Peter Greene has a rapier sharp wit, which he wields so deftly that the object of his attention has been beheaded without knowing what happened. If you want to see him at his best, read this mystery: Who is murdering Charter Schools?
Teachers?
Unions?
Lobbyists?
If you live in the real world, the people fighting privatization are heroic defenders of the commonweal, protecting the public interest against the Waltons, the Koch brothers, DeVos, and other private interests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I first started following the charter/”reform” sector in 2001*, and in researching, I learned that there was a thriving fringe movement to eliminate public education entirely (even opposing public money for private schools). At that time, Jeanne Allen’s name was on the lists of supporters of eliminating public education entirely. In recent years I haven’t seen it there, so I’m assuming that turned out to be bad for the brand. But we should be aware.
Although, of course, with folks like her, the safe assumption is that they so-called “believe” what they’re paid to so-called “believe,” and that may fluctuate with the trends.
*during a controversy over once-hailed-as-a-miracle, now-dead for-profit Edison Schools in my school district, San Francisco Unified.
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Carolinesf, whether or not you see Jeanne’s name on a list of those committed to eliminating public schools, she is still there.
I have read her website carefully and found not a single positive word about public schools, but hurrahs for even cyber charters, which most other reformers consider to be an embarrassment.
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There are degrees, too — people who support eliminating public schools as we know them but sending all the public funding to private schools. But her name was on the list that supported eliminating ALL public funding for K-12 schools — at the time it was a movement called Separation of School and State. Haven’t had bandwidth to research whether it still has a visible presence.
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yes, I remember that fringe activity. So insignificant that one cannot call it a “movement.”
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“And charter students in Oakland, for instance, perform dramatically better and have cohort graduation rates of 72 percent, compared to 50 percent in public schools.”
Jeanne Allen is either lying, deluding herself, or relying on crappy data for her talking points. Data from 2017-18 for 4-year cohort graduation rate shows that Oakland Unified graduated 73.1% of their district students. Oakland charters graduated 79.6%. The amazing thing is that even with all the attrition, pushout, fewer SPED, etc, the district schools were comparable with charters on this metric. District schools in Oakland, with the exception of FRPL, educated more high needs students in virtually every category (SPED, newcomer, ELL, homeless), and they also backfill. Most Oakland charters don’t backfill, and they’ve gamed this system for years to push their grad numbers up. It’s just another example in the Ed Reform World of MSU (Make Stuff Up).
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“Jeanne Allen is either lying, deluding herself, or relying on crappy data for her talking points.” YES. In our district all three of these elements circle endlessly depending on which reformer opens his/her mouth.
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Remember that Jeanne Allen is saying what she’s paid to say, like an actor performing from the script. So wondering whether she’s lying, deluding herself or relying on crappy data isn’t really relevant (though mouthing lines while performing the role of a sincere believer certainly constitutes lying).
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Given Jeanne’s long history of advocacy for choice and hatred for public schools, I feel certain she is sincere in her views.
Wrong, but sincere.
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Many years of living well on bounty from the billionaires for mouthing their scripts might certainly tend to nurture her sincerity!
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Privatization is failing under its own weight of lies, waste, fraud, embezzling, nepotism and other nefarious activities. The public has caught on to the scam, and they can see through all the hype and spin. They are less willing to sacrifice their young and subject them to endless charter churn and schools that fail to deliver on promises. The public is understanding the incredible public value of public schools. They do not want to send their tax dollars to greedy profiteers that skim off the best of the community and leave it hollow and empty. Public schools are the community anchor of stability. Parents know that public schools offer professional teachers and rights since they are based on local democratic control of tax dollars. They want a public school, not a company school with an ever lowering of the bottom line.
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I love reading Peter Greene. I just read https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/uber-sharing-economy-ride-share-ipo in The Guardian about how the libertarian dream of a sharing economy was a sham. A few people got rich on the backs of underpaid drivers via the creation of an app that disrupted the taxicab industry. Now the company is going public while it continues to throw money down the drain and its workers protest having to sleep in their cars.
They tried to turn schooling into a sharing economy app, a libertarian dream that was a sham, a scam, in the first place. A few people got rich on the backs of underpaid teachers via school choice programs. It was like the Uber app — think websites like greatschools dot org. It was doomed from the start, a corporate libertarian fantasy. People will eventually reject anything that makes their lives worse instead of better, once the veneer of tech fantasy Utopianism wears off. Who is killing charters? Charters, that’s who.
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LCT, Great Answer. Charters are killing charters. A scandal a day sacrifices good will.
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The school district in the latest school shooting had been asked by the district to look into allegations of bullying, violence, and self harm at the STEM charter school. The school did nothing. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/09/us/colorado-shooting-district-investigation/index.html
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