The November referendum on charters in Massachusetts has raised important questions. The measure would permit the addition of 12 new charter schools every tear into the future. What problem does that solve?
Harvard doctoral student Jacob Fay writes:
It pits group against group, reduces the funding available to Boston public schools, diverts funding from public schools to charter schools.
This is a crucial election. The billionaires are throwing in $20 million or so because if they can sell charters to the most successful state in the nation, they can sell them anywhere.
This election has national significance. Will Bay Staters agree to privatize public schools or stand together to reject privatization? Privatization always produces segregation. It never produces equity.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Privatization always produces segregation.”
My recollection is that parochial schools in the Boston area played in important respects a positive role during the fights about busing, as they provided an environment that was racially integrated and safe and featuring high quality academics. Almost inevitably, kids in those environments became less prejudiced than their parents had been, who had gone to more segregated public schools.
And as for public charter schools, it seems plausible that they may play a positive role as an appealing option for people from diverse cultures, open to community residents via lottery application rather than by exam, audition, interview, essays as is the case for many of our most esteemed public schools.
Those concerned about racial balance in Boston schools may find this of interest:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/04/23/boston-latin-little-outreach-city-black-latino-students/of6NlYrJhR8PvxMUYNi50L/story.html
Veteran PBS Broadcaster Callie Crossley finds that all this outside support for Question 2 to raise the charter school cap — tens of millions ($21.7 million) from out of state folks like Eli Broad, the Walton family of Walmart, Wall Street hedge fund managers PLUS three top-tier law firms providing pro bono legal work — to be troubling.
To think that all this has been given out of simple generosity, merely because those funders care deeply about children’s education — the same funders who have never given that enormous amount of support to anything previously, nor have they ever done so with no strings attached, and no expectation of return …
Well, she says that “just doesn’t add up.”:
http://news.wgbh.org/2016/10/07/local-news/question-2-lifting-charter-school-cap-doesnt-add?utm_content=bufferf4666&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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CALLIE CROSSLEY, (veteran PBS braodcaster):
“Have charters successfully leveled the proverbial playing field for the kids who are most disadvantaged? Bay State Banner publisher Melvin Miller says yes. He points to the Edward W. Brooke Charter School where last year the kids ‘outperformed students from the affluent towns of Weston, Newton, and Belmont’ on one of the college readiness tests.
“But I am not convinced. How can the mountains of positive data be trusted when side-by-side comparisons aren’t based on the same factors? Traditional public schools have to follow certain regulations about staffing, curriculum, and hours. And they must take all students. Charters are free to custom design school staffing and operations. And they don’t have to take the most challenging students.
“Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson opposes the charter expansion proposal because it is built off the backs of district schools who lose funding when public school students enroll in charter schools. Jackson points out the lost funding pays for ‘art, music and electives.’
“Supporters of charter expansion insist that isn’t true. They cite a Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation study. But, that same report doesn’t acknowledge that the state has stiffed the school districts for the last three years, not paying back the reimbursements due them. That’s why Superintendent Tommy Chang—long a charter school supporter—isn’t convinced either because he says, ‘there is no funding tied to this measure.’
“And it’s also a no on Question 2 for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is “very concerned” about the thousands of children ‘living in districts with tight budgets where every dime matters.’
“Meanwhile, I can’t figure out why the charter cap expansion has gotten so much big money from corporations both here and outside the state. WGBH News reporter Isaiah Thompson discovered that ‘no single ballot question has drawn as much in donations.’
“And I still wonder what was the incentive, last year, when three lawyers from three competing white-shoe law firms jointly filed a lawsuit claiming fewer charters denied minority students’ civil rights. Call me cynical but I don’t believe the high-priced lawyers’ donated time, and the millions in contributions are about making sure all of Massachusetts’ students have a better education.
“I’m far from a mathematician, but something just doesn’t add up.
“No on Question 2.”
Privatization solves no problems. Massachusetts is known for having one of the best public education systems in the nation. People should value what they have and work to improve it, not undermine it. Public education is the promise of democracy. Privatization often costs more, weakens public education, eliminates local control, enhances segregation and offers no magic solutions. Look at the disastrous record of privatization in other states! Don’t be fooled by dark money, hype, spin and outside interests that want to profit from your children!
In the COMMENTS section, here’s a comment I posted to Mike, a Question 2 supporter
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Mike,
Can you provide an example of JUST ONE EXAMPLE in the past where these folks — the Walton Family of Walmart, Los Angeles real estate mogul Eli Broad, Wall Street hedge fund managers — have poured in this kind of cash ($21.7 million) to something … no strings attached, and with no expectations of monetary return?
That $21.7 figure of out-of-state Question 2 support can be found here in this well-researched article:
If, as you and Question 2 supporters like Marty Walz claim, the most ruthless capitalists that have ever walked the Earth are now kicking in this kind of cash to pass Question 2 merely because they care so much about children’s education —
… and not about their profiting through the privatization of public schools brought about by the expansion of privately-run charter schools,
… or also not about their profiting from their on-line and digital learning products that will be sold to these charter school chains —
… then I’m sure you could google around the internet and find a past example where they have done something similar .. .again out of generosity… with no strings attached, and no expectation of an eventual monetary return…
Something like …
“Well, you know back in 2000-something, or 1900-something, these same folks donated $20 million to the (INSERT CHARITABLE CAUSE HERE). Here’s the link that proves this.”
No, I didn’t think so, Mike.
Seriously. The argument that Question 2 and its insane amount of out-of-state support from Walton, Broad, Wall Street, etc. is about corporate generosity just doesn’t pass the smell test.
So the real question is:
To whom do the schools of Massachusetts belong?
The citizens and parents who pay the taxes there?
… or …
… a bunch of money-motivated out-of-state billionaires and Wall Street hedge fund managers who are trying to buy those same schools via Question 2, and the resulting expansion of privately-managed charter schools which they control, or also profit from their on-line and digital learning products that will be sold to these charter school chains?
If you believe the former, THEN FOR GOD’S SAKE, VOTE “NO” ON QUESTION 2.
Send them a message to the out-of-state (and in-state) profiteers:
Massachusetts schools are NOT FOR SALE!!!
” then I’m sure you could google around the internet and find a past example where they have done something similar .. .again out of generosity… with no strings attached, and no expectation of an eventual monetary return…”
Try attachment 19 here.
Click to access 2014-133441466-0bff07b1-F.pdf
Please do let us know your thoughts after completing reading it.
Stephen,
Thank you for offering the Walton Family Foundation as an example of a selfless organization that makes grants purely out of generosity, with no strings attached, and no expectation of an eventual monetary return. You are joking, right? The Walton Family Foundation is the Walmart family, and is now the richest family in America, with a net worth exceeding $130 billion. Its foundation is committed solely to privatization, to charters and vouchers, not to public schools. Its fortune was created by paying workers less than the minimum wage, by not giving workers full-time jobs, by destroying communities and Main Street shops owned by local residents. If the Walmart didn’t make big enough profits, it closes down and preys on another community. The towns it leaves behind are bereft of businesses, because they were all destroyed by Walmart, which had no ties to the community and didn’t care what damage they inflicted on the local economy. You would be hard pressed to find an American-made product in any vast Walmart store. Walmart is also famed for its antagonism to unions. That is probably why they are major funders of Teach for America, which provides the scab labor for charter schools. Walmart claims credit on its website for funding one of every four charter schools in the nation. It has pledged to spend another $1 billion to open more charter schools over the next five years.
I assume you are right that they don’t expect to make a profit from creating charter schools, but they are advancing their political goals: privatization and union-busting. Not what I call generous and selfless.
Thanks so much for sharing their financial document.
You can learn even more about the Waltons by reading their website: Start here: http://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/our-impact/k12-education
Here is a list of their most recent education grants: Every privatizing group imaginable is represented. Do some close reading to see if you can find any public schools on this list: http://2015annualreport.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/grant-reports
It is disturbing to see the NPR received $1 million from this rightwing foundation, and even the New York Times got $350,000. Chalkbeat, which covers education, got $350,000, and EdWeek got a grant of $70,000. What does this do to their coverage of education issues?
The biggest winners, it appears from my fast scan, are KIPP and TFA.
The Waltons have two goals: privatizing public education and destroying teachers’ unions. So far, no evidence for either, but that won’t slow them down.
According to BallotPedia, org, there are 1,854 schools in 404 school districts in Massachusetts with more than 70,000 teachers working with almost one million students in its k-12 schools.
Automatically opening 12 autocratic, opaque, often fraudulent and inferior, corporate charter schools annually, it will take about 154-years (probably faster as the surviving schools are financially starved, go bankrupt and close) to bring an end to community based, locally controlled, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public education in that state killing the foundation of democracy and the profession of teaching.
And this will be done to create a publicly funded, private sector, profit-based industry that benefits a few at the top, because whoever works in those schools, if those jobs aren’t eventually totally automated, will end up workign longer hours earning poverty wages without benefits. It’s easy to imagine even the local administrators being replaced with automated artificial intelligence. Suckerberg’s Facebook is on the fast track to create AI.
Then the day will come when there will be no need for children to teach, because there will be no jobs for them when they become adults. Thanks to Bill Gates and his cabal of oligarchs, there will be no need for children so all living humans of child bearing age will be gelded except for the 0.1 percent who are the wealthiest humans on the planet.
In less than two centuries, the population will plunge from about 8 billion today to 8 million, and if genetic science and nanotechnology make breakthroughs in lifespan, the billionaires of today might still be alive to see that day when one of the leaders of the Eugenics movement realizes his goals through his son.
“Bill Gates and Eugenics: The World Needs Fewer People”
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/bill-gates-and-eugenics-the-world-needs-fewer-people/
SPREAD THE WORD because state lawmakers and voters everywhere need to know right now that the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals.”
The report documents multiple cases of financial risk, waste, fraud, abuse, lack of accountability of federal funds, and lack of proof that the schools were implementing federal programs in accordance with federal requirements.
Throughout our nation, private charter schools backed by billionaire hedge funds are being allowed to divert hundreds of millions of public school tax dollars away from educating America’s children and into private corporate pockets. Any thoughtful person should pause a moment and ask: “Why are hedge funds the biggest promoters of charter schools?” Hedge funds aren’t altruistic — there’s got to be big profit in “non-profit” charter schools in order for hedge fund managers to be involved in backing them.
And even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
One typical practice of charter schools is to pay exorbitant rates to rent buildings that are owned by the charter school board members or by their proxy companies which then pocket the public’s tax money as profit. Another profitable practice is that although charter schools use public tax money to purchase millions of dollars of such things as computers, the things they buy with public tax money become their private property and can be sold by them for profit…and then use public tax money to buy more, and sell again, and again, and again, pocketing profit after profit.
The Washington State and New York State supreme courts and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions.
Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money. Moreover, as the NAACP and ACLU have reported, charter schools are often engaged in racial and economic-class discrimination.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO FEDERAL MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC. Hillary Clinton could, if elected President, on day one in office issue an Executive Order to the Department of Education to do just that. Tell her today to do that! Send her the above information to make certain she knows about the Inspector General’s findings and about the abuses being committed by charter schools.
Agree, but what does this say about elected representatives who pass this kind
of legislation. Clearly, it’s failed public policy that should be corrected. No innovation, no replication and no reason to continue poorly designed policy.
I don’t see Jacob s post
“I don’t see Jacob’s post”
It’s here: http://edushyster.com/choice-for-me-but-not-for-thee/
Your link points elsewhere, Diane.