In this post, Matthew Gardner Kelly of Pennsylvania State University explains why demands for charter moratoriums are growing.
The root of the problem is money. Public schools in most states were hurt by the recession of 2008 and funding never recovered. Adding competition with charters made the financial situation worse.
“In Pennsylvania, the local district makes a tuition payment to the charter school enrolling each student from that district. The payment is based on per-pupil spending for similar students. For example, if a fourth grader leaves a public school in the Pittsburgh School District to attend a charter, the Pittsburgh School District is required to pay the charter school $16,805.99 – which is the average amount the district spends on a student in the district.
“At first glance, it perhaps makes sense to have money follow the children. The problem is that increased charter enrollments rarely allow a district to save as much as they lose in charter tuition. As a result, without additional revenue from state governments or local taxes, districts are forced to make budget cuts and spend less on the students who remain in traditional public schools.
“Consider an example. Bethlehem Area School District paid $25 million in charter school tuition payments in 2017. It was not possible to save $25 million with the students gone, however, because of the way the students were distributed across the district.
“The students enrolled in charter schools came from 13 different grades in 22 different schools. Since students moving to a charter were rarely all of the students from a single school, grade or class, the district was not able to reduce staff or close classes to help cover the charter tuition payments. If next year’s third grade class goes from 28 students to 26 students in a school, district officials still need to keep that third grade class open. They cannot pay that teacher 2/28th less, heat 2/28th less of that classroom, or reduce the operation of electricity in that classroom by 2/28th.
“Yet, if the class went from 28 to 26 students because two students enrolled in charters, the district needs to make tuition payments for the missing students. When those payments are repeated and distributed unevenly across schools and grades, it adds up to millions of dollars. Students move between districts all the time, but nowhere near the scale– nor with the fiscal impact – that takes place because of charter expansion. Bethlehem Area School District had 1,900 students, about 12 percent of the district’s population, enrolled in charter schools in 2017.”
This kind of fiscal drain is unsustainable. The vast majority of students are harmed so that 12% can go to charters. If it continues, the public schools will be irreparably damaged. This is not sound policy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But this is nothing new – that’s always been the case. I think the reason why charters are now losing momentum is that privatization is no longer a good liberal cause. It’s become clear how much the “liberal” privatization agenda overlaps with the “Republican” agenda and it’s getting harder to pretend it’s about civil rights or equal opportunity.
Well-said! More people are taking off the Obama goggles and are realizing under the soothing, charismatic talk was a Wall-Street sycophant more than willing to deliver what the hedge funders wanted. That included the destruction of public schools to further the privatization juggernaut.
When he left the Oval Office, Obama was rewarded handsomely for his deference to them; $64 million book deals do not fall out of the sky.
I miss Obama’s dignity, intellect, and gravitas. I don’t miss anything about his education policies, which were seamlessly interwoven with NCLB. I recall apublic event where Margaret Spellings was in the audience, and President Obama hailed her and said that Race to the Top was built on the foundation of NCLB. True. Sad.
I too miss Obama’s dignity, too.
But, I do have my issues with him and in a nutshell here are my big three:
DEFORMS. He knew exactly what he was doing. He’s a DFER.
He clapped in public on TV along with Arne when the first public high school in the nation was closed. For me, watching Obama clap with Arne was despicable.
Re: public education … Obama has no clue and neither do the rest of the DFERS.
Eleanor: BINGO! I agree totally with you so I am quoting you here for the record:
“Well-said! More people are taking off the Obama goggles and are realizing under the soothing, charismatic talk was a Wall-Street sycophant more than willing to deliver what the hedge funders wanted. That included the destruction of public schools to further the privatization juggernaut.
“When he left the Oval Office, Obama was rewarded handsomely for his deference to them; $64 million book deals do not fall out of the sky.”
Dienne, you just summarized my new book in a sentence.
and thanks to much great writing, so many detailed posts, it feels as if finally a large percent of teachers and parents can now articulate why they are so unhappy
In some ways DeVos has been a huge boon to public schools simply because her naked hatred for them has inspired a protective backlash as it becomes inescapable what the privatization agenda reallt is. No more pretense that charters are goung to help public schools. DeVos doesn’t give a flying fig for your public school.
“Since the 19th century, American school reformers have focused on making schools and districts larger to lower costs and save money through economies of scale. But charter schools increase costs by removing these economies of scale and creating multiple school systems within the same district.”
So-called reform is based on so many false assumptions. We cannot run parallel systems for the same dollar amount. Competition (without more funding) will never make public schools better. The few charters that get better results cherry pick their students, and they often spend far more than public schools because they also receive funding from wealthy people looking to reduce their tax burden. The public schools have no such angels.
The truth is as Chiara has pointed out many times, public schools were not even considered when privatization was unleashed on public schools. In fact, there are many that are working hard to make public schools whither and die. We cannot afford to lose such a valuable public asset that has served our nation well. Privatization is no substitute for strong public education which is often the hub of community life.
Privatization is not sustainable. The goal of privatization is to move public money into private pockets with little to no educational value attached. Mass privatization harms students, teachers and communities. People need to defend their public schools against the barbarian horde of privatizers that seek to vandalize their public institutions. Privatization leads to defunding public education as education vandals invent new schemes to privatize through charters and various voucher schemes. Frankly, public schools offer a much better value and result as they are more efficient and effective than most privatized inventions.
Greetings, Not sure if different outside California however if students are “counseled” back to the local district the money remains with the charter. Which is why Dr. McKenna is advocating with the Board and our legislative staff legislation for ADA to be per student follow the student versus daily attendance which is how it originally used to be.
Carolyn
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In addition, there is no way that most if not all private sector, corporate charter schools can compete with public schools when they do not put the same amount of money into the classroom.
Most if not all Alt Right charter schools pay their administration and management a lot more and their teachers less. That is stealing money from the classroom — taking from children and giving to the greedy and corrupt.
To paraphrase this president’s “i’m untouchable” statement,
President Obama could stand in the middle of Times Square and shout “I love charter schools” and he’d still be a 1,000 times better than this despicable president. And, by now he’d have changed his views anyway.
It might have taken a decade, but I expect even President Obama would see the dark money buying boards, the 1% profiteering off kids, and the thousands of charter kids kicked out once their schools get their money and kicking out another batch before state testing – and he, too, would reverse the trend.
He drank the kool-aid, but he’s brilliant and he’d see (and admit) the errors of the reforms
You don’t think Obama was 100% bought and paid for by dark money? If he was so brilliant why didn’t he see charters for what they were all along? For that matter, why didn’t he see that it’s wrong for one executive to have the ability to order the assassination of U.S. citizens? Why didn’t he see that turning Libya from a functional society into a failed state was wrong? Why didn’t he see that turning Honduras over to a right-wing dictator with death-squad militias would cause (among other factors) the “crisis” at our southern border?
Or maybe he did see all of those things. Maybe he was just well-enough compensated not to care.
In 8 years, he never acknowledged the damage done by charters, and Duncan is still dinging their praises. I doubt Obama would have changed on this issue. He still hasn’t.