Paul Thomas of South Carolina calls out the charter industry for its spiraling frauds, hoaxes, profits, and resegregation.
At the end of his post, he includes a list of readings:
“It’s Charter Scam Week again—time for the annual corporate Charter School Week P.R. campaign. Time to point out how that charter advocacy has revealed itself in the following ways:
“Charter advocacy cannot be about improving student achievement since charter schools consistently have a range of outcomes similar to public schools.
“Charter advocacy cannot be concerned about resegregation of schools by race and class since charter schools are significantly segregated.
“Charter advocacy is a thinly veiled attempt to introduce school choice as “parental choice” despite the U.S. public mostly being against channelling public funds into privately run schools.
“Charter advocacy is tolerating at best and perpetuating at worst schools for “other people’s children”—a system that subjects minority and high-poverty children to limited learning experiences, extensive test-prep, and authoritarian/abusive disciplinary policies.
“Charter advocacy chooses to ignore that charters eject some the most challenging students, ELL and special needs students.
“Charter advocacy also ignores that nothing about “charterness” distinguishes charter from public schools.
“Charter advocacy has committed to the (dishonest) “miracle” approach to demonizing public schools, and abandoned the original ideal of charter schools as pockets of experimentation (means and not ends) for the improvement of the public school system.
“The problem for charter advocacy is that the evidence is overwhelmingly counter to nearly every claim in favor of charter schools.”
– See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/05/188123/charter-scam-week-2015#.dpuf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Every one of these points is spot on. How are public officials getting away with their continued favoring of charter schools and their undermining of public education?
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“Charter advocacy also ignores that nothing about “charterness” distinguishes charter from public schools.”
I’ll have to disagree as the charterites will tell you (and the courts) that they are indeed private and not public when it comes to opening their books to inspection.
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This explains why Success Academy’s shadow group, Families for Excellent Schools, has been running their #dontstealpossible ads again here in the NYC area. I’m so cynical I thought it had something to do with the bad publicity they recently received in the NYT. Curiously, I’ve seen these ads running during the evening news and Yankee games. Maybe part of their strategy is to influence the elderly and/or single white male voters who are ignorant as to the issues.
It’s criminal the extent to which these rabid pro-charter groups actively forward this notion that “the system is broken,” as they do in the #dontstealpossible ad. While some public schools in low income neighborhoods may have problems, most public schools are good schools. The system really isn’t broken, and certainly no more broken than policing is nationwide. Imagine if a group ran ads about policemen, saying “the system is broken.” They would be flamed mercilessly. As many problems as there are with policing nationwide, it would be irresponsible to actively undermine the public trust re: policing. However, these rabid pro-charter groups are doing just that through their ad campaigns. To actively undermine the public trust in public education is wrong.
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