The U.S. Education Department, which was once a defender and supporter of public education, has now become a major investor in privately managed charters.
The lobbyist for the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District reported that larger amounts of federal funding was directed to the city’s charter schools than to the city’s magnet schools. The city’s magnet schools are far more successful than the charters.
As the LA School Report says:
“For all the successful magnet schools in LA Unified and elsewhere, they are not attracting as much federal support as charter schools.
That was a stark message from the district’s federal lobbyist, who told a district board committee this week that Washington is increasing national support for charter schools by nearly 32 percent but by only 6 percent for magnet schools, a difference that surprised some of the school board members.
“We never imagined this would ever be this much of a discrepancy,” board president Steve Zimmer said at a meeting of the board’s Committee of the Whole.
“The money for charters rose to $350 million from $270 million while the magnet school support increased to $96 million from $91 million, according to Joel Packer, of the Raben Group, which lobbies for the district in Washington.
“Charter schools have big bipartisan support in Congress,” Packer said. “They got a big increase. Magnet schools don’t have the same political clout.”
Who lobbies for magnet schools? No one.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Where are the “angels ” in Los Angeles?
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Thanks Diane for getting this right up on the blog…it is disgusting to see how our tax money is misdirected due to the most powerful and deep pockets billionaires hired guns who see to it that only their voices are heard in Congress. The LAUSD lobbyist is like an annoying gnat competing with a flesh eating dinosaur…called Eli Broad and Company.
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Too many angles in L.A. They drown out the angels.
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Hi Mike…yes…LA is like a hydra headed beast…we battle to cut off one head, and two more grow in its place.
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The SEC and the U.S. Dept. of Ed. are working against the American people.
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Once again, you see improved educational outcomes for children is not the agenda of corporate reform … funding and advanding privatization thru charter school expansion, even when the charter schools they’re funding perform far worse than the traditional public schools that they are not funding.
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Here’s something else that corporate reformers are now funding.
To answer those critics that kindergartners are getting too much academics, with the reformers banning recess, play, and exercise to increase that increased academic instruction …
Who says you have to choose between academics and exercise when it comes to Kindergarten?
With this new handy-dandy multi-tasking invention — already in use (this is not from THE ONION ) — as a child, you can HAVE your desk and RIDE IT, too!!!
“Pedal-desks!!!”
Yes, you too, can have your children learn while they exercise. It’s the best of both worlds:
http://www.scarymommy.com/pedal-desks-for-elementary-schools/?utm_content=bufferec899&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
The activist parent / writer here is obviously less enamored of “pedal-desks”, as the title of her article indicates:
“Our Kids Don’t Need F@*#ing Pedal Desks, They Need Recess”
This whole thing reminds me of Chaplin in MODERN TIMES, when the efficiency managers want to get more productivity out of factory workers, so they invent a machine with gears and gizmos that feed the workers — doing what hands usually do — so their hands can be free to work on an assembly line simultaneously.
Naturally, Charlie is the one chosen to demonstrate:
Only with “pedal-desks,” this is no joke… reality is outdoing comic fiction.
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Is the Department of Education necessary?
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Yes, for who else will go to bat for the profit-seeking reformers? Who else has a multi-billion dollar budget and the ear of the President and the Congress? Who else thinks about the billionaires and their never-ending quest for MORE MONEY?
Won’t someone think of the billionaires? (Snark alert!)
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There are approximately 130,000 children enrolled in charters located within LAUSD’s boundaries, tops in the nation. LAUSD’s magnets enroll about 55,000.
Apart from the significant difference in enrollment, which explains a lot of the difference in funding, LA charters and LAUSD magnets (some of which are TAG screened schools) have very different student populations: charters are 83% FRPL-eligible whereas the magnets are only 51% and have more than twice the % of white and Asian students as the district as a whole. Federal money is primarily meant to be driven to at-risk kids, and the LA charters have way more of them than the LAUSD magnets do.
http://laschoolreport.com/cortines-praises-stellar-performance-of-lausds-magnets-on-tests/
But these are just details–quick, get the pitchforks and torches!
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Consider Tim that the charters can pick and choose their students, leaving behind in Title 1 schools those who are hard to teach, English Language Learners, varying stages of handicapped and Special Needs kids. Many of the stats and evaluations we all follow show that the magnets consistently outshine the charters academically. Amazing that they do this with less money to spend. Is that because White kids who you say populate magnets, come from a better gene pool? Or is because their parents had opportunities from good parenting, and are seeing to it that their children have the same good parenting.
The inner city parents are either working two or three jobs, cannot speak English, have no sense of the need for schooling…and those who are drug dealers and crack whores whom no one seems to speak about.
Today, the LA Times featured a front page article, not paid for by Eli Broad, ostensibly, but all about the new LAUSD Supt. of Schools, Dr Michelle King. It spoke of her going to the great Pali Charter HS, and as one of the few Black students there. It barely touched on the fact that both of her parents were highly educated professionals who were deeply involved in her education and goals.
Ergo, Black children who have educated parents have the basis for receiving a fine public school education. It is the inner city kids who generally come from one parent homes, who suffer from lack of parental involvement…which is something that cannot be mandated….it is poverty driven.
So if the US government were not short sighted, they would put the major portion of tax money into these inner city schools so that children would have LIBRARIANS, nurses, counselors, and more top notch teachers, among other services that those of the chosen group for charters, whose parents stay closely involved, do not get double benefits, while the real need is elsewhere.
Instead of paying the Broad Academy-trained CEOs of the charters a million dollars a year, taxpayer money would be far more usefully spent to truly raise all boats…not only the grandiose boats of the highly successful…or even the modestly successful.
Tim, do you ever go down to Skid Row and see the kids living on the streets? LAUSD has about 13.000 of them…and they are neither in charters nor magnets…if they are lucky they are in public schools where there are rats and other vermin in the kitchens which hand out the outdated foodstuffs that constitute these deserving kids food for the day. I never hear of the charter ‘choosers’ hunting for them and finding them to send them to Pali Charter HS. Do you????
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Once again: LA charters serve a population that is 83% economically disadvantaged. LAUSD as a whole is 77%. LAUSD’s magnets are only 51%.
Charter schools are open to all, even to the children of crack whores and drug dealers. I will leave it up to others to decide how likely it is that a crack whore or drug dealer could negotiate the insanely complex magnet points system (and about a fifth of the magnets are TAG schools for high test scorers): http://echoices.lausd.net/Mag/MAG_FAQ.aspx.
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Tim you can spin like a circus plate but the fact is that magnet schools are public schools and charters are not.
Shifting tax money from publicly owned-and-controlled public schools to profit-seeking privatizers is not the noble effort you try to spin it as being.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing cannot be made into a sheep no matter how sarcastically you defend them.
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99% of charter schools in California are nonprofits. Charter schools in Los Angeles are serving 107,000 economically disadvantaged children; LAUSD magnets are serving 28,000. There’s no need for spin; the numbers are what the numbers are, and the money flows to where the need is.
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Oh, Tim. The charters have rich lobbyists, the magnets have none. Get your violin. The magnets perform better.
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Any careful reader of Diane Ravitch’s blog knew this to be self-evident, but it is reassuring somehow to see it stated so plainly in black-and-white every now and again: it’s okay if traditional district schools cream, if they have selective admissions, if they shunt the most difficult-to-educate kids into separate schools, if they sort and stack based on parental income, or even if they have blind lotteries exactly like the ones charter schools use. All of those things are acceptable so long as they aren’t impacting the headcount at “democratic” and “transparent” traditional public schools.
Great caution must be taken when comparing a collection of charter schools that are entirely open-admissions and serve a student population that is 83% economically disadvantaged, vs. a collection of district schools that serves a student population that is 51% economically disadvantage and whose applicants have to navigate a complicated “points” system (http://echoices.lausd.net/Mag/MAG_FAQ.aspx) or, in about 20% of the schools, pass a challenging screen for academic giftedness.
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Tim, you need to bone up on your research of what magnet enrollment is and what the goals of it are–racial integration. Charters segregate.
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Tim and Raj are very much in love with the town world-views, and do not admit anything like FACTS, that contradict their dearly held beliefs.
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Tim,
You do not deserve pitch forks and torches. For your courage to state the obvious with supporting data you deserve “Bouquets.” But unfortunately it is a lost cause in Diane Ravitch blogs.
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Public schools are unfashionable in DC circles. Surely you’ve figured that out by now.
Still, they must have one or two representatives in Congress. Obviously taking public money out of the school budget to bribe their elected representatives with campaign donations (as was suggested) so those same representatives maybe send some public money back might be a wash, but it’s worth a try.
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Broad and the billionaires have the deepest pockets and the greatest power to hire lobbyists and creative PR flacks…and they use them to run Congress…this is NO NEW NEWS.
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Tim, how’s about the federal government invest in schools that serve ALL kids, instead of investing in charters and magnets that serve only the cream of the crop?
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The vast majority of Federal support does go to traditional public schools in the form of Title I, which is agnostic as to school format and based completely on student poverty.
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Tim, the vast majority of federal funds SHOULD go to public schools. That’s where the vast majority of children are. Are you suggesting that the vast majority of federal funds should go to charters, are you?
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Yet most of you will vote for a Democrat who intends to use the full power of the Federal purse to continue Federal intrusion into public education. Most say it is a lesser of two evils vote, but I say poppycock. Most of you believe in the fairy tale that the Federal government can be a force for good. The question is whose good? Certainly not the children in traditional public schools.
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I DO!
My little magnet school worked!
No wonder it is gone!
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When it comes to magnets vs. charters, I don’t really have much of a dog in the fight. Yes, magnets are public schools with public oversight, which is better than charters, but there are otherwise too many similarities for my tastes. Magnets have all the same skimming and creaming issues as charters. They’re mostly a sop to parents who would otherwise flee to the suburbs to avoid having their kids in with “those” kids. I can sort of, maybe, see having magnets with specific focuses like arts or languages or science (as long as there are no admissions tests), but then, why not have rich programs in all subjects at all schools? But selective enrollment magnets are abhorrent, especially for how much we talk about public schools serving all kids.
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Magnets do NOT skim the cream from the crop like charters do. Their enrollment is by a formula whose first goal is racial integration. Unlike charters, magnets provide transportation so that the school is genuinely available to students from any neighborhood. They do not counsel out kids. Selective enrollment is limited to magnet programs for gifted students and some but not all arts magnets require auditions or portfolios.
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They are a smart way of encouraging parents who otherwise might flee to enroll their kids with “those kids”. It’s a travesty to the legacy of Brown vs. the Board of Education that magnets have not been a bigger part of the policy discussion in our increasingly segregated society.
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“Magnets do NOT skim the cream from the crop like charters do.”
Really? How many homeless kids are in magnets? How many kids with incarcerated or drugged out parents? How many kids whose parents are working 3 jobs each and/or who don’t speak English? By definition, any form of school choice, including magnets, skims the cream because of the application process – there is a certain subset of families who are excluded because they cannot or will not go through the application process. Magnet schools may be more racially integrated than public schools, but they’re still skimming the cream of the minority students out of mostly minority schools, leaving the poorest and most challenged behind.
And testing for so-called “gifted” students is still selective enrollment and is still abhorrent when we claim that public schools serve all students. It’s basically saying that some students, usually on the basis of one test score, deserve better than their peers who don’t score as well.
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USDE policies have betrayed workers in truly public schools. Message need to be reinforced that charters are NOT public but privately managed.
Not much mention of any education on the campaign trail except preschool and college costs.
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I believe that,at the federal level the dept. Of education I a wolf in sheep’ s clothing. We have all been duped.
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I believe that,at the federal level the dept. Of education is a wolf in sheep’ s clothing. We have all been duped.
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Maybe I’m becoming cynical, but what’s surprising to me is that the board is surprised. Are they paying a lobbyist to influence congress and the DOE or just report back what they hear? California is the most politically influential state (more congressional seats than any other, more political donations coming out of California than any other state–candidates from other states have fundraisers here to tap into the big donor base in California) and if you look at a map showing the region of California, Oregon and Washington, it’s easy to see how goes California, so goes the rest of the country. As the largest–by far–district in the state, and the 2nd largest school district in the country, Los Angeles should be exerting a lot of influence and SHAPING policy not just hearing about it. Also, since the Feds only count for 9% of education funding, what’s the lobbying report from the California state Capitol? And they better make sure they don’t rely on their lobbyist from Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst who Is still on their payroll, as I wrote about here http://www.psconnectnow.org/blog/2015/10/12/is-eli-broads-hostile-takeover-of-lausd-coming-from-the-outside-or-in.
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On behalf of Magnet Schools of America, I would like thank you for speaking out in support of our nation’s magnet schools. As you correctly noted, there is clear evidence that Los Angeles Unified School District’s magnet schools are significantly outperforming charter schools in almost every measure, as highlighted in the recent Op-Ed published in Education Week. Equally important to note, is that magnet schools serve the dual purpose of promoting academic excellence and creating diverse and integrated learning environments through voluntary public school choice and intelligent student assignment policies.
In New York City, home to the most segregated school system in the nation, magnet schools are doing a much better job than charter schools at creating multicultural and racially diverse schools according to this recent report released by the UCLA Civil Rights Project and featured in the New York Times. This study found that magnet schools in New York City have the highest proportion of multiracial classrooms and the lowest proportion of segregation. In contrast, the vast majority of the city’s charter schools are intensely segregated, and only a fraction are multiracial.
Unfortunately, as you elaborated, the magnet school community is outgunned by the charter school movement and does not have the support of powerful and wealthy donors such as the Gates, Broad, and Walton Foundations. In fact, it relies on our nonprofit membership association to serve as its lone voice in Washington and across the nation. There is a silver lining for magnet schools, however, that emerged out of the recent funding battle in Congress along with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Last December, with the support of Congresswoman Rose DeLauro and the advocacy of Magnet Schools of America, funding for the Magnet Schools Assistance Program was saved from complete elimination. This program was also reauthorized in ESSA and set on an increased funding trajectory over the next five years.
Thankfully, magnet schools have a few allies in Congress such as Representative Joe Courtney from East Hartford, CT who has made magnet schools a top priority. Last year, he introduced an amendment to the Every Student Succeeds Act that would have placed federal magnet school funding on equal footing with charter schools. It was included in the substitute bill introduced by House Education and Workforce Committee Ranking Member Bobby Scott, but it was ultimately defeated.
There is indeed a tremendous amount of ignorance about magnet and charter schools in the American public schools system, something that we continue to work on illuminating.
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