Retired educator Mike Deshotels expresses his frustration with the charter industry in Louissiana, which has stymied every effort to regulate them, allow local districts to decide if they want them, or to hold them accountable. The new Governor John Bel Edwards pushed for charter reform, but was repeatedly rebuffed by legislators who were funded by charter advocates.
This must be child’s play for the billionaires, none of whom live in the state.
Deshotels wrote:
This story in The Advocate describes some of the House Education Committee actions yesterday, killing several bills designed to curb abuses by charters. Charter school administrators descended on the Education Committee in force Wednesday while the administrators and teachers in the real public schools were teaching children.
The charter advocates are a highly effective special interest group because they are backed up by big business in Louisiana and nationwide who are determined to privatize education as much as possible. In my opinion these folks have no respect for public schools or professional educators. They just see public education as a way to make money off of children.
As part of their strategy, charter advocates funnel huge amounts of political contributions to legislators and BESE members to insure that no legislation will pass to limit their growth and profits. So when legislators vote against reasonable bills to prevent charter abuses, it is the political contributions they received or expect to receive that are controlling the voting. If you are a supporter of public education, you need to know who voted against you repeatedly this week. I will provide that later.
Here is the testimony I gave to the House Education Committee in favor of HB 98, that would delete a provision in the 2012 Jindal legislation that allows BESE to approve independent charter school authorizers. Those authorizers could approve many new charter schools over the objection of our elected school boards.
Testimony on HB 98
Good morning. My name is Michael Deshotels and I live in Zachary. I do education research and write a blog on education for educators and parents.
I am here in support of HB 98, because we need to correct an error that was made in 2012 when the legislature rushed to try everything that they thought would improve public education in Louisiana. This part of the legislation was a mistake because it can take away our right to run our public schools through our elected school boards.
Most citizens believe in local control of our government services. It is wiser to have our schools run by our local school boards than by unelected groups or even by BESE. In addition, my research shows that it is also more effective to have our schools managed by our local school boards.
At one time it was thought that if low performing schools were taken over by BESE and given to charter school operators, that their student performance would improve over their performance in school board operated schools. That has now been proven to be wrong!
All of my research shows that the schools operated by BESE approved charters generally do a poorer job. All but one of the takeover schools in the Baton Rouge area, have been total failures. They have done so poorly that parents pulled their children out and some schools had to be shut down for lack of support. My research shows that the takeover schools in New Orleans still do not do as good a job of educating low-income students as do our local school boards across the state.
This experiment with our children has failed! It would be mistake therefore to allow new groups that are independent of the taxpayers to approve more charters.
It is a well-known fact that big contributors from outside Louisiana are the ones pushing for these new charters. Those contributors are the Waltons, the Broads from California (not spelled with an x), the Gates foundation from Washington state and Mike Bloomberg from New York. These big donors are the primary financiers of our present BESE elections and they are the primary financiers for New Schools for Baton Rouge, one of the groups that wants to be a charter authorizer. But to add insult to injury, these donors are not contributing money to help our public schools. They are donating millions to get politicians elected to privatize our schools and to use our tax money to do it with.
It is a serious error to say that that MFP money for each child belongs to the parent and that they should be able to take it to any school they choose. Citizens who have no children in public schools pay most of the MFP allocation and we are happy to do it. We deserve the right to choose how our schools will be run through our elected school boards. Please vote for this bill.”
All of the bills to regulate charters failed, despite the governor’s support.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
America today is suffering from an epidemic of “The Billionaires’ Disease,” and this disease has brought paralysis to our government and ruin to our schools. Most billionaires — with the exception of Warren Buffett — are delusional. They have accumulated great wealth and all the things that go with it, such as being surrounded by sycophants who assure them that they are geniuses. In fact, most billionaires not only believe themselves to be geniuses, but believe that they alone are responsible for the wealth they have accumulated; they rationalize away the key and essential roles played by others in the success of their businesses. In their delusion they also think that their self-identified genius can be applied to other areas, such as government and public education, regardless of the fact that they have no experience or expertise in these areas. So what we have today are billionaires with no governmental experience who think they know best who our elected officials should be and what government should or shouldn’t do, and of course they say that what the government shouldn’t do is make corporations pay a fair share of taxes. And there are billionaires who never taught a classroom full of children but who think they know exactly what “reforms” are needed in public education. And, of course, what’s needed is the charter school business model that bleeds tax money from genuine public schools and puts public taxpayer money into the pockets of private charter school operators who don’t file the same reports that true public schools file to tell taxpayers just where their tax money is actually going. And of course there are plenty of simpering sycophants who tell the billionaires how insightful they are because these sycophants see an opportunity to cash in on unregulated charter schools to bleed tax money away from children and into their own pockets. If only there was a cure for The Billionaires’ Disease, perhaps the billionaires could turn their resources to combating the true root causes of problems not only in schools but throughout our society: Poverty and racial discrimination.
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Why allow billionaires to take control of our schools?
Answer:
“The Billionaire’s Burden” (based on
“The White Man’s Burden”, by Rudyard
Kipling”)
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, Send
forth the tests ye breed
Go bind your schools to test style, to
serve his market’s need;
The weight of heavy VAMness, On
captive folk and mild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half
teacher and half child.
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, In
patience to abide,
To veil the scheme for teach-bots, The
prime intent to hide;
With coded speech of Orwell, you really
must take pains
To make a hefty profit, And see the
major gains.
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, The
public schools to fleece—
Fill full the days with testing And
Common Core disease;
And when your goal is nearest The end
that you have sought,
Dispatch the Opt-out movement Lest
work be all for naught.
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, A
tawdry rule of Kings,
The toil of IT keeper, The sale of
software things.
The data ye shall enter, On privacy to
tread,
To make a “decent” living, Until they all
are dead.
Take up the Billionaire’s burden And
reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better, The hate
of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!)
toward the light:—
“Why brought he us from bondage, Our
loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, Ye dare
not stoop to less—
So fulminate ‘gainst Apple To cloak your
Siri-ness;
And strategize in whispers, For all ye
leave or do,
Or silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh
Diane on you!
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, Have
done with childish ways—
The Kindergarten playing, The test-less
former days
Come now, to join Reform-hood, The
pride of Duncan years
Cold, edged with Gates-bought wisdom,
The plan of Billionaires!
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“A management company responsible for running four Pinellas County charter schools has disappeared from the scene after recently being challenged about financial and operational problems.
The sudden absence of Newpoint Education Partners has forced parents and members of the two volunteer boards overseeing the schools to pick up the pieces. Board members moved this week to change locks and security access at the schools, and they set up new bank accounts so Newpoint can no longer access public funds that flow to the schools.”
It’s wild. The management company and the shell “nonprofit” who were supposedly running the schools just… disappeared when financials were (finally) demanded.
There will be a safety issue caused by this recklessness. It is just a matter of time.
Our corrupt, captured political leaders will regulate these schools, but it will take a tragedy in one of these states before they do it.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/parents-others-help-out-after-a-pinellas-charter-school-management-company/2273330
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The chair of the education committee in the legislature of Florida is an owner of a charter school himself. And his family is invested in a charter management company in Florida. Just follow the money.
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It’s all about the money, everywhere, annie. Everything is being privatized, from our prison system, to our schools, even much of our military.
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This is why I vote for Bernie.
Too
you may be interested. The May issue of “In These Times” has a very interesting article by a teacher in England who went back to the school where she had taught and found how it had been changed. She had taught there, went to teach in a college, came back to visit and found this. Regimentation. She and I think you will find it appalling as well and find similarities to what is happening in the U. S.
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