The task force appointed to reform California’s weak charter school law has 11 members; six of them have ties to the charter industry. Two of the 11 are part of the California Charter School Association, the official lobbying group, which spends $20 million a year to prevent any accountability for charters. How likely is this task force to propose meaningful reforms to stop charter schools from draining resources from the public schools that enroll most of the state’s children? How likely is it to propose meaningful reforms that take away endless appeals by failing charters? How likely is it to prevent small school districts from opening charter schools in districts that do not want them or need them? How likely is it to propose reforms that prevent entrepreneurs and grifters from opening their own charter schools? How likely is it to oust charter chains (the Walmarts of education), storefront charters where teachers meet students only once every three weeks, or charters operated by foreign entities?
Well, we won’t know until we see the final report, will we?
I promised Tony Thurmond that I would suspend judgment until I see the final report, and I will.
Nonetheless it is worrisome to see that somehow the charter industry managed to gain six of the 11 seats on a task force that will make recommendations to reform the industry.
I assumed that Thurmond was responsible for the composition of the task force
I may have been wrong, but honestly I don’t know who made those decisions.
I received an email from a reader in California whose credentials are impeccable, who has a direct tie inside the Governor’s office. This person told me that the committee was selected by Governor Gavin Newsom, not by Tony Thurmond. This made sense because Thurmond was smeared by the charter lobby during the campaign in 2016, which spent nearly $40 million trying to beat him. He has no reason to stack the panel in their favor. But the bottom line is that I don’t know for sure. All I know is what I see. And the optics are not good.
Who wants to stay on the good side of Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Bill Bloomfield, Arthur Rock, the Fisher Family, and the many other charter-loving billionaires in California?
I wish him well in producing a report that actually reforms the charter industry in California and limits the damage it is now doing to the public schools that enroll nearly 90% of the children in the state. Given the composition of the task force, it won’t be easy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It makes sense that you wait, Diane, as you have had a personal conversation with T. Thurmond about this. On the other hand, the activism hinted at (not sure what folks commenting are actually doing in terms of real action) in many of the replies also makes good sense. As an out-of-stater, I can only hope that pressure on both the governor and Thurmond is being applied so that the task force composition is changed. Beyond that, it seems to me it is long past the time that all the state’s unions and professional associations supporting public education come together in a united front that can push back forcefully against the charter lobby and the billionaire foundations and think tanks behind that lobby. It will take time and hard political organizing to pull it off, but a united front is possible and urgently needed.
I agree. If it were up to me, I’d scrap this task force and start over, adding civic leaders with no connection to the charter industry and independent fiscal analysts.
Good question, Diane. “Why not select civic leaders with no connection to the charter industry?” I smell lots of RATS.
Great opening paragraph of questions, says it all. Keep going, you’re the warrior from hell for these darkside people. If Gov. Newsom appointed the comm with a pro-charter majority, he’s the dark side of the Dems which dominate the party and deserve campaigns to unseat them.
Once again, Gavin Newsom did not appoint this committee!!! He may have rubber stamped it but it comes from CDE, the SPI office. Be clear!! Be honest and submit more names to Tony and see if he adds some people given the firestorm so far.
Putting people with a background in the charter industry on a task force, is like putting Al Capone on a crime task force.
Absolutely, Charles!
How about a task force on organized crime that includes 6 Al Capones? Bonnie and Clyde? Bugsy Siegel?
No one chose them.
They chose themselves, cuz that’s the way it works when you have the backing of billionaires.
You are simply handed the reigns of power and told to do whatever you wish.
No permission is required anead of time and no explanations or apologies are expected afterward.
reigns of power? — how about puppet strings that come with a list of names and future decisions already decided for you
Can we do something with those homonyms–reigns and reins? Somehow “reigns of power” seems more appropriate when talking about billionnaires who strive to be kings.
The reign in Spain, stays mainly in the plain
When it reigns, it pores
Reign reign go a weigh come again another dey
It’s a hard, it’s a hard it’s a hard reign gonna fall
A possible name: Californians United for Public Education (CUPE). California has something like 275,000 teachers, 1,024 school districts, and 10,000 + school counselors, psychologists, social workers, nurses, and librarians. If even 60% of 285,000 professionals each contributed $10 to an advocacy super fund, a united front could launch with a budget of $1,710,000. While this isn’t the kind of money Gates, Broad et al can toss into the coffers of the Destroy Public Education movement, it sure could provide a solid foundation for building a movement to restore preK-16 public education in the state.
All the fiery posts, replies, and comments on blogs are a necessary part of raising consciousness, for sure (and I think Diane Ravitch’s blog is one of the best we have for this!). However, without good old down-in-the-trenches organizing all this key pounding just stirs up the bile and leaves us with no actual change. To me, that’s a real problem. According to Eric Mann, one of wisest people around regarding organizing for social change, building a base and never walking alone is one of the 16 qualities of the successful organizer. While Diane continues with her truly excellent blogging, I hope some Californians will take the opportunity provided by this latest educational outrage to take back educational reform and take up organizing so that the fever of charterism as a supposed “answer” to the challenges of education in a democratic society is put where it belongs, namely, the dust bin of history.
The good news is that the grassroots organizing is happening everywhere. The Network for Public Education keepstrack of s ores,hundredsof groups, and connects them to each other.
Vouchers were beaten back in Arizona, Texas, and Kentucky, and the fight is on right now in Oklahoma and Florida. The grassroots are blazing. Join in.
OK, I signed on. Question: with all the Californians on the board of NPE, are they involved with leading a pushback in California? I hope so, although I note that three of them are faculty with schools/colleges of education, a notoriously timid group. Perhaps Marla K. understands what I was trying to get at, namely the need for field-based full time organizers to work across stakeholder groups, mobilize and coordinate across local organizing initiatives. With 1,000+ school districts in the state, it is a gargantuan task. You know a bit about how huge a challenge it can be through your contact with San Diego Unified during the dark days of Allan Bursin. Multiply that one example times at least 100 other districts where the “reign of error” has grown deep roots and you begin to understand the scope of the challenge just in California. Add the other two largest states and you see the need for a paid organizing team of at least 10-12 well trained people with solid credentials in grassroots organizing. Just some feedback.
Julian Vasquez Heilig and Roxana Mariachi of California were actively involved in drafting NAACP resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools. Tina Andres, Teacher, is a grassroots activist within BATS and CTA. No one timid on the board of NPE.
Got it. Thank you.
Not one Democrat was willing to attend the school choice week event in D.C.- thanks to grassroots action.
Politicians like Hakeem Jeffries, Jared Polis and Cory Booker were forced to acknowledge their greed destroys the common good. Every event they attend could boil over with people venting their outrage about education and in Booker’s case, the abuses of pharmaceutical firms.
Linda that’s great news!
Think of it this way. Every one that funds, works for or supports the California Charter School Association is like a Trump clone with the same narcissistic tendencies.
That means they can’t be trusted and will use every dirty trick imaginable to achieve their greed based agenda.
Give these scum the benefit of a doubt and a grain of trust, and turn your back on them, and they will stab you with a sword and run it through your heart; then kick your body into the gutter while they laugh all the way to the bank.
If Newsome picked the members of the task force himself, he can’t be trusted.
But there is another possibility. TFA has been infiltrating the White House and both Houses of Congress in addition to every state held office possible with their recruits. Every TFA that finishes their two-year stint, is promised a position of influence and after all these years, TFA vultures and leaches have spread like leukemia through the marrow of our state and federal governments with one goal: subvert the Constitution Republic and end the democracy.
I wonder if Newsom has one or more former TFA recruits on his staff that used their two years as a fake teacher to claim they had education credentials, and Newsom trusted that claim to appoint them to come up with a list of candidates for the Charter Task Force.
I doubt if Newsom had the time to do it himself. He had to trust someone else and it is possible he was “punked” by those TFA infiltrators.
Mad Max @ Thurmondome
This is not true about Gavin!!! You are making lots of good people bark up the wrong tree!
David,
Gavin can prove the point by getting rid of his establishment Dem chief of staff from CAP- Ann O’Leary and replacing her with a Justice Democrat.
He can oppose the proposal from PPIC that seeks to destroy democratic decision making in California’s higher ed. “Coordinating California’s Higher Education System” (March 2019)
And, he can make a point of distancing himself from privatizers, Rep. Susan Davis and George Miller (Bipartisan Policy Center).
There are billionaires behind every door exploiting the people through corporate Dems and the GOP.
That’s a bold claim that you need to elaborate on, David.
I don’t see Gavin Newsom as having contributed much to the State. As I said before, another Gray Davis…
Who wants to stay on the good side of billionaires at the expense of communities and their children? Answer- “Charlatans profiting off of monetized starvation and exploitation of schools.” – a quote from Dr. Keith Benson
Given my combination of having researched and documented the charter industry for years, plus my recently acquired legal education, I would have been the perfect candidate for this task force.
The fact that you are uniquely qualified disqualifies you.:-)
Agreed.
Reportedly, students are suing Stanford for cheapening their degrees- cause of the lawsuit, this weeks’ arrests in the cheating scandal. IMO, there is no university more deserving of scrutiny about its values …unless it’s the University of Southern California.
The Education Departments at Stanford, USC and UCLA are all suspect.
One of the first administrators who should be ousted is the President of the University of California, Janet Napolitano. She’s been linked to a Walton-funded organization that has as its goal, privatization of K-12.
The Dean of USC’s Ed Dept. is a Fellow of the Gates-funded Pahara, which is omitted from her bio. It’s inexplicable that an accrediting board is chaired by her because board members who presumably elected her include AFT and NEA executives.
Well, Yale is also pretty deserving, although the Yale President is trying desperately to distance Yale from the scandal by painting Yale as the victim, assuring everyone that the coach is no longer at Yale and that no one else had any inkling what was going on.
It IS curious that the coach is no longer at Yale. Perhaps she did not bring in enough bribes.
Striking, picketing, and protesting in the rain with so many brothers and sisters was inspiring, and really difficult. It was well worth it. Best thing I ever got to do. We won smaller classes, most importantly. We also won a recommendation by our charter loving school board and investment banking, breakup artist superintendent for this committee, and of a moratorium. We didn’t get the moratorium. Not to put words in UTLA President Alex Capito-Pearl’s mouth, but we will get from the task force an admittance that charters drain funds from public schools and therefore an endorsement of the moratorium, or we will go back out on strike. Rain or shine, we WILL walk the line. The pressure is on, folks. Newsom and Thurmond know it.
That’s exactly the way to get it done, LCT…keep the pressure on/hold their feet to the fire.
When we strike, we win.
Amen! Keep fighting!
SEIU 99 is the labor arm of Eli Broad. Lester Garcia makes 7 pro-charter members on the task force, not 6. SEIU 99 just spent 1 million dollars opposing Jackie Goldberg for LAUSD school board. There is a revolving door of leadership between the Broad Foundation and SEIU 99. SEIU 99 represents workers involved in construction. Eli Broad is the biggest real estate developer in the US. Let’s get our numbers straight – it’s 7, not 6.