The United Teachers of Los Angeles hired an independent research firm to analyze the true cost of charter schools to the school district.
The firm, MGT of America, was free to reach its own conclusions.
Its report concluded that charters are costing the Los Angeles Unified School District nearly $600 million a year in lost revenue.
A report by MGT of America, an independent research firm, reveals that LAUSD has lost an astonishing $591 million to unmitigated charter school growth this year alone. If costs associated with charter school expansion are not mitigated with common sense solutions, the district will face financial insolvency, according to an analysis of the report.
As the number of independent charter schools continues to grow, it becomes increasingly important for LAUSD to quantify, forecast, and manage the costs associated with independent charter expansion. LAUSD oversees more charter schools than any other district in the country. Charters are privately managed despite relying heavily on district and taxpayer funding.
Taken together, the findings in the report paint a picture of a system that prioritizes the growth opportunities for charter school operators over the educational opportunities for all students.
As Massachusetts and Georgia voters prepare to vote on whether to expand the number of charters, they should be fully informed that more money for charters means budget cuts for public schools. Budget cuts for public schools mean larger class sizes, fewer teachers, fewer programs for the schools that serve the majority of students.
As the charter sector continues to expand, because of false promises to parents about their “success” (even before the school opens), the public school system that has been a foundational element in American democracy is threatened by loss of funding and privatization.
I wish we could get the Board to realize they are cutting their own throats. See Karen Wolfe’s account of the last board meeting. While they deny some charters, they approve many more. We are working on this but it’s an uphill battle.
Hi Diane, i don’t know how to message you an idea for a blog post, so sorry for just putting this in the comments, but i think this piece is important.
https://emilytalmage.com/2016/10/29/ed-reform-2-0-if-you-can-train-a-pigeon-to-detonate-bombs/
wondering, thanks, will post. It is in the queue.
The collateral damages of charters are far greater than just the loss of funds to public schools. The community loses its identity when public schools close as public schools are generally the hub of the community. When public schools close, many middle class teaching jobs are lost Perhaps a better question is, what is actually being gained through charter expansion and by whom?
The Chartyr
Chartyr, Chartyr, burning down
All the public schools in town:
What billionaire hand or eye,
Could frame thy feared inequity?
In what distant rich man’s screed
Burnt the fire of thine greed!
On what bull dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what bankster, & what art,
Could twist the sinews at thy heart?
And when hedge funds began to take,
What dread hand put glut to bake?
What the hammer? Chartyr chain?
In what back room was thy brain?
What the Eli? What the Broad
Filled the town with all these toads?
When the People built their schools
And voted boards of Them to rule:
Did not they smile their work to see?
Did democracy make thee?
Chartyr, Chartyr burning down
All the public schools in town:
What billionaire hand or eye
Could frame thy feared inequity?
Excellent and appropriate invocation of Blake
The traditional public schools are the reason that the United States is ranked the 4th most educated nation on the planet with almost 3 college grades for every job that requires a college degree. Until recent years (a low single digit, the U.S. manufacturing sector was larger than China’s. Production has steadily increased for decades. In fact, the U.S. still produces more than 80 percent of its own steel and exports some of that steel. The reason manufacturing jobs have been lost is mostly due to automation, not jobs lost to China or Mexico.
The charter school industry, with one obvious goal: to make money for a few, is out to destroy the highly successful traditional public school system that countries like China and Finland learned from before NCLB started to destroy those American schools, and plunge the U.S. way down that ranking causing the U.S. to become a 3rd world country.
With a poverty rate that is already the highest among developed nations, the U.S. is on the fast track to regress while countries like China and India leave the 3rd world behind. The ratio of poverty in China is already lower than poverty in the U.S., and China’s middle class for the first time in its history already rivals the entire population of the united States, and China’s leaders want to double that number.
Because of the same greed that drives tax cuts for the wealthiest few, like Donald Trump, and the privatization of the U.S. education system, the infrastructure is aging and falling apart, for instance, the electric grid, power plants, rail, the roads, public works, and airports. The money isn’t there to keep the infrastructure up to date and in good shape, because of narcissists and psychos like Donald Trump, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, and the union hating, poverty-wage paying, government subsidized Walmart Walton family, the wealthiest family on the planet.
It’s like a ponzi scheme. There is no way the public education system can support the growing number of charters. If this continues there will be a tipping point where the choice will be charter vs no available school openings for the majority of the children. What happens then?