Stop what you are doing and read this article by Katherine Stewart.
She documents how the charter movement has paved the way for vouchers. When parents are convinced by propaganda that their public schools are “failing,” then sell them consumer choice.
Some of the leading charter chains are fronts for religious fundamentalists, as Stewart shows.
And as we learned from a study conducted by The Huffington Post, the largest number of vouchers are used by fundamentalist Christian schools, where it is okay to teach lies and hatred for the Other, as well as lies about science and history.
School choice is about destroying not only public schools but about destroying democracy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is interesting, but I think it is more than the charter advocates being “useful idiots”.
Diane, there was a time that you advocated for charters when they looked like they could do some good for some of the most vulnerable children. But when you saw the issues and problems, you realized you were wrong and stopped supporting them. Even if it meant that you didn’t get as rich as you might have as the willing tool of the charter movement.
But charter advocates today have done just the opposite. They knew the problems but they doubled down and covered up and professed that they were doing it all for the kids when they were well aware that the percentage of children who benefitted was very small compared to the huge number of children who were getting screwed.
But since the pro charter advocates were finding it very financially rewarding to ignore that inconvenient fact, they continued to promote something that was terribly harmful to most kids and rationalized their own greed by saying “well we’re helping some kids (the ones who are profitable for us to teach) and my own bank account is thriving so it’s all okay”.
The pro-charter advocates are no different than any paid lobbyist who promotes ending Medicaid for poor children and instead demands that the Medicaid funding be given to a few charities who will provide free medical care for any child they feel is deserving of it (and won’t cut into the high salaries they pay their administrative staff).
If you heard a lobbyist justifying taking money from Medicaid for poor children and giving it to some charities that can decide which children are worthy of getting healthy care treatment and which aren’t worthy of any healthcare, you’d hear the same arguments made by pro charter folks. They’d pretend that the fact they want to cut Medicaid and give funding to special charities had nothing to do with their own greed, but was because it was so great that the few children who didn’t cut into the charities’ bottom line were so healthy. (And of course, the other children could be dying and those lobbyists don’t care one iota because as long as some children get great medical care from an overpaid charity whose CEO is taking home a huge salary, all is well).
Charter advocates know exactly what they are doing. They are the Republican Congress who doesn’t mind if our President turns out country into a fascist state as long as they think they are personally benefitting. If other people suffer, that’s perfectly fine with them.
Charter advocates aren’t idiots. They are simply extremely greedy men and women who only care about money and anything that interferes with their ability to get it — like facts — are not allowed to be mentioned.
LikeLike
From the perspective of a parent who made the choice to have his kids attend charter schools, I think the characterization of charter supporters as profiteering, naive, evil or racist (which almost every article and poster implies) is grossly incorrect.
Many parents are caught in a collective action problem, whereby we recognize the value and benefit of a strong public school, but individually we want what’s best for our kids. In Arizona, there are frankly just a lot of poorly payed teachers who are looking for the next bus out of town (an exaggeration but it sure feels that way), so when a charter school opens up filled with kids who are self selected high performers, it’s hard to resist the siren call of the excellent education and opportunities presented. Many of my kids’ classmates are racially diverse 1st generation immigrants who just want to have the best opportunity.
Anecdotally, it also feels that gifted programs are passively discouraged at public schools lest it lead to any perception of inequality. Charter schools persist because there is an unmet need, not because of overt malfeasance.
LikeLike
I don’t mean the PARENTS who choose the charters are greedy. I mean that the people who are paid a lot of money to advocate for more charters and the ones who run them are doing it because they are selfish and greedy.
I get what you said. That’s why the system is so reprehensible. You have been given a choice to have a better school by excluding the kids who cost more money to teach. And while charter advocates claim that public magnet schools do the same thing, the truth is that they don’t. Public magnet schools are always part of a larger SYSTEM that has to care for the other students as well. Charters don’t. Charters profit by abandoning those kids. Like you, some of their parents wanted the “better” school that didn’t have to teach every kid, but sometimes the kid that the charter doesn’t want to teach is theirs! And sometimes charters merely have policies to discourage those parents from enrolling in the charter in the first place.
Charter schools don’t persist because of an “unmet need”. They persist because they are lying about what they are doing. They want some kids and not others and they will stoop to anything to get rid of the others.
The “overt malfeasance” by charters is that it is illegal for them to cull their student body for the easiest to teach. So they have to suspend 5 year olds and pretend they are evil and violent and make children feel like the lowest of the low because that makes their parents pull them. They have to fail children multiple times and tell their parents it is their child’s fault and not the teacher’s that their child is still in 2nd grade despite being 9. Anything to get rid of unwanted children because they don’t have to care about any child not in their charter.
If someone told you your child could get the equivalent of a free private school education and all you have to do is look the other way and say nothing when other kids are mistreated, would you accept it? What if they told you that they’d only mistreat a few children and 30 kids — including yours — would be much better off?
What does it take to buy your silence about what the charters are doing? What does it take to get parents to agree to abandon the most vulnerable kids to a public policy based on lies?
LikeLike
Some charter advocates are naifs and useful idiots, but the people pushing and financing them are vicious bastards (and should be called out as such), motivated by greed and power.
They are willing, nay happy, to destroy lives and institutions to get what they want.
LikeLike
YEP!
LikeLike
Along with those that believe that charters offer students more opportunity are right wing Christian extremists like DeVos that believe that public schools are anti-Christian. They use the term “government schools” pejoratively. Unfortunately, many of these same people use these private schools to promulgate their religious ideas, and some of these people like DeVos and the Koch brothers are billionaires that want to impose their extremist views on young people.
Our founding fathers that clearly understood the divisive nature of religion in politics sought to keep government free on religious content. These right wing billionaires are being given too much access to our young people and public money through charters and vouchers. Future voters should not be brainwashed by the Koch brothers “history curriculum.” Why aren’t the so-called progressives doing more to countermand this threat to our democratic principles?https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-bigelow/the-koch-brothers-sneak-i_b_6163946.html
LikeLike
I actually think that’s the biggest story in ed reform, how cheerleading charters morphed into cheerleading vouchers almost seamlessly.
It’s probably not good for “the movement”. They’re enough of an echo chamber as it is. With the distinction between “public” and “private” completely obliterated they’ll get more and more insular and lock-step.
It was hard enough to tell the difference between Obama and Jeb Bush on education. Now it’s impossible.
You’ll notice these shifts never occur TOWARDS public education. Ed reform only moves in one direction, and it’s Right. They are moving inexorably and (now, since Trump) RAPIDLY towards espousing all-voucher systems. What’s amazing is the lack of any real debate. There’s a periodic lurch Right across the movement and then everyone follows.
Barry Goldwater is now the “center” in ed reform.
LikeLike
Many of the current crop of “conservatives” are not interested in conserving anything. They want to blow everything up to reinvent policy to reflect right wing Christian values. They are doing this in many southern states one nitpicky law at a time.
LikeLike
Conservatives conserve.
What we have now are anarchists and nihilists who believe in nothing but self enhancement
LikeLike
Regressive reactionary selfish bastards is what I would call them, certainly not conservatives.
LikeLike
Ed reformers throw around this idea that “school choice” week “includes” public schools because remember! They are AGNOSTICS.
But read what they write on their own sites! It is 100% charter and voucher cheerleading.
Here’s a piece from a “Democratic” ed reformer. He describes a political agenda for Democrats that completely ignores existing public schools:
“Today, Democrats continue to lead the way forward in advancing public charters with accountability. ”
It’s amazing. In ed reformworld there are NO public school families and if they exist they can be taken completely for granted. No ed reformer has to offer them ANY added value. They don’t even have to mention that our schools exist.
Democrats don’t even bother to propose improvements or adding value to existing public schools. In the past they broke their promises but at least they made promises. Now public schools have been dropped by BOTH political parties. 90% of families have no representation. None.
https://www.the74million.org/article/jeffries-what-school-choice-means-for-democrats-in-the-age-of-trump/?utm_content=bufferf178a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
LikeLike
There’s another new wrinkle in the obliteration of the distinction between “public” and “private” in ed reformworld.
Now if they fail in pushing thru a voucher law religious schools simply morph into charters. They “become” public schools. Wink wink.
It’s just a matter of slapping “charter” onto the letterhead after “St. Marys”. Presto! Public funding! Another scam.
LikeLike
This seems like the age old “We could make this “Garden of Eden” better if we
knew shit from shinola…”
Does effective propaganda or marketing, BEGIN where:
A) Critical Thinking
B) Consciousness
C) Education
Ends?
**When parents are convinced by propaganda **
Isn’t it TIME to understand WHY?
LikeLike
This is a fascinating “chicken egg” question. We know that many of the right wing fanatics watch a lot of Fox News as does Trump. There are also several right wing ideologues on TV, radio and on-line. Many children’s views are influenced by their parents, and schools play a role as well. I am certain that the Koch brothers’ history program would provide a right wing spin for many voucher students. How it all starts I have no idea, but it’s a great question. However, there seem to be many more of these ideological programs available on the right.
LikeLike
One of the most disturbing things about these Christian Scholarships is that they do not include Catholics (or Mormons) in their definition of Christian here in Arizona. I would say that this fact is proof of the problem.
LikeLike