Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy–a retired educator who served as deputy commissioner of education for the state of Ohio- asks the question that is the title of this post.
And he answers:
What educational opportunities do charters provide that would not exist if there were no charters?
Sometimes public school advocates say, “I don’t have a problem with charters, but…” A short quiz is an appropriate way to think about what the charter industry has contributed to the improvement of educational opportunities and results.
ο What innovations and best practices have Ohio charters demonstrated that are worthy of replication in the real public school system?
ο What additional and/or high quality educational opportunities are charters providing for regular, disadvantaged, career/technical students and those with disabilities that are not available in the real public school system?
ο What extracurricular activities do charter schools offer that the real public school system does not?
ο Have charters demonstrated stronger academic performance than the real public school system?
ο Have charters demonstrated a lower cost for school administration than the real public school system?
ο In view of more than 200 charter school closings in Ohio, have charters provided more stability for students than the real public school system?
ο Have the threads of fiscal fraud and corruption, funds wasted in charter closings, nepotism, inordinate profits and towering administrative salaries inherent in charterdom established a new normal in school operation?
Ohio taxpayers have been forced to invest in this $9 billion charter experiment. Truthful answers to the above questions reveal that they have, in large part, been bilked; but state officials in charge of the Statehouse continue to throw more money at this failed venture.
If you want to contact Bill for information or to support his activities, he can be reached at:
Ohio E & A, 100 S. 3rd Street, Columbus, OH 43215
ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gumless bubble blowing in school.
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Also, the opportunity to have your homework torn up and thrown in the waste basket when you can’t explain how you got the answers.
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Don’t forget the ability to torment and/or fire teachers who don’t tear up and trash the students work with enough fervor, or who want to make teaching a lifelong career, and the ability to hire unqualified TFA temps in the first place. That is the “innovation” charters tout and want to replicate in public schools, turnover. Cheap labor. More money for millionaires.
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students’
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Good way to put it:
More Money for Millionaires.
Of course, 3M is also the tape company.
Which brings to mind another charter opportunity: the chance to have your mouth taped shut for talking in class.
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1675
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The opportunity to have days off to march in rallies in support of more public money for charter schools.
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…and you get neat t-shirts and beanies and an appearance on the left-wing media!
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How could I forget the t shirts and beanies?
Plus, just being at a rally in the company of a civil rights icon like Eva Moskowitz is the opportunity of a lifetime.
Some day, they will fondly recall her “I have a scheme speech” wherein she laid out her plan to make half a million dollars a year in salary at public expense.
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“Free money at last! Free money at last! Thank Bloomberg, Almighty! Free money at last!”
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Enjoying your humor today SDP! Thanks for chuckles.
Your first entry made me realize with pleasure: at the chain PreK where I’ve long done Span enrichment, I have not heard “catch a bubble” more than twice this entire school year. It was once a routine shouted expletive. They brought in a new director 7 yrs ago. No big changes– working-class urban families, & still most of the same low-pd teachers they started with. But she works with them, gently nudging in good techniques, encouraging collaboration. It’s now a place I’d send mine to in a heartbeat.
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Oh, poet, some of your most entertaining writing today, and it doesn’t even rhyme. I like your wit~!
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Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy is a wonder. A voice of sanity and really on top of issues in Ohio. Get his alerts, if you don’t already.
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“Unique Charter Opportunities”
The opportunities
That charters have are these:
The bubble blowing sprees
And every day with Rhees
And testing till one pees
And grades like F’s and D’s
A menu sure to please
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Good questions, but the goal of the private sector education industry doesn’t have anything to do with improving education. The goal is to replace the traditional community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public schools with autocratic, opaque, often fraudulent, inferior, child abusing, for-profit corporate charter schools. Another goal is to end labor unions and teachers’ unions are a big target to destroy.
Once the schools are removed from the public sector and the teachers’ unions are swept away, there will be no due process rights that are protected by the U.S. Constitution, and the teaching profession will be replaced with technology that will boost profits for the high-tech industry.
Without labor unions, there will be no job security; jobs that offer livable wages will be few, and most of the people will be treated like the serfs were treated by feudal lords during the dark ages.
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Yes, that’s the whole point, Lloyd. Money.
Money makes the world go around.
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A metaphor, because the real world goes round due to the earth’s magnetic field. The moon doesn’t go around – no magnetic field. If money made the world go round, the richer the rich got, the faster the earth would spin until we flew off into the vacuum of outer space. I wouldn’t mind as long as the rich went with the rest of us.
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None!
Other than what SDP points out!
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We have reached the nadir of the privatization movement where evidence, waste, fraud and instability are ignored. We have reached the point where we need the general public to stop our policymakers, or public schools, as we know them, could become a thing of the past. “Reform” is a product of billionaires and corporations whose goals are exactly what Lloyd stated, and the bigger goal is to destroy democracy and make another transfer of wealth and opportunity from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.
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We have indeed reached the nadir of privatization. I am put in mind of the theory that if you put a frog in water which is slowly being heated, no matter how close it is coming to death it will not get out. Too many citizens I talk to, and too many media outlets, have been taken in as the water of school privatization has been slowly heated…and now appears to be boiling.
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Anyone with experience with frogs knows that claim is most likely an old frog’s tale. Even frogs in pails of cold water jump out as long as the pail is not too deep.
I have never tried the experiment,, but I’d bet a frog would be smart enough to jump out of a pot of water that was being heated.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for people.
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Poet, start working on that frog/people poem.
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“Hop or Drop?”
Frogs are smart and hop
From slowly heated pot
But people simply drop
Cuz smart enough they’re not
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:o)
With an emphasis for the ignorant deplorables that votes the Malignant Narcissist into the White House.
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A noble effort, Thank you.
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Ok, despite what some YouTube Laureates may claim, an actual amphibian expert says ” the legend is entirely incorrect!” — Dr Victor Hutchison, Prof emeritus of Zoology at U of Oklahoma, who studied thermal regulation in amphibians.
http://archive-srel.uga.edu/outreach/ecoviews/ecoview071223.htm
Experiment shows that frogs and other amphibians have a critical thermal maximum beyond which they will try to escape.
I would try the experiment myself but for the chance that my test subject may be an exception to the rule. What did the frog ever do to me to deserve such a fate?
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I think you should be asking what opportunitie$ do charters offer.
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They really haven’t in Ohio. Obviously there are solid charter schools but there are plenty of solid public schools too and they aren’t all in “wealthy suburbs”, either.
They just plunk them down willy-nilly too. They have a “magnet” charter in Cleveland now that pulls directly from a magnet public school. No one gave the slightest thought to what happens to the system as a whole, or the magnet public school that already existed, or anything really other than someone wanted to open a magnet charter school.
I remember when they “flooded” Toledo with charters. That’s the word the local paper used. “Flooded”. They conducted this experiment on an entire city and then left this giant mess and moved onto Youngstown.
We did a new public school in this county recently. It took two years, 3 district-wide votes and umpteen community meetings. It was really hard! It’s supposed to be hard! You don’t just plunk a school down like you’re opening a KFC.
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I’ve been reading ed reform plans for rural schools, which is the latest fad.
It’s frightening how hard they’re pushing online learning. It’s a Rocketship model.
I really, really hope rural public schools don’t blow a wad of money and community good will on an ed reform experiment parents don’t want and kids don’t need.
Invest in something else. Resist the hype. You won’t regret it and your local community will thank you in 5 years.
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Charters in rural areas will quickly destroy the public schools. Unlike city schools, the low enrollment numbers of rural schools will feel the immediate pain, and many rural schools are already seriously under funded from the start.
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Rural areas seem very concerned about the negative impact of charters on athletics. Although I believe in strengthening public education without charters and perceive the push for charters to be a way to break unions, I do know parents that love the built in extended day of some charters. The parents prefer extended day to their children being unsupervised after school.
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Opportunities that charter schools provide 10-18% return on debt to Wall Street, the fulfillment of racist Georgia Gov. Talmadge’s vision, financial gain for charter owners, at the expense of communities, taxpayers and kids, campaign funds for politicians who serve anti-union corporations, the way to gouge, in the $1 trillion ed. business sector that Rupert Murdoch identified, the way to destroy America’s most important common good,….
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Well stated! I hope the general public understands what is at stake before it’s too late. We are actually offering government incentives like tax credits for the wealthy to destroy “our most important common good.”
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Well, there’s always the opportunity to rent the school building, at unconscionably high rates, from your cousin or from the “educational management organization” you are secretly (or brazenly) connected to.
In CharterWorld, the opportunities for wealth generation are limitless. Unfortunately, there’s the minor, insignificant detail that every dollar spent on these fiefdoms is a dollar taken away from the public schools.
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Response to Diane Ravitch blog;
What Opportunities Do Charter Schools Provide That Would Not Exist Without Charter Schools
By dianeravitch
https://dianeravitch.net/2017/03/28/what-opportunities-do-charter-schools-provide-that-would-not-exist-without-charter-schools/#comments ~
Rat’s I can’t upload a pic of the PERT chart showing APPEAL OPTIONS for kids in the Broward County FL school district ~
It shows the progression of choices when a child is under disciplinary action and also shows, CLEARLY, a box marked CHARTERS that sits isolated in the middle of the chart and has NO CONNECTING LINES OR ARROWS GOING INTO OR OUT OF IT – which is SURREAL because this means Charter kids are completely on their own as far as any procedural oversight or responsibility! WORSE: the 1950’s mentality of punish-first,, ask-questions later; and to get rid of whinny-women as second-class citizens, extends to pregnant teens in that… Hold on to your seat… Sit down for this…
~ CHARTER schools can have K-12 kids and their parents sign and agree to remove themselves from their school if they get pregnant – this applies clearly ONLY to women, not to the young men that got them pregnant, of course… so that a young woman becomes a PARIAH and marked woman who must leave a school where she has likely grown up with everyone in her class and they are likely the only people she knows in the world, and has known her whole life… all are to shun her and she is to leave school and it is all signed and DONE in order to even ENROLL in the school –
Worse even than that these horrendous things can happen, is that once everyone is made aware of it, all make excuses and look away… How zombified are we that these issues can be raised with the school boards and instead of being addressed and fixed it is allowed to continue? This is not just a matter of a mistake or oversight, this is frightening endemic institutionalized madness – it is SURREAL.
How shameful is this that any parent would do such a disgusting thing as even wish to send their kid to such a school is a fair question, but many misguided souls do, it is the innocent kids that are my concern… what of them that WE ALLOW SUCH NONSENSE AS schools that force parents and kids to sign such contracts… this happens in Palm Beach FL and in Broward and should not be allowed. Perhaps our legislators will put an end to it, but they also feel powerless many of them in the face of overwhelming ignorance and fear that enables trauma-organized thought to rule our legislatures, school boards, and schools. What is wrong with us?
Look up Dr. Sandy Bloom and her writings on Trauma-Organized Thinking and Institutionalized Traumatic Organizational behaviors at her SANCTUARYWEB.ORG – or was it sanctuaryweb.com ? – and Google the “behavioral transmission of neurotoxic stress Complex PTSD to find my own writings going back to 2003 in R.C., SD.
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Here is an article that appeared in the Indianapolis Star. I was liking what I read until it came to the part about choice and vouchers. Quote:”Republicans and some Democrats in Indiana have done well in education reform with their emphasis on choice and competition. A generation ago, public schools had a monopoly in urban and some rural areas, but especially in Indianapolis.”
…………
Pulliam: Teacher merit pay shouldn’t be determined by test scores
Russ Pulliam , russell.pulliam@indystar.com 5:00 a.m. ET March 25, 2017
Indiana education chief Jennifer McCormick is right.
ISTEP test results shouldn’t have to be a factor in how teacher merit pay is determined.
McCormick caught fellow Republicans off guard this past week when she proposed that local school districts decide whether to use the test results in compensation formulas.
She’s closer to a traditional Republican philosophy in pushing the issue back to the local level, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all mandate from the General Assembly.
Indiana Republicans have tied their push for education reform to merit pay, linking it to test scores. But the flaws of ISTEP have been noted in both political parties, and the test is on the way out.
Teachers and parents also are weary of the testing mania that has overwhelmed the schools. Tests have their place, but the best schools don’t go overboard with them. Many teachers wind up just teaching the material that will be on the test, and that doesn’t not necessarily lead to better education.
National achievement tests such as Stanford or Iowa can offer a sense of how a student is doing. Some members of the General Assembly want to pursue the national test route instead of spending millions to write a new state test.
Apart from the test controversy, Republicans and some Democrats in Indiana have done well in education reform with their emphasis on choice and competition. A generation ago, public schools had a monopoly in urban and some rural areas, but especially in Indianapolis.
CHOICE Charitable Trust launched private scholarships for Indianapolis Public Schools in the late 1980s, revealing a big demand among low-income parents to have private school alternatives to IPS.
A decade later, former Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson introduced charter schools. Then-Gov. Mitch Daniels and the General Assembly launched a state scholarship program so more low income families could use private schools.
The Mind Trust, growing out of Peterson’s charter school push, became an important source of new ideas in education, and attracted national attention to the city. IPS has responded with its own emphasis on choice. Innovation schools now give the flexibility of charter schools, with closer ties to the IPS administration.
McCormick is offering good wisdom on this testing issue. Republicans in the General Assembly should not get stuck in a testing rut, but let school districts have some flexibility in merit pay.
Pulliam is associate editor of IndyStar. Follow him on Twitter: @RBPulliam. Email him at Russell.Pulliam@indystar.com.
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Carolmalaysia, they lose me as soon as they start talking about “public schools had a monopoly…..”
As if they are talking about for-profit companies.
Do we say that the city, county, state and federal government have a monopoly on public roads and highways? Do we say that cities, counties, and states have a monopoly on law enforcement? Or that cities and counties have a monopoly on fire-fighting services?
No, we do not. (At least, not yet.)
All of those, including education, are part of promoting the general welfare and the common good.
They benefit everyone, and, yes, educating our kids even benefits those who are childless and those whose children are grown. Just as public roads benefit those people who do not own cars, and police and fire protection benefit those who have never had need for those services.
It is to everyone’s benefit to have well-educated citizens, those who will grow up to get jobs, pay taxes, vote, and, oh, by the way, take care of our people in so very many ways.
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The late Roman Republic had a free market solution for fire fighting. Marcus Crassus’ private fire brigade would show up at your burning house with a contract turning over ownership of your house to Crassus in exchange for 10% of its value. Sign or we let your house burn. Sweet freedom.
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NYC had a free market solution to fire fighting in the early 19th century. Competing firefighting companies would arrive on the scene and fight each other for the right to save the burning building. Often the building turned to cinders while the firefighters fought each other.
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All the above are public services, not monopolies. The minute they use the word monopoly, the article becomes propaganda.
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Yes, certainly, rt.
But they are trying to privatize and corporatize every single thing that they can. Unfortunately.
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Off topic but breaking news.
Pending a signature by Trump, Republicans have succeeded in making internet privacy a relic of the past. Last week the Senate passed a bill that will give internet service providers (ISPs) the automatic right to make a profit from every bit of data that you and your family, including children, place on your computer through an internet service provider such as Verizon, Comcast, AT&T Inc., or Charter Communications Inc.
At around 3 pm today, (March, 28, 2017) House Representatives voted to kill legislation intended to enhance internet privacy.
Moreover, the just-passed legislation makes it a “forever after” impossibility for the restoration of the Obama legislation or anything similar to it. Even if there is a massive breech of ISPs data (e.g., your SS number, credit card information, banking accounts and transactions, health records, your child’s school records and internet activity) the ISP is no longer obliged to notify you.
House Republicans argued that breeches of privacy can be managed on a “case-by-case-basis.” In other words, the user of the ISP service hires a lawyer and hopes to get satisfaction through a court action. The House Republican argument also featured claims about regulatory overreach stifling innovation and boosting the economy. http://thehill.com/policy/technology/326145-house-votes-to-send-bill-undoing-obama-internet-privacy-rule-to-trumps-desk
If you are a techie, you might think there is a work-around. This article casts some doubt on that. https://www.wired.com/2017/03/vpns-wont-save-congress-internet-privacy-giveaway/
It is not clear to me how this bill intersects with The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)–the Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law is supposed to apply to all schools that receive funds under “an applicable program” of the US Department of Education. Since the USDE is being “deconstructed” and the edtech industry and its supporters want internet-based everything, I imagine that lobby will be thrilled with this legislation.
Further, it is not yet clear how this bill intersects with the privacy and security standards for medical information provided in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), now under the leadership of longstanding Republican Thomas E. Price, M.D.
I listened to the House Republicans and Democrats go back and forth about the bill. None mentioned the ripple effects across other federal agencies.
Some internet gurus think that the bill also has major implications for national security, making theft and marketing of ISP data lucrative.
The purpose of this bill was to enable ISPs to seek profits from their data. ISPs operate as monopolies in many regions. They gather your clicks, record your dwell times and all other data that gets you access to the other “retail” tier of the internet—Google, Bing, and specific websites, The ISP lobby wanted the gravy train of profits enjoyed by the “retailers.”
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Depressing news. Frightening news. Soon, Russia will have my and my students’ psychometric data. Awesome.
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Also off topic, watching PBS, I just now heard, “Coming up on the Newshour, the Supreme Court weighs in on how schools educate students with disabilities.”
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My friends in Texas are very worried about the bill HR 610. If this becomes a law, it will eliminate funding for all but basic, one size fits all, instruction. It will also apparently make it easier for them to shift funding to vouchers. I don’t know much about it, but it sounds like it could be very damaging.https://projects.propublica.org/represent/bills/115/hr610
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I’m on my way to Texas now. Will meet with activists, Friends of Texas Public Schools.
Will learn more and keep up the fight.
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Here is what – There is no secret sauce. Sorry but they do not have it…I have learned nothing from their example that could be transferred to public schools. Charlie Rose to OG TFA (what is her name?) – – – crickets ! no secret sauce ! ! He kept asking her…and please refer above to Caberet songfest…get real – charters are a money grab – whose money? yours…
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Wendy Koop
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“Have charters demonstrated stronger academic performance than the real public school system?”
Those for whom expressions like “academic performance” are meaningful, don’t care about questions like
What extracurricular activities do charter schools offer that the real public school system does not?
Just think about today’s Internet landscape. Does Comcast care if the customers are happy? Memphis is divided up between AT&T and Comcast and they refuse to give service in each other’s territory. All Comcast wants to make sure is that the customer doesn’t revolt in massive numbers.
In schools, we want our kids to be cared for. This is not a word that drives any private company.
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