I posted the Central findings of the EdNext survey this morning. I did not have a link. Here is an article that examines the poll numbers and includes a link to the survey.
Bottom line: the public is souring on charter schools as it learns more about them. The fact that Trump is a big fan of charters stripped away the claim that charters are “progressive.” They are a form of privatization.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Credit belongs to the tireless efforts of Diane who cares about America’s children and the nation’s communities and democracy. If there was justice, the decline in support for the contractor school abomination would be greater than 12%. And, the profit-taking, children-cannabilizing, scum from Wall Street, the tech industry and discount retailing would be routed from society and pilloried, at a minimum.
Yes, Linda. AGREE!
I think the continual flow of scandals has caused the drop. The drop was worse among Republicans . They don’t want their tax dollars wasted.
“wasted” is a word that sanitizes (1) the money’s use in corrupting state politicians (2) the role of contractor schools in fleecing of taxpayers and, (3) students denied the education that citizens wanted for them so that they could be productive citizens.
In the nation’s 7th largest state, the biggest contractor school reportedly had a 70% truancy rate. And, the contractor school industry was described a billion dollar boondoggle.
Full responsibility rests with Walton heirs and Bill and Melinda Gates.
Have that Dump take all those repressive, stupid tests. That should keep him very busy.
He’d pay some lackey to do them!
“Without a doubt, there is a national spotlight on public school choice and we were not surprised to see some changes in support of charter schools nationally as a result reported in the EdNext poll released today. However, CCSA’s own public opinion polling has found much higher levels of support for charter public schools in California than EdNext’s poll found at the national level,” he wrote.
It’s so funny that ed reformers use state and local numbers when it benefits them and when it DOESN’T benefit them they use national numbers. They prefer national numbers in Ohio, generally, for obvious reasons.
Fun with numbers! 🙂
That’s the thing about numbers. The biggest lie that was ever told may be “numbers don’t lie”. Sure they do. All the time. Anyone can spin them around and turn them upside down, omit some, add others, and EVERYONE does.
Was the spinning, the reason for the report’s date embargo? Or, was the embargo aimed at getting time to shore up financial and/or political support before releasing the bad news?
Don’t know.
As usual in ed reform, there’s the laser-like focus on charters and vouchers. For some mysterious reason, 10% of schools get 90% of the attention in a “movement” that is supposedly about “public education”.
The bias is baked in. It permeates everything they do.
They should poll on whether the public wonders why no one in “public education” ever talks about public schools when 90% of kids attend them. That might be an interesting question. They may be wondering why they are asked about charters and private schools over and over (and over) when those are not the schools most of their children attend.
I live in very conservative, military supporting north Florida. I reposted some of Diane’s blogs on a local community website about the horrible new charter law that Scott just signed into law. I was expecting to have a fight on my hands, but, to my surprise, not one contrarian. In fact, some parents were voicing their frustration and disgust with the law. This would not have happened a year ago. The public is catching on to all the grifters and snake oil salesmen in the charter business.
I find it very surprising that the drop in support among Republicans w/charter schools (13 points) was more than the drop in support among Democrats (11 points). How to explain?
The well-crafted PR facade of civil rights which was attached to privatization of America’s most important common good, allows Democratic politicians to take money from Wall Street and the tech industry. The politicians remain silent about the Center for American Progress’ education agenda to keep the money rolling in. If they spoke out the base would know about the school plotting and reject it.
I love the graph contained in the article. It shows that support for reformyism has been eroding for some time, that DeVapid bashing of public schools (and grizzlies) has not begun but deeply intensified public distrust of reforminess, and suggests that the trend will not just continue, but magnify in years to come.
Still looks like there is plenty of work to do on vouchers and the false choice meme, and the numbers opposing union dues show that unions have a lot of work to do. Merit pay is another issue we need to keep discussing. While I remember some teachers being inspirational, more often than not my admiration was spurred on by my own interest. I would hate to have seen my teachers judged on my performance, particularly on tests. My own children’s teachers were basically good but not great teachers. A few stand out but more for the care they took with my kids rather than superb pedagogy. As my own kids got older they seemed to realize that how much they got out of a class really depended on how much they put into it.
I do look forward to the days when we can get back to discussing what good public education should look like. I was really much too trusting in the good will of those who inhabited the public school system even before but especially as corporate think began to monetize and quantify every aspect of education. I never quite figured out or bought into the game you had to play to increase your chances of staying employed.
The news about the eroding support for deregulated charters is good news. But there was some very discouraging news in the survey: Americans still love their standardized tests. Here’s a quote from an Education Week article on the results:
“Testing and holding schools accountable for student performance continues to have broad support across members of both parties. About two-thirds of respondents agree with the federal requirements to test students in math and reading every year from the latter elementary grades through middle school and once in high school.”
https://waynegersen.com/2017/08/15/hoover-institution-survey-finds-diminishing-support-for-charters-which-is-good-news-continuing-support-for-testing-which-is-sad-news/
Indeed, that is very bad news. Nothing has been gained and much has been lost after 16 years of annual testing. No high performing nation does this. No other nation in the world does it