Unlike most readers, I remember the origins of the charter movement. We were promised that charter schools would cost less, deliver better results, and if they failed, be held accountable.
None of these promises were kept. Charters demand the same amount of funding as public schools. Few, other than those that choose students carefully and exclude low-performing students, get better results than public schools. Many fail, some close because of academic or financial failure.
Some fail yet never close.
That’s the case in Nevada.
Clark County teacher Angie Sullivan writes here about the lack of any accountability for charters:
Choice.
Extreme waste.
Market forces versus Acccountability.
30 years and zero failing charters have been closed.
The Teacher’s Union does support choice. It does NOT support extreme waste.
NPRI continues to support extreme waste.
The adherence to school choice as a concept when it has primarily produced expensive low-performing alternatives like failing Nevada charters is ridiculous.
NVDOE and the Charter Authority needs to close these extreme failures.
Folks mislead by for-profit ads enter into market created classrooms or on-lines which claim to educate but fail to graduate is an abuse of tax payer funds.
When half Nevada’s charters are floundering is academic disfunction and bankruptcy – it is time to close them down.
NPRI needs to stop being the chief proponent of educational waste, while also publishing the Nevada Charter disfunction on their website. Evidence is collected by NPRI of extreme choice waste. The irony does not escape anyone.
$350 million in waste.
Get a grip on your choice.
No one wants to flush $350 Million down the drain.
Extremists who cling to alt-right rhetoric while ignoring the market fails to correct waste or create viable innovation – are a threat to us all and our pockets.
NPRI unintentionally makes a case for regulation. It publishes criticism of Nevada’s charters on its own website. Who do you think will get that waste under control? Advocating for charter monopoly is not choice.
The teacher’s union supports regulation to prevent waste – for both educational choice and energy.
We do not believe in extreme on-going draining waste.
Close down the 40 Nevada Charter Campuses which are extreme failures and I will believe in NPRI is a conservative group again.
Also, Teachers do not support discrimination on any level. That is a sad Nevada Charter Story for another day. White flight is the main achievement of Nevada Charters.
Get a grip on that too.
The Teacher
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Charter schools are robbing childhoods and well rounded experiences from students ages 5-18. They simply do not match what public school offers. The obsession on test taking and test scores makes both teachers and students miserable. The questionable qualifications, or complete lack of them, makes it obvious that those running the schools are doing so merely to make money and not out of any real interest to help pave the way for a happy life for the students in their care.
There are culprits in both parties from Jeb Bush to Andrew Cuomo and Senator Booker. I don’t trust either the Democrats or Republicans when it comes to education. I think local control is by far the best option. Federal and state interference has never produced much of anything as far as success.
Makes me sick, too.
AGREE with: “I don’t trust either the Democrats or Republicans when it comes to education. I think local control is by far the best option.”
“We were promised that charter schools would cost less, deliver better results, and if they failed, be held accountable.”
We were promised more than that in Ohio. We were promised ed reformers would improve PUBLIC schools.
What did we get? Testing, budget cuts and a group of politicians who no longer feel they have to lift a finger to contribute any value at all to the public schools in the state.
Ed reformers have really excelled at promoting and marketing charter and private schools. What they haven’t succeeded in doing is offering anything of value to families in existing public schools.
It’s all downside. They’ve utterly captured state government in Ohio for the last 15 years and the last 15 years have been TERRIBLE for public school students.
They cannot point to a single improvement in the state’s PUBLIC schools since they took over. They’re either lousy advocates for public school students or they are not actually working on behalf of our kids. Has to be one or the other.
If you read national ed reformers you will see that the BEST they offer public school families- the BEST- is to allow our schools to continue to exist.
We can do better than that. We can hire people who actually value our schools and our kids. We don’t have to choose between “hostility and neglect”- there are other options. We could insist on people who are actually committed to improving our schools.
In an era of extreme political partisanship and gridlock, it’s very revealing that one of the few places where the “bipartisan spirit” still exists is in the agreement of the political class and it’s overseers concerning the privatization of the public schools.
Trump’s election signaled a split within the Overclass in the US, with the split roughly corresponding to interests based on extractive industries based in the US (agriculture, mining, energy, etc.) who support Trump and his nativist agenda, versus industries focused on global trade and information (finance, digital commerce, entertainment, etc.), which selectively oppose it.
The fact that people who otherwise have very different worldviews and interests (save the profit motive) and who drive each other insane, can agree on the need to destroy public education, reveals the Overclass consensus they share on this issue, and why no matter who is elected, the attacks on public education continue.
That even the most prominent and progressive elected officials, such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, seem to be willfully ignorant about what’s being done to the public schools, suggests how deeply that consensus is shared among the Overclass.
“The fact that people who otherwise have very different worldviews and interests (save the profit motive) and who drive each other insane, can agree on the need to destroy public education, reveals the Overclass consensus…” WELL SAID.
“The fact that people who otherwise have very different worldviews and interests (save the profit motive) and who drive each other insane, can agree on the need to destroy public education, reveals the Overclass consensus…” WELL SAID.
Thank you Diane, I totally remember the origins of the charter movement, “charter schools would cost less, deliver better results, and if they failed, be held accountable.” I am convinced it’s their pocketbooks that keep taxpayers from rising up against zero accountability for charters w/lackluster results & fraud/ mismanagement (& the corollary, declining $ for tradl publics). They were all focused on the first promise, figure they’re saving $ so who cares, & won’t wake up until the tax dollars they’re throwing away are enumerated for them.
Glad to see the money angle finally making it into the press here & there. Hoping for this to begin dominating the charter conversation.