Caitlin Reilly of “Inside Philanthropy” writes that philanthropies no longer see charter schools as the means to transform American education. Although a few have doggedly doubled down on their commitment to charters, there seems to be a broad shift underway. Reilly calls it an “inflection point,” a point where change is undeniable.
She writes:
“Though charter schools have acquired a powerful ally on the national level in the form of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, local backlash and scaling challenges have led to questions about the future of the publicly funded, privately run schools.
“Philanthropic enthusiasm for the charter movement is at a similar inflection point. For now, support for charters seems to be holding. However, the schools have had trouble reaching scale and have yet to catalyze the system-wide transformation many backers hoped for.
“Some of the field’s champions take that as a sign of the work left to do. Those foundations are doubling down on their support for the schools.
“Other funders, including former stalwart backers of charters, see the failure of this model to scale and spread as a reason to pause and consider their future investments. Those foundations tend to see charter schools as an important part of the education landscape, but not as a means to transform the system.
“Meanwhile, major new donors arriving on the education scene from the business world haven’t gravitated to charters in the same way that many such philanthropists did a decade ago. While these schools remain a growing sector within K-12, drawing political support and philanthropic dollars, the momentum around charters among funders has palpably slowed in recent years.”
The bottom line is that charters have become politically toxic, and its hard to paint them as “progressive” when Betsy DeVos is their most potent champion and striking teachers demand a moratorium on them. What’s “progressive” about schools that are highly segregated, overwhelmingly non-union, and have a record of excluding the neediest children?
It’s no accident that the foundation most deeply invested in creating new charters is the archconservative, anti-union Walton Family Foundation, which claims credit for opening 2,000 charters, more than one of every four in the nation. Why is this family, whose net worth exceeds $150 billion, devoted to charters? Charters kill unions. That works for Walmart.
We learn here that Eli Broad seems to losing his once-passionate commitment to charters. Eli Broad!
“There does seem to be a faction of the charter movement that is stepping back to consider what comes next, and are open to charters playing a smaller role in future efforts.
“One of those people is Andy Stern, a board member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and board chair of the Broad Center.
Stern started out as an unlikely ally of the charter movement. He is the president emeritus of the Service Employees International Union, which grew by 1.2 million workers under his leadership. Given the antagonism many felt charter schools held toward unions, some were surprised by Stern’s decision to get involved with Eli Broad, an early and ardent supporter of the charter movement.
“Stern didn’t see charter schools as antithetical to his work on behalf of workers and unions, though.
“I got involved in charters because of the members’ of my union’s kids,” he said. “To me, giving janitors’ kids a chance to get the best education possible was everything they wanted from coming to this country. In Los Angeles, where we started, that was not their experience.”
“Now, Stern’s enthusiasm for the schools is waning, and it sounds like Broad’s may be, as well.
“So I would say Eli [Broad], absent any of the recent strikes and activities, has been rethinking what he wants to do in education, as he has been thinking about what he wants to do in the arts and science, as well,” Stern said. “As he thinks about his age and what he wants to see happen in a transition, I’d say there is a natural rethinking and reprioritizing going on.”
Reilly did not speak to any critics of charter schools, other than Randi Weingarten, whose union operates a charter school in New York City. She did not speak to Carol Burris or me or Jeff Bryant or Peter Greene or Anthony Cody or Leonie Haimson or Julian Vasquez Heilig or Mercedes Schneider or Tom Ultican or any of the many others who have warned about the rise of charters and the danger they present to public education.
Nor did she examine the many scandals that have brought down the repute of charters, like UNO in Chicago or ECOT in Ohio.
The good news is that many philanthropists are disenchanted with school choice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you, Secretary DeVos!
“I think the sad reality, and probably the biggest disappointment, is that people have tended to live in silos,” Stern said. “It’s almost like they’re competing companies instead of mutually supportive efforts to educate children. I think because of that, they’ve turned into sort of competing forces against each other, as opposed to competing to see who can provide better education to kids.”
This is just nonsense. They were always set up as competitors. Always. That was the claim. That setting up a school market would “lift all boats”. DeVos still says it, over and over and over.
In addition, all of these charter advocacy groups do not a lick of work on behalf of public schools.
Did you see the DeVos event in Tennessee yesterday? Overt advocacy and cheerleading on behalf of private schools and charters, with every public school and public school student in the state relegated to a throw away line at the end about how they would “improve” due to competition.
Ed reform sent a clear message to public school families in Tennessee yesterday- “we don’t work for you, your families, or your schools. We work exclusively for charters and vouchers”
The article claims that charters and public schools may collaborate in the future, but charters have always focused on competition, and often unfair competition. The only collaboration that makes sense is to put charters under the jurisdiction of local public school boards of education and require accountability, transparency and proper management.
The article is weak and mealy-mouthed. But the news here is that the philanthropists are losing their love of charters. Now they areinto “personalized learning” (computer-based depersonalized instruction) and “social-emotional learning.” Forgive me, but I have no idea what the latter entails orwhat they will fund. Robots?
AND to demand that all schools receive the exact same testing/student services/student inclusion rules faced by any other public school.
Andy Stern sold out his union to Eli Broad a long time ago. He is a mouthpiece for the billionaires.
Rhetorically, who is worse, Andy Stern or Howard Fuller of the billionaire-funded Black Alliance for Educational Opportunity?
Howard Fuller’s Black Alliance for Educational Options was funded by the usual billionaires. Apparently they decided they had gotten all they wanted from him and they stopped the funding. BAEO is now defunct.
What a strange article. Pages and pages of discussion and little to no mention of the huge scandals and perbasive fraud that have plagued these schools, involving the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars of public money. From reading it you would think charters are clean as a whistle.
The founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy appears to be reluctant to identify the source of his initial start-up capital. If he reads this, he can let us know if the characterization is accurate.
The resistance to charters is more complex than this article portrays. In addition to community backlash, many people understand that charters debilitate public schools. They also represent corporate meddling in education and the absence of democratic input, not the “civil rights issue” of our times. All the crooked, wasteful misuse of public money has also turned off people that may have once thought charters were “innovative.” Charters have failed to offer anything new or different. People have also noticed the hostile way in which minorities have been treated when politicians imposed privatization on them. If charters schools represent such a wonderful opportunity, why have many communities protested against them? The fabled waiting lists have turned out to be “fake news.” Most of the public now sees that charters were more about privatization that transfers public money into private hands and not about civil rights or improved education.
The most ”innovative” feature of charters is their endless capacity to find new ways to fleece the public.
retired teacher-
Your final sentence cuts right to the core.
The sole source of objective writing about philanthropy is NonProfit Quarterly.
It doesn’t help Broad’s image, when the NAACP, ACLU, and SPLC recognize charters for what they are.
The villainthropists couldn’t “scale up” charters so, Bill Gates turned his attention to digital takeover of education. Gates and tech firms evidently got under the tent of employees of state boards of education- SETDA- to achieve coveted public-private partnerships.
With justice, the ACLU will find the SETDA alliance a threat to democracy, worth reviewing.
Diane, there is no person more important to the cause of public education and, the vanquishment of the barbarians at its gate, than you.
They are disenchanted because the jig is up! They’ve been caught taking advantage of the legal loopholes that were put into place for them. Most everything that they have done has been legal yet morally corrupt. They are now looking for the next new thing….ed tech.
It’s called “legal graft”
I suspect that a lot of what’s been done was actually not legal, but people got away with it because the powers in charge had no interest in investigating to say nothing of prosecuting the crimes because the charter as Savior was part of their own shtick.
Rhetorically, has there been in progress by Ohio’s GOP attorney general in the case of ECOT?
The owner of ECOT contributed to the GOP state party, if that helps with the answer
The writer of this “tipping point article,” Caitlin Reilly, is determined to assert that charter schools are public even though they are privately managed. The writer is also determined to assert that charter schools are all about trying to “lift up” education. She does not dwell on how charter schools do real harm to public schools, teachers in these schools, and the communities who pay for them and have a voice in their governance.
The author mentions a few of the billionaire funders of charter schools who sequester money in non-profits then use those funds to buy the schools and forms of education they desire. She refers to the foundations of the Walton Family (wealth from Walmart), Bill and Melinda Gates (wealth from Microsoft), John and Laura Arnold Foundation (wealth from hedge funds now Arnold Ventures LLC), Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation (wealth from real estate and SUN Life insurance), and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (wealth from Facebook with an LLC structure).
There are no well-informed criticisms of the charter movement, just a lot of recycled talking points. I think the author does not understand that the 2017 CREDO study is not peer reviewed, was funded by the Walton Family Foundation and Doris and Donald Fisher Fund (wealth from GAP stores) and that CREDO (Center for Research on Educational Outcomes at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution) is infamous for weird estimates of student performance based on the statistical fictions.
One fiction in CREDO’s research methods is the construction of students who are “virtual twins,” where one student attends a traditional public school (TPS) the other attends a charter school. The matchup is based on test scores in math and reading and demographic indicators (fudged to make all students with disabilities fit in one group)same for other indicators. This animated infographic is supposed to explain the process of creating virtual twins. http://credo.stanford.edu/virtual-control-records/
A second statistical fiction comes from translating standard deviations in math and reading test scores into claims about gains or no gains in “days of learning.” The 2017 CREDO study attempts to explain how ” days of learning” works as an estimate of the “rate of growth” in test scores (p.12). This fiction is based on a boatload of unstated assumptions about the length of a school day, school year, allocations of time for reading and math as well as other subjects worthy of study in a school year and so on.
The arrogance of the authors of the CREDO report is reflected in the total trust in their fictions. They claim: “The effect sizes are the mathematically computed measures produced by the statistical models and should be the basis for policy decisions p.12.” Good heavens NO. https://credo.stanford.edu/pdfs/CMO%20FINAL.pdf
For a really clear critique of the 2017 CREDO study, Caitlin Reilly, and others should read the following review from the National Education Policy Center https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/reviews/TTR%20Miron%20CMOs_2.pdf
For a really absurd example of Walton-funded research on charter schools see this analysis of “return on investment” (ROI) for point gains in NAEP math and reading scores coupled with a belief that NAEP scores predict the economic worth of a student at some future date. I kid you not, this is an exercise in serial calculations of: (a) ROI for point gains on NAEP tests, (b) dubious productivity measures for charter school and “traditional public school” revenues, and (c) the economic value of a NAEP score down to a dollar value of gain or loss of a single point. This BS comes from the Walton-funded charter-school-loving Department of Educational Reform at the University of Arkansas. http://www.uaedreform.org/wp-content/uploads/a-good-investment-public-charter-schools-in-8-us-cities.pdf
Caitlin Reilly and others should understand that charter schools want test scores to be taken as if hard evidence of worthwhile learning. They are not, but the charter lovers perpetuate this myth and others such as this: “cognitive skills as measured by standardized achievement tests are a strong predictor of future income and economic well-being.” This is another case of BS.It is perpetuated by economists connected to charter-loving CREDO and the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).
Readers who have and interest in exotic correlations of test scores and economic indicators may be interested in the following article written by oft-cited economists who write reports that CREDO favors. This one is filled with maps and graphs and inferential leaps made in the Spring of 2008, on the front end of the nearly world wide economic meltdown having not a thing to do with test scores, just massive greed and deception in the financial sector.
https://www.educationnext.org/education-and-economic-growth/
Economists are hell bent on making educational outcomes conform to their assumptions, metrics, and expectations for unlimited economic growth.
The nation’s children and young people and their teachers should not be held as if captives to such a limited and really crass view of what education is for and who gets to decide. Non-profits-in name-only are funding charter schools and tapping public funds much too easily with too little scrutiny and token regulation.
If Inside Philanthropy won’t identify its funder, we know what we need to know about its journalists.
Even tabloids are transparent about ownership, investors etc.
This is very telling; thank you. I hadn’t realized that SEIU was in Broad’s camp. (And I receive hundreds of IP missives, stopped reading them though I actually really like them.
SEIU has totally f’d up a very important board election here between long-time, old-time activist Goldberg and young-time zero-experience political appointee. They’re favoring the latter, big-time, tons of money. This is very explanatory. THANK YOU DIANE.
Sara, it’s actually inexplicable but Andy Stern of SEIU has been Eli Broad’s handmaiden for years and applauds whatever he does. Odd that a major union would fight against a pro-union activist and send big bucks to a Broad Stand-in to protect non-union charters.
Also, with deep respect especially to Ms. Chapman whose posts are always so thick and interesting, I think you’re overthinking this article a bit. It’s intended for grants writers searching for the next great innovative pocket of money. It’s not really intended as an analysis of charter schools v public schools, what or whether charters are public, what or whether they are successful or supportable, etc. It’s a delving into the milieu among the thinking of these funding billionaires. Again, with the intention of where to point the thirsting questers next. It’s a trade rag for funds-requestors. At the same time it provides insight, I think, into the bending of these willows. But that’s not at all the same as scholarly research into the thing itself. If you follow.
sdr-
You’re correct. In a system of unbridled capitalism, a product’s efficacy or harm caused doesn’t rise to the level of consideration. Charter schools are sold on the sizzle of choice, not the steak which is toxic.
In a discussion with a person who worked at P&G, I learned that the company changed a long-held principle. Before the change, the firm refused to introduce a feature to a product like toothpaste unless it had efficacy. After the change, the company acted on the premise that if consumers perceived a change, the innovation got get a green light.
The editor of Inside Philanthropy, in an article, sold the billionaires the sizzle that they were “risk takers”. The people on the receiving end of the donor class take the risks, not the rich. Duckworth sells the sizzle of “grit” to the wealthy because they like to think grit instead of privilege and a rigged system got them where they are.
The lure of “choice” for the super-rich is that it is an alternative to adequate funding and higher taxes.
Without a doubt.
But, it’s also about racism. The wealthy NFL owners’ injustice to Kaepernick disillusioned most Americans.
Nice points, all. Thank you. It’s actually very helpful to me in learning about this landscape of philanthropy, the shifting of risks, the marketing of that shifting risk, among a class for whom “risk” just isn’t. In fact – new thought for me – the denominator of what one can afford to lose also shifts the equation of risk. So its very notion is relative (I know this is not new thinking, just for me new in this context of philanthropy, its style and how this reflects back on things like Education funding, it is).
Bottom line: when someone whose job it is to recognize the landscape of giving reports on a very different configuration there, that is huge news for those of us who might wish to see that change. It’s really important. Even if the insight is subpar.
Anand Giridharadas has written an extraordinary book….Winners take All….examining the destruction caused by billionaires collecting mountains of money, and using a tiny fraction of the money to portray themselves as do-gooders, who calculate how best to help those whose lives have been negatively affected by their collecting their wealth. (the cover of the book includes a short endorsement–apparently written by a robot and signed Bill Gates). After 200 pages….I encountered the metamorphosis of Young Bill Clinton—-in 2016—“according to the former leader of the most powerful country in history, a centrist whose wife was just a few months from her own long-sought turn at its helm—all that worked in the modern world was private, world-saving, full of good intentions, unaccountable to the public, based on win win partnerships initiated by companies and philanthropists, blessed (sometimes) by public officials.”(Page 232).http://www.anand.ly/
One thing about Trump…..I doubt Melania is much worse as first lady than Bill would have been as first man.
Yes, I am reading it this week and it’s outstanding work. I certainly hope billionaires are seeing the folly of vulture philanthropy. I wonder how much good Eli Broad would have to do to atone for his sins in education.
I enjoyed “Winners Take All.” It all sounded so familiar. I laughed when I saw the blurb on the jacket by Bill Gates. Proof that he didn’t read the book!