Reader Chiara posted this comment this morning. Whenever a legislature takes up charters and/vouchers, they forget that public schools exist. From that moment, at least 90% of their time in session will be devoted to the care and feeding of the 10% or 3% or 1% in publicly supported private schools.
“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.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks, Chiara.
Your message needs to be heard, Chiara!
Ed Reformers, in spite of much backlash, has done a lot of their heavy lifting already. Tests seem to be here to stay. Test-based “accountability” is an all but accepted part of our educational culture. They can afford to focus attention on choice and charters.
Nothing is here to stay. That is a message of despair. The testing regime will collapse once legislators understand that they are spending millions and hundreds of millions for useless testing.
I so hope you’re right, Diane.
Q Whenever a legislature takes up charters and/vouchers, they forget that public schools exist END Q
Does anyone have any specifics on this? I find it very hard to believe. All states have either laws or constitutional mandates, requiring the state to set up and run public/common schools.
I tend to give our state legislators more credit than most. I believe that these individuals have to keep the state-operated public schools, in mind, when they are considering empowering parents to opt-out of government-run, publicly-operated schools.
Many (not all) state legislators have attended public schools. Many (not all) have children in public schools.
Here in Virginia, the state assembly (the oldest in the Western Hemisphere), has repeatedly passed school choice plans, but the governor keeps vetoing the plans. The legislature is therefore forced, to continue to finance the status quo.
Be fair. The legislators in the several states, have neither forgotten , nor abandoned our public schools.
Charles,
You are not a parent. Parents who read this blog are reporting what they know.
Why do you disrespect them?
I am not disrespecting anyone. I just believe what I see. The legislators in the several states, continue to fund the public schools. In many states, educational spending (including vo-tech, and higher education) is the largest item of spending in the state budget.
I just cannot believe that state legislators have “forgotten” or “abandoned” publicly-financed education in the states.
BTW- The walkout in Kentucky is spreading, at least 26 counties have had to close their school systems. see
http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article207399739.html
I am certain that the legislators in KY, are paying close attention to this development.
I know full well, that I have no children. I need not be reminded of this fact. I am a member of the public, and I contribute my tax money to the public schools.
Teachers in state after state are walking out because public school funding has not kept pace with inflation, teachers are underpaid, health care benefits are cut. Wake up. The Center for Budget and Public Policy reported that 38 states today spend less on public schools than they did before the great recession of 2008. But you won’t read that in your rightwing rags.
I do not dispute your claims that teachers salaries are not keeping up with inflation. NO dispute at all. Here are the government-provided figures:
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-spending-per-pupil-data.html
I have consistently supported paying all public servants a living wage. I find myself in support of teachers striking, when they have a legitimate grievance.
I can speak best for Ohio, Charles, but I read enough about other states on here and elsewhere. There have been precious few state legislatures going against the Reform agenda. There have been rare moments when state legislatures have fought the agenda. In Washington state (Gates country!), the legislature passed a very controversial piece of legislation ALLOWING schools to evaluate teachers without any input from standardized tests. A couple New England states (Vermont? New Hampshire?) have made similar moves. An exceptional Republican state legislator in Pennsylvania has been fighting the enormous amounts of wasted money on tests. Any of the anti-“Reform” efforts have been remarkable because of their rarity.
Charles loves the reform agenda so he can’t see anything to criticize about it.
I do not dispute your assertions. Since many of the forces pushing for reform have financial muscle to back up their agenda, it is quite natural to assume that state legislatures will be receptive to their overtures.
Money talks. Bull**** walks.
It is rare to find a state legislator who is willing to risk their political career fighting for the status quo.
Nevertheless, I still have difficulty latching on to the assertion, that state legislators have abandoned/forgotten public schools. The financing for public education (of all types) continues to be the top expenditure item in nearly all of the state budgets.
Charles loves himself to the point of pure narcissism. Anything that’s ever happened to you and me and to anyone else has also happened to Charles. He’s been through it all. He may as well be Oprah’s twin.
Oh yes: He ALSO was abducted by aliens who were disguised as Buddhist monks and who then opened up a Pakistani-Rhuwandan take-out place in Louisville, Kentucky in which the waiters tap dance their way to your table and then zap you with a ray gun to abduct you into their spacecraft.
Charles, how was the food there? Was the spaceship comfortable? You must know. It did happened to you!
But as Charles tries desperately to regain strength and pantomime critical thinking, maybe he will one day see some light that privatization and choice are anathema to a healthy democracy.
Poor, intellectually flaccid and limited Charles. We must support try and him in his sad time of need.
@ Diane: I have let all of the “ad hominem” attacks on me, just slip by. I have never attacked anyone with sarcasm or any inappropriate remarks.
Some of the remarks recently posted, are just a little over the line. Don’t you agree?
And yet DeVos continues draining public tax money away from children who are in genuine public schools and is siphoning that public tax money into private charter schools in spite of the fact that The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report which warns that, because of their lack of financial accountability to the public “CHARTER SCHOOLS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS POSE A POTENTIAL RISK TO FEDERAL FUNDS, EVEN AS THEY FALL SHORT OF MEETING GOALS” because of financial fraud and the artful skimming of tax money into private pockets, especially hedge fund pockets.
If nothing else is required of charter schools, one thing must be required so that charter schools are accountable to taxpayers and inform taxpayers as to how taxpayer money is actually being spent; that one key thing is: Charter schools must be required to file the SAME detailed, public domain financial reports under penalty of perjury that public schools file.
Charter schools will cry that this is “too burdensome” — yet public schools file such reports. What would the outcry be if public schools were “freed” of this “burden”? Why, the outcry would rattle the very heavens! So, why is it that private charter schools are allowed to get away with taking public tax money and not have to tell the public on an annual basis how those public tax dollars are spent?
Charter schools bill themselves as “public schools”, but Supreme Courts in states like New York, Washington and elsewhere are catching on to the scam and have ruled that charter schools are really private schools because they aren’t accountable to the public because they are run by private boards that aren’t elected by voters and don’t even have to file detailed reports to the public about what they’re doing with the public’s tax money.
The taxpaying American public has a right to know in detail how its money is being spent by private charter schools.
90% may attend public schools, but those are the least important Americans.
Everyone knows only about 1% matter and the vast majority of those were/are educated in private schools, so even if 99% attended public schools, Betsy would still be justified in ignoring them.
Um… what’s your point, Chiara? That the “elected officials” should care about their constituents?
Here is the percentage of the unionized workforce: 1954 – 35%, 1983 – 20.1%, 2016 – 10.7% They want percentage of public schools to follow the same trend. Forty years since Milton Friedman’s call for arms against territorially-assigned public schools we start seeing the results. Give it another 10-15 years, and the whole system will be dismantled.
At the Post Dispatch in St. Louis, where I have been making comments since 2006 regarding the destructiveness of charter schools, all my comments have been blocked for two or three years now…one employee says it is because of facebook, another, named Beth O’Malley, claims she, and she alone is the one who blocks me. I am free to comment at current affairs, a place overpopulated by right wing….experts on everything. I left a thread for Claire McCaskill…..warning her that she is going to lose if she tries to be too careful to maintain that moderate pose, which means proper respect for the thieves in the corporate foundations operating the charters. I referred to her likely opponent as a nothing burger with extra mayonnaise…..asking her how she is going to feel when he replaces her in November the same day several new democrats are elected. I told her I would still vote for her, but she is going to lose.
All boards are like this, including this one.
Yeah, their ears are tuned to the sound-wavelength of the 1%. This is an incurable condition, so they need to be replaced.
Why are we arresting mothers for stealing an education? See
https://www.the74million.org/article/stealing-public-education/