The state of Washington rejected charter schools three times. But in 2012, Bill Gates and his wealthy friends like a Walton and a Bezos, spent $10 million and barely got their legislation passed.
The state’s first charter is in big trouble.
According to the Seattle Times:
“Just months after it opened, First Place Scholars, the first charter school in Washington state, is in turmoil.
Its first principal resigned in November, more than half of its original board of directors have left, too, and the state’s charter-school commission has identified more than a dozen potential problems that need to be fixed soon if the school wants to keep its doors open.
“Among them: hiring a qualified special-education teacher for the roughly two dozen students who need those services, and completing background checks on some of its nonteaching staff.”
The Washington Policy Center, a free-market advocacy group, insisted that the charter school was not in trouble and the law is working just fine.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
While most of us sleep, the owner of this blog continues to post. I thought the 18 hours at the computer comment on the video was an exaggeration… Apparently not.
The whole commentary about the Seattle charter school becomes an occasion to hype market based solutions to Seattle schools that are not doing well on the state performance index. This is a whitewash of the incapacity of the charter school to operate with EFFECTIVE leadership… And the caps on that word are for Billy Gates.
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Here’s the link to the story in the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2025202824_charterschoolproblemsxml.html
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So you sleep? The time on this post is 4:03 AM? As for the Seattle charter having been a special ed teacher for 21 years, these students usually need more than a certified teacher. I worked directly with a counselor, social worker and psychologist. There are almost always wrap around services needed. One more problem with charters is they so not offer such services. But then that would be one more example of the myopic view of a charter school.
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Let’s ‘play school’ just isn’t as easy when you have real students, it is charters? When will these charters learn that Public Schools aren’t doing it all wrong…it’s just that sometimes there is SO much work for the grownups (ie teachers, principals and superintendents) to do that it looks like it might not be working as well as it is. Real schools, public schools, serve everyone no matter what their learning style is and over the years have learned to do it very well. If charters want to succeed they need to base their model on public schools…but they don’t want to succeed at teaching…they want to succeed at making money. Until their goals become the real goals of education they will never succeed at either educating students or making money.
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The comments by the Washington Policy Center are ideological fantasy at its finest. I urge Ravitch readers to located the Seattle Times story and read through the 100+ reader comments. I am not close to the situation in Seattle, but I have experience working with all types of students, and am fortunate to have a co-teacher when I have special education students in my classroom.
As long as we continue to have high expectations (and rightly so) for special education students, but are unwilling to fund that expectation, we will not meet these goals. Many special education students require much more resources then are given.
The story comments reveal a board that apparently is not very well-informed about education issues, a board president who quit when he realized that running a school takes more time than he thought, and teachers who work 12 hours a day to create their own lessons without a copy machine on site. High staff turnover and students without desks or science books.
And this is better then a public school?
Welcome to charter world.
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The Washington Policy Center is a two person office….:)
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The grave danger and insult is the private invention of fake public schools. The capture of public education for privatization is another example of the nullification of democracy by wealth. Three times, the voters of Washington rejected charter schools, until billionaires intervened with $10mil to force the vote their way. In New York City, voters twice installed 2 term limits on city officials, until billionaire Mayor Bloomberg used his vast wealth to buy a third term for himself. Great wealth has always damaged democracy in American life but now it has reached a constitutional crisis. Only our great numbers can stop their vast dollars if we can mobilize enough opposition to rescue not only public education but public life itself.
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I wish I knew what to do about it, but I don’t. They’re not even ashamed that they’re bought and paid for.
Citibank can hold the entire federal government hostage. The government will literally SHUT DOWN unless Citibank gets what they want tacked onto a budget bill and no one bats an eye. On the contrary, they’re all patting each other on the back. “Good job!”
The ethical bar just couldn’t get any lower. Forget “good government” It’s now “we did not violate any existing law, as far as we know, yet”
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/spending-bill-vote-winner-jamie-dimon
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“The ethical bar just couldn’t get any lower.”
Quite correct!!, When the president orders the hit (successful) on a 16 yr old American boy without any judicial proceedings, the ethical bar is about as low as it can go–not to mention the moral bar.
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Ira Shor – ‘fake public schools – nullification of democracy by wealth’ say it loud ! Thank you for your excellent wording !
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Ira shor is absolutely correct. Our numbers are large but we need to get a couple of serious moneyed folks behind us. The last bastion of democracy is at stake here!
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We’re 15 years into privatization in Ohio and a national ed reformer just announced that she’s reconsidering whether markets work in public education.
They used this state as a dumping ground for every half-baked ed reform theory and experiment, damaging every existing public school in the process, and they are JUST NOW considering the possible downside of their reckless and irresponsible crusade.
It doesn’t matter, either. They’re still expanding. They’re now targeting low income rural and suburban public schools. They’ll be able to knock rural systems out easily. They simply don’t have the numbers of students to survive a competition with a privatized system. If you pull 20% from a rural system it will be profoundly damaged and won’t remain open except as a vastly diminished “safety net” for the charter system.
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To a fanatic of the free market religion with a hammer, every situation is a nail. And they use a sledgehammer on teachers.
Free markets work as a thought experiment, but like all abstractions, must be modified in the concrete real world. In cases like education and health care, free markets are a terrible fit and even destructive. But since libertarian economics has become a belief system devoid of rational thought, the free marketers keep swinging the hammer.
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“They’ll be able to knock rural systems out easily. They simply don’t have the numbers of students to survive a competition with a privatized system.”
I don’t think so Chiara. Schools in small town America really are part of the warp and weave of the rural fabric of life. I believe it’s the other way around when it comes to the numbers; there aren’t enough numbers for the privatizers to make it profitable.
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Editorial from Seattle times states:
“First Place Scholars in Seattle’s Central District converted from a private school that primarily serves homeless students with the goal of expanding from 45 students to 100. Among the school’s problems are a lack of a full-time special-education teacher, open seats on its board and incomplete background checks on some staff.”
Take from this should be:
It is a tiny school, originally a private school serving homeless children. It does in no way represent the charter school movement let alone in Washington, but every where in the country. It’s only claim to fame is that it is the first charter in Seattle and made news published in the Seattle Times.
This school should be honored for being a private school before and now a charter school catering to primarily the homeless.
Yes, it lacks in some areas, but statements connecting charter movement and its failure using this tiny example to Bill Gates and the Waltons is fear mongering on the part of Dianne Ravitch. Some one should carefully read all that is published on this issue in the Seattle Times.
Comments on this blog are nauseating.
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“In addition, the principal is submitting a plan this month to make sure the school complies with federal disability law”
These schools open with no clue about special education law and no one bothers them about breaking it.
“Incomplete background checks on some staff”
Inexcusable
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It is a tiny school with 45 homeless students. What do you expect?
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Homeless children are the students who need the stability and services that regular public schools provide the most. We should not be settling for a school that has not made sure that the staff are checked, that cannot provide a copy machine or books, or does not have a special education teacher.
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Expect the law to be followed and for the owners of the school to know what they are doing before they open the school. Is the size of a school an excuse not to follow the law?? Or are laws not important to the 100% since they do whatever they want anyway in this country?
As far as background checks, no one should be allowed to work at any school near children without checking their background first.
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1%
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No Raj Acharya, most of us teach for a living and understand the realities of education, both public and private.
It’s quite clear to me that this school doesn’t have a clue. An idealistic school board, idealistic young teachers, a lack of basic structure and supplies. If this were a business (oh that’s right, that’s what this is), they would deserve to fail.
And then the public schools are left to pick up the pieces.
Every year my school has kids return from charters. And however long they were gone, that’s how far they are behind.
I respectfully ask, are you a teacher?
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For God’s sake, this was a private school catering to homeless children. I am sure they were not in it for money. There is no money to be made from 45 homeless people. Why were they doing this? My best guess is that the public school system failed to take care of these homeless children and they were filling a void. I do not want to hear that the public school system is flawless from this crowd.
Now that they are receiving some money (not a lot) from the public school system, all of you are griping and connecting this minuscule problem to Bill Gates and others. Remember 45 children, may be two or three teachers and at best survival techniques in what they believe to help the homeless.
You guys should spend less time in bad mouthing charter schools and more time doing your job.
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Raj,
Come down to Newark and do my job for a few weeks. Let’s see how fast you get up to speed in a renew school.
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The only point, Raj, is that they should have been prepared the day they opened their doors. It doesn’t matter who was running them before; it matters that they be fully equipped to do the job safely. I don’t have to be glad that they are, through the goodness of their hearts, providing a “school” for these homeless children. It sounds like they were woefully unequipped to do the job necessary, and it really isn’t that hard to figure that out especially if you have trained professionals planning the program. They may even have jumped in to save the school from going under. However, alarm bells have got to go off when a new school loses its principal and over half of its board before the school year is half over. Let me use a line from the reform crowd: the kids deserve better.
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Raj –
“It is a tiny school with 45 homeless students. What do you expect?”
I, and most people on this blog, expect MUCH more. These are the most vulnerable of students, and this is what they deserve:
Certified teachers with enough life and academic experience to be able to help, not a contractor.
“Among the most pressing issues for Halsey was the lack of a teacher with training in special education, given that nearly 20 percent of the school’s students need those services. Earlier in the school year, a contractor was helping those students, but she left Oct. 29.”
Not a fly by the seat of your pants, make it up as you go unsafe school opening:
“…failure to do all the required staff background checks, the school had a number of other issues. Its fire-drill plans were out of date, for example, listing emergency contacts who no longer worked at the school…On Dec. 1, Halsey notified the school that it was putting students’ health, safety and educational welfare at risk…”
Teaching is hard work, and the teachers at this school are certainly working hard:
“Kristina Sawyckyj-Moreland, a mother of two First Place students, said her special-needs daughter has not received any services since school started. She also said she’s concerned about the degree to which teachers are scraping together curricula. She keeps her children at the school because of the teachers, who she said are dedicated to the kids.”
But those in charge of oversight and running the place have failed, perhaps because:
” ‘It’s one thing for a district to open a new school — it’s a whole different story when you talk about a whole district being established,’ Halsey said. ‘And that’s pretty much what these charter schools are.’ ”
Yes, possibly the best environment for these vulnerable kids would have been a district school staffed with certified teachers and appropriate infrastructure and support mechanisms. Not a job for amateurs.
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Christine Langhoff: you nailed it.
The fruit is so low hanging that I am going to pick a little of it:
1), Those in favor charters & vouchers & privatization suffer a serious case of the “bigotry of low expectations” so they
2), give themselves over to the “hard bigotry of mandated failure” [e.g., high-stakes standardized testing & denying critical resources to public schools].
It is precisely those in favor of a “better education for all” that have high expectations and push forward, despite all obstacles including those erected by the self-styled “education reformers,” to give the best to those that need the most.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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Chiara, Judith and MathVale are right, the dangers are grave and advancing, given the speed of privatization enabled by the billionaires and bought officials pushing it. Money means speed and power to get things done, the more we let the rich accumulate money in the last 35 years, the more they can force votes their way in govt and in elections. (I pose this problem for critical inquiry/writing in my composition classes, try to design it as an interactive curriculum without lectures.) Of course, moving our vast numbers from the bottom up is slow compared to the speed of big money, especially when “our” organizations have betrayed us for a seat at the table of power, acting as agents of the status quo–AFT, UFT, NEA, PTA(along with too many grad schools of education, like UMASS which fired the wonderful Barbara Madeloni). At this moment, our best strategy is to get outraged parents to opt-out of the standardized testing(outraged parents drove incompetent test-maniac John King from Comm of NYSDOE). Opt-out can can stop the billionaire boys club. Many, many parents are troubled by non-stop testing on their kids and with the sabotage of their public schools by the privatizers’ money grab. The testing machine requires huge numbers of students to validate its results. Denying that number will invalidate the ugly bogus operation altogether. Let’s do it. Parental opt-out can stop the private war on public schools. The wonderful group United Opt-Out holds a national gathering this Jan MLK weekend in Fort Lauderdale–I’ll be there with folks to push this along. Join the defense of our kids who can’t defend themselves, of our families which need good public schools to work, and of our teachers being undermined by the union leaders who refuse to fight back.
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Schools in this country have been the center of communities. The divide and conquer mindset of charter school backers has destroyed that and made many communities weaker. The mishmash of schools, like in New Orleans, divides communities and makes everything a competition. Even the name of the charter school being talked about here disgusts me – “First Place Scholars”
The social studies curriculum for students has traditionally moved from identity of self to family to community and then to the broader community of town, state, country, world. Education “reformers” are stuck at the narcissistic self level. Community is not important since they own it all anyway.
They are accomplishing exactly what they want – education as a contest to be won by the highest “score.”
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If Gates Foundation spent money actually helping schools instead of buying elections, maybe they could be called philanthropists.
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I do not see how Gates Foundation is involved in this school. Just because Dianne Ravitch started this blog with a swipe at Bill Gates. I have no idea how she can justify this. All she wants to to do is to sell her books and make more money.
Gates Foundation has done more good to schools in general, the down trodden in particular and you constantly bad mouth it. You people drag the foundation into everything. Get over it, do your job as well as you can and let things happen. And do not question my right to express my opinion since most of you are so upset with the whole wide world. I do not represent the whole world.
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Bill Gates and his cronies funded this charter school initiative in WA even though we voted them down several times in the past. The initiative people used unscrupulous tactics to get it on the ballot – paid signature gatherers from out of state who lied, pulled dirty tricks like bait and switch – and then used inflammatory ads on TV and radio to bash public schools, gave out BS information about charters. Even then, the initiative barely passed.
If Bill Gates does such good work, why does his company hide money offshore so they don’t have to pay their full share of WA State Taxes? Taxes that would fully fund our state for 2 years? If sent just to K-12, those taxes would fully fund us for years to come. Why does the Gates Foundation invest in private prisons? Why do they hire Ed Deformers like Tom VanderArk, who is usually just one step ahead of the law with his failed charter ventures and other crap. Sorry – these days, the Foundation only does things to further their agenda and get tax write offs, not to genuinely help others. They are always looking for a ROI and recognition, not to do good work behind the scenes like a true philanthropist.
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Are you a teacher Raj Acharya? You can’t be. You just can’t be. When you have invested your career in this field, you would understand where we are coming from. As Peter Greene writes, the education reformers are just tourists. It’s the reason why we value experience more than enthusiasm. Get your certification and join us, please.
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Do you try hard to be an asshole or moron or does it come naturally, Raj. You truly are both. You come here to stir shit, not to contribute anything to the “conversation’ – Troll.
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Raj, I started the post with a reference to Bill Gates because he gathered the $10 million plus to pass the charter referendum. Without his financial support, the referendum would have failed, as it had 3 times before.
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Gates et. al poured nearly $11M into the I 1240 campaign. Seattle voters REJECTED charter schools with margin of 60% 40%. Within the state, the charter school intiative passed by approximately 1% or less.
The funders of I 1240 put the charter school initiative during the governor’s race. Many felt it was more important to put time and resources into electing a Democratic governor. At the time, the state was also looking at legalizing gay marriage, and marijuana. In essence, the backers of 1240 knew that resources and time would be given to the governor’s race, marriage equality and marijuana initiative. They were right.
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TC,
I agree, why don’t they just fund the school? Hershey funded a school. Rosenwald contributed directly to schools.
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Interesting piece about Washington: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/should-states-spend-billions-to-reduce-class-sizes/
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Washington passed a class size reduction initiative several years ago. Nothing happened because the legislature never came up with the funding. I expect that’s what will happen this time, too.
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Too bad everyone always chooses to quote Hanushek in their articles. Blah.
This is our 2nd class size intiative. The legislature suspended our previous one along with our teacher COLA one some years ago. They’re still struggling to figure out pay for McCleary (the lawsuit that says they need to fully find K-12), yet they handed out tax breaks to Boeing, which promptly moved more business to cheap labor/unskilled workers in South Carolina. The GOP plan is to gut social services to pay for McCleary, because no one has the spine to look at 1) cutting tax loopholes, 2) going after Microsoft and the taxes they owe that could fully fund our state for 2 years or 3) instituting an income tax on high earners (we have none – just property tax, a high sales tax, and the business taxes), or 4) telling the Feds where to stick it and quit funding these ridiculously pricey Federal mandates MSP, SBAC, CCSS, etc. The Dem plan so far is to complain about the GOP plan.
We also need more school buildings. My district is bursting at the seams, with some buildings losing their computer lab space and portions of their libraries to become classrooms and/or teaching spaces. Class sizes in some buildings are at 30+. In one building, the principal even gives up her office so some small groups can meet in there with an aide to work on their reading. The class size intiative will undoubtedly require us to reopen one closed building (which never should have been closed), and possibly look at reopening another that has been closed for 20+ years. Seattle School District has a similar problem – they have no more space. Buildings that were closed, sold off, or handed over to community groups through shady deals are now needed. Buildings that are being built or remodeled are already smaller than the projected enrollment.
So while I am definitely in favor of the class-size initiative – my worst year of teaching was a year I had 29 second graders, plus an additional 8 more each day for math because of the 1/2 combination class next door – there are a lot of complications it brings to the surface.
As for First Place School – it was the only charter in WA I hoped would succeed, but I knew the transition from private to charter would not be good. They should have stayed as a private school. They did do good work, but I don’t think they really realized how much it takes to become a charter, and I’m afraid this will close them down completely unless they opt to have a corporate charter management group come in, in which case they will lose their soul and the intent of the charter. The remainder of the applicants who are supposedly opening schools next year are all corporate charter chains, or at least have carefully hidden connections to corporate charter chains. Here’s hoping the WA State Supreme Court rules soon on charters and maybe we won’t have to deal with them.
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The Chair of the Washington State Charter Commission is Steve Sundquist. Sundquist served as President of Seattle Public Schools. Under Sundquists watch, the State Auditor Charged the board with failure to oversee district operations, operational infra-structure fell apart and we had a $1.8M scandal
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2014330280_eakes26m.html
Sundquist served with a business backed board during the Great Recession. This board defunded elementary school counselors, drug and alcohol specialists, summer school and other vital supports needed for student success. Instead, Sundquist and the business backed board funded data and testing.
There is enormous pressure for the first charter schools to succeed, and those that support charter schools claim that we have the best charter school laws in the country. Time will tell, but I am not hopeful.
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Yep – the charter chains are salivating over our charter law because there are so many vague areas and loopholes! That’s why they say we have the best charter school law in the country.
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How come the comments here are so biased, just because it is a charter school? And unfortunately Dianne Ravich tied it to the Gates foundation at the start of this blog without any rhyme or reason. That was a long reach to include the Gates Foundation. Once again it has only 45 students who are homeless.
You do not get it, this was a poor private school catering primarily to homeless kids that wanted to get some state funding for their great cause. Why did they exist, because the public school system dropped the ball. If the public school system had done its job, these homeless kids would be in a public school. What have the public school system done for these homeless kids?
Any way it accounts for a few teachers in Seattle. None of you had any rights to question the school when it was private, but now that it has acquired a label of charter it has turned into a poisonous entity with all the bad things you claim is associated with Gates Foundation. Bill Gates did not start the charter movement in this country.
Now some of you are asking whether I have ever taught. What if I have not? Does that mean I am a lower caste than the superior caste of teachers? Get off blaming me for the inevitable incursion of the charter schools. It is in almost every state including Washington. They account for almost 20% of all the students. Why are they increasing in number, is it because parents are tired of the status quo and they want some say in their kids education. Is it wrong to have ideas other than those spouted here?
A blog is just that, the comments need not be justified with any real supporting information. I dare you to find a direct connection to Gates foundation and this school.
While you are at it please tell me how this school changing from private to charter status is harming the kids? And how your comments are going to help these kids? And what is the Seattle school district which approved the charter going do to help this poor school and its homeless kids? How is Gates foundation harming these kids? Finally how many of you have lost your job because of this charter school?
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“…the inevitable incursion of the charter schools. It is in almost every state including Washington. They account for almost 20% of all the students.”
Hardly inevitable, and they account for somewhere between 5% and 7% of all students nationally, nowhere near 20%.
” A blog is just that, the comments need not be justified with any real supporting information. I dare you to find a direct connection to Gates foundation and this school. ”
On this blog, most comments and threads are supported by clear evidence. We believe in evidence-based decision making for our public schools. Evidence that these “reforms” were not working was the reason for the change of mind of the host of this blog.
“You do not get it, this was a poor private school catering primarily to homeless kids that wanted to get some state funding for their great cause. Why did they exist, because the public school system dropped the ball. If the public school system had done its job, these homeless kids would be in a public school. What have the public school system done for these homeless kids?”
The political machinations which turned this school into a charter is the reason it is not a public school. Likely, it was an easy target for charterization because homeless kids have few who are able to advocate for them effectively. It’s dubious that any wealthy private school would have lowered standards for the education of children as far as this one has in its conversion to charter. Parents with social capital would rightly be storming school authorities.
People here are angry because the most vulnerable kids are being denied an appropriate education – and you keep making excuses for that.
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We have plenty of homeless kids in public schools in my district. One of the major distinctions between charters and public schools Raj, is public schools have to accept all types of students, while charters do not.
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As you’ve been told numerous times by previous posters but have chosen to ignore – Gates and Co are the reason WA State now has the charter infestation starting. He and his wealthy friends were pretty much the sole financers of the whole initiaitve. That’s why the post started out with a reference to Gates. But since you’ve chosen to be deliberately dense about it….
Why people are now concerned about First Place School? Because now they are receiving our public tax dollars. We now have a say in how they do because they chose to go with public financing. If they had remained a private school, it would not be our business. They could have continued to operate with fewer regulations, and their accountability would be their business, not ours.
No Seattle school district approved this charter, it was done at the state level. They appeared to have their ducks in a row on the application, but obviously things did not work out.
You ask what public school districts do for homeless kids? A hell of a lot. Clearly you do not know a thing about what we do, as you have obviously not taught nor worked in a public school. Heard of McKinney-Vento? This requires us to transport homeless kids from wherever their current place of residence is to the school they consider their home school. For some of these kids, this means a 2 hour car ride each way every day. The district sends a car/van/taxi/bus to pick these MV kids up each day and take them home. One of my buildings has 57 MV kids they transport EVERY SINGLE DAY. Thats just ONE school. We have plenty more at our other schools. We have clothing rooms for them to pick out clothes, and we send them home with backpacks of food on the weekends. We have a washer/dryer where we can wash their clothes so they have clean ones to wear. For a few of our families who are currently living in cars, the kids come early to school and shower, all kids get free breakfast. We assist them to find housing, we’ve assisted them with finding furniture, necessary services, translators, fill out paperwork, etc. We work closely with social services, we provide counselors when we can, and we are lucky to have some very generous families who donate money to ensure these kids still get to go to camp, participate in sports and music and other extracurricular activities. But you don’t really care about what public schools do, so I’m done wasting my time with you. Go bask in your adoration of the Gates foundation and charter schools and don’t let your blinders get in the way.
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“People here are angry because the most vulnerable kids are being denied an appropriate education – and you keep making excuses for that.”
These homeless kids were in a private school. People were not angry when they were in the private school, only when the school was turned into a charter school. What were you doing about these most vulnerable children? What excuse did I make? and why were you denying them an appropriate education?
“It’s dubious that any wealthy private school would have lowered standards for the education of children as far as this one has in its conversion to charter.”
Do you have any proof that this school was a wealthy private school catering to primarily to homeless kids? Prove it. Why does conversion from a private school to a charter school lower the standards? Why do you think that charters have lower standards? Where is your evidence?
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Why? It’s simple. School principals representing charters typically have little or no school experience. Some of them even don’t have required academic credentials, so they try to make them look like they are real educators-by faking academic credentials. Like one 22-year-old man pretending to be a CEO of new charter school by calling themselves “Doctor Who.”
It’s called Ph. D in Fabrication.
Go ahead and read the Settle Times again to figure out why Washington State has a strong resistance to charters and privatizations. If you want hard-core evidence, then go ahead and read the author’s book or US DOE website. There is an overwhelming evidence in educational research that discredits initial appearance of charter supremacy to public schools. People have little difficulty to get the sources from blogs, newspapers, and certified education research organizations on a daily basis.
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them/him; privatizations/privatization
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First Place Scholars should be commended for enrolling the homeless and special ed.
100 students might be 1 million in state funding. Why don’t the rich folks in WA match dollar for dollar and add 1 million to First Place to make things go right? Fund 1000 charter schools in WA on this model and contribute 1 billion per year to the education of the kids they care about.
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A good portion of the very wealthy here don’t even pay their share of their taxes. Why on earth would they contribute to the education of homeless kids? Unless they can get a tax write-off….
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Taxes are not the subject here. And feeding the trolls comments are asinine. May he/she without sin cast the first stone.
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Why do we feed the trolls?
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Perhaps to give us an opportunity to train how to cope with them and analyze how their language behavior mirrors their incredulous moral character?
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You are judging moral character. Who made you the judge, jury and executioner?
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There you go. You jump down on it because it ticks you off, huh?
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Because most of us are teachers and we always feel the need to educate, even when, as in this case, it is most definitely futile?
But also because we don’t care to let the erroneous comments go without rebuttal. It happens too much out in the mainstream media, the legislature, etc., where we are not given the voice to provide the truth. Here we have that voice and we use it.
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FYI – the WA State Charter Commission has now rejected the correction plan submitted by First Place charter school.
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/educationlab/2014/12/12/state-commission-rejects-seattle-charter-schools-correction-plan/
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I have followed since this blog since its inception and have made some modest contributions on some threads. I guess you could say I’m a regular.
I used to get more than a little annoyed at the shills and trolls that came on to this blog to engage in their sneers, jeers and smears.
No longer. They’re just pathetic.
So let’s just take one teensy weensy example of what moral vacuity looks like.
When it comes to charters, as a blog regular I must be—or so it is alleged—blindly and zealously opposed to one and all.
😳
Reality check for those checkmated by Rheeality Distortion Fields.
This blog, 5-21-2013, “Missouri Punishes Charter for Taking on High Risk Kids” with the following posting by the owner of this blog:
[start posting]
One of the first charters to open in Missouri was the Gordon Parks charter school In Kansas City.
Its idealistic founders believed that the purpose of the charter was to take the kids who were far behind their peers and try to help them.
The state of Missouri just canceled the charter.
Gordon Parks Elementary School will die because its test scores were too low.
This charter tried to do what charters are supposed to do: to take the kids with the greatest needs.
And now it has been punished for doing what the original visionaries of the charter movement wanted, a decade before passage of No Child Left Behind.
Who will want these children? Not another charter school. They have learned their lesson. Take the kids with the best scores; counsel out or exclude the others.
NCLB killed this good charter. And so did the state board of Missouri, which values test scores more than children.
For shame, Missouri.
[end of posting]
And the latter part of what I wrote [minus the final sentence] on the thread of that posting:
[KTA excerpt start]
First, those who are shutting down this commendable charter consciously put distance between themselves and the people they are [literally] damaging. Why look into the faces of children who are being given a chance, dedicated staff and hopeful parents—when you are going to viciously stab them in the back? The haters [yes, Deb!] are concerned about people—THEMSELVES—so they don the Edubully Armor of Ignorance, cast self-protective spells of Educrat Unaccountability, invoke the mumbo-jumbo of the High Priests of Testing Intimidation, so as to protect THEMSELVES from feeling or experiencing any of the hurt and harm they are inflicting on others.
Second, test scores are not a substitute for sound ethical human judgment. This is in one of the worst traditions of humankind: “We were really forced to do this” [Sarah Potter, spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Second Education; click on the link provided by Diane].
No, you were’t forced to do this.
As some of the students I worked with used to say, “Don’t be a hater.”
And this blog, and its commenters, will continue to remind the Potters of the world that an increasing number of people are holding them responsible for their vile words and actions.
[KTA excerpt end]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/05/21/missouri-punishes-charter-for-taking-on-high-risk-kids/
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, haters gotta hate…
Get a life.
😎
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