Indianapolis is a hotbed of privatization, where the DEFER-style Mind Trust has allied with the forces of rightwingers Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence to bid farewell to democratically-controlled, community-based public schools. The latest addition to the privatization toolkit is “unified enrollment.” When parents begin to look for a school placement, there is no neighborhood school, no zoned school. Instead, they look for a school on a list that combines both charter schools and public schools, each of which is identified by their offerings or specialty. Thus, consumerism is firmly established, and charter schools are turned into the equivalent of public schools, even though they have private management and may operate for profit.
The idea of OneApp was funded by the charter-pushing, anti-union Walton Family Foundation in New Orleans and other cities controlled by privatizers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As much as I loathe both Daniels and Pence, is it fair to blame them for this? This seems to be an initiative of the Indianapolis Public Schools, which are controlled by an elected board.
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It’s also funny (not ha-ha) how they talk about having a uniform system of “application deadlines”. Real public schools have neither applications nor deadlines.
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They’ve been trying to push ‘unified enrollment’ in Boston as well. ‘Empowerment Zones’ is the next privatization scheme to look out for. Since ref 2 went down with a thud last year, I’ve been hearing a lot about them in MA.
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The plan was hatched by The Mind Trust.
It’s really pretty clever. They turn public schools over to private contractors but they don’t call them charter schools- they call them “innovation network schools”- they’re charter schools in all but name but this way they can call them “district schools” and trun them over, lock stock and barrel, to private companies.
“But IPS has already begun to launch schools with more independence, calling them “innovation network schools.”
So far, all schools operating under that arrangement are being managed by outside groups, including charter school networks.”
What’s interesting about Indianapolis to me is they have embraced for-profit charter companies- ed reformers (supposedly) oppose for profit schools, yet they’re all out promoting Indianapolis as a national model.
Did they jettison yet another principle? They no longer insist on “non profit”? One more compromise on the way to wholly privatized systems?
In a decade there won’t be a public school left in Indy, which, of course, was the plan at the outset. They just neglected to inform the public.
https://in.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2015/12/22/the-basics-of-the-ips-plan-for-school-autonomy-and-innovation/
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The public should be aware that the privatization efforts in Indianapolis have not actually improved public schools.
Yet, the whole ed reform chorus are promoting this model all over the United States.
Now- these folks claim to be about “data”. Why would they replicate an unproven model? Why are they over-selling this? If it’s actually valuable they shouldn’t need all these paid cheerleaders exaggerating success, yet they do. Why is that?
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Also, correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t ed reformers promise teachers that if they eradicated labor unions teachers would be paid the same or better?
How do they explain the plummeting wages in Wisconsin? That’s hardly “empowering” teachers- paying them rock bottom wages.
What happened? Why didn’t wages hold up when they eradicated the labor union? Is this a failed economic theory?
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This is an interesting forum and I should follow up with research on it. But when you say the wages are falling that makes an interesting piece of information, and one which needs more specifics. Could you give an url where I could verify the falling teacher wages?
The other thing which forces itself on one’s mind is why do people simply go along, or seem to, with these huge changes without making a fuss about it; or do they? I would like to see your response to these questions.
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My middle son is in an apprenticeship and he says the ed tech salespeople are out in force selling garbage online programs to replace experienced instructors in the trades.
Do we really want electricians trained on cheap computer programs? That’s dangerous work. Skimp on materials and you aren’t gonna get a quality product, which may not matter that much when they’re shoving kids into online foreign language programs but may matter a lot when you’re fixing a high voltage transmission for an entire grid.
They’re going to ruin apprenticeships like they ruin everything else.
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“Do we really want electricians trained on cheap computer programs?”
What you are hinting at is the concept of transferability of skills from one context to another. It has long been acknowledged in testing that supposed mastery in one form of learning and testing does not usually nor necessarily mean that the mastery will occur when the test taker is subject to a different type of test in a different environment even though each test is supposedly assessing the same learning construct/objective (or in edudeformer terms-standard). That lack of transferability was explained by Wilson in his 1997 dissertation that all involved in any education should read and understand. See: “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
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What are the processes by which privatizers make a profit off charter schools? While some may understand it well, I do not. Do they pay teachers less? I read that they rent their buildings to the charters they own, but in what other ways do they make profit. Would appreciate a response.
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Most of the profits come from real estate deals, in which the charter buys the property, rents it to itself for an inflated fee, or does business with related companies owned by same company as the charter.
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Teachers in charters are also paid less in most cases. Their benefits are also really bad in many cases.
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Echoing Threatened Out West here: charter teachers are most definitely paid less & have fewer bennies. This is de rigeur if you need to lower costs to squeeze out a profit, since typically teacher salaries are 75% of school costs. So your labor pool will necessarily be newbies w/qualifs looking for experience– who will leave as soon as they can get a pubsch job– or TFA’s on a 2-yr contract who will leave as soon as [ditto] or parlay up into policy/ admin positions that look for TFA alums– or qualif pubsch teachers squeezed out by school closings/ layoffs, who will leave as soon as they can retire or find a diff career– etc. The consequence for charter schools is teacher-churn, which lowers the quality of ed there.
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melchi48, the profits from charter schools come from a combination of tax credits & direct public subsidies. They are structured as public -private partnership in which a public school system contracts out (outsources) their responsibility for managing a school or a group of schools to a private management company. These public-private partnership contracts have become a web of conflicts of interest, cronyism & rent extraction.
Outsourcing to an Education Management Company (EMO) allows charters to function as private companies while being subsided with public school money. EMOs, function somewhat like Health Management Companies (HMOs), shut out public accountability and oversight. Their first order of business for an EMO is profit for investors. Everything else related to educating kids is secondary & subject to budget cuts.
In outsourced education, school systems &/or the state pay charters for the numbers of children they serve. As such, charters make efforts to keep the least expensive kids enrolled, exclude high-needs kids & churn teachers through overwork & low pay. The tech industry brags about their 20% labor churn. If EMOs ever achieve that level of churn prepare your self for their slick marketing about how they fire ineffective teachers & hire only the highest achievers.
Here is a great article by Jonathan Turley who explains how charter schools gouge taxpayers and enrich a few billionaires through the tax code. Essentially, the billionaires in business & their lobbyists are making sure that capital wins every time.
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“The state’s largest district saw drops in ISTEP scores at the vast majority of schools. Scores fell across the state, but the situation was worse in IPS, where the passing rate went down by 4 percentage points to 25.3 percent in 2016.”
The grand experiment on other people’s children does not seem to be yielding the types of results that were promised. However, the “Innovation Schools” are making money for some favored individuals, and the parents have “choice” as a comfort for their declining schools. Choice makes money for a few at the expense of many, and the local people lose their democratic input. That’s what privatization accomplishes, a further disinvestment in one’s own community.
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Good lord. This is the primary reason my family moved to NJ from NYC [Bklyn] (despite having been very happy there for 17 yrs) when our eldest was nearly K-age: tho the local elementary looked pretty good, the middle-school playgrounds were littered w/syringes & crack vials (which meant patching thro for 3 yrs ponying up priv-sch tuition)– but MOST IMPORTANT: the hi-sch scene looked like this IN K12 scene: forget about a decent pubsch school near home, be prepared instead for research, applications, lotteries, maybe changing schools midstream etc. The same dammed thing you have to do for college. Can’t imagine why IN folks want to inflict that on themselves K12!?
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The oligarch wants total control. Politicians are bought for this very profitable agenda dealt and managed by the .01%.
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