Massachusetts is widely considered the state with the most successful public schools in the nation. Its students outperform the rest of the nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The state has a strong tradition of local control. It also has great independent schools. But it is the state that launched public education, whether you trace them to their 17th century roots or to the common school revival led by the great Horace Mann in the 1830s and 1840s.
But now the cradle of public education is under pressure to remove the state cap on charter schools, the entering wedge of privatization. The usual privatizing groups have descended on the legislature, abetted by a Republican governor.
The privatizers, as usual, claim they have silver bullets or secret sauce that can save poor kids from failing schools. This is balderdash, but who will tell the legislators? They are impressed by the Walton-funded CREDO studies and by a study from Harvard’s Center in Education Policy, not only Gares-funded but including leading charter advocates as faculty members (Thomas Kane, Martin West, Marguerite Roza).
But now another set of voices has weighed in: the Massachusetts school committees, or local school boards. The school committees ask the basic question: Whose children are served? Charters have a well-established record of selecting their students to reduce or exclude students who might pull down their scores. Charters are also known for boasting about their scores. They were supposed to be innovative, but the no-excuses charter look like 19th century schools. This is not the kind of innovation that should be imposed or shared with public schools.
In state after state, the charter industry is under a cloud because of political and financial scandals.
Why doesn’t Massachusetts improve its public schools, using research-based strategies, instead of privatizing them?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why doesn’t Massachusetts improve its public schools, using research-based strategies, instead of privatizing them?
GREAT question. Why is this happening all over our country?
Money more important than people is my reasoning. Soon the plutocracy will make us all peons to their greed, myopic vision, stupidity et al.
TRAGIC!
Basically this kind of thing, plutocrats running our country is why I have pushed for Bernie Sanders. I LOVE what he is saying and what he has said and DONE over the decades. He may not win but I for one am pulling for him.
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Let’s hear from the other side…
“New data released this month by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education confirms claims of creaming are false.
On a statewide basis and in urban districts, charters serve a higher percentage of African American and Latino children, and nearly the same percentage of special needs children. Statewide, charters serve more children who either cannot speak English (ELL) or struggle with it. In urban districts, ELL enrollment has risen steadily – in Boston from 2 percent to 13.8 percent in just the last five years, while in other urban districts, ELL enrollment has risen from 7 percent to 12 percent.”
http://www.patriotledger.com/article/20151023/OPINION/310239988/2012/OPINION
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This article was written by Mark Kenen. He is executive director of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association – so, I’d take his editorial with a grain of salt.
Take a look at the data on the Massachusetts DESE website. Pick any charter, follow a cohort over a four/five year period by looking at the school profile under students (link for different years is a tiny button on the top left.) Look at the school profile under students for the rates of out-of-school suspensions and under teachers for the percentage of teachers highly-qualified and over the age of 25.
John Lerner has done this study with Boston charters on attrition. Lerner’s graphs are linked here: http://www.citizensforpublicschools.org/charter-schools/as-charter-school-classes-shrink-mcas-scores-rise/
Another thing that surprised me when I looked at Mass. State Auditor Susan Bump’s analysis of charters is that with the current charter school portfolio of 81 charters, there are 44,000 charter seats in MA. However, there are approximately 34,000 charter students. If there are about 10,000 empty charter seats why is MA thinking about adding new charters?
“…Of those schools, 71 were Commonwealth charter schools, with 31,997 students,5 and 10 were Horace Mann charter schools, with 3,356 students.” (Bump, 9) and “Actual authorized enrollment capacity for already-operating Massachusetts charter schools is approximately 44,000 students.” (Bump, 9)
Click to access 201351533c.pdf
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Diane, please come back to Boston, wave your magic wand and restore reason to the decision makers who are hellbent on destroying public education for the kids who most need real, certified, experienced teachers!
We are in a fact free zone, as the State Auditor Bump noted in her testimony:
“Why is this worth thinking about? It is because, more than 20 years after the passage of the law authorizing public funds to be spent on private schools, the debate about charter schools is still largely a philosophical one, and the battles in which the sides engage are still determined almost entirely by political power, not by evidence. If evidence were really guiding this debate, there would by now have been widespread adoption of the one best practice from charter schools that is proven to make a difference – a longer school day. But those holding the public purse strings, taxpayers and politicians alike, don’t want to make the financial investment that that reform entails. Instead, we continue with this zero-sum game.
This is the 21st century. We have the brain power and we have the ability to get the information necessary to inform our decision-making, so let’s base decisions about the future of our kids, our economy, and our society on facts.
After two decades and the transfer of millions of public dollars into the hands of private charter schools, there is still little more than anecdotal evidence of outcomes to support the contention that charter schools are better suited to meet the needs of our students and charter schools are still experiments.”
http://www.mass.gov/auditor/news-and-updates/press-releases-2015/remarks-of-state-auditor-suzanne-bump-before-the-joint-.html
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Christine,
My speech at Wellesley was supposed to clear away the smoke of propaganda.
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The Patriot Ledger correctly labeled Marc Kenen’s piece as Opinion.
From Auditor Bump’s report of facts:
DETAILED AUDIT RESULTS AND FINDINGS WITH AUDITEE’S RESPONSE
1.The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s charter school waitlist information is not accurate.
2. DESE has not developed an effective process to ensure the dissemination and replication of charter school best practices to other Massachusetts public schools.
3. Key student and educator data for charter schools and sending districts may not be reliable, and data systems lack adequate data security controls.
a. School and district data reported to DESE may not be reliable.
b. DESE’s data security controls were deficient.
4. DESE renewed school charters in an inconsistent manner.
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Diane…I am a long time public school educator here in Massachusetts, and it’s all upside down here with Charter Schools because democracy and rational thought have been “trumped” by money and the profit motive. Many of us who work on the front lines of public school education everyday are still amazed that this commonwealth could elect, back to back, two Governors who are in reality apologists/apostles for the private sector’s assault on our public school system, which as you point out has the longest pedigree of any in the nation. How did it come to this? The short answer is ordinary working people do not know their own mind and are continually subjected to disinformation and wrong-headed enticements. The result: widespread cognitive dissonance. We need an American Confucius to walk the land and start the educational healing process….not just with education, but across the board of our dying civic life. Thank you for your amazing effort to shine light down on our messed up educational realities.
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Yes, Charlie Baker and Great Schools Massachusetts are running a letter writing campaign to lift the cap. They trot out students of color who were “saved” by a charter school. These are single stories. The general public doesn’t see the hard statistics. GSM has a Facebook page. Some of us have been arguing on the site with brainwashed parents/advocates of charters. They don’t get it.
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Charters in Mass have high suspension rates. John King’s Roxbury Prep was among the highest in suspensions.
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Rox Prep still has the highest suspension rate in the state. They’re number 1!
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Boston Public School parents weighed in as well! We don’t want more charter schools! https://publicschoolmama.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/105/
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Let’s not be hoodwinked by John King’s “leadership” in attaining high test scores in an urban school. Roxbury Prep charter school started out with 79, 6th grade students, and ended up with 43 students left to take MCAS in 8th grade when he was the co-director in 2002. The school had 0 English Language Learners, 0 Special Education Students, and only 54.8% were on free or reduced lunch. Roxbury Prep is a charter school who has always had the highest suspension rate of all charter schools in the city!
http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/profiles/student.aspx?orgcode=04840505&orgtypecode=6&leftNavId=305&&fycode=2002
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This happened in Chicago:
http://valeriefleonard.com/StayingintheLoop/nfblog/?p=1767
and now we’re seeing the same playbook in Boston.
Why? BillandMelinda, creeps:
http://www.crpe.org/publications/district-charter-collaboration-compact-interim-report
Click to access boston_city_summary.pdf
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More on how CRPE is unspooling in Boston:
https://publicschoolmama.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/assume-good-intentions/
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By taking the cap off Charter Schools Governor Baker is negating the fundamental right of every child’s entitlement to a good and equal education. He wants to take the easy way out by creating a 2-tier system that negates every child’s right of access to reach their potential. This law is promulgating an inferior education because the monies given to Charter Schools are taken away from the Public schools and the students who need it most. Governor Baker is after the easy solution creating a couple of charter schools rather than having the will to attack the true complex problems of the schools in Massachusetts . In many cases and we have many where a 2nd language demographic of the school population, poor physical plants in bad neighborhoods in poor school districts, lack of supplies, large classroom sizes, lack of aides, lack of discipline in classrooms, dependent and negected students, lack of parental involvement to carry on expectations of legislators and school administrators who are far removed from the true realities of schools. First of all, everyone needs to be made aware that the problems are not just education problems and teachers cannot do everything. A new order of cooperation needs to be articulated exacting a new mission to educate every student, spelling out responsibilities, needs, and giving directives regarding student’s learning circumstances, physical and learning conditions in the classrooms, impediments to learning need to be addressed, solutions from educators and the parents need to be sought, as well as politicians, people at human services, and medical communities, churches need to be brought together to help attack these problems.
Politicians who are required to tackle the tough problems to bring a good and equal education to students in all districts of their state need to realize that cooperation of government entities and offices needs to exist among the executive branch of government along with the legislative and justice branches, human services, and we need to see schools trying to fullfill the needs of busineses in their communities by teaching subjects that foster sustainable growth promoting the one idea that the education of their children will bring new opportunities for employment, stability in neighborhoods by cutting crime and more importantly the sustainability of our communities and our world.
As a community, we need to ask ourselves, what is most important? Do we have the courage to make the right choices? Is it going to be the short sighted moneymaking business deal or enterprise of today, or the education of today’s children who will create the jobs of the future that will provide the stability and the susrainability of our world.
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Why should one parents “choice” be allowed to negatively effect the traditional schools attended by the majority of students. Massachusetts charter schools have had over 20 years to recruit special education and English Language Learners; they have only proven themselves to be segregation academies with a selective population which never reflects the sending district schools. Charter school promises “to do better” are empty! Charter Schools have failed the public trust.
I thought I was kind of in the know about charter schools but what has come to my attention recently is that Massachusetts charter schools are evaluated differently from traditional public school districts, they are allowed to aggregate the data of ALL their individual schools by calling them “campuses.” Under 603 CMR 1.02 of Massachusetts Charter School law defines “campus” as the location at which a charter school educates students. It goes on to say charter school may have multiple locations under one charter. Why can’t the Boston Public School district call it’s 128 schools “campuses” and aggregate its data? Schools in BPS wouldn’t be considered underperforming. Boston Public Schools English Language Learners and Special Education students wouldn’t be marched around the city and placed at whatever school “could stand the hit” that year!
The aggregation of charter school data has become increasingly problematic as charter school’s request to proliferate and expand. Aggregated data always masks, by allowing charter schools to aggregate data under the charter school “campus” definition, ESE has given them unfair advantage over our District’s traditional public schools where each school in the district is evaluated individually. On the ESE website, If you looked up a large charter school network, like Roxbury Prep, that has multiple school “campus” buildings across the city, it is listed as if it were one school in one building! There is no way to know if an individual charter school “campus” is succeeding or failing or if they are segregating demographics of students at a single location.
Two years ago 12 Boston Public Schools (BPS) were closed, this year the BPS wanted to close five schools to “shore-up” other district schools. Our wise Massachusetts Legislators said “NO” to lifting the cap on charter schools after hearing from parents and teachers about the negative impact that charters have had on traditional public schools, especially in urban areas.
Nothing has changed over the past year to indicate that the cap on charter schools should be lifted or that charter schools should be allowed to increase their existing seats, they don’t backfill the empty seats they have now! Charter school populations still do not reflect the SPED/SWD and ELL student demographics of the public schools. I’m still waiting to see those magical charter school “best practices. Just because charters “can increase”, doesn’t mean they should, when it negatively effects 88% of the students remaining in the sending district!
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