Jeremy Mohler, of the nonpartisan “In the Public Interest” wrote this post:
The phone rings and a cold, automated voice says your kid’s school is closed tomorrow. A sign hangs on the school’s door saying there are “repair issues.”
That’s all parents of students at Florida’s Unity Charter School received. No word of the K-8 school closing for good. No mention that its building was just foreclosed on and will be auctioned off by the end of the year.
Luckily, the local public school district is ready to help. “If Unity Charter School is foreclosed, we’re happy to welcome students into our classrooms,” says its superintendent.
Turns out, it’s a common story. Students at charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, are two and a half times more likely to have their school close than those at traditional, neighborhood schools.
Between 2001 and 2013, nearly 2,500 charter schools closed nationwide, many because of low academic performance or because the private group in charge committed fraud or wasted public money.
Like Unity Charter School, they often have closed abruptly. A charter school in Sacramento, California, handed out letters at the end of the school day informing students that their school was shuttering that night. A Delaware charter school folded with a notice posted on its website, leaving parents and students confused. “Right now, I have no idea where my future is and that’s really heartbreaking to say for myself,” a student said in the aftermath.
Oh, and you guessed it, schools — neighborhood and charter — serving a larger share of students of color and students from low-income families are more likely to be shut down than schools with fewer students of color and similar education achievement.
But charter school closures aren’t just shockingly routine. They’re also a selling point for the deep-pocketed voices aiming to privatize public education.
Like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who once compared choosing a school to choosing which food truck you want to go to for lunch. “We must open up the education industry — and let’s not kid ourselves that it isn’t an industry,” she said.
And Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, whose infamous $100 million donation to Newark, New Jersey, in 2010 went to $1,000-a-day consultants who did little to improve education for the city’s students but closed neighborhood schools, replacing many with charter schools, some of which are now closing themselves.
And Bill Gates, who has spent millions pushing charter schools. The founder of Microsoft once said, “The freedom to perform in new ways means that if [charter schools] don’t perform, things are shut down after you are given a chance.”
It goes without saying that closing a school is disruptive to students. When charter schools close, many students return to their neighborhood schools and struggle to catch up. Dislocated students are less likely to graduate. A 2013 study found that school closures have contributed to Chicago’s high rate of youth incarceration.
But disruption is exactly what the likes of DeVos, Zuckerberg, and Gates want. They want public education to be like a marketplace, where private boards can decide whether they listen to parents or not, large corporate-like chains like KIPP and Rocketship dominate, and schools open and close overnight in a constant churn of “innovation.”
They have no interest in supporting public education for all!
If you have been following what is happening to the public schools for more than a few years, it has become obvious that the autocratic billionaires and their minions behind this agenda are not interested in improving education at any level … unless it is for their children and only their children and maybe a few children of their closest, most trusted servants and minions.
The real agenda is to create a world where there are Lords (the wealthy powerful nobility that inherits its wealth and power from generation to generation just like the nobility of old) and the rest of us who will become uneducated, illiterate serfs with much shorter lifespans and miserable lives.
They are fundamentally opposed to demogratic governance. This is one of the very few brief and on-target critiques of these efforts from within the non-profit sector.
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/12/11/billionaires-focus-their-philanthropy-on-education-but-will-children-benefit/
“Rooting out Democracy”
Public education
Democracy in action
Demands eradication
By oligarchic faction
“Contempt for Democracy”
They don’t believe in democracy
In fact, they have contempt
For any vote by you and me
From which they act exempt
“Checks and (bank) Balances”
(Federalist Numero Uno)
The wealthy class must lead
Our leaders must wear tweed
The men of means
Must be the deans
Deciding what we need
How about a reasonably priced hunting license, say $5, to bag men wearing suits that cost more than $1,000?
For an additional $5, the license includes men wearing suits getting out of the back of stretch limos.
For $15, the license includes shooting executive jets out of the air.
The suit-limo-exec-jet hunter with the most hits, win’s a prize. What should that prize be?
This seem an appropriate time to share a poem I wrote which is a sort of plagiarism of form of the earlier poem mentioned below
Diane Ravitch and Billy Gates
(With apologies to Dudley Randall 1969, It seems to me, said Booker T.)
I’ve noticed of late, Said Billy Gates
That modern education
Needs a new invention
Something for the kids to do
That makes the facts all stick like glue
And makes the kiddies all excited
Makes me want to fight Ed-
Ucational establishment
So that this we might prevent.
I’m not a fan said Ms. Diane
You give us things with ulterior motive
And you make it seem the teachers don’t give
All they do to make the kids learn
Start the fire that will for life burn
What’s more, the data show for years now
That we were improving somehow
So your reasons and ersatz concern
Are making leaders want to burn
Our bridges up before we know
If this success we have to show
And then said Gates:
We must confess,
The almighty test
Has shown to us our graphics
Failure in statistics
Points the fault of mystics
Running all amok
And has our country all but stuck.
So get you out your Microsoft
Don’t go to school, sit in your loft
Curl up with my electronics
So to learn of plate tectonics
Students will be better then
And we the ones to send
Them out into the new wide world
All the little boys and girls.
But wait a bit, said Ms. Diane
A false stat is but lying.
For years we have been trying
Sometimes failing often not
Working always there a lot.
Teachers are the ones who know
Just how our vague attempts will go.
One thing that is rarely needed
Is for those who’ve barely greeted
Anything that’s educational
To abuse our way, traditional.
Screen time babies notwithstanding,
Teachers have been firmly landing
This the ship of educational state.
Leave it alone now Billy Gates.
If these word have some offended, think a bit and it is mended.
The founder of Gates’ funded New Schools Venture Fund stated the goal of charters, brands on a large scale.
IMO, schools-in-a- box, a for-profit investment of Z-berg and Gates, is planned as the dominant player in the contrived market they politically created, without constituent input.
First, the strategy of brands necessitated enactment of education “choice” policy. Secondly, market domination, in oligopoly or monopoly markets, required elimination of competition/choice. Just like Walmart was built on the skeletons of Main Street businesses, Gates/Z-berg’s success will be built on the skeletons of financially weak charters or the skeletons of charters whose operators are indictable for financial crimes.
The fact that the situation is brutal to families of the poor, disproportionately Black, wouldn’t matter any more to vulture villainthropists and the people they pay, than Ohioans being bilked out of $1 bil. worth of education and taxes.
From Non-Profit Quarterly:
“Philanthropy is the least democratic institution on earth,” says Professor David Nasaw, a historian who has researched Carnegie’s philanthropic focus on education. “It’s rich men deciding what to do.”
SNIP: “Two philosophical challenges have arisen with the nature of these investments. The first, which NPQ has discussed at length, is that it limits democratic control over the nation’s public education system. In effect, education philanthropy puts education program design in a few hands who are, by definition, outsiders, and often less expert and less informed than those who are doing the work. In the case of CZI, which was established as a limited liability corporation instead of a philanthropic foundation, there are also related issues of transparency.”
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/12/11/billionaires-focus-their-philanthropy-on-education-but-will-children-benefit/?utm_source=NPQ+Newsletters&utm_campaign=558fbf4ec1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_11_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_94063a1d17-558fbf4ec1-12886885&mc_cid=558fbf4ec1&mc_eid=cc73fe1cff
Charter school are more than 2.5 times likely to close than a public school, and dislocated students are less likely to graduate from high school. Disruption may be good for business, but it is not good for young people. Poor students are already living in circumstances in which they struggle. All the disruption from privatization is harmful to young people, and it may have contributed to the increased murder rate in Chicago where Emanuel closed fifty schools in one day. Students do best in a stable, nurturing environment that a quality public school can provide. Here’s the link: https://medium.com/in-the-public-interest/betsy-devos-mark-zuckerberg-and-bill-gates-want-your-kids-school-to-close-9a96e12df5c?fbclid=IwAR1LzaxtxFQDZ2T5CS78SoJ7phki0P970QL-AZIPycPA3d4maU0e0c7bCAI
These three should go live in Gates’ model city in the desert with a WALL around them.
I think a one way ticket to Mars on Elon Musk s maiden rocketship voyage would be better.
Tens of millions of miles of empty space is the best wall in the universe (apart from a black hole event horizon that even light can not escape.
I’d happily chip in for the one way ticket.
When a non-public school is not delivering, or has other problems, it will close. When a public school is not delivering, or has problems, the politicians just throw more money at it.
Maybe school closures are not as bad as people think.
Charles,
Please read Eve Ewing’s “Ghosts in the Schoolyard.” Since you have so many strong opinions about education, without ever sending children to any school, you should try to inform yourself. Charter schools are far more likely to close than public schools, either because of academic or financial failure. Closing schools is inherently disruptive and children do not thrive when their school is closed.
Please order the book and read it.
As long as I continue to pay school taxes, and I have to live in a nation populated by public school graduates, I will continue to contribute. I would feel the same way, if I had a dozen children in public school.
Closing any school, for any reason, is “disruptive”. So what? Families move, and transfer around the country, and children have to leave one school, and attend another. This is reality.
My father was military. I attended 8 different schools from first grade to high school graduation. Again, so what?
Children can and do “thrive”, when families transfer and/or when schools close. It is better to close down a failing school, and place the students in an effective and functional school.
The constant disruption in your own education left you bereft of any understanding of what makes a successful school.
You lack compassion and you lack knowledge of the work of teachers.
Chicago closed 50 public schools in one day and the research shows that most did not benefit and did not get assigned to a better school.
Charles said, “My father was military. I attended 8 different schools from first grade to high school graduation. Again, so what?”
This share should help us understand why Charles thinks the way he does. A child’s disruptive life growing up often leads to a disruptive thinking process as an adult.
@Lloyd: Lloyd, you claim to be a veteran. Do you have something against the children of military families?
Charles, Charles, why are you changing the subject and avoiding the evidence that proves you wrong, wrong, wrong in regards to the original subject.
Q The constant disruption in your own education left you bereft of any understanding of what makes a successful school.
You lack compassion and you lack knowledge of the work of teachers END Q
You are starting to step on it now. As a result of my father’s military transfers, I attended different schools. I look on it as a benefit, I was exposed to a variety of different educational experiences, that other more stable families do not enjoy. It did not stunt me in the least. I managed to graduate high school, in the top 10% of my class, and I was accepted at a fine university.
I have as good an understanding of what a successful school is all about, as any layman.
I understand what teaching is all about. My grandmother was a public school teacher in Grant County, KY. My sister was certified as a public school teacher, and taught in Jefferson County KY. My aunt was a public school teacher in Boone County KY. My aunt (on my mom’s side) was a teacher and middle school principal in Jefferson County KY.
Did your grandmother tell you what good teaching is? Is that why you tell the many teachers who read this blog how to do their jobs?
Well said, Lloyd. It’s like people saying their teachers used to paddle them, so what’s wrong with paddling. The abused turn in to the abusers.
Well said, Lloyd. It’s like people saying their teachers used to paddle them, so what’s wrong with paddling. The abused turn in to the abusers.
Charles: Here’s the difference between your situation growing up (based from what I can glean from this post), and students in urban districts who are facing more disruption in their schooling because of school closures. Whether or not a student can adequately cope with disruption has a lot to do with how the rest of their life is functioning. In your case, it sounds like, despite the frequent moves, that your home life was relatively stable. I’m going to make some assumptions here, not knowing from personal experience about military life. Your parents were in a steady relationship (?), your family had guaranteed housing and employment via the military every time you moved. Your parents did not have to cope with the brutal uncertainty of job loss, or eviction. They did not have to deal with the possibility of ICE coming for their parents and deporting them. I’m sure there are plenty of stressors with military service, but these kinds of financial and housing stressors are what separate many urban children from others with more home stability. So, when comparing yourself to others, it’s important to realize that other children, through no fault of their own, did not have the social and financial advantages you had, and therefore the two experiences with school disruption will be completely different.
Q Did your grandmother tell you what good teaching is? Is that why you tell the many teachers who read this blog how to do their jobs? END Q
My grandmother retired from teaching, some years before I started public school in Charlotte NC in 1960. She never discussed any of the specifics of teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Kentucky. I do remember her reciting some of the lessons in the old McGuffey readers. see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey_Readers
I have never told any teachers how to do their jobs. I am an electronics man, and not remotely qualified to do this. I have worked as a curriculum development specialist in a vo-tech school, and for a university educational television station. I am fascinated by some of the new technologies that are appearing, and in some of the new teaching methodologies as well. My interest is academic only.
Charles: I had a far different experience than you did. I was born in a rural area. It’s school was its community. When my neighbor’s boy became the first Bedford County native killed in WWII, all the community had his funeral in the local high school. It burned in1972. When I wrote a history of that fire recently, all I had to do was to go to social media and read the talk about it there.
What you have never experienced is community. Good schools and churches and civic clubs are about community. They are only bad if they hurt community. Otherwise, they are good and can be changed for the better. Making them go away destroys community.
@Roy: Bully for you. While serving our nation, my father (who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel) had to make frequent transfers. I was exposed to a variety of good (and other) public schools.
I experienced “community”, my parents participated in PTA, I was in the band, other extra-curricular activities.
I resent the comments, that I am some kind of a second-class citizen, because I was raised in a fine military family.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
“Between 2001 and 2013, nearly 2,500 charter schools closed nationwide, many because of low academic performance or because the private group in charge committed fraud or wasted public money.”
There are sufficient stressors on children growing up in military families particularly when their parents are serving in far off locations. In addition, many children lose immediate family members who are killed in combat, or accidents. Some children of service people are subjected to the additional pressures of poverty.