Peter Greene says that when Arne Duncan was Secretary of Education, he had to once in a while notice a public school, maybe even visit one.
But in his foreword to a new book praising charters, Duncan makes clear that charters have the secret sauce. No need to pretend anymore.
Apparently the only schools that ever “close the gap” or produce awesome results are charter schools.
Funny that Duncan’s piece came out just days after a charter founder in Pennsylvania admitted that he stole $8 million from the school’s accounts.
Greene writes:
Notice that he doesn’t even go as far as admitting there are come bad actors and fraudsters in the charter sector, nor does he see a role for government in protecting students, families, and taxpayers from fraudsters. Nope– just let the charter sector police itself.
There was never any doubt that Duncan was a charter fan, but this piece puts him in line with some of the most pie-eyed charter lovers. All pretense is gone, and in a way, it’s impressive that Duncan could pretend to be even semi-supportive of public education for as long as he did. But now he can stop pretending, and be the charter-loving, public school dismissing PR flack he always wanted to be.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Enabled by Obama.
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I agree. Obama has been worse than any Republican could have been on this issue. His support gave credence to the people who say “even Democrats recognize that young minorities need “no excuses” to curb their violent tendencies at age 5.
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On Obama: he has been worse for public education than Bush because the Democrats used to stand up to Bush. Obama has made privatization bipartisan.
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“His support gave credence to the people who say “even Democrats recognize that young minorities need “no excuses” to curb their violent tendencies at age 5.”
This sounds, to me, like the mindless mob talking. I really do not understand your statement. Please elucidate for me. Thank you.
–Martin Serna
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The main reason I refused to support Obama’s re-election and regard him as a mediocre president at best. I am a lifelong Democrat, but I couldn’t support a faker like him.
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I agree with Diane that Obama has made privatization bi-partisan. The media has played a large part in that. There will be no questions asked of either Trump or Hillary regarding education. There is some faint hope that Hillary is distancing herself from Gates and the Waltons, but God forbid any member of the press pins her down on it. Trump tells black people their schools are no good and he is going to make them great. He is not likely to be asked any followup questions either.
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I focus a lot of attention on St. Louis. I stumbled upon some basic information that would be hard for the charter industry to explain if there was not a code of silence regarding negative questions about charters in St. Louis. http://interact.stltoday.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1188625 If anyone could offer a comment, it would raise my morale, but I am resigned to being either ignored, or occasionally ridiculed–my style of posting is less than ideal.
I will follow with what I believe is monumentally significant.
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Obama has made privatization even worse than a bi-partisan issue. He has create the illusion that it is an evidence based consensus issue, when in reality it is neither.
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Check out these articles by Julie Woestehoff, of the anti-corp.-ed-reform, pro-public-school parents group, PURE (Parents United for Responsible Education), which is affiliated with Parents Across America, of which Julie was one of its founders. Both back in his days in Chicago, and during his tenure as Secretary of Ed, Arne was familiar enough with Julie as one of his adversaries, that during protests, he would wave to her personally.
Julie has been keeping track of Arne Duncan’s lies. In fact, she just wrote this post in August 2012:
Julie points out how Duncan told a bizarre lie about certain high school buddies of his going to work at the “Chicago Stock Yards.” The problem with that lie is that the “Chicago Stock Yards” ceased all operations when Duncan was 7 years old.
Why tell such a stupid, easily-verifiable lie?
Here’s more posts form Julie about his lies:
— Duncan’s lies regarding claims regarding “turnaround schools”
http://pureparents.org/?p=15935
— Duncan’s lies regarding charter school “successes”
http://pureparents.org/?p=15909
— Duncan’s track record of lying in general
http://pureparents.org/?p=15916
Good stuff… perhaps worthy of a separate article.
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Of course, no discussion about Arne Duncan would be complete without spotlighting the Dodge Renaissance Academy fiasco.
In late 2008, just after Obama’s victory over John McCain, Obama and Duncan announced Duncan’s appointment at Secretary of Ed. To signal the changes Obama had in store for the nation’s schools, they made this announcement at a school that exemplified the efficacy of Duncan’s “corporate education reforms” in Chicago …
Dodge Renaissance Academy.
During the press conference / photo op, Obama pointed out that Duncan showed great courage when he had previously closed the pre-existing school occupying the Dodge campus and serving the students now attending Dodge. He fired all the adults—principal, other administrators, teachers… right down to the guys who sweep the floors. This was difficult decision where he had get tough, as there were major protests against this move.
However, this served as an example of how Duncan, as Secretary of Ed, won’t be letting defenders of the failed status quo get in his way, or stop him.
As a result, Dodge was transformed into a miracle charter school …
… until it wasn’t.
A couple years later, the school descended into administrative and financial chaos, and parents fled, leading to the school’s closure. This was a story not covered by the mainstream media, but covered by Huffington Post (Mercedes Schneider) here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mercedes-schneider/school-ironies-the-fizzle_b_6504252.html
and Dr. Ravitch here:
Oh, and the Dodge charter fiasco also encompasses the whole gentrification-thru-charterization phenomenon, as well as how military schools are being — in the words of Jonah Edelman — being shoved down the throats of unwilling parents of poor and minority parents.
Chicago activist and teacher George Schmidt added all this to the comments section of the Ravitch article on Dodge:
—————————-
George Schmidt
May 10, 2013 at 6:30 am
“We are still waiting for the Chicago papers to cover this update on the sad Dodge story, and the Arne Duncan/Barack Obama ironies around it all. I took photographs at Dodge after Duncan announced the original proposed turnaround, which that year took place in two phases. In the first phase, the school was emptied out and one year of ‘planning’ was supposedly implemented.
“The kids were scattered to the winds, especially the homeless ones, and those whose families could not afford the new $200,000 townhouses that were being built down the street from Dodge. (A photograph putting Dodge in its geopolitical perspective would be taken from the United Center, less than a mile to the east, to depict accurately the displacement of poor and working class black families from the area…).
“Fewer than half the original Dodge kids returned to the ‘new’ Dodge the following year. And for those who were sent hither and yon, the results were bad. The Dodge kids who tried to go to Grant Elementary School (where many of them were sent) were beaten up by the (then) Grant kids. The Grant kids didn’t want the ‘Dodge Dummies’ to lower their school’s scores. (That was ironic because there really wasn’t that big a difference between Grant and Dodge, but perception is reality…).
“Eventually, Duncan’s versions of school reform got around to Grant, too. With the help of then Congressman Rahm Emanuel (who bragged he got a one million dollar earmark for the job) Grant became a ‘military academy.’
“First, the Phoenix (Army) high school was put in the Grant building. Then the ‘Marine Military Academy’ was put in there, too. As a result, the remaining kids who had been at Grant elementary school were scattered to the winds, just like the Dodge kids had been.
“The ability of Duncan, Obama, and Emanuel to get away with this stuff, decade after decade, rests on the failure of the corporate news media in Chicago to cover the tragedies of the poor and working class families who become, over and over, the voiceless victims of these policies. Their voices — thousands of them — are drowned out every day by the screaming of Rahm Emanuel’s PR machinery (only part of which is the multi million dollar ‘Mayor’s Press Office,’ which daily issues commands to the media to cover a media event starring Rahm and some corporate chieftains). It is a choice made for more than a decade by Chicago’s corporate reporters to focus on the official party line of the ‘School Reform’ crowd and ignore the tragic facts, year after year, school after school and child after child.
“And this year, we’re facing the largest and most tragic assault of all. But we can’t ever forget that this attack on children and truth was part of the program of Arne Duncan, Barack Obama and Richard M. Daley long before Rahm Emanuel returned to Chicago to purchase four years on the fifth floor of Chicago’s City Hall…”
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WOW. Too much truth; my mind is numbing. I’ve seen this phenomenon happen, where Big Wig Reformers — including the President — publicly laud some school or program here in Denver, and then only a year or two later the school or program is falling into chaos. BUT NOBODY IS HELD ACCOUNTABLE, nor is the unmistakable dissonance even mentioned in the press.
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I used to have some sympathy for charter folks and believed they really wanted to help children.
Now I am certain that they only want to help themselves. For greedy men like Arne Duncan, he promotes charter schools that have abandoned the very at-risk kids they were supposed to help and what is far, far worse, have dishonestly proclaimed they educate all kids like this and public schools should follow their lead and abandon the same at-risk kids they did! I hope his wife is embarrassed by her colleagues at the fancy private school she teaches where most parents and educators find her husband to be repulsive and promoting ideas for young poor kids that they would not let their own kid near.
For the billionaires, it is about promoting themselves as charitable and not greedy jerks. But their greedy jerkdom always wins out. Because they don’t just want to be charitable, they want to WIN. And winning means that you look the other way at charters that have abandoned the at-risk kids who can’t make the grade. The billionaires find those kids nasty and ugly and violent and they are almost always minorities unlike the white billionaires who like their minorities saying “yes sir” to them and performing as asked so they can be a credit to their race and to the white billionaires who love them so unless their kids can’t keep still at age 5, in which case they are happy to characterize them as violent and scary young children.
Shameful.
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No surprise, of course. His deputy, Peter Cunningham, moved directly from the Department of Education to helming the Education Post, an astroturf propaganda mouthpiece for school choice, vouchers, and charter boosterism.
The palpable sense of relief from Arne is audible from here in East Lansing. The poor guy has been living a lie and can finally be who he is–an unabashed privatizer and charter school cheerleader.
I expect to soon see Arne and Pete come out in support of Donald trump, whose education platform is virtually identical to their beliefs. Then the transformation from neo-liberals to proud Republicans can be complete.
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I am not a fan of Trump’s by any means, but what specific education platform has he revealed? Clinton’s record on education, from her time in Arkansas through her support of the advancement of charters during Bill’s administration, are definitely in line with Duncan’s agenda. Hillary has taken large contributions from Eli Broad with assurances that she will support charter schools. It was Bill’s administration that created the large tax benefits for those investing in charter schools. Watch the video introducing the Clinton Goals 2000 initiative. This was the precursor to NCLB and the beginning of the end of public education. The truth is neither major party candidate will be good for public education. If you want to make this about politics, please get the facts straight.
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Elizabeth,
Trump has come out in favor of charter schools. He said in Detroit that school choice, specifically charter schools, are at the center of his “new civil rights agenda.” He also told the American Legion that he will make sure that schools teach patriotism. He said he is against Common Core, but he has no power to stop Common Core.
I am hoping that Hillary has learned something from the failure of NCLB and RTTT. When I met her a week ago, my first words after hello were, the Obama education policies are a disaster. She shook her head yes, in agreement. If she’s elected, I will pursue her and her advisors to change course. If Trump is elected, he won’t listen to any of us. He will listen to his children and Dr. Ben Carson.
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Charter schools are a puppet regime of education. Waiting to collapse, destroying systems built for decades, leaving nothing.
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Arne Duncan is too hard on charter scams. He wants them to police themselves: “…it is absolutely incumbent on the charter sector to be vigilant about policing itself and closing down low performers.” But they don’t have to! The free market polices everything! See? “Low performers” will close immediately if they get the icky scores that most of them do because parents yank their children over to the school with the latest goody scores every year. That’s the logic! Oh wait, that’s not happening. OK, I agree with Duncan. Charter scams should shut down themselves. Wait, that’s not happening either…. Hmm… It must be the government’s responsibility to regulate public education. Who’d have thunk?
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The NAACP call for a moratorium on new charter schools (soon joined by The Movement for Black Lives) has defenders of charters out in force. The defenders are in a double bind because they have to acknowledge that charters have targeted low income and minority communities.
As usual, teacher unions are being blamed for this call for a moratorium. But part of the impetus comes from the perceived overreach in federal funding of charters and charter facilities along with charter “bankrolling” from billionaires, especially the Walton Family Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Last week, EdWeek featured a back page commentary titled “NAACP” Has it Wrong.” The commentary was offered by Howard Fuller, the “founding board chair of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.” Fuller claims that NAACP’s call for a moratorium on charter schools is wrong because “black students are getting a raw deal, as they have for decades,” in traditional public schools that serve low-income and working-class families.
Fuller cites dismal NAEP scores for low-income black children to make his case Those scores are placed into a contrast with achievements gains documented in New York City charter schools. He also cites Stanford University’s 2015 CREDO study of Urban Charter Schools claiming that charter schools ” gained 33 percent more learning in math and 24 percent learning in reading compared with their traditional public school peers.” Those percentages are nonsensical. CREDO is a part of the conservative Hoover Institution housed at Stanford University. CREDO is funded by the Walton Foundation with Pearson contributing to some studies.For a more reliable report on charter schools see: On the differences between facts and myths about charter schools, http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-separating-fact-and-fiction
Another commentary is in front of me (EdWeek August 24,2016). It is offered by Chester E. Finn and Brandon L. White, Jr., both affiliated with the charter cheerleading Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and Bruno V. Mano of the Walton Foundation. The title is “Chartering Must Cultivate Academic Choice.”
This 1000 line essay celebrates the 25th anniversary of Minnesota’s first charter school. It recognizes that charter schools, now in 43 states, primarily enroll “low-income children of color.” The authors applaud the no-excuse charters that extend learning time and focus on college prep–with KIPP, Achievement First, and Success Academy as “brands” singled out for praise.
They boldly claim that charter schools are underfunded by 30 percent in operating expenses compared to nearby district schools and they whine about getting no money for facilities. (The claim seems absurd to me, especially when you consider the high CEO salaries of charter operators, their operational expenses for advertising and recruiting and the cost of operations for a longer school day and year. These are “choice” costs).
Of particular interest in this Commentary is the effort to discredit research from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA on the role of charters in resegregation schools. How? By citing research with opposite conclusions from Walton-funded University of Arkansas researchers.
In any case, these cheerleaders for charters end the commentary with a claim that no-excuses charters are not, in fact the only option and that many charters are more “progressive.” They also argue on behalf of far more choice-with-charters, more deregulation while “paying attention to sensitive issues of community engagement, human capital and race.”
Here is the fun and the scary part of this commentary. Their suggestions for expanded choice is nothing less than a roster of boutique schools of many kinds–
schools just for girls, schools just for boys, schools just for character education and civics, schools just for art enthusiasts, schools just for youthful offenders and former offenders, schools just for rural residents, schools just for digital learning (mislabeled personalized), schools just for athletes, schools just for children with disabilities (per at least 100 charter schools are available), schools just for “classicists,” and schools just for career and vocational preparation.
These charter enthusiasts studiously avoid mentioning any common purposes of public schools in creating a well-informed “public.”
They see no virtue in democratic governance of this major institution.
They seem to think that “paying attention to sensitive issues of community engagement, human capital and race” is a good idea, as long as that does not interfere with their creative ideas about schools based on more segregation by demographic identifiers, by delivery system, and by narrowly defined specializations.
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“Those scores are placed into a contrast with achievements gains documented in New York City charter schools.”
NYC charter schools are propped up by a certain charter chain that has 99% passing rates with 50% of the kids who don’t mysteriously disappear from sight (are they held in a dungeon somewhere, or are they just pushed out the door via the lovely methods we all witnessed on the video?).
If you remove that certain charter chain from the mix, charters are mediocre in NYC. So mediocre that they don’t dare to call out the unethical one for bad practices because without the unethical one, they just look bad. And when it is a choice of doing what is right for kids and making themselves look good, the charters have proven over and over again that kids are NOT their priority. Looking good is.
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I focus a lot on St. Louis. After the school board election results of 2006 were disappointing to Mayor Slay and other charter enthusiists, political pressure was put upon the state board to take over the St. Louis schools. They did, and a three member board was appointed, and remains in power almost ten years later. I documented that at present, the charter schools, (39% of the district) have a 70-30 black to others ratio, compared with 88 percent in the remaining schools. i also found an old FAQ sheet bragging about charters….from Mayor Slay’s office….among the things to brag about: 87% of the 6000 students were african american. Now, with 10,500 in charters, under the guidance of the three people appointed by 2 white and one black politician, the percentage of african americans has dropped from 87 to 70, and knowing St. Louis, the percentage of children with special needs has similarly been lowered. I document a lot of other things in a Post Dispatch current affairs thread which includes the PD columnist Tony Messenger’s last name, and the word “smorgasboard”.
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Wow, do they do what they do in NYC and open special brand new charters that have at least 50% middle class (mostly white) kids while leaving the poor minorities concentrated in charters that are 90%+ low-income? Is it like NYC where the charter schools where the white kids go overlook minor issues while the schools that are mostly minority students make sure those kids experience that special no-excuses discipline that charter folks are certain that minority kids must experience because so many of them are naturally violent at age 5, as their leader has explained on national tv when she tried to claim that the reason so many 5 and 6 year olds were given suspensions was not for minor things.
That’s what charter chains in NYC do. They are a chain, but a few of their charter schools have at least 50% middle class students and 99% of the white students are in them, and some schools have almost all low-income minority students. Separate but equal is the charter school way, except that the ones with all the white kids have much lower suspension and attrition rates.
Does St. Louis do it differently? Are all the charter schools 70-30% black to other ratio, or are the non-Black students disproportionately represented in a much smaller number of schools, while the others have very few students who aren’t minorities?
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And see this: This Guardian Piece Touting Bill Gates’ Education Investment Brought to You by Bill Gates
http://us10.campaign-archive1.com/?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=6f5a675c9a&e=558e3b714e
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