisiana or Indiana in just the last few years.
Let’s rip the mask off of these phony, fraudulent “ed reformers” and show them for what they really are. And in a weird way, Rupert Murdoch has helped us clarify the battle lines here.
It’s now getting much easier to tell the Good Guys from the Bad Guys—and which ones are indebted to charters as a way of slowly dismantling our public education system over the years ahead…
Let’s stop them now, while we STILL HAVE the ability to do so!
I’m right there with you. As an independent, non-affiliated voter, it sure makes it easier to sway Democrat when you see this kind of stuff finally come out in the media. This way, it won’t be just the teachers who have been saying this all along but the general public come election day. I am all about people earning a paycheck in this country. I am not for lying, cheating, and stealing from those they view as weak in order to get ahead. I especially don’t want those people to be viewed as role models for our children. You can be successful in this country and still have a soul with decent moral character intact. Too bad the Republican Party is short on those types of people in leadership positions.
We can stop it if we have a will no will and the battle is lost.