Philadelphia has experienced a long string of charter school failures.
Here is another one, in trouble both financially and academically.
Yet The business and civic leadership, egged on by the Boston Consulting Group, wants to close more public schools and open more charter schools.
Haven’t they figured out that deregulation and lack of supervision are not strategies for education reform, but opportunities for malfeasance?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Since they are depositories of free taxpayer money and virtually unregulated, charter school is code for “opportunities for malfeasance.” It’s a twofer for any snake oil salesman who wants to run a family business.
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Reading Tom Piketty’s new book “Capital in the Twenty First Century” provides some insight into what is happening to public education. Over the centuries productivity has increased dramatically in agriculture and manufacturing but not in the service industry. This has resulted in the service sector becoming a larger component of the GNP. Combine that with a greater concentration of income & wealth leads to the problem of how to pay for these services. While “follow the money” is certainly an important explanation, the wealthy understand that paying for public services will have to come from higher taxation of the wealthy, and that in my opinion is the other major cause of the privatization movement in public services. Recall statements from Bill Gates about how a great teacher can have a class of 100 students. Piketty proposes that the ideal solution that will never happen would be a worldwide progressive income tax.
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I guess my initial reaction to this letter was the same as yours. Another failed charter. However, what was missing was the evidence they are failing the students. I have to take, with a big grain of salt, anything the Philadelphia school district has to say, as THEY have failed their students on every level. The fact that they have almost double the allotted spaces speaks to the fact that parents are still enrolling and there is no parental voice in this article. In addition, that chunk of cash is a HUGE motivation for the district to work to close the schools down. They have mismanaged their finances so badly, they are broke. Thus they will be out to get every cent they can. Is this a justified closure, I’d need to assess the data before I would buy the district’s take on this school’s success or lack there of. Truthfully, we’d also need to look at the public schools in the same neighborhood to determine how they compare rather than looking at the data only. I am not a fan of charters, but school districts such as Philadelphia have been doing a piss poor job of education, it’s hard to take what they recommend with any real sense or sincerity. IMHO.
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx In another article here http://articles.philly.com/2014-04-26/news/49408615_1_charter-renewal-palmer-leadership-learning-charter-policy
the SRC chairman “noted that for the vast majority of its students – 85 percent – their neighborhood district school outperforms Palmer Leadership academically”. But the other reasons cited (enrolling over cap, billing for students no longer there) sound like there’s more to the issues than meets the eye.
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Here is the CREDO report for PA charter schools…http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/PA%20State%20Report_20110404_FINAL.pdf
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The laws allowing private individuals and corporations to take over a public school and turn it into a private business were passed while citizens were preoccupied with the Recession. Do you remember when these laws were passed? Did you have the opportunity to vote on them?
If the answer is no, write to your representatives to have these laws amended or reversed.
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They understand, they may well have intentions to cash in on this situation themselves, it is, after all, “good business.”
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Here today ~ Gone tomorrow Charter Schools.
Would it make sense to research names, locations and durations of failed charters?
If the public knew the instability, failure rate and opportunities for charlatans to move into any community, hang their hats and run schools until the money runs out…and close their doors without any sense of responsibility to their students, the public may begin to pay more attention and express concerns.
Just a thought.
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In Nevada . . . we have a law that prevents the renewal of charter contracts. But no one seems to care, we renew them anyhow. I’ve been in school board meetings twice before when this happened and then this week Beacon Academy which fails to graduate high school students in its on-line program was in the spotlight . . .
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/25343493/breaking-news-board-renews-beacon-academys-certification
A friend of mine sent me this . . . .
I know why Beacon got renewed. Andrew Barbano has been writing about it on his blog up in Reno 2 years. The kids who will not be graduating are dumped into it to increase the graduation rate of the other high schools. The adult learning program operated by the state can’t look like they have a low grad rate so the most risky go to the charter and fill a spot in the books. Charter gets paid fail or no fail and the state looks like its graduation rate is soaring at the reporting schools.
Are public school systems actually using some charters to pump up their own scores?
I’ve mainly been concerned about the blatant resegregation by race, religion, and interest.
Never occurred to me that charters are a way to cheat?
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Philadelphia schools are a hot mess thanks to more than a decade of defunding and failed privatization schemes. Charter or public, the whole thing is a rob-peter-to-pay-paul shell game. there’s no $ in the cookie jar thanks to Vallas, Corbett & many others. An unconscionable situation for residents and their children. A particularly bitter pill for the home of megamegabucks Comcast poised to swallow Time-Warner & state gov so in their pocket they can’t manage to squeeze them enough to keep local schools running.
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Here’s a link to yet another charter failure- Mosaica Education Inc. out as manager of the of the Muskegon Heights charter school district.
http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2014/04/mosaica_out_as_manager_of_musk.html
It would be interesting to look into the “academic turnaround” they claim. I suspect it was the result of removing low-performing students.
Scott
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Does anyone near and dear to Philly have time for a next weekend camp-in at Whiteface Lodge at Lake Placid NY? No, they won’t let you on the property while they are busy pounding yet another nail into the coffin of the Philly public schools, but you can bunk at the nearby Comfort Inn with sympathetic teachers and parents who are gathering to protest the pathological plutocrats who have pulverized Philadelphia Public Schools and most of NY State. You can’t camp at Camp Philos but you can get real close and publicize your plight. Send a delegation. Details at Picket In The Pines on Facebook or Twitter.
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Diane, This has nothing to do with education quality for children and everything to do with diminishing whatever power teacher unions had been able to accumulate. Politicians and millionaires don’t like competition for their power. Rob
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