Fred LeBrun writes a column for the Albany Times-Union on politics. He is one of the most insightful journalists in the nation on the subject of education.
The New York state budget was late this year because of disagreement over a tax break for real estate developers, whether to raise the minimum age for criminal responsibility from 16 to 18, and how much money to throw to charter schools. The State Senate will vote on the budget deal tonight. The Republicans and Governor Cuomo are in love with the charter school lobby, despite the fact that charters in the state capitol of Albany–where the Legislature meets–have been a terrible disappointment. They can see the evidence before their eyes that charters open with grandiose promises and close without a whimper. That doesn’t matter.
LeBrun writes:
In the tentative budget deal announced Friday night, all three made it through. No great surprise there. Charters were enriched by about $50 million, according to the governor. Hardly enough to call it a budget deal breaker, though. Raise the Age will be done in steps, and that’s an excellent outcome. Kudos to the governor. Real estate moguls are smiling.
But what is amusing to consider is that two out of three issues, if you want to call them that, supposedly holding up budget passage have a commonality. Reviving the expired 421-a real estate development tax credit, which admittedly drives growth and affordable housing, is also an unabashed windfall to real estate developers, who themselves are among the most generous political donors to our governor and legislature. The political donors benefit directly from the legislation.
It’s not the charter schools I referenced above that hold the power, and certainly not the 122,000 or so young New Yorkers who attend them, predominantly in New York City. It’s the relative few billionaire hedge fund investors in charters looking for the return on their investment who would have the ability to hold up our budget until they get theirs. Because they in turn have become generous contributors to the governor and the Republican Senate. Again, the political donors benefit directly from the actions the governor and senators take on their behalf.
I can hear the charter crowd screaming that they are also public schools, because it says so in the legislation creating them. That’s a lot of hooey, as Albanians certainly well know. They are private schools masquerading as public schools. And until the day comes, if ever, that you the taxpayer vote on the boards running charters funded in your school district, and yearly vote where every dollar is to be spent, as happens across the state with real public schools, then charters are bogus public schools.
At its peak, Albany taxpayers, without representation on charter school boards or budgets, were shelling out $30 million a year on these bogus public schools. Yet please show me how the charter movement benefited public education in Albany appropriate to the extra money spent.
Charters are under the protection of certain politicians. Why is simple enough, and has not much to do with “ideological” considerations. Just follow the money.
In the last election cycle, according to New York State United Teachers, the state’s powerful teacher’s union, the governor and Senate majority received $4.5 million from the charter school-oriented political action committee, New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, and more than $11 million since 2014. That’s private dollar contributions to politicians in exchange for directing taxpayer dollars their way.
And as investments go, you can’t beat it. New York taxpayers shell out $2 billion a year to these private charter school investors.
Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan’s one-house revenue bill this year featured a half-billion dollars a year more for charters. Now, granted, there was no real expectation this bill would pass, but it does reveal intentions and a wish list. Flanagan wanted to reward charter contributors. So did the governor, whose “compromise” over charter funding was to throw an additional windfall at charters without lifting a tuition freeze that would lead to an even greater windfall. All of it is money that ought to be going to traditional, chronically underfunded public schools.
Enriching charters schools is not the direction a progressive state like New York should be following, no matter what new pressures in Washington suggest. The developing community school movement, a holistic approach to fighting under performing public schools primarily in impoverished urban districts, is a far more likely candidate. There’s only so much money for public education, and we as a state have to decide where we want to invest. Charters are nothing but an expensive distraction.
The last time state legislators got a pay raise was during Republican Gov. George Pataki’s first term. The raise was in exchange for welcoming charter schools to New York.
That was a black day that has haunted us since. What started as supposedly an “experiment,” that began as an annoyance, has graduated to a genuine irritation. Now charters are unquestionably imbedded across the country in our secondary education system and we have to learn to live with it. Do they have a place? Of course. But let those who want them pay for them, but not with my money.
I think the political environment in each state is different. Of interest is the growing public dispute between charter and voucher supporters and the exposure to view of rampant fraud for both. See this https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2017-03-23/trump-school-choice-proposals-drive-wedge-between-charter-school-advocates
Laura,
I could be wrong but I think the wedge between supporters of charters and vouchers may be one of convenience. The charter folk like to think of themselves as liberals, so they don’t want to appear to be too cozy with Trump. He wants to pour federal cash into more charters. Crocodile tears.
I guess all it takes to be “one of the most insightful journalists in the nation on the subject of education” is to meet the anti-charter, anti-common core, anti-testing, anti-evaluation, pro opt out checklist. A bullet list could convey the same “insight”.
In our system charters are not being examined on their own merit. In our highly politicized environment, charters are supported by big money interests that hire lobbyists to ensure charter growth and expansion despite the many flaws, failures and meager gains. Supporting a parallel system of schools comes at a big cost to the public school students in the state who see class sizes increase and other assorted budget items deleted. In Pennsylvania the Republican led legislature holds the purse strings hostage until the governor acquiesces to more funding for charters or an increase in the number of charters. The powerful charter lobby manipulates to ensure there is more funding for charters, and these decisions have nothing to do with the quality of the education offered or the needs of the young people they purport to serve. This practice is beyond being a distraction; it is both extortion and dirty politics that harm public schools.
The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report that, because of their lack of accountability to the public, charter schools pose a risk to the Department of Education’s goals. The report finds that “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 financial fraud and the artful skimming of tax money into private pockets.
Even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its favorable 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 dollars that are intended to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets and to the bottom lines of hedge funds.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Court, and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools at all 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. That’s common sense to any taxpayer: Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money but have virtually no public record accountability of what they do with the tax money they divert from genuine public schools.
There are many tactics used by many charter school operators to reap profit from their schools, even the so-called “non-profits”, such as private charter school boards paying exorbitant sums to lease building space for their school in buildings that are owned by corporations that are in turn owned or controlled by the charter school board members or are REIT investments that are part of a hedge fund’s portfolio. There are many other avenues of making a hidden profit from operating private charter schools.
In addition to the siphoning away of money from needy schools, reports from the NAACP and ACLU have revealed facts about just how charter schools are resegregating our nation’s schools, as well as discriminating racially and socioeconomically against American children of color; and, very detailed nationwide research by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA shows in clear terms that private charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students. Based on these and other findings of racial discrimination in charter schools, the NAACP Board of Directors has passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice.
Therefore, in order to assure that tax dollars are being spent wisely and that there is no racism in charter schools, charter schools should minimally (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that the charter schools are accountable to the public; (2) be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) be required to operate so that anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
Those aren’t unreasonable requirements. In fact, they are common sense to taxpayers and to anyone who seeks to assure that America’s children — especially her neediest children — are optimally benefiting from public tax dollars intended for their education. But, after the internal scams of charter schools become exposed to taxpayers through routine public reporting, the charter school industry will dry up and disappear, and the money that the charter school industry has been draining away from America’s neediest children will again flow to those in need.
Why aren’t socially responsible politicians pushing for charter school financial accountability?
Ohio already has vouchers so ed reformers are lobbying to expand them:
https://edexcellence.net/articles/text-of-testimony-given-before-the-senate-education-committee-4517
Nothing for public schools out of Columbus except budget cuts.
The state legislature `went from spending 90% of their time on charters under Obama to spending 90% of their time on vouchers under Trump.
Session after session, it’s charters and vouchers. Meanwhile, 90% of the students in the state attend the unfashionable public schools that are ignored.
“U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued the following statement after accepting an invitation to visit a school in Van Wert, Ohio:
“I look forward to visiting the students, parents and educators of Van Wert. Every parent should be able to send their children to a school that meets their unique needs, and for many parents, that is a public school. I support and celebrate all great schools.
“I appreciate the district and AFT (American Federation of Teachers) President Randi Weingarten extending the invitation.”
Van Wert has about ten thousand people. The city couldn’t support three different school ‘sectors” .
The ed reform “choice” plan would leave Van Wert with 3 weak school systems instead of one strong one.
DeVos has absolutely nothing to offer public schools, so I expect she’ll go to this town and push vouchers, although vouchers are completely irrelevant to Van Wert.
What a waste of time, especially considering her pricey security detail. Save a million dollars and just stay in DC.
“The share prices of global education giant Pearson dropped more precipitously than any other stock on the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index on Thursday, a fact the publication attributed to a brokerage’s concerns about the company’s ability to expand virtual schools.
Exane BNP Paribas’ is the brokerage that raised a red flag about Pearson, based on a lack of new school openings, caps on enrollment and regulatory issues facing the sector, the Financial Times reported.”
The cyber charter craze seems to be over. Watch Pearson though- they’ll just switch sales tactics and push online learning into public schools.