Do you remember when the charter school idea was first circulated in 1988? Do you remember how the idea was sold in the 1990s? We were told that charters would save the taxpayers millions or billions because they would be lean and efficient: no central bureaucracy.
Surprise! Now charters are suing in Néw York and DC for the same funding as real public schools, you know, the ones that are required to accept English language learners, kids with disabilities, and unmotivated kids.
And guess who is siding with them to drain more money out of the public schools: the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
Peter Greene says this is classic bait and switch.
The bait? Charters will save money and get dramatic results for the neediest kids.
Says Greene::
“So here comes the switch. We pitched charter schools as more economical, more efficient, lower-cost alternatives. Now that we’ve got them up and running, we want more money. This is simply a continuation of the policy goal, adored and nurtured from corporate boardrooms to federal offices– the policy goal of shoving public schools aside and replacing them with charter schools. I don’t imagine that public schools will ever be completely done away with, because the charters will need some place to send the students that they refuse to educate, but those public schools will be stripped of resources and filled with the students that nobody wants.
“It is really one of the oldest business tricks in the book, used by everyone from John D. Rockefeller to Jeff Bezos– undercut your competition, and once you’ve bled them dry, boost your price as much as the market will bear. Charters just refine the technique by having federal and state government serve as the vampiric mechanism by which the competition is sucked dry.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I also thought charters were supposed to be testing grounds for breakthrough innovations that would be used in traditional public schools. What happened to that promise?
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Thanks for asking. Lots of examples of this. Here’s are a few examples – charters (and now some district schools) that have board of directors that include a majority of teachers working in the school, are project based, use the “Hope Survey) to determine whether students are learning to set and work toward goals
http://www.edvisions.com/custom/SplashPage.asp
Or in New Hampshire, a virtual charter that enrolls about 100 students full time, and several hundred students who attend district schools part time
Or Minnesota’s first secondary Montessori charter. This led the local district to start a Montessori middle school (previously it only had an elementary)
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Outliers all, exceptions that prove the rule, and mentioned solely to distract from the overwhelming institutional weight of charters as a project to cannibalize public school budgets, turn teachers into at-will temps, and train the Proles, rather than educate them.
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Fortunately some teacher union leaders see the potential of the teacher leader model and have been discussing and promoting it.
Many of us want great respect and opportunity for professional educators.
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Michael Fiorillo: let me first bring in a heavy hitter.
Dr. Raj Chetty, of Vergara Trial testimony and creator of “Campbell’s Conjecture,” warned us to avoid the all-too-human tendency to focus on outliers and instead to have faith in the [select] large data sets he—and a few other researchers—are allowed access to. No, we need to understand self-proclaimed “education reform” (with its chimerical charters) as an attempt by himself and others to make sure that the few highly effective ‘Michael Jordans’ of America’s classrooms are identified and retained while the many grossly ineffective ‘’not-Michael Jordans’ [the educator version of Michael J Petrilli’s student “non-strivers”?] are identified and retained.
And just where do we find such outstanding schools and classrooms?
Glossy brochures, ad campaigns, lobbyists, ‘research’ studies: charters by nature and nurture do significantly more with significantly less for increasingly more and more students. And they’re just getting better and better and better…
But what do actual large data sets say? Don’t believe the outlandish claims of outliars…
Go figure… [A numbers/stats joke]
😎
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In terms of “outliers” the majority of charters are not part of a for-profit group, according to National Alliance for Public Charter schools. The majority are independent.
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Joe,
While I don’t doubt that some innovation exists, it is still rare in the charter sector. As the sector becomes increasingly dominated by chains, they will be standardized curriculum scripts that are designed to generate profits.
We have had numerous charter teachers apply for jobs in our district over the last few years. (They do so because we pay better than for-profit charters). When asked about the culture of their former school, they don’t really tell any stories of innovation. They describe something relatively similar to , well, my school.
The biggest difference is who ends up with the money from the state. At the charter, a larger percentage is dedicated to administrative costs and functions.
I’d also point out that it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to identify regular old public schools that are experimenting with a variety of models so it isn’t like charters are the sole source of fresh ideas.
So while it’s fair to say that there are innovative charters, I think it’s fair to say that a sizable majority aren’t really doing anything that pedagogically groundbreaking.
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Joe, while “many of us” do indeed want educators to receive more respect, that group does not include the people who fund your organization.
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Actually, our organization is funded in part by some urban public schools that are very happy (as we are) that in Minnesota, the state provides additional $ to schools serving high percentages of low income students.
Opinions vary among other funders on this.
Meanwhile, our organization’s position is clear. We think more $ should go to support schools that serve high % of low income students.
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Steve K,
I am curious about you claim that the charter sector is becoming increasingly dominated by chains. KIPP schools, for example are less than 3% of all charter schools. Gulen charter schools are also under 3% of all charter schools.
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TE,
We’ve already engaged in this discussion. You used private schools as your point of argument. I used general historical trends.
I’d think you’d remember the debate. Over time, the large chains will use their leverage and financial resources to crowd out competitors. This has happened historically.
Not revisiting a discussion we already had. Your percentages are nice but remember that charters just got uncapped in many states. Let’s wait ten years and see where we’re at.
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Steve K,
It seems to me you are making an empirical claim here, that charter schools are increasingly dominated by charter chains. As far as I can tell, the large charter chains mentioned here are small relative to the overall number of charter schools in the country.
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Also TE,
If you lived where I do, it would be obvious. One chain keeps opening big charters. The other charters in the area are far smaller. So the percentage of charters by that one chain in my tri-county area is only about 10% but they service over 40% of the charter students.
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Steve,
No doubt there are areas in the country where charter chains are more prevalent than others. Perhaps you could have said that “charter chains are increasingly dominant in some areas of the country” if that is what you meant.
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TE – I think the more relevant percentage to look at is seats, not schools. Independent charters may be more numerous, but they serve relatively few students each. The chains tend to serve hundreds of kids per school.
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Dienne
I did do that for KIPP, and the percentage of students in KIPP schools is also under 3% of total charter enrollment. Those figures are likely to be low as the number of schools and students is from KIPP’s website (162 schools and 58,000 students, so about 360 students per school), but the overall charter enrollment given in the NCES data is from the 2011-12 school year.
I was not able to find the number of students in Gulen charter schools, but if we assume the number of students per school are comparable to KIPP schools, Gulen charters also enroll less than 3% of all charter school students (and a tiny tiny fraction of all students)
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Funny, I would think that the most relevant metric is rate of increase. If the percentage of either seats or schools is growing faster for charter chains than it is for non-chains, that would seem to fit the bill for “increasingly dominant.”
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FLERP!,
For the increasing part I would agree. It is the dominant part of the statement where I think the actual share of schools or students educated by charter chains is important.
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TE,
Um, yeah. I thought you would get the intent of the message. You would say that Walmart is a tiny percentage of stores, I guess. But there would be no denying that their vast resources and ability to shift capital nationally and internationally can be used to leverage small, local competitors. There’s also no way to deny that they do vastly more business per store in say alcohol sales than my corner party store.
Sorry I wasn’t more clear, but I inadvertently assumed that your background as an economist would make the connection.
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Steve K,
No, Walmart has a large share of retail sales in the US.
Economists have a measure of industry concentration called the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. To compute the index you sum the squared market shares. A single firm serving the entire market has an index number of 100^2, or 10,000. One hundred equal sized firms each with 1% of the market would have an index number of 100. I will look around and see if there are some industry concentration numbers for charter schools.
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Districts, like charters vary in size. There are huge districts.
But I think the central issue in this post is whether charter advocates have “switched” their request from requesting less to requesting the same or more.
There is considerable evidence that those involved in advocating and helping to write the first charter laws asked for the same per pupil dollars. This point is found among other things in a 1996 book I wrote that included a model charter law.
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Thanks for your reply Joe. I hope this increases. So far in my area, there has been no exchange of ideas.
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Concerned mom – Some state departments of education, colleges and universities and foundations are seeing sharing information as important to do.
Several years ago Governor Deal in Georgia brought together district & charter educators to learn from outstanding examples of district/community and charter/community partnerships.
You may want to urge elected officials to do this.
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They simply want to be schools now, that take money away from paid professionals, and redirect it as profit to companies. Problem is, companies speak louder and more clearly and can concentrate money easier than hundreds of thousands of disparate teachers and that influences the few people who represent far greater numbers.
Teachers can have a far greater voice in initial numbers – the problem is the outsize influence corporate coffers can have on individuals that represent far greater numbers. And the people they represent can’t vote to have someone represent them with some issues and not with others.
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Maybe the truth is finally coming to light. If you force the charter schools to accept, retain, and educate students with learning difficulties, including severe disabilities (whose parents are often activists who know their rights), the movement will die. As long as they are catered to, they will keep on sucking the life out of the publics. Only education professionals know how to educate professionally.
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Awesome timing by the Obama Administration. Add this to their 220 million new federal charter building program and maybe they can knock out public schools completely. Has there ever been an administration that was this hostile to public schools?
Has this administration ever done anything on behalf of public schools? Besides stern lectures from paid DC hacks and unfunded mandates, I mean. If you’re paid to work for public schools don’t you have a duty to work for the public schools that actually exist instead of the charter schools you hope to replace our public schools with? Is there some reason public school parents are paying ed reformers in government? If they want to work for charter school companies, why don’t they do that?
BTW- Big new piece in Propublica on how non-profit charters funnel money to the charter owner’s for-profit companies. The “non-profit” designation was always baloney. It’s meaningless. It’s good there’s an independent non-profit media outlet willing to call them on it. God knows no one in DC will.
http://www.propublica.org/article/charter-school-power-broker-turns-public-education-into-private-profits?utm_content=bufferbb191&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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Greene writes: “So here comes the switch. We pitched charter schools as more economical, more efficient, lower-cost alternatives. Now that we’ve got them up and running, we want more money. This is simply a continuation of the policy goal, adored and nurtured from corporate boardrooms to federal offices– the policy goal of shoving public schools aside and replacing them with charter schools. I don’t imagine that public schools will ever be completely done away with, because the charters will need some place to send the students that they refuse to educate, but those public schools will be stripped of resources and filled with the students that nobody wants.”
Yes. And that’s been the obvious tactic for years. All of the above paragraph is true. 18 months ago, pro-charter editorials stopped promoting charters as better, (for the most part) and suggested that they were more cost-effective. But now that argument has to be replaced because charters are asking for more. (MAPSA in Michigan has made a case for more funding, too.)
Meanwhile, I keep figuring out just what it is that charters do that is so innovative. A few try the blended learning model but that has met mixed results (considering Rocketship’s move away from its intensity). But otherwise, it’s just a school. Drill-and-kill and no excuses models are just modeled after schools from decades ago or private schools with strict honor codes. As a poster noted above, now they’re just regular old schools in terms of the instruction.
So what is really the end game with charters? It doesn’t appear to be a better education system. Even when they get “better” results the difference is nearly always very slight. So, ultimately, what is the choice that parents are making?
The choice has little to do with the quality of education. Many parents will flat out say that it has more to do with the environment. And what is the biggest determinant of the environment? The student body. And that’s where charters will always win. Their admission system is based upon a selective process (either self-selection by applicants or later selection by counseling out practices).
In order to keep those charter dollars flying, they must get results. And that’s where Peter Greene is more right than ever: public schools will have a small role taking the kids that charters don’t want so the charters can propagate their superiority.
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Good points Steve,
Yes, most parents that “flee” to charters out of a perceived “fear” of public schools do so for the environment of the charter, ex. smaller, more user-friendly, more or less? homogeneous….and of course they “seem” to be just a better setting to get an education versus the larger public school.
So, if there is really a “need” for choice and alternatives, then they should still all be public, not private, schools. So, why do we not just create more, and smaller, public schools and keep the private sector, with their capital interests, out of the equation. Really simple: if one does not like the public school then one must go and pay tuition for a private school. No, “hybrid” charter school should be allowed (strong IMO).
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Just in case anyone thought there was going to be any “charter reform” in Ohio as a result of the near-daily scandals, you may rest easy:
“Rothenberg asked why David Hansen, who heads the state Department of Education’s charter-school accountability office, has ignored the problem, noting that he formerly served on the board of an Imagine school in Columbus and should have known about its lease arrangement.
Hansen, husband of Kasich’s chief of staff, was on Imagine Academy of Columbus’ board and among those recommending that the school be closed because of poor academic performance. The school closed but reopened weeks later as a new Imagine school with the same lease, which directs more than half of its state aid to rent.”
Imagine schools will continue to rip-off the people of this state with impunity, just as they have done for the last decade because they’re very well-connected politically.
This state has been turned into a dumping ground for every flavor of ed reform rip-off and garbage, and the hits just keep coming. They can’t steal from us fast enough. The whole country will look like this when the ed reformers are through. It’s an absolute feeding frenzy by every crook in the country, while Ohio public schools starve.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/10/13/charter-schools.html
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Charters are the ‘tax savings’ gateway to vouchers.
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Most parents that want “choice” are those that don’t want to be forced to contribute to, and participate in, their local public school. They complain about the size of the public school, the combination of heterogeneous kids (“so different, aka, inferior, to their own”). They resent having to send their “Suzy” to a school were she has to sit in class in “Hakim” and “Jose”, because after all these “other” groups are the “problem” with the country”; and this, of course, goes all directions because we all are prone to be ethnocentric.
No choice should be given to parents who never help out at their local public school, first.
Only after being a contributing stakeholder does one have the right and rationale to give feedback and make complaints or recommendations. Being given the privilege (which they don’t deserve) to “run away” to a “nice, cozy and friendly” charter is contradictory to the method, mission and goals of participatory democracy that should be existing in our local public schools.
Local public schools can be a catalyst to much positive community input, feedback and change, where all stakeholder contribute and work at their issues together. This is the vision of what public schools are and should be.
For those that don’t want to participate in this vision, then don’t let them leave under the guise of “choice”, because in that “choice” they are really saying “we don’t like our local public school but are unwilling to make it better, because we are too selfish to get away from the TV and go to a PTSA meeting; we expect service from our schools, but never have to serve our schools”.
If the “free market” makes education a “for profit” venture, then they last vestiges of participatory democracy in our educational institutions will be lost. Communities will become fragmented and people divided, because the cohesive force that the public school can be, and should be, will be lost. Along, with that loss is the death of any forms of “socialism”, where the social “capital” of people working together to make their schools and communities (guided and promoted by wise State and Federal policies and guidelines) will be replaced by the “value” of capitalism, which never really cares about people, but only the bottom line.
My faith teaches me “love does no harm to its neighbor”, but apparently today’s capitalism (promoted by the “Right” wing, which seems to no longer value what my faith says has value, and will lose me as a constituent) says “my neighbor only has value if they can contribute to my bottom line”.
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Rick, parents have to pay taxes, whether they want to or not. Moreover, charters in many states enroll a higher % of low income, limited English speaking and students of color than the district in which they operate.
Moreover, some districts offer district public schools that differ from eachother. So I wonder what research supports your assertion that
“Most parents that want choice don’t want to be forced to contribute to or participate in their local public school.”
One of the central ideas of America is that people will be allowed to make choices. It’s not a right wing or a left wing idea. It’s an American idea.
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As a past PTSA president and active teacher (listening to the signs) I make this assertion: that most parents that want choice to leave the public school are not willing to contribute to make it better; otherwise they would stay longer and help fix the problems they perceive as being so “bad”. No, I don’t have a database, just vignettes.
Yes, as a Republican I believe in choice, but if we as a society first created public schools as the local-democratic participatory educational institution, then just because they “seem” not to be working for some, do we then “throw the baby out with the bathwater”??….to the point that many of them are not rotting and falling apart because so much money goes to the alternative charter schools.
When does the accountant warn us that the more schools we create the more funds it will take to maintain them, and if those funds are lacking, then should we be creating more schools, just for the sake of “choice”?
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Rick, thanks for being a veteran teacher and PTA president. I also worked in an urban district & was the PTA president at our children’s school.
I’m sorry you received the response mentioned from a charter director. Not every school leader makes wise decisions.
In most states, most charters receive less per pupil than district public schools. This does have an impact on their budgets. But a wise school director/principal constantly is looking for ways to provide better programs, within budget limits to students.
This is part of the reason that some people have created teacher led schools. In many of these schools, the board (which has a majority of members who are teachers in the school)
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The illusion of choice, you mean. Fixed that for you.
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“Moreover, charters in many states enroll a higher % of low income, limited English speaking and students of color than the district in which they operate.”
You got back-up for those claims? I’ll give you the last one because a lot of charters specifically target minority kids (segregation, anyone?). But more low income and more ELL? Everything I’ve see says that charters serve fewer kids in abject poverty and fewer ELLs, especially ELLs who are at the beginning of the process of learning English.
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Studies across the nation show that charters enroll high numbers of children of color, in fact, most are highly segregated by color, more than the district in which they are located. But they have smaller proportions of ELLs and smaller proportions of students with disabilities. That is how they game the system, by excluding the kids who are most expensive and most challenging to educate.
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Maybe the Statue of Liberty will say on it “as to our charter schools: give us your most “talented”, those with the most market-potential, whose value has been documented by test data, so that the sponsoring corporations will get their GDP participants out of their investments. But, as to the rest, go to your public school, because they still apparently value you, regardless of your “market earning potential”.
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Dienne, and anyone else interested can look at district compared to charter demographics here, on a national or state by state basis:
http://dashboard.publiccharters.org/dashboard/students/page/race/year/2011
According to these stats, in 2010-11, the latest year for which data is available, charters enrolled a higher % of African American, Hispanic/Latino and low income students nationally than did district public schools.
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“In most states, most charters receive less per pupil than district public schools.”
Yes, that’s how they sold themselves – it was charters who claimed they could do the job cheaper. Are they reneging on that now?
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No, Dienne, charters from the beginning asked for the same average as district public schools. The politics in most states prevented this from happening.
It’s also true that in many states, local property taxes are a significant part of funding. As many have pointed out here (and elsewhere), this has the unfortunate impact of producing less funding for schools in many states that have higher percentage of students from low income families, living in low income communities.
This is not right, whether for district or charter public schools.
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No, Joe, I was there when my friends at Fordham and Hoover and other rightwing think tanks insisted that charters would cost less (no bureaucracy), get higher test scores, and would be held to strict accountability standards. In fact, they don’t cost less, they don’t get higher test scores (except when they exclude kids with low scores), and they are almost never accountable because they befriend politicians. It is getting harder and harder to believe their claims because of the mounting evidence of fraud, scams and self-dealing.
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Fordham was not involved in writing the first several charter laws. Indeed, several of them were not very supportive of the charter idea. They preferred the voucher approach.
Ember Reichgott Junge, a Democrat and chief author of the Mn charter law has written a book about how the first law was written and approved. Fordham was not involved.
The second charter law was adopted in California. Its chief author a Democrat named Gary Hart (not the man who ran for President, a different person). Again, he did not claim that the charter idea would save $.
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Joe,
Charters have become the province of the rightwing and profiteers. Sorry.
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Except for thousands of progressive educators and inner city, rural and suburban parents who see some charters as great places to teach, and great places for their students to attend.
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Joe,
The strongest voice for charters was the Center for Education Reform, led by ex-Heritage Foundation analyst. Biggest money for charters: Far-right Walton Foundation.
Yes, all those promises were made and broken.
Why do we need a dual school system?
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I am not sure why folks think that charter schools create a “dual school system”. In places like New York City there are private schools, district public schools, and qualified admission public schools. Charter schools would seem to be the fourth kind of school available.
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Strongest voice for charters was President Bill Clinton who strongly endorsed charters in his campaign for president and then worked with Congress to provide start up funds.
The conservative groups that you mention were quite skeptical of charters initially as they much preferred vouchers. We made it clear in Minnesota, California, Mass and other states that they are key differences between charters, which we supported and charters which we oppose.
Your argument about “dual systems” is the same argument made 40 years ago when some of us began creating options within districts. The reason progressive educators and families pushed for options is that we recognized there is no single best approach for all students – neither Montessori nor project based nor Core Knowledge nor any other approach.
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Rick, you are making generalizations here that simply aren’t true in many states and cities. 93% of the children enrolled in New York City charter schools are black and Latino; 65% are eligible for free lunch. Most of them live in hypersegregated neighborhoods and thus are zoned for hypersegregated schools with massive challenges.
The accusation that such parents haven’t done anything to fix their neighborhood school is offensive. They are literally the last people who deserve blame for the condition of their zoned schools; schools where the blithe, privileged assumption that kids with motivated parents will do “fine” has no basis in fact.
In the absence of actionable strategies to reduce segregation-related poverty or to integrate NYC’s shockingly segregated district schools, charter schools are a potential lifeline for marginalized families.
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It could be true in Rick’s town. I know this is the case for many of my acquaintances who go to charters.
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Thanks Tim,
Yes, my generalizations are based on the data I have, in the context I’ve experienced, which is not inner-city NY. So, I value your insights into those dynamics and the potential value of charter schools in those contexts. I speak from my perspective of suburban Miami, where many charter schools have popped up, and not for reasons that you site. Many middle class “burb” families here are “apprehensive” of large public schools for reason real and imagined. In my dialogues about choice and alternative schools I find many parents believe “the grass is greener on the other side”, and it is these that rarely get involved with their local public school. So, that is the frame of reference I write from, and I value your reproof of my narrow-minded conclusions and helping me to see and “walk in another’s shoes”. Grace and Peace!
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I just can’t stand that snooty little Suzy! And don’t get me started about her racist parents!
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I base my vignette and generalizations from dialogues and conversations I’ve had, or heard, from parents and families. Yes, there is a sense of pride, arrogance and ethnocentrism that plagues us all. It goes all the way back to Adam. Public institutions should make their participants and stakeholders learn to “get along” and not have the “choice” to become secluded in homogeneous entities, though we are all prone toward this “better than the other” attitude and behavior (thank God, Jesus came to teach against that, and pay for the guilt that is due for such arrogance)
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I just remembered, you’re the creationist science teacher, right?
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No, I’m the science teacher, who believes based on facts and evidence that the Old Testament is a valid and reliable historical document, written from a “perspective” that transcends human capacity, bias and favoritism……and you are a ______ category teacher?
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Rick, for decades, affluent families that wanted to avoid students from low income families could and did move to affluent, exclusive suburbs.
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You probably don’t mean it, but please let’s not blame the children.
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Joe,
That is correct but now we have families who cannot afford to move to affluent towns leaving their neighborhood school. What Rick is stating is that these families refuse to participate when they are “stuck” in their assigned school, but they become very active when they win a charter seat. I have witnessed that in my area also.
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Ha! I was *lucky* enough to put this very question to my congressperson last weekend.
After launching into his pro-charter talking points about how effective charters are at lower costs, I asked him why then, if charters really are already doing sooo much better than regular schools, do they need more funding? Why not just give regular schools relief from costly mandates? His answer was that we need give charters more money so that they can “set the world on fire”. His exact words. Stunning logic fail!
I’m now voting for his opponent, whom my arrogant congressperson described as a “in-name-only candidate.
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Good for you for asking the hard questions! I think his scorched earth analogy is spot on.
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Good, no, great catch, CM! The irony would be totally lost on him, though.
I’m thinking of sending him the state report cards that show his beloved charter schools are not the good deal he believes, although reality might be lost on him too.
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Yah, one reason charters are so “cheap” to run is they pay their teachers a substandard wage, barely a “living” wage. After 23 years of teaching, a PhD candidate and several awards, I’d like to think I’m a “worthy employee”. God knows all the extra time and energy I do, to “go the extra mile”, because I view teaching as a service based on commitment, not an “hourly-wage” position. When I asked a local charter school what they might pay me, the principal said, “I couldn’t afford you”, which to me meant “my institution does not value your skill set, wisdom and experience”
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/10/15/4233621_new-charter-rules-benefit-owner.html?sp=/99/100/&rh=1
I thought the cap on charters was eliminated as a condition of accepting RttT dollars. Regardless, I am glad to see local papers reporting on these issues.
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” The U.S. Department of Education has declared the relationships between charter schools and their management companies, both for-profit and nonprofit, a “current and emerging risk” for misuse of federal dollars.”
Which I guess is why the Obama Administration is actively working to knock out public schools and replace them with charters.
We’ll know our politicians were on notice of the risk when they recklessly continued down this path and it blows up in their face in these states and DC, and it will. It’s a recipe for corruption and capture.
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I think my favorite thing about the Obama Administration is how they launched their latest rounds of volleys against public schools AT THE SAME TIME as they put a huge new unfunded mandate on public schools, with the Common Core.
The betrayal and bad faith is stunning. I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t watching it. Thousands of public schools are industriously working with gutted budgets to put in ed reformers latest giant and expensive demand, WHILE he and his “team” seek to replace those same schools. Talk about bait and switch. Boy are we suckers, huh?
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Here is a list of the oldest “Charter School” in America:
Boston Latin School (1635), Boston, Massachusetts
Hartford Public High School (1638), Hartford, Connecticut
Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (1648), Cambridge, Massachusetts
Hopkins Academy (1664), Hadley, Massachusetts
Academy of Richmond County (1783), Augusta, Georgia
Glynn Academy (1788), Brunswick, Georgia
Westford Academy (1792), Westford, Massachusetts
Newburgh Free Academy (1796), Newburgh, New York
Woodstock Academy (1801), Woodstock, Connecticut
Bacon Academy (1803), Colchester, Connecticut
Guess the idea isn’t really all that new, we just don’t call them charter schools anymore!
Anyone teach at these? Is it as bad as they say?
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Nice try, Q.
I don’t think “charter school” means what you think it means, however.
All private schools (in my state, at least) must be chartered by the Board of Regents in order to operate, but they are not the new-fangled, tax-sucking “charter schools” under discussion here.
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Duncan and Obama came in hostile to public schools, and boy have they delivered for their donors:
“As Mike Petrilli at Fordham’s Flypaper explains:
Get ready for another golden era for charter schools. In many ways, the Bill Clinton years were better for charters than the George Bush years. Largely that’s because the press and the public expects Republicans to support choice and charters; it’s much more powerful when Democrats do so. And by all accounts, Arne Duncan loves charter schools. One person told me that Duncan would make every school a charter school if he could. But at the least, he will be an effective advocate for the view that urban districts can use chartering to promote their larger reform agendas. Which means charters are going mainstream.”
A golden age for charter schools! At the expense of every public school in the country.
http://reason.org/news/printer/two-reasons-to-like-chicagos-a
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Yet, he has offered very little to the Latino community that supported him. I know his big announcement is coming after the midterm elections. Come to think of it, he has done nothing for the droves of public school teachers that supported him. I guess money trumps votes and the voice of the people.
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He has given nothing to public school teachers? How about the millions of dollars to school districts to retain faculty during the most difficult days of the recession?
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The historical fact is that the nation’s first charter law was in Minnesota. From the beginning, charter advocates in Minnesota asked for equal funding for charter public schools.
This is not a new request. It was made during the first legislative session where this was considered. Same request was made in many states.
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That may be true, but it’s not how charters are being sold these days, charters as cheaper and better alternatives to public schools.
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Sharon, a variety of people are sharing information about district & charters. Some of us think there are great examples of both – and that we ought to be learning from both.
Yes, I agree that some people are making the arguments that you describe.
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I’m wondering that if support for Healthcare reform was contingent on Obama supporting privatizing of the Education Department and of schools? Some kinda grand bargain between the Obama administration and the Reformers? If Obama REALLY wanted healthcare, it’s reasonable to believe he could be convinced he was helping students in public ed by having the money and attention of the wealthy elite. I don’t have any evidence, just a hunch.That’s the only way it makes sense to me.
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Time for PA citizens to pressure legislators to repeal the reformers charter law of 1997. It is not serving the best interest of PA students.
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I’m almost looking forward to the belated recognition among well-intentioned liberals when they realize they got played, and supported privatizing the one and only universal public system in the US.
By then it will be gone, of course. How gullible are they?
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As others have noted, this “universal system” is deeply unfair. Leaving aside the debate about charters, the method of funding schools in most states relies heavily on local property taxes. This means less per pupil in many states for students from low income families.
Moreover, it’s not true that public schools accept anyone who wants to attend. There are boundary lines in most states that determine who attends a school within the district. Some suburban districts have hired detectives to keep out people who don’t live within the district.
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One recent article pointed out that the only way to stop the irresponsible expansion of charters in the judiciary branch. I don’t know that we can get an unbiased decision from them either. http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/education/219506-charter-schools-civil-rights-and-the-theft-of-education-funds
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I wonder if lobbyists and their politicians will let the public know they’re “winding down” public schools in the next election.
With the federal government coming solidly down on the anti-public school side, I’m sure “free markets” will work very quickly and the one and only free universal public system in the US will be gone before my youngest is grown.
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A further betrayal is that a lot of states are looking at charter schools to abrogate their civic responsibility to their children. They also see it as a way to union bust and get out of any fiscal obligation to future pensions offered by the state since they would have a lot fewer educators eligible for a state pension. It is a twisted evil plot.
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I called this a few years ago. That once the Charters took a foothold and enough Public Schools where closed so that it would be impossible for the Public Schools to absorb the Charter’s students, the Charters would demand more money!
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Charters should have to report all private money from donors, and that sum should be deducted from the amount they siphon from public education.
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Millions of dollars are given each year to district public schools.
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I think it will suck for public school children as they disinvest in public schools and switch over to the privatized system.
They talk about “20 years” to completely privatized at their conventions, and all I can think of is all those kids in public schools who don’t know they’re being “phased out”.
Philadelphia is what that will look like.
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I re-blogged and added this comment: “Efficiency is the enemy of true reform in public education since it reinforces the factory model that it is premised upon… and if nothing else deregulated for-profit charters are coldly efficient. This efficiency (delivering the same results for a lower cost) makes taxpayers and politicians happy since they can save money without compromising results.
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Well, if there’s any upside to what ed reformers have done in Ohio, it’s that it’s Ohio.
When the hacks arrive to campaign for the state in the presidential election of 2016, Ohio can be a real national showplace for the wonders of privatizing public schools.
We can conduct tours of the super-awesome “charter sector” in this state, and show you-all our decimated and abandoned public schools.
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The charter schools will simply become the new public schools without union, run by private organizations who can rewrite math, history, etc. And we thought Big Brother was the government? Farenheit 451 here we come!!
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Cross-posted at:
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Peter-Greene-Charter-Bait-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Bureaucracy_Diane-Ravitch_Disabilities_Education-141016-485.html#comment516237
with this comment (which contains embedded links to posts at this blog which do not reproduce here):
WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT THE FRAUD OF CHARTER SCHOOLS?
If the charter schools fail, and the public schools are GONE, where is our democracy which depends on shared knowledge?
15,880/50 (districts/states) let’s face it , according to Arne Duncan who IS the voice of the charter is choice narrative:
“The United States can never have too many privately managed charter schools. Arne Duncan doesn’t care if the schools exclude children with disabilities. He doesn’t care if they don’t enroll any English language learners. He doesn’t care if they drain funds from neighborhood public schools. Remember that this is the same man who said that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to education in New Orleans (it wiped out public education, the elimination of the teachers’ union, and the unjust firing of 7,500 teachers, 3/4 of whom were African American and the backbone of the local black community). And here are Arne’s awards, some to the richest charter chains in the nation:U.S. Department of Education Awards $39.7 Million in Grants to Expand High Quality Charter SchooL Contact: Press Office, (202) 401-1576, press@ed.gov OR
Take a look at the record of charter schools in the myriad districts at the Ravitch Blog by putting CHARTER IN THE SEARCH FIELD.
A sample:
When is cheating not cheating? When it happens in a charter school whose owner is politically powerful. When it threatens the very foundations of test-based accountability, the foundation of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
In Pa, Larry Feinberg, who runs the Keystone State Education Coalition of public school advocates, offered a summary of K12 Inc.’s Agora charter school in Pennsylvania which shows its failure.
In Florida: Karen Yi and Amy Shipley of the Sun-Sentinel in Florida report on the multiple problems of Mavericks Charter Schools. The chain currently runs six charter schools for dropouts, five of them in South Florida. But more than a thousand pages of public records obtained by the Sun Sentinel raise questions about the private company’s management of its six charter high schools, including five in South Florida, which are publicly funded but independently operated.
Many of the company’s schools have been investigated and asked to return public dollars. Three have closed. Local, state or federal officials have flagged academic or other problems at Mavericks schools, including:
Overcharging taxpayers $2 million by overstating attendance and hours taught. The involved schools have appealed the findings.
Submitting questionable low-income school meal applications to improperly collect $350,000 in state dollars at two now-closed Pinellas County schools.
Frequent academic errors that include skipping state tests for special-needs students, failing to provide textbooks and using outdated materials.
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