On Thursday the California State Board will decide about the fate of Thrive Charter School in San Diego. The district refused to renew the charter, saying that it is a failing school. The County Office of Education rejected Thrive’s appeal. Thrive now goes to the State Board with a final appeal. Thursday’s meeting will be the first in which Linda Darling-Hammond will chair the State Board.
So we will learn whether the State Board Will side with the district or with a failing charter.
Tom Ultican has written about Thrive in the past. He recently received an unsolicited letter from someone who worked as a sub at Thrive.
I can’t tell you how angry this post made me. I felt outraged and frustrated. It is not just about privatization. It is about the purchase of an entire state by one family. How can anyone teach civics in Arkansas when one family owns everything?
This post will make your head spin. Public schools in communities of color are taken over by the state, and charter schools open. One high-powered chain. spreads it’s tentacles across the state, scooping up the best students. A rotating cast of characters plays musical chairs at the state board, the state education department, and superintendencies.
The schools targeted for closure and privatization are schools that enroll mostly children of color. Everyone feels powerless to stop the Walton train.
Behind it all: ALEC, the Koch brothers, and the Walton Family. The Walton Family owns everything and every body.
Schools? Education? An afterthought.
This saga reads like a gangster tale. The mob always wins.
I was contacted by a minister in Little Rock who asked, what can we do? My advice: civil disobedience. Mass protests. Marches. Demonstrations. Chain yourselves to the schoolhouse doors. Nothing else will work. The greatest enemy is complacency, apathy, hopelessness. Faced with the unlimited power of a family that owns the state government, it is easy to feel hopelessness. But resistance is the only path. The other way, the status quo, is servitude.
When the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives last fall, a great champion of working people, children, and public schools was restored as chair of a key committee overseeing the social safety net. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut is determined to protect the federal funding on which millions of people depend. Trump wants to increase military spending.
WASHINGTON, DC — Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), Chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, today released the following statement regarding President Trump’s 2020 budget.
“For the third year in a row, President Trump has released a budget that is cruel and reckless. His administration has proposed $21 billion in cuts to programs at the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education—cuts that will crush critical programs that serve working people and middle-class families. This is not hyperbole. President Trump actually wants to cut Medicare, Medicaid, home energy assistance for seniors and people with disabilities, groundbreaking medical research, tools that help local communities fight poverty, job training programs, funding to enforce our trade agreements, pre-school grants, teen pregnancy prevention programs, anti-hunger programs like SNAP, afterschool programs, Pell Grants, federal work study programs, and much more.”
“It is disheartening to see a budget that would dismantle so many programs that people rely on every day. It would be a cold day in hell before I helped pass a budget like this—one that hurts the American people in order to lavish tax cuts on millionaires, billionaires, corporations, and special interests. Instead, Democrats will continue fighting for working people, the middle class, and the most vulnerable.”
Some cuts President Trump’s budget proposes within the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education include:
Department of Labor
Cuts Job Corps by $703 million
Cuts the Bureau of International Labor Affairs by $68 million
Cuts Women’s Bureau by $10 million
Eliminates job training for Native Americans and Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers (-$143 million)
Eliminates Senior Community Service Employment (-$400 million)
Eliminates Susan Harwood Training Grants (-$10.5 million)
Department of Health and Human Services
Cuts the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $5.4 billion
Cuts the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by $750 million
Cuts the Health Resources and Services Administration by $1 billion, eliminating most programs that support training for health professions, including nursing
Eliminates the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) (-$3.7 billion)
Eliminates the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) (-$1.7 billion per year)
Eliminates the Community Service Block Grant (CSBG) (-$725 million per year)
Eliminates Preschool Development Grants (-$250 million per year)
Eliminates the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (-$108 million per year)
Department of Education
Eliminates numerous programs, including:
Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants (-$2 billion)
Afterschool programs (-$1.2 billion)
Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants (-$1.2 billion)
Basketball Star Kevin Johnson was Mayor of Sacramento. He married Michele Rhee, ex-face of the privatization movement. Before their marriage, Johnson founded St. Hope Academy charter schools in Sacramento.
What has St.Hope got to do with Tony Thurmond’s Task Force on the fiscal impact of charters?
One member of the task force, Margaret Fortune, was the superintendent of St. Hope Academy. A graduate of Berkeley, she has stellar academic credentials. Nothing on her resume, however, refers to experience as a teacher or a principal. She is now board chair of the California Charter Schools Association, the powerful lobby for charter schools.
Another member of the task force is Ed Manansala, who is Superintendent of the El Dorado County Office, which runs a SELPA, providing special education services for students in charter schools. El Dorado County’s SELPA offers low prices and competes for students with disabilities in districts hundreds of miles away. How they are able to provide services to students in distant and far-flung districts is not clear.
A reader sent this additional information.
“Ed Manansala used to work at Sac Charter HS as a Principal of one of the small schools (School of Business), when Margaret Fortune was Superintendent of St. HOPE public schools. When she resigned to take over The Fortune School (her Dad’s teacher prep program), Ed became Superintendent of St. HOPE before moving back into the public sector as El Dorado County Superintendent. “
I googled and indeed Ed Manansala was principal and superintendent of Kevin Johnson’s St. Hope Academy Charter High School in Sacramento before he became County Superintendent in El Dorado.
So, yes, indeed, a majority of the members of the task force that is supposed to scrutinize the fiscal impact of charters on public schools have direct connections to the charter industry.
The membership of the task force does not inspire confidence in its judgment or independence.
The question remains: Why did Tony Thurmond and Gavin Newsom give a majority of the seats on this task force to people directly connected to the charter industry, which enrolls only 10% of the students in the state? This is especially curious since the same charter industry spent many millions trying to defeat both Thurmond and Newsom.
Another Question: Did they think no one would notice?
Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic is part of the Polk Award-winning team that investigated charter school frauds, scams, and abuses.
This is the second part of an article in which he describes the mistreatment of students and the state’s failure to investigate complaints.
He writes:
“Charter and district schools are both publicly funded schools, but they are vastly different in how they’re governed.
“School districts have boards elected by local voters. Those boards hire superintendents who are responsible for personnel and policies. Board meetings are typically held at least monthly and are open to the public.
“Charter schools boards, meanwhile, are appointed by the charter owner, who in some cases is also on the board. Some Arizona charter schools have only two board meetings a year, each lasting 10 minutes. In some cases, a charter owner determines who is allowed to address the board.
“A Brown University study from 2014 found charter schools, in general, because of their autonomy face less scrutiny of their finances, and the lack of oversight has led to numerous cases of fraud across the country.
“Anabel Aportela, a research director for the Arizona School Boards Association who had a similar role with the Arizona Charter Schools Association, said members of district school boards are “accountable to their communities and voters in their districts,” but charter school board members are not.
“The proposed changes would not necessarily help a situation like the Georges’ because the bill does not guarantee parents access to a charter school’s board of directors. It also does not prevent a charter owner from stacking a board with friends and relatives.
“The bill has passed the Senate Education Committee and is working its way through that chamber.
“In Arizona, with minimal access to a local charter board to air complaints, typically the public’s only recourse is to appeal to the state Charter Board, an 11-member body mostly appointed by the governor.
“The Charter Board, with just 11 employees, is tasked with monitoring more than 500 Arizona charter schools. That means only a small fraction of complaints are investigated, The Republic has found.
“An analysis of 89 public complaints to the Charter Board from the past four years released to The Republicunder the state’s Public Records Law, showed only 12 percent were investigated. The rest were closed after the charter operator responded in writing, often denying the allegations.
“Among the cases that went without investigation were complaints of bullying, refusal to provide student transcripts, a 5-year-old boy leaving campus unsupervised, violations of the Open Meetings Law, failure to provide special education services, classroom temperatures being too cold, and a teacher cutting a girl’s hair without parents’ permission.
“In some instances, schools changed course following a complaint to the Charter Board. The student who was unable to get his transcripts from Arizona Call-a-Teen Center for Excellence obtained them after he filed a complaint.
“The state’s Charter Board not only investigates few cases, it also lets parents see little information about the complaints themselves. The Charter Board does not make public on its website the number of complaints against a charter school, nor does it post them online even though complaints are public record.
“Gov. Doug Ducey — following a yearlong investigation by The Republic that found widespread financial abuses, profiteering, and insider deals at charter schools — has proposed adding 10 additional regulators to the Charter Board. The additional staff could result in more complaints being investigated.
“Ducey’s office estimates the new Charter Board staff will more than quadruple the number of visits to schools to investigate fraud. Currently, just 15 percent of Arizona’s charter schools receive a site inspection each year to make sure a school is accurately reporting its finances and enrollment to the state.
The kinds of cases the Charter Board doesn’t investigate
“After a 5-year-old boy wandered away from Mesa Arts Academy on Aug. 15, 2016, while on “time out” his parents complained to the Charter Board.
“In its response to the August 2016 complaint, Mesa Arts Academy confirmed the child had left campus, and that police had been called before a staff member found the child. The school added it had since installed security cameras.
“The Charter Board elected not to investigate further.
“The Charter Board also took a pass when a 15-year-old girl at Heritage Academy Gateway said a male classmate put his hand under her shirt and groped her.
“The girl told her parents about the alleged incident in early September, and the parents notified the school. School officials, in turn, reported the incident to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
“The Republic typically does not disclose the identity of alleged victims of sexual abuse.
“The day after the incident was reported, the boy transferred from Heritage Academy to another charter school.
“The girl’s family said that allowed the boy, whose mother is a Heritage administrator and member of its board, to avoid discipline.
“According to the girl’s parents, the boy continues to visit the Heritage Academy Gateway campus every afternoon.
“Calls to Heritage for comment were not returned.
“The girl said the incident has caused her to see a therapist for anxiety.
“I don’t like seeing him on campus,” she told The Republic. “It’s kind of scary to see him in that situation.”
“Her father said the family asked Jared Taylor, Heritage Academy’s charter holder, CEO and board chairman, to keep the boy off campus.
“It’s pretty little what we have asked for,” the father said in an interview.
“Records the school provided to the Charter Board in response to the complaint indicate Heritage Academy denied their request.”
The Arizona Republic recently won a Polk Award for its outstanding coverage of charter corruption.
Craig Harris, a member of the investigative team, writes here about how charters ignore parents’ complaints.
When a student is mistreated, there is no re ourse. The boarddoesnt care. It protects the school,not the student.
Students in charter schools have no rights. The parents of the student in the incident described herewithdrew him from the school.
Harris writes:
“Evan George had finished his classes for the day and was hanging out with friends at American Leadership Academy’s Queen Creek campus, when two staff members approached and accused him of vaping.
“Evan, 16, says he was doing a trick with his mouth thatproduces a plume of moist air that resembles vapor from an electronic cigarette.
“His explanation didn’t convince the charter school’s staffers.
“Evan was ordered to the administration office, where Athletic Director Rich Edwards took him into a room and searched him, looking for a vape pen, which would have been a violation of school policy.
“He told me to take my pants down, and he put his fingers in my underwear,” said Evan, who is a junior. “I felt scared.”
“The search didn’t turn up a vaping device, according to records the school provided to the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools.
“ALA still suspended Evan from school for eight days.
“His parents, Chris and Kimberlie George, said both the Dec. 11 search and the suspension were wrong.
“The athletic director inappropriately touched their son, they said. And the school suspended Evan without proof he’d had been vaping, even though their son’s only prior disciplinary issues were for wearing torn jeans and chewing gum, they said.
“But when the Georges sought an independent review of Evan’s suspension, they found they had nowhere to turn.
“Arizona’s charter schools are primarily run by private companies. They must have a governing board, but school owners get to pick who’s on the board, so many are stocked with relatives, friends and even the charter’s owner. In some instances, boards have just one member — the charter operator.
“American Leadership Academy Queen Creek student says he was strip searched over vape trick
16-year-old Evan George says he was strip searched in December 2018 after performing a trick that made it appear vapor was coming from his mouth.
“Beyond the school, parents can only turn to the state Charter Board. And regulators there, because of limited resources and limited authority, rarely investigate such complaints against schools, an Arizona Republic investigation shows.
“The result is a lack of independent oversight that leaves students and families at some charter schools, in disagreements big and small, with no recourse to challenge school officials’ actions — even if they think those moves inhibit their students’ academic progress or personal safety.
“ALA Queen Creek officials denied the Georges’ request for an appeal hearing before ALA’s Board of Directors, which is composed of friends of ALA founder Glenn Way.
“Evan was never afforded due process,” Chris George said. “He wasn’t able to speak to his accusers, and the dismissal hearing was a farce. There was no interest in what the truth was.”
The Arizona Republic has previously written about Glenn Way, the founder of this charter chain.
On July 11, 2018, the Arizona Republic described how Way has made millions of dollars through hischarter chain.
“When Glenn Way moved to the East Valley at the end of the Great Recession, he might have been looking for a fresh start.
“The charter school operator was deep in debt to the IRS, had sought bankruptcy protection, and recently resigned from the Utah Legislature after his wife filed a protective order against him, public records show.
“Arizona offered other opportunities for someone in his line of work: A more lightly regulated charter school industry that’s well-funded.
“At his American Leadership Academy, which he launched in June 2009, he promised students would find “the best educational experience … in a moral and wholesome environment.”
“Thanks partly to Arizona’s favorable charter school laws and lucrative no-bid contracts with ALA, Way would find new wealth.
“The schools, which have made patriotism central to their brand, including red, white or blue student apparel, have been a hit in the conservative East Valley. American Leadership — which bears the same name as a charter school Way and his wife, Shelina, operated in Spanish Fork, Utah — has over nine yearsgrown to a dozen campuses with 8,354 students in Florence, Gilbert, Mesa, Queen Creek and San Tan Valley.
“Way’s own development and finance companies bought the land and then built most of the school buildings. Then, they sold or leased them to American Leadership Academy, where Way, until last year, was board chairman.
“An Arizona Republic review of property records shows that during ALA’s nine-year expansion, businesses owned by or tied to Way made about $37 million on real estate deals associated with the schools — funded largely by the Arizona tax dollars allocated to his charter schools.
“Way disputes the profit figure, saying undisclosed capital costs tied to the campuses, such as street improvements, trimmed profits to $18.4 million. He did not provide documents to show a lower profit.
“But building and selling the schools weren’t the only ways he has profited. Another one of Way’s firms is paid at least $6 million a year to operate them under a contract with American Leadership, records show.
“An Arizona charter schools watchdog said regardless of the precise size of the multimillion-dollar profit, it’s clear that Way has profited handsomely — like other charter operators — using Arizona’s loose charter school laws.
“Meanwhile, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools is investigating allegations of financial mismanagement at ALA.
“Way said there has been no wrongdoing.
“Charter schools were not designed for people to make a profit,” said Chuck Essigs, government relations director of the Arizona School Association of Business Officials.
“Way disagrees.
“The (charter school) law is silent on the question of profit, and for good reason. Arizona families will only benefit if more operators of quality charter schools are enticed to expand their offerings in our state,” said Way, who is building a home in Queen Creek valued at nearly $1 million.”
It must be the height of patriotism to get rich from public funding intended for schools.
We know a few things about the Sackler family. Their family fortune is vast, about $14 billion. Their fortune was derived primarily from the sale of highly addictive opioids. More than 200,000 people have died due to opioid addiction. The Sackler nameis emblazoned on museums, libraries, and universities. Curiously, Jonathan Sackler has been a major finder of charter schools in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and other states. He has been a major founder of the no-excuses chain called Achievement First.
“An examination of 990 donor tax forms draws a wider picture of how Sackler largely came to underwrite many pro-charter entities over several years.
“Sackler made donations to charter schools and charter groups dating back to at least 2003, including a $50,000 unrestricted gift specifically to New Haven charter school Amistad Academy, which received $365,000 from the foundation in 2004 and $20,000 in 2005. The foundation also donated to the Arizona-based Alliance for School Choice in 2004 and 2008, and donated $250,000 to pro-charter organization ConnCAN in 2004 before its official launch, for which he is listed as an interlocking directorate.
“According to forms filed by the Bouncer Foundation, which is Sackler’s foundation, Impact for Education, a New Haven-based “philanthropic advisory practice,” received nearly $100,000 from the foundation for offering “philanthropic advice” in 2013.
“The year “2013 was the heyday for charters and charter expansion,” said Wendy Lecker, a senior attorney at the Education Law Center and a contributing columnist to Hearst Connecticut Media.
“Two years prior, New Haven-based Amistad Academy charter school co-founder Stefan Pryor was named commissioner of the state Department of Education. Also, around that time, then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy publicly stood with charter school advocates, Lecker said.
“(Sackler’s) fingerprints are all over the charter movement, particularly in our neck of the woods, and that’s another stain on the charter movement,” Lecker said. “The most vulnerable are in their schools, and for the charter industry to take this money when they’re claiming to help these kids is pretty questionable.”
“The foundation’s yearly reimbursement for Impact for Education’s annual philanthropic advice increased to $130,454 in 2014 and, after a payment of $90,000 in 2015, was reported to be $470,000 in 2016 and $262,500 in 2017, the most recent year available on searchable public databases.
“Impact for Education engages forward-thinking philanthropists to catalyze systemic change in public education,” the practice says on its website.
“Impact for Education’s president and founder, Alex Johnston, also co-founded the pro-charter advocacy group Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCAN, with Sackler in 2005. Johnston served as executive director, while Sackler sat as chairman of the board.
“According to his biography on Impact for Education’s website, Johnston also is a board member of FaithACTS for Education in Bridgeport, a registered nonprofit coalition of religious education advocates that received $700,000 from the Bouncer Foundation between 2015 and 2017. The group’s founder, the Rev. William McCullough, told the Connecticut Post that the group believes in school choice.
“Neither Johnston, a former member of the New Haven Board of Education, nor Impact for Education returned a request for comment.
“In 2009, the Bouncer Foundation had begun making gifts to Yale University that would ultimately culminate in a $3 million endowment for the Richard Sackler and Jonathan Sackler Professorship, but other donations effectively ceased until 2011, when the foundation gave $100,000 to Students for Education Reform and $5,000 to the conservative Alliance for School Choice. After an austere 2012, the foundation donated to eight groups affiliated with charter schools, including ConnCAN and its subsequently founded national counterpart 50CAN, Students for Education Reform, New Haven’s Booker T. Washington Academy, the Northeast Charter Schools Network. In 2013, Achievement First, the charter network co-founded by Dacia Toll, and which operates Amistad Academy, was named a recipient of a donation….
“In 2013, Achievement First, which runs 35 other schools in three states, received $151,571 from the Bouncer Foundation. The contribution was increased to $250,000 in 2014 and 2015 and was more than doubled in 2016, when the network received $600,000 from the foundation. By 2017, the foundation’s gift to Achievement First was $350,000.
“For 2013, 990 forms show Achievement First reported $29,253,402 in contributions and $40,396,539 in revenue, so contributions were about 72.4 percent of revenue. In the most recent year for which data is available, Achievement First reported for 2017 about $22 million in contributions and grants, of $46 million in revenue.
“For the entirety of the Bouncer Foundation donations, Sackler sat on Achievement First’s Board of Directors.”
Wendy Lecker gave a good explanation of the appeal of charter schools to the Uber-rich like Sackler.
“The Education Law Center’s Lecker said wealthy donors receive tax incentives for donating to charter schools, so a number of wealthy charter donors are seeking financial advantages. However, she believes there’s also a basis in undermining public services.
“The whole privatizing of public education is an effort of the uber-wealthy to tamp down the expectations of what people should want in the public sphere,” she said. “A smaller public sphere in terms of public education and local democracy means people have less of an expectation of what they can get from the public.”
“Lecker said she believes a number of philanthropists believe they are doing a good thing, but the fact that some, like Sackler, “are so aggressively involved, and have been since the beginning, means they have to know what goes on in charter schools and what impact they have on funding for public schools.”
“Advocates for district schools such as Joyner and Lecker see charter schools as a movement to undermine teacher unions and hand governmental control of education to charter management companies and moneyed interests.”
Mercedes Schneider is a master at tracking down financial records.
In this post, she shows the direct connections between the Sackler’s billions–derived from the sale of OxyContin–and the growth of the charter movement.
OxyContin is a highly addictive painkiller. It has been responsible thus far for more than 200,000 deaths.
The Sackler family is now being sued individually by the State Attorney General of Massachusetts, who claims that they knowingly pushed a drug that they knew to be deadly.
Meanwhile, museums, libraries, and universities are debating whether to keep the Sackler name on the buildings they endowed.
Some of the choice-promoting organizations that Sackler funded have a decidedly rightwing bent: the Philanthropy Roundtable is an organization of conservative foundations; the Alliance for School Choice; and the now-defunct Black Alliance for Educational Options were all fronts for DeVos-style privatization. The NewSchools Venture Fund is the uber-fund of chartering. Campbell Brown’s Partnership for Education Justice got $200,000 of Sackler money to attack teacher tenure and unions. Brown’s “The 74” website got a nice chuck of opioid money, as did KIPP and TFA. Lots more money for charters and charter promoters, including the faux “graduate” school called Relay. Oh, and money too for the libertarian Institute of Justice, which is to the right of DeVos.
So the money rolled in from opioids and went out the door to fund charter schools.
More than 200,000 people have died because of opioid addiction.
Governor Raimondo of Rhode Island is not returning contributions from Jonathan Sackler, although other elected officials have done so.
The Sackler family is worth about $14 billion based on the success of their addictive drug. Jonathan Sackler is a major donor to charter schools. He founded ConnCAN and is a board member of 50CAN and other charter-promoting organizations.
I have often wondered whether their grand mansions are haunted by the ghosts of those killed by OxyContin.
A report on Monday by Reuters said that embattled OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma is considering bankruptcy to shield itself from more than 1,600 lawsuits, including by the State of Rhode Island and by multiple Rhode Island cities and towns.
“The potential move shows how Purdue and its wealthy owners, the Sackler family, are under pressure to respond to mounting litigation accusing the company of misleading doctors and patients about risks associated with prolonged use of its prescription opioids,” reported Reuters.
The Sacklers rank as the 19th richest family in the United States according to Business Insider.
Jonathan Sackler, who has been a board member of Purdue Pharma, and his wife Mary Corson, are significant donors to Governor Gina Raimondo. Raimondo, who has said in the past she supports the Rhode Island lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, has refused to donate or return the donations from the Sacklers.
In contrast, Lt Governor Dan McKee donated campaign donations from Sackler and Corson to Rhode Island agencies that treat substance abuse.
The story of the task force charged with reviewing the charter law and the fiscal impact of charters on public schools continues to evolve, and not in a good way.
Of the 11 members of the task force appointed by Tony Thurmond, in consultation with Governor Gavin Newsom, at least six are directly connected to the charter industry.
How can this be possible when the charter industry supported former Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa against Gavin Newsom, and when the charter industry spent millions to defeat Tony Thurmond, outspending his supporters by a margin of 2-1?
Here is the task force with new information about one member, the superintendent of El Dorado County:
The task force members are:
Cristina de Jesus, president and chief executive officer, Green Dot Public Schools California (charter chain);
Dolores Duran, California School Employees Association;
Margaret Fortune, California Charter Schools Association board chair; Fortune School of Education, president & CEO;
Lester Garcia, political director, SEIU Local 99 (Local 99 took $100,000 from Eli Broad to oppose Jackie Goldberg, a critic of charters);
Alia Griffing, political director, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 57;
Beth Hunkapiller, educator and administrator, Aspire Public Schools (charter chain);
Erika Jones, board of directors, California Teachers Association;
Ed Manansala, superintendent, El Dorado County; board president, California County Superintendents Educational Services Association; the El Dorado County Office set up a Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) specifically to service students with disabilities in charter schools and wooed charter students away from their local districts; El Dorado supposedly offers services to disabled students enrolled in charter schools who live hundreds of miles away;
Cindy Marten, superintendent, San Diego Unified School District;
Gina Plate, vice president of special education, California Charter Schools Association (charter lobby);
Edgar Zazueta, senior director, policy & governmental relations, Association of California School Administrators (ACSA endorsed Marshall Tuck against Tony Thurmond).
By my count, six members of the 11-member panel are directly connected to the charter industry, including two from the lobbying organization CCSA. That’s a majority.
As a supporter of public schools, I supported Tony Thurmond as best I could on this blog. I personally contributed to his campaign. I thought that his election and the election of Gavin Newsom meant that charter schools in California would be held to the same standards of academic, financial, and ethical accountability as public schools; I hoped that the state would stop stacking the deck in favor of charters. I hoped that necessary reforms would eliminate shady operators and grifters and put a halt to the unchecked proliferation of unstable, unsound charter schools.
Now, I am not so sure.
The fox is in charge of the henhouse.
If you are as outraged as I am, if you feel you have been had, please contact Superintendent Tony Thurmond.
Only 10% of the students in the state of California attend charter schools.
Why do their representatives get to police themselves?
Why do their representatives get to decide whether they are hurting the public schools that most students attend?
Why does the charter industry get to decide whether it is okay for them to drain funds and impose budget cuts on public schools?
Diane Ravitch's blog 