Ah! The truth is out! The chairman of the Education Committee in the Ohio House of Representatives said that the reason he supports charter schools in urban districts is because it saves money!
Bill Phillis, former deputy commissioner of education in Ohio, now retired, writes:
Chairman of the Education Committee in the Ohio House of Representatives: “…reducing the cost of educating urban kids is the reason I support charter schools.”
The above statement was made during a workshop session at the State Auditor’s August 11 & 12 Charter School Summit.
So charter schooling is cheaper, says Mr. Legislator. He is saying the investment required to deal with the problems of urban education can be averted by merely promoting charters.
The promoters of the charter private business enterprise promised better educational opportunities and results on less funds. This pledge was appealing to policymakers who were blind to the need for additional resources to educate children in poverty zip codes.
The charter industry is preying on and using the most vulnerable children and parents. Charter school opportunities and results, in general, are grossly inferior to those inherent in the common schools. The higher cost of educating children living in poverty zip codes has been recognized for many decades. Several state and federal compensatory programs have been implemented to help address the poverty issue. But policymakers have adopted choice, a tactic to allow some students to escape the traditional school system, instead of addressing the actual additional cost of educating children of poverty.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://www.ohiocoalition.org
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Shared with the National Catholic Register Sept. 4, 2016 URL:
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/school-choice-must-support-and-protect-catholic-education/
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I thought we had federal laws against separate and unequal schools. Public money should not be used to enhance segregation while creating separate and unequal schools. These ‘reformers’ should not be able to hide their true intentions behind a cloak of lies including “choice, civil rights, and opportunity,” The true intent is to offer something cheap, separate and less than while they deny poor minorities the right of democratic participation in the process. Let’s not forget that corporations are profiting from the exploitation of these poor students simultaneously. This is a hijacking of democracy, and African Americans need to pressure policymakers to stop assisting in the corruption and change laws that give charters partiality over public schools. At the very least any decision to create a charter school should rest with a community vote and not a complicit governor, mayor or legislator.
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Well-stated. Cheap education is what charters offer even with chronic and absurd complaints about being underfundered. .
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Nice summation of Ohio’s plight that incorporates many of the issues from this blog posted this week on Plunderbund, a blog the covers Ohio politics.
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Last year, this same individual, Andrew Brenner, said that public schools were “socialism.” Just a short time later, he was rewarded with the position of Chair of the House Education Committee. In Ohio, the Ed Committee leader is an opponent of public ed and believes that poor children in urban environments should be educated through “low cost” charters. Can you imagine? What a sad state of affairs.
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Columbus is like a parody of ed reform, it really is.
They held a week-long, taxpayer funded marketing event for charters and this is what public schools get – the state superintendent rides by a public school and takes a picture:
“Passing many great Columbus schools on Ride the Cbus this morning. ”
Is this to prove he knows public schools exist? Photographic evidence that he saw one once?
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Incidentally, Ohio lawmakers just dodged their own charter law:
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/09/charter_school_reviews_are_back_on_schedule_after_state_superintendent_paolo_demaria_sidesteps_rule_change_controversy.html
They were lobbied heavily and they weakened the law, exactly as most people predicted they would. Nothing will come out of the much-publicized charter regulation. They won’t sanction a single authorizer.
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cutting costs for educate our children in the public schools means more tax cuts for the super wealthy and corporations
To most if not all of the wealthy, it’s always about the money and enough is never enough. And the rest of us who don’t worship at the alter of avarice, to the billionaires, we are all losers who must be controlled physically and mentally.
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YEP, Lloyd, unfortunately, YEP!
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This was Broad’s reasoning as well, although he added in “better.” The “better” has not come to pass. Since his reasoning was based on how much better parochial schools performed, we can see he really had no idea what he was talking about. As a community based teacher, I used to receive the underperforming Catholic school students when they were kicked out of Catholic schools.
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This was part of the original idea of charters, have private companies chip in to foster these experimental schools and make an investment in the communities and future employees.
Then suddenly politics, greed and ideology took over and everyone involved decided to destroy public education as it was, as they were suddenly on this mad crusade to sell a cheap product as a matter of civil rights.
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Charter schools? Saving money?
What a joke. Is that like the money “saved” in Flint, Michigan with regard to piping and water supply infrastructure?
What kind of person would govern as such when it comes to using charters to save money?
Norway would never do this. It spends a ton of money on public education but it also spends a lot of money hiring tax people in all levels of government to MONITOR the utilization of tax money to ensure that the money is being spent properly. And because “the tax man” is taken care of so well by the Norwegian government, there is little to no incentivization to become corrupt and facilitate coverups or underreport fraud, little of which takes place in Norway anyway because our social safety nets and contracts function very well.
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Though strengthening public schools may be more expensive for urban areas than opening charter schools in the short run, they’re an expense that pays off in the long run. When students are offered school choice and more attention and money is given to the charter schools, the public school students fall even farther behind and those of whom who are already in high-poverty areas will likely end up relying on government money in the future. Rather than opening charter schools and giving some students the option of entering them, urban areas should focus on strengthening their public schools–all of them.
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