Reader D.L. Paulson writes here about the charter industry’s sabotage of local control in education.
The overruling of local school boards is a terrible problem in California. Now that it’s hitting an upper-income community (actually, the Mt Diablo district is mixed in its demographics), middle class parents will see what poorer urban districts have had to contend with for years.
Stories abound of charter schools not only wanting the equivalent of what real public schools get, but feeling like they deserve even more. Their mode of operation is to achieve through political connections what they can’t obtain by deceptive marketing practices or bullying of local school boards.
At the bottom of this post are links to stories of a charter network called Caliber, which operates in the poor districts of Richmond and Vallejo, CA. It has another questionable educational program, especially for math, which consists of plopping kids in front of a computer for endless repetition and test prep, masquerading, of course, as “personalized learning”. All that Caliber really does is siphon badly needed funds from other schools for a relatively select group of students that it can profit from.
One particularly interesting thing about Caliber is the couple which founded it: Ron Beller and Jennifer Moses. Mr. Beller was famous for the collapse of his hedge fund and an odd story of a secretary embezzling millions of dollars. Both are part of a cabal of rich individuals that have torn apart the public education system in England, with Ms. Moses funding and pushing heavily for charter schools there. They left London a few years ago for unexplained reasons, but possibly because they smelled blood and opportunity in the charter-infested waters of Northern California.
Many people wonder, if charter schools like Caliber are non-profit, and they’re spending the same money as real community-run schools, how can anyone accuse founders of profiteering? The answer: land grabs and self-dealing. Many of the networks that run these schools, like Rocketship, buy their products (software, supplies and more) from the same companies they or their friends invest in. The properties they purchase are securitized by taxpayer dollars, allowing them to leverage an investment in the same manner as a Real-Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Since there is no public oversight over their purchasing, no bid requirements, no review of salaries or per-pupil spending, they can quite literally get away with anything.
The motives of investors like Ron Beller and Jennifer Moses are not philanthropic. That’s why they and so many other hedge-fund managers love the story of failing schools, so they can cover-up what they’re doing by pretending to serve poor minorities and other victims of some mythical failing system. No matter what jargon is used to describe their “personalized” or “no excuses” model, making poor minority students walk in straight lines, silently, and then plopping them in front of a brain-numbing computer program is not giving them the same educational opportunities as kids in, say, Lafayette, CA (right next door to Mt Diablo). It’s greed, pure and simple, as evidenced by Goldman Sachs seminars telling investors exactly how to make money through the privatization of schools. It is destroying public education in this country, and it’s going to worsen our problems of racism, community polarization, and income inequality.
We can only hope that Jerry Brown will “get it” soon. He understood similar issues with redevelopment agencies, and he ended them early in his first term. Perhaps ending the insidious invasion of charter schools will be his second term legacy.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
In a related story …
☞ Peter Buffett • The Charitable-Industrial Complex
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Very impressive link, Jon. Buffett, the senior, gave much of his fortune to the Gates Foundation.
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“It has another questionable educational program, especially for math, which consists of plopping kids in front of a computer for endless repetition and test prep, masquerading, of course, as “personalized learning”. All that Caliber really does is siphon badly needed funds from other schools for a relatively select group of students that it can profit from.”
This really worries me. I wish there were some organized way to push back against the huge ed reform push to adopt this stuff. I think we will deeply regret it. If school districts cut staffing and adopt computer training to save money, there will just be a new lower baseline for funding. You will not get teachers back once they’re gone- they’re the single most expensive budget line.
Let higher income districts and private schools go first. Let them be the experimental population. They can afford downside risk. We can’t. Be “late adopters”. Don’t get pushed into this. Be careful. All these salespeople will be down the road when your school has turned into an “online learning” facility and the public will be furious.
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California has term limits and Brown terms out on January 7, 2019. If it wasn’t for term limits, Brown would probably stay governor until he died or wanted to retire.
You can bet that the oligarchs will spend more money in California than ever before in the 2018 election year in an attempt to elect another one of their puppets as governor of California. They might even spend more than they do on presidential elections. California is a key domino to topple for the autocrats buying America one election at a time.
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Brown also vetoed single payer universal health care when State Senator Mark Leno got it passed by the Legislature. To be fair, he did recognize the travesty of the Vergara decision and saw to it that it went to the Appeals Court which overturned it. and he recently endorsed Ca. AG, Kamala Harris for our Sentaor, filling the role of the retiring Barbara Boxer…Kamala is my favored candidate.
However, he has done too many questionable things which show his bias toward charters including his honoring of Refugio Rodriguez who literally was elected to the LAUSD BoE with despicable and lying ads about his incumbent opponent, Bennett Kayser, and Ref used the immoral an illegal Voteria to win his seat. Rodriguez developed and runs 16 Charter schools…under investigation for financial misdealings.
As I have reported here before, Brown’s sister, Kathleen Brown Sauter, is a lawyer with the LA firm of Manatt which has among its’ clients many of the privatizers of our public schools.
I am also concerned that Tom Torlakson, who many of us worked to re-elect as State Supt., and to keep out of the realm of Marshall Tuck and his deformers, has done so little in this painful California deformer takeover condition.
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It could be worse. Imagine if Eli Broad got his own people elected to those positions, how bad it would be.
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There’s really no upside for a low or moderate income district to rush out and buy Chromebooks and test out these theories. Risk belongs with school that can afford it. It’s insane to shove all the downside risk on the people least able to absorb an expensive failure.
That makes no sense. If it’s worthwhile you’ll know, and you can adopt it organically as needed. That;s just ordinary prudence.
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‘The Big Short’ comes to education. The financial gamers thrive on the chaos and make huge sums. But it is a zero sum game and when it implodes, the little people lose.
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Chaos out of Order = $$$
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Yes. Financial gamers, educational gamers. Find the money, take the money…move on.
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Ed reformers in Ohio still promoting their online, for-profit charter chain:
They got tens of thousands in campaign donations from the owner of the publicly-funded business.
Apparently none of these public employees have any spare time to devote to the 93% of Ohio children who attend public schools.
They spent the entire last session “reforming” charter schools and now they’ll spend this session gutting their own reforms. Meanwhile, we’ve had 4 state superintendents in 5 years and tens of unfunded mandates and gimmicks and every other half-baked fad sold to them by the ed reform lobby.
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By the way real estate in many parts of northern California is insanely expensive, any land grab would be worth millions. The local citizens need to organize to fight off the vultures, but it is so much harder with a governor that is charter friendly.
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Real estate all over California is highest in the nation. But since we are hog-tied by Prop.13, taxation is unfair, and this had been the greatest reason for California schools loss of income. Commercial property is covered as well as residential by this self serving law, so that huge corporations pay a pittance when property is transferred, while new homeowners entering the market, bear the brunt of taxation. This MUST change.
But you are correct in your view on “land grab” and many of us speculate that major developers such as Broad, Milken, and their ilk, are in favor of an LAUSD forced into bankruptcy, since they could then buy up all the schools property on the cheap.
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D.L. Paulson, I would love to get this translates to Spanish, and distributed in the target areas that Rocketship is hitting in Concord, how do I get permission to do so? I have a translator.
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I am a retired teacher – resident of Richmond. For the moment we have denied Caliber the view site they wanted for $60K(imagine that!).
But their ability to sue, their endless cash flow makes me wonder. The public is harmed by charter schools for their access to our public school money and their lack of responsibility, teachers have no protections; accountability= ??? Lining the pockets of already rich people in Beller’s case. And who benefits? Also have heard the stories of kids they kick out of their program, send back to public schools – I guess that’s more “take the money and run”.
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