The national board of the NAACP is meeting tomorrow.
Please call as soon as possible to urge them to support their conference’s resolution calling for a moratorium on new charter schools.
The number is: 410 580 5777
The national board will vote on whether to confirm the resolution passed by its convention this past summer calling for a moratorium on new charter schools because of their negative effects on African-American communities. This resolution shook up the billionaire-funded corporate reform movement because it pretends to be in league with the civil rights movement. The resolution stripped away this pretense, as the 1% have never been allies of the civil rights movement. Consider charter school leaders like the Waltons of Arkansas, whose Walmart stores employ over one million people and are resolutely non-union (make that anti-union). The best way for them to advance the rights of black and brown people is to pay them good wages so their children can be well fed and live in decent housing with good medical care.
The NAACP resolution recognizes that charter schools are a distraction from the income inequality that harms children and families. Address root causes. Help schools and children. Don’t close schools and destroy communities.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sent a letter citing research on charters disproportionate discipline projects found on your blog with email address from BATS.
LikeLike
I called NAACP with this message.
The woman who answered was not very pleased with this info. I urge
Everyone to call. NOW.
LikeLike
Ditto, Jill.
LikeLike
Ms. Ravitch,
Having enjoyed your book Left Back years ago, I am stunned to read this insanity on your blog.
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. Conflating real, actionable steps to be taken to provide competition in education for better outcomes with some vague, and crucially not practicable thing about “income equality” with thought bubbles that somehow imply that this thing called “income equality” necessarily harms children and families.
It’s bizarre.
Charters provide choice and millions of poor families are voting with their feet to get free of the union failure factories that rich people can buy their way out of .
Teachers unions should never have been allowed in the first place. Good teachers should be paid more and bad ones should be fired, the way things work in the real world.
Charters are the best thing to ever happen educationally to poor kids in this nation.
Shame on you for perpetuating unsubstantiated lies.
LikeLike
Christopher,
I don’t think you know much about charters. They fail more often than they succeed and they make some entrepreneurs millions of dollars.
LikeLike
I am sincerely curious about the data. (No, I don’t work for anyone but myself and only care about good public policy.) Can you please point me to studies which demonstrate those ill effects?
The only ones I see demonstrate value in terms of better learning opportunities for disadvantaged youth.
LikeLike
Christopher,
Please read my last two books, where I cite the research on both charters and vouchers.
Charters can get high test scores by excluding kids who have disabilities, English language learners, and behavior problems. They can raise their scores by kicking out or repeatedly suspending those with low scores.
On this blog, I have repeated documented stories about charter scandals: fraud, graft, self-dealing, theft in the charter sector because of lack of oversight. In Ohio, the missing money is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, paid out to for-profit operators who refuse to be held accountable for poor performance and are protected by their political donations.
LikeLike
However, aside totally from the issue of whether charters work or do not (or what, more likely, the distribution of outcomes looks like in a time series), I seriously take issue with the intellectually-dishonest attempt to link something measurable (like individual student or school outcomes) with something as vague and ill-defined as “income inequality.”
I don’t think it helps your cause to make sweeping statements about things that by their nature are noting but contentious theories about perceived reality.
Schools are – or should be – designed to educate individuals to make their own choices in this world. They cannot be used as mechanistic “inputs” to a desired socially-engineered output.
Every time such social engineering has been tried, it has failed.
So while you are rightly to be judged on your experience and thoughtfulness inre: educational programs and pedagogy, I’m afraid you’ve got hard yards ahead of you to convince me that public sector unions were ever a good idea, and moreover that competition which works beautifully in every other area of human endeavor, somehow is a bad thing when it comes to schools.
LikeLike
Test scores on standardized tests are primarily a reflection of family income and education. When they enroll the same students, charter schools get the same (or worse) results than public schools.
The World Economic Forum recently named Finland the best school system in the world. All of Finland’s teachers and principals belong to the same union.
No district or state that prohibits teacher unions is successful academically.
LikeLike
Diane and readers,
Please note the impulsivity and immaturity of Mr. Messina’s choice of words and how he couches political events when he decides he does not agree with something. I think his character is to be vetted, and so far, it leaves a poor impression, given the way he tweets. Read below one of his recent tweets and the decide if this is someone who is capable of rationally thinking through the pros and cons of charter schools.
Normally, I know you don’t allow cursing in your living room, but it is only included here to put a sample of Mr. Messina’s potty gullet into context. Mr. Messina also exhibits narcissistic and violent proclivities that would send him to the shame gallows should he ever try and run for any reasonable or average political office.
He sounds as though he leans heavily in the direction of “idiot”.
Christopher Messina
Christopher Messina – @CJAMessina
Fucking @SwedenUN @SwedeninUSA ABSTAINED from the vote???!!! I hope #Stockholm is overrun by knife-wielding #jihadists. Scandy Assholes.
LikeLike
Christopher,
In “the real world”, drumming out the customers who cost you the most money is NECESSARY. Marketing to the customers who cost you the least money is considered “good business practices” and any expenditure of funds to do so is using your funds wisely to advertise for the cheapest customers so you can make a bigger profit.
In “the real world” no one wants to educate the kids with special needs who cost too much money.
In “the real world” public school systems can provide all kinds of choice within the system and without private actors working under their own rules to get rid of any child they choose with no oversight.
In “the real world” segregationists love charters because nothing is stopping them from advertising to the (wink wink) “right kind of kids” and treating the (wink wink) “wrong kinds of kids” like garbage that needs to be thrown out.”
Shame on you for perpetuating unsubstantiated lies.
LikeLike
Christopher. Do your homework. You are repeating boiler plate from the charter industry. Try this and read everything the owner of this blog has written.
The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA conducted a national survey and concluded that charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students and students with disabilities.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/study-charter-schools-suspend-more-black-students-disabled-students
“Charter schools suspend students at a much higher rate than non-charter schools, some of which have suspension rates north of 70 percent. But a disproportionate amount of those suspensions fall on black students, who are four times more likely to be suspended than white students, and students with disabilities, who are twice as likely to be suspended as their non-disabled peers.
“Those are just some of the inequities highlighted in a blistering new analysis from researchers at the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
LikeLike
This is one of the worst things I’ve ever read. Conflating real, actionable steps to be taken to provide competition in education for better outcomes with some vague, and crucially not practicable thing about “income equality” with thought bubbles that somehow imply that this thing called “income equality” necessarily harms children and families.
It’s bizarre.
Charters provide choice and millions of poor families are voting with their feet to get free of the union failure factories that rich people can buy their way out of .
Teachers unions should never have been allowed in the first place. Good teachers should be paid more and bad ones should be fired, the way things work in the real world.
Charters are the best thing to ever happen educationally to poor kids in this nation.
Shame on you for perpetuating unsubstantiated lies.
LikeLike
Christopher,
Since you are a dyed in the wool school-choice kind of person, may I suggest that you read “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education” and “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Schools?” You said you read “Left Back.” I think you should find out why I changed my mind about choice.
LikeLike
I will indeed! I’m off to find them and will get back to once I have!
LikeLike
Christopher Messina says:
Charters are the best thing to happen to poor kids in Detroit! Charters are the best thing to happen to poor kids in Ohio. Charters are the best thing to happen to poor kids in Pennsylvania.
Or maybe not. But charters are DEFINITELY the best thing to happen to the CEOs who became very very rich by running them!
LikeLike
CM,
Dr Bruce Baker, Rutgers U Grad School Ed professor, and Mark Weber, doctoral candidate, crunch stats and have reported on how charter schools are not educating the same population as district schools, so claims of higher test scores are not what they seem. They have also looked at attrition from 5th to 12th grade–especially for African American male students–at certain Newark, NJ charter schools. Dr Baker writes at School Finance 101. Mark Weber, a music teacher, writes as Jersey Jazzman and has had some articles on NJ Spotlight.
LikeLike
Demographics of districts and charters vary by state. However, I think it’s unwise to try to say “districts” or “charters” have higher scores. There are dramatically differences among district & charters. Some focus on a particular group of kids. Some use a particular curriculum.
We ought to be learning and sharing what is most effective among both district and charters.
LikeLike
Joe,
Sharing was the original rationale for charters. Now it seems that the charter industry has nothing to share but boot camp discipline and no goal other than to seize public property and eliminate public schools.
LikeLike
Apparently hundreds of educators think the idea of a teacher led school (developed by Minnesota New Country charter, where teachers are the majority of the school’s board of directors), is worth discussing – since hundreds came together, district and charter, to discuss this last year. Teacher union leaders joined charter activists to convince the Mn legislature to allocate $500,000 to help start district “teacher led” schools.
Apparently the presidents of the NEA and AFT think it’s a good idea to meet with leaders of charters to share ideas and learn from each other
Click to access A-Transformational-Vision-for-Education-in-the-US-2016.01.pdf
Next month, district and charter educators will meet together with families and students to help more students earn college credits while they are in high school.
These are all examples of district and charter educators who find working together can help students.
LikeLike
The Washington office did not answer the phone today.I Left message asking for the moratorium. The Baltimore number worked, I asked for the moratorium before being cut off. Agree with Jill. CALL NOW!
LikeLike
Good piece on the cheap garbage “blended learning” ed reformers are pushing into low and middle income schools.
http://www.alternet.org/education/whats-behind-netflix-ceos-fight-charterize-public-schools
I hope public schools don’t all jump on this heavily-marketed bandwagon.
Please. For once. Do your own due diligence. They’re selling this stuff so hard for a reason.
LikeLike
It is amazing to me that the people who designed, promoted and funded Ohio’s disastrous charter school sector want to take their “governance” approach and impose it on every public school in the state, but they do:
They’ll destroy existing public schools. They’ll turn every school into one of their unregulated, for-profit, opaque charters.
LikeLike
Chiara,
Andy Smarick came up with the idea of “relinquishment,” meaning that the public should willingly give up its public schools so they can enter the free market ad become labs of innovation–or something. Maybe profit centers.
LikeLike
Did Andy Smarick ask any of the people in these places he doesn’t live whether they want to privatize the school systems they built and paid for?
He knows these schools don’t actually belong to him, right?
I don’t think he can give away something he doesn’t own.
LikeLike
Andy Smarick has not grappled with the question of whether the people whose lives will be changed matter at all to him.
I asked him to read “Seeing Like a State,” which is about distant bureaucrats and planners messing up the lives of other people without their consent, and I thought he got the message. But I think he went back to his old way of thinking.
LikeLike
Can any ordinary member of the public come up with one thing state or federal ed reformers have done for K-12 schools this year other than open charter schools and design testing schemes for public schools?
So if you’re a public school parent or child the sole contribution these people make to your schools is “tests”.
Do we really need as many as we have to mandate tests for public school students? Seems like far fewer could get that narrow job done. They outsource the actual test design anyway.
LikeLike
Well, well, Christopher Messina makes no secret of the fact that he is rabidly anti-union and that the big selling point of charter schools is union busting. He even goes so far as to say, (“Teachers unions should never have been allowed in the first place.”), that teacher unions should have been banned. The top performing states educationally, are the states which also happen to have a unionized teaching force. Unions and good schools are not mutually exclusive. Messina obviously does not believe in democracy and freedom of association. Quite the typical authoritarian mentality. His views are highly radical and extreme, not the norm.
LikeLike
Messina is a Gary “Aleppo” Johnson supporter. That says it all.
LikeLike
I agree with NorwegianFilmmaker’s assessment of Messina 100%. Very succint and to the point.
LikeLike
Yes, Mr. Messina is psychologically unfit to enter into civilized, intelligent debate. Readers beware. He had MANY such violent, vulgar styled comments on his Twitter.
LikeLike
Really interesting, if you read the ed reform echo chamber (which I suggest everyone should do):
“The districts and unions complain that they have fixed costs, like heating and electricity, and when a child departs, their fixed costs remain the same. Welcome to the real world! That’s true of every business and nonprofit in America, but we don’t subsidize them or limit their competition. We expect them to figure out how to cut their costs or attract more customers.”
There’s a consistent practice of speaking about public schools as “districts” while speaking about charter schools as CHILDREN.
Here, the writer insists “districts” will be the only losers, as if there aren’t children in those districts!
They literally don’t connect public schools with the children IN public schools. The “district” is the enemy- they don’t even see the children in the schools. That’s why they can be so cavalier about harms to public schools.
https://www.the74million.org/article/a-note-to-massachusetts-progressives-remember-that-it-was-democrats-who-embraced-charter-schools
They’ve also reduced students and parents to “customers”, which is of course a lesser status than “owner”.
LikeLike
It really is worthwhile to read the ed reform echo chamber, because this is the template our elected lawmakers slavishly follow. If you’re not reading ed reformers you won’t know why the federal and state government employees are attacking public schools.
This is The 74. Charters, charters and charters. Nary a mention of a public school.
The one reference to public schools is about the huge controversy over chocolate milk 🙂
https://twitter.com/The74?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
LikeLike
You have a stronger stomach than I.
If I read too much of their stuff, it gets depressing.
Important to remember how few they are, how they exist not because of popular support but solely because of money from people who never set foot in a public school.
LikeLike
Brown needs to re-name her blog: The 3
Approximately 3 million children attend charter schools. If she works hard enough maybe she’ll get to re-name it The 4.
LikeLike
That’s a good one, Rage
LikeLike
Here’s an example of the mindset:
“Unknown how districts will adapt; do know there r huge benefits of attending urban charters in MA & students who want 2 but cannot bc of cap”
They don’t know how “districts” will adapt. So the effect on CHILDREN in public schools is “unknown”, but they avoid saying that by referring to the “district”.
It’s amazing. They’ve disappeared the children in public schools. The bad effects will be shouldered only by “districts” as if “districts” are wholly unconnected to schools and children in schools.
That’s the craziness that happens in an echo chamber.
The complete lack of interest or concern for existing public schools is nuts. It’s blind and they don’t even recognize the omission or how the language they use minimizes harm.
LikeLike
How have districts responded to the chartering option? It varies. Some have cut programs and in some cases, closed schools. Others have responded by creating new options.
Boston is a great example. It turned to district teachers who created Pilot schools – new options within the district.
Other districts around the country also have responded to chartering by creating new district options.
For example, St. Paul, Mn, had rejected parents requests for a Montessori middle school. After experiencing this over a number of years, some St. Paul parents and educators created a Montessori junior senior high school (learning, in part from the Cincinnati district Montessori-junior senior high school. )
After the St Paul Montessori junior-senior high school proved very popular, the district recently created its own district Montessori junior high.
After charters proved very popular among low income students and families in Mpls, the district turned to educators and has given them the opportunity to create new, or modify existing schools into places where local educators have much more power to select curriculum and determine how funds are used.
Some districts are responding quite constructively to the fact that low and moderate income families have options. (Wealthy families always have had options, including the ability over the last 50 years to move to affluent suburban public schools.
LikeLike
Creating new district options that are overseen by the district is a very different thing than opening up your state or city to billionaire funded charter school chains that have so much money that they sue to prevent oversight and any boards that oversee them never question their actions.
The problem is that the majority of charter schools in many cities are the second kind. And the outside forces funding this in Massachusetts want more of the second kind with perhaps a few crumbs tossed to the first kind to keep them from ever criticizing them.
LikeLike