Bill Raden of Capital & Main presents us with this puzzle: how did it happen that seven of the 11 members of Gavin Newsom’s Task Force in charter school reform are part of the charter industry?
The Fox is in charge of the henhouse.
Since the Task Force is supposed to examine the fiscal impact of charters on public schools, why is the industry judging itself?
Shouldn’t the Task Force have been composed of public finance experts and others who are not tied to the industry?
Or, if the Task Force was supposed to be representative, shouldn’t the majority represent the almost 90% of families whose children attend public schools, not the 10% in charters?
Why are two members drawn directly from the lobby for the charter industry?
This Task Force is a blatant example of “capture” by the industry. It is akin to the tobacco industry taking control of a commission charged with examining the link between smoking and cancer.
it is an insult to public school parents and teachers, who wrongly assumed that Governor Newsom was not indebted to billionaires like Reed Hastings.
Who did the dirty deed? After talking to Tony Thurmond, I’m convinced he did not give the Task Force to the charter industry.
I’m betting that Gavin Newsom did it to placate the billionaires who love charters.
Does he need them for future campaigns?
The teachers and public school parents of California should be outraged.
If Tony Thurmond manages to get consensus from this Task Force That leads to reform, he deserves credit.
As the series published this past week in the Los Angeles Times showed, the Charter law enables corruption, prevents reasonable regulation, and encourages small districts to poach resources from other districts. The charter industry has fought any genuine accountability and transparency. It heedlessly collapses the efforts of a district like Oakland to recover a sound financial footing. Under the current law, charters in California are parasites, crippling their host.
The answer is not to remove the ability of local districts to control charter growth inside their boundaries but to empower them to make decisions about whether charters should open or close. The role of the state should be to police the fidelity and integrity of districts and charters, not to overrule districts when they reject a charter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
follow the $$$
Newsom certainly didn’t pick (or research) those board members himself — he’s not THAT hands-on and not that informed about the weeds of the charter-sector-vs.-public- education landscape. There’s some unknown insider influencing this.
This stacking of the deck is very very very blatant. Two avowed charter lobbyists from California Charter School Association. This is a thumb in the eye to CTA, which supported Newsom and Thurmond.
Yes, I agree, but Thurmond says he wasn’t responsible for that and I’m convinced Newsom merely acquiesced to someone’s picks (I have two firmly anti-charter friends who were on his education advisory committee during the campaign, so I have a decent idea of how much he actually knows). So the question is: Who is that influence? I’m asking around.
A colleague of mine was on Newsom’s Education transition team. He is a scholar who has written about charter schools. He was not invited to serve on the task force or on the “expert advisory” committee. Who is pulling the strings?
That’s the question. I bet your colleague will agree with my friends that this is not Newsom’s area of interest or expertise and he didn’t personally handpick a pro-charter committee, though.
Charter deeds, done dirt cheap
Note that guitarist Angus Young wears the charter outfit
If you’re havin’ trouble with the school board head
He’s givin’ you the blues
You want a charter but he wants it dead
Here’s what you gotta do
Pick up the phone
Eli is home
Call him any time
Just ring
36 24 36 hey
He “owns” the LA Times
Charter deeds, done dirt cheap
Charter deeds, done dirt cheap
Charter deeds, done dirt cheap
Charter deeds and they’re done dirt cheap
Charter deeds and they’re done dirt cheap
You got problems with the state or guv
They’re trying to take your charter
He promised public that “this will end”
That’s when the teardrops start, fellar
Pick up the phone
Eli’s alone
Or make a social call
Come right in
Forget about Gavin
We’ll have ourselves a ball
Charter deeds, done dirt cheap
Charter eeds, done dirt cheap
Charter deeds, done dirt cheap
Charter deeds and they’re done dirt cheap
Charter deeds and they’re done dirt cheap
If you got an order and you want it gone
But you ain’t got the guts
It keeps naggin’ at you night and day
Enough to drive ya nuts
Pick up the phone
Leave it alone
It’s time you made a stand
For No fee
He’s happy to be
Your back door man
Charter deeds, done dirt cheap
Charter deeds, done dirt cheap
Charter deeds, done dirt cheap
Charter deeds and they’re done dirt cheap yeah
Charter deeds and they’re done dirt cheap
PAC money, school board plants, LA Times
Done dirt cheap
Wall street ties, contracts, high fivin
Done dirt cheap
Charter deeds
Done dirt cheap
Charter deeds
Charter deeds
Charter deeds
Done dirt cheap
The LA Times was purchased by a billionaire with (apparently) no particular interest in charter schools. Eli Broad no longer subsidized education coverage. In the past, he paid $800,000 a year to the LA Times. No longer.
To own or to “own”, THAT is the question.
It’s pretty clear that the LA Times are simply trying to throw the public a bone or two with their recent articles highlighting fraud.
The L.A. Times was avidly pro-charter, anti-teacher and pro-“reform” — in its editorial positions and in the slant of its news coverage too — before Eli Broad started subsidizing the education coverage, but this presents the appearance that they were behaving that way to woo Broad, which is a flamboyant violation of journalistic ethics.
But the Times has now gone through a wrenching shakeup and then a rescue by, as you say, a new billionaire owner who doesn’t seem to have a dog in the education “reform” hunt. (I need to redo that metaphor so as not to malign dogs by associating them with education “reform”!)
They may not have a dog in the hunt, but they have a feret.
Pay close attention to the use of terminology in their recent (supposedly) “unbiased” coverage of charters.
It’s not what they say, but how they say it that matters most.
Like nearly all the country’s print newspapers, the LA Times’ readership has shifted toward the conservative side over the last 15 years.
It used to be that the Orange Country Register and the Los Angeles Daily News were the region’s stalwart conservative rags; the LA Times has fallen in line. It’s still as conservative as it was ten years ago, it’s just become more savvy regarding the way it presents its news. DOn’t be fooled.
I plan to let the Governor this was a mistake!
Hello Diane: As a general rule, corporate or oligarchic takeover schemes won’t just jump in and take over. They start by claiming they will make the present situation better, by offering bells-and-whistles, and by controlling the narrative until they gain control. It’s only then that they not only “starve the beast,” but kill it, or at least set the conditions for it to self-destruct.
One name for this interim aspect of the takeover scheme is: “public-private partnerships.” The fox puts one foot in the chicken-house, and then starts stealing eggs and killing chickens, one by one, until both feet are in (the task force of charter backers), they take the whole thing over, but still retain the name of the thing they killed: in this case, “public education” or derivatives of it–because the public is distracted and trusting, and often cannot see the worm in the pie or the cancer in the organ we think is healthy.
I believe in capitalism; BUT it depends on individual people (politicians and all) having a well-developed conscience and paying close attention to it. Lacking that, it depends on an open rather than closed circle of authority where the below is less and less likely to occur:
QUOTE FROM YOUR NOTE ABOVE: “. . . the Charter law enables corruption, prevents reasonable regulation, and encourages small districts to poach resources from other districts. The charter industry has fought any genuine accountability and transparency. It heedlessly collapses the efforts of a district like Oakland to recover a sound financial footing. Under the current law, charters in California are parasites, crippling their host.”
The current analogue is Barr keeping the Mueller report from Congress and the American Public: ” . . . enables corruption, prevents reasonable regulation, . . . fought any genuine accountability and transparency.” <–a closed, rather than an open circle of authority. CBK
The phony reform movement has been in control for a decade and more. None of its promises were realized. It’s a fraud.
The charter lobby is a many headed hydra with far reaching tentacles. Either Newsom or someone in his office is stocking the task force with a majority charter friendly members. Charters schools peddle their marketplace drivel when promoting charters, but behind the scenes the billionaires are gaming the system, buying influence to ensure that charters get the preferential treatment they want. The system is rigged because billionaires are a gigantic thumb on the scale. Charters are not about so-called choice. They are about moving money into private pockets. The wealthy charter advocates always make sure that decisions come from the top where it is easy to buy a few key people, and they almost never want a public vote on the issue because they know the decision would be truly democratic and representative of the people. The composition of this committee reflects the will of the wealthy. Billionaires most assuredly do not want real democracy to occur.
Corrrection: drivel, not dribble.
This situation is somewhat analogous to the Florida governor and legislature’s drive invalidate the overwhelming vote to restore voting rights to convicted felons who have served their sentences. I expect those kind of shenanigans in Florida, not California.
LA teachers should not have returned to the classroom until this charter outrage was settled to the benefit of teachers, students and public schools. Once striking teachers leave the public square and follow their insistent union leaders’ demands that they end their strike prematurely, the teachers have surrended the only power they have that counts, withdrawing their labor and letting Newsom and Thurmond watch over the thousands of suddenly unsupervised k-12 kids. Furtive manipulations to sabotage progressive advances are typical strategies of corporate insiders running the status quo–here in NY, the DINO Gov. Cuomo refused to support legislation strictly regularing the infamous “pay-to-play” financing of state legislators. Guess what he did instead–he appointed a commission to “study” the issue. Renegade Cuomo and his Dem insiders also dismissed the 25-year legal and electoral battle to force NYState to finance NYCity schools adequately. Lessons here are obvious–when teachers strike with community support, they use the most formidable power already in their hands, in NY or LA. When union leaders force teachers to settle too soon for too little and let the insiders handle the rest, teachers and students and the public sector lose. If the renegade teacher union leaders of NY and NYC had prepared teachers to strike until they won, the illegal under-funding of NYC schools and the illegal over-funding of crony politicians would have ended.
“Betsy DeVos
Despite what some may try to tell you…Education Freedom Scholarships are privately funded and do not take any money from public schools.”
It’s incredible that ed reform believe this is positive sales point for their “movement”- sure it’s true that they provide absolutely no value and perform no work on behalf of students and families in public schools, but they promise they won’t ACTIVELY HARM those schools and students. The 90%. Of students and families they disdain.
The absolute best we can hope for with the echo chamber in charge is NEGLECT and the complete exclusion of public schools from any and all efforts and support. That’s their political argument. We’re supposed to pay them for this.
Really low expectations. We can do better. We could hire and pay people who actually provide some benefit! That’s within the realm of possibility.
We really don’t have to choose between abuse and neglect. No one should be paying for that.
Education scholarships are another name for vouchers. Corporations and wealthy individuals divert taxes to private schools,so there is less money for public schools. The donors get a tax credit.
Win for the donors. Win for the private religious schools. Loss for the public Schools. Loss for the children who get vouchers and go to schools where teachers are uncertified and the Bible is the textbook.
Posted at Oped news https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Have-Charters-Already-Game-in-General_News-Billionnaires_Charter-School-Failure_Charter-Schools_Learning-190402-828.html#comment729649
and I added/quoted Catherine Kings comment in the comment section. She nailed it
The employees of the US Department of Education would like to assure you that they don’t, in fact, intend to harm public schools and public school students with their singular focus on pushing their voucher plan.
Please pay them for this and thank them. It’s incredibly gracious and generous on their part. Why, we should hire more of them! Let’s continue to hire thousands of public employees who do not intend to harm existing public schools. Because that’s the job description and obviously the absolute best we’ll ever get. They MAY permit public schools to exist.
What it took in Ohio was every newspaper in the state covering the issue for 2 years and the single largest financial scandal in the history of the state.
Even then the echo chamber still dominate, but a few dissenters were permitted to speak, and that helped.
No one was held accountable at all. The main architects were actually promoted. They never got the money back, either.
The state of Ohio will pursue an individual who owes the state until the ends of the earth, but they found themselves mysteriously powerless in the case of ECOT. It’s the most corrupt thing I’ve ever witnessed, and it took place on the front pages of newspapers and in county courts.
That’s clout. Raw political power. The governor and attorney general and auditor were powerless. Compare to Columbus Public Schools, where they sent armed agents in to seize attendance records and 4 people went to jail.
Reformers still Own Colorado. With DFER dollars, they swept the Denver board. One of them is governor, another is senator. Polis and Bennett.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
In Californa, corporate charter schools are parasites, a terminal cancer killing public education, and Governor Newsom is allegedly helping the corporate charter industry cover up its own crimes.