NPE Statement on Charter Schools
The Network for Public Education believes that public education is the pillar of our democracy. We believe in the common school envisioned by Horace Mann. A common school is a public institution, which nurtures and teaches all who live within its boundaries, regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, sexual preference or learning ability. All may enroll–regardless of when they seek to enter the school or where they were educated before.
We believe that taxpayers bear the responsibility for funding those schools and that funding should be ample and equitable to address the needs of the served community. We also believe that taxpayers have the right to examine how schools use tax dollars to educate children.
Most importantly, we believe that such schools should be accountable to the community they serve, and that community residents have the right and responsibility to elect those who govern the school. Citizens also have the right to insist that schooling be done in a manner that best serves the needs of all children.
By definition, a charter school is not a public school. Charter schools are formed when a private organization contracts with a government authorizer to open and run a school. Charters are managed by private boards, often with no connection to the community they serve. The boards of many leading charter chains are populated by billionaires who often live far away from the schools they govern.
Through lotteries, recruitment and restrictive entrance policies, charters do not serve all children. The public cannot review income and expenditures in detail. Many are for profit entities or non-profits that farm out management to for-profit corporations that operate behind a wall of secrecy. This results in scandal, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer funds. The news is replete with stories of self-dealing, conflicts of interest, and theft occurring in charter schools [1].
We have learned during the 25 years in which charters have been in existence that the overall academic performance of students in charter schools is no better, and often worse, than the performance of students in public schools. And yet charter schools are seen as the remedy when public schools are closed based on unfair letter-based grading schemes.
By means of school closures and failed takeover practices like the Achievement School District, disadvantaged communities lose their public schools to charter schools. Not only do such communities lose the school, but they also lose their voice in school governance.
There is little that is innovative or new that charter schools offer. Because of their “freedom” from regulations, allegedly to promote innovation, scandals involving the finances and governance of charter schools occur on a weekly basis. Charter schools can and have closed at will, leaving families stranded. Profiteers with no educational expertise have seized the opportunity to open charter schools and use those schools for self-enrichment. States with weak charter laws encourage nepotism, profiteering by politicians, and worse.
For all of the reasons above and more, the Network for Public Education regard charter schools as a failed experiment that our organization cannot support. If the strength of charter schools is the freedom to innovate, then that same freedom can be offered to public schools by the district of the state.
At the same time, we recognize that many families have come to depend on charter schools and that many charter school teachers are dedicated professionals who serve their students well. It is also true that some charter schools are successful. We do not, therefore, call for the immediate closure of all charter schools, but rather we advocate for their eventual absorption into the public school system. We look forward to the day when charter schools are governed not by private boards, but by those elected by the community, at the district, city or county level.
Until that time, we support all legislation and regulation that will make charters better learning environments for students and more accountable to the taxpayers who fund them. Such legislation would include the following:
• An immediate moratorium on the creation of new charter schools, including no replication or expansion of existing charter schools
• The transformation of for-profit charters to non-profit charters
• The transformation of for-profit management organizations to non-profit management organizations
• All due process rights for charter students that are afforded public school students, in all matters of discipline
• Required certification of all school teaching and administrative staff
• Complete transparency in all expenditures and income
• Requirements that student bodies reflect the demographics of the served community
• Open meetings of the board of directors, posted at least 2 weeks prior on the charter’s website
• Annual audits available to the public
• Requirements to following bidding laws and regulations
• Requirements that all properties owned by the charter school become the property of the local public school if the charter closes
• Requirements that all charter facilities meet building codes
• Requirements that charters offer free or reduced priced lunch programs for students
• Full compensation from the state for all expenditures incurred when a student leaves the public school to attend a charter
• Authorization, oversight and renewal of charters transferred to the local district in which they are located
• A rejection of all ALEC legislation regarding charter schools that advocates for less transparency, less accountability, and the removal of requirements for teacher certification.
Until charter schools become true public schools, the Network for Public Education will continue to consider them to be private schools that take public funding.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Supporting an egalitarian public school system means supporting economic and humane social policies that allow the schools and their communities to thrive.
Those who seek a “solution” to public education through charters had better endorse that kind of society. All schools should have autonomy to create an environment that BEST serves the community–but they must be PUBLICLY supported and free of the racism and classism that emboldens private enterprise to plunder public trusts.
The way the narrative is moving, Charters are the savior of public education. No. As they are now, they only further aggravate the rich/poor and white/people of color divide.
Private entrepreneurship must be subservient to the public good and not the other way around.
Let ALL schools get what they insist for Charters and there wouldn’t be a need for “charters”. They would just be schools.
Public ones.
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Just a cautionary tale. The concept of “autonomous” schools is part of the charter school lexicon and the overall strategy for dismantling local school districts with elected officials. A related strategy sets up regional or state-wide authority for school governance, often with appointed officials.
Another strategy is for the district to sign on to a “let’s make nice” compact, called a Gates Compact because Bill Gates pushed for these. These vary, but they are famed to oblige a school district to “share” resources or decisions about facility use ( e.g., co-occupancy), transportation, food service, special education, and the time/resources of central administrative staff. These “compacts” are designed to give benefits to charter schools that look innocuous, but take money from public schools and build an aura of legitimacy to the charter school as a “public” entity.
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Laura,
I’m trying to find financial information on a Kansas City, MO charter school “district”-University Academies. Any help that you can give me in finding out that information would be greatly appreciated. The owner is Bush Helzberg of Expedition Capital of Aspen, Colorado.
Gracias,
Duane
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Laura H. Chapman It’s like inviting an evil guest into your house (for example, Bill Gates into public education) and then the guest insists on taking over the entire house and you in it.
It sounds more like how cancer works than any kind of cooperative for the common good. If they really wanted to help kids get educated, they would throw their support and money into public schools (and their communities?) and not try to make an entrepreneurial venture out of what should remain public and–guess what–NON-COMPETITIVE.
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CBK,
The metaphor for charters that seemed most apt is that they are parasites that drain away the resources of the host.
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Diane: Yes–and then the host dies. The metaphors of cancer and parasites are both appropriate as they both tend to kill the source of their own living. I can live with capitalism; but predatory takeover- capitalism, as we are presently experiencing, is structurally self-defeating.
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Duane – this is what I could find: http://www.universityacademy.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_509468/File/Document_Uploads/Audit_1516.pdf
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Agreed the solution to our education problems is in the economy not the class room.
Nothing proves it more than the opioid epidermic affecting rural America .
It is not a failing sense of values that causes poverty it is economics, poverty that affect values.
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Thank you for the clear, concise, reasonable position paper. I would love to see someone follow the money to representatives’ war chests. It would be interesting to see how much money these people are getting from the charter lobby and get it published for the public to see.
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Of course when it comes to the individual donors you need a who’s who and what their issues are .
Open Secrets publishes a list as well. Some of the larger donors are going to have multiple agendas
https://www.followthemoney.org/
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Check out the Niagara website, you can see the donation the Politicians make to charters.
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What is the Niagara website?
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To reach the Niagara Foundation web site, here is the location:
http://www.niagarafoundation.org/niagara/fethullah-gulen
I will send you another website, the website listed above has so much information on the Gulen/Niagara movement. I will see if I can find a separate one for the donations, if you are unable to locate information regarding donations on this site. Margie
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Two more great sites to follow the money:
publiccore.net/follow-money.html
http://www.followthemoney.org
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Cogent and on the money.
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How does public schools absorb a structure that segregates and has an undemocratic governance? Look away, look away like Dixie Land?
I suggest those that value integration and democracy don’t look away but join he ranks of those that are charter schools abolitionist.
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“A common school is a public institution, which nurtures and teaches all who live within its boundaries, regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, sexual preference or learning ability.”
On the last, learning ability:
Why does the state through its public schools blatantly discriminate against those whose cognitive abilities, however that is determined, and there are myriad ways to describe them, prevent them from supposedly satisfactorily completing a COMPLETELY INVALID standardized test?
How can the state support such discrimination where some students are rewarded and others are castigated and denied the educational opportunities that they desire?
What is the purpose of state sponsored discrimination via connatural mental abilities?
Who in their right mind actually believes that those COMPLETELY INVALID test results actually have any credibility to accurately assess a student’s learning?
When we will finally realized that state sanctioned discrimination as standard testing obtains is unfair, and unjust and will finally be understood and adjudicated as such and eliminated?
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We need more legal challenges to the discrimination. It is unethical for a government to attack its own employees and work against a public institution. As for green lighting discriminatory practices against children, it should be illegal as it is certainly immoral.
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Duane, this is absolutely correct. “COMPLETELY INVALID”–first, not valid or reliable; second–NO quality control/oversight (never has been); third–incompetents scoring these tests, thus giving INVALID test RESULTS; fourth–labeling schools not making “AYP” as “failing,” closing them in favor of…charter schools!
But wasn’t that the ALEC plan all along?
I refer all of you back to Laura Chapman’s recent post on 50CAN.
Click on the PIE link & follow the money.
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RT and RBMTK,
I struggle to get the discrimination angle out. It seems not many want to even consider it.
For me it’s as plain as a sunny day, the nefarious effects and state sanctioned discrimination of the standardized testing regime against the most innocent of society, the children. It’s my new everyday post commentary, not totally replacing my Wilson commentary but it is my attempt to take Wilson’s work to the next level of action to try to “lessen injustice” in our society.
I just cannot fathom why so many supposedly cogent and diligent educators cannot see this state sanctioned discrimination and fight against it. Is it not a teacher’s charge to protect their students against all forms of bullying, harassment and discrimination?
The lack of acknowledgement of that state sanctioned discrimination so infuriates me. Perhaps I should take a break from it, but I can’t as too many children are being harmed on a daily basis.
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Another Quixotic quest I know. And like Sr. Alonzo Quijano, I can only hope to die peacefully knowing I did what I could, which more likely than not was/is not enough!
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Diane Well-written. This document is a powerful statement.
One base that is not covered and that I wonder if you all have either forgotten or avoided on purpose?
That is, questions of the curriculum, particularly regarding (1) the teaching of religious and/or known-biases as doctrine (like racism) and (2) the requirement to follow generally accepted FIELD standards (not necessarily K-12 “standards”). I only mean here by “standards,” in this context, and most particularly as example, well-accepted movements in the scientific, fields and aspects of other fields, and as correlative, the omission of well-accepted methodologies and content that, for instance, fly in the face of religious or other doctrines?
Perhaps such curriculum points are assumed in the requirement for teacher certification (state) and in the presence of regulations?
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Diane: My guess is curriculum “standards” and requirements that presently come with teacher certification are “on the block” with drive to omit them. However, my guess is also that, behind the scenes, DeVose and others are working as we speak to actually change the substance of such certification too.
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States would have to sign on to destroying their own standards for teacher certification. Teacher certification is a state law, although I guess the feds could come up with some nonsense that states could opt to sign on to or not. If DeVos and Trump propose this, they would cross their own ideological states rights’ position. There is a great deal of talk from privateers about the need to make credentials portable so teachers can be the new migrant workforce “Reform” or modernize usually connotes destroy. This reinvention would, of course, harm state universities, teachers’ due process rights and pensions.
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retired teacher: You say, in order to affect curriculum: “States would have to sign on to destroying their own standards for teacher certification.”
I suggest that this is but one reason DeVos et al are about “returning power to the states.” She and the likes of ALEC are now well-known for their concerted work with appropriating State legislatures. And Trump et al are tearing down the different Federal departments as we speak. We are watching a slow implosion of Federal power (as in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?)
Money talks in Congress too (duh). But the right KNOWS that legislators in local and individual states houses are much easier marks for all sorts of snookery, bribery, and power-plays. Koch knows this, and ALEC has been around now for, what, 50 years? It’s slow and persistent and its “get rid of big government” and “government schools” has a very concerted purpose.
Also, from what I’ve seen in higher education newsletters, these well-funded right-wing organization are many and are also after that level of “too liberal” education.
A fundamental point is that the right is famous for thinking that teachers who teach college students to think for themselves, and to be open to new ideas and to their own critical-questioning process, are necessarily teaching to a “liberal ideology.” The thinking goes: they themselves are ideological driven, so everyone else must be also. (Everything is political and/or entrepreneurial.)
But freedom of thought, even in thoughtful and morally-developed people, is and has always been dangerous to political and religious ideologies. Of course, there are both liberal and conservative horrors that occur from time to time at the university; but the general idea of openness-of-mind in the university (as in universe-city) is often considered by the right as a total takeover of “liberal-leaning professors.”
Methinks we are living in extremely dangerous times.
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I would modify the list to explicitly require:
“independent” audits or “external” audits — NPE’s choice; and
transparency should extend beyond opening the fiscal and budgeting books to reviewing test scores, student selection and attrition data, and other information that is currently kept from scrutiny.
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agree…this information needs to be made public as it is our public monies from taxes that are paying for charter schools…we have a right to see how that money is spent and also we have a right to see if it is used wisely for students.
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“We do not, therefore, call for the immediate closure of all charter schools, but rather we advocate for their eventual absorption into the public school system. We look forward to the day when charter schools are governed not by private boards, but by those elected by the community, at the district, city or county level.”
But then what will be the difference between charter schools and regular public schools?
Great proclamation, btw, except I’d withdraw all public support from non-public schools. No flexibility. Any flexibility is just a foot in the door. If there is a problem with some public schools, the public should take care of it, not some other well and not-so-well meaning third parties.
Instead of giving flexibility for other school structures to exist within public schools, make the possible involvement of the public more direct, more flexible, muuuuuuch less bureaucratic. Presently, even school boards are ridiculously difficult to talk to.
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Mate,
A fair interpretation of the language is rhatcharter schools would in time cease to exist.
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A detail that COULD be used against this otherwise reasonable list is this:
“Open meetings of the board of directors, posted at least 2 weeks prior on the charter’s website”
Having worked as superintendent in five states, I know of none that require posting of school board meetings 2 weeks in advance. It might be better to require that charters adhere to the posting requirements and right-to-know laws that apply to public schools. Based on my experience that will ensure the “transparency” that is currently lacking.
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