Mercedes Schneider has been following the money trail in Massachusetts, where voters will decide whether to allow charters to expand by 12 a year indefinitely. The issue is Question 2 on the November 8 ballot.
Some of the money supporting charters is “dark money,” bundled by committees that are not required to identify their donors publicly.
“To date, the ballot committees in favor of Question 2 have raised just shy of $14.5 million in unique dollars** to expand charters in MA– with $8.6 million of that amount (60 percent) coming from New York-based Families for Excellent Schools– and being dumped into the coffers of Great Schools Massachusetts.
“In contrast, the single ballot committee opposing Question 2, Save Our Public Schools, has raised $7.2 million– just under half of the amount raised by the pro-charter-expansion camp.”
“Thus, the total money spent on MA Question 2 is currently at $21.7 million. By comparison, as of October 05, 2016, the marijuana legalization ballot measure has a total of just over $4.3 million in funding ($3.7 million, in favor, and $634,000, opposing)– or only 20 percent of the amount of money behind Question 2 on charter expansion.”
Are the people of Massachusetts prepared to turn their public school dollars over to private corporations? Can they be fooled by expensive propaganda to privatize their public schools?
The public schools of Massachusetts are the best in the nation. Don’t let he privatizers buy them or steal them?
Ring doorbellls. Call your neighbors and friends. Don’t let the Walton/Walmart family of Arkansas take over and privatize your schools. The schools were built and paid for with your tax dollars. They belong to the people of Massachusetts, not to Wall Street and Walmart.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The Obama administration’s top education official urged Michigan school leaders to think through the consequences of closing potentially dozens of struggling schools in Detroit and across the state.
“The key question is: what are they being replaced with?” asked U.S. Secretary of Education John King in a Wednesday interview with Chalkbeat. “What are the opportunities that will be available to students instead?”
The secretary says Michigan has a poor track record for improving schools — and such poor supervision over charter schools that the privately-run, publicly funded schools do not offer a strong alternative to district schools.”
It’s too late for this in Michigan and Ohio. The Obama Administration and ed reformers were cheerleaders for any and all charters in Ohio and Michigan. They promoted this every step of the way. They’re STILL nor regulating charters in Michigan and Ohio.
Duncan traveled to Detroit less than 3 years ago to marvel at the magic power of charter schools. Now King wants to talk about “consequences”?
Now they want to deny any accountability for their role in this?
Massachusetts should be extremely wary of ed reformers. Take a little field trip. Go to Ohio, Michigan or Pennsylvania and ask about how well privatization efforts has worked out for us.
It’s harmed BOTH public schools AND charter schools. No one wins.
If the Obama Administration is worried about unregulated charter schools, why did they just invest hundreds of millions of dollars in opening more of them?
No one is thinking about “consequences”. They’re expanding like mad, anywhere and everywhere.
The Obama administration were granting tens of millions to open new charters in Ohio when every newspaper in the state was calling for regulation. It’s as if they’re actively getting in the way of regulation- replacing as many public schools as they possibly can before their term is up.
Also, a big question- why are taxpayers picking up the freight for the Walton’s supplanting of public education, when the Waltons and other rich people are willing to pay for it, themselves?
Here’s the actual ed reform record in Michigan:
“In the past decade, state legislators have reduced their investment in traditional public schools by 25%, while school enrollment has dropped by 200,000 students.
But at the same time, they’ve added more than 300 charter schools – some are great, more are terrible, but none are monitored very well — and also allowed for-profit, cyber schools to take millions of our tax dollars, and those don’t seem to work at all.
That’s right: we’re funding more schools than ever before, with much less money and fewer students.
You don’t have to be an AP calculus student to know that doesn’t add up.
So what gets the squeeze? The same public schools most of us attended.”
It’s the same in OH and PA. They don’t talk about this when pushing these same “reforms” in Massachusetts and people should ask why they never mention their own failures.
They’ll tell you to look at DC and NYC and New Orleans. You’ll never hear Ohio or Michigan or Pennsylvania even mentioned. There’s a reason for that. The public school systems in these states are now ranked lower than when this started, 15 years ago.
http://michiganradio.org/post/were-spending-less-money-more-schools-michigan-thats-why-were-near-bottom#stream/0
“The public school systems in these states are now ranked lower than when this started, 15 years ago.”
That’s a feature, not a bug.
In Massachusetts, Governor Baker is desperate to stop
the initiative that legalizes marijuana from passing.
(NOTE: the first half of the article deals with all the
campaign finance violations during Baker’s 2014 run
for governor)
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_politics/2016/09/dodgy_donors_prompt_56g_charlie_baker_purge?utm_content=buffer894ef&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=bufferand
In the article above, Governor Baker’s latest argument
opposing the marijuana initiative is that
the “YES” campaign is being funded by
outside, out-of-state money trying to
influence and internal matter for the state of
Massachusetts, and who are out to profit from
the initiative’s passing.
Hmmmm … where have I heard THAT before?
However, he’s also desperate to pass Question 2,
which will lift the charter school cap, and expand
charter schools, which is getting several times the
out-of-state money that the marijuana initiative is
getting.
So it’s wrong to fund the marijuana initiative with
out-of-state money because … marijuana is BAD,
and it’s BAD when those out-of-state pot folks
profit from the initiative passing.
But it’s right to fund the charter school initiative with
out-of-state money because … charter schools are GOOD
and it’s GOOD when those out-of-state charter folks
profit from the initiative passing.
I can predict what will happen in Massachusetts if voters allow this “movement” to completely capture state government- public schools will drop completely off the radar when charter-mania takes hold. All education initiatives will come a distant SECOND to “choice”.
You’ll be amazed at how quickly public schools become the unfashionable “safety net” system that no lawmaker can be bothered with. Every issue or difficult problem with existing public schools will have the same answer – “more choice!” You’ll find entire state law debates are conducted exclusively by and for ed reformers. Public school advocates will be marginalized and ignored, accused preemptively of “self interest” or “working for adults”. The only time your schools will merit mention is when they’re putting in a new testing regime or reporting scores and even then the sole analysis will be a comparison to charter schools. Your kids will become data producers, and public schools become data collection centers- useful and valued ONLY to prove or disprove ed reform theory.
Since the Secretary of Ed is traveling to Michigan, maybe he could check out this absolutely ridiculous example of ed reform gone wild:
http://michiganradio.org/post/new-whitmore-lake-cyber-school-took-advantage-loophole-get-chartered#stream/0
It’s a charter school for the children of political conservatives.
Because that’s what we need in this country, right? The children of Republicans and Democrats to attend separate schools. God forbid the child of a liberal should be forced to attend a public school with the child of a conservative.
They go nuts once they get a foot in the door.
They’ll open any kind of school anywhere, without a second thought as to the consequences for existing public schools, or anything else.
That’s the plan! That’s why the idea of charters was started by the racists who wanted segregated schools in the south. How else could they keep out the unwanted children except by demanding NO oversight and no obligation to educate every child.
Georgia Sen. Talmadge, when faced with the court ruling on integration, proposed privatized public schools. More than a decade after his death, he gets his wish.
Bingo. The KKK has been advocating charter schools since 1954’s Brown v BoEd. The difference between the KKK & ed reformers is the reformers disingenuous civil rights arguments. The language justifying stratification by test scores and segregation by disability is peppered throughout The Thomas B Fordham Institute’s policy papers.
http://kkk.bz/?p=2460
https://edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/financing-the-education-of-high-need-students-0
“with $8.6 million of that amount (60 percent) coming from New York-based Families for Excellent Schools…”
Families for Excellent Schools is pro-suspension of Kindergarten children. They heavily support charter schools that claim that 20% of their students who are only 5 and 6 years old are so violent that they need to be given out of school suspensions. It will surprise no one that the charter schools FES supports only seem to suspend so many young children in their schools that serve mostly low-income non-white students and not in their schools with disproportionate numbers of middle class white students.
FES also attacked Mayor de Blasio for saying that NYC public schools should no longer suspend children in Kindergarten through 2nd grade. There was no reason for FES to get involved since it had nothing to do with their pro-charter mission, but since the charters they are very “pro” insist that lots of their 5 through 7 year olds are very violent, it’s important for FES to make the public understand that a “good” school is one who recognizes the violent tendencies of their youngest children — especially when those children just happen to be low-income kids.
No doubt once there are more Massachusetts charters they can do the bidding of the organization that made their existence possible and suspend the heck out of any child they decide to target for removal.
Thank you for this information.
http://wrsi.com/monte/dissecting-the-great-schools-massachusetts-ad-on-question-2/
This is from Monte Belmonte a popular radio personality from my neck of the woods in western mass. I’m glad he decided to speak up.
No on 2