When Corey Booker, then Mayor of Newark, and Chris Christie, then Governor of New Jersey, persuaded Mark Zuckerberg to give them $100 million to transform the schools of Newark, they told him that Newark would become the New Orleans of the North and that it would become one of the highest performing districts in the nation. Hahaha. As Dale Russakoff explained in her book The Prize about Zuckerberg’s millions, most of the money went to consultants and to pay off debts to the teachers’ union.
Nonetheless, Christie delivered on his end of the bargain. Newark is on track to have more than 40% of its students in charter schools. Ten years ago, less than 10% were in charter schools.
The state has signed off on nearly 7,000 more charter seats to be available by the 2022-23 school year, according to state data compiled by Sass Rubin, who teaches at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning & Policy. If all those seats are filled and district enrollment stays flat at about 34,200 students, then the share of students who go to school in Newark and attend charters could climb as high as 44 percent.
No one knows whether the demand will meet the supply, but that doesn’t matter. The supply will be there thanks to the Christie administration.
Some said it made sense to stockpile extra seats during the charter-friendly Christie administration, under which the number of charter students doubled. “While the getting is good, and Christie is approving just about anything that sounds stable, why don’t we just go and apply for additional charters so we can have those in our pocket?” asked one charter leader, describing the thinking of some of his school’s board members.
So now we must eagerly await the results to see whether Newark becomes a model for the nation, as Booker and Christie said it would be. Or do we have to wait for Newark to become 100% charter? Apparently the goal is to prove that poverty and segregation don’t matter, and that charters can succeed despite those factors. Let’s see.
But the problem with Newark becoming 100% charter is that then the charters would have no place to send the kids they don’t want. As this report by Mark Weber and Julia Sass Rubin shows, the charters systematically under enroll students with disabilities and English language learners. If charters must take all of them, it might drive down their test scores.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Selling out to the charter industry is not different from privatizing, with a public subsidy to the charters. I’d bet that the next ten years will see the charters becoming computer centric in order to pocket more money for the “founders” and CEOs.
key words in this “helping the kids” game: COMPUTER CENTRIC.
It won’t become 100% charter. The public schools are essential to the “choice” schools. They’re the default schools.
Ed reformers actually had a paper on it. How public schools were for the 10% of students who were transient- who couldn’t be placed elsewhere, in a “choice” school. They used the word “default”.
What would you do if you were a parent? You have one system that is clearly unfashionable and not supported by politicians and then a set of “choice” schools that are showered with attention and praise and encouragement and extra funding. Obviously you leave the public system and head to a “choice” school- the schools that are preferred by the powerful people who run things.
Listen to one of DeVos’ speeches sometime. Public schools are portrayed as terrible places, places families “escape”, full of thugs and bullies and low performers. Charter and private schools are portrayed as the premium product- the “better” schools that everyone wants to get into.
That’s why they brand vouchers as “scholarships”- something that is limited and exclusive as opposed to the lower quality “public” system that any random kid can get into. It’s also why they exaggerate the waiting lists. It’s marketing 101. It’s not subtle and it’s not even sophisticated.
If you’re a public school parent just be aware that the Best and Brightest have designated your kid’s school as a lesser tier. It’s not an accident that public schools get worse in all these states dominated by ed reformers. It’s deliberate. The collateral damage that must be imposed to reach the ideological promised land.
Eva Moskowitz has a graduating class of 17. All of the kids who washed out of her schools went somewhere- they went to the less favored “default” public schools.
“Choice” schools need public schools much more than public schools need choice schools. Moskowitz should be grateful to all those public schools she demeans- they make her schools possible. There couldn’t be a public, universal system made up of Success Academies. All the kids who wash out would be on the street.
Ed reformers have decided not to mention this essential element of their success. Maybe they don’t realize it themselves- they pay so little attention to kids in the disfavored public sector schools they may have completely forgotten about them.
Read ed reform stuff on Los Angeles sometime. Public schools are CLEARLY disfavored, clearly designated as the less desirable schools, the schools that won’t be supported or invested in, the “default” schools that ed reformers must grudgingly accept until their privatized dream is realized.
They’re winding them down, our schools. The guy who owns Netflix envisions leaving 10% of public schools as a back-up for the kids who can’t be placed elsewhere. How do you think those schools are going to fair? Not well.
This is how “the movement” sees every public school (and every public school student) in the country. As lesser.
Public schools don’t do well under ed reform governance because ed reformers don’t value public schools. If you want support for your schools you’ll have to find and hire people who aren’t wholly captured by this “movement”.
“Schools in several of Kentucky’s largest counties were forced to close Friday when teachers angered by the passage of a pension overhaul refused to go to work. The state’s two largest districts in Louisville and Lexington were among at least eight school districts that closed schools due to employee absences.”
West Virginia, Arizona and now Kentucky. Meanwhile, the “ed reform movement” remains blissfully unaware of this ongoing crisis in….public schools.
I used to joke that every public school in the country could close and ed reformers wouldn’t notice because they don’t actually work on “public education” but instead work on charters and vouchers. I never dreamed we would actually see that, but we are.
You know what ed reformers in Kentucky spent the last year on? Charters.
Meanwhile, the schools NINETY FIVE PER CENT of people in that state were in crisis.
They don’t work for public school families. They work for some abstract privatized school system that exists only at the Walton Foundation.
Would someone notify the 4000 employees at the US Department of Education that PUBLIC schools are closing? No one in ed reform will notice- they don’t send their kids to our schools.
“….most of the money went to consultants and…”
Yeah, I have to wonder how much of the reform/Race to The Top cash went to “consultants”? The whole craptastic effort should have been named, “No Consultant Left Behind.”
We had a “consultant” who would tell us one thing one day then something entirely different the next day. It’s like some of these so-called Common Core “experts” were using a Magic 8 ball.
You really don’t have to “smear”or misrepresent ed reformers- there’s no reason to.
You just have to read what they say:
e’re talking about students, like Trevor. Trevor is from California. He has cerebral palsy, though he’s refused to let it define him. He excelled in elementary and middle school, earning all A’s.
But in high school, his condition made it difficult to navigate multiple floors and a large campus. One day, moving between classes, Trevor fell down a flight of stairs, breaking his knee. His accident crushed his bone, and, it nearly crushed his spirit.
Sadly, Trevor’s school was less than accommodating. They didn’t allow leeway for extra time to transfer classes nor any mechanism to catch up on missed instruction time. This 4.0 GPA high schooler saw his grades tumble and his aspirations fade.
“They really weren’t concerned about Trevor going to college,” Trevor’s mother said. “They really just wanted him to graduate high school.”
In other words, pass him along so they wouldn’t have to deal with him: a sad reality for far too many students in far too many schools.
Thankfully, Trevor and his parents discovered a blended learning charter school that allowed students to take classes online or in person.”
Every single one of DeVos’ speeches is like this- terrible public school versus excellent “choice” school. One of her favorite themes is how public school students are all bullies.
It’s true across ed reform. In fact, it’s so true that DeVos got FOUR standing ovations at their conference- her entire speech smeared public schools and public school students. Ed reform cheered.
This IS “the movement”. They’re anti-public school. Which should concern you if your kid is IN a public school. You have a right to insist that the public employees you pay NOT harm your schools. You are allowed to demand that. Whatever their ideological dream is, if they are harming your kids public school you should insist they be replaced. You’re paying these people! They offer NOTHING of value to your kids. Find someone better and hire them.
Since the state has signed off on 7,000 charter seats, the people should organize a boycott of those seats. People should insist on having an authentic public school as an option, and get social justice groups’ support to arrange protests. If no public option is made available, they should sue the state.
If current patterns hold, many of the Newark charter school seats approved by Governor Christie are unlikely to be filled by Newark residents because there appears to be an oversupply of charter seats for the level of demand in Newark.
Over the last four years, Newark residents have filled only about 80% of the approved seats in Newark charter schools. This may have been a factor in the Christie Administration’s decision to close several Newark charter schools last year, as doing so would create more demand for the remaining charter schools.
This pattern of weak demand for charter schools is also seen in other New Jersey cities with large charter enrollments.
The data showing a gap between supply and demand throws into question the claims of a 35,000 student waitlist that the NJ charter industry has used to push back against any slow down in approvals. The 35,000 figure is self-reported and unverified. It is created by the charter school trade association. If a student’s family applies to 10 charter schools, the waitlist would count her as ten students. Analysis of specific individual charter waitlists also confirms that they may include students who have moved away or who applied in prior years and are no longer interested.
Mark and I will be releasing a second charter school research report next month that goes into greater detail on these and related issues.
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Poison-Pill-That-Chris-in-General_News-Chris-Christie_Diane-Ravitch_Public-Good_Public-Interest-180401-14.html#comment695453
WITH THIS COMMENT
The entire school ‘reform’ movement is the Orwellian plot to offer ‘choice’ but to end public education across the fifteen thousand separate school systems. http://www.opednews.com/Series/PRIVITIZATION-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-150925-546.html Public education — i.e. the schools– is already divided for conquering, as no one that I meet can tell me what is ongoing in the schools district next door, let alone in the state, or in the systems across the nation. No one knows what real LEARNING looks like in a classroom, but everyone buys the crap about ‘teaching’ put out by Gates, as the testing mania evaluates nothing, but tells people how the school is failing” so public money can be shifted to charters.