Corporate privatizers like Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump, Arne Duncan, and Peter Cunningham (previously Duncan’s communications director, now editor of the billionaire-funded Education Post) claim that turning public money over to operators of privately-managed contract schools (aka, “charter” schools) is the “civil rights issue of our time.”
But the authentic voice of the civil rights movement–the NAACP–does not agree. Last summer, the national convention of the NAACP passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on new charter schools until important issues of accountability were addressed and corrected. Despite a concerted effort to persuade the national board of the NAACP to repudiate the resolution, despite critical editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Board upheld the resolution at its meeting last October.
Since passing and confirming the resolution, the nation’s oldest civil rights group decided to hold hearings across the country. What they learned convinced them to stand by their demand for charter accountability. Even those whose own children are enrolled in charters stuck by the resolution.
Rebecca Klein, education editor at Huffington Post, writes:
“Next month the NAACP will release a report detailing what the task force found. HuffPost, through conversations with several task force leaders, received a glimpse into what these findings might look like.
“After spending time in seven cities, NAACP Task Force on Quality Education chair Alice Huffman says she is more convinced than ever that the call for a moratorium was the correct decision. The election of Trump, and his subsequent appointment of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has given the issue specific urgency. DeVos, a notorious champion of school choice, would like to see more charter schools, and her department’s proposed budget has put funding behind them.
“Nobody is convinced … after going all across the country, that the moratorium was wrong,” said Alice Huffman, president of the California NAACP. “My mind wasn’t as made up as it is now.”
Advocates of privatization continue to defend charters, even though they are more segregated than public schools and have higher suspension rates. Supporters of the privatized schools deny that they cherrypick students and point to small test score gains.
I am very impressed that the NAACP did not succumb to the big-money behind the privatization movement. That shows their genuine commitment to the children and families for whom they fight.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is a great first step. Education is one part of the neo-liberal assault .
Make that several parts of the assault.
I am so glad to see this! When the NAACP task force came to Los Angeles, I was blown away by their level of engagement in charter policy and knowledge of how that was playing out in our communities.
I wrote about the LA hearing for anyone who missed it http://www.psconnectnow.org/blog/2017/2/12/how-a-white-westsider-got-schooled-at-the-naacp-hearing
I am encouraged that the NAACP is involved in our city, not only looking into charter school abuse but helping vet candidates for the school board.
All the unfair and unjust treatment of minority students in many charters is well documented. Whatever course of action the NAACP decides to take should be supported by other social justice, parent and community groups. An affront to one group of young people is an affront to all. The more people that support the NAACP’s position, the more likely it is that change will occur.
Cross posted at: https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Inside-The-NAACP-s-Fight-T-in-General_News-Accountability_Betsy-Devos_Charter-School-Failure_Charter-Schools-170629-699.html#comment664655
with this comment which has embedded links back to this site.
Read about the massive charter school scandals from Ohio to Florida The Akron Beacon-Joirnal reports on a multi-state charter scandal. http://www.ohio.com/news/local/multi-state-investigation-alleges-akron-area-charter-school-founder-bilked-millions-from-parents-students-taxpayers-1.776444
Howard Ryan, writing in Monthly Review, analyzes the sources of support for corporate reform and privatization. https://monthlyreview.org/2017/04/01/who-is-behind-the-assault-on-public-schools/
Ryan writes:
Over the past three decades, public schools have been the target of a systematic assault and takeover by corporations and private foundations. The endeavor is called “school reform” by its advocates, while critics call it corporate school reform. Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg has given it the vivid acronym GERM–the global education reform movement. Its basic features are familiar: high-stakes testing; standardized curricula; privatization; and deskilled, high-turnover faculty. In the United States, public schools have become increasingly segregated, destabilized, and defunded, with the hardest hit in low-income communities of color.
Nevertheless, while the political conflicts and social ramifications of the school reform phenomenon are well known, basic questions about the movement remain underexamined. Who really leads it? What are their aims and motives? After briefly taking up the statements of the reformers themselves, I will turn to the views of their progressive opponents, and offer a critique of three influential interpretations of the school reform movement. Finally, I will present my own theory about this movement, its drivers, and its underlying aims…
A large body of research, however, challenges the merits of high-stakes testing and other elements of the corporate school reform package. It is also at least questionable whether the reformers really believe their own statements.
The reformers’ interest in school improvement appears, in a number of ways, to be less than genuine, to mask a different agenda. They prescribe models for mass education that they do not consider suitable for their own children. They sponsor think tanks to produce “junk research” praising their models, while ignoring studies that contradict their models. They insist that full resourcing of schools is unimportant or unrealistic, and that “great teachers” will succeed regardless of school conditions, class size, or professional training.”
You will find it interesting to see how he weaves together the various strands of the corporate reform movement.
Add the organization, Black Agenda Report, to the list “Corey Booker: A Clear and Present Threat to Public Education.”
Add the Southern Poverty Law Center to the list of organizations demanding changes at contractor schools.
I love the use of “contractor schools”.
I provide some examples of why this moratorium is needed in the largest charter authorizer in the country: http://thewire.k12newsnetwork.com/2017/06/28/is-the-lausd-charter-school-division-providing-any-oversight/
Thanks for the link.
Reblogged this on Terri Goldson.
Here is where Peter Cunningham and the other people getting outrageously high salaries to promote the billionaires’ privatization agenda are shown to have lost any sense of decency whatsoever.
The NAACP is not saying that every charter is evil. They are calling for real ACCOUNTABILITY. And while overpaid white guys like Peter Cunningham tell the NAACP that they aren’t smart enough to accept his educated white person’s measure of “accountability” — test scores of the students who his beloved “high performing” charters don’t drum out of their schools while the ones who disappear are treated as if they never existed — the NAACP isn’t buying it. Perhaps because the majority of students who get suspended (even at age 5), put on got to go lists, flunked over and over again, and BLAMED (and humiliated) for their own ‘lack of effort” when their newly minted teacher’s robotic teaching methods don’t reach them aren’t white. But their teachers and charter leaders getting rich often are. And most of the billionaires on their boards are.
CREDO just spent hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to look at the RESULTS of charter schools and devised a questionable method to match charter students to an invented student that is supposed to represent the kid in the appropriate nearby school (almost always a failing public that has to accept every child and spend resources addressing their needs). CREDO calls that ACCOUNTABILITY! Look how well the kids who are allowed to remain in charters for at least 4 years do when compared to the a made up student from the worst possible public schools only.
CREDO (intentionally?) left out any look at whether the charter schools getting the best results have unusually high suspension rates or disappearing children! CREDO did NOT have an ounce of curiosity about the fact that in one of the top performing charters in the entire nation — Success Academy — they could only “match” 168 out of 14,000 students to use in their study! And they decided it wasn’t worth wondering about that because that might lead to inconvenient questions that the billionaires want to shut down.
And the complicit “reformers” like Cunningham tell the NAACP to shut up and be quiet and not to ask any inconvenient questions like why, in all their reform, has Peter Cunningham and the charter oversight agencies who supposedly protect the students in charters expressed absolutely no concern about why so many children would disappear from the highest performing charter schools at rates significantly HIGHER than they disappear from the mediocre ones.
The white reformers like Cunningham want the NAACP to accept what they seem to believe in their heart — it’s just because you non-white people don’t like top performing schools. So don’t ask questions about why so many kids leave one of the best charter schools in the country. It’s because their parents prefer bad schools to good.
No one believes that BASIS Charter is for every kid because the kids who drop out and disappear are ALSO white and middle class. Cunningham doesn’t say “they were violent or they were lazy or their parents like mediocre schools because they don’t really care about good education for their kids.” The reformers wouldn’t have the chutzpah to say that about white parents. Everyone recognizes that BASIS is ONLY for the top performing students and having one million BASIS schools is not the answer to failing public schools.
But those reformers tell the NAACP that the high suspension rate and high attrition rates in the billionaires’ favorite top performing charter chains have no connection with their high performance. It’s just that those children were violent 6 year olds, says the people Cunningham supports. It’s just that so very many African-American parents like you don’t really like top performing schools when their kids are actually in them. Yes, that’s the ticket, say the reformers like Cunningham. Stop asking questions about the students who disappear, just because they are disproportionately non-white. We already told you that those charters have lots of violent 6 year olds and that their parents hate good schools and you better shut up and believe it instead of demanding any more accountability. Trust us, say reformers like Cunningham. And stop demanding accountability. As long as test scores are high, who cares how many children get thrown out with the trash? The reformers certainly don’t and they despise the NAACP for not accepting that those children are NOT important. They don’t count.
I believe that the plots of the Koch’s, Gates, Walton…will fail because too many have sacrificed too much for this nation to revert to the “divine right of kings.”
But, when the work to oppose the richest 0.1% seems overwhelming, the words of Atticus Finch can sustain, “I wanted you to see what real courage is…It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”
The NAACP deserves gratitude and support for this courageously important affirmation of support of our public schools.
Yes and I hope Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren give it to them loudly and clearly to counter the relentless attacks on the NAACP from the fake “reformers”.
And, the Clintons and Obama decide the American people deserve to know the Gates/Walton plot is an attack on democracy- that they feel compelled to denounce the richest 0.1% in all of their public speeches.
Clinton and Obama are yesterday’s news. Just like Bush and Cheney were once Obama took office.
Someone recommended reading Jane Sander’s interview in The Nation so I did:
Q: Bernie talks about the billionaires buying the election process and the economy, and in education, it seems to me that Bill Gates, the Waltons, and Eli Broad are doing many of the same things, just with charter schools and high-stakes testing.
Jane Sanders: “I think that some of them, like Bill and Melinda Gates, have very pure motives. They really want to help. I think that they should be part of the discussion. I really do. But we agree with the Chicago teachers.”
If Bernie and Warren don’t start changing their rhetoric about what it means to be a “progressive” on education, I don’t believe public education will continue. Mouthing support for teachers unions does nothing — not one thing — to help the public understand what is wrong with reform. All it does is convince them that the entire issue is about kowtowing to your big donors in the union. At a time when the NAACP and BLM are explaining what is wrong with charters, we need our progressive leaders to do better. It is almost too late.
Unfortunately, we agree about the harm caused by the lack a voice at the national level. If the Clintons and Obama are irrelevant, it is their choice. People that have the level of visibility that they have make themselves relevant. They could denounce CAP and Podesto and make a lot of news.
It is of grave concern that Sanders and Warren have muted positions about the sell-off of America’s most important common good. The issue is the most emotionally compelling and easily packaged of all of the issues.
Every time Hillary Clinton supports something it just backfires. Do you really think it will change public opinion to hear the right wing attack her for the one millionth time as being a sore loser. The public is already convinced that she is a liar and corrupt, don’t you know? Why, even the progressive Democrats are certain of it. Why do you want or need the loser liar on your side when you supposedly have progressive politicians in office NOW who really care about middle class America?
The torch has been passed to Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. They have the bully pulpit but they sure don’t want to use it to support public education or fight privatization. Why?
Like you say “The issue is the most emotionally compelling and easily packaged of all of the issues.” I agree! Sanders and Warren are the ones with the bully pulpit now. Why aren’t they repeating Hillary Clinton’s statement that charters are not taking the most expensive kids or kick them out if they do and that destroys the budgets of public schools while they profit? Is that really too hard for them to grasp? Oversight? Why isn’t Bernie out there supporting the NAACP on this? Instead of using his bully pulpit to campaign for the pro-education reform candidate for Virginia Governor. Is Bernie concerned that Virginia is one of the few states left that hasn’t given in completely to the charter movement and he wanted to make sure there was a pro-charter Governor who would support what he believes in?
Progressives have let Bernie get away with enabling the reformers agenda. I don’t know what he has to do to convince you he does not care about public schools and the most you can hope for is some mouthing of support for the “union” while supporting “public charters” undermining the public schools where union teachers teach.
Bernie should know better. I’m tired of excusing his ignorance. It’s long past time for him to understand the NAACP’s issues and stop pretending it’s just about giving union teachers in public schools better wages. I think deep down he has little respect for public schools. Maybe he didn’t like his own. He is a smart guy and it makes no sense he cannot fathom the issues better.
Hillary was seen as a politician running interference for the rich. There was no excuse ethically nor in terms of expediency, for Nina Turner to be denied speaking time at the Democratic convention. There was no excuse ethically nor in terms of expediency, for Michael Bloomberg to speak at the Democratic convention. In a better U.S., Bernie and Warren would not only take on the rich, they would invite Diane Ravitch and the NAACP to share their pulpits. Why they don’t, has no good explanation… only bad ones.
Charter schools are the profit-making part of the “education reform/choice/voucher” movement that has from its very beginnings has been rooted in racism. The movement has always had resegregation of America’s schools as its core agenda, so Betsy DeVos offers no surprises there.
The deceptive call for “choice” and vouchers was the first racist response to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court declared that “separate but equal” public schools are inherently unequal and ordered racial integration of the public schools. That ruling triggered “white flight” from public schools to private schools — but parents quickly realized that the tuition cost of private schools was more than they wanted to pay out-of-pocket. That realization led political and private resegregationists to the concoct the “reform” of vouchers, and to sell it to eager parents by deceptively marketing it then —and still today — as merely giving parents a “choice.”
Reports from the NAACP and ACLU have revealed the facts about just how charter schools are resegregating our nation’s schools, as well as discriminating racially and socioeconomically against American children, and last year the NAACP Board of Directors passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice. Moreover, a 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.
The 1950’s voucher crusade faded away when it became clear that because of school attendance boundaries no more than a few token blacks would be attending formerly all-white public schools. In 1972 when the Supreme Court finally ordered busing to end the ongoing de facto segregation, the reform movement rose from its grave and has been alive ever since then trying new tactics to restore racial segregation because it’s unlikely that the Court’s racial integration order can ever be reversed. When it became clear in the 1980’s that vouchers would never become widespread, the segregationists tried many other routes to restore racial segregation, and the most successful has been charter schools because charter schools can be sold to blithely unaware do-gooder billionaires as well as to unscrupulous profiteers who recognized charter schools as a way to divert vast amounts of tax money into their own pockets and into the pockets of supportive politicians at every level of government.
An essential part of the strategy to mask their underlying motives has been for segregationists to sell the public on the necessity for charter schools because public schools are allegedly “failing.” With all manner of “research” that essentially compares apples to oranges against foreign nations’ students, and with the self-fulfilling prophecy of dismal public school performance generated by drastic underfunding of public schools, and with condemnation of public school teachers based on statistically invalid student test scores, the segregationists are succeeding in resegregating education in America via what are basically private charter schools that are funded with public money.
The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “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 the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Courts, and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools 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. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL” because no charter school fulfills the basic public accountability requirement of being responsible to and directed by a school board that is elected by We the People. Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money.
Even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “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 money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property. These aren’t onerous burdens on charter schools; these are only common sense requirements to assure taxpayers that their money is being properly and effectively spent to educate children and isn’t simply ending up in private pockets or on the bottom line of hedge funds.
These aren’t “burdensome” requirements for charter schools — they are simply common sense safeguards that public tax money is actually being used to maximum effect to teach our nation’s children.
The result of full, detailed financial reporting will cause most charter school operators to fade away because once what they’re doing with public money comes to light, the game is over.
NO PUBLIC TAX MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC.
Thank you, Scisne. Indeed, there is no such thing as a “public charter school.”
The FTC owed it to America to prohibit the false advertising of contractor schools, using the label, “public “.
Yeah!
The first of choices should always be to have a well resourced, comprehensive, traditional, neighborhood, public school that is within walking distance for ALL STUDENTS and at ALL GRADE levels, that is the center hub of their communities! Then offer your “flavor of the day” charters, providing transportation on the district’s dime. Now that would be real, equitable choice !
As long as the “flavor of the day” charter had the same oversight as the public school.
As long as the “flavor of the month” had an elected board voted on by members of the community in the same process that elects public school board members. And, as long as the “flavor of the month” accepted all students.
Linda,
Thank you – I like your reply better than my own.