The charter industry in Texas wants to take part of the capital funding that now goes to public schools. Charter schools in Texas do not perform as well as public schools, but they have a powerful lobby of business elites who are contemptuous of public schools.
Currently, public schools are required to give space to charter schools. Public education in Texas have been underfunded since the legislature cut $5.2 Billion from them in 2011.
But charters want their own dedicated funding stream, even though the funding will be taken from public schools.
Here’s a thought: why don’t the billionaires like John Arnold and Tecans for Education pay for charter facilities?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, did you mean contemptuous and not contentious?
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Thanks for correction,Duane.
Damn that autocorrect!
(There is a hilarious website with that name.)
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I’ll have to search for that site!
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Billionaires like John Arnold and Texans for Education pay for charter facilities?
What a novel suggestion!
😏
If they ever put their money where their mouth is—that would be truly a creative and disruptive innovation that would give new meaning to the old saw about matching deeds to words by walking one’s own talk.
And turn rheephorm vanity projects and $tudent $ucce$$ upside down.
Not holdin’ my breath…
😎
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The hyper wealthy will never put up their own money when it’s far cheaper to just bribe some politicians and get free money from the public instead, because God forbid that we the people should have any say at all on how our own money is spent by what pretends to be our government. And THAT is the only “free stuff” in America, our tax dollars being given away as a variety of subsidies to those individuals and corporations who least need them.
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I find it hard to believe over 100,000 students are on waiting lists for charters in Texas. Are these requests from students or are these students Gov. Abbot has decided should be in charters? I’d like to know how they came up with their tally.
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my guess is that the “waiting list” is as fraudulent in Texas as everywhere else.
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Another outrageous demand from the charter industry.
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On the topic of a successful climate for charter schools, Prof. Wohlstetter’s recent paper (funded by John Arnold and the Waltons), identified as the first variable, “Political Support”.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
In general charter schools have proven to be less effective than public schools. When will this “fad” mentality end? Texas like many other states are going to have to get proper funding for all children, whether in a public or charter school. One should not be short-changed at the expense of the other.
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