Mike Klonsky notes that Arne Duncan is paving the way for his return to Chicago by ladling out millions to charter schools.
Remember when Rahm Emanuel closed 50 schools in one day because they were under enrolled? It turns out that charter schools are also under enrolled, but that’s no reason to stop opening more of them!
“Just as Arne Duncan was announcing his retirement and his plans to return to Chicago to “spend more time with his family,” he dropped another $8M in fed dollars on pal Mike Milkie’s Noble charter school chain. This on top of another $42.2M coming to IL with the lion’s share going to Noble and Lawndale Educational and Regional Network.
“Milkie says Noble (which I lovingly call the Billionaires; Charter Network) needs the money in order to open 8 new schools to meet the growing demand and shorten its “waitlist.” But the Raise Your Hand parents group just made a few phone calls and found out that at least 5 Noble schools can’t fill the seats they have. They wonder, “Where’s the waitlist?”
“RYH asks some great questions:
‘Why is the charter community rallying for more schools when there are plenty of openings in existing charter schools across Chicago, including Noble, and CPS’ enrollment has been declining for years, down roughly 14,000 students just since 2012? RYH found last year that there are over 12,000 open seats in charters across Chicago. How and why are taxpayers expected to fund eight new schools when there are plenty of open seats in Noble schools right now?'”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
PAYBACK in more ways than one.
LikeLike
Sickening.
LikeLike
Yeah, the Obama Administration aren’t even pretending anymore. All they do now is promote charter schools:
View at Medium.com
I’d like to know how much collaboration there is between the Obama Administration and city and state governments with these big charter marketing efforts. I don’t know how one would find that out but I’d sure like to know if they planned the big Ohio charter expansion with the Kasich Administration.
LikeLike
Does a public school even have a shot applying for a grant from the Obama Administration, given their clear preference for charter schools? I’d say Congress should look into it, but I know that;s a lost cause. Maybe some private entity could analyze Obama Administration grants and compare, adjusting for total students served, of course. How did low income public schools fare as grant recipients since 2009 as compared to charter schools?
LikeLike
I suspect that Arne’s perverted reasoning on funding comes from the difference between funds that Arne could not totally control such as NCLB and the humongous discretionary kitty that he was given, aided by RTT. In any case, many of the initiatives he took originated with Gates and friends with their intent to expand charters and privatize education while pretending to “improve” public schools, as well as specific recommendations from McKinsey & Co. Intended to make pay for performance the national norm and to rearrange the workforce in education as if the participants were not more than wooden pieces in a chess game.
LikeLike
I believe this is crimanal!
LikeLike
I agree that it’s criminal, Marian, & made that comment on Mike’s blog. How can this be legal, especially in the climate of “disappearing” special education students? (Is yet more money to go to the rash–& rash-faced Evita Moskowitz?)
We have become Haiti, Argentina & Chile, all rolled into a gargantuan mess.We are becoming no better than a third-world country, beginning with the shameless non-reporting of the press & media, our news being restricted under the oligarchy of the owners of newspapers, radio & TV stations, and then, the mass closing of our public schools both by monetary starvation and by teaching to the tests.
We who are working on the Sanders Campaign will push for the focus of the second debate to be preK-12 education and all that is current–the privatization, the homelessness & economic ruin occurring in families, the over-testing, the publishing company monopoly, & every issue that is discussed on this blog.
LikeLike
Yeah, good question.
LikeLike
Arne has already multiplied bread and charters, turned water to whine and raised LabsRus from the dead.
What’s left?
Oh, yeah, now I remember…
LikeLike