Lloyd Lofthouse, veteran of the military and veteran teacher, wrote this explanation of the ingredients of school success. He writes that school choice undermines success because it destroys community support for the community’s children.
He wrote in a comment:
The neos (liberal and conservative) are always looking for language loopholes to subvert the constitutions of the states and nations.
How can schools compete unless the students compete because using student test scores to rank schools forcing schools to compete can’t work unless every single student competes by actually paying attention to teachers, what teachers teach, cooperating, no behavior problems, no disruption, and every child reads every day for fun and learning in addition to doing all the work?
Find me a teacher in almost all the public schools who’s taught for at least 10 years and claims that every one of their students has is is always on track and working/learning, and I will show you a liar. If you can’t cherry pick the students and cherry pick the facts, then you can’t be successful with 100 percent of the students.
Choice means the end of a free public education for every child even if the child is a challenge to engage in the process for learning.
The formula for a child’s education takes a village. Schools can’t do it alone. Teacher’s can’t do it alone. Children can’t do it alone. Parents can’t do it alone. They all have to come together and work together for learning to happen.
Choice will never replace the village. That why the community based, locally controlled, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools are the only way to allow the opportunity for every child to be offered an education to work.
Children also have a choice when they walk into a school. They have a choice to learn or not to learn and some of them choose not learning when they do not do the work and do not read for whatever reason and there are a lot o reasons why those children do not join the village to learn what teachers teach.
Even Donald Trump was a challenging child to teach. I’ve read that Trump was kicked out of his expensive private school because he was a challenge to teach so his father sent him to a military boarding school, a boot camp school similar to Eva’s Success Academy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Find me a teacher in almost all the public schools who’s taught for at least 10 years and claims that every one of their students has is is always on track and working/learning, and I will show you a liar.”
And yet I got eviscerated on my evaluation yesterday because “all of my students weren’t engaged.” In a class of 37.
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How horrible. NO class can successfully work if there are 37 students in the room.
I’ve worked in a number of poverty area schools. One had a music class of 36. Behavior disorder students (7) were sent to music class since all we did was play.
I worked overseas in a good school and the average class size was 16 students. It was an expensive private school. Tuition for the high school, nine years ago, was $10,000 plus there were a lot of money gathering fees to bring in more $$$. Parents were either corporate officers or embassy people.
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“In a class of 37″
My God”
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In my small school full of wonderful kids I see in excess of 150 children per day. There is no way I can keep up with the ones who need special help, even though my individual classes do not exceed 32.
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Roy, what subject(s) do you teach? I ask because in some schools, music and phy ed classes are quite large. But having said that, I agree that 150 students is a very large number. It’s very difficult to get to know that many student well.
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Yet these same reformers who bow to the business model of education would not tolerate for one minute the outright refusal of a worker to do their job. Said worker would be held responsible for their recalcitrance and would probably be dismissed. But somehow in the school setting of this business model if a student to refuses to do their job, they bear absolutely zero responsibility for their performance. Blame the “supervisor” (teacher) who offered every opportunity for help instead.
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So Lloyd and Diane – are you opposed to choice plans that permit students who can pass tough standardized tests to get into magnet schools? Are you opposed to choice plans that allow affluent families to send their children to school districts that hire detectives to keep out families who can’t afford to live there?
And do you regard the “public” schools in New York City and Chicago as not really public schools, because they are not run by “democratically elected” school boards?
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Joe Nathan,
I support the NAACP resolution on halting the expansion of charter schools because of their negative effect on children of color. Do you?
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Many years ago a racially diverse group of mothers asked the ST Paul School Board to create a new k-12 option as part of the district. Many families came forward to support this effort.
The St. Paul NAACP voted to oppose this. Nevertheless the local board went ahead. This was the first of many public options in ST Paul. I’m glad the local board decided to proceed.
I think the NAACP has done many fine things over the years. I disagree with this resolution, as do many leading African Americans, the New York Times, Washington Post and others.
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California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC) issued a letter calling on the NAACP to reconsider. The CLBC letter was the latest in a chorus of voices speaking out against the resolution and calling on the NAACP to stand with Black families.
In September, 160 Black leaders sent a letter to the NAACP urging the organization to reconsider a moratorium and learn more about how charter schools are working to help communities of color.
Black charter school families from New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington state also penned a letter to the NAACP, expressing their stance on charter schools as a critical component to student success.
Their ChartersWork petition attracted more than 3,000 signatures from parents from across the country in a matter of days and the list is growing.
The above from a press release issued by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
IMHO, we need to learn from great district & charter publics. And all over the nation, there are efforts to do just that.
Here’s a progressive vision for education developed by the presidents of the NEA, AFT, several charter leaders and others.
Click to access A-Transformational-Vision-for-Education-in-the-US-2016.01.pdf
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Joe Nathan, re: the paper you cite in 4:21 comment. Looks to me like a brainstorming session on the overall direction 21stC public education should aim for– w/o the slightest suggestion as to how to get there (unless I am naïve & it’s simply a plug for CBE software). Charter schools certainly haven’t moved us in that direction. What’s the connection w/ the [sensible, no?] changes NAACP wants to see in the charter-school model before allowing it to proliferate further?
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I agree that we now need to talk about next steps to move in that direction. It’s been encouraging to see that in some places around the country, district and charter educators are meeting to do exactly that.
I posted the Education ReImagined document in response to a comment that charters had nothing to offer. I think both district and charter educators have a lot to offer.
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I work at a magnet school, and I attended magnets in my youth. My schools are part of the school district and share rather than sapping away resources. My ability to speak for lower class sizes and developmentally appropriate curricula, not wasting resources on wi-fi, iPads, or Chromebooks, is defended by unions. I am thankful that Villaraigosa never usurped control of my school, but at least he was a democratically elected mayor, not a secretive, private, unaccountable board of profiteers. And as for hiring detectives for redlining, what are you talking about?
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Sorry for editing after posting: sap, not sapping.
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Magnet schools, like district schools and charter schools vary widely. Some magnets have no admissions tests. Some use admissions tests to screen out students they don’t want to work with.
Having worked in several districts and visited urban districts across the country,I know that magnet schools do take resources that would otherwise be spent in neighborhood schools. Moreover, some of the support for chartering has come from low income families whose kids can not get into exclusive magnets (and I’m not saying all magnets are exclusive)
As for detectives – there are a variety of districts that hire detectives to insure that students who attend those schools live in the districts. For some suburbs, this is a way to insure they work with few if any students from low income students as there are, in some suburbs, virtually no housing that low income families can afford.
Here’s an example cited by MPR. Many examples are available:
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/26/133246495/Parents-Cross-Lines-To-Get-Kids-Into-Good-Schools
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Joseph Nathan says: “Moreover, some of the support for chartering has come from low income families whose kids can not get into exclusive magnets…”
And some of the non-support for charter schools has come from the low income families whose children DID get into charter schools and learned the hard way that the charters had no interest in educating any child who they couldn’t educate. And then learned that there was nothing to do be done about it because doing exactly that is how the charters get more and more resources from the billionaires.
Notice the NAACP asked for transparency and oversight. Maybe the NAACP would have been more supportive of expanding charters if the charter world had done this themselves, instead of using their hundreds of millions in donations to 1) fight transparency 2) lobby for the right to suspend 5 year olds as much as they want because they claim so many of them are violent and 3) reward charter schools on the test scores and the percentage of kids who are passing them even if the number of kids who actually take the test is half as large as the number who entered the charter school a few years back.
Instead of being so angry at the NAACP, Joe Nathan, why aren’t you angry at the proliferating “no-excuses” charter school chains getting untold resources and dollars from the billionaires fighting to keep charter school funding high and public school funding low?
Charters have shown no desire to police themselves. The NAACP recognizes the dangerous folly to have MORE charters when the charter world uses its funding to market themselves, lobby politicians and pay their CEOs handsomely — anything other than to do real oversight. There money is there to do real oversight. But the desire is most certainly not. They will fund studies that carefully limit themselves to show charters in the best light while ignoring the elephant in the room — that the attrition rate at the highest performing ones should be extremely low and instead is unconscionably high. And they desperately want to prevent any study that would explain why that would be so. Since we all know exactly why that is so. Some students are not welcome.
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Cheryl Brown Henderson, daughter of the lead plantiff in the Brown vrs Board of Education, says it far more eloquently than I can. She joined a number of other African American parents in questioning the NAACP’s statement.
“Over 60 years ago my father joined with numerous parents to stand with the NAACP and fight for all African American students stuck in a separate, broken education system. Brown v. Board of Education created better public education options for African American students, and made it the law of the land that neither skin color, socioeconomic status, nor geography should determine the quality of education a child receives,” said Cheryl Brown Henderson, daughter of Oliver Brown, plaintiff in Brown v. Board of Education and founding president and CEO, Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research. “I am eternally grateful to the NAACP for their leadership on this case and for giving African American families the opportunity to send their children to the best schools that would help them to succeed.
I am troubled that in 2016, the NAACP would oppose placing better educational choices in the hands of families across the country. Charter public schools present African American families, especially those in low-income communities, with the choice to choose a public option that is best for their child. We must protect this choice.
http://www.publiccharters.org/press/alliance-black-parents-education-community-leaders-speak-say-charter-public-schools-work/Charter groups have demonstrated over and over again that they are eager to see supervision of both district and charters.
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Well said. Just because some charter schools are well behaved doesn’t mean that the model is correct. It seems, in fact, that the model is incorrect. In general, models that channel public funds to private companies are questionable.
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Mate, you say that you are opposed to funneling public funds to private companies.
So are you opposed to allowing public schools to buy paper, pencils, computers, buses, books, etc from private companies?
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Joe,
There is no problem with schools buying pencils, software, hardware. That is very different from privatizing control of the entire school, giving it to a corporate charter chain or the Waltons. This comment is beneath you. So puerile.
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Some districts contract with private schools to serve certain students they don’t want to work with. The NY Times has covered some scandals that happened when this happened.
I completely agree that all publicly funded schools should be monitored. I’m in favor of accountability for all public schools, district and charter.
I’m also opposed to allowing “public” schools to have admissions tests, whether they use standardized test to select student, or whether they keep out students whose families don’t have the ability of the family to buy an expensive home and pay high real estate taxes.
It appears that these forms of admission test are ok with you.
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Joseph “So are you opposed to allowing public schools to buy paper, pencils, computers, buses, books, etc from private companies?”
This is a different question because education and children are not products. But let me ask you one which comes before yours:
Is it OK if a state makes a contract with a private company so that all public individual schools in the state will buy the same supply from the same company?
So should the state of Tennesee have a contract with Dell for computers, with HP for printers, with Staple for staplers, and with Pearson for books, exams, teacher certifications?
My answer to these questions is a definite no. The rationalization of these contracts is always “it saves money”, but in fact they don’t.
In general, anything “big” shouldn’t be handled by a single private company. No private company, making products, should be allowed to grow big, because it prevents fair competition, and they always end up hurting the public.
State contracts to private companies are like steroids, they need to be outlawed.
Again, schools and children are not products. Instead of charters, state schools and teachers should be given (much) more autonomy as they are given now—including from whom they buy their supplies.
The crucial difference between autonomous schools and charter schools is public oversight.
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We agree that there are problems with monopolies. No single company should have a contract to provide services or products for a state, a school district or other entity.
We also agree that people working with youngsters, whether in district or charter public schools, should have wide (though not complete) discretion about how to organize schools.
They should not, for example, be allowed to create admission tests for public schools. They should not be allowed to restrict who can come to the schools on the basis of race or income (this means “public” schools in wealthy areas should not be allowed to block enrollment by students from low income families living nearby, but outside the district. Some states have cross district public school.
I think these principles applies in public education. Families and educators need options.
As far as accountability, this section of a TEA website summarizes some of the accountability requirements for your chartered public schools
“The governing body of the public charter school is responsible for managing and operating the public charter school. There are certain laws (or statutes) and rules that charter schools must follow, such as licensing of teachers, open meetings and public records, civil rights, health and safety standards, public records, immunizations, open meetings, etc. (see Tenn. Code Ann. § 49-13-105 and 111), the sponsor of a proposed charter school may apply either to the local board of education or the commissioner of education for a waiver of any state board rule or statute that inhibits or hinders the proposed charter school’s ability to meet its goals or comply with its mission statement. Charter schools are not required to follow local board of education policies, but the policies of the governing body of the charter school.”
https://www.tn.gov/education/article/charter-school-faq
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Joseph “As far as accountability, this section of a TEA website summarizes some of the accountability requirements for your chartered public schools…”
As far as I can tell, this doesn’t say clearly that charter schools have to have the same accountability and transparency as public schools. In fact, it seems to indicate some available exceptions, that is, loopholes.
And when we look at the practice in, say, Memphis, the lack of clarity in the rules has been exploited. For example, the Achievement School District has been taking over “low performing” schools, and some of these are given to actual charter operators, but both the financial and education data for ASD are hard to come buy and have been manipulated—as it’s been reported here, on thjs blog as well.
https://dianeravitch.net/category/tennessee/
The same can be said about other states. In New Orleans, the Recovery School District has created an all-charter school district. Has this KIPPization been working out?
To me, it is one thing to look at the effectiveness of charter schools, and here I immediately stop the discussion since effectiveness is given in terms of student test scores, an unacceptable circumstance.
But even before the effectiveness of charter schools is dicussed, the creation of charter schools needs to be addressed: during ASD and RSD takeovers, thousand of teachers were fired indiscriminantly. Are these bloodbaths acceptable parts of any kind of fair competition charters are supposed to create?
Imo, before any charters are created, clear laws, offering no exceptions, need to state two things: One, charters need to have exactly the same accountability and transparency as public schools; two, no company can manage more than, say, 5 charter schools nation wide (but perhaps changing the 5 to 1 would be best).
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Joe N
You’ve “worked in” several districts? And “visited” many more? What product or program do you sell? Or, for whom do you lobby?
As for local, neighborhood schools serving local, neighborhood communities, it is a public good. Lying about your address on a registration form is not a public good. If you lie on an application to steal a seat from a resident, I suppose you should expect to be investigated. Support your local, neighborhood community and school!
As for housing redlining, magnets generally ease the Big Bank created problem of housing segregation without scamming the taxpayer and robbing the poor, as charter scams do. Finally, as for low income families being trapped in poverty or near poverty, they need far more support and assistance than bus rides to the suburbs. Those communities need unity as well as support the 1% are able but unwilling to provide. They certainly do not need more “visits” from traveling salesmen.
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Teacher in St. Paul Public Schools for 12 years; Educational assistant in Minneapolis Public Schools (serving as a teacher but could not be paid because I was doing alternative service as a CO).
I don’t “sell anything.” We’ve brought millions of dollars to schools via various foundation grants to help increase family involvement, help create new options.
Have worked with a number of school districts in several states – bringing dollars and helping them create new within district options.
3 kids, all of whom attended urban public schools, k-12, all 3 of whom worked in this district. My wife recently retired after 33 years as a urban public school teacher working with kids with special needs.
Since 1989 I’ve written a weekly newspaper column carried by a variety of Minnesota newspaper. This week I wrote about the value of a statewide conference put on by the state’s teachers union.
More info here:
http://hometownsource.com/tag/joe-nathan/?category=columns-opinion
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J.N,
MYC Parent asked you a very good question. Why don’t you answer it instead of sidestepping to note individuals who side with Wall Street against the NAACP?
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As I wrote in an Ed Week blog, I’m excited by some things I see in charters, and very angry about some things happening in charters. Same is true of district public schools.
“I’m both exhilarated and infuriated by what I see happening with the charter idea.”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2015/01/five_myths_of_public_charters.html
But beyond what I think, leading Democrats including President Clinton and President Obama and the late Senator Paul Wellstone have helped promote more public school options because they think public school choice can be part (not all but part) of what helps more students succeed – and can be part of what makes the teaching profession more attractive.
Giving teachers the power to create the new options, based on their philosophy, is one, not the only, but one way to make teaching more attractive. The Boston and NYC (district) Pilot Schools are a great example. So are the New York City “New Vision” schools.
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Oh. Sorry about that, Joseph. But I don’t understand why you’re in support of charter expansion if you care about public schools. It’s not possible to support the ideas of Friedman economic policy if you want public education and equal rights for all.
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Much the same arguments were raised when groups of public (district) school teachers helped create new options within public school districts – decades ago. As one of the people who worked with parents to do this beginning in 1971, I’ve seen over and over that some people are fine with options for wealthy people, but not for low income families.
I’m in favor of public schools that are open to all – not public schools that use admissions tests, or can reject students based on where they live.
It’s clear that many people who post here are fine with school choice via suburbs for the wealthy, and they are in favor of district schools that use admissions tests.
The charter movement has grown in part because many families and legislators, of both parties, believe there need to be options beyond what local boards offer.
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Joseph “The charter movement has grown in part because many families and legislators, of both parties, believe there need to be options beyond what local boards offer.”
The question is what the “many” in “many families” means. Are you stating that the experiment with charters the desire of the majority of the people?
What we suspect here is that the answer is no. In fact, a small minority is given a big muscle by billionaires to prevent the charter issue to be discussed by the public, and instead it is pushed through using politics and false advertisements, trying to prevent the facts to be known.
Since the process is at the expense of the non-consenting majority, it is antidemocratic and hence outrageous.
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Phi Delta Kappan, Gallup polls consistently show that the majority of Americans support the charter idea.
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Joe “Phi Delta Kappan, Gallup polls consistently show that the majority of Americans support the charter idea.”
Would you say, people understand what charter schools are?
I wonder how much people’s understanding have changed since this 2002 Gallup report
http://www.gallup.com/poll/7033/americans-ready-charter-schools.aspx
It says that people are given this definition of a charter school
“charter schools operate under a charter or contract that frees them from many of the state regulations imposed on public schools and permits them to operate independently,”
and then they are essentially divided in supporting the idea. But then, once they are given a more detailed explanation, they contradict their original opinion
Even though charter schools are by definition differentiated from other schools by their independence from certain regulations that shape public education, most Americans (77%) want charter schools held accountable to the state in the same way that conventional public schools are accountable.
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Like most things, I think people vary in their understanding of the charter idea. But as noted, I believe both district and charters should be given wide but not complete discretion.
We’ve worked successfully here to give district schools options either to be charters or to convert to a “teacher led” school model with lots of discretion at the school level.
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Joseph “Like most things, I think people vary in their understanding of the charter idea.”
The “idea” of a charter school doesn’t reside at the same basic, gut level as, say, the idea of abortion or freedom of speech or equality of the sexes and races, does it?
But more importantly, the idea of a charter a school is very different from the implementation of the idea. And my understanding (and personal experience) is that, apart from rare exceptions, the practical implementation of the charter idea has been unacceptable.
The implementation of the idea of charters suffers from the same problems as the implementation of many ideas of businesses: lack of patience. Instead of letting the idea take hold naturally by allowing people to take their time to try it out in small dosage and judge it, businessmen and politicians bend and change the rules for quick implementation.
So I am not arguing against the idea of charter schools. That would be foolish. But I do argue that the implementation of the idea has failed.
Of course, this happens all the time: reasonable or even great ideas fail because of their implementation. For example, the idea of communism is much more noble and reasonable than that of capitalism (many of the thoughts on this blog have been chewed over by Marx 150 years ago), but its implementation by corrupt politicians has failed without exception. The same can be said about many philosphies and religions—or even about the Common Core, for that matter.
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Polls also show that most Americans don’t know what a charter school is, don’t know that they are free to choose or expel students, don’t know that charter schools divert money from public schools.
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Various national polls show that most people are supportive of the charter idea, and the more they know about the idea, the more supportive they are.
I agree there is confusion. That’s in part because despite the fact that state legislatures have repeatedly included charters as part of their public education program, some people who oppose charters insist that they are not part of public education.
And as some have noted, some NLRB decisions differentiate between different kinds of schools supported by the public.
Public education has come a long way from the 1950’s. In some ways that’s good, in some ways, not so good.
A number of states now support statewide schools that are not run by a locally elected school board. These are not charters, these are simply statewide schools that are supported by taxes.
A number of states allow high school students to attend colleges and universities with state funds following them, paying tuition and in some cases
and lab fees. In some states, local school boards don’t have the power for high school students to attend these colleges and universities.
One of the reasons that high school graduation rates have increased is that some families have more options than they did in the 1950’s.
But some people want to keep the 1950’s approach to public education – which was that low and moderate income families had only the options that local school boards wanted them to have.
Fortunately courts also have ruled that no single level of government – be it a local school board, a state legislature, Congress or courts – has all the power. But state legislatures can – and in many states have -expanded what is meant by public education.
A bi-partisan consensus has developed that all families should have options as part of public education that goes beyond what local school boards offer.
I understand this bothers some people.
I’m spending the rest of the day with our grandkids and grandchildren. Happy Sunday to all.
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LCT,
Joe is a pioneer in the charter movement and he can’t accept that he is now in the same boat with the Koch brothers, ALEC, Scott Walker, and the Waltons. He is a liberal who was used.
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Actually I have worked for more than 45 years to help create more options in public education. I was trained by Saul Alinsky and am used to working with a variety of people – some of whom I generally agree with on most issues, some of whom I disagree on most issues.
My mother was the first Head Start director in Kansas, and one of the first Head Start directors in the country. She welcome support from liberals and conservatives for Head Start.
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I disagree. The charter scam outbreak grew not out of desire to commute, but out of financial and political backing by families Walton, Broad, Bush, Clinton… wealthy and powerful people who prey on the prejudices of the public. Since, as part of their campaign, they have changed the meaning of the word ‘choice’ to signify privatization, it is important to distinguish between having choices among good public schools, and having privatization. I support all public schools being funded equitably and run by the community. That gives people choices.
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IMHO There are few things more “private” than exclusive “public” schools in affluent suburban districts where the price of admission is the ability to buy an expensive home, and pay high real estate taxes.
IMHO There are few things more private than allowing some public schools to screen out students (including students with disabilities) who can not score very well on a standardized tests.
I understand these practices are ok with you & many others who post here.
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Joe,
This is not true. Public schools are responsible for all children. Even when they have selective schools, they still take responsibility for all children.
By contrast, charters keep the kids they want. They have no responsibility for those who are kicked out.
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Diane – IMHO Some district schools do wonderful things with a variety kids. They should be given credit and praise for doing that. Our Center has a variety of documents praising some district schools for fine work they do, and encouraging people to learn from them.
Public schools in suburbs do not have responsibility for all students. Some work very hard to keep out kids they don’t want. Some have even taken parents to court to keep their kids out of their schools.
Some magnet schools take no responsibility for all kids – they only will work with kids who can pass the kind of high stakes tests you often criticize.
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No one is arguing in favor of creaming students, a practice of which I think at least one in five charter schools out here in California is guilty. I attended GATE magnets growing up. Honestly, my parents unfortunately white flighted me out (pardon my invention of phrase) into those exclusive magnet schools. Today, teaching at a magnet that accepts all students, I don’t like the idea of allowing separate schools or tracks for GATE students. But I know from experience that the presence of charter schools intensifies my district’s desire to offer tracking and GATE programs to compete for students. I do not accept tracking or segregation. You have no idea how hard I work to fight tracking and segregation. You have no idea.
Fighting segregation means fighting charter scams first and foremost. It means fighting for equitable funding. It means fighting redlining and white flight in the housing sector. It means fighting for working class jobs. It means fighting for unions. It means fighting discrimination and predation by banks and politicians. It has nothing to do with privatizing schools.
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Glad to read that you oppose allowing public schools to have admission tests. Of all the people who have posted here today, you and I are the only ones who have criticized that idea.
There has been a powerful silence here about allowing suburban schools to keep out kids they don’t want to serve. Suburbs are the largest publicly subsidized school choice program in the country. Fortunately, in this state, we have cross district public school choice. We also put more state $ behind students from low income families. I think those are both progressive practices.
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Diane,
Thank you for that info. I thought so — I smelled it — in the first place.
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Joseph,
I don’t think we’ll be taking any warm showers together any time soon, Joseph Nathan.
How about giving more money to low income schools and communities instead of to private businesses in the suburbs (Suburban neighborhoods are “subsidized [charter scam] programs”? Rheeally?) giving money via the children who are compelled to commute to escape the underfunding suffered by those who remain true to their local schools and neighbors? That’s what the NAACP opposes — inequality. I oppose your opposition to equitable funding for dollars that “follow the child” into your pocket. I oppose opposition to the NAACP. I oppose inequality. You’re on the wrong side of history, Joseph Nathan. I do not appreciate you pretending to have something in common with me.
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Expanding opportunity is the right side of history. That’s what’s happened over the last 200 years.
Also I favor putting more $ in the education of low income kids than affluent kids – and that’s what we’ve done here.
Also, very glad to see that the Cubs just won the first game over the left coast team.
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There was an awkward sentence in there. I meant to say, give money to low income neighborhoods, not to profiteers via commuting children.
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Joe (such a long thread, can’t indicate which comment I’m replying to!) you can add me to the list of those who disapprove of magnets, it’s the primary reason we moved from NYC to the suburbs before our eldest started K. It’s a bandaid designed to keep middle-class people in the city, & it comes at a high cost: months & years of ppwk & competition one usually associates w/ college, then you get to send your 14-y.o. on an unchaperoned & lengthy subway commute.
But– as you say– we could afford to buy a home in an excellent school district. To me, segregated housing is no more a justification for charters than it is for magnet schools. I have to differ w/Diane here; clearly there is only so much $ in a city budget. Magnets obviously spend more than nbhd schools & thus siphon off $ from them. Charters (in general) do something a bit different: they operate cheaper than city public schools while offering fewer services, restricted curriculum, less-qualified teachers– usually smaller classes & safer environment (but usually w/o the transportation services to make it generally available). Bandaid which offers better for some at the expense of others, just like magnets.
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The L.A. Dodgers were exhausted after miraculously surviving the onslaught in Washington D.C. After too long a time of Chicago gangster mentality rule, I look forward to Team Blue ripping the Cubs from the yard in coming days as their great bullpen recovers.
As for your latest choice cheerleading, (A.) Wrong sport for cheerleaders, (B.) Repetitive talking point that answers no questions or arguments, (C.) incorrect to say dollars should follow the child to the burbs, and (D.) Is centrist/right wing, not progressive. Ball four. I’ll take my base.
This reply is dedicated to Vin Scully, Sandy Koulfax, and Jackie Robinson.
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Wait a minute. Everything we’ve done in the last 200 years expanded opportunity? Is that what happened. Opportunities for bankers, maybe.
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LCT,
Whoa! My mother’s family came to the US for life, liberty, religious freedom, and opportunity. If they had stayed in Europe, they would have been slaughtered by the Nazis. They were never rich, but they had a good life and loved America. Same for my father’s family, who came from Poland. No Jews survived in their village. Don’t sell America short. In the 1940s and 1950s, we were a far more equal society, although blacks suffered because of segregation and Jim Crow. But I don’t think there were billionaires then.
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Bee,
A magnet school is a district school, transparent, overseen with, and regulated by the same laws as the rest of the district. Some have special themes or programs, but very few have special requirements for admission. Independent charter schools are completely different.
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Sorry, I don’t know how autocorrect went from bethree to bee.
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Diane,
We Jews, as well as other immigrants and African Americans have struggled for equality here in America. We have made great strides and achievements, but not every step was forward. That’s not to say that immigrants have not escaped and still do not escape murderous conditions in dictatorships elsewhere. But corporate charter scam expansion, as with Jim Crow and other forms of discrimination, is a clear example of one of those steps backward. We are great. We are not perfect. No?
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I don’t mean to equate the plight of immigrants from Europe and other continents. It’s just that David Duke hates us just as much as anyone else. And I’m pretty sure he supports charter schools and vouchers.
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Joseph Nathan knows full well that there is no reason you can’t provide CHOICE for students without private charter schools.
Joseph Nathan and the billionaires who underwrite his movement and own the politicians that direct billions in public dollars into it don’t care about CHOICE. They care about PRIVATIZATION.
To them, there is no “choice” unless a private organization is free to run a school without having to follow those pesky rules that were developed to protect ALL students. How can those privately run schools compete against public “choice” schools if they have to follow the same rules and teach all kids? How can they market to parents without being able to brag about the high test scores that can only be achieved if they can suspend and fail any 5 year old they want, counsel them out, and use any means necessary to get them out and keep test scores high?
That is the bottom line. If they believed in choice, they could have had choice within the system, as there was in NYC and still is. What Joseph Nathan and the other pro-charter cheerleaders want is something different — the “choice” that was enabled by Bloomberg, Cuomo and the billionaires who reward them with unlimited funds to have a school that doesn’t have to follow the rules so they can take advantage of not having to deal with the pesky students who Joseph Nathan doesn’t want to talk about. I mean the ones who didn’t sign the anti-NAACP petition because although they “chose” the charter, the charter decided it did not choose their child.
It is possible to have choice in the system. What PRIVATE charters add is the special franchise to suspend and get rid of any child they don’t want to teach. The only reason to support choice by PRIVATE charters is because you want them to be able to get rid of the kids who bring down scores or otherwise bother the charter CEOs by taking too many resources or just having PITA parents. No oversight necessary.
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Well said, NYC Public School Parent
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Joe “I disagree with this resolution, as do many leading African Americans, the New York Times, Washington Post and others.”
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The above quote is not an argument to defend a position, is it?
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Hundreds of thousand of African American families have enrolled in charter public schools. A variety of African American families wrote to the NAACP urging them to reject the resolution.
Here’s a link to a letter from African American parents, including the daughter of the lead plaintiff in the Brown vrs Board of Education Supreme Court case
http://www.publiccharters.org/press/alliance-black-parents-education-community-leaders-speak-say-charter-public-schools-work/
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And what about the parents that LEAVE the charter schools?
Notice Joe isn’t talking about all of them. They have shame and humiliation and they don’t have an organization of billionaires who will
“encourage” them in their PR efforts and underwrite every complaint and spend millions on a PR rally (including paid celebrities).
I guess since they don’t have the big bucks behind them, those parents don’t count. But you know they are out there, Joe Nathan. And the charter movement has FOUGHT to keep them out and to shut down criticism and oversight. You never said a word.
Also, I am sickened by your phony argument that a mostly white suburban school is practicing active segregation because there aren’t enough minority children living in a district drawn decades or even a century ago. Those suburban schools are not keeping kids out. They are educating EVERY child who lives in their zone. And they sure can’t suspend a kid until he leaves. If they don’t want that child, they are responsible for the upwards of $100,000 for a private school to educate them.
Maybe if charters were responsible for paying $100,000 year to every family they encouraged to leave their school, you would have a point. But they don’t. Getting those children out is a CHOICE by the charter and it doesn’t cost them a thing except for their complete moral compass getting overrun by their extreme greed. Is that what happened to you? Afraid to speak out for the costly kids who charters push out gleefully so there is lots more money for rallies?
Shame on you for comparing a suburb with charters who push out any expensive kid because that is the incentive that charters have made for all of you. If you don’t understand the difference between having a set catchment area and being responsible for all kids in that area, and having a charter school that is only responsible for the students who help a charter with their profits and to look good, then you are either a liar or ignorant.
If you want charters, you should have been fighting for accountability years ago. Instead of shutting up because the same people throwing pennies to your ‘good charter’ wanted no accountability and you were terrified of speaking out against them. It was the greed of the charters that got us here. And the NAACP understands that the greed was more more important than educating any of their children. You wanted to teach only the children who you wanted to teach. Without accountability. Without oversight. All while demanding that the NAACP bow down to you and your billionaires with extreme gratefulness you were willing to choose a few of their children as worthy while throwing out the rest with the trash. Shame on you.
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Coming late into this discussion (the daughter had a distant swim meet, the drive to which was almost as slow as her time), I would like to suggest that Mr. Nathan is correct in that some magnets pull money from schools which need it. That no more justifies charters than Trump’s justification of misogyny on the basis of Bill Clinton’s behavior. Both are wrong.
I believe the problem is systemic and widespread. From a high school perspective, students who have antic behavior that prevents others from learning are at best problematic for those of us in Lloyd’s Village. I believe the Village is the problem. We have long based our educational paradigm on competition. This is erroneous.
Take my daughter, for example. A bit over a year ago, she learned to swim at the late age of 9. We joined the swim team so she could learn to swim well and not drown in the pool due to panic, to which she is succeptible. She has succeeded beyond all expectations.
Her swim team is not like the ones where she competes. Other teams discourage kids like her from going to meets because they hurt the team time. Her team takes a kid where they are and moves them forward. This was what she needed.
In education we are guilty of the same perverse methods because we are forced to compete. It was not always so. Educational models in history are often much more focused on the individual and their progress.
I do not oppose magnets or charters or any other institution that tries to get the most to the most. What else should be our goal? Charters are demonstrably pulling money away from communities. Thus they seem not to fit this vision. But no one wants to fund a vision that really works. No one does.
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Lloyd says: “Choice will never replace the village. That why the community based, locally controlled, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools are the only way to allow the opportunity for every child to be offered an education to work.”
Yes, but the “neos” will describe and put down all of these schools as if they are wrong and all identical because they are traditional. “Traditional” is amplified by saying such schools are all based on an outmoded “factory” model of education. The stereotype neglects the fact that many districts have elected to have schools within neighborhoods and also schools with varied emphases, including some with selective admissions. The one-size fits all stereotype is needed to justify charter expansions and more and more teaching by proxy via computers and the internet…outsourcing.
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“The one-size fits all stereotype is needed to justify charter expansions and more and more teaching by proxy via computers and the internet…outsourcing.” Agree—Enter CBE to personalize all the learning for Every student— No special education needed. Special Education parents need to watch this closely and make another trip to Washington to speak up about CBE and how this will affect special education services. Just look at the cyber education in PA. Most students do not perform well when all learning is delivered online. http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2016/08/school-performance-profile-scores-for.html
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It is rich that neoliberals/ mainstream Republicans/ Friedmanites denigrate public schools as obsolete factory-models in justification for opening the public purse to the private sector. That is the cohort which has succeeded in importing factory-model standardization of curriculum/ assessments/ data-collection/ mid-20thC-style MBO to our national public school system,
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Agreed, Lloyd.
And, of course, there’s also the illusion of choice -a major part of our economy and culture. Phony choices.
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Something wonderful happened today. Despite enormous ed-reform and political pressure, the Board of Directors of the NAACP stood strong and supported the delegates’ resolution for a moratorium on charters. You can read the press release issued by the NAACP here. It says:
We are calling for a moratorium on the expansion of the charter schools at least until such time as:
(1) Charter schools are subject to the same transparency and accountability standards as public schools
(2) Public funds are not diverted to charter schools at the expense of the public school system
(3) Charter schools cease expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate and
(4) Cease to perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest performing children from those whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious.
Carol Burris
Executive Director
Network for Public Education
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You rock.
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“Choice will never replace the village. That why the community based, locally controlled, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools are the only way to allow the opportunity for every child to be offered an education to work.”
BUT
When the community based, locally controlled, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools, TEST the children, the parents are advised to make a
CHOICE…OPT OUT
Some might “argue”, Independence is the right of all people, in the name of
self-determination.
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Let’s try to keep in mind that the current craze for natl stds/ curriculum/ testing was imposed from fed & state levels w/ nary an opinion nor vote solicited from the municipal voters whose taxes are exacted to support it.
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Joseph Nathan says “Cheryl Brown Henderson, daughter of the lead plantiff in the Brown vrs Board of Education, says it far more eloquently than I can. She joined a number of other African American parents in questioning the NAACP’s statement. … Cheryl Brown Henderson, daughter of Oliver Brown, plaintiff in Brown v. Board of Education and founding president and CEO, Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research.”
So, I go looking for who is funding Henderson’s foundation and find the following instead.
“The Kansas City Star reports that a foundation headed by the daughter of the lead plaintiff in that historical case—the Rev. Oliver Brown—has been evicted from a National Park site located in a formerly segregated school in Topeka, Kansas, where the suit originated. The organization is the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research, run by Cheryl Brown Henderson. Apparently, last year a federal investigation criticized Brown Henderson for a conflict of interest when she concurrently ran the National Park site, charging that while running the site she funneled some $300,000 to the foundation, which employed her sister and her boyfriend. That apparently led to an audit by the Department of Interior’s Inspector General. The audit hadn’t been released to the public or the press as of late last week, but the site superintendent said that the results were “troubling,” and that led to the request for the foundation to leave. We will watch to see what kind of findings were so troubling as to lead to this somewhat precipitous request from the Department of Interior that the Brown Foundation move out.— Rick Cohen”
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2011/12/05/foundation-that-honors-brown-v-board-of-education-evicted-from-national-park-site/
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How come these articles never make into the mainstream newspapers for the general public. Someone send this to Trump and Clinton. I would if I knew how.
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Joe Nathan and his never ending magnet school deflection. Is there a big magnet school problem in the US that I am unaware of? Are the billionaires behind school magnetization? Are magnet schools being forced on school districts willy-nilly? I live in central NJ and I’m not aware of any of the school districts having magnet schools. Maybe Trenton has one, maybe not? No magnet schools in Princeton, South Brunswick, West Windsor/Plainsboro, etc. Sorry, but JN has a very disingenuous way of arguing his side.
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My other objection to his deflecting attack on magnet schools is that magnets are PART of the system. Overseen by the same people. So every child they supposedly abandon is still the responsibility of the school system. A public school system with one good magnet and 20 failing schools gets attacked by Joe and his billionaires in the pro-charter movement because all they focus on is the failures in public schools. No public school system directs hugely disproportionate funding to the magnet while forcing the 20 failing schools to have 35 or 40 kids per class because no one will care and they can brag about their “magnet” and everyone will praise how amazing the public school system is. They are RESPONSIBLE for ALL children. That’s something the charter folks do not understand. They don’t WANT the responsibility for all children and Joe Nathan believes that it is GOOD that private actors should be allowed to choose the kids they are responsible for and abandon the rest to the public schools they lobby to cut funding from due to “poor performance.”
What Joe means is that if magnets were run by the same folks as charter schools were — private actors with no oversight who can profit from the education of the “best” students — then he would have no problem with them because they were charters. Somehow he despises them because they are overseen by the same people who oversee the public schools and have to educate ALL students and not just say “once the kid is out of the magnet they are off our books forever”. Charters do that all the time and that’s what corrupts them. Public schools can’t and don’t. And that makes all the difference. No person who calls himself an educator who is ignorant enough to believe there is absolutely no difference between a magnet run by the same people who are responsible for ALL students and a privately run charter whose responsibility ends as soon as they can convince an unwanted student to leave their school should be teaching students.
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Actually, it’s the reverse of what you wrote – as I’ve tried to explain before.
I am opposed to any publicly funded k12 school having the power to base admission on a standardized test. Some of us have worked with Congress to make it less likely that such schools will receive federal startup funding.
I’m spending the rest of the day with family. Happy Sunday.
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Joseph Nathan says: “I am opposed to any publicly funded k12 school having the power to base admission on a standardized test.”
So what? Be opposed to it all you want. What does that have to do with charter schools?
The question is, do you SUPPORT having a privately run supposedly “public” charter school that has little oversight and is allowed to make up its own rules for suspending young children and acting in any way that they choose to push out the kids they decide are undesirable and thus completely wash their hands of that kid and never have any responsibility — moral, financial, or otherwise — for ever and ever? Because they are NOT part of the system and the people who oversee them are NOT part of the system.
That does NOT describe a magnet school since pushing out that kid means that the very same people who are responsible for the magnet school also are responsible for that child. It isn’t “out of sight, out of mind” as it is for charter schools who are overseen by people incentivized to approve anything that keeps the charters test scores high and expenses for special ed teachers low. A magnet school might have higher test scores if it pushed out kids, but another school in the same system won’t and a school system is judged by how they teach ALL students, not just the high performing ones in magnet schools, as you well know (but pretend not to). Charter schools are ONLY judged on the kids they keep. And that incentivizes the “best” ones to keep only the “best” students as you also well know.
It takes a special chutzpah to say “I am opposed to a public school having an admissions test, but I am fine with a charter school being free to rid themselves of students they don’t want” and thus absolve themselves of any responsibility for that child forever.
Charter school defenders are fine with BASIS Charter school because it has no “admissions test’ and uses the delightful charter-approved method to weed out the undesirables and absolves itself of all financial and moral responsibility for those “undesirables” they can treat however they want to get them out. But they object strongly to a public system that educates ALL students if they have any special schools for high performing students and are honest about it.
When your only defense of charter school dishonesty is “we should be allowed to be dishonest because magnet public schools are honest and have admissions tests”, then you have certainly lost your way. If you ever had any way beyond teaching the kids you wanted to teach. And I regret to inform you that public education isn’t about teaching ONLY the kids you want to teach. That’s a lesson the charter school folks refuse to accept.
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There is insidious sophistry in the defense of privatization.
They say, “If you buy pencils and computers from for-profit vendors, why not let a for-profit corporation run the school.”
They say, “If the public schools have schools with any selective admissions, why not have selective admissions for charters?”
They conveniently ignore that the school system is responsible for finding a seat for all kids, but the charter doesn’t care about the kids they kick out.
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“They say, “If you buy pencils and computers from for-profit vendors, why not let a for-profit corporation run the school.”
Yeah, at first all I thought, this was a weird connection, between two unrelated issues, made by somebody who was supposed to be a smart charter school purist.
But, as you say, Diane, the problem is not weak logic, but that public schools shopping from private vendors would somehow justify that public schools should be run by private vendors.
There is also the related problem: buying pencils from a vendor may really turn into effective influence of the vendor on schools and of ten much more.
For example, Pearson first just sold textbooks in Tennessee, then they ran the statewide standardized tests, and now they decide who can teach in the state.
Even the contracts themselves are already insidious:
–Pearson forbids parents to see what their kids did on an exam and even forbids the kids to discuss the exam questions. Their excuse: the tests are their intellectual property.
–If I want to organize a small conference on campus of my university, I cannot just buy 20 bagels for $5 from Costco for the participants, but I have to hire the state contracted food vendor for hundreds of dollars for catering.
–If I want to buy 3 computers for my department, I cannot just go online and buy the cheapest available computer, but I am pressured into buying from the vendor (Dell in TN) the state made a contract with for whatever price the vendor established at the state level.
So all contracts (not just managerial) between public schools and private vendors need to be controlled very tightly to avoid undue influence of the vendors.
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I thought that Joseph Nathan’s claim that a public entity buying any office or school supplies from a for-profit business (are there other places to buy those supplies?) is no different from full privatization to be very telling. I sometimes think he genuinely wants good charters, but then I see him using that kind of rhetoric and realize that he isn’t interested in honestly discussing issues. He just wants more charters, period.
It’s like a group of pro- mercenaries saying “it’s fine if this neighborhood wants to establish a privately run police force — with public money taken from the city’s police force budget — with all the power to arrest and jail people with no oversight because that city’s police force bought their pencils from a vendor that is privately run! So there’s no difference at all.” That’s the kind of logic Joseph Nathan wants us to accept.
It’s like Joseph Nathan saying: “The US military bought planes from Lockheed Martin, a private company. That’s exactly the same as having a private organization being given millions of public dollars to run their own militia to “protect” the people they choose to protect — no oversight necessary.”
It’s pretty shocking that the pro-charter voices are reduced to this kind of rhetoric because the LAST thing they want to talk about is why they are fighting accountability and oversight so hard with no expense spared to do it.
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I understand that if people don’t agree on some basic principles, they start to get into details, hoping for some common ground, because most of us want peace, and wish to see not just themselves but other people happy.
But details get messy very quickly. This is why we have politics and laws with all their horrendously complicated nitpickings that are prone to be so full of errors and inconsistencies that normally we’d declare them invalid and discard them without second thought.
Instead, nowadays we just let out a embarrased little cry when we encounter an inconsistency in our laws or rules, then we show a slightly embarrassed smile, shrug our shoulders, and we chalk up the the error to part of “real life”.
But there is always a point when people get saturated with listening to heated debates over miniscule details that are hardly distinguishable for anybody but the debating parties. This seems to be the times we live in: the two major political parties try to meet in the middle on all issues, “bypartizanship” becomes the goal, and hence big issues get avoided.
Do we really believe that it’s worth arguing over whether suburban magnet schools or inner city charter schools discriminate more, or if the standardized test scores of charter schools or public schools are better or if VAMming teachers appears to be more prudent in case of admission lotteries?
How long would it take for us to explain our position, one way or another, to an outsider like a parent? Is the issue what we really have in the back of our minds that complicated that we must post links after links and then use a high precision scalpel to extract some evidence that supports our side?
Isn’t this exactly the point when the situation is ripe for a unifying simple message that saves the day? Like
Mass privatization and its little brother, deregulation, don’t work.
Once stated, let’s not offer an apology or a list of exceptions, and let’s not worry about possible objections. Just let ourselves breathe easy, feel the clean air coming in and out, without wasting any thought on the ridciculously small pollution that may come our way.
What can the other side say? That despite our claim, despite of all the failures of mass privatization, this newest one in education will work out? Who the heck is willing to believe it?
If people want to argue against our claim, they would have to claim that mass privatization of health care, prisons, banks, military contracts, state contracts and services, the airline industry work well. The other side are all data driven, so they would compile data, collect links, so they could drown us in statistics.
But just right before they’d begin their exhausting Powerpoint presentation, we could just casually ask,
Hey, before you turn on your little laser pointer, please do me a favor and tell me how you feel when your child gets sick and you go through the 200 page long insurance contract to see if you can afford a treatment, when you try to get a loan for a car or home or your daughter’s college, when you want to fly to Denver on a short notice for a wedding, when you cannot look at your child’s math test held tight by Pearson, when you find out that the price of a single tomahawk missile is more than you make in a life time?
So, perhaps, let’s communicate our main motivations and our main feelings. The agins from small battles have been exploited, since both sides have piled up enough conventional weapons to fight these forever.
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“veteran of the military and veteran teacher”
For me, being a veteran of the most anti-democratic organization, the US death and destruction machine that is the US military, while an accurate description of Lloyd’s personal history (Viet Nam era when the most undemocratic means, the draft was used to shanghai youth, far too many, into that and their death and destruction), is not to be considered as a positive and used as a supposedly aggrandizing lead-in to the story.
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While it may not be the same, but reformers allow themselves to react to “public school teacher” similarly as you describe your reaction to “military veteran”, and both are unfair.
I don’t think we want to equate an organization with the people in it—as we don’t equate a country’s actions in politics with the citizens of the country.
The military does have a very important function we don’t want to forget: they really do defend us.
I recall Jane Fonda’s case
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My response was meant as a condemnation of the most destructive military machine in history and the very people that make up its core. Notice I said that it was an accurate description of Lloyd, what I condemn is the undying love of most everything military by many in this country as shown by Diane’s usage in this context. I have no problem with a military that would be for defense of the country. But that is not the military of today, nor the propaganda that is spewed forth by those who only choose to see the military as a supposedly great example of American pride/exceptionalism. I contend that it is the worse type of organization for which a supposedly democratic society that supposedly believes in equity, fairness and justice, can elevate to demi-god status for it’s members.
To understand a more historical perspective on what the military and its being used for purposes other than defense please read General Smedley Butler’s critique from the 30s: https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
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Look, Diane, somebody else is also quoting Wilson. https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/10/12/why-competitive-marketplaces-are-an-awkward-fit-for-education/#comments
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Added my summary of Wilson’s work to the discussion.
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I actually meant to write “Look Duane” not “Look Diane”.
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I thought so.
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Figured as much! Poor gal having been confused with this ugly mug!
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U-tube: President Obama Delivers Remarks Remarks on Education. “Summary: Today, President Obama announced America’s high school graduation rate reached a record high of 83 percent.”
He praises John King and Arne Duncan for the good job they have done.
https://youtu.be/ZoyrtpaDbTk
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President Obama has 2 months left where he could really take a hard look at the lack of accountability for all the funds that Duncan and King have directed to charter schools and demand some real oversight. He could say, every charter that gets federal money will immediately post the number of students who start each year of school and track them to see if an unusually high number are either being flunked (and not advancing due to poor teaching by charters) or just disappearing. He could say “we realize that just looking at the % of students passing is nonsensical if we ignore the elephant in the room that half the first-year’s class – or even more — has disappeared over the years, sometimes to be replaced with more selected students.”
I know he won’t. But it astonishes me that he only wants the research that proves exactly what we always knew it would – if your definition of “high standards” leads to the lowest performing students leaving or not advancing, your school will always do well with the ones who are able to meet your high standards. All those billions to learn what we always knew. None of those billions to address the students that high performing charters don’t want and can’t teach.
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