The State Senate in New York loves charters. They produce generous contributions from financiers and Wall Street.
The State Senate is now holding hostage a deal to renew mayoral control unless Mayor De Blasio agrees to accept more charter schools. Don’t let them get away with it! More money for contractor schools that can choose their students and impose draconian discipline on children of color.
Contact your state senator if you live in New York. Now.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
By all means, yes. Let’s take away choices from parents of color and tell them that we’re doing it for their own good.
Don’t forget that in NYC and most places, children are in charters by choice. If parental demand wasn’t there, the school wouldn’t open or would close. The same can’t be said for most traditional public schools.
Anyone who has exercised school choice by moving or attending a private school is hypocritical if they deny the same choice to those who can’t afford it. Even more if they simultaneously say that they’re doing them a favor.
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Oh go away. All your disingenuous points have been addressed dozens of times on this blog. Why do you object to parents of color having the choice of a good, well-resourced public school in their neighborhood, if we’re going to play games?
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Dienne,
I’m all for good, fully resourc d public schools as a choice also.
In your second post, are you suggesting that it’s fair that the rich can exercise choice and the poor can’t? Re vouchers, I support vouchers equal to public per student expenditures for low income students. Why should we force a student to go to a traditional public school where we will spend $20,000 to educate them when the family would prefer a private school that costs $8,000. Those are accurate numbers from my community.
NYC parent, spare me the segregation talk. Charter schools enroll a greater percentage of minority and low income kids than traditional public schools.
http://www.in-perspective.org/pages/diversity-and-inclusion#sub1
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John,
You and DeVos are promoting a dual school system, taking us back before the Brown decision. One system that chooses its students (charters and vouchers),the other required to find a place for every child that wants to enroll, no matter what their disability, their test scores, their sexual orientation.
Only two other nations have a free market in schooling: Chile, where the system was installed by the dictator Pinochet, recently labeled by the OECD as the national school system with the most social segregation; and Sweden,whose test scores cratered after the introduction of the free market system.
Neither of these is a good model for American education. Finland is a superb model. No standardized testing. No charters. No vouchers. Highly educated teachers who prepare for a career, not a job.
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Diane,
Charters exist because traditional public schools are not giving parents what they want.
IMO, our school system doesn’t resemble Finland because of unions, school boards, and teacher education programs; none of which operate here the way they do there.
Charters exist as a Band-Aid to a system that isn’t working for too many kids. Frankly, I think there are better solutions, but they weren’t and aren’t happening, and I don’t see them happening any time soon.
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John,
So you think it is ok to milk the system that enroll 90% of the children so the 10% can exit for a privately managed system whose leader cops $600,000 a year?
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Diane, there is zero doubt that traditional public schools get more per student when their children go to charter schools. That’s not “milking”.
I don’t care for that salary, though most of it is paid by philanthropists, not the per-student revenue. Also, she brings a lot of private money into her school, so if she were gone and the school saved that 300k, I’m sure they would have much less to spend on teaching and learning than they do now, not more.
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John, spare me the “I’m doing it for all the poor minority kids”. Funny how the people who promote the charters the most are the right wingers — I wonder if you really claim with the straight face that Betsy DeVos is doing it all for them. No doubt you do.
Charters are often quite segregated themselves and the one reason charters enroll a higher percentage of minority and low income kids is that the politicians they own have allowed them to profit in the poorest urban neighborhoods where the underfunding of public schools is the worst. Charters are not (yet) opening in affluent suburbs because the billionaires who hate public education do not yet have the ability to completely undermine the public schools of the middle class. Believe me they are trying and once they do many greedy charter operators will be there to pick off the least expensive children while throwing the rest away as if they are trash.
Anyone who claims to care about all children while supporting Betsy DeVos is not fooling anyone.
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NYC Parent,
I don’t know Betsy DeVos, but I find a lot of things about her disturbing.
You lose all credibility when you talk about charters existing to profit from kids.
You fail to acknowledge at every turn that these families are choosing charters.
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John,
That last line is vintage DeVos.
Charters market themselves as miracle schools, which is a lie.
Parents are fooled, as so many are by false advertising.
The fact that parents are hoodwinked into choosing a prison-like atmosphere does not make it a good choice, and the collateral damage sucks resources away from the public schools, where 90% of the city’s children get fewer resources so charters can have a system funded by public dollars.
With all Eva’s millions and her billionaires, why not open private schools instead of mooching off the public dime?
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Diane,
I’m confident that I know many more charter parents than you do, and it appears to me they know more about what’s going on in the schools they opted to leave than you do, or at least more than you are prepared to acknowledge.
They are not ignorant people being duped into trusting their children to nefariius interest. How perfectly condescending you are to them in order to maintain your belief that the issue couldn’t possibly be the schools they left.
You and I had a conversation once about the high school in my area with a sub-50% graduation rate and what you would say to parents who are reluctant to send their children there. Your response was that it was a perfectly good school that would provide their children with a fine education. Frankly, that said to me that you care more about maintaining the system as it is regardless of the results.
Also, you trot out dated and overstated memes about charters. I sincerely doubt that you’ve spent much time in them nor spent much time talking to charter teachers other than those who left unhappy. How about meeting with some of the state teachers of the year who are charter teachers, including the national teacher of the year who,was snubbed by the NEA?
I think your bias is not about great teaching or great schools, it’s about publicly elected school boards and unions.
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John,
You are right on one thing: I favor democratic control of public schools and unions, just like Finland.
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Yes, as a priority higher than what children are learning, which is the purpose of public education. I prioritize that highest, so I don’t care whether a great school is a traditional public or a charter, and I don’t care where a great teacher teaches.
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If the teachers at the charters are “great,” why is teacher turnover so high? Why are the reviews of Success Academy by teachers so negative?
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“If the teachers at the charters are “great,” why is teacher turnover so high? Why are the reviews of Success Academy by teachers so negative?”
You like to make blanket statements like this, and you like to create strawmen out of legitimate questions.
I did not say charter teachers are great. I believe there are great teachers in all types of schools. I suggested that you talk to great teachers who happen to teach at charters. If you only talk to disgruntled teachers who left, you will only confirm your biases. It would be me like me only meeting with teachers who quit traditional public schools or were removed from the classroom.
You have a great opportunity to hear from Sydney Chaffee, the national teacher of the year, or Nikos Giannopoulos, the Rhode Island teacher of the year who speaks so eloquently about his visit with Trump (and took that awesome picture). Frankly, I don’t know if they are yay, rah-rah charter fans or just happen to teach in charters, but it doesn’t matter to me. They are great teachers and you should care as much about whatever story they tell about their schools, their careers, and their kids as you would for any other teacher of the year.
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There is a body of evidence, which supports the thesis, that school choice decreases “segregation”. See
https://www.brookings.edu/research/does-expanding-school-choice-increase-segregation/
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Charles,
There is an even larger body of evidence that school choice increases segregation.
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“I’m all for good, fully resourc d public schools….”
So does that mean you support raising taxes to fund a separate charter system? Because otherwise, no, you don’t support fully resourced schools – the charters you so heavily support suck the money out of public schools. It’s a zero sum game and you have firmly declared which side you’re on. Stop pretending otherwise.
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I support raising taxes for education, but no, I don’t think the charter system should be funded separately. That means that traditional public schools get more money regardless of whether they’re doing a good job and regardless of how many students opt out of going there. That does not make sense to me. I think per-pupil funding makes more sense, and I’m all for increasing it across the board, especially in urban areas.
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“…are you suggesting that it’s fair that the rich can exercise choice and the poor can’t?”
Again, I’ll ask, how much should the school voucher be? And how much for the transportation voucher? Because unless you favor giving the poor hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars, the reality is that the rich will always have more choice than the poor. Personally, I’m pretty darn close to communist, so if you’re calling for complete income equality, let me know and I’ll join your bandwagon. Otherwise, knock off the hypocrisy. Of course the rich can exercise choice where the poor can’t – you support the system that allows that.
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Dienne,
I answered you. A school voucher should be the same amount that would be spent in the traditional public schools. You like to use the example of the few super-elite private schools, but the vast majority of private schools cost much less than what we spend in traditional publics.
I used to be against vouchers as I do see the danger that they pose. But, I now support them for very low income families because I’m tired of watching families be forced to send their children to schools they don’t like where we (the public) will spend $20,000 per year on each kid, when what the family wants, but cannot afford, is a school that costs $7,000/year.
Private schools are definitely not a cure-all and definitely not for every kid. But, where a family has made an informed decision, I think we should allow low income families the same choices that higher income families have.
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Funny how parents in middle class neighborhoods that can afford private schools STILL overwhelmingly send their children to the local public school. Why? Because when given a choice, parents overwhelmingly choose a properly funded neighborhood public school. They know that a charter will divert their taxes to some children and not all children. Charters exist where communities have been gentrified. So, your “choice” system is nothing more than diverting resources. It is, quite frankly, a system built on racism.
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Bill, my children are in traditional public schools that are great. There is no need to provide an alternative to those schools. But, if I couldn’t afford to live where I do, I would want options.
My experience is that parents don’t care much about whether a school is traditional or public. It’s the adults who benefit from traditional public schools that care.
Re racism, the system that is built on that is using property taxes to pay for education. Charters, if anything, are reverse racism; giving choice to people who would otherwise have their choice taken away by their economic circumstances.
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John,
Most of those choices are bad choices. But with so much money in marketing, parents don’t know that.
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Diane,
My school doesn’t spend a penny on marketing. And based on your previous statements, your idea of parents making a bad decision for their children is based on things that have nothing to do with their children’s education.
I don’t believe that children from low income families should “take one for the team” to support your idea of public education while families of means move to the suburbs to escape those same schools.
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“There is a body of evidence, which supports the thesis, that school choice decreases “segregation”. ”
Charles, I have to agree with Diane on this one, but I think school segregation is mostly dependent on the physical segregation of minorities that we have in this country and the fact that property taxes are used for school funding.
What I object to is people who want to stop charters because they are largely minority and use decreasing segregation as the rationalization. The segregation was caused by white flight from cities. Taking away choices from an oppressed minority is not the solution. More funding for urban schools would be a start.
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“A school voucher should be the same amount that would be spent in the traditional public schools.”
But the rich have the choice to send their kids to Phillips or Lakeside or Sidwell, all of which cost substantially more per child than traditional public schools. I thought your point is that the poor should have the same choices as the rich?
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“Bill, my children are in traditional public schools that are great. There is no need to provide an alternative to those schools.”
Are you saying there are absolutely no parents in your school that are unhappy with the public schools? What if some parents are unhappy? Should those parents have the choice to have a separate school funded out of the same pot of money that’s funding your child’s school?
Incidentally, what’s the socio-economic make-up of your “great” traditional public school? Do you think maybe that’s what makes it so “great”? If the great teachers and administrators from your school were transferred as a block to a “failing” (i.e., poor and minority) school, would they make that school “great”? Or is what’s “great” about your school the fact that there are few of “those kids” in it?
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BTW, John, I live in an area that’s been kind of known for police corruption. Should I have the choice to hire my own private security? The rich do, after all. But since I can’t afford that myself, the government should pay for it, right? Even if that means they have less money to pay for the police that serve the remainder of the community, right?
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I find it completely disingenuous when John basically justifies charters because parents “choose” them!
Notice he does not mention the many parents who “chose” the charter but found out the charter decided their child was too expensive to bother teaching. So out they sent him. Oh yes, I know it’s illegal, so charters have to criminalize the behavior of 5 year olds who they don’t want in order to to suspend, punish and humiliate their parents into pulling their child.
John is okay with charters being incentivized to appeal to the least expensive kids and humiliate the unworthy ones. After all, they get the same amount per kid as public schools and how else can they profit if they have to teach EVERY kid who wants their school. Good thing there is a public school dumping ground for the kids the charters don’t want, even if those parents DID “choose” their school, right John?
See, that’s where John’s entire argument falls apart. Because the supposed “best” charters also have the most at-risk parents who “change their mind”. According to John, it’s because so many of them decide they don’t like well-funded high performing schools after their child wins the lottery for one. Now if John said that about a bunch of college educated white parents everyone would laugh him out of the room, but he counts on people’s racism to imply that those at-risk kids who leave just have stupid parents who hate good schools. Despite the fact they PROVED they didn’t by signing up their kid for the lottery in the first place. Shame on you, John. You know you’d never get away with that if the majority of kids who get humiliated out of charters weren’t poor minorities. An example — everyone knows that BASIS Charter Schools has outrageously high requirements that kids leave — it doesn’t pretend to be for anyone but the highest achievers because so many of the “leavers” are middle class white kids. I wonder what would happen if BASIS operatored in NYC where they can’t just claim to be for high achievers — would BASIS humiliate the heck out of the affluent white kids who couldn’t do the work? Would John agree those kids were all violent and their parents hated good schools to justify why so many parents “change their mind” or would he not dare because he knew he couldn’t get away with smearing all those white kids who leave BASIS as violent children with such severe problems that no public school for normal children could ever handle them.
Rich parents “choose” private schools. But private schools do not “choose” many of their kids and they can’t send them there. That’s what makes them private — the fact that the school doesn’t have to choose the kids who choose it.
And that’s what makes charters private, too. The fact they don’t have to choose any of the kids who choose them. Because the only way to make a profit — even if you are a non-profit and all the extra money just gets to pay your CEO hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary — is to choose which kids you will and won’t educate.
Publics do not do that. Period. You cannot name a single public school system that refuses to educate every child that lives in it. So instead you point to a magnet school as if somehow the magnet school is a private school that isn’t part of a larger system. And every child turned down by the magnet school is educated as part of the SAME budget.
Every expensive student a charter gets rid of is out of their budget forever. Just like private schools. Which is why they have absolutely no business being called anything but private charters. Who – just like every private school — will teach who they want when they want and if you aren’t one of the chosen their responsibility for you is exactly zero.
You and Betsy DeVos have alot in common, whether you are willing to admit it or not.
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diennne77, John seems to be saying this:
He would be perfectly fine if a group of parents of the highest achieving kids (but none with special needs) from his children’s “good” public high school started a new charter that was only for the highest achieving kids. There would be no room for any child who needed any extra help or teaching because the parents of the high achieving kids wanted to take their per pupil allocation and make sure it is spent entirely on the needs of the high achieving kids who have no additional needs. Let the public school for the kids that group of parents are trying to get away from have all the problem kids. After all, they have “the same money” so they should shut up and be happy.
In John’s “dream” world where everything is perfect, all the parents of kids who come into Kindergarten already counting and reading could start their own school so that their entire per pupil allocation went to their kids and not one penny was spent to subsidize the education of even one child who might need more attention to learn.
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NYC parent,
As usual, you just make stuff up and then pretend the words came out of my mouth.
Maybe you should be looking at Sean Spicer’s job.
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BTW, Diane, I’m in moderation and he’s not? Seriously???
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Dienne,
You are not in moderation.
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Diane, every time I post it says “your comment is awaiting moderation” and it doesn’t show up until you go through the comments. How is that not being in moderation?
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Oh, didn’t do it that time. Thanks!
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WordPress puts me in moderation sometimes and Diane and I haven’t been able to figure that one out. I may have to do with posting 2-3 posts real quickly, but I’m still not sure.
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Until just that last post, I’ve gotten that message every single time I’ve posted since the election. I’d never had that glitch before the election. If it’s just a WordPress glitch, it’s a rather interestingly timed one.
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“Anyone who has exercised school choice by moving or attending a private school is hypocritical if they deny the same choice to those who can’t afford it.”
So you favor vouchers of upwards of $30,000 so that everyone can attend Sidwell Friends or Lakeside Academy or the Chicago Lab School? What happens when, after everyone has access to $30,000 for tuition, those schools raise their tuition? Just how much should we give the poor so they can have the same choices as the rich?
Incidentally, I think transportation is almost as fundamental as education – if you can’t get around, you can’t get a job, right? So how about if we give everyone “transportation vouchers” to buy a car? And I think the poor should have the same choices as the rich, right? So that voucher should be somewhere around $200,000 so everyone can have a Ferrari? Agreed?
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John, you are a complete hypocrite.
You can have “choice” without having privatization. There IS choice in NYC and if charters want to open under the same oversight as the public schools, they can.
Or, you can have the “choice” that Betsy DeVos offers: schools can choose to educate the kids they want.
CHOICE is what racists say when they demanded segregated schools for their fellow racist parents. They wanted parents to be able to choose a segregated school with the government paying for it.
Your dream is about to become a reality. And Betsy DeVos will be throwing your words right back at you. Why shouldn’t parents have a choice of a school that doesn’t have to spend their money on “those” kids? Choice uber alles. Anything goes because the “market” is the only oversight you need.
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This is amazing. Not really- ed reform is almost completely incoherent- but Cesar Chavez must be rolling over in his grave:
“Cesar Chavez Prep is a Washington, DC middle school, one of four city schools run by Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools. (It seems weird that they didn’t unionize from day one, just for branding purposes. Anyhow.) Just last week, more than 80% of the three dozen teachers at Cesar Chavez Prep signed union cards and filed a petition to hold a union election, asking to be represented by the American Federation of Teachers. If successful, they will form the first public charter school union in DC.
So, we have A) a school named for a famous union leader in which B) a huge majority of teachers have publicly requested to form a union. The response from the school’s leadership? Do you even have to guess?”
Why name an anti-labor charter school after a labor leader? Why not name it Ronald Reagan Prep? Why do they have to put this glossy sheen on what are REALLY old tactics? This is like union-busting 101. It’s been around since 1890. Nothing at ALL “innovative” about it.
http://fusion.kinja.com/theres-an-anti-union-campaign-at-a-school-named-for-ces-1795852111?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Fusion_twitter
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That is why Randi is supporting “public charters.” She sees a chance to expand her domain. I guess the fact that public school teachers pay her salary is lost on her, and she does not see this as a betrayal. Why should public school teachers pay for a union that betrays their interests?
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I am going to suggest that Randi’s vision of a PUBLIC CHARTER is not quite what we think it is.
Actually the best chance you stand to defeat the privateers is organizing those charters.Which means organizing those workers. Removing the incentives of the privateers. It is not easy and it is an on going process. Something that many other unions have done ,that teachers have been spared the necessity of having to do . The same questions of qualifications and experience have arose in other industries. The eventual goal is that these new members wind up getting the same pay and having to obtain the same qualifications as other members.
Yes it is a long slog . The alternative without the political power, There is none!
My Union has been involved in three or four organizing drives in my 40+ years, sometimes going after targeted employers, sometimes going after the entire non union sector in this industry. Or as many individual employers as you can get to organize. . You take in 1500 members with their employers and 5 to 10 years later your at it again.
With out Political power does she have an alternative. Cuomo got 362,000 votes in the 2014 primary. Teachout 162,000. There are 600,000 members of the NYSUT explain that.
80% signing pledge cards is pretty impressive . If not for OBAMA that would have eliminated the need for an election. EFCA never made it out of committee.
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Egads! Public schools ROCK! Why do people blame the ills of society on public schools? Guess people need a scapegoat
And DT went to a private military school. Look at him. OY! And remember where the RICH send their kids to school. One can actually purchase their degrees, because of $$$$$.
I’d take a public school graduate over a private school graduate (and charters are private schools using public tax dollars) any day.
This country is so messed up.
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