Brilliant reader Chiara, who lives in Ohio, wrote this timely observation:
“U.S. Education Secretary John King on Wednesday weighed in on a swirling schools controversy, criticizing what he called “arbitrary caps” on the growth of high-quality charter schools, publicly funded but, in many cases, privately operated K-12 schools in 42 states and the District of Columbia.
Appearing at the National Press Club, King said the USA is “fortunate, I think, as a country, to have some high-performing charters that are doing a great job providing great opportunities to students — charters that are helping students not only perform at higher levels academically, but go on to college at much higher rates” than students at similar neighborhood public schools. “That’s good. We should have more schools like that, and I think any arbitrary cap on that growth of high-performing charters is a mistake.”
Obama Administration continues their 8 year practice of advocating exclusively for charter schools and completely ignoring the existence of public schools.
King’s statement is nonsense. He has it backward. Obama and DC REQUIRED states to arbitrarily lift caps on charter schools regardless of quality in order to receive federal money. They made no distinctions on ‘quality’ or which states- they cheerled every single charter school expansion in all 50 states.
They just handed 71 million dollars to expand the worst charter sector in the country in Ohio. They weren’t even aware that Ohio’s charter sector is a disaster.
This isn’t about “quality”. It’s about an ideological preference for privatized schools and outright hostility to existing public schools and it permeates DC.
None of these people ever talk about improving public schools. It is all charters all the time in the echo chamber. They couldn’t be bothered to act as advocates for public schools when state after state gutted funding during Obama’s terms. Not a peep out of any of them. But, threaten charter schools and the whole gang rises up in anger!
Ridiculous that they’re all public employees. Public employees who oppose public schools. They should find work in the private sector.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
IT’S UP TO YOU AND ME NOW TO SPREAD THE WORD because our state and local lawmakers and social media friends everywhere need to know right now that the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals.”
The report documents multiple cases of financial risk, waste, fraud, abuse, lack of accountability of federal funds, and lack of proof that the schools were implementing federal programs in accordance with federal requirements.
Throughout our nation, private charter schools backed by billionaire hedge funds are being allowed to divert hundreds of millions of public school tax dollars away from educating America’s children and into private corporate pockets. Any thoughtful person should pause a moment and ask: “Why are hedge funds the biggest promoters of charter schools?” Hedge funds aren’t altruistic — there’s got to be big profit in “non-profit” charter schools in order for hedge fund managers to be involved in backing them.
And even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
One typical practice of charter schools is to pay exorbitant rates to rent buildings that are owned by the charter school board members or by their proxy companies which then pocket the public’s tax money as profit. Another profitable practice is that although charter schools use public tax money to purchase millions of dollars of such things as computers, the things they buy with public tax money become their private property and can be sold by them for profit…and then use public tax money to buy more, and sell again, and again, and again, pocketing profit after profit.
The Washington State and New York State supreme courts and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions.
Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money. Moreover, as the NAACP and ACLU have reported, charter schools are often engaged in racial and economic-class discrimination.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO FEDERAL MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC. Hillary Clinton could, if elected President, on day one in office issue an Executive Order to the Department of Education to do just that. Tell her today to do that! Send her the above information to make certain she knows about the Inspector General’s findings and about the abuses being committed by charter schools.
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Like!
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That’s EXACTLY what King is planning, his next employment with Charters. And don’t forget, he actually sent his children to a private school WHILE he was the Public School Commissioner in New York State!! While he implemented the disastrous drill and kill testing regime that private schools were protected from. He is a complete fraud and corporate lapdog.
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The persistent, but appalling, theory of action is that democratically-governed public schools are an irredeemable failure and that alternatives need to be developed to serve the deserving few. Combined with declining and inequitable school funding and a test and punish testing regime designed to make public schools and their teachers look bad this is recipe designed to undermine and delegitimize public education.
There are, in fact, better ways to improve education for all.
http://www.arthurcamins.com
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As Pasi Sahlberg more or less stated in his lecture, The American school system is not broken, What we have is the result of extreme income inequity. He actually used statistics that showed how well we are doing despite our inequities. I cannot remember in recent years (other than from J Jazzman) viewing graphs that confirm the effectiveness of our public schools. We still have plenty of work to do, but our public schools are doing their best in a hostile political climate. Sahlberg also stated that no other country has ever improved its schools through privatization. Sweden and Chile found this out the hard way. Our policymakers need to look at the facts and stop allowing billionaires to influence our policies.
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Ah, but the poor man is starting to splutter; the citizenry keeps getting in his way, now, right and left.
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Is Hillary ready and willing to listen to the NEA and AFT and to scrap the failed privatizing policies of the Obama DOE? Will she use her power wisely to appoint a secretary who sees the mission of the DOE as one of supporting public education? Our unions endorsed her and have funded her and we have earned her consideration and respect, but I’m still not convinced that she gets it any more than Obama or even Bernie. On the bright side she does seem to understand the principles of democracy a lot better than her opponent.
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Good question, GST, especially now that Hillary is in the homestretch and Trump seems to be going off the rails. What happens to John B. King on January 20, 2017?
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King goes to work for Gates or Broad or Ms. Jobs or Zuckerberg.
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Two bits says that she keeps him on. You know a transition thing that lasts at least four years.
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I guarantee that she cares too much about children to continue the testing abuse.
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So you’re accepting the bet? Two bits payable at the next NPE conference. Accepted!
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Duane,
I will bet you John King moves on to a cushy job in the reform biz. He will not be Hillary’s secretary
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You’re on (although perhaps I am not wise to bet with someone who might have more inside info than me-ha ha!) Two bits payable at the next NPE Conference, eh!
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I sure hope Diane is right. (Sorry, Duane.) I’d love to see John B. King “building his plane while flying it” out there in Redmond, WA. The farther from New York State he is, the better. Good riddance!
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I could be wrong, but I think Hillary will be better than Obama. Hillary herself graduated from a public school system. Obama surrounded himself with people that were comtemptuous of public schools. Hillary was always supportive of public schools when she was a state senator from New York. Her choice Tim Kaine as VP is a positive sign as Virginia is not on the charter bandwagon. I know who her friends are and who her campaign manager is, but I think the NAACP’s position may actually sway Hillary more than Obama. She may be willing to support more accountability for charters as I doubt she wants to alienate the NAACP.
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I do not mind being corrected when my perceptions are missing the mark. I do appreciate reassurance if I am getting close.
I believe criticism of charter schools can be difficult to communicate, because there are two separate routes to some sort of success, not very similar in their methods. There are charters which are reasonably well managed with a goal of offering a better choice. KIPP might be an example. Selective choosing of students, methods of avoiding what might hurt testing results, and so-called “tough standards” often helpful in causing attrition of undesirable students, amounts to a form of re segregation, which inevitably places a heavier load on the non charter schools. But there is a different way to achieve success as a charter. Hiring TFA and other relatively inexpensive teachers, not worrying too much about class size, or much of anything else….just showing how much more cheaply undesirable loads of students can be taken care of might work well in chain operations, with inevitable failures and closings (the 2008 St. Louis Can Academy is a vivid memory for me, lasting only 7 months) can be run using routine corporate routines of anticipation of failures, but remaining profitable until they do. To me, the avoidance and attrition model of re segregation is more damaging. Perhaps the others biggest role is to enable the claim…..see how great it is about charters….if they do not work, they close. which is the most “wonderful” thing about them.
I do not know if any writing has been about what I have perceived as a duality of danger in charters. Perhaps it is all in my imagination. If it is not, more emphasis needs to be made to explain the dual rails of damage from charters.
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I guess I am a hardcore anti-charter foe. If we want to establish free and fair competition in educational opportunity K-12, then do it within the public school district construct. Otherwise, you are taking resources away from the promise of an equal educational opportunity for all, while adding additional administrative and regulatory costs. That is our public/societal obligation. Anything different ensures a protected class of students and families. AND, that a large number of pupils will be Left Behind. It has to be and it has proven to be exactly that. If you want something different or “better” for your child, pay for the universal free public education and THEN pay for your own options. All the claims of “unfairness” from non-universal public schools are bunk.
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I do not know if that was supposed to be a response to my post…my point was that there are two different types of charter schools, both dangerous to public education. That should get me a reasonably hardcore anti-charter foe. or so I thought.
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There has been o going debate about KIPP, test scores, attrition.
I met Michael Feinberg and KIPP top staff in Houston a few years ago and they had the wisdom to take me to lunch at a Mexican restaurant. Nice people, doing their best. But it did not assuage my concern about turning public money over to corporate chains. Like KIPP. I believe in the public school as a community institution, not a corporate chain. It is an out community, democracy, voice.
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Goodness! Did they pay for your lunch with their charter school tax dollars?
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But, threaten charter schools and the whole gang rises up in anger!
Perfectly evident with the parents sent from Memphis to protest the NCAAP resolution for a cap on charters, paid for by “Democrats for Education Reform”
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The Obama administration is a disgrace on education. I hope if Clinton becomes president she takes a different stand on education. The last thing I want to see is 4 more years of Obama policies on education.
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Still better than what Trump would do, eh?
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John King is an utterly horrible individual, He would not last 10 seconds in my country, which would have the people AND the politicians throwing stones at him or anchoring him firmly into a guillotine, so to speak!
Where is the American outrage at such a poor excuse for a Federal Secretary of Education? And it was your very president who appointed him.
SO sad.
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NF,
He was a disaster in New York. It is a mystery how and why he was chosen to be US Secretary of Ed.
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I understand what you are saying, but I don’t agree with you.
If I am not inaccurate in my understanding of Obama, did he not praise some public school in one of your states for firing the entire staff, and he was not even aware of the particular circumstances in that school? Was it in Maryland or Rhode Island?
Obama is gung-ho about privatization, as he and his wife were both working for a think tank in Chicago some 20 years ago, and part of its mission was to close public schools and reopen them as charters.
The rotten apple King has not fallen far from the rotten tree POTUS. But to be fair, I can’t imagine that Obama is solely responsible for education reform. This must have been going on for years, and it has metastasized into a larger clump. It’s really bad, but with hard work, not without some real hope, I think.
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Central Falls, Rhode Island.
Obama and Duncan praised the district and state leaders for threatening mass firings.
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How utterly reprehensible.
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Obama certainly is not solely responsible for so-called education reform, but he was/is a Trojan Horse brought in to market it among the liberal classes.
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He was chosen because he (John King) represents the same or very similar views as the president. Obama doesn’t walk on water.
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Apparently, the Obama administration was pleased with King’s fiasco in New York, which is why he was promoted. There is no mystery here whatsoever.
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Question? Is Mellissa Steel King, wife of Secretary King still a partner with Bellweather Education Partners? This would seem to be a major conflict of interest for the Secretary?
On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” Brilliant reader Chiara, who lives in Ohio, wrote > this timely observation: “U.S. Education Secretary John King on Wednesday > weighed in on a swirling schools controversy, criticizing what he called > “arbitrary caps” on the growth of high-quality ch” >
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Yes
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It seems that Obama, with his eye on becoming a centimillionaire like the Clintons, has actually relished the prospect of destroying public education. Or is that the going price of his admission ticket into the post-presidential plutocratic premises?
And we thought GWB was rough on public education.
As far as I’m concerned, Obama deserves nothing but contempt from the supporters of public education. If I am ever at a public event where he is speaking (doubtful, as I have a feeling he is already banking on those $250K-per-speech paychecks), I will turn my back to him.
Respect is a two-way street, and Obama has shown us that he has earned a rating of “Unsatisfactory” in that domain.
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He only attended elite private schools, K through Harvard Law, and his adulthood was largely spent ingratiating himself to local and then national elites (his cup of coffee as a “community organizer” was a brilliant exercise in brand development) and being a point man for selling their policies – gentrification, , destruction of public housing – among the people he claimed to represent.
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