Jack Schneider, a historian of education who often collaborates with Jennifer Berkshire, analyzes the fading allure of charter schools. After years of claims that they would “save” public schools and poor children, the public has given up on them. Why? They have not delivered, and the public gets it.
For most of the past thirty years, charters seemed unstoppable, especially because their expansion was backed by billions from people like the Waltons, Gates, and Broad, as well as the federal government. But they have not kept their promises.
Today, however, the grand promises of the charter movement remain unfulfilled, and so the costs of charters are being evaluated in a new light.
After three decades, charters enroll six percent of students. Despite bold predictions by their advocates that this number will grow fivefold, charters are increasingly in disrepute.
First, the promise of innovation was not met. Iron discipline is not exactly innovative.
Second, the promise that charters would be significantly better than public schools did not happen. In large part, that is because the introduction of charters simply creates an opportunity for choice; it does not ensure the quality of schools. Rigorous research, from groups like Mathematica Policy Research and Stanford University, has found that average charter performance is roughly equivalent to that of traditional public schools. A recent study in Ohio, for instance, concluded that some of the state’s charters perform worse than the state’s public schools, some perform better, and roughly half do not significantly differ.
Finally, charters have not produced the systemic improvement promised by their boosters.
Competition did not lift all boats. In fact, competition has weakened the public schools that enroll most students at the same time that charters do not necessarily provide a better alternative.
Schneider does not mention one other important reason for the diminishing reputation of charters: scandals, frauds, embezzlement, and other scams that appear daily in local and state media. A significant number of charters are launched and operated by non-educators and by entrepreneurs, which amplifies the reasons for charter instability and failure.
The charter fad is fading because we the public are not as dumb as most of our politicians think we are
“The Charter Rush”
The charter is a “gold mine”
A hedge-fund schemer’s trick
Like golden rush of forty-nine
It’s offer: “Get rich quick!”
But Gold of fools is our return
For buying into plot
And picks and spades and “lessons learned”
Are all we ever got
The Charter Fad
The charter fad is fading
An edu-fidget-spinner
The public bores of waiting
For Superman and winner
I like it. Welcome news, too.
People are starting to associate charters with billionaires and corporations. Some are starting to see charters as a class movement backed by the wealthy. People are starting to understand what they will lose if public schools become corporate schools. I think #45’s tax revision has made more people understand that the wealthy are an island unto themselves, and they are not looking out for the little people. It has caused a backlash and awareness among some average, working families.
the ONLY good in the horrible mess of electing Trump: possible public awareness of many things previously kept in the dark
This is my personal opinion so maybe not in any way representative of anything, but I wonder if charter and voucher supporters could have maintained more support if they had ALSO supported public schools.
I think tearing down public schools was deliberate- to open the way for charters- but if the pitch is both systems are public schools they probably had to support public schools too, and they didn’t. They say this themselves- the plan was to put in an anti-public school person (Rhee) and then follow that with someone who builds bridges and is “agnostic” But they never really came thru on the “supporting public schools” part.
The fact is if your “movement” is predicated on 1. choice and 2. accountability than existing public schools only get the accountability part. They only get the downside. They get the grim metrics and the scolding and the drumbeat of “failing” and charters and private schools collect all the gains and gushing acclaim.
Go look for a single positive statement about a single public school (or public school STUDENT) in DeVos’ political speeches. It is relentlessly grim and if you’re IN a public school you know that’s not true- that it’s much more complex than that. We’re not all “trapped”, our students aren’t all failing or drug addicts or school shooters. They don’t all hate school. The NYTimes did an article about the drug addiction crisis in Ohio. The girl they interviewed described her school as “her happy place”. It is the ONE thing that is functioning in her town- the public school. This just isn’t recognized at all, but it’s true in parts of Ohio and I assume elsewhere. People who live there know it’s true.
Colonialism was privatization’s singular goal – profit taking, breaking labor’s back, destroying democracy and training future workers for subjugation.
The richest 0.1% know the growing level of concentrated wealth makes them vulnerable. Their last ditch efforts to keep control before the lid blows is their gerrymandering, privatization, ALEC draft laws, incarcerations, control of the courts and election of a dictator.
The agenda has and always will be antagonistic to public schools.
The founder of 4 Gates-funded ed organizations stated the only goal they thought might be acceptable to the public..the goal of charters, “…brands on a large scale.”
I’ve posted this before, but it summarizes in verse what you described
“The Billionaire’s Burden” (based on
“The White Man’s Burden”, by Rudyard
Kipling”)
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, Send
forth the tests ye breed
Go bind your schools to test style, to
serve his markets’ need;
The weight of heavy VAMness, On
captive folk and mild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half
teacher and half child.
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, In
patience to abide,
To veil the scheme for teach-bots, The
prime intent to hide;
With coded speech of Orwell, you really
must take pains
To make a hefty profit, And see the
major gains.
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, The
public schools to fleece—
Fill full the days with testing And
Common Core disease;
And when your goal is nearest The end
that you have sought,
Destroy the Opt-out movement Lest
work be all for naught.
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, A
tawdry rule of Kings,
The toil of IT keeper, The sale of
software things.
The data ye shall enter, On privacy to
tread,
To make a “decent” living, Until they all
are dead.
Take up the Billionaire’s burden And
reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better, The hate
of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!)
toward the light:—
“Why brought he us from darkness ,
from blissful clueless night?
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, Ye dare
not stoop to less—
So fulminate ‘gainst Apple To cloak your
Siri-ness;
And strategize in whispers, For all ye
leave or do,
Or silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh
Diane on you!
Take up the Billionaire’s burden, Have
done with childish ways—
The Kindergarten playing, The test-less
former days
Come now, to join Reform-hood, The
pride of Duncan years
Cold, edged with Gates-bought wisdom,
The plan of Billionaires!
” I wonder if charter and voucher supporters could have maintained more support if they had ALSO supported public schools”
Don’t give them any ideas
The ed reform refrain about “wealthy suburbs” having the only functioning or solid public schools is also not true and I think comes from them- their geographical locations.
“Suburb” doesn’t even mean “wealthy”. It hasn’t for years. But if you are based in a huge metro area (primarily on the east coast) that’s your reality. That the only “good” schools are in super expensive areas. One can attend a solid public school here with purchase or rental of a property that costs $75,000. It’s working class. They aren’t luxe schools- they don’t offer everything and they don’t have elaborate facilities, but the schools get the job done and people succeed coming out of them. They’re valuable. To pitch them in the trash for some gimmicky slogan out of Silicon Valley seems crazily reckless.
What blows me away and makes me think “the movement” is not capable of change is the fact that they put in NCLB and then didn’t support the public schools that had to do the work and then did that AGAIN with Common Core.
This idea they have that they can jam thru their ideas and then walk away from the schools that have to execute the idea and go back to bashing public schools and cheerleading charters and voucher is just not going to work.
The public school here adopted Common Core. They may not have liked it- I don’t know- but they were given this ambitious directive and in my experience they worked really hard at it. The reward? They got their funding cut and remained the designated punching bag of every ambitious pol in the state who wants to dump every problem on public schools, because blaming public schools means they don’t have to fix anything else.
11 million views and counting:
(NOTE: does the charter / corp. ed. reform industry have a comparable YouTube video with even a 1100 Views that challenges this?)
In addition to testing, the ed “reform” my local public school got was cheap online classes to replace certain smaller specialized classes- foreign language and an advanced science course.
This is a net loss for the school. It’s not an improvement. That they sell this as “improving public schools” when it’s apparent to anyone in a public school that it’s “investing less in public school students in order to have funding to promote our “choice” agenda” is insulting.
The promise was they would “improve public schools”. It wasn’t that they would replace public schools with whatever commercial scheme strikes their fancy this month. That’s a bad deal and people should reject it. They will regret buying it.
Hear is an example of how Democrats are parsing the charter issue. There are “good charters” even though some are a problem.You will also see that the justification for investing in public education is economic/workforce preparation. Public educators need to do this and that the other thing in the interest of “accountability for the use of public funds. The last paragraph ignores the damaging federal support and huge allocations for charter schools.
Dear Dr. Chapman:
Thank you for expressing your views on charter schools.
Strengthening our economy and our future begins in the classroom. We must invest in new and innovative academic programs that ensure all children are prepared for a 21st century workforce.
While many charter schools are committed to providing a first-rate education to our students, I have concerns that they use public funds while facing little accountability. It is crucial that all schools are held to standards that ensure our children are receiving a proper education and that your tax dollars are being spent in a responsible manner.
In the past, I introduced the Charter School Accountability Act, a bill that would increase the accountability, transparency, and community involvement requirements for public charter schools across the country. The Charter School Accountability Act called for increased transparency and disclosure by requiring both independent financial audits and public disclosures about important financial information, performance agreements between the school and its authorizers, the school’s mission and program, student discipline policies and procedures, recruitment policies, and student and teacher attrition rates.
There are charter schools in Ohio that are providing high-quality education for the students they serve, but their reputation is being undermined by bad actors. Should Congress consider legislation related to charter schools, I will work to ensure that all students – regardless of income or geography – have access to a high quality education.
Thank you again for writing.
Write Sherrod again and ask him if he is aware of the NPE report, “Asleep At the Wheel,” which found that more than 1/3 of federally funded charters either never opened or closed soon after opening, at a cost of $1 billion.
Ask if he will call for an investigation of this program or will take action to eliminate it, since it now serves as DeVos personal slush fund of $440 million a year. Most of themoney now funds corporate chains, not innovative startups. Of course, both are a waste of money.
Done, this evening. see below for text.
Ask him if he is aware of the report:
“Senator Sherrod Brown: asleep at the wheel”
There is a great deal of evidence that these people don’t even care what their constituents think and want.
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Gilens and Page
Sherrod’s overarching goal- to stay in DC.
He models Portman’s style- keeps his head tucked in and avoids controversy.
Right and wrong- the future of the country- they’ll leave that to those who have spines.
Schools are like shopping malls, here today, gone tomorrow. Where all all the cool people going? Where did all the cool people go? Same basic trends of self segregation of exclusionary groups. In the 60’s and 70’s it was white flight. Charter schools were a means for self segregation for those without the means to geographically relocate. But what does it all accomplish?
I would bet money that even the majority of parents IN charters do not like “charters” per se.
What they like are free schools that can choose the students they want to teach and don’t have to teach those who make it difficult for other students to learn or those students whose learning needs take a disproportionate share of resources so that the average student gets far less.
The quick and easy way to get rid of charters is to have the public school systems establish their own “choice” programs and give those schools the resources that charters get from their big donors. Most parents given a choice between a charter school whose CEO embraces Betsy DeVos and demands that their mostly low-income students sit quietly with hands folded from their first day of school and specializes in humiliating their lower performing classmates and a different choice of a public magnet school for students who are well-behaved and learn quickly where those students would be free to move around a little and be imaginative and treated with the respect that the children of the billionaires receive in their private school, would choose the public school.
Parents don’t really like “charters” and don’t hate public education — they love their suburban public schools with their sports teams, musical performances, artistic classes, etc. What parents like are schools where the number of difficult to teach students are kept low. In days past, parochial schools thrived in inner cities not because their teachers or curriculum was better but because their schools didn’t have to teach everyone.
There are so many problems with segregating well-behaved students without any learning issues from students unmotivated to learn or who have significant special needs or whose parents are so at-risk that they are unable to support their child’s learning. But when parents who have easy to teach children are in schools where most students are at-risk and come from severely disadvantaged families who can’t support their learning are offered what seems to be a better “choice”, they understandably often take it. That “choice” doesn’t have to be a charter, but when the only alternative is a charter, they often choose that.
There are very few charters in suburbs with good public schools. The promoters know that they have to undermine the public schools because if they don’t, no parents want charters. And that is the worst thing about the charter movement. It started as a way to help the most vulnerable students, and morphed into a “business” where the only goal is increasing their market share and the only way to do that is to undermine their competition — good public schools..
Dear Senator Brown,
I recently received an email from you, intended as a response to my prior effort to understand your position on federal funding for charter schools and so-called “choice” programs beloved by Secretary DeVos.
You gave an uninformed response to my concerns about federal money pouring into the coffers of the charter school industry, money often added to by state funds and non-trival sums in private dollars.
Please pay attention. More than one third of federally funded charter schools, funded at $1.billion, never opened or closed soon after opening.
You should be investigating why Betsy Devos is treating our tax dollars as a personal slush fund for corporate charter schools while ignoring well documented evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse and cronyism in how these funds are used.
Charter school advocates posture about “high-quality schools” just like you do. In fact, many charter schools are terrible. Consider these facts.
Ohio 2018 report cards for 257 charter schools.
__235 charter schools received a grade of D or F (not exactly high quality).
__15 charter schools earned a C, merely average (not exactly high quality).
__ 4 charter schools had a grade of B
__ 3 charter schools had a grade of A.
Most federal funds are flowing to corporate chains with off-the-shelf franchise plans, hostility to collective bargaining, and an aversion to public schools with democratically elected school boards.
Charter schools claim to be public until they are sued in court. They are routinely draining money from local public schools while claiming to be underfunded.
Most charter schools do not need federal funds. They are being supported by billionaires and many Republicans who want to privatize public institutions, public services, public lands and natural resources.
Charter schools are not lacking in funds and should not be given more from the federal budget.
Please read this report before you respond. The three-page Executive Summary is a must read. https://www.scribd.com/document/403089110/Asleep-at-the-Wheel-final-Online-Version
I look forward to your response.
This particular blog entry is essential reading for June 2019….it’s a concise roundup of where we’ve been, where we are and where we could be going… A definite bookmark.
Looking forward to Diane’s book.
Gotta go finish this week.. Have a good one.