Jersey Jazzman, aka Mark Weber, experienced teacher and doctoral student at Rutgers, follows the claims of charter promoters in New Jersey, especially Newark. His latest post is simply “Facts About Newark Charter Schools.”
Bottom line: the charters do not enroll the same students as public schools. Why is that so hard for the media to understand?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Side note: Jersey Jazzman’s wife, Linda Weber, is running for Congress against Leonard Lance in NJ’s 7th district. Not my district, I hope she wins, wish I could vote for her.http://lindaweberforcongress.com/about/
Lazy journalists who aren’t very good with numbers. It’s too hard to figure it out for themselves so they prefer to listen to what the “experts” (PR shills) tell them about the data.
Fortunately, science and medical reporters aren’t nearly as terrible (yet) as education reporters. But no doubt soon they will be replaced by people who tell them just how wonderful this Donald Trump-developed new cancer treatment is because this “study” had 100% success with a random assortment of cancer patients who all got better! 100%! And if you have a stage 0 or stage 1 cancer, you are welcome to come and take this miracle drug and if you happen to develop into stage 3 or 4, well, you just disappear from the study! But the stage 0 patients are treated like patients in a 5 star hotel and they say the treatment works great so isn’t great the market is working! No oversight needed at all.
SO very definitely our years-long school “reform” disease: when the “experts” are simply PR SHILLS.
What has happened in Newark could happen in any community that has experienced widespread charter proliferation. The charters accept the cheapest and easiest to educate, and the leftovers attend depleted public schools. When you add a vindictive bully governor into the mix, you create a system that is wholly autocratic and undemocratic. The charters are not subject to the governors draconian cuts. They get to keep their bloated administration and profit. The public schools struggle to provide service to the neediest most vulnerable while facing draconian budget cuts. I hope the Education Law Center looks for grounds to sue the state for such malfeasance and inequity.
The move to privatize public education has its roots in the same philosophy that is being used to replace Obamacare with “let the market decide”.
The Republicans got a lot of traction by convincing people that their Obamacare was overpriced and substandard and a waste of money.
But suddenly they want to replace it with insurance that will be less expensive while offering consumers even more! And it’s true, the replacement IS much better and cheaper. As long as you stay healthy!
Progressives have done a decent job — or perhaps circumstances have done a decent job — so that even many of the most rabid Trump supporters understand how foolish it is to pay less for an insurance policy that will drop them — no oversight needed! — to get them off their rolls if they get sick. Or has fine print and they learn they have maxed out their $20,000 lifetime cap in one week of cancer treatments.
The Democrats have done a very poor job of explaining how charters work the same way. And in fact, because charters have flourished mostly in the poorer urban areas, the rest of America hasn’t cared.
But now that Betsy DeVos is promoting what charter folks have long wanted — the complete voucherization and privatization of the system — and the middle class voters are starting to understand that this will affect their beloved neighborhood school, there is some push back.
The Democrats have the perfect opportunity to educate the public about what these issues are all about and I wish Bernie and Elizabeth Warren would start acting like this matters to them.
“Bottom line: the charters do not enroll the same students as public schools. Why is that so hard for the media to understand?”
Why is this so hard for the deplorables that support Fascist Trumpism to understand this – because they are all racists and some of them are publicly in denial that they are racists?