Reed Hastings, the founder and CEO of Netflix, is a major player in the corporate reform movement.
He is on the board of various charter schools and charter chains, including Rocketship and KIPP.
The organization fighting the proliferation of Rocketship charters forwarded his address to the California Charter School Association:
Watch the 2 minute synopsis video.
Get the story and the full keynote.
The long-term goal is to replace most locally elected school boards with charters, all operated by independent boards, all competing for higher test scores.
And the longer term goal is to replace our present system of democratically-controlled schools by a system of privately-managed charters.
Underlying this plan is the assumption that the main problem in American education is democracy, since school boards are elected.
Other corporate reformers prefer mayoral control or governor control, whereby a single chief executive can override objections to open charters at will.
ALEC has pushed the idea of a state charter panel, appointed by the governor (and sometimes the legislature), whose decisions override local control.
The problem with school boards is that the local populace can replace them by vote.
In other words, as Chubb and Moe argued 25 years ago in their book advocating for vouchers, Politics, Markets, and Schools, markets are better than democracy.
No high-performing nation in the world has handed its schools over to private management; instead, they have a strong and equitable public school system, with a respected teaching profession and a well-prepared staff.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Another reason to boycott Netflix, I guess….
I read an interview with an ed reformer who calls himself a progressive yesterday, and he seems to believe that “non profit” has the same definition as “public”.
The frame itself is a bit of a lie, because MOST charter school students attend for-profit schools, because of the huge, national rip-off “cybercharters”. Most charter schools may be nonprofits. but most charter school students attend a for profit school.
I’m baffled by this. Do ed reformers really believe that “non profit” has the same definition as “public”? There are non-profit insurance companies in Ohio. No one in their right mind would refer to them as “public”. Anyone who tried that would be ridiculed.
Have ed reformers really re-defined the word “public” to mean “non profit”?
Also, how are they still denying they want to privatize all public schools? This billionaire is one of their spokespeople. Obviously, he wants to privatize all public schools. He just said it.
Chiara Duggan: is it possible to provide an online link to the interview you mention?
Thank you for your comments.
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Yeah, sure.
Can someone in media ask Arne Duncan if he agrees that school boards should be dissolved and all public schools privatized?
The California Charter group cheered this speech. They agree that all public schools should be privatized.
I wonder when they were planning on telling the public of the objective here. Obviously, it’s clear that President Obama and Arne Duncan PREFER privatized schools, but I was not aware there was a plan to privatize all of them.
I am curios about the claim that most students attend for profit charter schools. It is certainly not the case in NYC where for profit schools are not allowed. A quick look around NCES didn’t turn up that information, though there is this nice map showing the percentage of students enrolled in charter schools: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgb.asp
“This year’s figures show that, despite huge growth in enrollment at non-profit charter schools, which jumped from 237,591 in 2009-10 to 445,052 in the 2011-12 school year, enrollments at non-profit EMOs are still lower than at for-profit schools. The largest for-profit EMO? K12 Inc., which educated more than twice as many students in 2011-12 school year than KIPP, the largest non-profit EMO.
If you are ever wondering about the reach of a particular charter network, take a look at NEPC’s Profiles of For-Profit and Nonprofit Education Management Organizations.”
Even the “non profit” claim is deceptive. NJ disallows for profit schools. NJ doesn’t disallow putting a for profit K-12 cybercharter INSIDE a charter organization that is legally a non profit.
“Non profit” doesn’t mean anything all by itself, without more. It’s a legal designation, a term of art. As a practical matter, it’s easy to get around. Set the school up as a non profit entity and outsource every piece of it to for profits.
Thanks for the quote. I tracked down the original study.
There is a very interesting statement in the report that I hope you might have some insight about. The report states:
In 2011-2012, 36% of all public charter schools in the U.S. were operated by private EMOs (this includes both for-profit and nonprofit EMOs), and these schools accounted for almost 44% of all students enrolled in charter schools. The proportion of students in for-profit EMO-operated schools is slightly larger than the proportion of
students enrolled in schools operated by nonprofit EMOs.
It appears that the majority of students in charter schools do not attend charter schools that are privately managed.
I was at a loss to see how they counted enrollment as well. I think this is especially important for the online organizations. My middle son took one K-12 provided course through a local public school district while officially a student in public schools. Did he count as one of the K-12 students? A fractional student? I suspect this would be a greater issue in more rural states.
Eva Moscowitz makes $500,000 a year salary. Non-profits make a lot of money due to the legal/tax structures. She and her ilk are
“philanthropic” leaders whose favorite philanthropy is themselves.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Charlotte Vrooman makes the correct point. Here’s all you need to know about the :non-profit” designation: In 2010, the Supreme Court’s landmark “Citizens United” decision cleared the way for corporations and labor unions to raise and spend unlimited sums of money, and register for tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(4).” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/05/13/what-is-a-501c4-anyway/
501c4’s are all about politics; theyre allowed to write off 50% of campaign donations.
Moskowitz’s Success Academy is a 501c3. As an active education organization [with operating programs] it qualifies; it must get “at least 1/3 of its donated revenue from a fairly broad base of public support; corporate support is limited to 10% but this is easily gotten around w/ support from, eg, Exxon ‘Foundation’… “501(c)(3) organizations are highly regulated entities. Strict rules apply to both the activities and the governance of these organizations. No part of the activities or the net earnings can unfairly benefit any director, officer, or any private individual, and no officer or private individual can share in the distribution of any of the corporate assets in the event the organization shuts down.
“Further, lobbying, propaganda or other legislative activity must be kept relatively insubstantial[5]. Intervention in political campaigns or the endorsement/anti-endorsement of candidates for public office is strictly prohibited.”
http://501c3.org/what-is-a-501c3/
In view of the fact Moskowitz can maintain this ‘non-profit’ while paying herself more than POTUS, & can march all the kids across Bkln Bridge or bus them up to Albany for protests… it’s pretty obvious that either her ‘non-profit’ status is not monitored, or…
the US laws in effect today regarding non-profit status– meaning you pony upthe difference for their exemption– are a sham.
Okay, I see that “teaching economist” is employing his “Play Dumb” tactic this time. (He’s the master of situational ethics, situational facts and “Who Cares If It Buys Us Time And Gets Us Through At That Moment!”)
Two Points:
1) I don’t know how this works in the NYC schools, but MOST so called “Non Profit” schools everywhere in the nation are only technically not-for-profit according to their tax status but are MANAGED by a for-profit corporation, usually located in another state.
(Year by year, the Charter Management Organizations, a.k.a. CMOs, are consolidating, like every other FOR PROFIT company in virtually every industry. There are now a handful of big CMOs and there will soon be only 3 or 4, and eventually 1 or 2 CMOs left standing. But that’s all part of the plan; and these CMO investors and executives can barely keep the drool seeping out of their mouths from soaking their Brioni suits and Berluti loafers.
2) The Eva Moscowitz Non-Profit Ruse: Now I’m not implying that Eva Moscowitz is the ONLY one using this ploy; far from it. But I will concede that Eva is so very good at it—and she’s got the media eating out of her hand to boot!
How hard can it be for the media to see that Eva’s “non profit schools” are paying her a million dollars every 24 months. THAT’s non-profit?!?! Most people would agree that Moscowitz is PROFITING quite handsomely at what she insists is a “Public School!” (Emphasis HER’s, not mine. Have you listened to her use those two words?)
I don’t know what else we can call it when the head of a “non-profit” is slipping $500,000 annually in their pocket using public funds.
My understanding was always that people went into education NOT to get rich, but to do something they believed in strongly. Eva Moscowitz is the Poster Child for the “Have It Both Ways” crowd, pretending to be “educators” while raking it in with both fists. (FYI, Eva’s yearly take is approximately ELEVEN times the salary of a first year teacher in NYC!)
Taxpayers and voters need to pay closer attention to this “Non Profit” Scam. Often when a company is applying for public sector contracts, they know that a non-profit has an advantage with the people evaluating the proposals. This is particularly true for charter applicants.
Often, the “non-profit” will have absolutely outrageous salaries, benefits and other perks, and will also have a handful of family members or cronies of one sort or another in “other management capacities” making anywhere from $150K and upwards.
Teaching Economist is undoubtedly hoping you don’t learn about the “non-profit” charter in Orange County, Florida, where the “CEO” of this one school was taking in roughly $330,000 in yearly salary, plus other goodies.
Her “school”, like many charters, was a scam. Even by the low standards established in Jeb Bush’s Florida for charters, this sham could’t jump the bar.
After three years, this person heading the school made $995,000. But when her school was closed, she was then given a little gift of an additional $500,000 for her negative results and abysmal teaching.
The conservative school board members who gleefully celebrated when charters came into their district—to battle the “greedy unions”, you know—went completely berserk, until their lawyers came back and showed them that they had approved the signing of the contract giving this “non-profit school” this “Golden Parachute” clause.
However, it gets better—or worse, depending on whether or not you like the idea of “privatizing” our schools: An intrepid reporter for the Orlando Sentinel decided to look more closely at the charter’s financial records: She saw several checks written over that 36 month period for “Consulting Services”; they totaled about $455,000. When she finally got to the bottom of it, she learned that the man providing the “Consulting Services” was the husband of the woman running the school!
When the dust all cleared this charter CEO and her spouse walked away with just a fraction over $2 MILLION DOLLARS of taxpayer funds; taken from a district that was forced to lay off numerous teachers and close several schools due to budget shortfalls.
So, Teaching Economist: We’re not buying what you’re selling. Go peddle your worn-out, thoroughly discredited wares somewhere else. ”
Okay?
It seems to me, Puget Sound Parent that you use the same grapheme {profit} in two different senses. That seems to me to conflate a legal distinction (profit vs. non-profit), with your disapproval of certain high executive salaries. Legal “non-profits” of all stripes often have high executive salaries, including the Red Cross, and the old unreorganized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Your animadversions against high salaries in one sector would carry more weight with me were you to be less selective in your targets.
“to a system of large non-profits”
That’s another deceptive part of ed reform. They sell this as “local schools” but these are chains and they plan them as chains. They’re national franchises.
It makes me laugh because one of the shots they take at public schools is our local schools are “factory schools”. From the people who are busily creating 4 national charter school companies, I find it amusing that my local school is a “factory”.
Rocketship is a factory.
“Now if we go to the general public and we say, āHereās an argument why you should get rid of school boardsā of course no oneās going to go for that. School boards have been an iconic part of America for 200 years. So what we have to do is to work with school districts to grow steadily, and the work ahead is really hard because weāre at 8% of students in California, whereas in New Orleans theyāre at 90%, so we have a lot of catchup to doā¦So what we have to do is continue to grow and growā¦ Itās going to take 20-30 years to get to 90% of charter kidsā¦.And if we succeed over the next 20 or 30 years, that will be one of the fastest rates of change ever seen around the world for a large system, itās hard. [applause]”
What a cool business plan! The plan is to lie to the public, and take over their local schools over 20 years.
No wonder he makes all that money! That’s brilliant. No one ever thought of lying to sell a product before.
Rocketship has come up with another really brilliant innovation. They’ve replaced expensive teachers with low wage workers who make 15 dollars an hour. That’s why we funded charter schools. So they’d come up with these innovative new ideas. Lying to sell a product and replacing middle class workers with low wage workers.
Business as usual. Look how many educated, experienced, intelligent people who are now looking for jobs. This has happened to all areas of non-unionized white-collar workers.
Citizens United has done so much to assure the Corporations can run over workers, elections, and anyone they wish. As long as just enough people willingly support their definition of a short term. profit driven “free market”, this sickness will eat our country alive. As long as profits are all that matter, there will be no prosperity for the many.
The more education and drive one has, the more difficult the acceptance of this travesty. And it continues to spiral downward. And when the 1% controls the words that need organizations are allowed to report and the images most people see, coupled with the unreliable information on the internet, we have tons of information that isn’t true! We have fallen into the trap of fighting amongst ourselves. That is what these privatizers want. This will break down our spirits as a society. Meanwhile, there are covert takeovers from every corner.
Some people think there are global connections. Some hate the President. Some think the Antichrist is on the move. Some motives are driven by fear of race and religion. Some people simply want to “protect” their kids from science.
All of these things fuel the opportunists minds with chances to take advantage at every turn.
Schools have been difficult to takeover because they had to come in and bust unions that gave teachers protections from abuse. Since the private sector workers have been abused in a similar manner, they have little concern about teacher protections. And they surely don’t want their tax money to pay salaries for lazy, leeches! How better to break teachers than to falsely tie their effectiveness to bogus tests? Get teachers out the door before they are too “expensive”.
IMO, we need to get rid of the testing first. We need to convince districts to turn down the federal money. We need to have public uprisings. But, here is the catch…with teachers working their fingers yo the bone, there is little energy left to fight this creeping crud.
No tests. No way to use the scores against teachers and kids. No tests. No threat of CCSS encroaching on any district’s purposes. No tests. No success for Gates and Pearson.
The only way to block this is to get parental and community support. Parents, teachers, social workers, firefighters, police, city, state, community, transportation, community workers need to stand up against this corporate takeover of the US, or there will be no middle ass, no need for college, no American Dream. I am.just saying that this is so much deeper than “education”. The truth is, teachers need to get their administration and school board to work WITH them not against them.
“No wonder he makes all that money! Thatās brilliant. No one ever thought of lying to sell a product before.”
gosh, I wonder what they will think up next?
š
How hard do you think ed reformers will hit kids in public schools with funding cuts while they’re winding down the public school system?
Public schools have really suffered under Duncan and the ed reform governors. I think it probably gets much worse for our kids while they’re closing our schools and replacing them with one of these cheap cyber chains.
It seems to me that there can be some regulatory trade off between systems where parents and children are free to choose schools and systems where parents and students are assigned to schools.
The whole “choice” thing is going by the wayside too. They have to assign people to schools because charters were cherrypicking. They’re going to have to assign in DC and they’re going to have to assign in Newark.
You’re trading public control for fake “choice”. It’s a bad deal.
“Youāre trading public control for fake āchoiceā. Itās a bad deal.”
I agree with what you are saying and it got me to thinking. Hasn’t it been fake choice all along?
So, a parent can only choose form what is offered, and what they can get their kid to, right?.
What if rocket ship doesn’t open in your area? Can’t choose it.
What is KIPP is too far away and you don’t have transportation? Can’t choose it.
You really wanted a Montessori school, not enough other parents did so no one opened one in your small town. Can’t choose it.
Success Academy didn’t take your special needs kid.
You cannot commit to all the long hours, volunteer time, fees, whatever requirement by the local charter.
Your public school has been starved so it is no longer viable.
Could go on and on with examples, but you get what I mean.
The choice will not really be the parents.
They might even end up with fewer choices than they had with public schools.
And that is why teachers, parents, administrators, and communities need to work together for reasonable compromise as to what is the best for everyone without expecting to get everything we, you, they want in all circumstances. That is life. Compromise.
We have become a nation of extremists. We have been told to expect perfection. We are told to move at computer speed. We are judged on our ability to adapt to perpetual changes is software, programs, etc. We never stand up in unity.
Here we are being overrun by corporate greed.
These kids aren’t going to sort themselves out “equitably” by the magic of markets.
All Cami Anderson is doing in Newark is zoning by kid instead of by “zip code”. That’s the plan for “equity” between schools. She has a super-secret algorithm that she insists is “fair”.
So much for “choice!”
How did you think this was going to go? It won’t work unless they assign kids to schools. That’s why they claim all schools will be GREAT. It’s the exact same argument public school advocates make. It’s simply an ideological preference for privatized schools. There’s no difference between this and what Milton Friedman proposed.
Why are you here other than to spread lies and demented libertarian talking points? Education is a public good–it is not a business that can be run on business principles.
Your passive-aggressive act is very tiresome and sickening.
What exactly do you mean by “public good”?
In economics “public good” means a good that is is not rival, that is one person using the good does not prevent another from using it with equal benefit, and it is not excludable, that is a person can not be prevented from using the good.
Education in a school becomes rival as the number of students increases as is routinely pointed out here. It is excludable, and that property is used by private schools to get tuition payments from families and prevent out of catchment or district students from attending a traditional zoned public school. Schools are what economists label a club good.
Surely the large number of private schools in K-12 and higher education suggest that schools need not necessarily be run by local governments.
Then take your kids to a private school and pay their tuition, or move.
I am not sure how your comment is relevant to my point.
Certainly everyone would agree that adding a student to a small class has little negative, and possibly positive impact on other students in the class while adding that same student to a larger class would have a negative impact. This is why I say the class is rival when congested. Sometimes people can not be excluded from enjoying something because of the nature of the thing. Clean air, for example. These things are in the nature of the thing, not generally the product of choices we make about them.
Never mind. You are the Master Deflector. It is impossible to carry through a conversation to an end with you. You always inject your son into the conversation. You “ask” people what to “do”. Then you change the subject to some other comments you may have made. It never ends.
After 2 years of using your son’s intelligence to state a case on whatever it is that you don’t like about your local education, you still complain and don’t seem to have found a local solution. I don’t know ypur options but you seem to use this form for a personal beef, not to provide good options for solutions that are on topic.
On topic? Let’s see. 1. Excessive testing harms kids. 2. Testing to evaluate teachers has no real merit. CCSS is unvetted. 3. Pearson is taking tax dollars in a much more intrusive manner than textbook companies and is increasingly shutting out any competition. 4.This causes a top down curriculum that is squelching creativity and thinking skills. It can create indoctrination of social values of whoever is in control. God forbid that it is decided by the Koch Brothers or Arne Duncan. Both extremes are nuts. 5. Privately owned charter schools take public money and the money doesn’t go into the schools but into the pockets of investors. 6. Every locality has some differences and that is not the thrust of what can be accomplished here. 7. We need to see the big picture and figure out what to eliminate first.
Maybe teachers, administrators, parents, and the public should actually work together to stop testing. That would derail the train and take away the means of teacher abuse and derail the private investments. Boo hoo. They need to FAIL.
Deb,
Poster Susannunes called education a “public good” and clearly believes this to be important. As that is a technical term in economics, I was interested in how she defined that term. How is that deflection? How is it not relevant to Susannunes post?
Your son is not relevant to her post.
And were did I talk about any individual student in my discussion of public goods?
I replied directly to your comments about your middle son, not to the publuc goods issue.
Are you talking about the question of how students are counted is K-12 students? Well, I suppose I could have asked if anyone knows if students in our local school board run charter school are counted as K-12 students because they take some classes on line through K-12. Is that better?
Why don’t you deal with this locally???? It is not the reason for this blog as far as I can tell. People here don’t know your district. It can be dealt with personally and privately. No one can answer personal questions that have little, if anything, to do with the topics of the blog.
Deb,
It seems that I am not making myself clear. The question is which students count as K-12 students nationally. The Report says that there are 87,091 enrolled in K-12. Does that number include large numbers of students who enroll in a single K-12 class while physically attending another school or does that number leave out a large number of students who enroll in a single or multiple K-12 class while physically attending another school? I don’t know the answer, and it seems like it may be important if you want to understand what the number 87,091 actually means.
There will be a great many comments on this blog that are purely local in nature, especially about the politics in New York City. It comes with the territory.
That was not what I was reacting to. Personal districts or states are one thing.
Back on the mobius strip.
What else have I said in this that you were reacting to? I gave examples of students that might or might not be included in the head count given in the paper. Do you know if those kinds of students are counted or not? Do you think it might be important to figure that out?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I don’t agree with the hostile attitude toward teachingeconomist’s posts. I for one welcome other viewpoints, to help me get perspective on my own & hone it. I like to know what libertarians are thinking, especially if they frame their thoughts reasonably without name-calling. True, TE’s questions are usually from a more remote, ideology-based ground. But the sheeple (not TE) who mindlessly promote libertarian views– often without a clue as to how they are being taken advantage of by politicians w/other agendas– are voters, & it helps to understand the ideology behind what they parrot, so as to frame persuasive arguments that might convert them.
The odd thing is that I am not a libertarian, just thoughtful about the costs and benefits of using centralized (government and firm) decision making and decentralized (market) decision making.
My frustration with the TE posts are simply that they are often diversionary and seldom offer solutions or agreement.
He has talked about this kids’ experiences with schools and apparentlybis not satisfied with his “catchment” area schools…even though he has chosen to live there.
This blog doesn’t address the questions he poses, but he continues to throw in the same old “what ifs” that he has asked over and over. And he appears to prefer Montessori schools. He seems to want more options. He is free to send his children where he wants, enroll them in online schools, etc. I think everyone gets that. No one can fix it, so he needs to move on and join in the discussions instead of asking the same questions or making the same remarks repeatedly.
Recently he has posted some more informational stuff. That is fine. But it seems to always pivot on some personal need.
No one can answer those personal types of questions. It would be like me coming on here and asking someone how to get a local principal to treat teachers humanely. No one can fix it. So, move on.
Deb,
I have been posting here for about 2 years. I have argued for a variety of positions on a variety of topics. I often argue that the relatively poor might benefit from approaches to teaching that are typically only available to the relatively rich like progressive, Montessori, or Waldorf educations. I have argued that traditional zoned schools create an overwhelming pressure on local school boards to ensure uniformity across buildings so that the arbitrary assignment of students to buildings will be seen by the community as unimportant because all the possible schools are basically the same. None of these are local issues, but national questions about how to respect the individual needs of students.
If you are interested in other positions I have argued for, just ask.
And those are fine observations I have seen and don’t disagree with completely.
My only point has been that you seem to want Ask questions for which this forum is not shoeing concern. They are about your district and children. They have to answer those questions. You have posed questions directly to posters who do not have answers for you. And, furthermore, it is simply better dealt with on the local level. It isn’t particularly relevant.
After 2 years things are startingvto have national upswing, national attention, and reaction, including the NPE conference. Focus needs to be honed and a plan needs to take place. Other side topics don’t seem to further the cause. Also, an answer isn’t sufficient, even “I don’t know.” It seems to just go on and on to no finish line.
Good day.
Again, it am trying to illustrate general points with specific examples. Some come from my own part of the country, some from many hundreds of miles away.
Oh please, TE. In case you haven’t checked your calendar recently, it’s no longer 1995 when this line of BS you’re pushing sounded good to a lot of hopeful, caring, idealistic people.
Now we’re on to your little scam. It won’t work anymore.
I’m one example of this. Although I was quite involved in politics and technology marketing for decades, it wasn’t until sometime in 2011 when it dawned on me that our schools are being attacked by essentially the same greedheads that brought down the entire global economy in 2008.
Now I’m involved. Don’t try to sell me that stuff; it’s starting to really smell at this point, incidentally. Dump it now before it gets REALLY revolting.
The amount of money and human capital that has been spent on this Charter stuff—by one side attacking and one side forced to defend our public schools—is staggering.
If we had taken all of that money and focused on making ALL schools much better, in every district in the country, we’d be a lot further along.
But, the Privatizers aren’t REALLY interested in that; all they really want is a corporate takeover of education so that they can start raking in more cash, directly from the taxpayers.
It won’t work anymore, sonny boy. Now run along and see if Chris Christie can still get you some sort of newly created position at The Port Authority of New York/New Jersey.
We are becoming Chile, the Friedman disciples do not recognize their failure, they think they just did not execute the plan properly. They think they need to try again in the United States. They should note the ending in Chile. Being larger, an extrapolation of similar results here will be exponentially more horrendous should all things run to form.
You nailed it. These people are nothing short of INSANE. Neoliberalism is a cancer that must be excised from all countries.
Societies with a handful of parasitical rich and everybody else poor cannot survive.
OT,
Agree.
BTW, Anyone interested in supporting documents for what happened in Chile:
Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine
“In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how Americaās āfree marketā policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. ”
Information is shock resistance.
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I so agree! I’d like to see an expose in a major newspaper (not buried in a blog like the Answer Sheet) showing what 40+ yrs of vouchers looks like on the ground.
For Twitter: Just copy, paste and then ReTweet as often as possible
No high-performing nation in the world gives its schools to private management
So why is this happening in America?
http://bit.ly/1cYQJCe
Current Arizona voucher legislation outlines the same goal: Complete privatization via a 100% “choice” system whereby public education will be starved of its funding.
“Choice” can never work if those who leave take money away from the institutions they foresake; when funding of the insitution is decreased in this manner, those who choose to stay are not allowed to have the same institution, but instead one in which resources have been reduced by those exiting.
The “choice” of charters and vouchers requires non-parasitic funding.
Here’s a link to the AZ voucher legislation:
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/on-vouchers-in-general-and-particularly-the-2014-all-voucher-arizona-push/
I wonder which national charter brand Mr. Hastings “envisions” for my community.
Let’s seem, there’s his chain, Rocketship, and then KIPP and then Uncommon Schools and then Basis.
I can already tell this is about “choice” and individuality. National school chains! What could be more individual than that?
Do you think the kids will wear their school brands? I envision them tricked out in the corporate patches like a NASCAR driver.
Burger King, McDs, Wendys, Jack in the Box, etc. . . are all “choices”.
Let ’em charge tuition like the private schools they are and stop feeding off the taxpayers.
Who feeds off taxpayers more than a District school that collects taxes even when parents send their children somewhere else.
Flawed logic.
We also pay taxes to support the military and what if a few taxpayers don’t agree with how that money is being used in the world. What do we do—–do away with the military and stop collecting those taxes to make a few people happy?
Taxes are supposed to pay for public safety and maintain the infrastructure (sewers, roads, schools, bridges, etc), but for sure that infrastructure will not serve everyone. For instance, there are plenty of roads and bridges most Americans will never drive on but doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build those roads and bridges?
There will always be some libertarian grumbler upset about something or everything taxes ware spent on like keeping up the sewer system or roads in each community.
I don’t want my taxes supporting private schools that have no oversight on how the money is spent and how the schools are run. I don’t want my tax money paying teachers half of what they are earning in today’s public schools while class sizes go from 30 to 50 to boost profits for some distant stock holder.
If the public schools vanish and are replaced with private schools by any name, then the tax payer had no say at all.
I think your feeling that you don’t want to pay for a school that you have no oversight over is widespread. That is what has driven state legislatures to take an increasingly activist role in education decisions.
Are you talking about the backlash against Common Core and private sector Charter Schools?
I am just saying that in increasing the share of state and federal money that goes to district schools will inevitably be accompanied by increased state and federal oversight.
I have no idea what you mean by more oversight. In my opinion, the public schools have too much oversight. They are watched closely and always have been.
I think they are more closely supervised now that state funds are such a large portion of every districts budget. Every state legislator an expert, students in one district dependent on the educational view of legislators from hundreds of miles away.
For better or worse, California has a rather professional legislature. My state pays very little for a significant time commitments, so my state legislature is made up of those that can afford to be away from work. It has important impacts on the background of the legislators.
I started teaching in 1975, and in the Southern California school district where I worked, the budget was watched very closely from the State Department of Education all the way down to each school. And for thirty years, that never changed. Because the budget was a public record (made public by laws), even teachers kept a close eye on the budget to make sure no one slipped a few dollars out into their pockets or spent too much on any suspicious items that might include kick backs.
However, I’m sure that if there’s corruption in a state and the elected legislatures and governor ignore laws or pass laws that allow them to be crooks, that corruption trickles down to the bottom.
But thanks to democracy, eventually the system kicks in and kicks the crooks out. Sometimes, it takes a few years or even a decade or too.
There are always going to be crooks. We see it happening now. What Bill Gates is doing is one example. Maybe he just doesn’t know he’s a crook yet. Maybe he thinks what he’s doing is okay because so many other billionaires in the private sector are doing the same crooked things.
I don’t disagree with anything that you said. But clearly, there is no accountability for the district school, which can lose students due to people moving out, people choosing private schools, or people choosing charters, all without losing a nickel of funding. In fact, there’s a huge financial disincentive for lousy district schools to improve because they would then get more students without more funding.
There are more than 13,600 public school districts. I’m sure some are, as you say “lousy” but how many? Has there ever been a study?
And if a public school district was in bad shape because it was being mismanaged would it stay that way forever? The answer is no, because once the voters in that local community were aware of the situation, they’d just elect another school board that would crack down and fix the problem. In fact, teachers are usually the first ones to reach out and seek help from the local community to fix problems if they appear. I’ve seen that happen.
Public school districts are run by democratically elected school boards and to be elected means you have to earn enough support from voters by doing your job.
If a public school district was “lousy”, as you say, the fault would belong to the elected school boards who hires the administrators and holds them accountable to run the school district efficiently and according to the ed code of each state. If an elected school board wasn’t doing its job, in the next election, the local voters could vote them out and replace them with real reformers (not the fake ones who are all billionaires and have little or no stake in all those communities public school districts serve) who could replace incompetent administrators at will because administrators have no job protection—none. Even if an administrator has, for instance, a five year contract, it can be terminated because there is usually a clause in the contract for that. I saw the school board where I taught do that twice: once to a high school principal and once to an assistant superintendent.
I taught for most of my thirty years as a teacher in one school district in Southern California that served about 19,000 students. And I can tell you that our elected school board did their job to make sure the schools were run efficiently according to the ed code and the use of tax payer money was used conservatively and was monitored closely to make sure no one was siphoning any of that money off.
What do these elected school board members get out it? School board members are elected volunteers. They don’t get paid except maybe travel expenses if they go to a conference of some kind that’s linked to education. They are in it mostly because they have kids too and care.
Lloyd,
I wish it was that easy. In many cases, elected school Boards represent the interests of the adults in the system, not the kids. So yes, I think a lousy school district can stay that way forever. Certainly decades.
Also, elected school Boards rarely represent the disenfranchised, economically disadvantaged students because their parents often don’t participate in elections. Those that say that charter schools get more involved parents because they fill out a one page application don’t also consider that the same parents probably can’t take time off from work or child care to vote.
In my area, the voters are disproportionally teachers, and to some extent, the parents from the more well off schools that are there to protect them even if it is to the detriment of the schools that serve other students. School Board candidates are mostly dedicated volunteers, but many have political aspirations beyond the school board and use it as a vehicle for that.
You say, “teachers are usually the first ones to reach out and seek help from the local community to fix problems if they appear.”, I’ve never seen that happen if the issue is academic performance. Instead, teachers fight accountability, and are frequently dismissive of parents who want to get involved.
Now, I have to be clear here that none of these things are true of the suburban public school that my children go to, but they are true of many nearby urban schools.
You also mention that elected school boards hire administrators and hold them accountable. Unfortunately, this also is not this easy. The average tenure of an urban school superintendent is 2.5 years. Why? Because they have little ability to change anything because of strict administrator and teacher contracts and powerful adult interests. Within the 2.5 years, the Board decides they aren’t getting the job done, then buys out their contracts and tries someone new. My position is that it is impossible (or immoral) to hold someone accountable for something without giving them some ability to influence it. All of the constituencies in public education seem so painted into corners that that flexibility is gone, and with it, the accountability.
I respect your thirty years in the classroom, and I’m glad you were in a district that upheld the standards of quality that it seems you do. My local urban school district won’t even admit there is an issue despite the 50% dropout rate in the high school, schools with zero percent passing in 8th grade, etc. They don’t even have a single substantial initiative going on to address the issue. They spend their time blaming lots of outside causes, which absolves them of any responsibility or need to change.
Please cite sources with links to those sources that support all of your own opinions. If you can’t do that, what you claim means nothing and I’m sure there’s nothing—even cited evidence–that will change your mind.
In fact, how do I know who you are and if you don’t work for the robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street? You could be a shill planting libelous claims that can’t be proven.
So when an ed reformer like Secretary Duncan or Governors Walker or Kasich visits a public school, are they sort of scoping out the property, looking for how quickly and profitably they can convert it to a chain?
Do we have to let them in the building? Is that mandatory?
All Boards of Education should be abolished — and replaced with advisory boards — if there is sufficient community interest in doing so.
The Legislative District,for State Representative — should replace the the school districts in this Legislative area — and the State Representative must pe put directly in charge of such School districts.
Vote your State Representative — in — or out — based on the successes and failures of your public schools.
Which corporations are they going to be advising?
You are crazy and have contempt for democracy.
That has to be the worst education idea that I have ever heard, bar none.
However, given the gerrymandering of districts that has been conducted over the past few decades, I can understand why the right would want to see this happen.
Loss of local control is anti-right wing. . . . I don’t understand.
Sorry, William. I thought that you were saying that Congressional Representatives should be put in charge. My apologies, I misread your comment.
Join @BillGates & @GStephanopoulos
discussion about common core standards
I can’t help it, this stuff makes me laugh sometimes.
I love how famous everyone is š
Just canceled my Netflix subscription and sent this note to pr@netflix.com.
I just cancelled my membership because of Ron Hastings radical views about how elected school boards should be replaced by unelected charter school boards.
There are a lot of choices and I decide not to support a company headed by someone with such radical, undemocratic ideas. Maybe he doesn’t realize what he is doing.
A lot of harm is being done to public education in the name of helping improve education.
Scott Hertzberg
Upper Marlboro
Way to go! Maybe someone could start an on-line petition.
I’m canceling mine also. . . . I will miss it, but I will not feed the enemy . . . . Start starving the beast, ladies and gentlemen . . . .
Wow, teachingeconomist is far more arrogant than insightful.
TE is on a spectrum and trolls the termites out of this blog . . . . Beware.
May I say….yes?
Markets ARE the ultimate democracy because each individual choses to buy or not to buy, i.e. “votes” by his or her choices.
Markets work well fore some things, less well for others. The interesting question is where the line should be drawn.
Corporations aren’t people. Citizens United sealed their deal. Bad news for humans.
Corporations are one way that we cooperate together. Markets are another. Governments are a third. Which works best depends on the particular situation.
Corporations are killing the middle class with the blessing of the Supreme Court. Worst decision in years.
Corporations are organizations of people that help feed, cloth, and shelter most of the people in the world. They are, of course, not the only organizations that do this. There are partnerships and of course sole propriaterships. Each offer their own advantages, but for large scale activities like producing almost every material that is in a home or school, a corporation or something very like it is necessary.
Simply put. They should not buy elections or politicians. Their greed has overrun the middle class.
Good night.
The general explanation for the increased income inequality we see throughout OECD countries is some combination of the inclusion of China in the world economy and the impact of technological change on the nature of work. Personally I think that including China has been more important, but there is certainly something to be said for technological change as well. Think about how many people it would have taken to have the equivalent of Dr. Ravitch’s blog fourth years ago, and how much each would have to be paid.
One Corp, for instance, even teaches their employees how to apply for food stamps because they need them to survive.
How thoughtful they are to help their employees out like that.
That’s Wal-Mart. It’s estimated that it costs the tax payers about $440,000 annually for each Wal-Mart store through the Food Stamp program to subsidize Wal-Mart’s poverty wages (this is based on average pay, not management pay).
Meanwhile, the Walton family is the wealthiest family on the planet.
You seem to imply, Lloyd, that there ought to be a limit on what a person can make in the way of wealth.
How would you legislate that, and then what would you do with the excess?
Unfortunately, there is a good number of people who simply don’t care whether they walk on others to get to the financial “top”. There are no limits to what a lack of conscience and social responsibility will do to blind a person to knowing when they are taking advantage of others and society.
Conscience that sets aside selfishness and greed is difficult to teach. It isn’t present in those who have continued to buy Congress in order for special privilege and loopholes. Then they set about taking jobs away and condescendingly look down upon those who lost their houses, careers, pride, and laugh that they don’t play the game correctly.
It isn’t the fact that they are rich, it is how many of them obtained their money.
In this case of privatizing schools, we are confronting those with no heart for dchikdren or education. They love money. They hoard money. They love power. This is bad for humanity and definitely for schools.
If one thinks Ayn Rand is someone to emulate, I simply feel sorry for their misguided, selfish souls.
Reblogged this on Carolina Mountain Blue and commented:
Reading this reminds me of why, (a)we need to support public education and (b)tighten, if not outright eliminate, the whole idea of charter schools.
Let’s at least acknowledge that local school Boards are not always paragons of virtue. I’ve yet to hear my local school board discuss academic challenges in any way except to blame them on funding. My perception is that they represent the interests of taxpayers first, school employees second, school vendors third, well off families fourth, and economically disadvantaged students and their families a distant last.
Certainly, the elected school Boards in New Orleans and NYC were filled with corruption, political patronage, and bureaucratic bloat. The school Board in Buffalo, New York somehow negotiated with the local union and decided that a plastic surgery benefit for teachers was an appropriate use of public funds.
I don’t think they should be abolished, but I also think that there are other structures that could work. If you love local school boards, you should acknowledge their faults and look for ways to improve them; not blindly support them vs. all alternatives without any critical thought.
I don’t think 100% parental choice model works either because I’m not sure where the checks and balances are regarding how much to pay for education would be (presumably parents would want to spend more than taxpayers at large would).
But, I could envision elected school Boards that manage portfolios of schools of various types, and whose responsibility is setting spending, enforcing uniform policies, and providing uniform information to the public about all of the available schools.
Competition does have some validity. Who on this blog thinks it’s a good think that there are basically 3 cell phone companies, 2 satellite TV companies, etc.? Yet, for almost every student in this country, there is one District school with a monopoly. Do you support the protectionism of NJ not allowing Tesla to sell cars direct in NJ? Or all wine sold in NY having to spend at least one night in a NY warehouse?
I know you all think Mr. Hastings must be evil because he’s a well off man who is involved in education. I’m confident that he spends a lot more of his own money on these organizations than he benefits from them. I’m also confident that he believes that a system of public charter schools would benefit children and parents. You’re certainly entitled to disagree with him, but it seems it would be better to do that on the merits rather than attack him personally. In my opinion, it’s also worthwhile to look at the plusses and minuses of any system or alternative, and that includes looking critically at current systems too.