Jeff Bryant has written a stunning documentation of the damage done by the charter industry to public schools in North Carolina. It is worth your time to read it all. It is a preview of what lies ahead for public education in the Trump era, unless parents and educators and public-spirited citizens join to save their public schools. It is not a pretty picture.
The Tea Party Republicans in the legislature and Governor Pat McCrory in the state house set a course to undermine, underfund, and starve public schools while opening the state to charter schools, whether nonprofit or for-profit. Jeff Bryant shows how funding for the public schools is below 2008 levels, even though enrollment has grown by nearly 80,000. Public schools have had to make budget cuts, at the same time that charter schools and online charter schools take away students and funding. In North Carolina, as in many states, if a student leaves a charter school after October to return to the public school, the charter school gets to keep the full year of tuition and is not obliged to replace the student who left.
The board that oversees charter schools and decides which new charters to approve is filled with charter school advocates. As Donald Trump used to say, “It’s a rigged system, folks, it’s a rigged system.”
Bryant explains in detail how the for-profit charter management companies make money. He uses the example of National Heritage Academies, which is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the hometown of Donald Trump’s designated Secretary of Education. Half their teachers may be uncertified, which means they have lower salary costs. But the real money is in the real estate.
Bryant writes:
How do these schools make a profit? The best answer the reporter for the Charlotte Observer could find was in management fees for the EMOs [educational management organizations], which In North Carolina equal to 7 – 19 percent of total school operational costs.
But based on my inquiries, that figure represents a very small part of the profit these schools make.
Out Of Michigan And Florida
“North Carolina is one those states that is new to the charter game,” Ellen Lipton tells me in a phone call to her office in Michigan – home of National Heritage Academies. NHA is based in Grand Rapids, where Betsy DeVos also lives.
“The low per-student funding that tends to characterize Southern states generally kept charter school operators from moving into those states,” she contends. “But now states like Michigan are getting saturated” so the charter chains have decided to move south.
Lipton is a Michigan State Representative who has spoken out against the spread of charter schools through the state’s Education Achievement Authority, an appointed agency, similar to the Achievement School District North Carolina created last year, that takes over low-performing schools and turns them over to charter operators.
According to Lipton, NHA has “fine-tuned” the business of chartering to ensure they make a profit. She points me to a recent investigative report by the Detroit Free Press that finds, “It is difficult to know how charter management companies are spending money … Unlike traditional school districts, the management companies usually don’t disclose their vendors, contracts, and competitive bid documents.”
“NHA is a business model based on, not necessarily educating kids, but on being a facilities management company,” Casandra Ulbrich, another Michigan source, tells me.
Ulbrich is currently serving her second eight-year term on the Michigan State Board of Education and also works in education administration at a state community college.
She tells me how the NHA business model works: First, NHA forms a charter school board to “invite” NHA to manage a new school. The governing board is not independent of the management company, and members of the board can serve on multiple NHA charter boards across the state, thus creating a network of charter school boosters the work on promoting these schools.
After securing a contract to manage the new school, NHA purchases a building – it could be a storefront in a strip mall or an abandoned warehouse – and requests approval from an authorizer to open a school there. After the authorization, the charter board signs a lease agreement with Charter Development Company, LLC to take over ownership of the building. Charter Development Company, which has branches in all the states where NHA has schools, has its home office in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the same address as the home office of NHA.
Now NHA and its related enterprises own the building and its contents, even if desks, computers, and equipment have been purchased with taxpayer money. It receives rent payments from the district. It owns the curriculum the school teaches. And if NHA is ever fired, the charter board – and by extension the district – is in the awkward position of having to buy back its own school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
This seems as good a time as any to re-post John Oliver’s charter school piece (approaching 7 million views!!!):
and these two short animations:
and this one from the recent and successful (62-38%) “No on 2” campaign in Massachusetts, which summed it up nicely here:
Enjoy!
THANKS, Jack! Love the clips. Says a lot.
IF the public needs new models for public education and it’s not charter schools, what should they be? Magnet schools? Montessori based public schools for young children?
Consider: http://www.educationrevolution.org/store/resources/alternatives/mapoflandscape/
Thanks Diane.
Excellent Jeff. This is service journalism 101. Bravo
Jeff Bryant nails the charter danger. And how N. Carolina is a poster child of how the evil is spreading by “pouching” students from wealthier districts. This is a must read to the end. This is like a fast moving cancer that will be juiced by Trumps and DeVos types. Yikes
North Carolina is the latest victim of irresponsible charter expansion. Many states and cities are experiencing fiscal stress due to unregulated charter growth. What local policymakers fail to understand is the economic snowball effect of charter expansion. Yesterday Chiara posted a report for the Economic Policy Institute about the impact of charters on several cities. Many cities are in economic distress because of too generous reimbursement formulas. Several cities and states with large concentrations of charters will have difficulty paying for public pensions because there are fewer people in the system than those scheduled to collect. A huge economic crisis looms on the 2030-2050 horizon when publicly held bonds become due. Cities and states have issued bonds for charter buildings paid by public dollars, but these buildings become part of the private companies’ portfolio. This is insane. Some cities are already being downgraded by Moody’s, and more cities and states will follow unless policymakers stop the reckless pouring of taxpayer cash into charter expansion. The current system with a lack of management and oversight of charter expansion is going to have widespread dire economic impact as it is not sustainable.http://www.epi.org/publication/exploring-the-consequences-of-charter-school-expansion-in-u-s-cities/
From Bryant in Diane’s note: “”NHA is a business model based on, not necessarily educating kids, but on being a facilities management company,” Casandra Ulbrich, another Michigan source, tells me.”
The above is one of the clearest indications of what I have referred to in other notes as a “split foundation.” On the surface, the conflict is between two “models,” one being a business model (as above: “a facilities management company”), the other an educational model (as is at work in public education). So that at the foundational level, the conflict constantly pits (a) capitalist principles, and the economic payoffs from the school and its children against (b) democratic principles, and the development and education of children in a democracy.
This split set of assumptions is at work in another of Diane’s notes regarding an article in “The New Republic.” Like Trump, Andrew Cuomo of New York refers to “community public schools as a ‘government monopoly,’ and he endorsed legislation to compel the city of New York to give free space to charters, even those that are able to pay rent . . . “
Here, capitalism is not just a way of doing business in a democratic culture. Rather, capitalism has saturated their minds and so, like a cancer, has taken over the foundational territory. Cuomo and Trump apparently think public schools SHARE the same CAPITALIST FOUNDATION as private schools. The foundations are not even “split.” The assumption is that all schools are merely capitalist enterprises, just like any other business, like selling shoes. The education as a common good takes a backseat to making money (for the owners and for themselves as they become “workers” so they don’t need tax-payer support). It’s no longer about educating and developing children to become mature adults in a vibrant democracy–the political ground that EVERYONE in the culture and nation already stands on. For a government official to think this way is an expression of pure political ignorance.
The mixed business-education model, then, has two sometimes-competing motivation-to-goal functions (as their foundations): (a) making money, based in a capitalist economy, and (b) educating children based on enriching their lives, developing child-to-adults, and sustaining a democratic culture towards “a more perfect union.” That’s why the government funds public facilities–not so others can make a profit from them. Calling public schools a monopoly, again, shows an acuter ignorance, but also perhaps some darker intentions?
The public education model, then, is based in a democratic political ground (foundation), has the singular function of educating children to develop, mature, and live well in a democratic field. The education model can (and does) develop curricula that accounts for economic considerations of a capitalist economy, but is not grounded in that foundation. In brief, education is not only about making money but about educating children–and part of that is to understand the difference between democracy and capitalism. <–in my view, that’s our real failure.
As an NC parent with a child in a local charter (and a parent happily retired on a fat teachers union pension), I think your focus is misguided. The real problem isn’t that charters are draining money from deserving public schools, but that many of the public schools here are of such low quality (and often rife with drugs/crime/violence) that sending a child there is tantamount to child abuse. I will happily take the charter school as we have experienced it – consistent academic excellence in a safe and warm learning community. If you value public schools, then make public school valuable. Right now though, the charters deserve my tax money; these public schools don’t.
Durham Dad: I think that the horrible state of the public schools you speak of is a part of the overall plan of people like Devos. (Good grief–they don’t even hide it. Greed is good.)
But starve the beast (public schools) so it can’t do its job, then wave charters at woeful parents who can take their vouchers elsewhere. I don’t blame you for caring for your children–who would; but you are also right to suggest (a glimmer of hope?) that the public schools CAN and should be improved and that you would return to them if they were.
That improvement comes “from above” and from savvy tax payers. Unfortunately, the “above” is too often bought and paid for by “reformers,” and the tax payers don’t understand the “dark side” of the long term plan they are involved in–and if they do understand, they still have children now whom they don’t want to send to “drug-infested” etc., public schools–and so they can easily be used and manipulated by those reformers who, over the longer term, want the whole of “public” education to disappear.
From my understanding of this blog, Diane is educating those who will listen and understand how, in fact, democracy is being hoodwinked by such reformers and made into an oligarchy or worse.
Catherine, you are so right. This is the reform strategy, open charters, starve the public schools, parents leave because class sizes are too large, and the public gets the kids the charters don’t want. Who are more expensive to educate. An evil circle.
What is happening in North Carolina as described by Jeff Bryant in his article below gave me a clearer picture of how the funding of charter schools and the increase of their numbers are wrecking public schools. I am sharing it with you because we all need to understand this issue fully. It is going to affect our grandchildren and those that follow them!
For public school administrators in NC, the charter schools are probably causing their work to be a night mare! Not only do the public school teachers lose money — funding for what they need in the classrooms but there are other big disruptive issues. school principals and teachers have to deal with such as huge numbers of enrollment changes throughout the school year. From my experience, I found that having a stable population of students allows principals and teachers to know the students and their families. For example, when it comes to making the school schedule and placing the students into classrooms along with matching student needs to teaching styles, population stability has MANY, MANY COMPLICATED affects upon the classrooms. I could write a couple of pages on the complexity of these two processes which comes with the goal of putting together the best combination of students to form a productive classroom community so that individual needs are met (i.e. special education services) and so that the teachers are not overwhelmed with an unmanageable range of student abilities and behavior issues.
I as a school administrator used to not look forward to returning to my office after Christmas and spring breaks ONLY because it was always during these times that I would get several new students who needed to be carefully placed in classrooms; often some of these students came with learning or behavior issues. (Their parents were renting an apartment in Plainsboro.) I observed many a new student who negatively affected the climate of a classroom which was working so well in the past. Of course, there were well behaved wonderful children who came in the middle of the school year but they were in the minority. In any case, the placement of new students for me was very challenging and to do it right, I had to give it much administrative time.
When I read that Melania Trump does not want to move her 10 year old son in the middle of the school year to DC from NYC even if he might be headed to a great school, I was impressed! If he did go to Washington in January, it would take time for his new school to get to know him and for him to feel comfortable! There probably would be some effect of his presence in his new classroom upon the other children which the teacher. (Can you imagine being the teacher of Donald Trump’s son? ) I think that most people, including some school administrators, don’t realize the challenges and implications that a large movement of just normal children transferring between schools districts and charter schools can have upon teachers and their students.
I’m so glad that I’m retired!!! Now we are going to have a Secretary of Education (Betsy DeVos) who has: 1. NO experience working in a school. 2 No experience managing an organization. 3. Has lots of money. 4. Has a history of giving large sums of money to Republicans for quid pro quos. 5. She believes in charter schools (with no accountability) and vouchers!!! Oy Vey! I wonder how many school administrators and teachers will retire early in North Carolina and other states this year which is another big problem to be discussed later.