“
Poor Bill Gates. He has poured billions into reinventing education, and nothing has worked. Nothing! Not even in his home state.
One of his fondest desires was to open charter schools in Washington State. He poured millions into a referendum (the fourth in the state), and it barely passed. Then the highest court in the state said the charters couldn’t be supported by the general fund, because they are not really public schools. Public schools have elected boards. At last, he gently persuaded the legislature to tap into the lottery money to pay for Bill’s charters.
But, as Carol Burris writes, the charters did not outperform public schools and did not close achievement gaps.
Oh, woe. Poor Bill!
Burris writes:
“The 2012 initiative was Washington State’s fourth charter school ballot initiative. The previous three attempts failed — in 1996 (64.43 percent opposed to 35.57 percent in favor), 2000 (51.83 percent opposed to 48.17 percent in favor), and 2004 (58.3 percent opposed to 41.7 percent in favor).
“The fourth and final attempt was not pushed by the parents of Washington State. It was pushed and funded by billionaires. The collection of signatures to get the charter initiative on the ballot was a well-coordinated effort that cost nearly $2.5 million.
“Funders of the initiative included Microsoft founder Bill Gates (who contributed over $1 million) and California billionaire Reed Hastings of Netflix. A dark-money group based in New York — Education Reform Now Advocacy, an arm of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) — contributed large sums as well.
“Without the financial push by billionaires both within and outside the state, the initiative, which barely passed on the fourth attempt, would likely have failed, as did the three previous efforts.
“Let’s fast forward to 2019. What was the outcome for all of those millions contributed allegedly on students’ behalf?
“The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University, which is funded by pro-charter organizations, recently issued its report comparing the academic growth over a three-year period of students in Washington’s charter schools when compared with their true public school (TPS) counterparts. What it found was that charter school students did no better.
“From that report:
“Over that time, the typical charter school student in Washington demonstrated no statistically different academic growth in reading and math when compared to their exact-match counterpart in nearby district schools (TPS). The trend across the two growth periods shows a slight downward trend in reading and math as the number of students served grew. The finding of no meaningful difference in learning gains held across most of the different student groups within the charter population. Only English language learners [ELLs] experience significantly higher learning gains associated with charter school attendance. Other student subgroups such as students in poverty, Black students, and Hispanic students experience non-significant positive gains on average. “
“It should be noted that the small gains experienced by English Language Learners disappeared when Hispanic ELLs in charters were compared with Hispanic ELLs in public schools. The report also confirmed that charters in Washington, as elsewhere, enrolled fewer special education students and fewer ELLs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Once again, out of district money is used to control in district events. When will we wake up and realize that the voters of a district, in this case Washington state, should be the only stakeholders in such an election? No one from outside of that state should be able to buy influence over their decisions. Yes, we have free speech, so outsiders speech is tolerated but it should be clearly labeled as being Paid for by Out-Of-State Funds. No direct funding of in state activities should be allowed. Same should be true for all other election districts. Only the people affected by such legislation should be allowed to contribute labor or funds.
Otherwise we have governance through the Almighty Dollar and we can see quite clearly what we get when we allow Absentee Lords govern us.
You are advocating an elimination of freedom of speech. If there is a local election in California, and a person in New Hampshire wants to contribute to one of the candidates, the constitution says that he can.
Are there any other rights, which you wish to suppress?
Charles,
So yousupport allowing a small number of billionaires to control allof our state and local elections?
Do you want Michael zbloomberg pr Bill Gates to choose your next governor?
Isn’t that the end of democracy?
Do you have any constructive ideas?
I support freedom of speech. I have no problem at all, with wealthy people contributing to candidates and/or causes that they support. As long as all donations are made publicly, with full disclosure.
I do not think that Gates and/or Bloomberg will choose the next governor of Virginia. This state is so ultra-blue, that the Dems are going to control the executive mansion here, for the foreseeable future.
It is not the end of democracy. Citizens may vote for the candidate of their choice. The amount of money spent on elections, has impact, no doubt. But I have more respect for the citizens, than to think that they can be “bought” with slick advertisements.
What I would like to see, is public financing of campaigns. This would end the “big money” influence in politics. It is not going to happen, but it is a nice idea.
The answer to speech that you do not like (in politics), is more speech.
The US has never been a “pure” democracy. It’s a Constitutional Republic or a Constitutional Democratic Republic.
https://www.diffen.com/difference/Democracy_vs_Republic
Charles, I do not think you know what “free speech” means when it comes to how it is defined by the US Constitution. I think you have a very simplistic definition of what “free speech” means, but you are not alone. There are a lot of ignorant people out there when it comes to understanding what the U.S. Constitution means by protecting “freedom of speech”.
“In the United States, freedom of speech and expression is strongly protected from government restrictions by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, many state constitutions, and state and federal laws.”
The key phrase in the previous paragraph is “from government restrictions”.
Corporations do not allow freedom of speech by their employees. In fact, some private sector employees have been fired for stuff they’ve published through the internet’s social media.
Teachers even in public schools do not have freedom of speech.
Students in public schools do not have freedom of speech.
There are restrictions. The US Supreme Court had ruled on these restrictions more than once supporting some.
Here are a few examples that that the Orange Idiot is guilty of violating repeatedly but the corrupt GOP ignored it and did not hold him accountable.
“Inflammatory words that are either injurious by themselves or might cause the hearer to immediately retaliate or breach the peace. Use of such words is not necessarily protected “free speech” under the First Amendment.[43]
Obscenity, defined by the Miller test by applying contemporary community standards, is a type of speech which is not legally protected. It is speech to which all the following apply: appeals to the prurient interest, depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. (This is usually applied to more hard-core forms of pornography.)
The 1998 Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act in Alabama applies to sex toys. The similar 1973 Texas obscenity statute (updated in 2003) was declared unconstitutional in 2008.
Invasion of privacy
Intentional infliction of emotional distress
Political spending.
And here are a few other examples that the Kremlin’s Agent Orange might not have violated … yet.
Government speech
The government speech doctrine establishes that the government may censor speech when the speech is its own, leading to a number of contentious decisions on its breadth. (Whatever that means????)
Public employee speech
Statements made by public employees pursuant to their official duties are not protected by the First Amendment from employer discipline as per the case of Garcetti v. Ceballos. This applies also to private contractors that have the government as a client. The First Amendment only protects employees from government employers albeit only when speaking publicly outside their official duties in the public interest Pickering v. Board of Ed. of Township High School Dist., updated and clarified by Lane v. Franks. Speech is not protected from private sector disciplinary action
In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the Supreme Court extended broad First Amendment protection to children attending public schools, prohibiting censorship unless there is “substantial interference with school discipline or the rights of others”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States#Types_of_speech_restrictions
What is at stake is whether the reform of our common life is led by governments elected by and accountable to the people, or rather by wealthy elites claiming to know our best interests. We must decide whether, in the name of ascendant values such as efficiency and scale, we are willing to allow democratic purpose to be usurped by private actors who often genuinely aspire to improve things but, first things first, seek to protect themselves.
From: Winners Take All / Arnand Giridharadas 2018
ELL growth in scores is very different from that of native speakers. When an ELL starts as a beginner, the end of year scores are from 0 to 10%. I remember that New York had a lot of zeros from ELLs. Obviously, students could not comprehend the test. Intermediate students are generally in the 10 to 20% range. In the third year a few may reach the 50% percentile, but most linger in the 30 to 40% range. In other words as input becomes more comprehensible, most ELLs will make an enormous gains in the third or fourth year of instruction. Most likely the public school students made larger gains than those in the Gates of H@ll school because they were taught by teachers that were trained to teacher English to foreign students.
Ed reformers moved the goalposts. Now it’s just “new” schools – “choice” itself is the end.
It’s a belief system. An ideology.
The moment it became clear that Ohio’s charters weren’t “outperforming” public schools on the measures ed reformers touted for 20 years, test scores, they rolled out the new marketing slogan, which was “choice”
They no longer use their own measures- the same measures they used for public schools to justify charters. You should hear them in Ohio now- they sound exactly like public school supporters a decade ago – “schools are more than test scores!”
Yeah, they are- except ed reform set the test score measure.
DeVos never actually claims the charter and private schools she spends all her time marketing are “better” schools. Instead she says they are “choice” schools.
By the way, how are things in Washington public schools? Anyone working on that?
There’s a cost to this ideological zeal, and the cost will be borne by the public schools they neglect.
I’m pleased Democrats at the federal level are offering something practical and useful to public schools. I know they won’t get the funding past this ed reform-captured administration but just to see something positive offered to public school supporters and families is new, after a long, long drought.
We really can insist they provide added value to public schools. They really can do more than stop damaging existing public schools. We could insist they actually support them.
“Neglecting” or “ignoring” is just the absence of affirmative harm, and while I know that’s a relief, don’t stop there. We can do better than that.
well of course charters are going to fail students. They are public schools too – Federal Funding = #DATARAPING state assessments = federal national standards = limited curriculum options = teaching to the test = pigeonholing worker bees into career pathways. That is not true choice it is just a choice of location while removing locally elected school board members and privatizing our education system. TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.
No, chartersare not public schools. They get public money, like Boeing. They are private contractors.
Tacoma charter school to close for good at the end of the academic year
“Funding special education was a large piece of the financial struggle, according to the Charter School Commission. The state’s 13.5 percent per-school funding cap created challenges for SOAR, where 20 percent of students qualify for special education services.”
Gates and Walton can buy the election, but when it comes to actually supporting something needed like special ed at a charter, they disappear into the bark like beetle larvae.
We opted out of our local public school here in Washington after, among other things, they refused to treat my son’s severe stutter. They argued for over a year that since he wasn’t failing kindergarten or first grade, he received no services. We fought and fought while paying out of our own pocket for speech therapy. His therapist fought the public school. We lost. We felt we had no other option but alternative education. Public schools in Washington have problems as well. There are many of us parents who do not agree with the direction the schools are going. We do not want to support bad education policies and poor teaching practices (CCSS). Some of us are on strike.
Public schools are not a panacea and they are not a fit for every child. They’ve never been.
(We do not send our kids to a charter school and this was prior to WA opening opening.)
Here’s the grass roots and local coalition deciding what our new school systems will look like:
Sandy Kress – Attorney and Accountability Expert
Susan Patrick – CEO, iNACOL
Trish Millines Dziko – Co-founder and Executive Director, Technology Access Foundation
Caleb Offley – Senior Advisor, K–12 Education, Walton Family Foundation
Moderator: Paul Hill – Founder, CRPE
They’re setting up a government. They’ll let the public in on the plans sometime after they implement it, I guess.
If I were an elected official I don’t think I’d outsource my entire job to these experts.
We’ll start to wonder why we’re bothering electing and paying our “representatives”, and perhaps consider replacing them with people who actually do their own thinking.
People are getting tired of government by the 1%. I saw a video of Howard Schultz getting booed and yelled at. The crowd was chanting “No more government by billionaires.”