Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat here describes the spread of the gospel of the “portfolio model” of schooling.In his article, Barnum shows how Indianapolis has fallen hook, line, and sinker for privatization of its public schools.
I first heard the term used by Paul Hill of the Center for the Reinvention of Public Education at the University of Washington, a leading thinker in the privatization movement.
The basic idea is that school boards should treat their schools as if they were a stock portfolio. Some will be public schools run by the district; others will be privately managed. If a school gets low scores, close it and open a new one. If a school is not performing well, turn it over to private management. Buy and sell schools as you would buy and sell stocks in a portfolio. Disruption? No problem. Chaos? No problem.
That’s the basic idea.
For this to work, you need both supply (a willing number of charter operators, ready to move in) and demand (dissatisfied parents). So it is necessary to create dissatisfaction with the repeated claim that “our schools are failing” and to put public schools and charter schools on an equal footing by having a common enrollment system (the OneApp or some other name that gives the appearance that charters are public schools, even though they choose their students and operate under different rules and laws).
How was Indianapolis snookered into privatizing its public schools en masse? Barnum credits the work of the Mind Trust, a faux-liberal group that worked closely with the faux-liberal Stand for Children, which is a passthrough for the funding of corporations and corporate reformers.
The district is actively turning over schools to charter operators, and it’s rolling out a common enrollment system for district and charter schools that could make it easier for charters to grow. Nearly half of the district’s students now attend charters or district schools with charter-like freedoms.
It’s a remarkable shift that many in Indianapolis credit to — or blame on — the Mind Trust, a well-funded local nonprofit with a clear vision for improving education in Indianapolis.
Since its founding in 2006, the organization has called for dramatic changes to schools; recruited outside advocacy, teacher training, and charter groups; and spent millions to help launch new charter and district schools. The Mind Trust’s vision has also won support from the school board — which was elected with the financial backing of Stand for Children, an advocacy group recruited by the Mind Trust.
Stand for Children is an enemy of public schools and professional teachers. It is the conduit for privatization dollars. It has fielded candidates to run against supporters of public schools, in efforts to replace them with privatizers on school boards. It led efforts in Illinois and Massachusetts to curtail the power of unions and to reduce entry requirements for teachers.
Barnum’s article shows how the efforts of the corporate reformers are spreading even as the performance of charters is faltering, and news of charter scandals, frauds, and embezzlements is growing. The charter movement simply ignores the NAACP’s call for a moratorium on new charters, as well as their underlying demand for greater investment in the schools that enroll children with the greatest needs.
The charter movement is inextricably tied up with the funding of the Koch Brothers, the DeVos family, Eli Broad, and Bill Gates. Advocacy for charter schools is inextricably connected to the far-rightwing ALEC and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Charters are the gateway drug to vouchers.
The proponents of the charter movement, as author Katherine Stewart said in her recent article in The American Prospect, are “the useful idiots” of privatization; they have paved the way for the religious extremists and fundamentalists who control some of the largest charter chains and receive the largest number of vouchers.
The privatization of public education is a dagger aimed at democracy, with the aid and support of the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Mind Trust, Stand for Children, and others who believe neither in public education nor in democratic control of public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am delighted to see this new marketing tack! I have supported the idea of a “mix” of public/private/parochial/military/home schooling for many years. If proponents can get this idea across, by calling it “portfolio”, then terrific.
When life insurance companies started marketing their product as “estate planning”, they sold more policies.
Huh? I assume you are being sarcastic.
What, you don’t see that educating children is just like selling life insurance? Now that was sarcastic. Dripping with, even.
My wife speaks English as a second language. I never use sarcasm. I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. If you read a post from me, it is the absolute and final truth.
I am 1000% in favor of ending the government-run publicly-operated school monopoly.
Marketing is important, of course.
Charles,
You are not giving the “truth.” You are giving your opinion.
Point taken. I frequently post opinions. Stipulated. But I like to accompany my posts, with facts, and websites. And I never use sarcasm. That is what I mean by “truth”. To me, sarcasm is lying. And when your spouse has limited English skills, you get in the habit, of measuring your words and vocabulary carefully, and you cannot use sarcasm with a person with limited English skills.
Charles is 1000% in favor of ending democracy as we know it. Sarcasm: Awesome!
@ InService. I am personally offended by your remarks. I am a veteran, I have served in combat posts (civilian) in Iraq/Afghanistan. I have lived under communism, and in an Islamic kingdom. You are full of (EXPLETIVE) if you think that wish to end our constitutional form of government.
Self-government, predates publicly-operated schools. Ancient Athenians had a form of democracy (except for their slaves). When I lived in a communist country, the government ran the school system, but they permitted foreign missionaries to operate schools as well.
Over twenty-five states, currently have some form of public funding for non-public schools (charter, ESA,voucher,etc) . The federal government, under our constitution, is still operating. When additional states implement school choice, our form of government will endure.
Shame on you!
Really, sounds a little like narcisium
Public schools have already had too much outside influence over the past fifteen years. All of the fancy maneuvering described in this article has led to corporations, the same people that tanked our economy in 2008, inserting themselves into education using free market principles for a hostile takeover of public education. All of the initiatives have failed, and the latest PISA scores show a significant level of decline. All of these initiatives inside the Trojan Horse do nothing to elevate the state of education for our young people.
Parents must be the first line of defense for their children. They must fight the business incursion into their children’s education as it represents the disinvestment in education, a lack of stability so essential for the healthy growth of young people, a loss of local democratic control of schools, and the movement of a key public asset, public education, into the pockets of the 1% and corporations.
Here’s an article in NY Magazine which needs a rebuttal:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/charters-didnt-cause-segregation-they-help-its-victims.html
If I were to do the rebuttal, I’d start with the author’s early admission that his wife works for a charter school and that his thinking about the issue is terribly biased. Then I’d move on to all of the article’s mistaken premises.
Those (relatively few) charter schools that show better results nearly always pick and choose their students, or counsel out those who aren’t making it. In general, charter schools perform no better than (real) public schools, and often they perform worse. They have no demonstrable record of better graduation rates, AP test scores, or student success in college, which are statistics not so easily skewed by their self-selection or gamed by teaching to the test.
Charter schools, with rare exceptions, do not provide urban youth with an education that matches the best suburban schools or private schools in and around a city. The charters provide a band-aid solution of no-excuses discipline and test-prep curriculum which masks the festering problems of poverty and inequality. Moreover, they have a ridiculously high teacher turnover rate, which virtually assures students that they’ll get a second-class education, lacking the personal connections and inspiration which students have in adequately-funded public schools in wealthier communities.
A privatized system of charters and vouchers institutionalizes the disparities between haves and have-nots. It bakes in the bad ingredients instead of sifting them out. The basic idea that we can’t wait for poverty and segregation to go away or for (real) public schools to improve—that would take money!—gives apologists a way to stop trying to make the system better or fairer for all. It’s an implicit acceptance of racism, because the solution offered by privatized schools is both separate and unequal.
Even if a small number of charter schools are better (by what measure besides test scores?), the system will never be scalable. The reason is not only obvious, and it’s demonstrated empirically in NOLA and Nashville. The skimming of students has a limit, as does the hiring of teachers who are willing to work just a year or two in the hope of “moving up” into a leadership role or starting their own charter. It’s a classic pyramid scheme, and it crashes under its own arrogant dogma and obliviousness to what “public” means.
The charter school system is ripe for corruption. It’s a rip-off of taxpayer money in multiple ways, from self-dealing, cheating of student enrollees, and rent-seeking behavior from an investor class—hedge fund managers who want to own properties and buildings and who are definitely not in it for the kids. Although we, the public, pay the bills, it’s almost impossible to review budgets, contracts, curriculum, teaching methods, hiring/firing, enrollment tactics, and disciplinary policies of most charter schools, especially those in the largest networks. No accountability, almost by definition and certainly by experience, means harm to taxpayers, harm to communities, harm to students.
I see the same thing that you do when I connect the dots. Some journalists may look at a selective charter like BASIS or Success and generalize their results as the results of the whole charter industry. We know this is a false equivalency. It is like saying that all the New York City Public Schools are like Styvesant, a highly competitive magnet school. These journalists are not doing their homework.
And rebutting I did! See my comments in the thread [a/k/a. Sra Vigi]. An outrageous article. It’s reminding me that in my nearly 2 decades as a NY’r, I stopped reading that magazine’s articles, used it on’y for the lists of events.
LOVE THIS: “Charters are the gateway drug to vouchers.”
“The privatization of public education is a dagger aimed at democracy” is right. Turning school systems into stock “portfolios” is a perfect way for the economists and financiers, with their stock trading VAM algorithms, who opened the Pandora’s Box of private control of public education funds, to gain control of everything and everyone. We the People are soon to be bought and sold unless We stop them.
You got it! Furthermore, public education is a public asset. A quality public school enhances a community and raises the value of real estate. When corporations move in, the public money that they turn into private profit leaves their local community for the most part. Why any community would knowingly turn their democratic power over to a corporation that will disinvest in their own community is beyond me? People need to connect the dots the way you have.
Well, therein lies the problem. People don’t connect the dots. No community would knowingly turn its democratic power over to a corporation to disinvest from the community. They don’t do it knowingly. Corporations and billionaires provide people with multimedia blindfolds to buy and wear. Think of all their tools. Think media. Think test score websites. Think foundations. Think tanks. Ba dum bum. People must be wearing blindfolds to allow their democratically controlled public service to become part of some hedge fund manager’s portfolio.
“I first heard the term used by Paul Hill of the Center for the Reinvention of Public Education at the University of Washington. . . ”
When was that? 1980s? 90s? ??? Thanks for the info!