Carol Burris notes in this article that the NAACP passed a resolution last year demanding a moratorium on new charters until charters cleaned up their actioms and policies.
Instead of doing some self-examination and trying to right what was wrong, the charter apologists attacked the NAACP.
Burris reviews some of the notable charter scams and corruption in the past year or so.
Back in the 1990s, when I was a Charter fan, I believed that charters would cost less money (no bureaucracy), but now they demand the same funding as public schools. The slogan of the day was that charters would get autonomy in exchange for accountability.
Now we know, 25 years later, that charters want autonomy with no accountability.
That’s a bad deal for students, teachers, and taxpayers. It does not produce better education. It robs public schools of resources. We are re-creating a dual school system. This is not Reform. It is a massive scam.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hechinger’s profiled a contractor school in Baltimore. The article didn’t report the contractor’s $9,137 per pupil in taxpayer funding, the public school’s share- $5,300. Nor, did the article identify if the contractor used selective admission. (The Baltimore Sun described the contractor’s court filing to get more money. $9,137 was insufficient).
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“Charters want autonomy with no accountability.”
This message needs to be in every niche and cranny of the media landscape.
This is the season for marketing charters and for recruiting students. It is also a season for recruiting the bright and naive college graduates who think that teaching is so easy that “anyone can do it,” minimal TFA training or none.
Promoters of on-line education are also recruiting through multiple media channels. No encounters with human teachers or human peers needed.
In keeping with the doctrine that innovation and competition are great. Our public schools budgets have a line item for advertising, unheard of a decade ago.
Keep up the good work in exposing the scams, the misrepresentations of public education, and dubious claims about the effectiveness all of the “reform strategies” that have morphed into the new status quo.
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Cross posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Carol-Burris-The-Broken-P-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Carol-Burris_Charter-School-Failure_Corruption_Diane-Ravitch-170623-348.html
with this comment If you are still unaware that America’s schools are under attack do read The Demolition of American Education, by Diane Ravitch . https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Demolition-of-American-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Choice_College_Diane-Ravitch_Education-Curriculum-170606-760.html#comment662166
At her blog, red about charter school fraud across the nation, how the hedge funds and profiteers commit open theft. https://dianeravitch.net/?s=charter+school++fraud
Or go to my series on Charter School Fraud here
https://www.opednews.com/Series/CHARTER-Schools–the-scho-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-141014-281.html
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The article was accompanied by a series of comments, primarily from a Malcom Kilpatrick whose response was mainly to criticize the lack of investigative journalism and to point out the positive effect of introducing more choices into the realm of education.
Since Burris was mostly listing instances of Charter malfunction, you would think the first impulse of those who disagree with her would be to point out that the facts she cites are false or that they do not represent a more general truth. But this is not the approach. Supporters of privitazation of governmental activity in general never provide rebuttal, only more of the same cocktail: government is the problem, the market is the solution.
There is some truth to the idea that Charters should cost less because of the elimination of bureaucracy. There is much to be gained by removing positions that do not deal directly with students. Too much administration has led in public schools to needless paperwork that is supposed to justify what money is going where. Micromanagement of teacher behavior requires massive administrative effort, more positions for people who never see a student, and mountains of time spent by teachers on paperwork that shows that they are following prescribed standards.
To put this simply, trust is cheaper than all the alternatives. From a teachers perspective, I have one request. Trust me. Feel free to drop by and see if you like what I am doing, but leave your evaluation rubric in the trash where it belongs. You hired me. Support my best efforts. Listen to what I have to say. This will work in both public and private schools. It will produce reform from the bottom up, reform that will work. Top down reform is a demonstrable failure these last 20 years.
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Several research studies show that charters spend more on administrative costs than public schools.
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Do you suppose that is because single administrators earn too much money in traditional private or charter schools? Or perhaps these institutions find it necessary to involve administration in the raising of funds form grants and donations? In either case, money is not being spent educating students. That would account for the higher administrative cost.
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As long as a superior education is being delivered to the students, and the parents are satisfied, this is not a problem. If the consumers (parents/children) are unhappy with the amount that a charter school is spending on overhead costs, they are free to leave the charter school, and select a school which is more to their liking.
Students trapped in public schools, do not have this option.
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No student is trapped in a public school. That is Privatization BS.
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Burris also showed the inefficiency of setting up parallel systems. This is especially true for small and or rural districts from either charters or vouchers. When a few students leave a small district, the public schools may have to pay $20,000 to $30,000, but the district cannot recoup any reduction in cost. The district still has to provide the same number of classes. Burris called this “stranded” costs that will either cost local taxpayers more or some good or service must be cut from the public schools. This is a harmful byproduct of “choice” for a few at the expense of many.
One of the positive aspects to public schools in addition to hiring a more qualified staff is their ability to consolidate with with neighboring districts or among buildings in the same district. For example, I know of one school district that served all elementary ELLs in one building to efficiently serve those students better. It cost the district less, and the ESL teacher did not waste time traveling. Today this is less likely to happen due to the preoccupation with test scores.
Likewise, many small districts pool their resources to serve classified and vocational educational students. Not only can districts hire better qualified staff to help these students, students can get more efficient and effective instruction at a manageable cost. I get annoyed when “reformers” lie about the wonders of “choice” because most public schools offer far more transformative choices than charters or vouchers that hire minimally trained staff and armed with a19th century curriculum or a bunch of cyber garbage.
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She did indeed make these points. I completely understand your annoyance with the manipulation of the word “choice”. I get frustrated when I meet other public school teachers who get to offer interesting electives in their well-funded, suburban schools. I try to get along with the bare minimum in my rural school. Real choice is expensive.
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Yes, give me the freedom and autonomy to teach with creative inspiration. Finland pays teachers well enough to attract the best and brightest, without wasting money on administrative and consultant nincompoops to tell teachers how to teach to the annual standardized tests they don’t waste money administering. They do not, like charters, hire large numbers of uncertified TFA temps who require constant assistance; they hire lifelong teachers. The students playground is nature, not pictures of nature via expensive gadgets and doodads. It’s smart because it’s not rocket science. They believe in their teachers, not in free market ideology.
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Follow the Money, the waltons have money in the charter school scam. They have money in ripping the students off in loans. Betsy is a plain and simple POS and goes with the entire cabinet #45 put in.
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Diane,
Don’t know if you follow the TC Record, but hopefully the links to the full length article below also contains other articles related to Charters
From the TEACHERS COLLEGE RECORD
Brilliant, Bored or Badly-Behaved?: Media Coverage of the Charter School Debate in the United States
by Daisy Rooks & Carolina Bank Muñoz — 2015
Background: In recent years, charter schools have received a great deal of media attention, appearing in documentary films, newspaper articles, magazine profiles, television news programs, and even sitcoms and feature films. The media is not alone in its interest in charter schools; researchers in the public and for-profit arenas have also focused their attention on charter schools in recent years.
Questions: This paper employs qualitative content analysis to answer the following questions: What information have journalists contributed to the charter school debate in the United States? And how might this information have shaped or influenced the debate?
Research Design: To answer these questions, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of print media coverage of the early years of the charter school debate. We analyzed 145 articles about public charter schools and public alternative schools that appeared in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times between 1994 and 2006. We developed two types of coding categories: descriptive and interpretive. The descriptive coding categories captured the following information about each article in our dataset: the publisher, the type of school described and the student population. The interpretive coding categories captured reporters’ descriptions of the students, teachers, resources, and institutional cultures of charter and alternative schools.
Findings: Our analysis uncovered several interesting themes. First, we found that print media depictions of charter and alternative school teachers tended to be more positive than media depictions of teachers in traditional public schools. This was especially true of print media coverage of charter schools that serve low-income students and/or students of color. Our analysis also cast doubt on a core assumption of the charter school debate; that charter schools’ approach to educating their students differs significantly from that of traditional public schools and public alternative schools. In their articles about charter schools that serve middle-income students, reporters described institutional cultures and pedagogical strategies identical to those found in alternative schools with similar student populations. When reporting on alternative schools that serve low-income students and/or students of color, reporters described pedagogical strategies that mirrored those found in charter schools with similar student populations.
Recommendations: Further research is needed to determine whether charter and alternative schools are educating their low- and middle-income students differently. If future research confirms this, we warn that charter and alternative schools could be preparing their low-income students and/or students of color inadequately for higher education and work in professional environments.
Although lengthy, I found the following interesting – Brouillette, L. (2002). Charter schools: Lessons in school reform. New York, NY: Routledge.
Fuller, B. (2009). Inside charter schools: The paradox of radical decentralization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hassel, B. C. (1999). The charter school challenge: Avoiding the pitfalls, fulfilling the promise. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Hill, P. T., Lake, R. J., & Celio, M. B. (2004). Charter schools and accountability in public education. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Lubienski, C., & Weitzel, P. C. (2010). The charter school experiment: Expectations, evidence, and implications. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Murphy, J., & Shiffman, C. D. (2002). Understanding and assessing the charter school movement. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Ravitch, D. (2001). Left back: A century of battles over school reform. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Rowe, C. (2002, February 20). In Woodstock, a nonschool with nonteachers, The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/20/nyregion/in-woodstock-a-nonschool-with-nonteachers.html
Sizer, T., & Wood, G. (2008). Charter schools and the values of public education. In L. Dingerson, B. Peterson, & B. Miner (Eds.), Keeping the promise?: The debate over charter schools (pp. 3-16). Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.
Toch, T. (2009). Charter-management organizations: Expansion, survival, and impact. Education Week, 29(9), 26–27, 32.
Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Related articles
A Citizen’s Response to the President’s Charter School Education Proclamation: With a Profile of Two “Highly Performing” Charter School Organizations in Arizona
A Guide to Charter Schools: Research and Practical Advice for Educators
Building a Plane While Flying It: Early Lessons from Developing Charter Schools
Charter Schools: Accomplishments and Dilemmas
A Light Shines in Harlem: New York’s First Charter School and the Movement It Led
Drowning Digitally? How Disequilibrium Shapes Practice in a Blended Learning Charter School
Getting to Scale: Ideas, Opportunities, and Resources in the Early Diffusion of the Charter Management Organization, 1999–2006
Does the Organization of Instruction Differ in Charter Schools? Ability Grouping and Students’ Mathematics Gains
Preparing Adolescents Attending Progressive and No-Excuses Urban Charter Schools to Analyze, Navigate, and Challenge Race and Class Inequality
Proud To Be Different: Ethnocentric Niche Charter Schools in America
Charter Schools at the Crossroads: Predicaments, Paradoxes, and Possibilities
Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record Volume 117 Number 8, 2015, p. 1-48
http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 18016, Date Accessed: 6/24/2017 12:29:33 AM
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Jscheidell,
I find it strange that the article cites my 2001 book, which says little or nothing about charters, but does not refer to books I wrote in 2010 and 2013 that addressed charters in depth.
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I cannot easily get tot the study. Both authors are sociologists. One is from Argentina. The article is dated 2015. These appear to be young-ish scholars who are looking at journalist discussion about charters in the NY Times and LA Times between 1994 and 2006.
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