Ann Cronin, retired teacher, says that Connecticut should get rid of charters. They were an interesting but unsuccessful experiment that failed to achieve their goals.
The people of Connecticut should put their money into public schools, not charters, she says, for the following reasons:
- Charter schools take public money (our tax dollars) but have no public oversight. Public schools have public oversight through state regulations and local school board policies and controls.
- Charter schools provide an education that is separate and unequal because the students are overwhelmingly students of color.
- The quality of education is inferior to public schools because the emphasis is on test prep rather than critical thinking.
- The “success” of charter schools, as measured by standardized test scores, is falsely reported because students who do not test well are counseled out of the schools.
- The “success” of charter schools, as measured by graduation rates and college acceptance data, is falsely reported because the attrition of students who do not have the credits to graduate or be accepted to college is not included in the reported data.
- The “no excuses” discipline practices which make for high suspension and expulsion rates in charter schools seem commensurate with racial prejudice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Charter schools were never intended to be private commercial enterprises, but the lapse of public accountability gave the charterbaggers the opportunity to wedge their proverbial feet in the doors of our public schools.
great word, perfect for the game: charterbaggers
It takes tone deafness on a colossal scale for those in the Catholic Church who promote charter schools to do so in the midst of the scandals related to their private schools and the rampant institutionalized cover-up of pedophilia.
No school system, public nor private, is immune to sexual scandals and cover-ups. see
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-chicago-council-school-abuse-hearing-20181128-story.html
Have you been reading the many stories about sexual predators in elite boarding schools, as well as elite private schools?
Yes. Sadly, no school system is immune to this.
The estimate from Australia- 7% of priests pedophiles.
Pennsylvania indicted 300. Illinois has reports of 690. In Texas- San Antonia- 54, Houston -42, Dallas-31, Corpus Christi-26, far west Texas-30.
Nailed it. Would love to have someone print it up on a t-shirt, and then I could wear it to the next board meeting..
The whole privatization package is unfair, inequitable and unbalanced. It allows for maximum opportunities for gaming the system. The charter industry is infested with opportunists, frauds and carpetbaggers that cherry pick students and manipulate politics to get a bigger piece of the public money pie. Charters use public money, but the public is barred from having a say about where or how funds are spent. Representatives are bought by charter chains to forward the monetization of our students and schools. The schools and communities losing funds rarely have any input into the decisions the determine their loss of funds. Privatization has morphed into a gigantic pay to play scheme. The dismal results are not worth the disruption and harm caused to existing public schools and students. Public schools are a better choice and value for any community, but we need to invest in them in order for them to do their best work.
It’s a STACKED system meant to HARM public schools and public school teachers and why? Answer: CONTROL & PROFITS.
DeVos endorsed Emanuel’s education agenda, so all the ed reform Democrats are desperately trying to create some distance between their agenda and Devos’
And failing:
Howard Dean
More Howard Dean Retweeted Betsy DeVos
Only problem with this statement is that DeVos is the epitome of less than mediocrity in her own voucher/ charter schools. Good charters are terrific. DeVos charters are much worse than the public schools they replaced
Someone should ship the talking points over to Howard Dean. The claim is charters don’t “replace” public schools- they only ADD, never subtract.
Ed reform may have to convene an emergency conference. If they don’t the voters they’ve been hoodwinking might figure there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them and Betsy DeVos.
The privatization decision has been made. They’re bickering over details of how to put it in.
Meanwhile, they offer absolutely nothing to the 85% of families in public schools. Nothing. They can’t even DISCUSS public schools without immediately veering off to cheerlead charters.
Dean has been a charter cheerleader for many years. His son was in TFA, and now he is in the charter business.
Of course.
Dean’s son should head to USC.
Disagree on #3: many public schools are just as guilty of constant test prep.
And those that claim to be teaching “critical thinking” in lieu of test prep are often fooling themselves. Real critical thinking depends on establishing a solid foundation of knowledge: that’s the proper reading of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The bulk of Bloom’s pyramid is knowledge, but teachers foolishly think that because it’s at the bottom, they should dispense with it and go straight to “teaching” critical thinking. That’s not how it works! Knowledge is the FOUNDATION of critical thinking!
Teach knowledge and critical thinking follows.
Federal law judges all public schools by test scores. Test prep is ubiquitous. It is wrong. The law is wrong.
Agreed, though it alarms me that most teachers I know have little beef with the test prep curriculum. They trust the authorities that it’s good.
Here’s the brilliant and mesmerizing Daisy Christodoulou on how Britain and the US education systems have gone astray:
She’s the Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of education!
And the test prep model is wildly expensive leading to fewer teacher resources and bloated class sizes. Imagine the positive effects of districts NOT shoveling taxpayer dollars to David Coleman at ETS every year. The real danger, at least in Connecticut, seems to be private foundations infiltrating public schools to control scheduling, training, and to guide them toward private funding resources like “Donors Choose” as public budgets go to billionaires through immoral tax cuts. There is also “hybrid” administrator training in CT where future building leaders are trained in public AND charter schools. The effect has beend a wave of data-collecting drones who seem to entirely lack the ability to recognize or criticize the debacle they are enabling.