You may wonder why I am posting so often about the charter question in Massachusetts. Simple. If out-of-state billionaires can persuade the voters of the top-performing state in the nation to authorize a competing, privately managed system, they can do it anywhere. This issue–Question 2–is a line in the sand that will determine whether privatization of public education can be stopped.
We know that the billionaires and hedge fund managers are pouring an unprecedented $20 million or more into the campaign to lift the cap on charters in Boston. If Question 2 passes, Massachusetts could add 12 new charter schools forever. At some point, there would be no more public schools. Unaccountable corporate chains would take over local public schools. Massachusetts has the best public school system in the nation. It needs better public schools in every neighborhood, not disruption and turmoil.
Our reader and commentator Jack Covey has followed the debates about Question 2 and shares his observations here:
He writes:
I”m watching the latest Question 2 debate, and the pro-Charter guy Mark just made some hare-brained claim that the teachers union’s motives in opposing Question 2 are racist, or — at the very least — their motives are rooted in the fact that the union leadership is white, and their white-ness is driving them, subconsciously or whatever, to oppose Question 2 … again to the detriment to students and families of color.
Go here:
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( 35:02 – )
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsZZ-J7mcU
( 35:02 – )
MARK, THE PRO-CHARTER GUY: “We have our strongest opposition from the teachers unions across the state, whose leadership is primarily white… our goal, and whom we are trying to serve, are those black and brown parents and young parents who are trying desperately to get alternatives for their children.”
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Yeah, right, that’s your “goal” … unlike those crypto-racist teachers in teacher unions who only care about themselves, even if that screws the education of black kids. This is in spite of the fact that those unionized teachers are the ones teaching kids of all races and classes — including blacks —- for seven or more hours each day.
Naaah, only billionaire-backed charter folks care about black and brown kids.
So if Barbara Madeloni and other Massachusetts teachers union leaders were as black as Karen Lewis, Mark, the Pro-charter guy, wouldn’t attempting this line of argument? No, then he’d probably characterize those hypothetical black Massachusetts labor leaders as an Uncle Tom sell-outs, who value big union officer salaries more than she does helping out her fellow blacks.
What utter nonsense!
Thank God African-American anti-charter Tito Jackson was there to immediately counter this asinine attempt to frame this as a race issue, and inflame racial tensions.
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( 35:27 – )
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsZZ-J7mcU
( 35:27 – )
TITO JACKSON: “Mark, the leadership of the teachers unions is primarily white, but SO IS the leadership of most charter school in the city of Boston, and so I think that THAT is a critical component.”
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Y
Tito then changes topic, then proceeds to debunk the vaunted charter school wait list numbers.
DEBUNKING THE WAITLIST
Think about it. If here were 30,000 – 40,000 people furious at being wait-listed and denied entry to a charter school, because there wasn’t enough of such schools, wouldn’t that mean these parents would have formed an army of volunteer campaign workers swarming the state pushing for passage of Question 2— knocking on doors, phone-banking, marching down streets, etc.? They wouldn’t need $20 million of out-of-state billionaire money. The volunteer component would be enough to win the day.
No, there’s nothing of the kind going on in Massachusetts. The pro-Question-2 stuff is all big money commercials, mailers, and robo-calls, not live calls from live volunteer workers, or live canvassers knocking on doors.
Anyway, back to what Tito could have said to Mark regarding the overwhelming whiteness of Massachusetts charter leaders, as well as those leaders not living in the neighborhoods where their charter schools are located.
Here’s what Tito could have said, but was said by someone else at the other debate.
In the other debate, the FEMALE MODERATOR, in a question to Charter Lady Marty Walz, goes into detail about THE TOTAL ABSENCE OF ANY BLACKS, OR ANY LOCAL PARENTS OR CITIZENS IN ANY POSITION TO EXERCISE ANY DECISION-MAKING POWER OVER THESE CHARTER SCHOOLS.
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(34:30 – )
(34:30 – )
FEMALE MODERATOR: “Representative Walz, for some who oppose Question 2, one of the issues that it comes down to is this, and I’m going to paraphrase Carol Burris, she’s a former New York high school, and she says
” ‘The democratic governance of our public schools is a American tradition worth saving.’
U
” … and then the Annenberg institute for school reform at Brown University earlier this year released a study, and they analyzed EVERY board for EVERY charter school in the state of Massachusetts. and they found that ..
“31% of trustees (school board members) statewide are affiliated with the financial services or corporate sector. Only 14% were parents.
“60% of the charter boards had NO parent representation on their boards WHATSOEVER.
“Those that DID were largely confined to charter schools that served MOSTLY WHITE students.
“Here’s an example: City on a Hill (Charter) Schools in Roxbury — again, this is according to the Annenberg Institute Report — has schools in Roxbury and New Bedford, (has a) 14-member board, trustees for all three of those schools.
“ONLY ONE member of the board lives in New Bedford. Three live in Boston, but NONE in Roxgury. The rest live in (upscale communities) Brookline, Cambridge, Cohasset, and Hingham.
“So they (at Annenberg) ask:
” ‘How can those charter schools be considered locally controlled and locally accountable?’ ”
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Charter Lady Walz responds by claiming — and winning applause from the charter folks stacked in the audience — that local control through school boards has “wholly failed’ to produce quality schools and educate children, and need to be wiped out.
Those in the audience are cheering the end of democracy? Really?
Wait. Isn’t Massachusetts the highest achieving state in the U.S.? Really? She says that democratically-governed schools with elected school boards in Massachusetts have “wholly failed” students? Really?
At another point in the debate, Charter Lady claims their group is about improving all types of schools, but here she is recommending replacing all of traditonal public schools with privately-managed charter schools. So which is it?
The Moderator interrupts by insisting that Charter Lady answer the question about accountability, and Charter Lady brings up the only method needed — the Death Penalty AND THAT’S IT…. but no accountability to parents and citizens, while those schools are actually open, and ZERO OPPORTUNITY OR MECHANISM for those parents and citizens to enjoy any kind of decision-making power over shose schools while they are in operation.
And we need to watch John Oliver again to find out how well that works out:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think public school parents in Massachusetts probably figured out that “ed reform” is about testing for public school students and opening new charter schools.
It isn’t like it’s a secret- they say it themselves it’s about 1. choice and 2. testing:
“Prior to the event, Bush spoke with me about his views on education policy, reiterating long-held positions in support of school choice, standards-based reform and the importance of accountability”
It’s literally all they talk about. The one and only time public schools are even mentioned is when they’re devising new measurement schemes. They have absolutely nothing to offer existing public schools, and it’s such an echo chamber they don’t even notice the omission.
Bush spends this entire interview trashing public schools and promoting charter and private schools. People aren’t stupid. They probably notice no one in ed reform has anything to offer the schools their children currently attend.
https://www.the74million.org/article/74-interview-jeb-bush-yes-on-choice-and-standards-no-on-trump-and-clinton
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This investment of money is needed to push the charter industry and to counter the well-informed criticisms of it gathering steam and evidence around the country, as in your other post about the frauds in Florida. The money for charters is not getting to students in need but flowing to profit seekers. The illusion of doing good via “choice” MUST be sustained.
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I mistakenly added a quotation mark to the link, which prevented it from embedding.
Here we go again:
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Here’s a great anti-Question-2 op-ed from a Massachusetts public school (high school) teacher:
http://www.recorder.com/my-turn-charter-schools-4942765?utm_content=buffer7b0d2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Opinion > Columns
My Turn/Martin: Charter schools don’t serve public well
By LUKAS MARTIN
Friday, September 30, 2016
I once heard an interesting parable at the beginning of an economics course. It went something like this: a physicist, a chemist, and an economist are stranded on a remote island with an unopened can of food that might help them survive until being rescued. The physicist devises a plan to use the force of gravity to smash the can open, while the chemist proposes heating the can before attempting to open it. The economist merely says, “Well, assume we have a can opener.”
Economists study the allocation of resources using — as the story underscores — models and assumptions of how things work in a perfect world. However, crafting law and public policy requires that we also contend with the vagaries and pesky imperfections of the real world. Since the charter school movement was predicated on the application of free-market principles to our system of public education, it is with this caveat in mind that Massachusetts voters should consider the ballot initiative on charter schools in November.
There are many reasons not to lift the current cap on charter schools. They have a devastating financial impact on traditional public schools, an unproven record of success, and are not accountable to local communities. Furthermore the argument for their expansion is based on misleading claims of massive waitlists (see the state auditor’s report on this), and it is arguably reckless to hold a public referendum on such a complex topic in the first place (remember Brexit?).
Yet I believe the most important reason to vote “No” on Question 2 is a more fundamental, troubling and largely unacknowledged issue: as they currently operate, charter schools do not serve their intended purpose and cannot reasonably claim to be public entities.
As originally conceived in the early 1990s, charter schools were to be granted more autonomy in curriculum, administration, and hiring practices in return for a different sort of accountability (five-year reviews from the state). The idea was for charter schools to serve as laboratories in which unique approaches could be tested, and promising results then shared with and replicated by traditional public schools. At the same time, market pressure in the form of local enrollment decisions would provide the needed incentive for traditional schools to improve in order to retain students.
In these ways — testing out new approaches and creating an incentive for reform — charter schools would be serving the broader public and could arguably be considered public entities. Unfortunately this model assumes the proverbial can opener; in applying free-market principles to schools, it assumes a perfect flow of information and perfect freedom of choice that simply do not reflect reality. The first problem is that market signals and information are not freely available, since best practices from successful charters are not being shared or replicated in any way.
Don’t just take my word for it. In December of 2014 the Office of the State Auditor released an official report on the state’s oversight of charter schools. It explains how charter schools are required to document their innovative programs and best practices while the onus is on DESE to disseminate this information and provide “technical assistance” in replicating successes.
Unfortunately, “DESE has not adequately documented that it has facilitated these practices, nor has it taken action to broadly disseminate charter school innovative best practice information itself since 2009.”
The system is not working, and as a result, “charter schools may not be fulfilling their statutory purpose of stimulating the development of innovative public education programs and providing models for replication in other public schools.”
It is not enough that a well-intentioned principal here or there has reached out to their counterparts to try to share ideas; until there is a well-designed and consistently applied mechanism to ensure that charters are actually serving as “laboratories of innovation” for the state, they cannot claim to serve the public good. Instead, they operate as a separate system that benefits a very small number of Massachusetts families.
The second flawed assumption has to do with the application process. Within the region that a charter school serves, any child may enter a lottery to be admitted. In that way, charters are considered open to the public and are thus public entities. The problem is that the act of applying in the first place acts as a barrier and creates a self-selective process whereby families with the awareness, stability, know-how, and general means of applying are those who ultimately attend. For any number of reasons — transience, homelessness, language barriers, economic hardship, to name just a few — some families are unaware of the opportunity or less able to apply.
As a result, in Greenfield we have a charter school (a good one, by all accounts) that serves ZERO students who are English Language Learners, and only 25 percent who are classified as “Economically Disadvantaged” as compared to nearly 46 percent in the Greenfield Public Schools. The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported on a similar finding in August: “Northampton Study: Charter School families well-to-do, highly educated.” Whatever the theory, in practice charter school demographics are not representative of local populations. The assumption that all families are perfectly free to choose by entering a lottery, which underpins this system’s claim to serve the public, is bogus.
There are some excellent charter schools that do wonderful things for some kids, and they could be a useful tool in a multifaceted approach to public school reform. Unfortunately the charter school movement as a whole rests on faulty assumptions, and until these issues are studied and addressed to ensure that charter schools truly serve the broad public interest it would be foolish to increase their number by the dozens. So in November, remember that Question 2 is NOT a referendum on your local charter school, or even on the relative merits of charter schools generally. The question is whether we should vastly expand an entire system that has never functioned as intended.
Martin teaches history at Greenfield High School.
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Australia Allows high levels of public funding to private schools, and also charge fees
http://theconversation.com/yes-some-australian-private-schools-are-overfunded-heres-why-66212?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20October%204%202016%20-%205731&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20October%204%202016%20-%205731+CID_3de5c9ab51d2da6293d98fb62f52143d&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Yes%20some%20Australian%20private%20schools%20are%20overfunded%20%20heres%20why
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Good article regarding white suburban voters denying black urban families the schools they want. Clearly, the unions don’t care about those families; they care about some potential future competition.
Charters should be “capped” when there is no more demand for them. While there is, this is nothing but politics and self-interest.
https://www.the74million.org/article/its-heartbreaking-boston-parents-ask-why-their-wealthy-neighbors-are-fighting-charter-schools
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The demand is manufactured.
It is about as real as the “demand” for Trump University. Remember how many students signed up? According to you, that is reason enough to allow Trump U. to continue unregulated because eventually some of the students will notice the scam.
FYI — proof of this manufactured demand was evident during the NYC rally sponsored by the same pro-charter group that is spending tens of millions of dollars not on education, but to “advertise” education just like Trump U did! So it’s all good.
One charter school parent claimed she traveled from Queens to a Brooklyn charter school. She also said there were parents “from all over, including Staten Island”.
But there are “thousands” of children on the wait list for this charter! How odd that they couldn’t even find enough students in a district of 20,000 students (the size of many cities) to fill the seats in a small charter. And they had to accept students from far afield in order to make sure seats weren’t left empty even though not one of them could legally enroll unless every single in district student was accommodated first. Corruption? Or just lies about a demand that doesn’t exist?
But since charter schools manufacture demand like Trump U. does, it is no wonder that their supporters desire for honesty is so similar to Donald Trump’s.
Only one side has “self-interest” and it is the side that Donald Trump wants. If that doesn’t give you pause in your claims that Donald Trump really cares about “black urban families” getting the schools they “want” — (the ones that label 5 year old children violent and go to great lengths to publicize how violent young 5 year old minority children are so that the public can understand why police shootings are always justified.)
No wonder BLM knows charters are the biggest fraud. They ONLY want to teach the urban students who they can profit from and are more than happy to label the remaining ones violent 5 year olds if they can profit from doing so. So they do. Shame on the people who think this is okay and refuse to speak out against it. Maybe when your charters say “hey, we know that 20% of those 5 year olds aren’t violent and we know that charters that suspend them are not really interested in teaching them they re interested in getting them out of their school” you can post and pretend it’s about urban kids.
Instead, you want us to believe that the same group who keeps advertising that schools will be violent and dangerous places if Kindergarten, first and second graders can’t be suspended whenever the school thinks they are “dangerous”, is fighting for these “urban kids” that they love to label as violent if it turns out they are too expensive to teach and won’t be a “credit” to the charter school.
How low can you go?
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NYC public school parent,
Parents (mostly low income and black) apparently demand them.
To have white teachers in the suburbs asking their neighbors to deny these people the schools they want is not progressive. Our property tax-based education system at it’s worst; those who have want to stop those who don’t from getting the better education they want for their children.
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“apparently”??
What parents are DEMANDING that private groups who spend millions advertising how violent the children in inner city schools are must provide a choice for them? That’s about as honest as Donald Trump saying that his university was perfectly fine because students “demanded” them.
Do YOU believe that the demand for Trump U. means we should all just shut up and direct more public resources to his university?
In fact, parents at urban neighborhoods demand good schools. If you give them a choice between a public school with a democratically elected board that is well funded and doesn’t have to spend a penny on any expensive children but can use it all for their well-behaved children, and a charter school supported by people who claim that lots of low-income minority children are violent at age 5 and 6, I suspect they would choose the public school.
Your fight for that false choice is truly appalling. Why not fight for magnet schools if you think urban parents of well-behaved children demand to attend schools where all expensive children are pushed out and all monies are spent on the well-behaved children?
What is most appalling is that those same people pushing charters also push the meme that public schools serving mostly at-risk kids should be able to teach them with large class sizes because the outrageously high results of the charter school leader who is proclaiming this to the world proves it is true.
There is no “demand”. It is just as phone as the “thousands” on wait lists in NYC and yet parents from Queens and Staten Island are easily getting spots in charter schools that are supposed to give priority to the thousands of at-risk students in their district. Either those parents don’t want the charter, or the charter doesn’t want those parents. Whether it is lack of demand, or corruption, your willingness to state facts that are not true is Trumpian in nature. No doubt that’s why he says exactly the same thing as you do! I’m sure he is just being as honest as he usually is. He cares about those kids as much as you do, right? We have all misjudged him.
Even Hillary Clinton understands that charters aren’t doing the job they claim they are doing. No doubt that makes you want to vote for Trump.
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NYC public school parent,
Sorry, but you’re describing what white, suburban parents want, or even more, what teachers want. You are not describing what urban parents want.
That places you in the same category as the suburban parents who will never see a charter school in their town, but will vote against it and deny urban parents what they want.
Did you read the article?
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That article had 2 parents from this charter school.
Despite the supposedly thousands on the wait list, how large is the 5th grade?
The article you posted links to a Mass State Report Card. There seemed to be only 25 7th graders in 2014. 40 6th graders and 45 5th graders. Are they in classes of 23 and 22? Nice. Why aren’t their classes full, if there are truly “thousands” on the wait list?
Is there an extremely popular public school that turns away students when their classes aren’t full?
How come the same people claim we need to “lift the charter cap” aren’t demanding the charters fill the seats they already have?
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