Lloyd Lofthouse notes the expansion of the charter sector in past decade-plus and wonders how this will affect public schools. We know from many state and city studies that charters don’t outperform public schools and that many are run by for-profit corporations. No high-performing nation is embarked on the destruction of its public education system by imposing charters and vouchers and allowing non-educators to open schools.
Lloyd Lofthouse writes:
Is there a site that lists all the private sector charters starting with the biggest chain. If the Walton’s have more than 1,600 (about 28% of total), wouldn’t their corporate Charters be the largest chain.
I found this:
From school year 1999–2000 to 2011–12, the percentage of all public schools that were public charter schools increased from 1.7 to 5.8 percent, and the total number of public charter schools increased from 1,500 to 5,700.
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=30
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgb.asp
AN UPDATE: In November, U.S. News & World Report says, Number of U.S. Charter Schools Up 7 Percent, Report Shows.
The number of charter schools surpassed 6,000 at the start of the 2012-13 school year, as these schools – publicly financed, but privately run – steadily increased by 7 percent throughout the United States that year. This annual growth contributed to a 47 percent increase in the number of charter schools over the seven years since 2006-2007.
In addition: Charter schools now account for more than 60% of the public schools in New Orleans. Some are run by KIPP a chain with 162 schools.
There are 146 charters in the Gulen chain
Eve Moskowitz of $500k+ annual salary fame, runs more than 32 in New York—-is this small—the district where I taught for 30 years in CA had 19 schools and about 19,000 students.
And here’s an interesting piece in Forbes:
Charter School Gravy Train Runs Express to Fat City:
On Thursday, July 25, dozens of bankers, hedge fund types and private equity investors gathered in New York to hear about the latest and greatest opportunities to collect a cut of your property taxes. Of course, the promotional material for the Capital Roundtable’s conference on “private equity investing in for-profit education companies” didn’t put it in such crass terms, but that’s what’s going on.
Charter schools are booming. “There are now more than 6,000 in the United States, up from 2,500 a decade ago, educating a record 2.3 million children,” according to Reuters.
Or this one from The Nation:
Venture capitalists and for-profit firms are salivating over the exploding $788.7 billion market in K-12 education. What does this mean for public school students?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For an excellent report on the growthof the charter movement see Gene V. Glasse’s website. He is a ell-known educational researcher who has been tracking charter growth. Comparing his stats and those offered by Lloyd will be useful.
Cream Rises to the Top in the Charters?
Posted: 08 Jan 2015 10:58 AM PST
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Here is the link:
http://ed2worlds.blogspot.com
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If it is obvious that they cannot deliver a better product, how long until they crash and burn?
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Parents choose the charters that are working. Denying that, or assuming that they are misinformed, is just one of the reasons why many of you don’t understand why charters are growing. Denying the existence of studies with results that don’t square with what you believe is another.
Denying that charter schools are public schools also unfairly excludes these students and parents from your thoughts and concerns, and points out your bias to decide what is public and what is not based on the adults involved, not the kids.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of the “exploding $788.7 billion market in K-12 education” is in district schools
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The $788.7 billion is in education reform, such as changing curriclum requirements (Common Core), technology, and testing requirements.
The investors cost the Treasury (from tax credits) $1.5 billion. Investors are making 7 times their investment in schools that are not performing well. Sometimes public schools are closed and replaced by under performing charter schools, causing huge turmoil in children’s lives.
The issue is not whether charter schools as a whole are good or bad, but the largely unregulated scam of the for-profit charter school industry.
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School districts or school boards should break it out for the public.
How much are they spending on each mandate? I read that 50% of districts had to upgrade platforms to conduct the CC testing. Maybe people want to spend their dwindling public school funding on that, but we won’t know until we ask them.
I’d love to see the real cost of of RttT for those states that accepted the conditions and got the money. Was it even a net gain for public schools?
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To clarify, it is costing the taxpayer $788.7 billion to fund all these CCSS requirements and the technology overhaul for what I would call marginal at best results. We could fund a second Iraq war with this kind of money.
The money would have been better spent on small class sizes, hiring more teachers, more professional development, better teachers pay, and enrichment classes like programming, art, music, theater, etc.
Its disgusting that so much money is being siphoned away from the classroom into the pockets the technology firms and hedge fund billionaires.
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John, sadly, parents choose charters even when they are not working. Why? Because they have been sold a bill of goods by the charter industry, and believe wrongly that charters are better than public schools, even when their teachers are inexperienced, and most kids can’t pass the state tests.
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Diane, in all cases, parents choose charters over some zoned district school because there are things that they like about them. I think it’s condescending to say that they are hoodwinked. I know that your favorite study says charters perform less well than comparable schools, but in many places, studies that you choose to ignore (including by the same author) show otherwise.
Less than 10% of the incoming students to my charter middle school have ever passed a state test, and their parents are generally unaware of that fact, and also unaware of the dismal trajectory their students were on in the district schools, where passing rates are barely above single digits and drop each grade until 50% of students drop out of high school.
The only “bill of goods” in my city is that those parents believe that their children are doing fine, but who can blame them when the kids are getting good grades and being promoted every year.
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John, many studies and state data show that charters perform no better than public schools and often far worse.
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IMHO, contrasting implied many “studies” with a single “favorite study” puts the commenter on the spot—
1), It is a deliberately inaccurate statement that ignores the many studies the owner of this blog has cited in support of her positions. Agree with her, disagree with her, say [and explain how!] she has accurately or inaccurately characterized the studies she has cited, but changing what she has said in order to make her look crudely ignorant with only a strongly implied lone “favorite study” to support her while the commenter has an implied legion of “studies” (“many places” plus “same author”) is a complete non-starter with me. It is, literally not figuratively, meaningless except as an insult. *I add in passing that this blog itself is an important source of firsthand information.*
Want to be taken seriously? Apologize. No excuses. The full monty.
2), Name that “favorite study” and its author so we have a clue what is being discussed and what those other “studies” are.
Chapter and verse. No excuses. The full monty.
Am I asking for too much? Am I placing too heavy a burden on those expressing their opinions on this blog?
I sometimes read comments on this blog with which I strongly disagree. For example, I always read FLERP! never knowing whether I will agree or disagree with him. No matter. As I see it, he adds something to the discussion here even if sometimes folks feel he is close to crossing over the line—and I am sure there are some that feel I occasionally get too close to crossing over the line.
No matter. But I assume we are all imperfect and will get carried away on occasion.
But there are limits. As I see it, deliberate dishonesty is one of those. Let me bring up what I consider a good example of how to handle one’s own missteps. Mr. Harlan Underhill, who used to opine here regularly, early on made the following wild statement:
“I’ll tell you why the rush to eliminate public schools, even if they are community hubs. It’s the ONLY way to get rid of the 1/3 to 1/2 dead wood teachers who are in them.”
Later in the same thread, he made clear how hollow his assertion was:
“No data, Diane, merely one parent’s anecdotal experience. But, I thought we were against Data Driven Decision making here because we are against comprehensive testing?”
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/04/how-to-live-with-an-outrage/
My takeaway? In his own way, even if inelegantly and sarcastically and casually, he made it clear he was full of it.
I realize that using Mr. Underhill as an example to follow might seem, er, unusual to some. *Believe me, I thought about that as, and after, I wrote the above!* However, in context, I find his follow-up clarification worthy of some respect—although, as I see it, he would have been much better served to have not undermined his own credibility to begin with. But at least he didn’t back down from admitting he had put foot firmly in mouth.
Just sayin’…
😎
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Yes, in a moment of frustration, I used some hyperbole referring to one study (meaning 1st CREDO). I could get into the huge amount of hyperbole that is used on this site, but I’ll leave that for another day.
I wanted to write a reply myself, but I’ve been swamped. This article that arrived in my inbox today does a very good job of addressing why I think the blanket statement that “charters don’t outperform public schools”, besides being misstated since charters are public, is not accurate.
I think it explains why the general public is supportive of charters. Very curious if anyone has a response other than the usual rhetoric.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2015/01/11/charter-success/
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Reality—Check:
York City, PA.
Muskegon Heights, MI.
Adelanto, CA.
Reality—Mate.
😎
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This is a good summary of the ways investors are making money by investing in charter schools and education non profits. Here are some other funding mechanisms to follow:
New Markets Tax Cedits – a tax credit (38%) for investments in low income schools, non profits
Scholarship Tax Credits – a tax credit (100%) for investments in non profits that provide scholarships to private schools
Social Impact Bonds or Pay for Success – investor loans the government money for education service (i.e. Preschool) and recieves payment back plus interest if the program is successful. Interesting idea, but another step towards privatization.
Education Funds – like health savings accounts whereby the state pays the per pupil funding to the student to spend as a voucher on public school, private school, or homeschool.
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Here is a PBS story on social impact bonds:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/social-impact-bonds-put-private-profit-ahead-public-good/
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The social impact or pay for success contracts are promoted by Obama and being used to fund preschool programs in Chicago and Utah. The Obama programs came from other promoters, the biggies are the Rockefeller Foundation and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, also Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Co. The promoters want this profitable lending scheme to be formally embedded in federal policy so that projects can be freed of the obligation to deal with multiple governance structures city, county, state and so on. Promoters see the social services sector of the economy, including education, as ripe for greater private and for profit exploitation. The tax benefits to investors are rarely discussed, but you have a good handle on these. The schemes are uniformly more costly than direct funding of programs with tax dollars,
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I don’t know when parents in public schools demand ed reformers show some benefits to their schools. Ohio had had what is now the national ed reform scheme for 17 years and our state legislature is getting ready to devote yet another session to charter schools.
Climb in the way-back machine and you’ll see we had this exact same discussion in this state in 2002:
“Charter schools will benefit from closer scrutiny. Ohio won’t gain, though, by rapidly expanding the number of such schools.”
They got no closer scrutiny and Ohio rapidly expanded them. It’s now 12 years later.
It simply doesn’t matter. They’re infatuated with charters in DC and in statehouses. You can’t pay them to focus on the unfashionable public school sector. Hell, we ARE paying them. To do what, I don’t know. It isn’t “improve public schools”. Ohio’s “public school sector” dropped from 5th to 18th in “quality” in the last 4 years.
http://10thperiod.blogspot.com/2014/12/is-all-this-charter-reform-new-not.html
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Charter schools and the Domino Effect: http://publicschoolscentral.com/2015/01/09/charter-schools-and-the-domino-effect/
And when charters dominate — I predict standardized tests will become less important to the private sector.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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