Surely, you remember the negative ads against John Kerry when he ran for President against George W. Bush. Some veterans of the Vietnam War ran a multi-million ad campaign against him, coming close to calling him a traitor.
Interesting that the same advertising group that created the Swiftboat campaign against Kerry is now running the deceptive ad in Massachusetts promoting charter schools as “public schools.”
Peter Greene looks at the controversy and nails the lies.
Peter writes:
Massachusetts is heating up. Perhaps no state has better exemplified the fierce debate between public school advocates and fans of modern education reform. Ed reformers captured the governor’s seat, the mayoral position of Boston, commissioner of education, and the secretary of education offices, and yet have consistently run into trouble since the day they convinced the commonwealth to abandon its previous education standards in favor of the Common Core Standards– which were rated inferior to the Massachusetts standards even by the guys paid to promote the Core.
These days the debate has shifted to the issue of charter schools. Specifically, the charter cap. Currently Massachusetts has a limit on how many charter schools can operate in the Pilgrim state. The people who make a living in the charter biz would like to see that cap lifted, and the whole business will be put to a public referendum in November.
So well-heeled charter fans have collected a few million dollars, and they have hired DC-based SRCP Media, most famous for the Swift Boat campaign that sank John Kerry’s candidacy. The Swift Boat campaign was also a demonstration of the fine old political rule, “When the truth is not on your side, construct a new truth.”
So is SRCP manufacturing truth in Massachusetts?
Spoiler alert: Yes.
It appears that the multi-million dollar ad buy will lean on that old favorite– charter schools are public schools. And when I say “favorite,” what I actually mean is “lie.” But let’s look at the whole thirty seconds.
Read on as Peter explains the Big Lies that are behind the campaign for privatization of public schools in Massachusetts.
Strange, isn’t it? Massachusetts is the highest performing state in the nation, and the privatizers want to grab a piece of the action (money) with their usual lies.
Massachusetts is the birthplace of public education in America. It is up to the voters to stop the privatization movement in November.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t understand why public schools don’t get a guarantee on ed reform promises up front. They never come thru with these promised benefits. That’s the whole story of NCLB isn’t it? That they put in the mandates without the money to pay for them?
The “grants” are a big budget lie, too. They’re “start up” funding. Talking it means you’re stuck with the ongoing expense when they move on to the next craze.
There was no net gain in Ohio for a lot of the districts that took RttT money. The grant didn’t even cover the cost of the additional mandates. The Obama Administration shifted all the risk of these experiments to public schools. They must be aware of the concept of risk-shifting in business. It’s like musical chairs. Everyone wants the experiment but no one wants the downside risk exposure. Public schools seem to always end up sitting on the floor. We need real advocates- people who value existing public schools. We don’t seem to have any in government.
And the echo chamber rolls on. The US Department of Education retweets Education Post which is run by a former US Department of Education staffer, all promoting charter schools:
And it goes ’round and ’round again. The same 150 people congratulating and promoting one another.
Public schools really must all suck. None of these people can find a single public school that “works”.
Science! 🙂
Here’s a “thought experiment”. Imagine if the ed reform “movement” politicians ran on “supplanting” public schools with private contractors?
We could make distinctions- they would assure us these contractors would be “nonprofits” and we could quibble over the essential meaninglessness of that construct, but we’d be having a real debate on whether or not to privatize a public system.
Would they have won on it? Or did they really REQUIRE the broader “improving public education” which led people to believe they meant existing public schools?
I am afraid that in Nevada they would win going away. Here there is little support for public education. Our governor, a former federal judge who was coaxed to leave the bench to become governor thanks to the chamber of commerce, actually has said we should get the public out of public education. The large numbers of people on fixed incomes gleefully state their belief that parents should pay for their children’s education, not taxpayers. Public education here is on life support as we have a voucher for all fight going on. The situation is not looking good.
We’ve done a great job of keeping the public out of public education in our district — mostly by having “public” meetings where nothing said is heeded unless it promotes charters and the endless rearranging of facilities.
Old Teacher ,
“The large numbers of people on fixed incomes gleefully state their belief that parents should pay for their children’s education, not taxpayers”
News Flash, a good percentage of those delusional retirees are teachers and other Union workers . Most of them need a serious intervention .
I guess they think that they actually paid for medicare or the medicaid they will probably rely on . My vote throw Granny on the street if she can’t pay her own way.
Somebody better tell Granny, that Pete Peterson is coming to get her The one thing he and his hedge fund buddies hate more than Public Schools is Granny. His latest round of commercials asks how are we going to pay for roads and schools . What they don’t show is his solution a virtual firing squad for for grandma and grandpa.
Am I the only one who sees the same Madison ave add firms behind him and those that portray our schools as failing. For it is certainly the same money.
I am genuinely interested in a debate on what is “public”. Health insurance companies in Ohio are publicly-funded under the health care law and they are regulated and they have to take applicants who meet certain conditions.
Are they “public” now? I don’t think they are. At best they’re government contractors, right?
Haven’t people made that argument a thousand times on this blog over the last few years?
Chiara,
When charters have been sued, their defense is that they are contractors, not state actors. They can’t be held to the same laws as public schools because they are not public schools.
Yet so many happily reach out and take public money.
In an article from a few years ago, the American Bar Association (ABA) weighed in on charter school operators” tendency to claim “private” status — i.e. “We’re a private company subcontracted by the government, therefore no one has any right to tell us how we should or shouldn’t operate, so butt out and get lost!” — if and when it’s convenient for those charter operators to claim to be “private” or to be “state actors.”
To this argument, the ABA pulled no punches:
http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/childrights/content/articles/winter2014-0114-charter-schools-upholding-student-rights.html
In short, the ABA contends that the evidence is overwhelming that charter operators’ convenient and situational claims of “private” status lead to a severe violation of students’ rights (yet —at other times and places, and in all their promotional materials, and public statements — those very same charter operators go around claiming:
“Charter schools are public schools too. We’re public charter schools.”)
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ABA’s Rosa K. Hirji:
“Charter schools promote the idea that, like public schools, they are tuition free and open to all students. However, public schools cannot be selective about the students that they enroll and keep. On the other hand, charter schools—according to recent court decisions from the California Court of Appeal and a U.S. district court in Hawaii—have the discretion and ability to dismiss students in a manner that would be unconstitutional if done by a public school. As it becomes more apparent that students in charter schools do not enjoy the same rights as they would in public schools, the “public” nature of charter schools is called into question.
” … ”
“In Los Angeles, charter schools have come under heavy criticism for turning away students with disabilities. Howard Blume, ‘Charter Schools in L.A. Unified to Get More Special Education Money,’ L.A. Times, Jan. 5, 2011. This is comparable to concerns raised by communities across the country. A study by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles expressed alarm at the role of charter schools in creating a higher level of segregation among students who are African American:
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“Charter schools, in many ways, have more extensive segregation than other public schools. . . . Charter schools attract a higher percentage of black students than traditional public schools, in part because they tend to be located in urban areas. . . . As a result, charter school enrollment patterns display high levels of minority segregation, trends that are particularly severe for black students.”
– – – – – – – – – – – –
— Civil Rights Project, Choice Without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards (Jan. 2010).
“In fact, until very recently, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education (OCR) did not collect data on civil rights outcomes for students in charter schools. OCR will release, for the first time, data related to charter schools for the 2011–2012 school year in early 2014.
“While charter schools that receive federal funding must still comply with federal civil rights statutes—such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act—the lack of oversight by a public board of education means that it is left to students and parents to enforce the laws independently through expensive litigation. The reality is that parents who can afford such actions will more likely locate a better school or have political clout within the charter school that allows them to avoid the worst violations.
“Although not raised in the case, a dismissal from the Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) was likely a tremendous loss of opportunity for Scott B. It appears, from the data, that OCSA is a unique and elite charter school—and a selective one. Ed-Data, Fiscal, Demographic, and Performance Data on California’s K–12 Schools. OCSA receives up to $5 million a year in corporate and private donations. OCSA also receives taxpayer money to support its students. OCSA is ranked as one of the top 10 schools in California, and it touts an academic program that aims to produce high-achieving and motivated scholars.
“OCSA is also racially and economically exclusive. Half of the students enrolled at OCSA are white, whereas white students comprise only 2.8 percent of students enrolled in the Santa Ana School District, where the charter school is located. Similarly, 6.4 percent of OCSA students are eligible for free and reduced meals, compared with 75.7 percent of students enrolled in the district. The court in Scott B. failed to consider the implications of the ability of a racially and economically selective school to remove students of its own choosing to maintain exclusivity, if that were its inclination.
“The structures that allow charter schools to exist are marked by the absence of protections that are traditionally guaranteed by public education, protections that only become apparent and necessary when families and students begin to face a denial of what they were initially promised to be their right. The decisions of Scott B. and Lindsey may encourage charter schools to push certain students out and make it easier to deny them the benefits of a publicly supported education.
“The perception that charter schools are open to all students is being called into question by increasing evidence that children who are disadvantaged by a disability, poverty, or being a member of a minority group, or who have been accused of an offense, may not have the same access to charter schools as those are not.”
Chiara, what do you mean, health-insurance cos. are publicly-funded under Ohio health care law? Regulated, I get, incl the reqt to take applicants who meet certain conditions. But these are private cos., not govt contractors.
The only public funding I’ve heard of is subsidized premiums on a sliding scale under the ACA law– which only affects people above the Medicare income limit who do not have access to employer-provided plans. I don’t think that makes the providers govt contractors. They can (& do) choose to withdraw from the subsidized-policy market if it doesn’t work for them– which means there is no contract.
So my answer to your cogent question would be, no, we do not have public health insurance.
Diane: though charters may be contractors of some sort, they clearly are not “government contractors”, which would require them as recipients of fed or state $ for specified scope to be thoroughly vetted as a bidder for govt work, subjected to competitive bidding, reqd to obtain matls & services acc to fed &/or state procurement law & be regularly audited to ensure compliance.
I find many friends & acquaintances to assume that charter schools are subject to the same laws as govt contractors. Perhaps the majority of voters are blissfully unaware that these quasi-public entities conduct their business according to state charter law, which in most states is defined only by the many ways in which players are not subject to the laws by which public schools and other govt contractors are reqd to conduct their business.
Beth,
State charter laws tend to be permissive and to minimize supervision, regulation or oversight
That opens the door to fraud and self-dealing
When does the swift boating of police, firefighters and judges begin? We need choice and free market solutions for those entities: charter police departments will compete with regular district police departments, the same for fire departments and the judicial system. The charter supreme court will compete with the original supreme court. The penal system is already being privatized.
I plan on paying my tax dollars to the “charter police force” which will only patrol low-crime neighborhoods. They are allowed to kick out any residents who they feel are unworthy of living in that neighborhood, and those residents will be sent to high crime neighborhoods where they belong. I will save lots of money and I won’t have to have any “unsuitable” neighbors because the charter police force will have complete freedom to “suspend” any resident who they feel is not quite up to snuff.
Then the charter police force will be able to brag about how low the crime rates are in the neighborhoods where they patrol! They will demand more money to patrol those low-crime neighborhoods to reward them for the excellent job they are doing. The CEO of the charter police force can pay himself millions for doing such a good job!
After all, why should high performing children have to share the costs of educating those at-risk kids who can’t keep up with them? Why should high-performing children have to pay for the pension costs of retired teachers who taught students in the past? Let the families of the unworthy low-performing students who keep their children in public schools bear that burden. Most of them wouldn’t be worthy of a spot in the charter school anyway, so why not skim lots of money from their per pupil allocation to pay for historic pension costs while charter school kids are free riders. After all, the deserving kids should not have to pay for historic costs and if a charter school can make a killing by advocating that we all abdicate any responsibility for unworthy children, then let them profit!
There’s a great companion piece to this Curmudgucation article on the Edushyster blog, one that pulls back the curtain on Question 2’s actual funders, and their motives:
http://edushyster.com/family-affair/
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August 9, 2016
by EduShyster
“Family Affair
“Political scientist Maurice Cunningham says the campaign to lift the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts is driven by GOP operatives and a handful of wealthy Republican families… ”
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EDUSHYSTER: “Ads in support of Question 2, the ballot initiative that will dramatically expand the number of charter schools in the Bay State, are running during the Olympics, and come with the tagline: *more money for public education.* I was prepared to give them a gold medal for, um, dexterity, but since the ads are being produced by the team that made the infamous Swift Boat ads that cost John Kerry the 2012 presidential election, I suspect there’s plenty more where that came from.”
MAURICE CUNNINGHAM: “I think we can expect some rough stuff. This is a Republican effort, it’s a big money effort, and it’s a conservative effort. That’s where they tend to go.”
EDUSHYSTER: “There’s a well-funded effort underway to paint the campaign to lift the charter cap in Massachusetts as a progressive cause. But what you’ve found in your research is that this is basically a Republican production from top to bottom.”
MAURICE CUNNINGHAM: “That’s right. There are a handful of wealthy families that are funding this. They largely give to Republicans and they represent the financial industry, basically.
“They’re out of Bain.
“They’re out of Baupost.
“They’re out of High Fields Capital Management.
“Billionaire Seth Klarman, for example, has been described as the largest GOP donor in New England, and he gives a lot of money to free market, anti-government groups.
“Then on the campaign level, you have Republican strategist Will Keyser, who certainly knows his stuff, and Jim Conroy, who certainly knows his stuff. They know how to make something look like a grassroots campaign that really isn’t.”
EDUSHYSTER: “By *make something look like a grassroots campaign that really isn’t,* what you really mean is that this is an entirely community-driven, grassroots campaign, correct?”
MAURICE CUNNINGHAM: “No.
“There is no grassroots support behind this (“Question 2) charter school cap initiative) campaign whatsoever.
“What do we look for to measure grassroots support? We look for a campaign’s ability to find people who will essentially volunteer, who feel strongly about an issue and are willing to do the work that a campaign needs done.
“Two examples: signature collecting and canvassing door to door. Great Schools Massachusetts isn’t able to do either one of those things. When they had to get signatures in 2015, they wound up paying $305,000 to a signature gathering firm. And that’s because they don’t have people who are strong believers who will go out on the street and volunteer and be passionate and do the things that people do when they really care about an issue.
“Or look at ‘Democrats for Education Reform.’ When they backed Dan Rizzo in the special Senate election earlier this year, they had to pay for canvassers because they don’t have people who feel strongly enough about the positions they take. The idea that these are community groups is completely manufactured.”
EDUSHYSTER: “Readers of this blog will recognize the name ‘Families for Excellent Schools,’ a New York group that set up shop in the Bay State in 2014, and which counted our Republican Secretary of Education James Peyser as its *uncle* until about 15 minutes ago. But *families* in this case literally refers to six families.”
MAURICE CUNNINGHAM: “The same small group of families that gave to the ballot committee, which is now ‘Great Schools Massachusetts,’ gives to a private foundation called ‘Strategic Grant Partners’ year after year.
” ‘Strategic Grant Partners’ is at the center of this whole thing, and it’s where you really see the longer term view taking shape. Joanna Jacobson, who founded it, understands strategic vision and marketing. She comes from a corporate background; she has a Harvard MBA and was the president of Keds.
“Jim Peyser is a central figure when you look at who was involved, both as a board member of ‘Families for Excellent Schools’ and in his former capacity as a managing partner of ‘New Schools Venture Fund.’ They’ve been at this for several years now — much longer than most people are aware of.”
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” *Secretive cabal* and democracy don’t go together—they just don’t. And if you say *let’s sacrifice democracy so we can have better schools,* that imperils us going forward.”
— Maurice Cunningham,
Professor, University of Massachusetts
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EDUSHYSTER: “Is it really so bad if a secretive cabal hatches a strategic plan and marshalls millions of dollars from untraceable sources if it means more ‘Great Schools’™?”
MAURICE CUNNINGHAM: “I think it’s terrible for democracy. *Secretive cabal* and democracy don’t go together—they just don’t.
“And if you say, *Let’s sacrifice democracy so we can have better schools,* that imperils us going forward. Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis once said that we have to make a choice.
” *We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.*
“To me this campaign is about democracy vs. unlimited wealth.”
EDUSHYSTER: “Massachusetts is no stranger to divisive education ballot initiatives backed by wealthy businessmen. There was the measure that eliminated bilingual education back in 2002. Coincidentally, it was also the work of a Republican and also called *Question Two.*
“What’s different about the campaign to lift the charter cap?”
MAURICE CUNNINGHAM: “We’re in the Citizens United era now, and that’s true nationally and here in Massachusetts. I think the application of a huge amount of money from a very small group of people who hide pretty well, that’s new. A good deal of this campaign is *off the books*—at least so far as campaign finance disclosure goes.
“I always look to see who the contributors that are listed at the end of the ad.
“Look at those contributors and see if you can figure out who the heck any of those people are — and you can’t. Basically you have what is a Russian nesting doll problem here. These people hide because they know that if voters recognize who is really behind this ballot question, they’ll be less likely to support it.”
EDUSHYSTER: “I thought you were going to say that what’s different is that this time ‘it’s about the kids’ … ”
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Maurice *Mo* Cunningham is a professor of Political Science at UMass Boston and a long-time commentator on Massachusetts politics. He blogs at MassPolitics Profs.