EduShyster has a fascinating and important interview with Preston Green, the John and Carla Klein Professor of Urban Education at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, who explains why charter schools are the new subprime mortgages. Green says he used to be a strong charter supporter, but he has become wary because of the excesses of deregulation. He predicts that just as the subprime mortgage bubble burst, the same is likely to happen to the charter school bubble. Just like subprime mortgages, charters are expanding rapidly without oversight. Promoters of charters, often with the best of intentions, seek multiple authorizers so that oversight is slack. Parents in urban communities line up on the hope that they will get better education, but they often (usually?) don’t.
Green says:
Promoters of charter school expansion are calling for an increase in independent authorizers, such as nonprofits and universities. Supporters of charter school expansion believe that multiple authorizers will issue more charters, in part, because they are less hostile to charter schools than school districts. However, our research suggests another reason that multiple authorizers result in more charter schools: multiple authorizers are like mortgage originators with no skin in the game. In other words, these authorizers don’t assume the risk of charter school failure. That means that if something happens with the charter school, the authorizers don’t have to clean up the mess. Multiple authorizers may also weaken screening by giving charter schools the chance to find authorizers who *won’t ask questions.* In fact, CREDO has found that states with multiple authorizers experienced significantly lower academic growth. CREDO suggested that this finding might be due to the possibility that multiple authorizers gave charter schools the chance to shop around to find authorizers who wouldn’t provide rigorous oversight….
Where I see this playing out is that if you have too many charters or options that aren’t public having a negative impact on the education system as a whole, you may start seeing challenges in these communities saying that the state is failing to provide children with a system of public education, or that the options provided aren’t of sufficient quality to satisfy the state’s obligation to provide a public education. The assumption is that if kids fail to get an education in a charter school they can return to the traditional system. But what happens if you don’t have that option? You may soon see that develop in all of these urban settings. The really scary scenario that I could see happening is that you end up with all of these options that aren’t traditional public schools with insufficient oversight by the authorizers and no real pressure to get these schools to perform well….
If we’re going to have multiple authorizers, we have to impose standards to ensure that they do a good job, because without those standards there is really no incentive for them to ensure that these schools are operating in an acceptable manner. I should also mention putting sanctions in place to prevent the really squirrely practice of *authorizer hopping,* where schools are closed by one authorizer and then find another authorizer, which has happened quite a bit in places where oversight has been really weak, like Ohio. Further, authorizers should guard against predatory chartering practices, including fining students for discipline violations.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t think the long term effects of ed reform will be “more charter schools”, although that’s obviously the goal. I think the long term effects of ed reform will show up in how they abandoned any pretense of support for existing public schools.
You don’t really see how corrosive it is unless you live in a state where ed reform dominates among lawmakers. It’s as if the public schools are already gone in my state. Our state legislature just spent 2 years “reforming” charter schools, although 93% of the children in this state attend the unfashionable “public sector” schools. The only time this huge group of public employees turned their attention to public schools was when they cut funding for half of them. Charter and voucher mania in DC and statehouses will have a legacy, and it won’t be charter schools- it will be what happened to the much-maligned public school systems under their watch.
The big lie wasn’t “more and more and more charter schools and vouchers”- that was a given from the start. The big lie was “we’re about existing improving public schools”. No, they’re not. Public schools are barely mentioned in ed reform circles, unless they’re prefaced with the mandatory “failing” label.
It’s a shame that the existing public system was assigned absolutely no value. I think we’ll deeply regret that decision. It’s a colossal waste.
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A shameless legacy of neglect, indifference, and irresponsibility.
Ironic that this de-facto charter policy is the bastard son of NCLB.
The Charter Legacy: “Only 93% of our Children Left Behind.
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I have to yet see promoters of charter schools do anything, ever, with “the best of intentions.”
Behavior is the most honest form of communication. Thus, after years-long patterns of false premises and false promises, we should pay no attention to what they say, but instead watch what they do (and do our best to defend ourselves and our students from their depradations).
When we observe their behavior, what do we see? Insider dealing and cronyism that accompanies the simultaneous demonization of the public schools and extraction of resources from them, cherry picking and counseling-out of students who threaten their precious test scores, intentional churn of ill-trained, under-supported, at-will teachers working in sweatshop conditions, behaviorist boot camp cultures based on fear and punishment of students, and wholesale capture of elected officials… the list could run on for pages.
Let’s forget about the supposedly good intentions of charters schools a generation ago, or what Al Shanker did or didn’t say about them then; none of that is directly relevant to the circumstances we face today, in which charter schools are explicitly used to undermine public education.
Except for the self-delusions of naïfs and the talking points of shiils, what “good intentions” are to be seen?
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I tend to agree. At some point it becomes ridiculous to continue to insist they’re not about privatizing public schools when all they do is privatize public schools.
Green talked about how schools are systems in the interview. It is difficult for me to believe all these high-powered “experts” missed that simple fact- they can’t promote charters and ignore the effects on public schools unless they never valued public schools in the first place.
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As always, yours is one of the most clear, cogent, and convincing voices on this subject. I’ve always taken issue with the whole “good intentions” cover for the privatization crowd, and you’ve pulled those covers entirely.
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From 2012: http://www.epi.org/publication/education-profiteering-wall-street/
Education profiteering: Wall Street’s next big thing?
Jeff Faux, Economic Policy Institute
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Comprehensive article. Scary stuff. Thomas Jefferson… and Andrew Jackson… would be furious to see what the banks and corporations that grew up around them have done. Thank you, more than just a teacher.
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Wall Street is the “house”, in gambling, that always wins. They’ve siphoned off an estimated 10-18% on charter school debt, which was money taxpayers, intended for students.
With luck, the “low hanging fruit”, of social impact bonds for preschoolers, will fail to take hold, even with the involvement of some misguided (charitably speaking) local United Appeals.
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“Promoters of charters, often with the best of intentions, seek multiple authorizers so that oversight is slack.”
Seeking “oversight is slack” belies “best intentions”.
Unless those “best intentions” are “best profit sources” for the investors.
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These are the people Forbes considers experts on US public ed:
“Many thanks for the insight and expertise to our panel of judges: Stacey Childress, CEO, NewSchools Venture Fund; Laurene Powell Jobs, founder, Emerson Collective; Wendy Kopp, CEO, Teach for All; and Sarah Kunst, an alumni from the 2015 list.”
Forbes apparently couldn’t find a single qualified person working in thousands of US public schools to act as a “judge” on products and programs what will be sold TO public schools.
Somehow Laurene Powell Jobs is the expert on what US public schools should be buying. We all have to accept her as an expert on our kids schools because…. she’s wealthy and well-connected? Why would I listen to her over my next door neighbor? They’re equally qualified.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2016/01/04/30-under-30-2016-the-years-leaders-who-unleashing-learning-for-all/
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You can’t find experts in education if you don’t look for them. “Reform” inclined mentality includes freezing out veteran educators and anyone representing legitimate schools of education. The “reform” crowd wants to create a parallel system served by fake educators produced by fake schools of education. They don’t want to hear from experienced public school personnel. These type of experts are a nuisance to those that want to replace public schools with a system of vampire schools designed to suck the money from public schools so that corporations can profit from public funds.
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Chiara,
For the first time in all your many comments, I have to disagree with you. Laurene Powell Jobs is not equally qualified as your next door neighbor to be an expert on what public schools should do. Very likely, your neighbor went to public school and has children who went to public schools. How can an out-of-touch billionaire’s wife know as much as your neighbor?
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If Ohio readers think Bernie will better serve our country, tonight (Jan.5), at 6:00, is the night to vote for delegates to the Democratic convention. Voting locations are based on congressional district and can be found at Ohio Democratic Party, under the tab, “Join a Caucus”.
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“. . . we have to impose standards to ensure that they do a good job, because without those standards there is really no incentive for them to ensure that these schools are operating in an acceptable manner.”
Those “standards” already exist. They are the laws and constitutional mandates that are on the books for public schools. If a school receives public funding then it should be subject to those laws and mandates.
It really is that simple!
If anyone wants to open up a school of whatever type they can, albeit with their own monies, not public tax monies that are dedicated for the education of ALL children.
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Duane, I agree that public schools indeed have standards without politicians imposing their version of what is needed. Curiously, their answer to school problems is to open deregulated schools and to transfer public funds to religious schools that have no standards and no oversight.
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Read this interview during lunch just now….and, to quote EduShyster, the research is, “… fascinating and frankly disturbing…”
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In addition to the sub prime mortgages, if you have seen the film “The Big Short”, you would know that what the greedy, power hungry SOBs did to cause the 2007-08 global financial crises hasn’t gone away. They have just repackaged it with a different name. What’s happening to the public schools is one of their other schemes to make more money and buy more power.
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There is more than one Big Short in Lewis’ book.
Unfortunately, the book is short on accuracy
For whatever reason (perhaps he was afraid of being sued — or worse — by folks he was writing about), Lewis makes it out to be the story of a handful of geniuses who saw what was really happening vs a bunch of deluded folks (the rest of Wall Street, basically) who either did not see it or simply went along because they got paid no matter how things turned out.
But we know that there was fraud at the highest levels on Wall Street, bankers and others who were quite purposely — and fraudulently — gaming the system.
William Black makes a very good argument that massive mortgage fraud (liars’ loans that people at the top were very cognizant of) was at the very root of the collapse.
In other words, it wasn’t just a bunch of bumbling fools at the top making “bad” (uninformed) decisions that brought the system down. An environment was created in many (if not all) of the big banks by CEO’s and others that made fraud almost inevitable because such an environment is VERY profitable.
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I think that was obvious in the film.
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I have not yet seen “The Big Short,” but it will be hard to beat Charles Ferguson’s excellent document “Inside Job” about the crash of 2008. It won an Academy Award as best documentary of the year.
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Then I’d have to say the film (which I didn’t see) was actually much better than the book.
There is a question near the end of the book that pretty well sums up the basic story line: “What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don’t need to make smart decisions — if they can get rich making dumb decisions?”
The implication is that the decisions all these people made were simply “dumb” — ie, done in ignorance — when in fact, many of them only seem dumb if one assumes the decisions were made honestly (ie, not fraudulently).
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Greedy players will make dumb and risky decisions because these greedy players are wiling to gamble with other people’s money to get rich. In fact, they probably attended workshops to find out how to use other people’s money to get rich.
For instance, “Secrets of the rich: Use other people’s money”
http://www.moneysense.ca/invest/secrets-of-the-rich-use-other-peoples-money/
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http://documentarylovers.com/film/inside-job/
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SomeDAM Poet,
You are absolutely right about Michael Lewis. He is a skilled and engaging writer, but his stories are fundamentally misleading in that he always structures them so that it’s a narrative about plucky outsiders who challenge stale, groupthink-induced behavior, and win.
The systemic practices of capitalism, and the inevitability and predictability of the resulting crises, are studiously avoided.
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Retired teacher: The “reform” crowd wants to create a parallel system served by fake educators produced by fake schools of education.
True,true, true, but you can substitute “reform crowd” for Congress.
Title II Part A of ESSA, “Supporting Effective Instruction,” is an extended exercise in providing big bucks, about $1.9 trillion over four years, to States and to States in collaboration with non-profits and FOR-PROFITS for a laundry list of “activities” designed to dismantle and deregulate educator preparation, weaken approvals of teacher education programs, allow certification, licensing, recruiting, and retaining teachers even if they enter classrooms with nothing but a degree and grades that “look promising.”
In addition to funding stand-alone teacher academies and presuming to know exactly how to prepare effective teachers, this law affirms that evidence does not really matter, just the incantation of that word, over and over, as in “evidence-based” with no firm meaning to that word.
The law endorses known to “not work” policies such as pay -for-performance, extra pay or bonus to teach in “high needs schools” and “high demand subjects. These policies have been tried by USDE and by their own evidence they do not work as intended to attract and retain teachers. (I have actually read some of these studies. They assume that teachers are only interested in money and that the supply of money for performance and bonus pay is easy for districts and states to guarantee over time. All have a narrow definition of bonus-worthy performance and it is almost always limited to raising test scores, nothing else is as easy to “count.” The pretense of objectivity is heroic and wrong).
Back to ESSA, Title II, A. In subpart 2, Congress specifies the focus of a program of “comprehensive literacy instruction” in detail, in points labeled A through L. Specification B is: “includes age-appropriate, explicit, and systematic, and intentional instruction in phonological awareness, phonic decoding, vocabulary, language structure, reading fluency, and reading comprehension.” Note the assumption that these are age-related pedagogical moves, in other reading specifications, the law refers to “developmentally appropriate”….explicit, etc, and elsewhere the law refers to “grade-level” performances. This kind of word salad tells informed readers that a lot of ignorance is embedded in the law and is circulating elsewhere as if those words don’t matter in thinking about sound policy.
It is absolutely true that the Secretary of Education has long been prohibited by law from directly specifying curricula and instructional methods. Evidently Congress does not have such restraints, so the members have offered specs for teaching reading, and for “traditional” American History, and perks galore for STEM (a STEM master teacher corps) and so on.
This law is not just about removing power from the Secretary of Education to the Governors and to state/local officials. It is all about rewarding the lobbyists who want to micromanage what happens in classrooms especially “high needs classrooms,” while maintaining the impression that nothing that current teachers, principals, and other school leaders do or think can possibly have merit, be grounded in scholarship, be of the highest quality that can be had–all without the nagging and the demeaning rhetoric in this law. Note also that “high-need” school has a floating definition. In some cases it refers to a school with only 20% of students from families with an income below the poverty line as in Title II Section 2226 (b) definitions.
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Laura: Thanks for your insights and specific observations on ESSA. With so many needy, vulnerable students depending on the federal government to provide instructional equity, it is disturbing to find that this law is a honey pot of corporate welfare. You are correct that they use “evidence based” incorrectly as if to assign some level of gravitas what the corporate lobbyists wanted included in the law, which has nothing to do with evidence. The law is rife with bad ideas, moves to deprofessionalize staff, and more toxic corporate partnerships designed to spend public dollars.
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“Charters-sub-prime mortgages” might be slight better than untested nuclear reactors that will bring catastrophic disaster–even bigger than Fukushima– with another big earthquake. But essentially, they are the same in terms of high risk, loose regulation, vulnerability to corruption.
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