Vouchers in Indiana have been an expensive flop. Students don’t learn more. They learn less.
Worse, says Sheila Kennedy, many voucher schools explicitly ban LGBT students.
Only about 3% of the students in the state use vouchers, even though their advocates believe that everyone is clamoring for them. Sorry, they are not.
Where I disagree with Kennedy is that she refers to charters as public schools. They are not. They are run by private corporations. They open the door to vouchers. They are a form of privatization. Frankly, it is sad to see a corporation take the place of a neighborhood school.
Your local public school should not be run by Walmart.
I posted the following comment:
“Diane Ravitch August 29, 2017 at 12:02 pm
“Charter schools are not public schools, even when state laws call them that. They are private schools that receive public money. They are the first step towards full privatization. They are the Gateway to vouchers. When anyone challenges charter corporations in federal court, their defense is that they are not “state actors” and therefore not subject to state laws. The NLRB recently ruled that charters are not subject to labor laws because they are not public schools. Documentation: read my last book: “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools”
Diane Ravitch”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Short posting. So much said in few words.
Charter schools that receive public monies are no more pubic entities than companies receiving public monies that make jet fighters, bombs and destroyers are public entities.
The latter are private and they’re in it for the profit. At least they have the virtue of not pretending to be public.
As the posting points out so succinctly—and this is what real news and verifiable facts look like—when push comes to shove, the charter heavyweights demand legal clarifications that then define them for the private actors they are.
Much better described as government contractors that feed at the public trough with as little oversight and regulation as they can get away with.
Of course, when they tout their wares to the unwary they resort to rheeal news and cherry-picked “studies shows” arguments in an attempt to Trump their way to $tudent $ucce$$.
As a contributor to the blog noted years ago: “Have they no shame?”
Of course not. Or as the man who wrote the corporate education reform playbook put it: “The system is rigged.”
Yep. “HUGELY.”
😎
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Yesterday I received my copy of the “Washington Spectator”, one of the most depressing things I have read in some time. It explains how the Republicans have very astutely seized control of our government by gerrymandering et al. Will not go into detail here.
We are more and more becoming a one party government, similar to Germany pre WWII. 5 major corporations control our “news” where good journalists are fired. Trump has by promoting the “false news” idea made any news items suspect to a great many people. The “Goebels” effect.
Now the powers that be wish to take over the content of our children’s “education”. They then can propagandize them as in the Hitler youth program as well as control 80% of the “news” their parents are indoctrinated with, controlling what is posted, what is not posted and in the way it IS posted twist the way it is presented to promote what they wish people to believe as us the case with corporate news now. “Trump may not be good for the U.S but he sure is good CBS” idea. Money, not people, not truth, the bottom line.
Already we see the disparity between the wealth distribution between the rich and the poor. We see that in commercial TV climate change is never mentioned with ALL the coverage of Harvey.
There is so much more but the Washington Spectator’s article of leading to a one party system AND by the way it is being done devastated me personally for some time.
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When I read about schools getting government funds and banning LGBT students, I am reminded of a T-shirt that I first saw worn by an elderly woman protesting the Iraq War:
“I can’t believe I’m still protesting this S–T!”
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I can’t believe that I can still talk to family, friends, neighbors — and still have them look at me blankly when I bring up the subject of school reform.
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Diane. It must get tiresome to repeat the facts about the misrepresentation of charter schools as private.
Keep on keeping on. The marketing of these schools as public is wrong, even if effective.
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Charles, that’s not true but you support government funding of Islamic schools. I don’t.
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