Patrick Kerkstra writes that he was always skeptical when anyone suggested that charters (at least some of them) were seeking profits. Now, having read about what is happening in Philadelphia, he is not so sure. I remember the early days of the charter movement. My colleague Checker Finn Jr. used to say, again and again, that there was a deal: if the state gives us (charters) autonomy, we will be accountable. The charters have autonomy but they no longer want accountability.
Kerkstra sees three big issues:
- Charters are no more efficient about their use of money than district officials. People should get over the belief that private=smarter, better.
- Profit-minded businesses are destroying whatever moral authority the education reform movement had.
I’ve long cringed when ed reform skeptics attacked the motives of charter advocates and others who’d like to see the public school system reinvented (or scrapped). With very rare exceptions, the individuals I’ve interviewed and spoken with in the ed reform movement over the years are True Believers: their fury and impatience with traditional public education is real and righteous. I haven’t always agreed with where they’re coming from, to say the least, but I’ve long dismissed accusations that reformers are in it for the money.Now I’m not so sure. There plainly is a large and growing group of interests within the education reform movement that stand to profit as traditional public education shrinks….
Charters were supposed to be different. Traditional public schools were beholden: to teacher’s unions, to political masters, to a powerful class of consultants and attorneys. Charters were supposed to be the indies. But as the charter movement grows, a big corps of financial interests has grown up around it. Increasingly, charters look just as financially beholden to an array of interests, only it’s harder to tell exactly who and what those interests are.
This is a really significant problem for ed reform advocates, and I’m not sure that it can be solved. The moral clarity of the early charter movement — nonprofit, about the kids, self-reliant — well, that’s gone. Increasingly, it seems not just fair to question the motives of ed reformers, but necessary.
- The School District’s charter oversight office is still understaffed and under-resourced. And charter operators frequently bristle at the prospect of more accountability. But something’s got to give here. The charter movement can’t keep growing and eating up tax dollars while operating in the relative darkness.
Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/citified/2015/09/17/charter-school-problems/#f82Suzej5Ge7GLbg.99
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“With very rare exceptions, the individuals I’ve interviewed and spoken with in the ed reform movement over the years are True Believers: their fury and impatience with traditional public education is real and righteous.”
I read this in Ohio a lot and I’d just like to take exception to one way it’s used. Questioning motives of individuals is based on a whole “movement” is bad- I agree. But why should people have to rely on guessing at “motives” for leaders of what is a public entity? The public haven’t “interviewed and spoken with” all of these people, and even if they had, I don’t think we should have to discern whether they’re good or bad people. That’s the whole point of uniform rules and publicly-conducted process and transparency requirements- so it isn’t a matter of “good” or “bad” people.
If he interviews the people who are collecting these huge debt service payments on charter schools in Philadelphia and they’re “True Believers” what then? We just drop the whole thing because after all they mean well? Isn’t that where judging this on his estimation of the intent of the various parties gets him? What if they say “we collect these huge debt payments so we can fund more charter schools because charter schools are better” and, being True Believers, they mean it? Is it okay then?
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To answer your question: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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seems to me that any state that does not want common core, or any rebranded name for it, is a target for the common core paid assassins. seems to me that common core “promoters” are now reporting “some charter schools are just out for the money”. well guess what, isn’t pearce publishing supplying ALL the books for common core in every state? aren’t school administrators and teachers paid on performance? what kind of performance are we talking about, surely not “our” history because cc has re-written our history. surely not on math, what math, this is not math, this is nonsense; however, my main issue with common core is that it usurps parental authority and rights under the guise of ” a better educational program for them”. more nonsense! I have seen a considerable amount of cc homework and teachers notes and do not know how such a flawed program ever got accepted. I believe cc’s only true value is to control the next generation of Americans and has little or no value as an “educational program”. to summarize my thoughts and feelings about common core including all it’s rebranded names is this; I find it socialism, anti-American and damn scary!
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Most teachers, thank heavens, are not paid for performance.
What you’re talking about is closer to fascism than socialism. If it were socialist, it wouldn’t be the private companies raking in the big bucks.
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Yes it is more akin to fascism, and that is when a small number of private companies, especially the capital class indeed do rake in big public monies.
Glenn is confused as to what socialism is: From Oxford-noun: socialism
1. a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
My take is that government in the US is designed as more of a socialist organization (although the founders would not have heard of that term at the time of independence as it is from French in the early 1800’s), as described by Lincoln-“Government of, by and for the people. . .”.
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It’s been a dispiriting, disheartening week here in Lake Wobegone, MA (with 50% of the children above average on the NAEP), where public education was more or less invented.
First, Governor Baker appointed Roland “Two-tier” Fryer to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. In Boston, a One Boston school enrollment form, like the infamous One Newark plan, was announced.
The the public face of the so-called Great Schools privatizers’ Stand on Children unfurled their banners. This morning, the “great taste” vs “less filling” (Peyser vs. Chester) debate occupied the minds of the DESE board as they debated the merits of sending $37 million to PARCC or on MCAS. The opinions of TeachPlus were cited as “expert”. See Worcester School Committe member Track Novick’s nimble reporting at
http://who-cester.blogspot.com
Meanwhile, back at the Statehouse, the governor has just declared “I don’t really care how the cap is lifted. I just want the cap lifted.”
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Sorry to say, but i think most Charters are in it for the money. I had the displeasure of working for one for one year. They were the largest Charter in the county of a fairly large metro area. The school was a disaster. Almost all of the board members had no education background. The original board (when they wanted to build the school) was comprised of education people. As soon as the school was built they had a brand new board. The Chairman runs a prison hospital business on the side that also gets to make $$ off state $$. I attended the annual state charter school convention. There are tons of people making $$ off this. The largest group of exhibitors were Finance groups that fund schools. My school and land was owned by Canyon Agassi group. I was asking some questions about finance related things at the convention and one guy told me that Canyon Agassi was one of the big boys in which investors earn double digit returns. Our school claimed to be anon-profit, but actually wasn’t. They have a management arm of the business in which a handful of people are paid consultants fees. These people run the school. They don’t have to disclose how much these fees are and still consider themselves a non profit. Knowing what these guys did before they ran the school I’d estimate that each of them makes at least $170,000 a year minimum. None had any education background. The organization continues to build schools and lease through Canyon.
The school was completely dysfunctional because no one including the Principal had any education background. They were warned by the county several times that they needed to serve special Ed., ESL, and gifted because they just weren’t doing it. I could go on and on. I would love to work for an organization that informs the public about the Charter mess. We need to get the word out.
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Thanks for your honest response. There is a whole charter industry claiming to be non-profit that take advantage of the lack of oversight and little regulation. Led by investors, they are taking the taxpayers for a ride by getting tax credits and creating building financing schemes in which they pay high rent for space built by some corporation with whom they are associated. Worst of all they are not improving education; they are delivering an inferior product while using tax dollars to underwrite outrageous salaries for those at the top and hiding the profit. http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/?m=0
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What is the school’s name and where?
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Glad to see that the infinite greed (that’s a Gates-ism) of the so-called reformers has finally broken through Mr. Kerkstra’s longstanding naïveté.
Just because the so-called reformers are “True Believers” doesn’t mean they are not also fraudulent greed heads; their “beliefs” are inextricably tied to their financial interests, their class interests, their will to power and their vicious opportunism, so much so that when they speak about those “beliefs” it should be discounted nearly 100%.
Welcome to The Resistance, Mr. Kerkstra. Better late than never.
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When the charter school movement started, I was naive and idealistic enough to believe we would see all kinds of innovative new schools where educators could try out different methods. I thought there would be more progressive Montessori, Waldorf, and Reggio Emilia type schools, where parents in high poverty neighborhoods could have access to the kind of education that upper-middle class professionals in university towns often choose for their children.
25 years later, most charter schools seem to be depressingly alike. The emphasis is on test scores and blind obedience, not on developing a lifelong love of learning. The aforementioned upper-middle class professionals in university towns would never send their kids to these schools. Thus they remain racially and socioeconomically segregated.
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In light of the recent trends following charter schools, I must say I am quite disappointed to hear the generalization of all charter schools as being greedy and for profit, but I understand that there are people who have money as a priority over a kid’s education and that seems to be all we hear about on these blogs. Why not instead of focusing so much on the wrong choices of many; let us turn instead to the few shining examples of what are education system should be like and study the factors that make them successful.
Why don’t we try to replicate those factors on a larger scale by allowing the flexibility of a charter school, but with the accountability of a public school and the resources of a private school. Implementing these changes into one school system at a time could lead to drastic changes in each state.
Or are we forever caught in a cycle of corruption and underperformance by people we put in charge of the nation’s education? This calls into question the future of education whether public, private, charter, or any other school for that matter. Where does the nation turn from here?
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Francisco, believe it or not, there still are and once were many shining examples among public schools. It is not like we do not know what factors influence the development of quality programs. Are there and have there been public districts that are mired in corruption in addition to being unresponsive to the needs of their citizens? Yes! Does creating a shadow system that is even less transparent, virtually free of scrutiny, and accountable to no one seem like a smart way to solve those problems?
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There are two reasons what you suggest is beside the point, Fransisco.
The first is that those “shining examples” are outliers, making up a small minority of charter schools. Most of them also tend to be smaller, mom and pop charters, which, like the public schools, will eventually be ground to bits be the “need” for standardization and economies of scale. While they might be good places for the small number of students fortunate enough to attend, on an institutional basis, they are not much more than Potemkin Villages. Ironically, and unbeknownst to their supporters, administrators and teachers, according to the logic of so-called education reform and neoliberal capitalism, these schools are also doomed. Rest assured they will be closed, merged or consolidated in the not-too-distant future, assuming the so-called reformers get what they want.
Second, even if it were possible to scale up these examples (which the so-called reformers have no intention of doing, preferring instead the chains that have received the Gates/Broad/Walton maledictions), it would still spell the end of public education as we have known it, since the resources needed to fund charters invariably, and intentionally, come at the expense of public schools.
Finally, why not look for “shining examples” of real public schools to emulate? There are thousands of them (I’m fortunate to work in one) and, unlike charters, they are public institutions that you can actually visit and get detailed information (rather than talking points, spin and Market Speak) about.
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