Throughout this presidential campaign, we have been treated (or subjected) to statements by both Democratic candidates Clinton and Sanders about charters: They don’t like “private charters” (Sanders) or “for-profit charters” (Clinton).
There are no “private charters.” All charters receive public funding. That’s what makes them so attractive to investors. That secure stream of government funding.
At the very least, we can be glad that Clinton is opposed to the for-profits, which rip off taxpayers and divert public funding to their stockholders and owners. Let’s hope that means she is prepared to cut off federal funding that goes to the scam artists of the charter world. No more 3-card Monte with public dollars.
But is there a difference between “for-profit charters” and “non-profit charters”?
Peter Greene says it is a distinction without a difference.
He writes:
In this scenario, I set up my non-profit school– and then I hire a profitable management company to run the school for me. The examples of this dodge are nearly endless, but let’s consider a classic. There’s the White hat management company that was being dragged into court way back in 2011. This particular type of arrangement was known as a “sweeps contract,’ in which the school turns over close to all of its public tax dollars and the company operates the school with that money– and keeps whatever they don’t spend. The White Hat story is particularly impressive, because the court decided that White Hat got to keep all of the materials and resources that it bought with the public tax dollars.
Or consider North Carolina businessman Baker Mitchell, who set up some non-profit charter schools and promptly had them buy and lease everything– from desks to computers to teacher training to the buildings and the land– from companies belonging to Baker Mitchell. From Marian Wang’s 2014 profile:
To Mitchell, his schools are simply an example of the triumph of the free market. “People here think it’s unholy if you make a profit” from schools, he said in July, while attending a country-club luncheon to celebrate the legacy of free-market sage Milton Friedman.
Real estate grabs
All charter schools– even the non-profits– can get into the real estate business as a tasty sideline for providing a school-like product. Charter producers can find money to fund a building and then– voila– they own a tasty piece of real estate. Remember– thanks to some Clinton-era tax breaks, an investor in a charter school can double the original investment in just seven years!
In fact, there are real estate companies in the charter school business. And this can be a particularly terrible deal for the taxpayers. Bruce Baker lays out here how the public can pay for the same building twice– and end up not owning it. Read the whole thing– it’s absolutely astonishing.
Write a big fat check
If you have the giant cojones for it, you can just write yourself a big fat check with all those public taxpayer dollars. To use one of everyone’s favorite data points– Carmen farina is paid $200,000 to oversee 135,000 employees and 1.1 million students. Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain handles 9,000 students, for which Moskowitz is paid almost half a million dollars. And while Moskowitz gets plenty of attention, she is by no means unique….
And that’s just the profit issue
This is before we talk about every anti-democratic, school-destroying, segregation-spreading, education-failing, community-disrupting, and achievement-gap-increasing aspect of charter schools. As readers of this blog know, while charters can (and once were) a good thing, the modern charter movement has turned them into one of the most destructive forces in education today.
But we’re going to maintain focus
We’re going to stick to one point, and the point is this– to pretend that there is a substantive difference between profit and non-profit charter schools is either willfully ignorant or deliberately misleading. I’ve said it many times– a modern non-profit charter school is just a for-profit school with a good money-laundering plan.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
last line is a winner.
AMEN!
Sound like a good summer read for HRC.
Nobody in the Clinton campaign, in the future Clinton administration, or in the influential parts of the Democratic Party will ever know or remotely get that there is no difference between for profit as not for profit charters.
Beyond that it will be a piece of knowledge that will most likely never bubble up to the top of the broader, more public conversation on education.
I generally agree with the first point, but think we have the power to get it into the public discourse, eventually. And if that happens, maybe the Democratic Party in 4-8 years will start talking about it.
Way to complex and nuanced for someone (HRC) who doesn’t care to begin with.
The time for wrestling for control of the narrative and making work like Peter Greene’s the dominant narrative was the last 5-8 years. Nobody on our side, organizationally, worked to do that. So here we are, deep into one of the biggest moments for the potential of a real progressive narrative and zeitgeist, and the left has mostly allied itself with the reformers’ rhetoric of social justice an civil rights. This is a loss of epic proportions for and by teachers unions principally. This was their big, everything-you-have existential moment, and they missed it and opted-in for a seat at the table.
NYST
You are overlooking the power of the opt-out narrative here in NY.
It shut Cuomo down completely and has resulted in a new BOR that will undue much of the Regents Reform Agenda. By 2017 – 2018, the most damaging aspects of APPR and the Common Core standards will be relegated to the dustbin of bad ed-reform.
However, I agree with you on the three million fingers that should be pointing at the NEA and AFT for whoring out our profession.
I think it also underestimates the “Bernie movement.” We just had over ten million people vote for justice and the public sector. I have observed in political circles that lots more leftists are including “public education” in their discourse. And people in general are becoming more open to political discourse and the neoliberal agenda. The privatization of public education is a part of this larger movement to privatize everything. The people who are beginning to understand this movement in general, are going to be more attuned to the privatization movement in education — and they are going to stand in solidarity with teachers, unions, and the working class.
I disagree. I think the mainstream public at this point is cynical enough to actually hear it when we explain the sad truths relating to 501c(3) & (4) “non”-profits.
Going to disagree some, or maybe even quite a bit. There are a lot of non-profit charters that do NOT hire for profit management companies, that do not pay their heads ridiculously high amounts of money. I know because I worked in two.
In some states, they’re not permitted to do it.
So does that make “non-profit” charters OK, Ken?
Did the two “non-profit” charters you worked for re-direct public money away from the public schools?
Ken this means that there are two. Maybe only two.
Diane, in Reign of Error, “solution no. 5” says: “Ban for-profit charters and charter chains and ensure that charter schools collaborate with public schools to support better education for all children.”
It appears your position may have changed on this. If so, what would you say is the new solution?
As time goes by, Ed Detective, the number of frauds and abuses in the charter sector grows. No state has adequate supervision or regulation. In a better world, charters would merge with public schools and end the farce of competition.
Today, we know more about charters than in the past.
All charters should be subject to local school board. They should be supervised and regulated, to prevent academic, disciplinary, and financial abuses. They should be required, as a conditional of their survival, to enroll students who are not served well in public schools. That’s the only reason for their existence.
Thanks, Diane. I rely on you and a few others when it comes to my knowledge of charter schools, since it is not my main focus. So you still support charter schools existing -if- they adopt these kind of regulations and procedures — which so far, are not in effect. If it were a choice between charter schools in their current form, and no charter schools, you would say no charter schools — including the so-called “non-profit” ones.
Charters in their current form are parasites. They suck resources and students away from public schools. They cause conflict and division. They destroy unions and hire uncertified teachers. A perfect example of a once-progressive idea go-opted by groups that are antagonistic to teachers, unions, and public schools.
If Peter Greene truly believes that the distinction between nonprofit and for-profit is meaningless, that the safeguards and filing requirements put in place for exempt organizations don’t matter, then I hope he doesn’t find out what’s going on in New York, where the city and state rely on privately managed, publicly funded nonprofits to deliver essential social services (and where all charters and management organizations are nonprofit; fully half of charters operate without management),
New York City’s public hospitals, for example, aren’t operated by the city of New York, but by a separate health and hospitals nonprofit (consider making a donation! http://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/bellevue/html/help/donation.shtml). The three public library systems—New York, Brooklyn, and Queens—are privately managed nonprofits. A vast array of social services, from Meals-on-Wheels to senior health care to homeless shelters to drug rehabilitation to after-school programming to arts organizations to volunteer ambulance corps, is delivered by privately managed nonprofits who receive most or all of their funding from taxpayers.
It is an arrangement that we trust, almost without thinking, when it comes to vital civic functions like these. We seem to accept the idea that there will occasionally be bad actors and fraud, but that generally it allows for greater efficiency and for a superior experience for end users.
Greene also makes the same factual error as seemingly everyone who writes to complain about Eva Moskowitz’s salary does—the portion of her pay that comes from taxpayer sources is capped at the governor’s salary. More than half of her compensation is paid for by private donors. There also are scores and scores of traditional public district superintendents in New York State who are making much more per student than she does.
Tim, I’m not going to play the “all charters are bad” game. I’m also not going to address your second paragraph because I am not knowledgeable on those topics.
However, Peter’s point is valid in that non-profit doesn’t necessarily mean that someone isn’t making money. The money a charter receives goes somewhere. I live in Michigan where a lot of shady practices occur.
My point would be that a non-profit, without a publicly elected board can direct contracts at whoever they want. For example, support services directed to friends and families even if they don’t supply the best bid. Or, by saving money at the i instructional level, they can pay even more money to top administrators. When Clark Durant ran Cornerstone Schools in Detroit, a non-profit, he earned triple the salary as my suburban districts superintendent with one-fifth as many students. And he wasn’t getting paid by outside sources.
There are plenty of examples of non-profits, without accountability to the public, directing money in ways that provide specific individuals with outsized earnings.
Steve,
My point, apart from the fact that we have little hesitation in giving privately managed nonprofits huge sums of money to provide social services, is that charter school laws and regulations vary from state to state, and Greene knows this.
Charter school board members in NYS are forbidden to have a financial interest in any business or entity that contracts with the school, period. The fact that there may occasionally be lapses does not come close to rendering the distinction between for-profit and nonprofit.
They ALL re-direct money away from cash strapped public schools!
No escaping that fact, and unless your ok with repetitive services which none of your examples (hospitals and libraries), no taxpayer should be ok with charters.
Here’s your opening tim. Time for your BS, cost per pupil rant. Either you remain ignorant on the issue, which I doubt, or you just love the sound of your one man echo chamber. Cheers.
Do these privately run entities fire the staffs and hire less qualified personnel? Instead of a librarian, do they get the ‘book person’ or instead of a doctor do they get someone just starting medical school? There is a difference.
Do PUBLIC libraries compete with government run libraries? Is the New York Public Library using scarce resources to open a branch in Brooklyn to “compete” for library patrons and prove they are better? Can the NYPL “counsel out” patrons who they decide aren’t behaving nicely (based on whatever standards they decide and it turns out most of the people “counseled out” are minorities)? Are those patrons unwanted by NYPL send them to the government run library that has to serve all people? Why hasn’t NYPL opened a branch in Queens?
If the NYPL was a public charter library it would be doing all that and figuring out how best to expand its market. Tim is claiming that the public library is just like a charter school but if that were true it would be looking for more market share elsewhere. Why aren’t they? Because a comparison to a charter is nonsense. Charters COMPETE. libraries are a public utility like the old con Ed who are given the right to serve an area.
Tim,
Money is fungible. Either Eva’s schools are private or public. Where are their financials? How many people on staff? What are their salaries? Is there a superintendent in NY whose salary is enhanced by private funds? Is Eva a superintendent? Does she have the certification to be a superintendent? Which superintendent in the state makes $600,000 a year? Why are the doors of SuccessAcademy closed to visitors? When is the next meeting of the board? Is it open to the public?
NYCP
Does the private library get the best books and limit patronage to only the best readers? And do these private libraries get their own set of rules so they can publicly brag about their superior services?
And does the head librarian skim off a cool half million for doing nothing substantial?
Charter Schools USA is in 7 states :
“The Governing Boards serve as the charter petitioner and holder. The Governing Board is a not-for-profit corporation organized exclusively for educational purposes and is comprised of respected leaders that are committed to providing high quality educational options for the citizens in the communities served.
The Governing Board is responsible for developing and outlining the mission, vision, and values of the school and developing the appropriate policies to ensure those fundamentals are maintained. The Governing Boards have contracted with a professional education management organization, Charter Schools USA, to provide all necessary management and professional expertise. Charter Schools USA assists in developing, planning, and marketing the School, as well as finance, human resources, curricula and school operations. Charter Schools USA is responsible for developing and implementing the ongoing operational procedures in accordance with the mission, vision, and values outlined by the Board.”
I know what my public school superintendent earns. Does anyone know what the execs and managers at Charter Schools USA earn? It’s 100% public money and they’re (supposedly) public schools. Shouldn’t they have to reveal that?
Where’s Campbell Brown on this?
Will Clinton promise to with hold federal funding from for-profit charter schools? No? Then she’s blowing smoke.
http://www.charterschoolsusa.com/governing-boards/
The money that goes to the high cost administrative salaries would be better spent on authentic teachers, library books or other materials. It is much better than a robot with a script while the public students attend a building with an unsafe or unhealthy physical plant.
My favorite part about the charter sector in Ohio is how anyone can just create a publicly-funded job for themselves.
Open a charter school, hire yourself and you’re in business!
100% publicly-paid and completely unaccountable to anyone in the public.
Diane, I think it’s impolite in ed reform circles to mention the for-profit chains they dumped in the less fashionable states and cities.
No one is supposed to notice that.
For-profit charter management used to be legal in New York, until it was banned in 2010 as part of charter school legislation that enjoyed sweeping bipartisan support: 91-43 in the Assembly, 45-15 in the Senate.
Nothing “uncaptures” legislators quite like the prospect of losing their job, so the taxpayers of Ohio have a little more say-so here than you’re letting on.
Tim, Google is your friend or enemy, depending on perspective. Look up “gerrymamder” and “50 states” and learn something today.
What about non profits authorized and monitored by locally elected citizen lschool boards (South Carolina)
You can’t just accept “nonprofit”.
The school entity can be organized as a non-profit and run all operations thru a for- profit.
You would have to take apart the sets of contracts and look beyond the legal entity that is organized to comply with state law.
You should be looking at the set of contracts that comprise “the school” anyway because it’s a PUBLIC investment. Who owns the property and equipment you purchased?
People in Ohio found out (too late) that they purchased property they don’t own.
Understanding that our situation on the Central Coast of California is quite different from that of most: we have three examples in my home town of charter schools which are authentically public charters. One is a parent co-op charter, where parent participation is a requirement. It’s the oldest. Then came a two-way bilingual immersion school, which went charter in order to keep their two-way program in the face of California’s outlawing of bilingual education, and retained union teachers, union contracts for both teachers and classified staff, District financial, transportation, food service, and administrative services, etc. We just wanted to control our own curriculum. The third went the same route, remaining in most respects a “regular” District public school, but with a curriculum focused on the arts. The Arts Charter also took control of their school lunch program, and has a wonderful “real food” lunch program as well as innovative programming.
Charters can remain public, and can fruitfully collaborate with and influence what happens in the other public schools. It’s just not the norm, but it can be wonderful when it works!
But do kids get “counseled out” of these schools, back to the public schools? What percent of these charters have of minority students, students with IEPs, and English Language Learners? If a student leaves the charter to go back to the public school, does the public school get some of the per pupil expenditure?
See, even with good charters, these are concerns. If your charters are equal opportunity and take all comers, then it’s less of a concern. But, it STILL means that there are multiple layers of bureaucracy and administration, where there could be just one. The cost of duplication of services is a real concern.
I hope you will respond to ‘Threatened out West”s comment. Because, what everybody wants to know is, what is the effect of your charter schools on the local public schools?
There really is no “war” here, beyond the petty kinds of skirmishes that go on in any bureaucracy–nor any “duplication” of admin or other non teaching resources, since all three of our charters remain “clients” of the same admin etc. as the public schools, and the kids go back and forth with the same difficulty they move amongst any of the other schools. The concern for the community is returning the arts, and with our new direct funding monies we were able to become the only District in our state where virtually all of that money went to adding a full-time Teaching Artist at every elementary school. Now we just need to get rid of the tests…
Great news on the minor duplication of services, but you didn’t answer the rest of my questions on levels of special education, minority, and ELL students, or if your charters “counsel out.”
Sounds like an “I got mine” scenario, fmindin. How are the non-chartered, now less fortunate public schools faring in this story? Sounds like you have the only game in town now. Good for you.
I would not want to live in your town, because I am not comfortable with inequality.
I read a lot of ed reformers. This is an example of an “unbiased, agnostic” ed reform piece:
http://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/you-asked-we-answered-what-can-charters-do-that-other-public-schools-cant/?platform=hootsuite
It is completely negative regarding public schools. In every example, the language is spun to compare public schools unfavorably to charter schools.
These are the people who have utterly captured our lawmakers. People who insist they are “agnostics” when they are clearly not agnostics, when they clearly have an agenda.
We cannot and will not allow our public schools to be privatized!
Maybe this is a REALLY stupid question, but is there such a thing as a good charter school? What are the ideal circumstances under which we would prefer/allow a charter school to exist?
I think it’s theoretically possible to have good charter schools, but it would take a lot of work and political will. They would have to be fully open and accountable to the public, controlled by a publicly elected board. They would have to accept and keep all students, the only “creaming” allowed being to take the most disadvantaged/difficult/expensive to educate students (their original purpose, after all). No religion allowed. They would need to abide by very similar labor practices as existing public schools (e.g., fully certified teachers, open to unions, etc.). And most importantly, they would have to be fully and separately funded, not pull funding from existing public schools. In other words, taxpayers would need to be told, okay, if you want a whole separate school system, you’ll need to pony up your tax dollars to support it, we’re not going to steal from existing public schools where most kids go.
Don’t think that would ever happen though – especially not that last one.
That is impossible in NY State as long as the SUNY Charter Institute is in charge.
SUNY does two things that will eventually corrupt all charter schools.
1. It does not care – even a little bit – if a charter school is suspending over 20% of the 5 and 6 year olds who win their lottery. It does not care if 40 or 50% of those children disappear by testing grades.
2. It rewards results -preferably 100% passing rates on state tests and if 40% of the low income students who started 2nd grade are missing when it comes time for third grade tests that is perfectly fine and even rewarded if it leads to higher test scores.
Thus the few charter operators who think they run ethical charters are kidding themselves that they are not next to go once public schools have been successfully undermined. They are like the people watching the rise of fascism and the lies and saying nothing because it hasn’t been directed at them yet. When it is turned against them, they will either have to embrace the same corruption or be swept aside.
Witness KIPP in NYC which made a concerted effort to stop harassing kids and has kept their attrition rate low. Their results are pitiful- simply awful – when compared to Success Academy schools with attrition rates more than double KIPPs. Soon KIPP will have to return to their old ways of getting rid of more kids or be taken over by Success Academy. Because SUNY can’t allow a low-performing charter to continue when they keep saying that Success has a special sauce that KIPP refuses to use.
Or maybe KIPP and the few other “ethical” charter schools can be like the Washington Generals to Success Academy’s Globetrotters. As long as those charter leaders don’t mind looking like inept educators they can collect their nice paychecks and help put on the show designed to showcase Eva Moskowitz’ brilliance in educating all at risk kids. See how she “wins” with her students and how lousy those other charters teach?
The special sauce is the “got to go” list.
I can tell you that in my particular area– a central NJ town w/excellent distr pubsch funding, which provides programs for IEP (w/n the sys)– incl recently an elem pgm for autistic– parents succeeded in establishing a distr charter sch (under the umbrella of the pubsch sys) in the early 2000’s. The parents were looking for something that worked for kids (middle-sch age) who were IEP w/devptl delay. The program folded after a couple of years, for lack of enrollment. But meanwhile, the distr hisch pioneered a “bridge program” that targeted such kids, which has been a success. I do not know whether they have since found a way to include midsch kids in that ‘bridge’.
What you describe was the original intent of the charter law. It was never intended to enable corporate chain schools. What has transpired is a greedy, market driven, segregated monster that feeds off of public dollars and creates private wealth for a few at the expense of many.
The original idea from Albert Shanker was to help students who were struggling in regular school. It was an idea to innovate and create an environment to help students in need.. not this corporate reform and rigor privitazation mess that we are now dealing with. Re Diane above: are you private or public ?
The moniker “non-profit” is indeed too easily used to hide true intentions. There are 2 “non-profit” hospitals in my little metropolitan area, c. 250,000, and both average a couple $ million in “non-profit” every year.
Non-profit status should come with some very strict regulatory parameters.
If you want to consider an abuse of non profit status, consider that ALEC is a non profit. There’s a loophole in the law that they exploit.
ALEC has c3 status under the IRS rulings, which means it is allegedly nonpolitical.
Yet its most important activity is to write model legislation on behalf of corporate interests, intended to maximize their freedom from regulation and to undermine unions and any regulations of the environment, guns, etc.
ALEC is militantly pro-privatization, pro-charter schools, pro-vouchers, anti-certification for teachers.
The ideal ALEC school would be taught by amateurs in a for-profit venture.
retired teacher, that is pretty incriminating.
Money laundering is indeed part of the business plan for many of the people involved in today’s version of “non-profits”, which I think can be seen in what they call themselves: “social entrepreneurs.” To me, this says their intention is to run businesses that make profits, typically from tax dollars, while they are manipulating people (and paying no taxes on their businesses). I think it’s a rather sick field that has emerged as a result of a government sponsored “non-profit” culture of greed.
The charter lobby admits this themselves:
“According to the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), a charter advocacy group, just under 13 percent of charters are run by for-profit companies, though in cities like Detroit, more than 80 percent of charter schools are run by for-profits. However, the distinction between for-profit and nonprofit is often messier than groups like NAPCS readily admit: Nonprofit charters can still hire for-profit management companies to run their schools.”
http://prospect.org/article/hillary-charters-yes-and-no
I think the point of that paragraph is that the charter lobby does not admit this (that there is no meaningful distinction between for-profit and not-for-profit charter schools) themselves.
Charter schools are private schools using public money with no oversight. i don’t believe that the “powers that be” at all levels of government do not understand this. Sad to say, I suspect they have all been bought and paid for in various ways and some just don’t care.
The dominant media, for the most part, paints wonderful pictures about charters and how well they are doing and how badly our public schools are doing.
Charters proliferate in mostly urban, under served communities that have high levels of crime and poverty.
The charters have slick ads to encourage parents who want the best for their children and have limited resources believe that a charter is the answer.
They take children by lottery and discard the ones they don’t want.
If charters are as wonderful as they claim, why not take over an entire school district and teach ALL the children.
“I look at all those poor black and brown ‘2s’ and think, my God, a good charter school could probably turn the some of them into ‘3s’. And at the same time this would give some purpose and meaning to my life; some day they may even refer to me as the Mother Theresa of disadvantaged students.”
. . . said the anti-Tilson who resides in a parallel universe.
Charming how he refers to kids by a number. And yet he thinks he’s Mother Teresa. Sigh.
…your white privilege is showing…
It seems to me the consensus of our comments is: US law regarding for-profit vs non-profit is bogus. Yes, we’re talking about 501(c)3 and 501 (c)4. As exacerbated by the Cit-United decision. Time for activists to get on board with ‘Get Money Out’ http://www.getmoneyoutaction.org
So am I right that the main objection to the idea of taxpayer money funding a child’s public education via a privately managed nonprofit—an arrangement that we accept without hesitation for the delivery of other vital social services and health care—is that these schools then compete with traditional district schools? And that charters have strayed far from their original mission, which was to take the most difficult students off the traditional district system’s hands while at the same time serving as a test lab for the district?
By any definition, unzoned lottery schools like the Central Park Easts, the Brooklyn New School, the Manhattan School for Children, Castle Bridge, etc., are very much in competition with traditional district schools. They have the exact same admissions procedure as charters, they have far lower rates of minority and FRPL-eligible students than their home districts (creaming), and they take away students/funding from zoned schools. Why is there no outcry over these schools, to say nothing of the many selective (either exam or “holistic”) schools the district operates?
And this eye-popping data out of California shows us that while individual schools or districts may not directly compete for students, it is clear that there is a cutthroat, ruinously expensive (as pointed out by Elizabeth Warren), and segregating competition to pay what it takes to get into a high-achieving school: http://www.rentcafe.com/blog/cities/los-angeles-ca/california-renters-pay-46-rent-live-near-top-schools-double-price-buy-home/. Successful district schools don’t have to “compete” because they have had their enrollments pre-screened by real estate (and all the redlining, steering, mortgage discrimination, intimidation, etc.). And we don’t consider it “competition” when districts lose large numbers of students due to out-migration, aging, and lowered birth rates—we accept that money and resources go where the students are, and adjust funding and staffing levels accordingly.
In the 80s and 90s while serving as the leader of the AFT Albert Shanker saw the greatest threat to public education as being disruptive students who destroyed the learning environment for their fellow students and working conditions for teachers. He repurposed the original charter concept as a way to get these kids out of traditional public schools. The originator of the charter concept, Ray Budde, most definitely did not envision such a narrow focus for charters. He saw charters as a way to provide different types of schooling—for all kids–that were impossible to achieve within a district structure. He believed competition and innovation were essential, as were autonomy and having charters monitored by people from outside the district. You can Google “ray budde education by charter restructuring school districts” to see his original proposal.
The main problem with the “competition/siphoning” arguments about charters is that there is actually little evidence to suggest that their presence is negatively affecting student outcomes in nearby traditional district schools, and there is some evidence that suggests their presence is actually a positive – google “The Impacts of Public Charter Schools on Students and Traditional Public Schools” and “Everyone Wins: How Charter Schools Benefit All New York City Public School Students.”
Are you suggesting that Al Shanker was ignorant of the problems associated with NYCs “600” alternate schools?
You seem to have a problem with history.
From the NYT (1992)
As late as the 1970’s, violent and disruptive students were removed from New York City’s regular public schools and placed in so-called “600 schools,” where teachers were paid an extra $600 a year for hazardous duty. The schools became dumping grounds for troubled children and were wisely phased out.
The “600 schools” isolated and stigmatized children, operated as they were by “the Bureau for the Education of Socially Maladjusted Children.” The sociologist Kenneth Clark warned as early as the 1950’s that New York’s children were needlessly being consigned to the schools simply because that was the easiest way to deal with discipline problems. To make matters worse, the 600 schools were inadequately staffed and lacked the family services needed by troubled children.
I can only assume Shanker was aware of the 600 schools as the timeline presented in your excerpt from a NYT editorial overlapped with his tenure as head of the UFT. The problem for him is that they would have been staffed by UFT members.
Shanker’s thoughts on school discipline can be found at this link, and they make for pretty interesting reading!
http://source.nysut.org/weblink7/Browse.aspx
I think Tim believes in those 600 schools to be the public school dumping grounds. That way private organizations get the much more lucrative job of educating the kids who are cheapest in charters.
Tim, to answer the question you asked:
Why is there no outcry over those magnet schools the district operates? Because no one is profiting from them! The savings in the cost per pupil spent in one school are spent in the SAME system in other schools. Not paying their administrators obscenely high salaries. Do you think the Stuy principal gets bonus money equal to her salary from an outside foundation? Can you imagine if she got more if she got the average SAT score up? Out with 20% of the lowest scoring Stuy kids! But uh oh – do you think the DOE would say – as the SUNY Charter Institute does – good job raising those scores? Nope because the DOE has responsibility for those kids who leave, too.
A magnet school that dumps lots of expensive students is overseen by the people responsible for those students. A charter school that dumps students is overseen by people who have no responsibility for those kids once they leave.
If you don’t understand why the market forces you love would reward the charters that dump the most students then you aren’t looking at Success Academy. They lost 40% of their low income 2nd graders who disappeared by 3rd grade testing at Bed Stuy 1. They lost 0% of their middle class 2nd graders. They brag about 100% passing rates on the 3rd grade exam and the network got 30 million in donations as a reward and the kids who disappeared – well no one has responsibility once they leave.
Those are the market forces you believe in.
Tim, I know of No evidence that competition and innovation improve schools.
Here are some studies about the effectiveness of charter schools. What may not seem innovative to one person might be viewed as innovative to one whose child is zoned for a low-performing school.
Click to access 20104029.pdf
http://economics.mit.edu/files/6335
Click to access how_NYC_charter_schools_affect_achievement_sept2009.pdf
Click to access ednext20054_52.pdf
http://urbancharters.stanford.edu/summary.php
I doubt Tim would ever argue that NYC should start taking tens of millions from the NY public library budget and giving it to a new start up library run by friends of the Mayor and force the NYPL to provide free space for this new library so the “competition” will make the NYPL better. Is Tim really trying to convince us that the NYPL would become a better library after being forced to subsidize the rent and overhead of the new library out of its own budget?
But maybe Tim is arguing that is the best way to run the public library system. I suppose some people who see a way to profit from running this new library to compete with the NYPL agree with Tim that he is right and we need that competition.
Tim, you already noted that magnet schools are like charters. The students in magnet schools do better, just like the students in charters. The only difference is ACCOUNTABILITY.
Charter schools are ONLY accountable for the students who remain in their school. Their overseers are ONLY accountable for them as well. They absolve themselves of complete responsibility as soon as a child walks out the door. That is a feature of charters, not a bug.
Magnet schools may try to use the same reprehensible tactics as charters to rid themselves of unwanted kids, but the same people who oversee that magnet are responsible for the children who leave. If they are paying $100,000 year tuition to private schools because the magnet claims a 5 year old is too violent to educate, that money comes out of the same pot that funds the magnet school. When charters claim that a child is severely disturbed and needs a special school to get rid of kids they find too much bother to teach, that child is off their books completely. And while that does mean that charters have plenty of money to overpay administrators adept at managing their “got to go” lists, those same “market forces” you idealize mean that the charters who do this the most are rewarded the highest!
It astonishes me that you don’t seem to care. If you were fighting for more magnet schools, I would understand it. But fighting for more privatized charters that profit more if they push out unwanted kids? That is something I will never understand.
Tim
I guarantee this question will silence you, as that is your track record here, but here goes:
Can you describe one important and effective innovation unique to charter schools that can be successfully exported to so-called “low performing schools”?
Just one idea that has never been tried in public schools that will help struggling students in high needs districts.
Just one. But make it a good one. No mumbo-jumbo. Straight talk that will enlighten any experienced public school teacher.
Just one.
And please don’t ask me to read your studies.
Why are you publishing this Diane Ravitch? You won’t endorse the California initiative to eliminate public funding for charters, because charter school backers are too powerful. What good do you expect to come from such a position?
Michael Dominguez, why do you say that I don’t endorse the California initiative to eliminate funding for charters? When did I say that? Why do you think I posted the announcement of the conference?
What makes you think I am afraid of the California Charter Schools Association? Why should I be? Enlighten me.
Did you change your mind? When I asked you, you said no, although not in so many words. We would have attached your name to our efforts. Come the new school year we’ll be sure to make your support known throughout California. Our teachers unions, UTLA, CTA and CFT oppose the Initiative to Eliminate Charter Schools in California which is a great disconnect from the opinions of our members.
Creating a public funded job is very well said and interesting. Thanks!