The Los Angeles Times endorsed two strong supporters of charter schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District board, both favored by the California Charter School Association. The rationale was simplistic: new voices are needed.This is bizarre. It doesn’t matter whether a voice is old or new. What matters most is what the voice is saying. Will a new board try to turn Los Angeles into New Orleans? Will it be Eli Broad’s puppet? His voice is the oldest of all. It would be truly refreshing if the LA Times told him to keep his hands off the public schools since all of his experiments have failed (e.g., Michigan’s Education Achievement District). Why don’t they tell him to stick to art and medical research and stop meddling in the schools?
However, the Times published an article by columnist Steve Lopez that offers a clear-eyed analysis of the CCSA’s dirty tricks. The CCSA and its billionaire buddies have decided that it is time to take out Steve Zimmer, chair of the LAUSD school board. They are raising millions of dollars to push him out, even though he has not been hostile to charters. But the billionaires don’t want a fair-minded board president who has classroom experience (Zimmer came into education through Teach for America but remained a teacher for 17 years). The last time they tried to beat him, they outspent him 5-1, but he prevailed. His winning issue apparently was the $1 million from former NYC Mayor Bloomberg, which gave the appearance that a New Yorker was trying to buy control of the LA schools. So this time the $1 million came from former LA Mayor Richard Riordan.
So here’s the dirty trick. CCSA created a phony group called LA Students for Change to demand Zimmer’s ouster. Once again, like Families for Excellent Schools in New York City, which is composed of billionaire families who will never see the inside of a public school, the charter industry finds it necessary to deceive voters. Worse, CCSA printed up flyers for their student-props, blaming Zimmer for John Deasy’s $1 Billion iPad fiasco.
How comical is that? The embarrassing iPad scandal caused Deasy to resign, with a cloud over his head. Deasy now works for Eli Broad. Broad is the city’s charter kingpin and a major financier of CCSA. and now CCSA’s student group is pinning Deasy’s mess on Zimmer.
I salute the Los Angeles Times for recognizing that it’s time for Monica Garcia, the board’s most fervent charter advocate, to go. The Times endorses Lisa Alva, a classroom teacher who would be a valuable addition to the board. She and Carl Petersen are running against Garcia, and here’s hoping that they pull enough votes to force her into a run-off and defeat her.
Los Angeles should have a great public school in every neighborhood. That won’t happen as long as charters continue to drain away the students they want and drain away resources, leaving LAUSD with the students most expensive to educate and less money to meet their needs.
The district needs that vision, not just new voices and faces for the sake of novelty.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
WA State has Stand on Children doing this same thing. Latest group they have is called Student Success – @WAStudentsnow – purportedly about funding schools. Funny thing is, it includes all the same groups trying to get rid of the judges who voted against charter schools.
LikeLike
The corporate reformers are known by deception. They are good at branding and marketing.
LikeLike
More evidence of the sociopaths plotting to destroy public education.
LikeLike
With the charter school industry that’s favored by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos bleeding vital funds from the public’s schools, the thoughtful person will ask: “Why are hedge fund people the main backers of the private charter school industry? After all, hedge funds are not known for a selfless interest in educating children.”
Well, the answer, of course, is MONEY.
For example, look at DeVos’ home state of Michigan: There are 1.5 million children attending public elementary and secondary schools and the state annually spends about $11,000 per student which adds up to pot of about $17 billion that private charter school operators have their eyes on. If these private operators succeed in getting what DeVos wants to give them — the power to run all the schools — these private profiteers could make almost $6 billion in profit just by firing veteran teachers and replacing them with low-paid inexperienced teachers, which is what the real objective of so-called “Value-Added” evaluations of veteran teachers is all about.
But wait! There’s more!
In fact, there are many more ways that big profits are being made every day right now by the private charter school industry. Here are just some:
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” because of the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the 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. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL” because no charter school fulfills the basic public accountability requirement of being responsible to and directed by a school board that is elected by We the People. Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money.
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.
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 PUBLIC TAX MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC.
LikeLike
All anyone is talking about is the money. Meanwhile, our libraries are still closed. Our class sizes are among the largest in the country. Our superintendent announced plans to consider closing and consolidating low enrollment schools. And LAUSD is making plans to begin a One App (like New Orleans) to combine charter and district school enrollment. And none of the candidates are being asked bout these issues.
LikeLike