Here is the latest poll on Question 2 in Massachusetts, whether to expand the number of charters by 12 a year indefinitely. See page 11.
Question 2 is losing in every demographic category except older Republicans.
Whites and blacks oppose Question 2 by similar proportions.
Younger voters (ages 18-39) overwhelmingly oppose it, by 71-21.
If the trends hold, this will be a massive and humiliating defeat for the corporate reformers, who have spent more on this election (at least $22 million) than on any education referendum anywhere. They won’t miss the $22 million, but they will have sustained a major setback in their plans for privatization.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good! This is what I want to hear. I was chomping on the bit so much that I early voted for the EXPLICIT reason to vote no on Q2. Hopefully this will be the wave that helps send Baker and his parasites packing. Hopefully they will take Pioneer Institute with them.
The Oligarchs will find another way. They are entrenched and some have been at this for decades. For instance, pouring even larger sums of money into elections for the governor’s mansion and the state legislature until they own a majority of votes in both. The 0.1 percent will also go after as many judges as possible in an attempt to also control the courts. Hopefully, Q2 will go down to utter defeat but it is only one more battle in a war that has been going on longer than Iraq and Afghanistan and will still be raging long after those conflicts are over.
I truly hope so. It gives me a little more faith that people can see behind the lies.
And a massive defeat of common sense and the imposition of the majority’s will against a minority. All of the data shows that charter schools in MA are doing a better job of educating student, predominantly the African American students from low income families that they mostly serve. It’s too bad that many people will vote based on the interests of adults and not those of children.
People who will not be impacted by charters will vote to take away that option from those who can’t afford to move to the neighborhoods where these voters live. I find this disgusting and disappointing.
A similar result would be obtained by allowing public institutions the same stat-warping practices. I have yet to be convinced that pulling all the good students out of a school helps everyone learn better. Sounds good for the few at the expense of the many.
Roy,
Sounds like you’re describing our current mechanism of paying for schools with property taxes and the parents that pull their students out by moving.
Blind comparisons of lottery winners to lottery losers show that Boston charters get better results with the same students.
Um, no, “John”. Mark Weber, aka Jerseyjazzman, has delved into this “research” and found it lacking:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2016/11/thoughts-on-question-2-and-charter.html
Even Mark admits that the data shows charters in Boston are doing better, and he does not argue the opposite. He just questions whether there’s enough data to support expansion. He also makes it clear that he would prefer that efforts go to improving traditional schools without saying what those might be.
John,
Please explain how it is possible to account for the kids counseled out of a charter? If the charter control group does not include the kids randomly weeded out over the years, of course it will be better because the public school can’t dump it’s lowest 25% or 50% or 75% of kids.
Misleaders keep saying “but they include the kids who leave”. And yet they can never explain how. And if you press them and say: How do the kids who have been weeded out in K, 1st and 2nd grade so that the 3rd grade testing grade consists entirely of only high-performing kids account for attrition, they are silent.
Does the kid who was weeded out in Kindergarten get counted after spending 3 years in public school? Of course not. That would be absurd. Any gains he made during his 3 years of public school would have nothing to do with the charter and any researcher who claimed that they did have to do with the charter would be drummed out.
Ah, but then you look closely and realize they only looked at a few charters that started in 9th grade. And the next year, every kid who was weeded out is off the comparison.
It’s stuff and nonsense, but people like John still believe these studies are good. Even if they are unable to actually explain how the many, many low-scoring kids who leave are considered. We should just trust them that they do count somehow in some way that is mysterious to all but the researchers.
Shades of Donald Trump! No wonder he loves charters. “I know, trust me, I’m not lying”. That’s the kind of “evidence” that the pro-charter folks love.
I believe Boston charter study and KIPP Mathematica study both included every student who attended the charter for even one day as part of the “treatment group” to avoid the very point you raise. The data still came out in favor of the charters.
John, you still didn’t explain HOW! That is my point.
You seem to be making the absurd claim that every child who wins a lottery spot is included in the comparison group until the time that his original lottery winning class graduates 4 or 6 or 8 years later.
Again, I challenge you — explain how you can do it. No study would because it would not tell you anything about the school!
Here is how silly your claim is:
According to you, out of 100 kids entering 9th grade, 30 of the lowest scoring kids are weeded out in the first month. Another 20 don’t come back for 10th grade. By senior year there are only 40 kids who have been in the school. But the scores of another 60 kids — at least half of whom have not been in that school for 3 years, are “included”. So if they want to a public school where they excelled, the charter would get full credit for that because they were in the school for 1 week 3 years earlier. That’s your claim, John?
Of course it isn’t true. First of all, we all agree that would be absurd! So what most likely happens is that the charter school “includes” those 30 children who mysteriously disappeared during that year.
But once the next year starts, with all of those low scorers gone, they are no longer counted. No doubt that charter can claim “improvement”! They used to have a 50% passing rate and now it is up to 71%. Of course, they used to have 50/100 kids passing and now they have 50/70 passing.
And the same thing happens with another 10 low scoring kids leaving during the year, who are out of the testing cohort because they didn’t “begin” the junior year. Junior year there are 50/60 kids passing! 83%!!! What an amazing improvement!! If only we could just get rid of those 10 kids by the end of the year…….
Success! Fifty kids begin senior year and all 50 pass! 100% passing rates! It’s a miracle! Every single kid that charter school teaches passes the tests! And they even account for attrition! Except they don’t really do so! But I will keep saying they do because gullible people believe me!
John, what I described is the only way to include the students who left. It is beyond absurd for the pro-charter folks to insist that the kid who left after the first day of school in 9th grade is still being credited to the charter school in 12th grade. It just isn’t happening. And if it was, it would make those studies meaningless since if the cohort measured includes 30 – 50% of kids who spent more time in public schools than charter schools, how would we ever know what affect the charter school had?
There may be some way for you to explain this, but your casual dismissal that these studies “included every student” are very misleading. I suspect they included the student for the year that they spent the day or month in the charter (if that). And then they were never included again.
You don’t understand how these work. If you take lottery winners and lottery losers, and count the winners as charter students even if they subsequently leave, you still get much better outcomes for the lottery winners. In these studies, the students get counted as charter students even if they leave after one day.
So, your “low scorers” that charter supposedly get rid of, are still counted as charter students in the studies.
John:
You have missed my point. Magnets and pull out programs have been workin for the lottery winners in various ways for decades. What do you plan to do for the kids who are difficult to teach? Are you willing to pay much higher taxes to help them too? Right now, charters are having a depressing effect on public expenditure in impoverished areas. You mention that right now all those people are moving to avoid bad situations. I agree. The people who move should not have to choose, but that takes higher taxes. Campaign on that next cycle.
Your “options” fragment public resources and hurt the common good. We are all impacted by charters…try thinking systemically.
Example—My friends now have to pay a $1,000 pay to participate in the marching band while charter school profiteers make millions and buy off politicians. You can’t even win an argument when you have huge financial advantages. People think systemically—unlike you—and realize that you are taking resources away from public schools.
Chuck, there are no charter profiteers in MA. Your school chose to cut band. Havenyou looked at which costs have actually gone up?
John, you are naïve. Think about what these people are saying – both, above and below. You’ll get it.
““Ms. Plancher, a registered nurse, was glad her youngest child had the charter option. But with four charter schools in her area, she has seen two public schools close. She said she worried that adding more charters would further crimp the traditional schools.
“I think whatever we have is enough,” she said. “We cannot pick and choose which kids we educate and leave the rest out.”
John, even the parents with kids IN charters know when the charter folks are lying about “we educate any kid”.
It’s so Trumpian to repeat the same lie over and over again that the highest performing charters achieve miracles with every random kid who wins the lottery. I’m glad, like Trump, people are finally demanding more than the “believe me, our suspension rate of 20% for 1st graders is irrelevant” nonsense that they have gotten away with for years.
Good for charter parents for sticking up for the TRUTH. Too bad charters themselves are so determined to lie. I used to support them until I realized how dishonest they were and until they stop with the lies, I will continue to oppose them.
I guess that is why NAACP opposes charters?
Doug,
Donations and board members from AFT and NEA is why the NAACP did that. Follow the money.
You really believe the fact that teachers can control NAACP? I don’t.
Doug, they wrote the platform and don’t even deny it.
The NAACP statement is about schools as employers, not about kids.
The oldest venerable black rights organization in America NAACP also BLM oppose charters because they are not vehicles for black advancement. The are about profit privatization and idology. Even Thomas Fordham is turning away from charters and back to vouchers. They see charters as a failure.
If you’re referring to just the title of their book, you haven’t read it. Their conclusion is that chartering needs to be improved and expanded. They support Yes on #2. https://edexcellence.net/articles/the-massachusetts-charter-school-cap-harms-disadvantaged-students.
African American families in Boston overwhelmingly support charter schools.
And here’s Elizabeth Warren on vouchers:
The concept of public schools is “deeply American” and embodies “the notion that merit rather than money determines a child’s future,” Warren writes. “But who are we kidding? As parents increasingly believe the differences among schools will translate into differences in lifetime chances, they are doing everything they can to buy into the best public schools.” She mocks the idea of even calling schools in more affluent communities truly public, since they are only open to the families with the financial means to live there, with poorer families locked out. “At the core of the problem is the time-honored rule that where-you-live dictates where-you go to school,” she writes. Warren says the solution is to break up the “ironclad relationship” between location and school and declares, “A well-designed voucher program would fit the bill neatly.”
White, financially well off families in Massachusetts have school choice. That they want to take it away from low income black families is pathetic. As an author of an editorial recently posited, it simply isn’t accurate to even call schools in MA’s lily-white, affluent suburbs “public” since you have to be able to afford to live there to get in.
That this crowd will readily ignore data underscores the basis on which decisions are made, and it has nothing to do with what’s best for children. Boston is a great charter sector, with as many special ed and ELL students as traditional schools, and where special needs do better, are more likely to graduate, more likely to earn merit scholarships, and more likely to be integrated into regular classrooms.
African American, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students are also achieving better in charters than in traditional public schools. In general, Boston charter students are making academic progress at double the rate of district students.
In short, it’s everything that charter foes say they want charters to be, but they will still oppose, because the only thing they want charters to be is gone. They can only overcome the pesky fact that parents keep choosing charters in ever-increasing numbers by taking away that choice legislatively.
So, that’s why there’s so much money pouring into this ballot question. If charter foes can stop charters in MA, they can probably stop them anywhere. In the process, they prove that their agenda is protection of adult jobs and influence without regard to academic achievement or student success.
I met Elizabeth Warren last year. I asked her if she still supports vouchers. She said unequivocally NO.
She opposes Question 2 because it will drain resources from the real public schools.
Please don’t twist her words.
Charter schools are not better than public schools. In the few cases in which they have better scores it is primarily through selection expulsion long hours and absurd test prep.
It’s also a major setback to their PR plans. I look forward to quoting Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Michael Dukakis as we fight privatization in California.
Lots of setbacks for reformy types these days.
NAACP position on charters
Question 2 Massachusetts
Minnesota judge doesn’t see any connection between LIFO and test scores.
More chinks in the dam will eventually bring down the whole wall.
“Younger voters (ages 18-39) overwhelmingly oppose it,” So those of child baring age oppose it . Says it all .
Once charter-mania takes hold in state government it can be difficult to get politicians to focus on public schools. The “silver bullet” is so appealing they end up spending 90% of their time chasing it.
I hope that doesn’t happen in Massachusetts but it has absolutely happened in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The response to any concern or issue with public schools becomes “choice!” and that way they don’t have to deal with any of it.
There’s not even a way broach the discussion about “improving public schools” because there’s a huge group of lawmakers and others insisting they have found the solution and it’s charters/vouchers. Every public school issue or debate is immediately derailed into a discussion about “choice”- public schools essentially vanish.
I think it’s because some of the discussions around public schools are not at all “bold” or sexy – it’s dull stuff like improving attendance by inches over time or restoring electives or getting rid of pay to play for sports – pay to play was an absolutely horrible idea. There’s just a lack of interest in pursuing those kinds of improvements.
Is Mass. really as rigidly cordoned off into income zones as ed reformers are claiming?
It can’t be ALL “wealthy suburban schools” and then “low income urban schools” can it?
There’s no working class or middle class public schools at all in that state?
They set the frame the same way in Ohio and it’s simply not true. There are plenty of middle income or economically diverse public schools in this state. Is Mass. really all high/low and nothing in the middle or diverse?
Massachusetts has many working class towns and rural towns. There are also places like where I live in Cambridge that are quite diverse in all ways. The department of elementary and secondary education has statewide reports that show data on hundreds of things for all districts.
http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/
Wells Fargo stands on way higher moral ground, than charter schools. They are similar, up to a point. (1) Top managers, of both, take substantial cuts off the top. (2) They are both part of a corrupt system that won’t rein them in. (3) Both created phantom customers, clients/students. (4) They’re noticeably different in the 4th. The charter school system’s harm, is widespread. Whereas, Wells Fargo’s harm, in charging, to make available, an unused and unwanted service, was limited and short term.
However, the huge difference, between the two, that makes Wells Fargo, morally, far superior, is described in 5 conditions, unique to privatized public schools. First, the government enables the charter school industry, to destroy public education, with the deceit that they are “public” entities. Secondly, a bank, like Wells Fargo wouldn’t expect politicians to covertly force taxpayers to give them assets (i.e. bought and thought, to be for long term student benefit). TARP and government contracts are visible, as such. Thirdly, select politicians, out of a sense of duty, sought (and, got) the resignation of Wells Fargo’s president. In contrast, politicians are courting, not targeting, the lawful but, unethical, wrong doers, in the charter school segment. Fifth, Wells Fargo didn’t plot with politicians, to hog-tie the other banks, with discriminant constraints.
http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1589649
Thanks for the graphic. I hope that Massachusetts voters prove to be smarter than the voters who let their public education dollars be stolen. From Ohio- a headline yesterday, about a charter school that the Dept. of Ed. claimed was overpaid $60,000,000 last year, “Most Students Reviewed are Truant”.
I will trust the self-reported data the charters provide to DESE, thanks. A gem from the big tobacco debate: “I state that in our considered opinion
there is no proof at all that smoking causes lung
cancer and much to suggest that it cannot be the
cause.”(Imperial Tobacco, 1956)
The NYTimes says the only problems with ed reform in Michigan and Ohio are “for profit charters” and “online charters”:
They have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about, yet they print one of these charter cheerleading articles once a month.
It’s irresponsible to push charters on these states without knowing the first thing about what is going on here. That’s how Ohio ended up with this mess- they relied on national lobbyists and ignored their own citizens.
How hard would it be to actually travel to Michigan and Ohio and find out that’s not true? It’s not like we’re talking about a trek to some distant land. They could read Ohio and Michigan newspapers and find out that’s not true. Hell, in Ohio they could go to the state department of ed website. They don’t even have to leave the building in NY.
They are probably relying on the Aspen Institute (Gates funds its education programs) and senators like Sherrod Brown, for their info.