Peter Greene maintains that advocates of school choice have sold us a pig in a poke. Or maybe they put lipstick on a pig. Whatever. He says that school choice is unAmerican.
The goal of school choice is to turn us into consumers whose only interest is the welfare of our own child. But, he says, we all have an interest in the well-being of public schools, even if we don’t have children. Not only that, but school choice eviscerates local control of education.
He writes:
“The educated human who emerges from school will become a neighbor, an employee, a parent, a spouse, a voter, a (one hopes) involved citizen, a person whose job will contribute in some way to the life of the community. Everybody who will ever deal with her in any of those capacities shares the benefits of that education. They are all “customers” of public education. Whether they are relatives of the educatee or not is hardly the point.
“We all have a stake in public education. We all pay taxes to support public education. And we all get to vote on who will manage the operation of our schools (well, unless we are in occupied territories like Philadelphia or Newark).
“School choice throws all of that out the window. Do you think it’s a bad idea for a student to attend Flat Earth High School or Racial Purity Elementary School or God Is Dead Day School? Well, under school choice, if you don’t have a kid, you don’t have a voice. Too bad for you.
“Oh, your tax dollars will still go to that cute school where the mascot is Jesus riding a dinosaur– but whether you’re upset because that mascot is ironic or because it isn’t, you don’t get to complain.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane how much of the following do you believe: “The goal of school choice is to turn us into consumers whose only interest is the welfare of our own child. But, he says, we all have an interest in the well-being of public schools, even if we don’t have children. Not only that, but school choice eviscerates local control of education.”
And do agree with this for some, none or all forms of publicly supported school choice? For example, should families not have the opportunity to move to the suburbs? Should school districts not be allowed to create new schools within schools? Should teachers not be allowed to work with families and others to create new district options?
You’ve pointed out your opposition to other forms of school choice – just wondering if you are opposed to the ones mentioned above?
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Oh Joe, two can play at your game. Sorry Diane, for butting in here since the questions are addressed to you and I’m sure you can/will answer them as you choose.
Joe, do you agree that charter schools are not public schools, as a judge in NYC decreed, and are, therefore exempt from all laws regarding discrimination, transparency, IDEA, Title IX, etc.? Do you agree that charter and voucher schools should not be required to take the same tests as public school students, as is true here in Florida? Do you agree that charter schools should be exempt from oversight and accountability as championed in Tea Party controlled legislatures around the country, including the US House of Representatives? Do you agree that charter school should be able to cherry pick and cream only the best students with supportive families as stated by a US Representative last week? Do you agree with charter schools paying their administrations and property management companies huge salaries making grifting easier and more likely as has been documented around the country? Do you agree that charter schools should be able to move into a public school and displace special needs students of the public school that used to be in the space as happened in NYC with the help of the governor? Do you support the eradication of public schools entirely as has happened in New Orleans, Michigan, and several poverty stricken cities in New Jersey and soon to be Philly? Do you agree that charter schools siphon off money from the poorest and neediest school districts thereby starving the poorest and neediest children for the benefit of a very few? Do you agree with all the ALEC-written legislations that makes a cake walk of charter school management with little to no accountability creates an uneven playing field for public schools who are left to educate the most difficult and neediest students with far less resources? Do you agree that the shame of the charter school movement is the continuance of segregation, the lack of services for special needs students, the treatment of children of the poor as if they are already criminals who must be educated in military-like conditions with little to no autonomy? Do your agree with the vast numbers of charter school managers that ignore parent and community input and do as they please, like in Newark, LA, FL, OH, MI, et al?
I’d like to read your detailed defense of all of these indefensible charter practices which I’m sure your charter school doesn’t engage in but which are commonplace around the country.
I could go on but I won’t.
Do you agree that your never-ending cheerleading for charter schools because your experience is exemplary ignores and denies the very real and very large problems charter schools have created around the country and how you disappear and never answer any of these questions or acknowledge that there are any problems at all?
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All you need to know about Joe:
Funding for Joe Nathan’s center for school change:
Funding for the Center has come from Cargill, Gates, Annenberg, Blandin, General Mills, St. Paul, St. Paul Companies, Peters, Minneapolis, TCF, Joyce, Bradley and Rockefeller Foundations, the U.S. Department of Education, the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Initiative Funds, Best Buy, Pohlad, and Wallin Foundation.
And read his insulting comment in reference to Diane:
Do We Need More Heroes?
by JOHN MERROW on 25. SEP, 2013 in 2013 BLOGS
http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6556
Joe Nathan 25. Sep, 2013 at 5:04 pm
Well done, John.
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Chris – State legislatures have declared that charters are part of public education as they have declared in several states that statewide schools not controlled by local districts are part of public education.
In some states, state dollars also follow students, paying all or a portion of high school students tuition, books and fees at colleges and universities.
According to state legislatures in more than 30 states and the District of Columbia public education and is not limited to those schools controlled by local school boards.
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And just as I predicted Joe ignores all questions and does not address the problems with charter schools.
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Readily agreed there are problems with some charters. I agreed dozens of times.
Would you agree that there has been corruption and resistance to good ideas from parents and teachers from some school systems?
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Citizens are indeed raised by their community. If we educate all students to the best of our ability then we make a better place for all of us to live. We are of course social animals living in communities that are connected by need and human desire for interaction. TO ignore or separate kids from all the best resources, has the ability to destroy the communities in which we live.
At this point it is still necessary to interact in the community to survive. Unless we want a community plagued with crime, selfishness and greed, everyone of us has an interest in seeing that all students are given the befit of an equitable education less we want to have a habd in our own destruction.
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On the 500 block of Maple street there would be many objections to things that might go on in the assigned school. 513 and 514 maple object to the project based learning claptrap. The folks at 502 want students to learn cursive, but 520 thinks it pointless. 518 Maple is alI in favor of teaching mathematics as a logic but most of the rest of the block is in favor of teaching mathematics as computation in exactly the way they remember it being done 30 years ago. The folks at 516 Maple would like Chinese taught to the young students, but 511 Maple thinks that is a waste of time and all language instruction should be left to the high schools anyway. In the end all the compromises result in a school that looks remarkably like what the parents remember of their school, and exactly like the school the folks on the 600 block of Maple are assigned to attend.
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Perhaps the compromises are due to a limit amount of money.
Will it ever be possible to have enough choices to satisfy the majority of the population. Where will the $ come from to support all these choices?
How will all these choices that parents want be funded?
Is it the public’s responsibility to offer an endless supply of choices to the people of Maple St.?
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No, unlimited choices are not possible. But some choices are.
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TE’s finite list for Maple St. seems cost prohibitive.
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To some degree the compromises are due to budget constraints, but I don’t think that is the binding constraint in most cases. It would be possible to offer the math curriculum of Thomas Jefferson High School in every neighborhood school, but there would not be the community of students in those classes unless in each neighborhood schools. Students need to cross catchment boundary lines in order to create that community. I think the same would be true of a Waldorf school or Montessori school. Scale includes not only cost, but the number a number of students to make it a good class.
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The U.S. public schools are part of the infrastructure of the country. They are as vital—if not more so—than the highways, bridges, waterways, airports, electric grid, water and gas lines, etc.—-infrastructure built mostly by hard working Americans and not by billionaires, who often take credit for what they never sweated or toiled to build.
Regardless of the cherry picked misinformation and lies of the greedy, power hungry fake education reformers and the fools who believe this swill, history and facts prove that the public schools were the foundation and are still the foundation, the first steps in life of almost every citizen, that made the United States the wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet, the country that helped tip the balance in World War I and win World War II.
And those public schools have improved steadily for more than a century as they evolved along with the country into a super power.
In fact, the only way the fake education reforms could make the public schools appear to be failures was to pass unjust, impossible laws that demanded the schools be successful with 100% of the children—something no other country on the planet in recorded history and into the future has ever or will ever achieve. To make sure the new private sector Charter schools would look successful, they created a double standard where only the public schools were transparent and had to achieve the impossible. The new charters hides behind an opaque wall and not be held to the same impossible standards, but even then the failure and fraud of these new Charters is so obvious that they can’t hide the truth and it is coming out—-the word is spreading. In time, there won’t be enough fools left in the country believing the fake education reformers for them to continue their charade.
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So Lloyd, it’s clear you oppose charter public schools.
How do you feel about schools within the district system that use admissions tests to screen out kids? Or regional schools or statewide schools that receive public support? Or schools within schools created by district teachers? Or alternative schools created by teachers for students with whom traditional schools have not succeeded? Or families allowed to move to the suburbs?
Those are all forms of school choice in the US. Is all of that wrong and something to be opposed? Some of it? None of it?
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I never said I oppose the original charter school concept that was started by public school teachers and that stayed part of public school districts.
In fact, the district where I worked had one but it went by another name. They called it an alternative high school and it focused on the most at risk kids in a district that was split by a freeway. On one side, we had the middle class and on the other the barrio, street gangs and poverty with poverty rates higher than 70% in those schools—that was the side of the freeway where I taught for 27 of the 30 years.
That one alternative high school was in an industrial area on the poor side of the freeway next door to the ed-media center of the district.
The name of that alternative high school was Santana. It’s where most of the pregnant girls went (it was their choice not forced) along with the most difficult to teach students who were recommended by teachers in the regular schools. At Santana, kids could stay longer than 17/18 to graduate.
At Santana, the teachers and administration had the power to be flexible with scheduling classes for students who had jobs because they had to work to contribute to their poor family—most of their students worked.
Santana had the lowest teacher turn over in the district. I was told by one of the veteran teachers at Santana that one of their male students finally gradated at 24. I was even urged to transfer when a position opened.
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Thanks Lloyd, two of the district schools we’re currently working with are similar to what you’ve described. So is it fair to say you are open to choices within a district, but not charters?
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I accept the alternatives a public school district creates through the democratic process provided by an elected school board as long as those choices stay in the public sector and are totally transparent. The education of most of the children in the U.S. is too important to turn over to the private sector. Most of our children must be taught by public school teachers who do not all believe one political/religious agenda.
A study by Gallup or the Pew found that a third of public school teachers are conservative Republicans, about half are Democrats and the rest independent voters—I think each of the 13,600 public school districts more closely represents the community they serve.
What happens when a private sector school is owned by a billionaire with his own extreme political/religious thinking? Does this oligarch hire only those who agree with his thinking? Do we end up with private sector charters that are all staffed with born again fundamentalist Christians; or libertarians, or tea party republicans, neo-conservatives, neo-liberals, etc.? Do parents lose their voice as part of the democratic process that exists in the public schools?
In fact, the public schools over more choice than any corporate run schools will ever offer, because of the democratic process that leads to a wide variety or regional cultural differences across the country. What do you think will happen if the Walton family of Wall-Mart wealth came to control the majority of schools in America?
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A good chunk of post secondary education is not public. Dr. Ravitch herself is a faculty member of the largest private university in the country. Do you see any problem with having private institutions doing post secondary education? What about the 10% of students that attend private K-12 schools? Should we make private K-12 schools illegal?
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Your list of questions is getting off topic and has nothing to do with what I said. I’m beginning to suspect you are paid to do this by someone like Bill Gates or the Waltons.
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That’s all TE does…..always and forever. Skim and don’t fret.
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Lloyd,
Your suspicions are unfounded.
Your post states that “The education of most of the children in the U.S. is too important to turn over to the private sector”. This naturally leads to some clarifying questions like those I asked. Do you only mean K-12 is too important? Do you think it is unimportant that the relatively wealthy do turn the education of their children over to the private sector?
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You are ignored! Keep asking your often unanswered questions that are similar to the Bridge to Nowhere.
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/09/bridge-to-nowhere/
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I do understand that having to give justifications for policy positions is sometimes uncomfortable, but it is generally a good idea.
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I made my statement—-in fact, I’ve made many here, and on my Crazy Normal blog where I usually go into detail with links to sources.
Your questions lead to an entirely different statement and/or agenda and are a waste of my time. If you want to argue different sub-issues, I suggest you do so on your own Blog if you have one or launch one and then do it.
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Not a different agenda at all, but the search for a better education for all.
I assume that you do not think it important that post secondary schools are public or private given that your daughter attends an elite private university. Why do you think that secondary schools must be publicly controlled? I do not see a sharp enough distinction between the two levels of schooling to allow public control to be essential when a student is in the twelfth year of education but irrelevant (or perhaps private education is to be applauded as I suspect your daughter could have gone to Berkeley, but perhaps I am wrong about that) to the thirteenth year.
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TE,
Take the boys, go fishing. It’s a beautiful day.
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It is not that nice a day here today, but it will go fishing with my youngest in a couple of hours.
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Tricky, aren’t you? That’s your opinion. I disagree. I made my thinking clear and refuse to be sucked into your endless questions that lead nowhere but in circles. I have better things to do.
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My questions are about arguments, the reasons behind positions. Public control of K-12 education for the majority (I say majority and not all students because……) of students is too important to turn over to the private sector because…….. and is unimportant after high school because……. My questions are about the dots.
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Where did I say that every child in America should be required to only attend public schools? As usual with your questions, you are creating an argument that doesn’t exist in the original comment you challenge. Therefore, you have changed the subject.
Exclusive private schools like the one that Bill Gates attended and his children attend have been around a long time but taxes don’t support those schools and never have. The first school I attended was a Catholic school and I didn’t leave until my parents could no longer afford the tuition, as it should be.
Exclusive private schools are for those who can afford to pay for that choice, and I strongly think that taxpayers should only support the public schools because taxes should come with representation and the private sector doesn’t offer the democratic process when a corporation or CEO is in charge—-parents have little or no say in the private sector and are usually required to sign a consent form to support that schools policies whatever they might be
In addition, through the democratic process, the tax payers have the right to stand up and make comments and suggestions about the public schools to improve them. Then through the democratic process, the representatives who were elected decide what to do—-not a CEO like Bill Gates!
The U.S. Founding Fathers fought a civil war against the British Empire based on taxation without representation, and what’s happening in the United States with the fake education privatization movement is replacing the British Empire with corporations.
In the public schools, taxation comes with the democratic process so all the taxpayers may have a voice through the elected school boards. That process has vanished in the private sector Charter schools that are being forced on America, and it is clear from the results of every election where the voters were asked to accept vouchers, that the majority of Americans don’t want them.
In fact, when Gallup (or Pew—I can’t remember which one, but the post on my Blog where I mention this does provide a link to the original survey) asked about the perception of the public schools that most American children attend, almost 80% of those who responded had strong confidence in the local schools their children attended, while overwhelmingly thinking that all the other schools their children never attended—and the respondent knew nothing about—needed reform. This is the opposite of the “grass is greener” concept.
What do you think caused that perception to judge schools negatively that these respondents had no direct knowledge of while they highly approved of the schools their children attended?
How can anyone fairly judge something they have no direct knowledge of—-except what they hear in the media that is the result of decades of PR campaigns paid for by the likes of Bill Gates, the Walton family or hedge fund billionaires selling shares for their private sector for profit Charter schools on Wall Street?
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Lloyd,
I do not know if you ever said every student should attend schools with public employed teachers. I did quote your post where you said “The education of most of the children in the U.S. is too important to turn over to the private sector.” By most, I assume that you mean a majority of students, but it is a little unclear. It may be that you mean it is only important for the children of the relatively poor, and it is fine that the children of the relatively wealthy turn the education of their children over to the private sector, but I am not sure it is a defensible position. I am curious about what percentage of children can safely be educated by the private sector and how those children are chosen.
I think we might disagree about how much say a parent has in private sector education. Even in my small town a parent can choose from a progressive private school, a Waldorf private school, a Montessori private school, and a parochial private school. The public schools are carefully regulated so that they are indistinguishable from each other. That is the only way that the school board can defend the decision that folks living on the 500 block of my street attend one school and the folks living on the 600 block of my street are assigned to a different school.
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Again, you have your own opinion—one that may be totally wrong. The evidence says so.
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Lloyd, more than 20 years ago Al Shanker accurately pointed out that teachers who tried to create new options in district public schools often “were treated like traitors or outlaws for daring to move outside the lockstep.”
There was no limitation in the assertion presented earlier today that school choice is “undemocratic.” There was no statement that district public school choice is ok. It was a straight out assertion by the blogger, accompanied by this “The goal of school choice is to turn us into consumers whose only interest is the welfare of our own child.”
Nope. People trying to create new options are trying to help more students succeed. That doesn’t mean all new proposals should be approved. They shouldn’t. It doesn’t mean there hasn’t been some corruption. There has. It doesn’t mean we should be sending public funds to k-12 parochial schools. I don’t think we should.
But the vast majority of people trying to create new options, like the people who created Santana, to which you referred earlier, are trying – and in many cases succeeding, in helping more students succeed.
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“Al Shanker accurately pointed out that teachers who tried to create new options in district public schools often were treated like traitors or outlaws for daring to move outside the lockstep.”
That is an incomplete statement and VERY misleading. Ask this: who treats teachers like traitors and outlaws for daring to not do as they are told? Not other teachers!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The “lockstep” doesn’t come from the teachers. The “lockstep” doesn’t come from the teacher unions. In fact, the teacher unions had little to nothing to do with the development and implementation of curriculum programs.
I taught for thirty years (1975 – 2005) and the public school system was trying out new, untested theories all the time, but those changes never, I repeat, never originated with classroom teachers. Teachers, in isolation, could try new ideas and teaching methods out in their classroom and share them with colleagues, who might give it a try too, but not once was any successful method used by a teacher considered by administration in the schools where I worked.
Those changes always came from outside the classroom from educational gurus, corporations that stood to make a profit if their untested theory worked, parents, administrators, elected school boards, state legislators, governors, the courts, and Washington DC.
For instance, the Whole Language approach to teaching reading that was forced on most English teachers in California’s schools in the mid 1980s and a decade later abandoned when the state’s ranking compared to other states dropped dramatically from near the top to near the bottom. The English department teachers—and I was one of them—at the school where I taught, protested when we were forced (FORCED) by the school board and administrators to throw out the grammar books and stop teaching kids how to spell, punctuate and write a complete and proper sentence. The theory behind that failed Whole Language experiment was that all a kid had to do was read thirty minutes or more outside of school ever day, 365 days a year and they’d learn all that stuff pain free and their self esteem wouldn’t suffer from all that boring work.
Actual classroom teachers are seldom if every included in the decision making process and change is a constant in the classroom. If teachers aren’t being forced to try out some new untested theory, they are trying out new ideas on their own to see what works. In fact, the best material is usually the material a teacher creates outside of school hours.
Another for instance (and I have many for instances) was when IBM offered our high school a $50,000 grant for a complete IBM reading lab for our most at risk, low readers.
The reading teachers were concerned about rushing into a new program when we had one that was working just fine, but who says no to that kind of offer—not administration or the school board. Two years later, those computers ended up in a store room and, thank God, the old reading kits were still there and had not been tossed out in the trash. You see, the reading teachers stored those kits away because they thought the computers might not catch on with the kids, who—it turned out—-sabotaged the disk drives with wads of gum and pried off the letter keys on the key board, took the mice, etc.
The number of changes we were forced to make in the classroom never stopped. It was like an assembly line of magic bullets coming from above. Every few years, there’d be another untested theory or program forced on cautious and/or reluctant teachers who questioned if it was good idea to throw out what was working to try something untested—-again and again and again. And when they failed, as they often did, who was blamed?
Teachers!
And this is where we go full circle to Bill Gates and the untested theory of Common Core standards and the Machiavellian testing regime that sees public schools closed and teachers fired to be replaced with private sector, for profit charter schools that often are riddled with fraud and do worse or no better than the schools they replace.
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Lloyd, several things:
One of the reasons some of us are promoting the teacher powered school approach (and there are now about 60 operating in various ways) is because lots of teachers with good ideas have been treated badly. Here’s a link for those interested:
http://www.teacherpowered.org/resources/white-paper.html
To your points:
a. A variety of people have treated teachers who try to start new district programs like “traitors or outlaws.” Shanker and I were on a tv program together and discussed this, and were at several meetings where we presented together.
Sometimes the people treating teachers like “traitors & outlaws” are other teachers. There are some teachers who have fiercely opposed allowing teachers in their district to create a new option (this has nothing to do with charters by the way, I’m talking about new district options).
Some of the people who treat innovative teachers badly are principals, or central office administrators, or school board members.
b. There are examples all over the country of districts that did turn to teachers to create new programs. Eugene Oregon is one, the East Harlem section of New York City (and later other parts of New York CIty. Minneapolis did this for a while. The Boston Pilot Schools. The LA Pilot Schools. There also are alternative schools all over the country created by classroom teachers who saw a need because some students did far better in a smaller more personalized school than the traditional secondary school.
c. Agreed that sometimes technology has been used badly, and money wasted.
It would be good to know what you think of the teacher powered approach.
Joe
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Points
A:
So Shranker is in the history books. Big deal. He’s still only one person with his own opinions and perceptions. That doesn’t make him right all the time. He was human. That means he was flawed. We are all flawed in some way.
B:
And your Point B cancels your Point A argument that teachers are “treated like traitors” and outlaws. I think that depends on local politics and each elected school board, the administration they hire, and the ideas a teacher might have that the majority disagrees with. In all things, consensus, I think, is the key to safeguard against the libertarian, tea party, religious fundamentalist crack pots and any other nut case out there.
I have no doubts that out of almost 14,000 public school districts, there would also be districts and/or schools that use the teacher problem solving and decision making approach. In fact, my first full time contract (78-85) was at a school that started out with a principal who did just that and I naively thought that was the way it was done everywhere until he had a stroke and retired early. Then I discovered the dark side of a micromanaging administration that didn’t value anything teachers thought or said. In that one district, only that one principal used the teacher approach and he was under a lot of pressure from the micro managers at the district office to abandon it. To his credit, he refused until the day he had his stroke and left us.
The only reason he didn’t lose his job was because what he was doing worked even if the district administration didn’t like his management methods. Ralph was a soft spoken Korean War veteran.
C.
What do I think of teacher powered approach?
I agree with how Finland does it. Finland has standards that come with suggestions, but they are flexible and teachers decide how much time to actually spend on them, which ones to focus on and how to do it. They also work together in support teams to problem solve through critical thinking.
To me, “teacher powered” means administration is basically office management that is only there to order paper clips, etc., and support teacher decisions in curriculum, and legal discipline methods that teachers have decided as a majority at each school site to use to control students who offer behavior problems. The elected school boards would be responsible to make sure teachers are free to work within the law to deal with curriculum, material, teaching methods and discipline issues—nothing but a check and balance system to make sure a group of teachers, organized into support and decision making teams don’t go beyond the law.
There’s no need to throw out what’s already there and let in people like Bill Gates, the Walton family and hedge fund billionaires to profit off the taxpayers. All that needs to be done is turn administration and school boards into the office staff of teachers with specific responsibility that do not intrude on curriculum, teacher methods and how each school handled disciplined.
But I suspect that in a country that prides itself as being the “land of the free”, but doesn’t practice what it preaches, this will never happen because the people at the top, who are basically all corrupt liars, are incapable of trusting anyone so they will always make the final decisions and the system will stay the same or be destroyed and turned over to corporations that will profit off tax payers while eventually providing a service that will be inferior to what already exists because all of those innovative districts you mention in point B will eventually be vacuumed up by the pirates and profiteers. That is inevitable with the Machiavellian Common Core agenda that demands the public schools, but not the private sector Charters replacing them—must produce 100% of 17/18 years olds who are college/career ready. That will never happen. It’s never happened in history. It isn’t happening today in any country in the word and I think it never will. It may happen at one or more schools one year but then the next they will fail when they fall to 99%.
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The only aspect that is public for charters is the money and the good test takers. The rest…not so public Joe.
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I should have added that Santana was not part of the school choice movement. It was a natural, organic outgrowth of student needs and the district adjusted for that at-risk segment of the student population. Its existence was approved through the democratic process offered through an elected school board and this school is as transparent as the rest of the public schools. If the Bill Gates, Walton family, hedge fund privatization of K-12 succeeds, I think Santana will vanish, and those kids will be abandoned by the private sector Charter school movement.
Here’s the Mission & Goals statement of Santana:
“Santana High School, long established as a California Model Continuation high school, provides educational options for high school students in Rowland Unified. Students attending Santana are provided the opportunity for credit recovery or acceleration through the use of individualized and personalized instructional methodologies. A high point of the Santana High School program is a focus on student support services. The entire staff works to provide ongoing support to encourage and advance student academic, career and personal/social development.”
http://www.santanahs.org/about/mission.jsp
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Lloyd, in my view there are many different approaches to school choice. For example, suburbs are one form. So are statewide publicly supported schools. So are programs that allow high school students to take courses on college campuses. So are options like Santana. Charters are another.
One of the ways I think we empower educators is to give them a chance to create new options. I get you don’t like charters. But how about district options like Santana?
Joe
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Charter schools are not public schools. Whenever they are sued for violating state laws, their defense is that they are not public schools. I agree. They are private corporations with government contracts.
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Disagree that “Whenever they are sued for violating state laws, their defense is that they are not public schools. ” There are many examples of schools that are part of public education that operate under different rules.
The magnet schools that use admissions tests to screen out most students which seem ok to some who post here, operate under some different admissions rules than many public schools. The statewide schools operate some different rules.
Fortunately legislators all over the country recognize that there is no single best public school for all students – and that public school choice is not only consistent with, but enhances democracy.
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dianeravitch: what you wrote.
Although, in all fairness, with so many viewers of this blog coming from so many different places and backgrounds and cultures, I will provide a clearer and more succinct English-to-English translation of what you stated above:
“Charter schools are not public schools. Whenever they are sued for violating state laws, their defense is that they are not public schools. I agree. They are private corporations with government contracts.”
For those that didn’t understand the owner of this blog before, I am sure you get the point now.
Thank me now. Or thank me later. Or don’t thank me at all.
It’s a free country. At least on this blog.
😎
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Lloyd, I agree with you completely. Well stated.
The public schools belong to the people and must remain under their governance. Their strength is vital to the health of our democracy.
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If it is essential that children be educated by the people, should we make private education illegal? If not, why is it essential that only students from relatively poor families have their education governed by the people while that it is not vital that students from relatively rich families have their education governed by the people?
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Private schools belong to the private sector. Public schools are paid for by the taxpayers who have a right to governance of these schools. Are you going to stand by while the school down the street is taken over by privatizers? Well, I am not and I’m fairly certain that the average citizen will not stand for it.
Poor children should have access to all publicly supported schools. The answer is in fair housing, employment and open enrollment across cities.
Yes, poor children have a right to private schools but only if they are paid for by the private sector. The public schools belong to the public.
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I think Lloyd is making a much broader point that K-12 education for the majority of students must be done by teachers who are employed by the government. I don’t think his position depends on public money flowing to private schools, thought obviously he can speak best about his positions.
Here to there is a sharp distinction between secondary and post secondary education. The Pell Grant Program is a voucher program for post secondary schools, and many millions of dollars flow from the federal government to private schools like NYU. If this flow is catastrophically harmful to high schools, why is it unobjectionable for post high school education? After all, it is still public funds being spent on privately controlled education.
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You say that I meant: “students must be done (taught) by teachers who are employed by the government”
Not true. This is misleading. The government doesn’t hire the teachers.
There’s the federal government and then there’s fifty state governments and none of them are involved in the hiring or firing of teachers. Teachers are usually hired by principals who are hired by administrators/elected school board of local school districts.
There are almost 14,000 public school district and 100,000 schools, 3.3 million teachers and 49 million children—and the hiring is usually done at the site level with approval from district administration.
The President doesn’t hire the teachers and he should also not be involved in firing them.
The same applies for governors, congressmen, senators, state representatives, etc. School districts answer to the voters and tax payers in each district and it is at the community/district level where decisions are made to fire or hire teachers.
Each district negotiates with local unions through their elected school boards and the labor unions that represent the teachers are also democratic organizations.
Corporations and CEOs are not. The private sector is more like dictatorships or monarchies, and Bill Gates, for instance, ruled his foundation and ruled Microsoft as if he were an emperor, the oligarch that he still is with the attitude that comes with it.
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Lloyd,
What do you mean by your distinction between public and private if it is not that public institutions choose and employ the teachers in the schools and in private schools it is the private institutions that choose and employ the teachers?
Are you saying that school districts are not part of the local government? If that is all, I will gladly concede the point and say that I should have used the term public institution instead of government.
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School districts have their own elections with those democratically elected school boards so they—for the most part, except where the fake education reformers have grabbed control of public school districts and continued to run them into the ground worse than they were before—school districts are not controlled by mayors, governors, presidents or Congress.
State legislatures have some impact through legislation as do the courts through judicial judgements, and until Bill Gates Machiavellian Common Core regime that Stalin, Hitler and Mao would have been envious of, the feds had little or no say in what teachers taught or how they were judged by a district’s administration under due process rights.
The very structure of public schools and elected school boards puts much of the control of those districts in the hands of the local community and voters. Active PTA’s have power too and are also part of the process at each school.
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Lloyd, voters also elect members of state legislatures. State legislators also have the power to create new public options, whether they are statewide schools, or charters, or local districts.
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That’s the problem.
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Lloyd, this is one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve read in a long while:
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Actually you bring up an excellent point about post-secondary education. Have you noticed that many (most?) of the fraudulent “technical institutes” advertise on TV with pictures of young men and women of color? Well, that’s because the advantaged kids go to NYU and UC Berkeley (or even City College) while many of the poor students go to Pay N Pass Technical Institute or Online U where they gain few skills and huge debts.
It’s important for the strength of our country to have an excellent K-12 system for ALL our students. As this charter fraud spreads across the nation, it will be the poor kids of color who will be shortchanged, just as their college-aged brothers and sisters are. At least the college kids are adults and should recognize a hustle when they see one, but younger people are dependent on the integrity of adults.
The rich will always have better housing, health care and education for their children. But it is in the best interest of our nation to have a high-quality public school system available for everyone.
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Let’s include the two-year public community colleges and their lower/lowest tuition. Let’s say K – 14, and tell the feds, Bill Gates, the Waltons, hedge fund billionaires and the other ake fools pushing a false and fraudulent private sector Charter movement to keep their grubby, greedy hands off.
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What do we tell Stanford, NYU, Pomona, University of Redlands, Mills, and all the other four year private schools about lower division classes?
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Joe Nathan –
You touch on an idea which I think would solve some of the problems of the inner city in Buffalo (which has school choice).
What if the Buffalo Public Schools extended into the surrounding suburbs and gave students the option to select any of the available schools? It would provide diversity throughout the area and allow true choice. The BPS has some incredible programs within their schools which have the potential to rival any public school within the state (and City Honors is already considered one of the top schools in the USA).
Buffalo is the fourth poorest city in America. Would mixing these children up with more affluent kids result in a change of attitude? Would a positive environment with the strong support systems found within the suburban schools motivate the under achievers to step up their efforts? Would an infusion of suburbanites into the city schools raise up the level of attendance, participation, and graduation rates (not to mention test scores)? I don’t know. The question is: Is it worth a try?
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There are some examples of urban/suburban cross district public school choice in places like Boston, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Minneapolis and St. Paul. These programs appear to have helped some participants.
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There is much counseling out in Boston. That I know from the experience of a relatives. Also, read Edushyter for the tricks. It helps the good test takers.
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Linda, are you referring to the METCO program which allows some urban Boston and Springfield students to transfer to suburban students? Are you saying there is “counseling out” before students enter or after they enter the program? I am not disagreeing with your statement, I’d seeking clarification.
For others interested in urban to suburban district choice plans, METO is an example. Here’s a link for more info:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/metco/faq.html?section=all
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Why do conservative support school choice? Because the public schools have abandoned conservatism, and there’s no way in this 21st century America to reform public education in a way that will get it back. Public education must, by necessity of openness, teach falsehood and lies. There is no God, or at least not a Christian God, and here is no such thing as truth except that evolution is the way we came to be, and the Bible is nothing but a book of lies.
Do I want to support other religious beliefs? No, but I already am. It’s called public school.
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We do all have a stake in it, which is why the popular 90s term “stakeholders” in school mission statements is annoying. What else would it be for? Who else?
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It’s great to see Peter Greene getting this much exposure; he deserves it. Thanks for highlighting so many great bloggers, Diane!
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I was thinking the same thing earlier. To be “Ravitched” is surely great kudos for an Ed blogger!
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Reblogged this on V-Hypnagogic-Logic and commented:
A must-read for all — teachers, parents, students, neighbors without children, everyone in this country. Clear, cogent, concise arguments to use against this unfortunate trend where public dollars are being funneled into charter schools.
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The problems with rights, is that the rights which protect me also protect others who might make questionable choices.
Although some of the teachings of creationists seem ludicrous to me, I cannot tell others what to believe. If the students with parents who feel strongly about a literal translation of the bible don’t go to a school which teaches these concepts, they will be home schooled instead. Hopefully these schools teach other, more useful (and accurate) curriculum.
You can’t negate school choice just because you don’t like all the choices. It’s not fair to the rest of the participants. It’s like the teacher who punishes the whole class because one student didn’t do their work. Who is truly being punished?
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I agree 100%.
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Good points, Ellen.
It appears that some are fine with the idea of wealthy people who can afford to move to exclusive suburbs being allowed that form of choice; that it’s ok for some “public” schools to screen out virtually all students who can’t pass standardized tests, so long as those schools are controlled by elected school boards. Some of these people have declined to comment on the practice of some districts (like NYC) sending kids with special needs to private schools that according the NY Auditor and NY Times, are not being carefully supervised.
These are all forms of school choice. Some of us would add to the acceptable list the opportunity to create new schools that are accountable to some other entity approved by a state legislature (which also is part of the democratic process). And some (not including me) would allow public funds to attend k-12 private & parochial schools.
It does seem inconsistent to say that school choice is undemocratic but then excempt from that “undemocratic” schools that have admissions tests, or schools that keep students out whose families can’t afford to live in the community, or schools that have been set up within districts to serve youngsters with whom traditional schools have not succeeded.
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Any action is democratic if the people, or their representatives, have the opportunity to choose in a fair and legal manner. If the majority of the people in any given community choose to turn their local school over to an outside management firm, then I would respect their right to do so, even if I do not agree. However, many of these charter schools are being privatized without the knowledge and consent of the people to whom they belong. Many legislators are being pressured by corporate donors to turn urban schools into charters for the likely purpose of siphoning tax money into private pockets. Many of us see this as a huge scam.
A good example of the fraud involved can be seen in California where instances of charter abuse abound. The saddest example is in Adelanto where parents thought they were choosing an improved education for their children and then found out they had given away their school! There is much evidence that the parents were deceived into signing.
Take the profit out of these schools and watch the interest in helping “those poor children” evaporate.
People truly interested in providing an equal educational opportunity to all children will advocate for fair housing, employment, and open enrollment in all tax supported schools. Children left behind in dangerous and crowded neighborhoods can be helped with many of the resources rich people choose for their children: small classes, two teachers per class, support services, beautiful books and enriching experiences. We can do better and I predict that we will.
Charter fraud is not the way to go.
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I agree that fraud – whether in district or charter – is not the way to go.
We’ve seen over and over again that there are problems leaving all decisions to local boards. If we’d done that without outside intervention, we would have not had equal opportunities for young women. If we’d give local boards complete control, we would have had too many places where African Americans were sent to inferior schools.
Local control is relentless celebrated by many people who post here. But one of the best parts of America is that we don’t give all the power to any single political institution.
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No one that I am aware of has ever advocated for “total” control of local boards. You are implying that we want to rescind IDEA, Brown vs. Board of Education, Title IX, etc. and that is just plain deception on your part Joe.
It’s disturbing that you, the great charter advocate, are making this argument since it has been highly documented that charters are exempt from so many of these laws designed to ensure equality and equal access to public schools.
Report after report, study after study show charter schools creaming off the best students, counseling out students who are difficult to educate, not offering special education and ELL services, segregating students by religion, race, and income.
You are an intelligent person Joe Nathan. You know these things. The only conclusion that I can draw is that you purposely misrepresent the truth in order to prove your points and that is sad.
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As noted repeatedly, our organization advocates for and works with district & charter public schools. You’ll see a variety of newspaper columns on our website that do this, as you’ll see a variety of projects that involve work with and learning from district & charters.
Charters are not exempt from federal laws like education for all handicapped or Title IX or civil rights. In many states, charters are exempt from some state laws.
We started out on this thread discussing whether choice is “undemocractic” as was initially asserted. Do you think allowing families choices among some public schools is undemocratic? Or should only wealthy families have options among public schools?
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Chris, He has learned from TE to deflect with more questions.
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Based on birth rates, by religious affiliation, Islamic schools will outnumber Christian schools.
An analogy using the Koran, instead of the Bible, would gain more traction?
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As the son of a teacher, and a father I observe that the current system is too highly controlled by the teacher’s union and administration.
The only way for parents to improve a school that under-performs is to be allowed to choose a different school.
If you have enough money you choose private school, or home-school. If not you are powerless to influence your child’s education.
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If you stood by as this school (in your area) supposedly deteriorated; if you watched while teachers were fired for low ranking by a tool (VAM using children’ test scores in an invalid manner), if you watched while monies were being funneled away from local scores to support voucher programs and Charters, then you share in whatever problems the local school (you want to withdraw your child from) has. The solution is not a Charter school but to support and make the public school better.
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My belief is the current system is broken beyond repair. To change an entrenched bureaucracy takes time, time that parents don’t have as their kids are in the problem schools now.
The only alternatives for parents are to move the kids out. Why should people who cannot afford private schools be prisoners of the system?
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Lloyd,
Thank you for all the heavy lifting you are doing for the rest of us today!
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“The goal of school choice is to turn us into consumers whose only interest is the welfare of our own child.”
Diane — I’ll be sending my daughter will attend a “choice” school this fall. Is that a bad thing? Should I be allowed to do that? Should her school be shut down?
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My middle son took many of his classes during high school from other institutions, including K-12. Should he have been prevented from getting classes that were more appropriate to his individual needs and desires than were offered by the local high school?
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Not all charter schools are the same http://www.educationtransformation.org/2013/02/not-all-charter-schools-are-same.html .
We definitely need to ensure that are public schools provide options for different types of learners. Mass forced schooling in which everyone is taught in the same way hasn’t worked yet why continue to forced it down the throats of the public especially to those who have little choice and voice. Public schools can offer a variety of options for different types of learning , charters are public schools the problem is they operate differently from state to state even community to community in some cases. In some states they are definitely becoming privatized, corporate, profit driven entities which are not part of the solution.
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Three comments to Joe and TE:
1. Won’t CCSS end school choice as a real option? I suppose you could argue that it will educate students in different ways but that’s not especially likely since CCSS is highly scaffolded and standardized.
2. The primary objection that I have to charters is that they get to play by different sets of rules than public schools. Lotteries (some of which are gamed where I live through a variety of tactics) is one difference. Not backfilling seats is another. Counseling out for non-expulsion reasons is another.
The ability to claim private management status while receiving public money is another. (And the biggest thing that bothers me). Corruption occurs at a variety of educational institutions but charters can conceal it far longer and more easily because they have little transparency in my state.
My main point is that it may be competition but the playing field isn’t level, at least in my state. Charters get the benefits every time. Traditional publics have more restrictive policies that they must abide by and then get punished for it.
3. Lastly, would you acknowledge that school choice means the SCHOOL ultimately chooses and not the parent? I have several kids that came here from charters (and always after count day in February but before state testing in March, so they get the money and we get the test scores). The kids are nice but not especially academically gifted. Many never had a single behavioral issue while here yet each were counseled out by their schools. Those families chose charters who then later “unchose” those families.
Let’s admit the rules are different and favor the charters at nearly every turn.
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Steve, thanks for your thoughtful questions:
1. I’m not sure about Common Core. Seems to me there will be lots of options about how teacher and schools can teach to help students achieve the outcomes.
2. Playing by different rules –
a In most states, charters can not levy local property taxes for operating expense, unlike district schools. So charters in most states receive less per pupil than district schools. Lots of research on this. Charters also can’not in most states, levy taxes for buildings. So charters in most states tend to have inferior buildings. Yes NYC is an exception on the building issue where the district has to provide building space. But the situation in NYC is not the situation in most states.
b. Charters & districts must both follow federal rules.
c. There are a vast array of charters as there are a vast array of district schools. Many charters were set up to serve students with whom traditional schools have not succeeded. Teachers in those schools say exactly what you say about kids being pushed out at a critical time in the school year, into their school. Incidentally, so do district & regional alternative schools – they often experience kids being pushed out.
d. I’m in favor of states counting # of kids twice for purposes of funding, not just once. The situation in some states does permit the kind of pushing out (from some charters and some district schools). That is not a good situation.
e. Not sure what state you are in, but there are many district magnet schools that screen kids out via admissions tests. That should be illegal. Does use of admissions tests bother you? There are some states which have charter laws in part because parents and educators were so frustrated with elite magnet schools. Those elite magnets definitely play by a different set of rules.
f. In most states, district schools can convert to charters, and have the same flexibility. This kind of conversion has happened in some states. It is part of the “model” charter law that some of us helped create.
3. No I don’t agree that in EVERY school choice plan it is the school that chooses. There are a variety of choice plans. Some district & charter plans do not allow schools to screen out or select students. Some alt and charter schools receive kids who have been pushed out.
Some choice plans DO permit district and in New Orleans, charters to have admissions tests. As state above (and often on this discussion board) I strongly oppose allowing this and have worked hard and in many states successfully to prohibit admissions tests for charters.
Some of us worked with the late Senator Paul Wellstone to attempt to eliminate federal startup funding for magnets that have admissions tests. The compromise achieved was to say magnets open to all would be given extra “points” on their application for federal startup funds.
Hope that’s useful. Reactions welcome.
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Joe,
Most of your responses regarding playing by a different set of rules have to do with regulations and financing. Mine have to do with ways in which charters can “shape” their student bodies. I live in Michigan where gaming the system is common. And in terms of financing, charters don’t have the same financial needs without legacy costs and transportation costs.
In regard to 2e: I only know of two magnet schools and they are in Detroit Public Schools (Cass Tech and Renaissance). I’m not a big fan either. Since most public districts in Michigan are smaller and local, there isn’t really room for alternative or admissions based schools.
And school choice in a pure choice environment is the school choice. Schools, charters and privates in particular, have way more control of their student bodies than regular publics. We have to take everyone who walks up to the door. And my school is open enrollment so it is open to outside residents. We have to prove a student is a danger to the school community for removal. Charters and privates have far easier mechanisms. I’m telling you, whether you believe me or not, I personally have had at least ten students over the last four years who came to my classroom from charters. They never had a single discipline incident here. They were simply academically remedial.
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Steve, I didn’t and won’t deny that there are some charters who encourage kids to leave. When I taught at an alternative school, and when I meet with teachers and administrators from alternative schools, I hear the same thing from them about traditional district schools.
Yes, I think states should require accounting twice a year as to how many students are present. That goes for all kinds of schools receiving public funds.
The financing and facilities of schools is very important. When one group of schools is receiving $1000 or more per pupil less from the state, and is unable to go to taxpayers for help in constructing, buying or leasing a facility, that is a huge disadvantage. This inequity is part of the reason there are some companies creating charters. Far better in my view to have equal opportunities for district & charter educators to have equal funding (and even more funding, as we do here, for students from low income families and those who don’t speak English).
Traditional districts can prevent students from coming in who don’t live in the district – and some traditional suburban districts have hired detectives to keep “those people” (ie students from low income families, urban students, etc) out.
Thought state laws vary, in many states, charters can’t prevent students from neighboring districts from enrolling.
The Michigan Alternative Education Association reports that there are 369 alternative programs in 270 districts, serving about 25,000 students.
http://www.maeo.org/
I’ve been at conferences with some of these folks. What I describe is what I’ve heard from some of them, as well as other alternative school educators around the country.
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Steve,
1) I am more optimistic that the CCSS are flexible enough to accommodate a variety of approaches to education. In any case I do not think state standards, common or not, cause school uniformity. I think the lack of school choice causes households to demand uniform standards across schools.
2) I think charters (and any school that does not have an all and only geographic admission system) play with a different set of rules for good reason. Because households can choose the school, they can substitute this ability to choose for some things that would normally be regulated. Some parents might strenuously object to the integration of rural farm animals into the education provided by the Walton Rural Life Center Charter School, but because they are not required to send their children to this school, those objections can be given less weight.
I do differ a bit from Joe Nathan on the issue of implicit and explicit admission criteria where there is an excess demand for seats at a school. I think that students who are “skimmed” by this process benefit from the “skimming” because they end up in classes where, in general, more students have bought into what the school is trying to achieve. I don’t think I am alone in this view, as Dr. Ravitch has talked about positive peer effects of charter schools in several posts. Where I do seem to be in the minority is that I take this gain to the skimmed student as valuable and contributing to a better education for all. Not allowing these students to be “skimmed” results in them getting less out of their education.
The backfilling of classes is also an interesting question. I am fairly certain that you would agree effective transfers into a school require a certain amount of standardization between the school a student is coming from and the school the student is transferring to. I have gone to meetings with other state schools in my state to ensure exactly this sort of standardization across classes at all the two and four year public colleges and universities in my state. This seems to defeat one of the primary advantages of having choice schools: schools can differentiate themselves from each other and construct unique programs that span multiple years. The Raisbeck Aviation High School, a public magnet school in Seattle Washington, for example, generally only accepts students as freshman because of the unique curriculum it offers. As I think the most important advantage of choice schools is exactly this ability to differentiate themselves from other schools, I think that only accepting students at certain points in the curriculum is reasonable.
3) I think that schools where there is an excess demand for seats can pick students, but there is an excess demand for seats because the households have picked those schools and not other schools. Not applying to attend a school is making a choice.
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Joe,
I’m in agreement about selective admissions schools. No debate there.
And though you note activity in many states, it isn’t the reality in mine. And that’s the reality public schools in Michigan have to live with.
And charters can prevent anyone for enrolling and they need the flimsiest of reasons. You even agreed that charters don’t always follow fair practices. Remember, this is Michigan. We have a political system that currently gives charters their every desire (unless the voters start making calls). I guess I’m tired of hearing how charter schools do “better” when they are basically selective admissions in reverse. Take them then sift them. Especially when my school and others gets criticized in comparison.
Which is really my point. Public schools suffer by comparison because they function by a different and less favorable set of rules. And then the charter PR machine starts rolling. And interesting developments (like Muskegon Heights) get little attention.
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Steve, as I’ve tried to point out, there are vast differences among district as well as among charters.
As mentioned yesterday, there are, for example in Michigan, where you are, there several hundred (district run) alternative programs enrolling about 25,000 students according to the Michigan Alternative Education Association. In Michigan, as in other states, some students are being pushed out/encouraged to leave traditional schools to attend these alternatives.
We’ve tried to discourage comparisons between district & charter schools because this does not seem like a meaningful comparison. It’s a bit like comparing the gas mileage of rented and leased cars.
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NY Times reports on efforts to use multiple measures rather than just one standardized test in what it describes as “elite New York High Schools”
The Times article notes that the law requiring that only a standardized test be used “was passed to appease parents, most of them white, who were worried about Board of Education proposals to introduce other criteria to diversify the schools, as backers of the new bill want to do.
Article also notes that that the United Federation of Teachers “is behind the push” to change the law. Good for them.
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