Matt Haney, a member of the San Francisco local school board, here responds to Reed Hastings’ proposal that local school boards should be replaced by charter schools.
School boards are part of our democratic concept of education. They are elected by the public to serve the public. They can be thrown out of office if they don’t serve the public.
Charter schools, by contrast, are run by private boards, elected by no one. Some are dominated by wealthy entrepreneurs like Hastings. Some are finAncially incompetent or self-serving.
Whatever their faults, school boards are a democratic institution. Charter boards are not.
Not that it matters, but I cancelled my subscription to Netflix, the company that made Reed Hastings very rich and empowered him to assail public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wonder what kick-backs (perks & $$$$$) Haney receives?
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Hey Reed, maybe we can replace our government with an autocracy that appoints the governors and reps. You know, they could plan better for our futures. People like you could reign over all of us for a lifetime and guide all of us peons. (Oh, we did this once before the American Revolution). You are an elitist and arrogant fool.
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Dee Dee: Next thing we know, you’ll be going all Thomas Paine on us. C’mon, attacking the 18th century equivalent of the corporate “hand that feeds us” is so, like, tied up with that now-discredited [?] practice of demonizing and scapegoating our social betters. I won’t even consider the absurd notion that you discount noblesse oblige.
Look at how much better things were under King George III. Folks like you and me didn’t have to worry our empty little heads about running our own affairs.
Or to paraphrase [and with profuse apologies to] Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A foolish belief in self-governance is the hobgoblin of small minds, adored by those enamored of democracy and freedom of thought and liberty.”
Which should put to rest your rheetorical question of a few days ago—“Have they no shame?????”
No.
Really.
Not rheeally.
😎
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❤
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I miss King George. I’m so glad Lord Hastings is here to save us all and carry on George’s legacy.
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With apologies to Churchill fans, school boards are the worst form of school management, except for all the others.
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Actually, district & charter boards vary. Some district boards are selected by mayors. Some are county governments, as part of the county. Some are elected by people in the community.
Some charter boards are composed of parents and educators who work in the school. Teachers working in the charter are in some cases, a majority of the board that runs the school. Some charter boards are elected by the parents of the students whose children attend the school, along with the educators in the school. Some charter boards are selected by other groups.
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“Some charter boards are composed of parents and educators who work in the school. ”
OK
great.
Now suppose there are 35 charters in my district sucking up my tax money.
Shall I (random tax payer) be expected to attend 35 different meetings each month to keep tabs on what is going on?
One school board meeting with published minutes and pre published agendas seems doable, not to mention that I got to vote for 2 of the 10 members (one on my area and one at large).
Where is my (tax payer) voice?
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You have multiple opportunities. You also can vote for state legislators who helped write charter legislation.
I’ve asked before – in addition to being a taxpayer, are you a parent, and educator or ?
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Great!
I (along with a HUGE portion of the state), can vote for one person who, among a large body of elected officials, writes charter legislation!
Wow, thanks.
For nothing.
#whereismyvoice
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Yes, Reed, because charter school boards are such models of good government we should all follow their example. The arrogance combined with cluelessness is just astonishing.
Does he know this is an absolute joke in a lot of places? That charter school boards are rubber stamp cheerleading squads where glaring conflicts of interest are ROUTINELY ignored and there’s no oversight at all?
“R. Gene Schuster, Worthington, Ohio Area
Gene Schuster is President of Synger~Ed Associates, an educational policy, enrollment management and instructional technology consulting practice. He serves as VP of Operations for the National Center of Higher Education Risk Management, and Board Vice Chair of Fund for Ohio’s Future (My School, My Choice). At OSU, Gene served as Director, Office of CIO, as well as University Registrar. For over six years, Gene has served as Chair of the Board for Ohio Connections Academy, a virtual charter school and is Treasurer of BCSB.”
Hey ed reformers? Thanks but no thanks. Why don’t you clean up your own HUGE charter school governance issues and worry less about bashing our schools and plotting to close them. Charter boards can’t even run the schools they have in this state. They’re going to come tell me I need an appointed board, so I can be more like them? I don’t want to be more like them. Why would I want that?
http://www.buckeyecharterboards.org/execbdmembers.html
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For Twitter: Just copy and Paste and then ReTweet often. The short link was created in Bitly and the link leads to this post.
Your taxes pay
#CharterSchools that aren’t democratic & don’t answer to public
#PublicSchools are & answer to public
http://bit.ly/1d2EPqR
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I do think it’s refreshing that the California charter school advocates are cheering the billionaires plan to get rid of public schools completely.
Maybe now we can drop the fiction that ed reform is about improving existing public schools, unless by “improve” they meant “replace” with a couple of “large” operators, to quote the media empire-owner.
Turns out “choice” means a choice between 4 national charter school companies. So much for referring to local public schools as “factories”. That ridiculous “progressive” talking point is probably inoperative after this news.
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Nice comparison.
There are four major corporations that support and own most of the private sector Charter schools. Each CEO has an office in a city. Those four CEO’s may all be in one city (New York) or spread between four cities.
But the public schools are divided up into 13,600+ different school districts that are run by democratically elected school boards representing each individual community those 13,600+ public school districts serve spread through 50 states and territories.
In fact, those elected school board members live in those communities and usually have children who attend or attended the same public schools.
Then these elected school boards meet at least once a month in an open forum where any member of the local community (teachers, students, parents, etc) may come in and ask them questions—hold them accountable for answers. The fact that school boards are made up of several elected members means they may check and balance each other to make sure no one is abusing the position.
In addition, each state has an education code that each district is required to follow and the states monitor to make sure all public school districts are in compliance. Everything came about through the democratic process.
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I really tire of this tone from ed reformers. It permeates Hasting’s speech or the parts that were quoted.
This patronizing nonsense where people are “attached” to things like democratically-elected school boards or local public schools and it is up to ed reformers to rip this attachment asunder “for their own good” is just so arrogant I couldn’t even imagine saying it publicly.
Really? He doesn’t think we understand the pluses and minuses of school boards? Maybe people are “attached” to these things because they have value? I mean, obviously he doesn’t recognize any value in our local public schools, but people do! That’s why they’re attached to them.
I’d love to know why he plans on keeping “10%” of public schools. I have a pretty good idea, but I’d like to make him say it.
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Reed speaks for some, but certainly not all people involved with charters. And there are plenty of abuses with traditional school boards. Despite assertions above, they are not all elected by the people of the community.
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Of course there are “plenty of abuses with traditional school boards”, Joe.
That isn’t the point. Hasting is holding up appointed boards as a model. Charter schools use appointed boards now. I don’t think the charter school model of corporate-style governance is any better than an elected school board. Arguably, corporate boards in the private sector are not such a wonderful model, either. They have their own problems.
This arrogant notion by ed reformers that public schools have to adopt their methods is misguided. I’m not impressed with charter school boards. I don’t think they’re better. I think it’s more self-aggrandizing bullshit on the part of billionaire ed reformers, that they’re now going to “reinvent” local government. So local government will look like charter school boards? No thanks.
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“are plenty of abuses with traditional school boards”
Right.
And I have my self and my neighbors to blame, because we elected them.
And we can toss them out if we find the abuses unacceptable.
I have no voice at the charters.
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You have opportunities to influence state legislators, and members of Congress.
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State legislators!
Yes, so much MORE accountable to me and responsive to me (and my neighbors) that some one who lives on our block (school board member).
What a load.
#whereismyvoice
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Joe Nation,
Don’t tell me I have the chance to influence my state legislature. They gerrymandered away, the votes of Ohioans.
ALEC drafts Ohio legislation, against the will of the people. The evidence was Senate Bill 5. Ohioans had to pay to get a referendum, had to get signatures and then, were able to overturn ALEC’s legislation.
Soldiers and their families have made great sacrifices for political freedom. Ohio politicians should be embarrassed to look them in the eye.
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So glad you mentioned Netflix. Was about to subscribe and now I know not to waste my money filling his pockets. Thanks Diane.
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Yay, another boyotter of NetFlix! I cancelled my subscription shortly after I started reading this blog. Can we get teachers everywhere to make a statement and boycott Netflix and Walmart?
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Here’s the bottom line: The taxpayers support public schools and should retain governance over them through their elected officials. In my opinion, only fools would give away the local tax-supported schools. I can’t believe it’s even legal.
Charter schools were originally conceived to allow teachers, parents and community members to try out new ideas without the burden of a lot of cumbersome rules and regulations. But while citizens were looking the other way, opportunists came and saw a way to make money. (Wouldn’t we all like to start a business that is completed financed by the taxpayers?) Please write to your state representatives to have these privatization laws amended or repealed.
Charters? Maybe (If under public governance). Privatization of public schools? No!
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The real Charter Schools were started by public school teachers back in the 1970s and were still part of public school districts. The real Charter Schools were created to deal with the most at-risk kids. In the district where I taught, the third high school in the district wasn’t called a Charter School. It was called an Alternative High School, but it served the same purpose and still does.
And over the decades, that Alternative High School had the lowest turn-over rate among teachers because teachers ran the school through collective decision making—decisions that served the best interests of the at-risk kids they worked with. In fact, the 17/18 graduation age limit doesn’t apply there. They keep their students as long as it takes to graduate from high school. Some of their students are single teenage mothers who have to support themselves and the teachers created flexible schedules to serve them. I was told that the oldest student who graduate out of that high school was 24. He had to work a full time job starting at 16 but didn’t want to end up a drop out.
Today’s private sector Charter Schools are not really Charter schools—by definition. The robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street just hijacked the name (because it was popular) and use it to hide behind as they profit off taxpayers.
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The smartest marketing they did was calling for-profit charters “public”.
Nothing else that is called “public” is for-profit. People understandably assumed that “public” means “no profit”. They’re still shocked when I tell them that Ohio charter schools are for profits. They read “public” and they made a perfectly reasonable assumption. They were wrong, but boy was that smart, hijacking the word “public”.
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They are highjacking a lot of things–much more than just a few names. They are corrupt crooks but they are smart crooks who are first changing the laws that allows them to be crooks legally. To change the laws, they have to stuff each state with their own puppet legislatures and governors. Heck, they’ve stuffed the White House with two presidents already: G.W. Bush and Obama.
Look at their success with the double standards they have created between private sector school supported with public money and public schools supported by the same money.
The private sector schools they profit off of have no oversight but the public school do and always have.
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“Real” alternative schools, some of which I helped started – have all too often been wrecked by school boards or district office administrators who wouldn’t really give teachers power they sought.
A number of people in today’s charters are educators who worked previously in traditional districts and were deeply frustrated.
And, for what it’s worth, about 2/3 of today’s charter public schools are independent – not a part of any larger group.
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Yet the Stanford study says most of the Charter Schools are no better or worse than public schools, and yes I’ve worked in a district where some administrators micromanaged everything from the district office and seldom if ever cared what teachers thought.
But then, we can find the same management style in the private sector. It’s just the way it is.
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Lloyd, “chartered” public schools vary widely,just as district public schools do. Comparing achievement of district & charter public schools is like comparing mileage of leased & rental cars – not a meaningful comparison.
There are great district & alternative and charter schools from which we can learn a lot.
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Correction, there are a few good private sector Charter schools—according to the Stanford study—that we might learn from but as you say, it’s like comparing the “mileage of leased & rental cars” (but that’s a tame comparison—it’s more like comparing the taste of a bitter melon to a sweet banana and failing the melon because it isn’t as sweet as the banana).
What happens if the programs and methods being used for teaching are the same but the demographics of the student population are not?
For instance, there was another public high school less than five minutes driving time from the one where I taught, and those two high schools were as different as night and day but the teachers used all the same methods of teaching. We all had the same training and all had to teach the same curriculum.
The only difference was the socioeconomics and ethnicity of the student population. The high school where I taught was in a barrio dominated by violent street gangs and poverty.
The other high school was in a different public school district but it was in the hills surrounded by upper middle class homes. The barrio came first decades earlier. The hills were once a cattle ranch. When they started building the middle class homes in the late 1970s, they also build walls that blocked streets from the barrio to make it difficult for the gangs to drive into the middle class community. Imagine, a twenty foot wall cutting right across a street turning what had once been an access road into cul-de-sacs. Some of the people living in the barrio actually went to court over that but lost. To leave, they had other roads they could use.
I taught at Nogales High School and the other one was Walnut High—both in California.
I just went online to compare the two schools. I used to drive by Walnut HS all the time going home but I didn’t live there although I had a friend who did.
Walnut has a student population that’s 52.5% Asian, 13.22% White and about 20% Latino. That high school’s API is a 10, the highest level possible. There was no listing that gave the percentage of socioeconomic student because it was too small to report. It has to be listed if the ratio is over a certain percent.
But at Nogales HS, 78.4% of the students were socioeconomically disadvantaged and 81.5% are Latino.
Teaching methods aren’t the problem. The teachers at both high schools were taught the same methods and I’m sure they all used them but the challenge is from the students who don’t cooperate, for whatever reason. The more poverty, the more challenges and problems and if the poverty isn’t dealt with, the problems don’t go away no matter how powerful the teaching is.
The so-called reform movement that’s driven by a small number of ignorant billionaire oligarchs like Bill Gates—who stand to benefits from billions in profits off tax payers—isn’t going to fix this problem by punishing teachers. They also won’t fix it by punishing the students. If these billionaires are honest, then they are assuming every child is hungry to learn and is willing to cooperate but the teachers have to be incompetent and aren’t teaching. But that is WRONG!!!!
No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and the Common Core testing have set a goal through laws that says if teachers can’t jump 1,000 feet in one leap—-without legs—then all teachers are failures and so are their schools. The students are the legs and when the legs refuse to move, you aren’t going to go anywhere even three feet.
No other country in the world in history has ever demanded that their teachers achieve such a goal—success with 100% of all students. And anyone who thinks it’s possible without dramatic social changes in the culture is a total fool because no one in history has ever achieved that.
There’s a simple equation that explains how education works.
Teachers teach
Students learn
Parents support
To learn, the students must pay attention, ask questions, do the work and turn it in on time, and the parents provide an environment at home where children may do homework and read while the TV, video games and other electronic distractions are turned off.
If the only element of the equation is doing their part, then there is going to be no improvement. It doesn’t matter how hard the teacher works—how brilliant she is.
If a private sector Charter school is opaque and refuses to keep those students who do not cooperate. then there is no comparison and the methods they are using are no magic pill that the public schools can learn from.
I have another suggestion. Let’s swap teachers with those successful Charter schools but keep the students in the same schools and see what happens.
I’ll tell you what will happen. Most of the teachers from the Charter school who never worked with the student population I worked with will fail miserably and probably quit before the year is out. If Bill Gates believes these Charter schools are better, he has nothing to fear. But I want to be the one who decides what public high school we swap teachers with. Gates can pay all the expense moving the teachers and their pay has to stay the same. The public school teachers keep their pay and benefits, and the private Charter School teachers keep their pay. :o)
We won’t move the administrators. There’s a problem here though. Many of the Charter school teachers might not be qualified to teach in a public school or they might not pass a criminal background check through the FBI. I had to have my fingerprints run through an FBI database before I could teach. Private Charter school teachers don’t have to do that. Some of the Charter school teachers might have criminal records or be sexual perverts but since the private Charter schools have laws that protect them from public scrutiny, they can easily ignore or cover those sort of problems up.
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LL – Thanks for the detailed post. I am glad you took the time to write it. It is important that we hear from teachers.
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“Joe Nathan
March 15, 2014 at 7:28 pm
“Real” alternative schools, some of which I helped started – have all too often been wrecked by school boards or district office administrators who wouldn’t really give teachers power they sought.
A number of people in today’s charters are educators who worked previously in traditional districts and were deeply frustrated.
And, for what it’s worth, about 2/3 of today’s charter public schools are independent – not a part of any larger group.”
I think that’s a poor measure, “schools”.
The measure should be students, enrolled. How many charter school students are enrolled in small independent charters versus the large chains? The whole point of ed reform is “scaleability”. It’s a word they repeat constantly. They hope to replicate a formula again and again, all over the country. This has nothing to do with “small” or “independent”, or, actuallly. “creative”.
When Duncan went to Boston last week he stopped by a charter school training program. The charter school tweeted that Duncan wanted to train “thousands” of teachers with this scripted method they’re using. Again, not small nor independent and not at all “creative”. “Efficient” and “replicable” would be the words to describe what the goal is there.
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Fortunately, growing numbers of families are discovering new options – sometimes in districts, sometimes in charters. Growing # of educators are discovering how they can have an opportunity to create the kinds of schools that they think make sense – sometimes through district options, sometimes through charters.
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Oh, Joe, that’s naive. When people talk about “scaleability” they mean a uniform system or method they can grow. That’s exactly what they’re doing, which isn’t all that surprising, since they say it constantly.
I have no idea how you plan to get from “appointed boards” to this loose, creative starting of schools you envision. What are you going to do, storm the charter board? Demand whomever is running the thing appoint new members? Corporate boards are MORE democratic than charter boards. At least there, shareholders have a process for a vote.
The big players are going to swamp you. It’s already happening. The biggest school “district” in my state is a for profit “cybercharter” school. That thing is no more “local” than Verizon.
If you truly want small local charter schools, you would do well to resist the push for centralized control. Ed reformers are always pushing control UP. When they don’t like the decision of a local school board, they seat a state board! When Eva Moskowitz doesn’t like the decision of a mayor, she runs right out to lobby for state control. I mean, honestly, what’s next? Who does she go to when a governor tells her “no”? Congress?
You’re getting rid of the whole NOTION of locally-run schools. The entire “movement” seems to be built around avoiding democratic process. That’s not really a good government goal of mine, personally. I don’t like how the US Senate operates, procedurally. That doesn’t mean I want to replace it with 100 board members.
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Chiara – There are different definitions of locally controlled. There’s nothing magic about school boards. We hear about the wonders of Finland – they don’t have local boards.
Fortunately a variety of people are recognizing the value of options and the empowerment of parents, families and educators.
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“empowerment of parents, families and educators.”
If by that you mean remove power from…yep.
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Yeah, they(parents, students, and educators) are discovering the reality that those suggesting choices are taking opportunities away from them to control education for the betterment of children. Power of takeaway. Ironic folktale, to me.
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In many places, it’s not win-lose. It can be win win.
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Of course they matter, they’re local and that is exactly why Duncan did not notify the Worchester MA school board that he’d be visiting this past week. Nothing worse than being ignored or made to feel inconsequential.
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A few tidbits about Reed Hastings (i.e., things to contemplate when watching a Netflix show):
– Hastings funded the launch of Green Dot Public Schools, the CMO started by Steve Barr.
– Hastings helped to start the New Schools Venture Fund.
– Hastings co-authored the California Charter School Initiative with Don Shalvey which passed and lifted the cap on charter schools.
– Hastings and Shalvey then co-founded the CMO Aspire Public Schools (several years later Shalvey went to work for the Gates Foundation).
– Hastings served on the board of Microsoft from 2007 until 2012
– Hastings founded a charter school in Santa Cruz, CA, known for pressuring families to contribute an extra $3000/student. See http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/2010/05/pacific-collegiate-charter-school.html
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Some of us dropped Netflix immediately when we found out about his attack on a democratically run education system supported by one of our greatest Presidents, Thomas Jefferson. He warned us about people like this trying to control our lives and thoughts and why we needed a public education system for all. We need to stop doing business with people like this immediately. This is why I tell public school teachers, parents of public school children, and people who believe in public schools to stop doing business with Netflix, Walmart, Exxon-Mobil, and others who believe corporate profits are the only important goal and they will do anything to increase their own wealth including destroying the middle class by buying politicians votes on bills favoring their goal. We mistakingly think the wealthiest are the brightest, but that is seldom the case. If we paid the brightest with appropriate compensation for their work in relation to what they give to improve peoples lives instead of rewarding people for occupations that add little to improve peoples lives, then more people would persue careers in areas of need such as in the STEM areas. Remember, we get what we pay for. Do you really want better Engineers, Teachers, or other professionals, then pay them. I believe it is the model used in most countries that we are told have students who perform better on tests but we always want something for nothing so we are more interested in maximizing profits over all else. GREED will be our Achilles heel.
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When I saw the concern for local school boards it reminded me of an earlier post about the democratic nature of some school boards. The post, from a frequent contributor, can be found here: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/07/19/prince-georges-county-no-democracy-for-us/comment-page-1/#comment-218962
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I think if Arne ignored a public school board last week but went to see a charter training school it shows he does not know how to connect with people but for buzz words, trends and new-ness.
And that is a very sophomoric state to be in. And so he leads us down garden paths because he does not know how to connect with people but for Nike, Adidas, Coca Cola type “campaign” banter.
It would be better for him, I would think, to find out what the local businesses are in a place before he goes there. Were any famous authors from there? Are any of the school board members developers in the area?
He seems so bound by commercial appeal. Like he’s only ever hung out in shopping malls and sports arenas—not museums, local cafes or symphony halls.
Why not go hear a public school band practicing? Or a chorus? Or visit an art art room? Or a science fair?
He wants to reinvent the wheel so we’re all like a giant shopping mall. Because that’s all he knows.
People make him uncomfortable. Clearly.
I hope we get someone who is not afraid of people in our next round of leadership.
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