Linda Darling-Hammond and her team at the Learning Policy Institute at Stanford published a report called “The Tapestry of American Public Education: How Can We Create a System of Schools Worthy of All?”
Carol Burris and I wrote a critique of that report, because it seems to endorse the reformers’ idea of a portfolio of charters, public schools, and other choices. Some call this the “portfolio” model or the “diverse providers” model, but whatever it is called, it accepts that charter schools and public schools are interchangeable. We argued that governance is crucial, because the public should be in charge of their schools, not private boards that are not accountable.
Linda Darling-Hammond took issue with our critique, and she responded here. I hope you will read her response in full. It recapitulates much of what is in the original publication, although the word “portfolio” has been deleted.
Our response is posted directly after Darling-Hammond’s comment on our original piece.
Here is our response.
We agree on many issues with Linda Darling-Hammond and the Learning Policy Institute. Our goals are the same. We want excellent schools for all children. But we don’t think that charter schools bring us closer to our shared goals.
As Darling-Hammond acknowledges, 40 percent of the charter schools that opened from 2001 TO 2015 have closed. Instability and churn do not provide a path to excellent schools for all. Darling-Hammond and her team believe the problems with charters are fixable. Given the charter sector’s continual resistance to any real accountability, transparency or serious reform, we are doubtful. It has become increasingly apparent that the corruption, mismanagement and self-dealing by private management are not “bugs,” but rather features of the charter sector.
We also think that the LPI team underestimates the damage that privately managed charter schools do to public schools, by siphoning off the students they choose and diverting resources, causing budget cuts to the schools that most students choose.
As Jan Resseger a former chair of the National Council of Churches Committee on Public Education explains here, scholars including Gordon Lafer and Bruce Baker have demonstrated the inefficiency of dividing scarce public resources among multiple systems of schools.
Some of the language we criticized in our prior blog has been deleted from the report, such as the word “portfolio.” We are grateful. Other language has been modified to soften the critique of those who are concerned about school governance, and language that we interpreted as opposition to caps has been clarified.
What remains, however, is a perspective that is consonant with the portfolio model, that is, the belief that privately managed charters can be seamlessly folded into the public school system as one of many choices. Based on what we have reported about charters school scams, frauds, and cherry-picking of students, we remain skeptical.
Given Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ love for charter schools, we continue to see private management of public dollars as privatization and to see privately managed (and unaccountable) charter schools not as public schools but as government contractors in serious need of regulation and oversight.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane In my view, “skeptical” is way-too-soft–in view of the long-term use of sophistic, hubristic, and downright Orwellian tactics used to promote charter schools and money to cloak them with tasty morsels for a still dupe-able public. This includes the ridiculous and even shameless “Oh, . . . but we don’t need oversight” idea.
These reveal, to me, plenty of reason for a NO CONFIDENCE vote for charter schools ON PRINCIPILE and, at a deeper level, the encroachment of the capitalist-only model on the democratic model and its ideals. It embodies the worst of what “private,” “individual,” “freedom,” and “choice” mean by using these terms to imply to the unwary what is best about them.
The innocuous terms, like “choice” and “freedom,” hide that the whole idea has become a cultural cul-de-sac for liars, the greedy, the self-promoters among us, and for the wealthy who, in fact, hate democracy and the clarity of the U.S. Constitution, and who use their wealth to double-up on their power and to diminish anything that goes against their short-term me-me-me self-dealing desires.
The question should not be “could charters be good for education?” but “What are charters slated to do to public education, and to a democracy if let be to grow? And GROW they will.
Let’s double-down on supporting public education in all sectors of our culture? CBK
Exactly right, thank you Diane and Carol for opposing LDH’s accomodation to the billionaires’ solution to erase public education. Charters/privatization have been a toxic assault on the public sector to loot the billions in tax revenues traditional assigned to public education. The scams and refusal of oversight are obvious but apparently not to some who have a stake in private sector initiatives. It may be that LDH is a stalking horse for centrist Democrats trying to stake out early a school policy that will appeal to the right in prep for 2020. Corporate Democrats still dominate the Party and plenty of DINOs and hedge-funders and charterizer insiders like Cory Booker need the ground prepped for their 2020 campaign which will still depend on billionaire funding for the Dem candidates(not so much for Mike Bloomberg, the sudden-Democrat billionaire who will finance his own run). The appearance of LDH’s policy initiative at this moment is a way to crowd out Diane’s stalwart opposition and the NPE and other public advocacy groups which soured on Obama and on Hillary, whose wing of the Dems is positioning itself for the next election cycle.
In your response at the Washington Post, you write: “As Darling-Hammond acknowledges, 40 percent of the charter schools that opened from 2001 TO 2015 have closed. ”
Do you have a source for that?
I’m having difficulty finding substantiation.
Closest I can find… Darling-Hammond linked to a NAACP report that included an allegation made by an NEA director at a Memphis hearing that: “Forty percent of all charter schools opened in 2000 no longer were operating in 2013 xxxv”
That of course is distinctly different than the allegation that you and Darling-Hammond seem to agree on. And footnote xxxv doesn’t confirm it. It instead links here: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=619
And there one finds numbers of schools closed during various years, but not sufficient information to support your conclusions.
That figure is cited in Darling-Hammond’s report and in her response.
Page 4 of this NEA report seems consistent with the NEA director’s statement at the Memphis hearing:
Click to access findings-of-nea-charter-taskforce-in-support-of-proposed-charter-policy-statement_april-2017.pdf
If LDH is serious that charters can be a beneficial addition to the American educational landscape, how much is she willing to raise taxes (her own included) to pay for multiple separate systems? Peter Greene has done a lot of excellent work showing how you can’t run two or more school systems for the same cost as one.
While often mentioned here, I do not think there are significant economies to scale for education, at least in the traditional classroom setting. Cost of education system depends overwhelmingly on the number of classrooms in the system. The difference between a system with 400 classrooms and two systems with 200 classrooms in each will be negligible.
The empirical support for this can be found by looking at the cost per student in large and small public school systems. NYC Public educates over 1.1 million students in more than 1,700 schools. Boston Public educates only 56,000 students in 125 schools. Both are in expensive urban areas, both have students from a wide variety of backgrounds. If there were important scale economies in education, NYC Public should be able to educate students at a very much lower cost per student than the comparatively tiny small Boston Public school district. NYC Public, however, will average $24,200 per student while Boston Public spends and average of $20,300 per student.
NYC Public spending from https://chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/08/31/how-does-your-schools-budget-compare-to-others-in-new-york-city/
Boston Public spending from http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/statereport/ppx.aspx
OMG, TE, as if we needed another reason not to take you seriously. An economist arguing against mergers. Ha!
For your reading pleasure, TE: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-fundamental-falacy-of-charter.html
Dienne77,
There are facts of the matter. The fact of the matter is that there are not significant scale economies in education, assuming that you do not believe in internet education.
Our curmudgeon asks us to imagine a school district of 1,000 students. Is that the size of your school district? Mine is larger, a bit over 13,000 students, about 1% of the students in NYC Public. It could be larger. My town has a private Waldorf school, a private Montessori school, a private progressive school, a private catholic school, a private Episcopal school, and a charter school. If we collapsed these seven separate “systems” into one unified public school, would you expect the cost per student to be 10% lower, 20% lower, or even 30% lower?
It would be helpful if you could point to some systematic relationship between the size of a school district and the cost per student.
ATeaching Economist “I do not think there are significant economies to scale for education, at least in the traditional classroom setting.”
The fact of the matter is that there are not significant scale economies in education”
Is that a fact? Or a “fact”?
Some of us would rather consider what the actual research shows than what TE thinks
See, for example, Economies of Scale in Public Education
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1109&context=eri
“Starting with the earliest work of Hirsch (1959), a considerable amount Of research has been done on this topic in finding out two basic questions in the production of education:
(i) whether economies of scale exist in the production of education?, and
(ii) if they do exist, then at what level, school, or district?
….
Most of the researchers are unanimous regarding the existence of economies of scale in the production of education. However, there are conflicting empirical results about the second issue.
//// End of quotes
In short, the question is NOT whether economies of scale exist in education. The research indicates they do . The question is at what level– school or district?
The authors of that paper indicate that the economies of scale exist primarily at the school level, which is precisely the level that is impacted when students leave a public school for a charter school.
I look forward to TE s claim that he did not say what he said.
The fact of the matter is that there are not significant scale economies in education”
Note that he did not say “at the district level”. His statement was quite unambiguous and all encompassing.
Also from the linked to paper
Economies of Scale in Public Education
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1109&context=eri
“The negative and highly significant coefficients on the variable
average students per school in all the tables suggests strong economies of scale exist at the school Level. This suggests that the per-student cost decreases as enrollment increases. In fact, when school size is regressed along with the district size, the latter becomes insignificant.”
// End of quote
Note that the authors of that paper use the term “significant” in the standard statistical sense.
Not sure how economists use the word “significant” or even if they understand statistical significance but if TE refers to something else when he claims “The fact of the matter is that there are not significant scale economies in education” , he is not speaking in a statistical sense.
I don’t even wish to speculate on what he means.
SDP,
He loves to be a provocateur.
You mean, he loves to say things that are demonstrably false?
The following report sure makes it sound as if charters are impacting economies of scale in the public schools they are taking students from:
From Exploring the Consequences of charter school expansion in U.S. cities
Report • By Bruce D. Baker • November 30, 2016
https://www.epi.org/publication/exploring-the-consequences-of-charter-school-expansion-in-u-s-cities/
“District officials in Nashville, Tennessee, recently contracted consultants to evaluate the impact of charter expansion on their district. The consultants’ report noted that charters:
Will continue to cause the transfer of state and local per student funds without reducing operational costs
Will continue to increase direct and indirect costs
Will continue to negatively impact deferred maintenance at leased buildings
May have an offsetting impact on capital costs, but only where available space can be re-allocated efficiently (MGT of America 2014)
Recently published academic analyses raise similar concerns. Bifulco and Reback (2014) evaluate the fiscal impact of charter expansion on two midsize upstate New York cities, Albany and Buffalo. They find that charter schools have had negative fiscal impacts on these districts, and argue that there are two reasons for these impacts. First, districts are generally unable to adjust their expenditures on a student-by-student basis, because costs range from fixed costs (districtwide and school overhead costs that are not reduced by the transfer of individual pupils), to step costs (including classroom level costs, also not reduced by the transfer of individual pupils) to variable costs, which are most easily reduced on a student-by-student basis, but constitute a relatively small share of school district budgets. These concerns echo those of consultants to Nashville Public Schools. Further, Arsen and Ni (2012b) find that higher levels of charter school enrollments in Michigan school districts are strongly associated with declining fund balances, and that revenues declined more rapidly than costs in districts losing students to charter schools.”
….
it is conceivable that the dissolution of large centralized school districts and introduction of multiple school operators into a single geographic space could compromise efficiency associated with economies of scale, which operate at both the school and district level. Numerous studies of education costs have found that the costs of providing comparable services rise as district enrollments drop below 2,000 students and rise sharply at enrollments below 300 students. Further, a comprehensive review of literature on economies of scale in education by Andrews, Duncombe, and Yinger (2002, 245) find “there is some evidence that moderately sized elementary schools (300–500 students) and high schools (600–900 students) may optimally balance economies of size with the potential negative effects of large schools.” To the extent that charter expansion creates independent “districts” operating with fewer than 2,000 pupils and/or increases shares of children attending schools with smaller enrollments than those noted above, inefficiencies may be introduced.”
/// End quotes
And the increased cost of two parallel systems is not simply hypothetical.
From the above paper
“Second, Bifulco and Reback (2014) point out that “operating two systems of public schools under separate governance arrangements can create excess costs,” or inefficient expenditures. Baker, Libby, and Wiley (2012) have raised similar concerns about additional, often exorbitant, overhead expenses created by introducing school systems within school systems (independent charter schools within districts). That is, while inducing fiscal stress on host districts, charter expansion may also be increasing total overhead costs. Two studies of Michigan charter schools, which operate fiscally independently of local public districts, have found them to have particularly high administrative expenses and low direct instructional expenses. Arsen and Ni (2012a, 1, 13) find that “controlling for factors that could affect resource allocation patterns between school types, we find that charter schools on average spend $774 more per pupil per year on administration and $1,141 less on instruction than traditional public schools.”
As you’re probably finding, SomeDam, there’s lots of research evidence contrary to your suppositions, e.g.:
“As the table indicates, the literature provides some support for the “healthy competition” hypothesis and almost none for the hypothesis that students in district schools are harmed by the growth of charters. Six studies found some evidence of positive effects, four found no effects, and one found negative effects. Breaking the results out by locations, in six cases that encompass five cities and states, there is evidence that charter schools produce (small) positive effects on the achievement of students in nearby public schools. In nine other cases, encompassing eight cities and states and one nationwide sample, charter schools have been found to have no effect on students in nearby district schools, positive or negative. The literature has only a single case—involving a single school district—in which charter schools have been found to have negative effects on the achievement of students in nearby district schools.”
https://www.educationnext.org/the-effect-of-charter-schools-on-students-in-traditional-public-schools-a-review-of-the-evidence/
“The fiscal and educational consequences of charter expansion for non-charter students are central issues in the debate over charter schools. Do charter schools drain resources and high-achieving peers from non-charter schools? […] The results suggest greater charter attendance increases per-pupil expenditures in traditional public schools and induces them to shift expenditure from support services to instruction and salaries. At the same time, charter expansion has a small positive effect on non-charter students’ achievement.”
https://www.nber.org/papers/w25070
etc.
Stephen,
If you read this blog, if you read Tom Ultican, you surely know that there are school districts that are teetering on the brink of insolvency due to privately managed charters. Kansas City, Indianapolis, many small cities. The charters don’t get better results. In Ohio, they get worse results. In case you had not noticed, this blog is dedicated to the improvement of public education, not privatization.
Stephan
teaching Economist made quite a specific claim: that there were no economies of scale in education.
I was primarily interested in addressing that claim.
Apart from what research shows, it is logical that there would exist economies of scale in the schools. As the piece by Baker alludes to, there are many costs which do not scale with a reduction in student body: salaries and benefits for nonteaching staff like Principal, VP, nurse, librarian, custodian, heating and cooling costs, maintenance costs, interest payments on loans for buildings. In fact, many of the costs are effectively fixed. Also, because teachers are not interchangable or divisible, one can not simply scale down the number of teachers commensurate with a decrease in student body (lost to charters or anything else,).
This stuff is really not THAT difficult to fathom. I am surprised an economist would deny what seems to be obvious.
With regard to the economic effect of charters on public schools specifically, i can appreciate that there are probably studies that show all kinds of things, but that does not mean they have merit. One has to look at the details and it is both evidence based and LOGICAL that charters have a negative impact in at least some cases.
SomeDam: “teaching Economist made quite a specific claim: that there were no economies of scale in education.”
He was responding to dienne77’s statement that: “Peter Greene has done a lot of excellent work showing how you can’t run two or more school systems for the same cost as one.”
I understood that in his response to her he was alluding to districts/systems.
“Apart from what research shows, it is logical that there would exist economies of scale in the schools. As the piece by Baker alludes to, there are many costs which do not scale with a reduction in student body: salaries and benefits for nonteaching staff like Principal, VP, nurse, librarian, custodian, heating and cooling costs, maintenance costs, interest payments on loans for buildings. In fact, many of the costs are effectively fixed. Also, because teachers are not interchangable or divisible, one can not simply scale down the number of teachers commensurate with a decrease in student body (lost to charters or anything else,).”
I’m confident that TE understands all that. And that smaller class sizes may be a desirable result, but not one without cost. Here in Massachusetts, the state steps in and provides financial compensation to local districts when they lose additional students to charter schools to help them cope with the stress of change. I’m not sure how widespread that practice is in other states but it seems to me like a good idea.
“With regard to the economic effect of charters on public schools specifically, i can appreciate that there are probably studies that show all kinds of things, but that does not mean they have merit. One has to look at the details and it is both evidence based and LOGICAL that charters have a negative impact in at least some cases.”
Agreed.
The additional compensation for districts that lose students to charter schools is time-limited. I think the compensation ends after six years, then districts have to do as best they can, cut budgets, Fire teachers, eliminate electives. All so a handful of students can go to a charter.
Diane: “then districts have to do as best they can, cut budgets, Fire teachers, eliminate electives.”
Presumably, some districts are able to do better than others… smaller class sizes, shifting budgetary resources from central office administration to classroom instruction and the like…
Here in Boston, as you know, the district has celebrated increasing successes in correlation with growth in the charter sector. Of course correlation isn’t causation… but should be cause for encouragement elsewhere…
Stephen,
This blog opposes privatization in all its forms, including privately managed charters.
Wherever public money goes, public accountability and transparency must follow.
Diane, my response to this nonsense went to moderation.
Not anymore.
I was cleaning 2 lbs. of Peconic Bay scallops. This is their season.
Oooh, yummy!
“Here in Boston, as you know, the district has celebrated increasing successes in correlation with growth in the charter sector. Of course correlation isn’t causation… but should be cause for encouragement elsewhere…”
In practical terms, although charters have skimmed off students who:
are less poor
have less complicated special needs
are more proficient in English as a second language though still classified as ELL’s
have parents who are more involved in their kids’ schools due to contracts signed with charters,
in comparison to students remaining in the public schools, teachers and students have enjoyed “increasing successes”, as measured, of course, by test scores.
This would seem to indicate that though the students remaining in BPS have greater obstacles to their learning, while the mayor has destablized the system, simultaneously reducing the school budget, firing the superintendent, and installing an ally of the privatizing foundations to run the show, the professionals of BPS have out-performed the charters and there is definitely neither causation nor cause for encouraging the charter sector.
Imagine what they might have achieved with sufficient funding and resources.
“the district has celebrated increasing successes in correlation with growth in the charter sector. ”
Successes in what? What is success?
The answer to “What is success” depends on the individual.
To someone like Trump success means waging all out war using every weapon you can: those weapons are decibel and lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. In his world, there is no compromise and no win-win situation.
It is always win-lose and Trump better be the one that wins. If he can’t win, send thugs or a mob to defeat and end the competition through violence and threats. There is never any middle ground or compromise.
However, to someone in the middle class that doesn’t worship wealth and what it can buy, success could be a job that pays enough to support a family and keep a roof over their heads along with adequate food so no one starves of is malnourished and at the end of each week or month, there is enough money left to go out to eat or see a film and at last once a year take a vacation and/or visit an amusement park like Disneyland.
“Here in Massachusetts, the state steps in and provides financial compensation to local districts when they lose additional students to charter schools to help them cope with the stress of change.”
So pretty to say – except that the state has NEVER provided the complete compensation due.
Christine: “So pretty to say – except that the state has NEVER provided the complete compensation due”
Do you have a source for that? It’s my impression that the compensation formulas have been 100% fully funded every year all the way through FY ’12 then at 96% or 97% for each of the next two years. And only starting in FY ’15 have there been some significant shortfalls. And even then the payments have been high relative to most of the rest of the country, right? Is there another state that pays as much to districts for students who have left?
Stephen,
That’s enough.
Since you’ve asserted that they do, I think you might supply the source. Nonetheless, updated last in 2016:
“Through Tuition Reimbursement Aid, the state helps districts offset the loss of tuition when more students depart for charter schools. This aid provides reimbursements set to a percentage of the new amount of money districts send to charter schools. The reimbursement rate is 100 percent of tuition in the first year and 25 percent each of the next five years. This approach began to be phased in during FY 2011, and for the first several years, was close to fully funded. However, the state has provided less than two-thirds of the reimbursements outlined in the reimbursement formula between FY 2015 and FY 2017. Fully funding reimbursements would direct roughly $54 million in additional aid to sending districts in FY 2017.”
The phrase “for the first several years, was close to fully funded” means it has never been fully funded.
http://www.children.massbudget.org/charter-school-reimbursement
“The reimbursement rate is 100 percent of tuition in the first year and 25 percent each of the next five years. ”
This means close to nothing. If, say, 10% of the students from a public school go to a charter school in year 0, after 1 year, the school gets only 90% plus 25% of 10%, that is, 92.5% of its year 0 budget.
But the average class size went down by only 10%, so from, say, 22 to 20. This means, the same amount of teachers, trashcans cans, heating, computers, janitors, etc need to be provided but on 92.5% of the budget, What are they going to cut? Teachers’ salaries by 7.5%?
Christine: “Since you’ve asserted that they do, I think you might supply the source. ”
See last graph here and surrounding text:
http://massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=Charter-School-Funding,-Explained.html
Seriously, who cares what they do in the FIRST year, whether they “fully fund” or not? The point is that after one year, the charter school takes away 75% of the state support of each student from the public school’s budget.
Besides, what money do they use for this compensation of the public schools (and to fund the charter schools)? Do they tax the rich extra or they take it away from other projects, like state pension, state parks, health care?
It’s a privatization scheme, no matter how we look at it.
I love it, that even this official state document writes
But because the formula assumes that charters educate an equal share of special education students as those educated in district schools, when in fact they tend to educate a lower share, this provision has led many charter schools to receive a disproportionate share of a district’s special education funding.
Charters are destabilizing the districts that educate the vast majority of students. What’s good about that?
Under Governor Charlie Baker’s administration, MA DESE has put its thumb on the scale in favor of charters. Recently, Jeff Riley, the Commissioner of Education, was moderator for an event sponsored by the Pioneer Institute to promote Cara Candal’s new book, entitled “The Fight for the Best Charter Public Schools in the Nation”. The fight referred to is, of course, Massachusetts’ Question 2 of 2016 which would have eliminated caps on charters, had voters not turned it down by a two to one ratio. This is despite dark money from the Waltons, Stand for Children, Families for Excellent Schools and Baker’s Chair of the state board of education, Paul Sagan, who alone made $600,000 in illegal contributions.
The Pioneer Institute is pretty far out there, having recently produced a documentary aimed at getting public funds sent to religious schools, tagging the Blaine Amendment as “bigoted”.
https://pioneerinstitute.org/featured/new-documentary-highlights-impact-bigoted-blaine-amendments/
About 94% of Massachusetts kids attend public schools. It would behoove the state board to support them, by for example, pushing for passage of the recommendations of the Foundation Budget Review Commission to update its funding formula to fulfill its responsibilty to “cherish” our public schools. Instead, MA BESE wants to promote charters in cities and towns which do not want them as an end run around voters’ explicit preferences.
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/ignore-the-charter-school-think-tank-crowd/
From your link:
“What does it mean to say that reimbursements haven’t been fully funded?
For many years, the state reimbursed districts for the full amount determined by the charter reimbursement formula. But reimbursement levels are subject to annual appropriations, and in recent years the Legislature has not appropriated sufficient funding to provide sending districts with 100 percent of the reimbursements as determined by the formula. In fact, the relatively new 100/25/25/25/25/25 formula has never been fully-funded. A year-by-year phase-in began in FY 2011—funding year one reimbursements at 100 percent in FY 2011, funding year one (100 percent) and year two (25 percent) reimbursements in FY 2012, and so on). The first four years were all close to fully-funded but, as shown in the graph below, the state has only provided about two-thirds of the formula-driven reimbursement amounts in the past two years.”
“The first four years were all close to fully-funded…”
Just as in the link I provided, reimbursements have NEVER been FULLY funded. “Close to” does not mean equal to.
Moreover, when charters first appeared, the money siphoned from public schools was intended to make up for students who LEFT the public schools. In Boston, there have historically been some 10-15% of kids who did not attend public schools. Now we have the case that money is taken from public schools and sent to charters for students who have NEVER been enrolled in a public school, and perhaps never would do so.
“Now we have the case that money is taken from public schools and sent to charters for students who have NEVER been enrolled in a public school, and perhaps never would do so.”
Wow.
TE made the specific claim “No SIGNIFICANT economies of scale in education”
Apart from the issue of how charters affect public schools financially , there is a more general issue that I have a problem with. Many charters are getting public money without precisely the same democratic oversight and transparency that public schools have. In fact, many charters essentially operate in secret, which is an invitation for fraud.
Without a guarantee of public oversight and transparency , i dont support even a single public dollar going to a charter school.
I don’t believe that such a demand is the least bit unreasonable.
Diane,
The trap that a lot of us keep falling into is accepting the framing of the issue.
So we end up endlessly debating things like whether charters are better or worse than public schools or whether this or that charter takes money away from the nearby public school rather than central issues like whether charters should get public money without the same transparency and oversight AND rules regarding acceptance of students (including those with special needs) that the public schools are subject to.
I think it’s a big mistake to debate the Deformers and charter crowd on their terms — essentially letting them frame the debate.
“I think it’s a big mistake to debate the Deformers and charter crowd on their terms — essentially letting them frame the debate.”
Exactly. Their framing begins with “let’s compare test scores”. I say, let’s not. Charter schools drain money from public schools, and let us discuss this fact. Explain how this won’t happen. How it can, in any way, be advantageous to public schools?
Don’t talk to me about any kind of competition, achievement when you suck the blood out from the other competitor.
And, actually, don’t talk to me about competition at all. Schools do not, should not compete.
Heres my position in a nutshell.
When charters are treated precisely as public schools in all regards: funding, acceptance of students of all types, hiring, paying, evaluation, tenuring, firing of teachers, etc, (essentially, when charters ARE public schools in a real sense and not just a claimed sense) I will allow them to get public dollars.
Until then, they should exist without public dollars as other private schools do. Without the oversight, transparency and rules of public schools, charters ARE private schools.
To paraphrase Henry Ford: you can have any form of school as long as it is public.
SomeDam Poet,
The paper you linked to has this sentence in the abstract: “The evidence indicates that there are scale economies associated with school size but not district size.”
Dienne77’s comment was about multiple school systems, that is district size, not school size. Thank you for providing some evidence that supports my position.
The alleged “Teaching Economist” is an ignorant fool just like Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos.
Teaching
Forgive me for making the mistake of believing (again) that your position was indicated by what you wrote
“There are facts of the matter. The fact of the matter is that there are not significant scale economies in education, assuming that you do not believe in internet education.”
But thanks for pointing out that your position can be different from what you write.
Should I take that as a general truth?
As Diane pointed out, this guy acts like an older brother with his little sister: provokes for the provokation’s sake.
In any case, the info and arguments you gave are great!
TE
Hardly incidental to the discussion is that you completely misconstrued the meaning of the statement by the authors of the paper I linked to
“The evidence indicates that there are scale economies associated with school size but not district size.”
When you said
“Dienne77’s comment was about multiple school systems, that is district size, not school size. Thank you for providing some evidence that supports my position.”
To say, as the paper authors do that “there are scale economies associated with school size but not district size” simply means that the size of the district tells you nothing about economies of scale that may be active within a district — eg, at other levels (eg, the school level).
This makes your original comparison of NYC vs Boston basically meaningless — and funny, in a sense.
It’s hard to believe, but you are missing something very basic here:
One can have a relatively small district (student number wise) made up of a relatively small number of relatively large schools that is actually more efficient (eg, gauged by per pupil spending) as a result of the economies of scale acting at the school level than a much larger district made up of a larger number of smaller schools. That is precisely why one can not draw ANY conclusions based purely on district size (a point that you have completely failed to grasp)
The finding that “there are scale economies associated with school size but not district size” does NOT mean that “there are no significant economies of scale in education”, which was your original claim. In particular it does not mean there are no economies of scale operating in a district.
And it most certainly does NOT mean that when you shrink the number of students in a public district by siphoning off students from schools within that district to charter schools (effectively creating two districts where there was one) that there is no impact on economies of scale within the public district.
The critical factor is that students who leave public schools for charters leave individual SCHOOLs. They don’t simply leave some amorphous “district”. Schools are precisely the level at which the economies of scale operate (you quoted the authors of the study on that finding!!) so it can and often does impact the economies of scale when students leave (as the evidence I linked to shows).
Stephan
TE does not understand what the paper I linked to means — and critically, does NOT mean.
And it is clear by your going along with TE because you believe he somehow has refuted Dienne with his comparison of NY to Boston districts that neither do you.
TE said what he said and regardless of what he meant — whether he was referring to districts or not –, that does not change the fact that his supposed “evidence” against Dienne is essentially vacuous, for the reasons I explained above.
He either does not get a very basic concept or he is being purposefully obtuse.
If you wish to stick with his nonsense, feel free to do so, but it certainly does not help your argument.
TE
Dienne said nothing about economies of scale.
That was something you interjected and regardless of whatever else may be true, your assumption that the economies of scale effect is the only — or even primary — thing that can affect the financial equation in the case at hand is simply false.
Her point about the cost of running two systems rather than one is supported by the second paper I linked to above (by Bruce Baker,)where in he notes that “
“operating two systems of public schools under separate governance arrangements can create excess costs,” or inefficient expenditures. Baker, Libby, and Wiley (2012) have raised similar concerns about additional, often exorbitant, overhead expenses created by introducing school systems within school systems (independent charter schools within districts). That is, while inducing fiscal stress on host districts, charter expansion may also be increasing total overhead costs. Two studies of Michigan charter schools, which operate fiscally independently of local public districts, have found them to have particularly high administrative expenses and low direct instructional expenses. Arsen and Ni (2012a, 1, 13) find that “controlling for factors that could affect resource allocation patterns between school types, we find that charter schools on average spend $774 more per pupil per year on administration and $1,141 less on instruction than traditional public schools.”
// End of quote
But Baker also has several things to say about the economies of scale impacts in that paper (which are very real, your denials notwithstanding)
Dienne77 talked about the comparative costs of running two or more school systems in place of a single system. This is a question about scale economies: Does the cost per student increase when a school system of 13,000 is divided up into two school systems of 6,500 each? The paper you provided gives some evidence that the answer to this question is no. Can we agree on that?
Are there economies of scale in dividing a district of 12,000 students into 20 different “local education agencies” (school districts)?
See my comment above.
It’s clear that you don’t understand what the paper I linked to means.
Among other things, the statement that “the evidence indicates that there are scale economies associated with school size but not district size.”
means that you can’t get any inkling about which of two districts will have a lower cost per student simply by comparing the district sizes
That makes your supposed refutation of Dienne very funny indeed.
SomeDam Poet,
You are correct in your understanding that the paper suggests that there is no detectable relationship between the number of students in a school district and the average cost of educating a student.
Running multiple school systems in a geographic area can not be assumed to increase the average cost of educating a student compared to running a single school system in that geographic area. I think we are in agreement.
What about Kansas City?
Is it efficient to have 20 different local education agencies in a district of 12,000 students?
North Carolina has a charter that is a district, which has a superintendent and a principal.
TE,
You are hopeless.
Let me remind you of what you said at the very beginning in reply to Dienne because that is what I was critiquing and you have obviously already “forgotten” what you said.
“I do not think there are significant economies to scale for education, at least in the traditional classroom setting. Cost of education system depends overwhelmingly on the number of classrooms in the system. The difference between a system with 400 classrooms and two systems with 200 classrooms in each will be negligible.”
No ifs ands or buts. You were quite certain that dividing into two districts would have NEGLiGIBLE EFFECT on cost
That is actually quite different from claiming that “Running multiple school systems in a geographic area CAN NOT BE ASSUMED TO INCREASE the average cost of educating a student compared to running a single school system in that geographic area.”
At the beginning, you claimed that you COULD ASSUME from nothing more than the number of classrooms that “The [cost] difference between a system with 400 classrooms and two systems with 200 classrooms in each will be negligible.”
Effectively, your original claim amounts to the claim that
“Running multiple school systems in a geographic area CAN BE ASSUMED TO EFFECTIVELY PRESERVE (ie, keep the same) the average cost of educating a student compared to running a single school system in that geographic area. ”
You were NOT justified in assuming that, which makes your entire “argument” against Dienne just so much BS.
Not incidentally, because there ARE economies of scale operating in education (at the individual school levels within a district)– contrary to your categorical denial at the beginning of this exchange and despite your continued failure to acknowledge the ramifications of economies of scale at the school level– it is certainly plausible that moving students from a public SCHOOL to a charter school might negatively effect the public district overall through the impact on economies of scale at the school level. And the references I provided make it quite clear that such a cost to the public district losing students is not just possible or hypothetical but very real in some cases.
The references I provided above talk about several cases where it DID have a negative impact on the public school but the only way one can know for sure is to look at the details involving the individual SCHOOLs in a particular case. You Can NOT just look at the district numbers.
I hope someone has gotten something out of this exchange because I am now fairly certain that you have not.
And all I got was a headache.
Then again, TE did provide us additionally with this gem, so I guess all was not for naught
“There are facts of the matter. The fact of the matter is that there are not significant scale economies in education, assuming that you do not believe in internet education.”
Facts of the matter!!!
One man’s fact is another’s hack
Ha ha ha.
Facts of the matter
Facts of the matter
Lead to egg
Lots of the latter
On the face
From George Orwell’s 1984
“CRIMESTOP means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. CRIMESTOP, in short, means protective stupidity… orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one’s own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body.”
// End of Orwell’s quote
In particular, Crimestop means “failure” to acknowledge the ramifications of the first part of the finding of the paper I linked to above*: “There are scale economies associated with SCHOOL SIZE”
It means totally ignoring the impact that economies of scale operating at the schools WITHIN a district can and do have on the district as a whole, thereby avoiding the “dangerous” truth that per student education cost increases in the particular case in which a student leaves a public school in which economies of scale are operating for a charter school.
*Finding: “There are scale economies associated with school size but not district size”
Atlanta superintendent Meria Carstarphen serves on the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. Linda Darling-Hammond heads (co-heads?) to commission.
Shortly after her appointment to the commission about two years ago, in a public meeting I asked Carstarphen, in effect: “With your appointment to the commission, what do you anticipate learning?”
Her response, in effect: “Nothing. I’ve been appointed to shake things up.”
Perhaps Carstarphen has succeeded.
LDH’s framing of the “portfolio model” of schools is exactly Carstarphen’s new “Excellent Schools Project.” It is Carstarphen muddying the difference between public schools, charter schools, and “other” school models, so as to mislead the public into accepting “A System of Excellent Schools” will provide all children “access” to a “quality school” and “quality school seats,” and that “it does not matter what kind of school it is, just as long as it is a quality school.”
Of course, we all know charter schools are quality schools, inherently. Create a charter school then, like magic, a quality school!
I read the WP coverage and found LDH’s position shocking. THE Linda Darling-Hammond now promoting destruction of public education and public schools?!! But apparently that is the case. Such a great disappointment.
LDH has been a disappointment since the early Obama years.
We are getting to the point where choice is the priority, not quality or equity. With resources so diluted by choice, no school will be able to do a good job operating at diminished capacity.
I agree with both!
There are almost as many charters that are essentially like Bostons Pilots but don’t have a school Board or Mayor did in Boston. Steve Zimmerman and others decided to organize these mom and pops—schools that support public education but also insist that a good school can’t be run by distant authorities but must provide significant autonomy to those most affected—both the families and the community served and those who must carry out the daily task of teaching. (Like the Parker schooling’s MA started by the Sizer’s and Mission Hill in Boston’s public school system.)
Vs the chains where corporate boards make policy etc. and those that favor privatizing the public system.
Someday I hope these independent community charters will be able to be part of a public system in which all schools have most of the rights these charters now hold.
Linda and us in NYC were for a time, when Sobol was our leader and Linda and Tim were trying to work this out—amen NY gave some high school permission to develop their own alternative to the Regents and the credit-course system in an alternative way.
We’re all trying to figure this out. We had an Annenberg supported plan that Chancellor Crew vetoed when he replaced Courtines was an example.
Thanks. I’m currently operating I-phone only. It’s much harder to edit so forgive the errors etc.
Sent from my iPhone
>
Deb,
We have a problem with corporate charter chains. Also with private management where no one is accountable. Teachers have no agency at all in the Success Academies charters. If they don’t like working conditions, they can leave. Parents can’t complain to the billionaire board, nor can teachers. It is a top-down autocratic style of schooling for everyone.
Deborah, thank you for pointing out the good work that is being done at the Coalition of Public Independent Charter Schools and that not all charter schools are corporate chains (in fact the majority are not). Many of us are interested in providing opportunities for students, families and teachers that are not always available within a traditional larger school districts. And you are exactly right, education is changing and what was done 10 or 20 years ago won’t work in the future and we are trying to figure it out in a rapidly changing world.
Peter,
For everyone like you, there is at least one charter operator who is taking public money and squandering it on his or her salary and failing to solve any problems. Don’t you think that the receipt of public money obligates anyone who gets it to accept public accountability and transparency?
I would like to weigh in if I may. Peter it is not just the chains that are the problem. You have two members in your Coalition, Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School Bethlehem, PA and
Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts, Bethlehem PA. Both are draining funds from the Bethlehem Public Schools. Both are causing those schools to more segregated. No matter how “good” the charter is, it hurts the public schools nearby. Innovation can happen in public schools. But if charters are pulling students, funding and providing alternatives it is hard for that to happen.
YES. Oh, that this truth was understood and protected as a backbone to public education: “No matter how “good” the charter is, it hurts the public schools nearby. Innovation can happen in public schools. But if charters are pulling students, funding and providing alternatives it is hard for that to happen.”
It makes no sense to strip funding from the schools that enroll 85-90% of the students.
ciedie aech Yes, the effects of privatization indeed can be devastating to public and neighborhood schools. “Starve the beast,” then say: “Look! the beast is weak. Let’s just get rid of it.” Enter: expensive bells and whistles: hurray, our saviour! Charter Schools and Vouchers!
But the whole discussion with teachers from charter schools who don’t seem to “get it,” speaks of the importance of all of us having a political education, not only for our students, but in and for TEACHERS, e.g., in our schools of education. This of course takes solid policy and curriculum development in teacher ed schools. And policy makers and college presidents need to have a full understanding of the intimate relationship between democracy and education of the people for whom both stand.
But wasn’t it in the early 80’s when many public schools stopped teaching civics? It seems to me that, in the greater context, we are in a kind of watershed for that loss as we speak?
But besides the effect on public schools, there is also the potential effects on curriculum. We need only to mention the Koch’s and Betsy Devos to warn of, respectively, anti-democratic ideology, especially in economics for the Koch’s, and in not only teaching ABOUT religious ideology in history, but in teaching FROM a specific doctrine for our friend Betsy. In both cases, the movement brings specific curricula to the classroom and insidiously eliminates other “certain” curricula. Both movements, far from being educative, are actually not-so-soft propaganda.
With privatization (by any other name), such movements can be slow like a cancer, but surely deadly to all-things-democratic. CBK
Claiming that there are vastly more independent charters than there are chain charters is like claiming that there are vastly more mom-and-pop restaurants than there are fast food chains. That is, of course, obviously true. But if each mom-and-pop serves a couple hundred customers tops and the fast food chains serve “billions and billions”, well, you do the math.
There is a gigantic difference between mom&pop restaurants and mom&pop charter schools: the former should be the norm while the latter are not needed are a mistake.
“Public Independent Charter Schools” So it’s like an exclusive independent school, but for the masses! The name reminds me of ironic names like the German Democratic Republic, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Grand Old Party and fat-free lard.
Diane,
I absolutely agree that charter schools should be held to the same level of public accountability and transparency as other public schools, and if they aren’t the laws in those states should be rewritten to force that to happen.
Carol BB,
My question to you regarding the PA schools would be why are students leaving their district schools? If the charter is open to all and meets all of the requirements for public schools in the state why shouldn’t parents be able to choose the charter school? As Bob Wedl, former MN state superintendent reminds us, districts don’t have children, charter schools don’t have children, parents have children and they are the ones who should determine which public school their children attend. If the district school doesn’t want to lose students they should do a better of meeting the needs of the students. 85% of my students started at their home high school but the students and their parents felt that they were not having their needs met. Most often that has to do with the district school being too large and class sizes being too large, and/or their special education or mental health needs not being met, and in turn this often means their academic needs are not being met. Why should a student be forced to stay at a school where their academic needs aren’t being met?
Peter W: “parents have children and they are the ones who should determine which public school their children attend.”
This is certainly not the case if 5% of parents want this at the expense of the remaining 95%. And that’s exactly what happens. Your argument easily generalizes to the 1%’s argument: “if people want to get rich, and have the opportunity, they should have the freedom do so; it’s not other people’s business”.
Removing 5% from a public school removes more than 5% of costs. Districts are left with “stranded costs,” the maintenance, heat and power, transportation, etc. The 95% are harmed so the 5% can try something new that might or might not work out.
Peter, it is obvious that because you are invested/own/working in a publicly funded, private sector charter school that’s free to ignore EdCode and legislation that came about through the democratic process as defined by state constitutions and the federal legislation, and hide how that opaque industry manages its public money, you are suffering from confirmation bias.
What I mean by ‘confirmation bias’ can be explained by looking at the tobacco industry that hid and refused to admit it’s products were addictive and killing people. The people that owned and worked in the tobacco industry also suffered from confirmation bias. based on the fact that they didn’t want to see their jobs and wealth at risk.
The same thing is happening in the oil industry that continues to fund climate change deniers even after big oil discovered through their own research that climate change caused by carbon emissions is real. Again, a case of confirmation bias form people that do not want to see their jobs and wealth at risk.
Another example is when the cattle industry went to court to silence Oprah and the Mad Cowboy because they feared that their jobs and income were at risk.
These are JUST three examples that help define your own “confirmation bias” supported by your own investment in publicly funded, private sector charter schools.
Once invested in an industry that turns out to be toxic, the people invested in those industries that depend on the money flowing through that industry will fight to save it. Some will lie. Some will ignore the facts and refuse to surrender.
Happy to answer why are they leaving, Peter. I spent well over an hour talking with folks in Bethlehem a few years ago.
1. The charters are whiter than the diverse public schools and the kids are fleeing from the BSD schools with the highest minority populations.
2. The charter for the arts has elite programs like a course in figure skating (yes during the school day paid for by taxpayers.) Public school can’t afford it and sees other needs as a priority.
Sometimes I don’t like the subway, Peter. Maybe taxpayers should have to give me some money to take a cab.
Diane,
With regard to your comment about a district losing 5% of their students to a charter school, until recently I served on my local district school board and several years ago we had a nearly 7% decrease in enrollment due to local population numbers and students leaving to open enrollment in neighboring districts. The administration and board had to make difficult decisions on staffing and costs. This is something districts continually have to deal with. Another of our neighboring districts is on the verge of closing down because of declining enrollment due to aging population and families moving out. This is a real issue in many rural communities. I will tell you that the decrease in enrollment in our district lead to the admin and board having honest conversations on how to retain students, types of programs we were or weren’t offering, and what we could do to attract students from other districts. Among the ideas we considered was the formation of a school within a school or a district authorized charter school.
“Among the ideas we considered was the formation of a school within a school or a district authorized charter school.”
Yeah, charter schools to the rescue. Only they can save the day—but only after an honest conversation.
Carol says Sometimes I don’t like the subway, Peter. Maybe taxpayers should have to give me some money to take a cab.”
Hey, why settle for a cab? Why not have the taxpayers buy you a Mercedes?
“Car Choice”, doncha know?
To: debmeier
I guess that you are a supporter or friend to Linda Darling-Hammond.
I love to copy the truth forever from José Espinosa who is the Superintendent of the Socorro Independent School District In Texas.
Here are all powerful points that I have experienced in the past 40 years in Canada and 25 years in my Country.
1) When something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
2) the Better Business Bureau used this catchphrase to alert the public of shady business practices.
3) this catchphrase can be used to alert the public of misleading business practices by charter schools in order to protect our most prized possessions — our children.
4) Reading lengthy student/family handbooks carefully before considering charters is just as important as reading the fine print before signing contracts.
5) We must also ask, “Why is Corporate America bashing our traditional public schools, yet it doesn’t demand transparency or accountability from charter schools?”
6) Just like the BBB, it is our duty to alert the public.
I am sorry to be on the side of Dr, Ravitch and her NPE organization = on the side of 99% population who completely trust our high education and high humanity morality. That means you and Mrs. Linda Darling-Hammond MUST BE AWAKEN soon before being brain washed by money and fake fame, and forgetting your duty to alert the public and the government. Back2basic
I am sorry to miss typing in a sentence
“on the side of 99% population who completely trust our “CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL PUBLIC TEACHERS with high education and high humanity morality.” Back2basic
I’ll be impolite. This is a sell out, a capitulation to the privatization agenda. Most troubling, LDH has climbed on board to a process that devalues community efforts and turns education into one more commodity. More erosion of a common good and a shared fate…
It is disappointing to read the full report.
No.
The report is a shocking approval of versions of customer choice in a marketplace assumed to be limited (as if by the invisible hand) to “high quality” options for choice.
Criticisms of charter schools are acknowledged, but dismissed. Choice is supported even when options are contrived by unelected super-rich people on behalf of parents and children who are poor and too often also the new majority in this nation.
The support for corporate and billionaire funding of charter schools “at scale” is shameful. New Orleans is not a model for anything other than capitalizing on a natural disaster.The New Tech High Network is cited as if it is a “high quality” charter network. Never mind that it was initially financed with over $15 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and nurtured by KnowledgeWorks.org–fan of online education and massive data gathering to “personalize education.”
Other massively funded franchise schools are praised as if these products of venture capital are “high quality” (a term repeatedly used and not defined). The authors are reluctant to criticize the proliferation of ill-informed entrepreneurial ventures in education by persons who are just seeking power and profits. Such ventures “at scale” should NOT be the new normal for public education or worse, undermine and replace pubic education. .
The whole report implies that schools (or rather “learning environments”) should function in the manner of a subsidized market with parental/family/student choices the ultimate authority for what counts as a “high quality” option.
I disagree.
I think that Linda Darling Hammond and her colleagues should look at the rapidly evolving effort to monetize all aspects of public education, with any public funds a bonus for investors.
Start at this link and by all means look at the link to the Heckman Equation. https://wrenchinthegears.com/2018/11/11/readynation-pritzker-and-newsom-get-ready-for-the-next-gold-rush/#comments
Thanks to Valerie Strauss for putting her readers in the loop of this report, and the criticisms from Diane and Carol.
Research has shown that private schools perform no better than public schools. Charters schools, except in cases of extreme cherry picking, do no better, and in many cases, worse than public schools. Plus, public schools offer certified teachers, not teaching temps. Students have a lot more protections under the law in a public school including health and safety standards, IDEA, and Title IX. There are no such protections in private schools operated by non-educator amateurs.
Missing from this dialogue is the word ‘privatization’. Just ask Flint, Michigan if water should be privatized. Poll any coast if public beaches should be privatized. Heck, get a necromancer to ask Teddy Roosevelt if public parks should be privatized. (Sorry, Joseph.) No matter what choices are offered — and keep in mind, segregationists coined the term ‘school choice — none of the choices should involve private management. After all, give Eva Moskowitz a chance to award herself three quarters of a million dollars a year in publicly financed personal compensation and she will take it (and abuse the students along the way). There desperately needs to be strict regulation of charters, but there shouldn’t need to be regulation because there simply should not exist publicly financed private schools. Or water. Or prisons. Or soldiers. Or much of anything.
There is something else foul about school choice too: competition for funding. I can’t, without risking my neck constantly, focus on the needs of my students while under pressure to focus on marketing my school. It’s too tempting to too many to engage in test prep, grade inflation, tracking, etc. in order to draw in students. Competition is the problem, not the solution. I teach in a district magnet that brings students from the most impoverished parts of Los Angeles to class in an idyllically wealthy neighborhood. The integration is powerful and entirely positive for all. But I can rest easy knowing that I am not taking funding away from those impoverished neighborhoods in backpacks full of cash. The per pupil money stays in the district, so it’s integration without competitive consumerism. Charters are the enemy of equality. They should not be.
“Missing from this dialogue is the word ‘privatization’. ”
Exactly, LCT. Carefully omitted—similarly to “portfolio”, and friends.
“There is something else foul about school choice too: competition for funding. I can’t, without risking my neck constantly, focus on the needs of my students while under pressure to focus on marketing my school. It’s too tempting to too many to engage in test prep, grade inflation, tracking, etc. in order to draw in students. Competition is the problem, not the solution.”
Precisely what VA hospital med chiefs say about the high-stakes rating system imposed in 2012.
Just like VAM
“I can’t, without risking my neck constantly, focus on the needs of my students while under pressure to focus on marketing my school.”
You are not an edupreneur material, be3five, so you cannot be a teacher in the bright libertarian future. Sad.
To be blunt, these folks aren’t facing reality, for whatever reasons.
It’s a strong and consistent theme, the fraudulent ideal of equality amid gross inequality.
I see it here in this piece on ‘fixing’ the homeless students crisis by allowing them, in the fake ideal, to seamlessly blend in.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/ny-metro-city-officials-tackle-homeless-students-crisis-20181108-story.html%3foutputType=amp
And in other recent exploitative news about ‘fixing’ dyslexia through ‘highly effective teaching.
I’m getting tired of this crap. It’s stupid, and it’s wrong. There are real solutions, there are direct approaches that actually deal with and do not deny reality. Life is not seamless. People are different and unique; not widgets or stats.
Thank you Akademos.
That is what Americans have President Trump since 2016. What do Amaricans have to lose, according to Trump’s motivation to all voters?
These voters succumb to a liar, cheater and gangster/ mobster style who even take Russian leader as a role model for him to oppress 99% population in America. But you are extremely intelligent, so are all the rest American Public educators. Thank you for your duty to alert public and those FAKE/ PROGRESSIVE democratic people/voters . Back2basic
Much of the rebuttal confirms that many public systems already contain lots of options, in fact many more options than most one size fits all charter schools. In additional to the many options mentioned, i know that sometimes public school sub-contract with private providers for services that they may not be able to offer. For example, a few severely impaired students may receive service in a private institution, or a private contractor may provide service such as instruction in Braille, as the need is determined by the district’s committee on special education.
Governance is an important aspect of school administration. While it should not serve the interests of the adults, it should serve the needs of students. The governance of public schools is transparent and generally democratic. The governance of most private operators is generally opaque and determined by corporate interests The profit motive corrupts school choice and has resulted in waste, fraud, embezzling and enhanced segregation. Where there is profit, student needs take a back seat to manipulating services to increase profitability. Market based education creates winners and losers, and often the neediest, most vulnerable students are the losers along with all the students that attend the public system as course offerings are cut due to charter drain. Students that attend charters and open and close frequently are also losers. There is little interest in equity in the constant churn of market based schools. They generally seek out the cheapest and easiest to educate, and leave the most expensive students for the public schools to serve with little money left to do the job. Our young people deserve better than test and punish or the churn and frenzy of privatization.
Market based schools also prefer less experienced, less costly staff. That is a disadvantage to students.
Market based schools “prefer” only what is profitable to technology companies.
This is why Gates and others have been hell bent on standardizing and otherwise reforming the schools.
Schools with thousands of different curricula and standards would never be profitable to corporations because the cost for customization is too high and return too low.
It’s only by standardizing and homogeginizing the schools that there is any hope for corporations to profit on them significantly.
That was the primary motive for Common Core.
On it’s face, it might seem ironic that many of the same people who talk about choice want to standardize and homogenize.
But by choice, what they really mean is “opportunity for profit”, so there is really no irony
“We … see privately managed (and unaccountable) charter schools not as public schools but as government contractors in serious need of regulation and oversight.”
The key words: “government contractors”
For instance, government contractors were hired to bring in private sector, corporate mercenary troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also were allowed to operate opaque, outside of regulation and oversight that were applied to the US military troops. I know several Marines that fought in Iraq and I’ve been told that those mercenaries were dangerous because when they opened fire, everyone was a target including our own troops. It was so bad if a US military patrol saw mercenaries ahead, they’d detour around them because of the danger they represented with their wild west mentality.
Brookings published this report: “The Dark Truth about Blackwater”
“But it has proven to be remarkably inefficient, all the while undermining our counterinsurgency efforts. According to testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Defense Contract Audit Agency has identified more than a staggering $10 billion in unsupported or questionable costs from battlefield contractors — and investigators have barely scratched the surface.
“Such corruption doesn’t just represent lost funds; it represents lost opportunities for what those funds could have been used on to actually support the mission: everything from jobs programs to get would-be insurgents off the streets to flak vests and up-armored vehicles for our troops. The situation got so bad that in August the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction (SIGIR) dubbed corruption as the ‘second insurgency’ in Iraq.”
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-dark-truth-about-blackwater/
The CEO and owner of Blackwater at the time was Betsy Devos’s brother, Erik Prince
Diane and Carol thank you for this. All too often we see “deformers” switch up their wording just to smoke screen the public. Sadly they will now use the word “portfolio” to mask the charter sector. Lipstick on a pig. As we know it is all a smoke screen because school choice is losing ground. We need a fully funded/strong public school system that is accountable to the public it serves and values teacher agency, as well as student voice.
The next word LDH should delete from her writings is “choice”, and replace it with “privatization”, then reread what she wrote the next morning, and she may see the true colors.
Optionally, she should also delete the word “tapestry”.
I think she writes with a politician’s eye, and she allows muddying her researcher’s vision with considering too many options and possibilities to please a larger audience than necessary for telling the truth. To me, she reads more like a politician than a prof, formulating sentences too carefully, at the expense of clarity—to her readers and probably for herself as well. What she misses is answering the following simple, basic questions to herself as a researcher,
Whydo I think, charter schools provide something public school can’t?
What do charter schools provide public school can’t?
Why do I think, this country needs a “tapestry” of school managements? Isn’t “tapestry” of school contents (teachers, curricula, students) enough?
Is it really worth (in fact, is it prudent) experimenting with charter schools at the expense of public schools and kids?
After answering these questions, do I still think, charters are needed?
I’d rather read an article addressing these questions than one about how to fix charter schools, how to make privatization work. We have at least a 150 years of experience to strongly indicate that privatization cannot be fixed, but privatizers begin their articles with the assumption “charter schools are needed, they are good stuff”.
Stop experimenting with charters, confine every experiments, including educational ones, to labs.
Agreed, Mate.
Tapestry is supposed to make it sound beautiful.
But a tapestry of tapeworms is still just a tangle of tapeworms .
A Tapestry of Tapeworms
A tapestry of tapeworms
A charity of charters
A CON-geries of fake terms
A murdery of martyrs
“A rattlesnake of garters”
Also works
“Portfolio the Cat”
The cat has left the bag
Portfolio escapes!
Although he lacks a tag
Portfolio is Gates
lol. Here is a twoliner version (possibly using Hunglish).
When Gates guard the gates
Portfolio, like a cat, escapes
Gates IS the cat: Don Gate-o
Oh, Señor Don Gato was a cat,
On his high red roof Don Gato sat.
He went there to open markets
Meow, meow, meow
With the public schools as targets
Meow, meow, meow
Twas the purpose of Don Gato.
“I adore you,” wrote the thinky tanks
Who were bent on funding for their banks
There was not a sweeter kitty
Meow, meow, meow
In the country or the city
Meow, meow, meow
And they said they’d wed Don Gato.
Oh, Senor Don Gato jumped with glee,
He fell off the roof and broke his knee.
Broke his ribs and all his whiskers,
Meow, meow, meow
And his little solar plexus,
Meow, meow, meow
“¡Ay caramba!” cried Don Gato.
Then the doctors all came on the run,
Just to see if something could be done.
And they held a consultation,
Meow, meow, meow
About how to save their patient,
Meow, meow, meow
How to save Señor Don Gato.
But in spite of everything they tried,
Poor Señor Don Gato up and died
Oh it wasn’t very merry,
Meow, meow, meow
Going to the cemetery,
Meow, meow, meow
For the ending of Don Gato.
As the funeral passed the market square,
Such a smell of fi$h was in the air.
Though the burial was slated,
Meow, meow, meow
He became re-animated,
Meow, meow, meow
He came back to life, Don Gato.
“He came back to life, Don Gato.”
Unhappy ending for Don Gato, the gatekeeper who, not surprisingly, was not guarding himself well. 😦
With apologies to Hot Tuna (Keep on truckin
What’s that smell, like fi$h, pretty momma?
I really would like to know
What’s that smell like fi$h, oh momma?
Really would like to know
That ain’t good, that ain’t nice
Gates gets fi$h and the schools get fried
Keeps on charterin momma, charterin schools away
Is there a tune coming with this? There must be one…
Bill Gates is a zombie cat.
Every time you think he is dead from falling off the roof (of Common Core, VAM, etc), he miraculously recovers.
The old saw about cats having nine lives appears to be true.
Hot Tuna is one of those great bands that no one has heard of
Also for your listening pleasure (from same album)
Thanks, sdamp. I like this pic
LOL
Is it possible to force, cram maybe, Bill Gates back in his bag and then seal the opening of that rip proof bag with Duct Tape?
No room left in the bag.
It’s stuffed full of money.
Come on, sdamp, we are America. We need happy ending. Can’t we have Gato be closed in somewhere safe, secure, dark?
Where to put Gato? In a vampire’s coffin deep underground in a crypt that never sees sunlight.
I see archaeologists, 5 thousand years from now, opening the crypt, and noticing, in horror, scratch marks on the lid, indicating how desperately the tenant was trying escape, using up his ninth life in the attempt. Some of the scratch marks appear to be some ancient cryptic writing, that may need its Rosetta Stone; the most puzzling is the most frequently used symbol: $.
Those future archaeologists will not know that Gato was suffering from Midas touch withdrawal syndrome and the closest he could get to his vast wealth and power was scratching $ on the inside surface of his vampire quality coffin that only a billionaire could afford.
Imagine a coffin equal to a $100,000,000 yacht that once belonged to Betsy DeVos.
If Trump was in a similar coffin, he’d be scratching “Trump is great. Trump is a stable genus. Women can’t resist Trump. Trump is the greatest success in human history. Trump is the healthiest human on the planet.”
Don Gato in Gitmo?
Yes! … yes! … yes!
In one of those outdoor dog kennels that were used to house alleged Islamic terrorists but in Gato’s case we know he is a domestic terrorist hell bent to destroy the US and possibly global civilization.
Knowing Gates, he will probably preserve his brain so that future archeologists can ask him directly.
He’ll have his brain installed in a super computer turning it into an AI with the limitations that come with an oligarch like Gato.
Perhaps the part of the report that made me most angry was that school governance is something that only adults care about, but is irrelevant to children: “Focus on high-quality learning for children, not the preferences of adults. Too often, questions related to school and program design get debated and decided in terms of the preferences of adults, not the needs of children.”
This claim echoes one made repeatedly by corporate reformers over the past decade – and was usually made to bash teachers and their unions and discount the views of others including parents and advocates when they objected to some policy that the Duncan/Gates/DC privateers were pushing. Even the name of Michelle Rhee’s organization, Students First, reflected that false concept – as though the she and her allies were the ONLY group that really care about the kids.
Hear Joel Klein in 2011, bewailing the fact that the state legislature had blocked his attempt to base teacher tenure on student test scores: “That Kafkaesque outcome demonstrates precisely the way the system is run: for the adults. The school system doesn’t want to change, because it serves the needs of the adult stakeholders quite well, both politically and financially.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/06/the-failure-of-american-schools/308497/
Here’s what Andrew Rotherham wrote in 2012: “the problem is actually a much broader one, in which… what’s in the interest of the adults on all sides of the bargaining table and various debates in state capitols often takes precedence over what’s in the interest of the kids.” https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/the-3-main-obstacles-in-the-way-of-education-reform/256144/
Or what Gov. Cuomo said when in his 2012 State of the State speech, he was trying to push through teacher evaluation linked to student test scores: “I learned that everyone in public education has his or her own lobbyist. Superintendents have lobbyists. Principals have lobbyists.Teachers have lobbyists….The only group without a lobbyist? The students…. This year, I will take a second job — consider me the lobbyist for the students. I will wage a campaign to put students first, and to remind us that the purpose of public education is to help children grow, not to grow the public education bureaucracy.” https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2012/01/04/in-annual-address-cuomo-appoints-himself-students-lobbyist/
Arne Duncan made this claim frequently over the years when he was Sec. of Education, and repeated it in an interview this summer in response to a question about the debate over school “choice” (meaning charters):
“Even the mention of terms like school reform and school choice can steer a constructive conversation off course. Did you notice that becoming a problem during your time as secretary?
Duncan: So much of that stuff is about adult dysfunction and has nothing to do with what kids want and need.” https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/08/arne-duncan-how-schools-work/566987/
Again and again, corporate reformers made the self-righteous claim that only they really care about the children, and anyone who opposes their half-baked or outright damaging ideas were only motivated by self-interest. To see LDH and her colleagues at the Learning Policy Institute echo that tired refrain in their defense of charter schools is astonishing – and infuriating.
The hilarious part is that their claim that “It’s all about the kids” is without a doubt the biggest lie that the Deformers have been telling.
I have found that if you put a NOT in front of every Deformer statement, it becomes true. Its a version of BOOLean logic called FOOLean logic
It’s all about the KIPPs
It’s all about the KIPPs
And not about the kids
Its all about the trips
And all about the bids
Well, that depends on the perception of the Deformers and how they define the meaning of “kids”.
If the Deformers see “kids” as a product on an assembly line, a number with dollar signs in front of it, then based on their perception and thinking it is probably all about the “kids” since the “kids” are the product that turns into money.
To them, “kids” are a product just like LED light bulbs that end up in Target or Costco for consumers to buy and that helps explain why they do all they can to reject and throw out kids that do not conform to their definition of kids as a product because in manufacturing, there are people or machines that check the products as they come off the assembly line and kick on the ones that are defective.
Trump isn’t the only person that thinks like that. There are thousands and possibly millions of narcissistic people that fit this profile.
It’s kind of a relief that Linda Darling-Hammond never became Obama’s Secretary of Education. She would have been far more credible than Arne Duncan, and I think she would have done more damage because she would not have been perceived as a lightweight.
I’ve been skeptical of Darlng Hammond’s committment to public education since her role in devising the edTPA together with Pearson became well known. This article from the NYT by the late lamented (not dead, just no longer writing on education!) Michael Winerip gives a full picture:
As an outcome of her stance against edTPA, Madeloni lost her position as a teacher educator at UMass Amherst. Fortunately, she was elected as president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (NEA) and was instrumental, together with the Boston Teachers Union (AFT) in the overwhelming defeat of Question 2, which would have eliminated the charter cap. (Madeloni was term limited, but her successor is cut from the same cloth.)
The scourge of the edTPA, a topic on this blog, has spread, and they currently claim that “there are 814 Educator Preparation Programs in 41 states and the District of Columbia participating in edTPA”.
http://www.edtpa.com/Home.aspx
I just love it when profs think, they are smart enough to move the whole nation, set policies, “run a nationwide pilot program”.
“Mr. Pecheone said Pearson, which describes itself as the biggest education company in North America, was one of six to bid to work with Stanford. Pearson was chosen in part because it was the only company willing to provide enough seed money for a nationwide pilot program. “We needed an operating partner,” he said.”
“A Nationwide pilot program”
An Oxfordmoron if ever there was one.
How fitting that a British company would run it.
You know, it’s been a century since the British Empire crumbled.
How long do you suppose they can go on pretending that they rule the world (or even matter at all)?
The people behind Common Core (David Coleman and Jason Zimba) are also Oxfordmorons.
Coincidence?
Zimba was actually a student of Roger Penrose but I don’t think anything ever came from it, certainly nothing significant.
Zimba has not done anything to speak of in physics since.
Zimba was a terminal masters student.
Penrose prolly grew tired of listening to Zimba tout the wonders of Common Core math!
I’d like to use Deb Meier’s mention of Boston’s pilot schools to draw a parallel to the evolution of charters from small experiments in innovation to their current incarnation as businesses sucking the lifeblood from our public schools.
The Mission Hill school was one early pilot of a cohort of pilot schools which the Boston Teachers Union agreed to in response to looming charterization outside of the usual governance and staffing of Boston’s schools. The pilots were granted several “autonomies”, such as control over budgets and staffing, and were allowed to set up boards which could circumvent policies imposed by the districts on traditional schools. Nonetheless, they remain under the control of the mayor and his appointed school committee. Over time, the pilots have attained a certain caché and have also proliferated.
Many pilots now have entrance requirements, such as portfolios of work, interviews, letters of interest, transcripts and submission of MCAS scores – none of which were in the initial autonomies. The impact has been to cream off more motivated families to apply, leaving behind many high needs kids for the less selective district schools. (Sound familiar?)
At one time, the BTU had a contractual agreement for teachers who were excessed due to school closings (but not dismissals for poor performance). Teachers bid in seniority order for openings by certificate area, until 3 bids were placed. Principals could then chose which of the three applicants they wished to select. It was a fair process and allowed tenured, experienced, costly teachers an orderly – though often imperfect – means to be hired in a new position. (In the case of a teacher who wished to transfer this process was not applicable.)
The pilots have been able to circumvent this system, choosing only teachers which the principal deems to be “a good fit” – often cheaper and less experienced. Futher, teachers at the pilots can be dismissed without cause at the end of a school year, essentially as at-will employees. Many staff at the pilots have come via the alt-cert route, such as TFA or the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR).
BTR is run out of an in-district charter school, where participants spend a full year working under a mentor teacher. It is funded by the grandiosely named Boston Plan for Excellence (for which teachers often substitute a different noun beginning with the letter E), which in turn is funded by The Boston Foundation, a wealthy and influential privatizer. It’s all data driven systems, and the goal is to serve the same flavor of KoolAid to would-be teachers. BTR has also made some movement toward awarding credits from The Sposato “Graduate School” of ed, a local variant of Relay. I’ve worked with some excellent BTR grads, but I’m uneasy about creating a teacher force benighted by group think, particularly when we’re blessed with plenty of traditional teacher preparatory programs at our many universities.
http://www.bpe.org
Now that the mayor seems determined to pare down the numbers of schools from 125 to 90, the squeeze is on. The closure of two high schools effective in June was announced a month ago, and those students are set to be scattered around the city like seeds on the wind. Parents and kids are vying for admission to the pilots, but there aren’t enough seats for all who are displace. Most will end up at district high schools, where ELL, complex SPED, and SLIFE (students with limited or interrupted formal education) programs already predominate. There’ll be fewer resources for the kids with greater needs, and all of this is occuring within the pubic school system.
Teachers, too will be scambling for new assignments, breaking up teams of staff who may have worked together for years in supporting our most vulnerable students. Veteran teachers can’t be fired without cause, but few pilots want to hire them – they’re expensive and not easily cowed. Some number will end up as building substitutes or assisting other teachers, without classrooms of their own – a waste of both their talents and the professional development the city has invested in for years.
The recently appointed superintendent, Laura Perille, a woman without any professional qualifications in education (https://www.edvestors.org/news-item/laura-perille-walked-unusual-path-to-interim-superintendent/) – has announced an initiative of construction of new school buildings. The plan is to have “groups of educators” compete to get shiny new buildings awarded to them. She has stated that they will be Boston public schools, but that is a meaningless phrase. I’m betting they’ll be pilots, “innovation” schools or in-district charters, anything to circumvent traditional schools served by tradtionally certified teachers working under a union contract.
Perhaps this was not the intended outcome of the introduction of pilot schools, but like the mom and pop charters absorbed by the chains, this is what we have now. Hard to see that the kids are the winners.
I meant to add that we’re well on our way to a “portfolio” of schools, language which the new superintendent has been using.
Portapottyo of Schools?
Portfolio of schools
A polio for fools
The goal, we know: the jewels
That’s stole by hedge fund gouls
Ghouls
I deeply appreciate this thread. I have read for two days with my heartily laugh with joy.
There is a sign of a solid stand up for a protection of American younger generation in Public Education System.
I love all veteran educators in this thread who determine that it is their duty to alert the public the bad and fake Charters operators who intend to rob tax payers fund, to destroy younger generations’ precious education, and to harm all conscientious public educators by stealing educators’ pension fund.
This thread brings me a hope and joy to see Humanity will be restored from true and conscientious Americans public educators with a strong support from parents and students in all USA States of all beliefs, of all races, and of all cultural backgrounds. Back2basic
May–Just want to say that, from your recent, excellent comments, you sound like you are getting much, much better. I hope this is the case, because we need to continue to hear more ideas and opinions from you: your voice has always been valuable to us blog readers.
Wishing you the best of health &–same to everyone here–keep fighting! Some great election wins for education!
Hi retiredbutmissthekids:
Thank you for your encouragement. I hope that you acknowledge how much I admire, respect and love you a much as for all other conscientious veteran educators who support Dr. Ravitch in this specific education platform.
The truth is that I am not physically healthy. I need to eat little, but sleep more than normal people in order to be able to read, to think and to write maximum total in 3 hours daily. As a result, I feel that I am useless. Honestly, if I am living in any dictatorial environment, I would definitely die quickly from high blood pressure and from a heart attack due to helplessness and frustration.
May God bless you and all other conscientious veteran educators, plus all young conscientious students, parents and new educators with a diamond strength to cut through all corrupted actions, illegal thread and oppression that intend to intimidate you and all others. May
Here’s a clear description of the impact expansion of a charter school would have on a public school district with a high percentage of students who are working in English as a second language, have high rates of poverty and have had low test scores. New Bedford, Massachusetts has long been a working port town with low property taxes to support its local schools. School personnel have done all the MA DESE has asked in terms of strenghtening the school district, and may see all of those efforts ignored.
By way of explanation, the foundation budget referred to here is a part of MA education law which provides a floor to the amount of funding provided by the state to local communities to equitably fund education costs. The formula has not been updated in25 years, and it’s estimated that the public schools are owed some $1-2 billion.
“After 2016’s defeat of Question 2, a measure rejected by nearly 60 percent of New Bedford voters, the financial impacts of charter schools are well-known and generally accepted. Districts benefit from economies of scale, which erode with expansion of charter seats. Instead of building up the traditional district’s resources and programs, increasing quality for all, the charter must spend dollars to create an entirely different district administrative infrastructure, account for occupancy costs, and still deliver comparable education services, which they can only achieve by staffing classrooms with lower-paid and less-experienced teaching staff. Some would argue this is an example of efficiency on their part, but with Alma students missing significantly more instructional time due to disciplinary action than those in the New Bedford Public Schools, we’ll take our chances with those more skilled in classroom management.
“In some cases, traditional districts can compensate for charter expansion by laying off their own teachers and closing schools—scaling down—but in New Bedford this isn’t so. Given the size of the district, the enrollment and locations of its schools, and the physical constraints of its buildings, there are no apparent opportunities to close and combine schools. Charters enroll students from all over the city, meaning the loss of enrollment is rarely clustered in just one or two traditional schools, rather in dribs and drabs across the city. Upon expansion, a class of 24 students isn’t reduced to zero. It might become a class of 22. The district still needs a teacher, a classroom, a school, services, and so on, while its budget is disproportionately reduced. It would be even harder to manage such a downsizing if the timing of expansion is unknown and volatile, and significant and well-founded doubts exist about Alma’s ability to execute their own expansion plan. There is little buildable or acquirable space in the city for three new schools to occupy, and even fewer early-career educators in the South Coast labor market willing to work for the below-market wages charters tend to offer. Chartered for more seats, the school can expand as it pleases, adding insult to injury to the public schools left to adapt.”
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/ignore-the-charter-school-think-tank-crowd/