Despite the outrage of the privatization movement, which attacked Bernie Sanders for his position on charters, Sanders doubled down by publishing an article in the San Jose Mercury News reiterating his views.
Here is an excerpt, where he accurately cites the study by Gordon Lafer on how charters drain money from public schools and the NPE study showing the waste of federal money spent on charters that never opened or closed almost immediately.
My education plan calls for rescinding Donald Trump’s tax breaks and using those resources to triple funding for low-income school districts. We will also institute a national per-pupil funding standard, so that the quality of a child’s education is not contingent on her zip code. Education should be a human right, not a privilege.
In addition, my plan also calls for restrictions on charter school initiatives that siphon resources out of the public education system and resegregating schools.
When parents enroll their children in charter schools, the public funding allocated to those students goes with them. In the Oakland Unified School District, for example, charter schools were costing the district more than $57 million per year. This amount would easily cover the budget shortfall of $56 million over two years that Oakland officials have projected.
Charters are publicly-funded, but they are privately managed — meaning, they are not accountable to taxpayers. As a result, billionaires like Eli Broad, the DeVos family, and the Walton family are able to bankroll destructive charter school experiments to enrich investors and real-estate developers with taxpayer resources.
Between 2002-2017, California charter schools received more than $2.5 billion in tax dollars or taxpayer subsidized funds to lease, build, or buy school buildings. In one example, the Alliance Ready Public Schools network of charter schools used public funds to build a $200 million private real estate empire in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a report from the Network for Public Education found 38 percent of California charter schools that received federal funds between 2006 and 2014 “had either never opened or shut their doors by 2019.”
Advocates argue that charters deliver good outcomes — but the overall results are mixed at best.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is good news. Diane, I’m sure you had a lot to do with educating Bernie.
Sanders is becoming informed. You and many others have helped in that, and it shows.
I hope that all of the wishy washies running for President will be as specific on this matter and others bearing on education and the social services required in a nation that has an obscene number of children who are living in poverty but rewards the super-rich with tax breaks.
I hope more activists can be present in town halls and other events to prevent the vague and all too frequent references to “wanting high-quality schools and the best education for every child.” That should be regarded as a red flag that the speaker is echoing the public statements of Devos and hopes to wiggle past significant support for public schools.
In good news for the nation and Bernie’s candidacy, the pro-government mood of the nation is at the most liberal ever recorded (a study spanning 68 years).
The agendas of the past, the New Deal and Great Society, have wide support in 2019. The study is by Prof. James Stimson at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The average age of the Fox audience, people who have views in common with the Koch’s, is deceased which is fortunate for the U.S. and world.
Four years ago Bernie was confused about “public charters.” He now understands that the only public features in charter schools are the money and students they siphon from public schools. He understands that charters are tied to gentrification, real estate, tax avoidance strategies and a separate and unequal education for mostly poor minority students. Bernie now comprehends what a behemoth of waste, fraud and embezzling unregulated, unaccountable charters have become.
I for one am so tired of hearing the zip code argument of privatizers along with the “islands of opportunity” statement. These “islands are often corporate islands of segregation.” Bernie has addressed this issue by proposing to equitably fund public education. This is a new and different plan as urban students have been systematically underfunded in state after state. This is the message that public schools have been waiting to hear. While the rest of the Democratic field continues to skirt the issue of K-12 education for fear of the charter lobby’s response, Bernie is unafraid to support opportunity for all in public schools, which, in my opinion, is the best hope for a country that is inclusive and considers its people citizens, not consumers.
Yes!
The zip code argument is irrelevant and I wish that Bernie would explain that if communities want to provide schools for the most motivated learners that do not allow other students to remain, those can easily be established by the community school district.
The charter propaganda has won public support by harping on that “zip code” line and it would be useful if it was addressed directly.
One doesn’t need a charter to profit from teaching accelerated and motivated learners and telling the students who aren’t quick enough learners to leave. Those schools could easily be magnet schools for students from all zip codes but no charter CEO would profit from the savings in running a school that only has to teach the easiest and least expensive students and no charter CEO would be able to promote the lie that one can teach any student with less money in large class sizes because their charters proved it could be done with the right leader and non-union teachers.
An honest discussion would go a long way in helping all public schools. But it is impossible to have an honest discussion when dishonest promoters of charters use their expensive propaganda arms to push a lie.
Public schools need supporters with a bully pulpit to call out the lies of those who pretend charters do something that they don’t.
Unless the rest of the candidates come out as strongly in support of public schools, Bernie Sanders should get the AFT and NEA endorsements ….I hope Randi and Lily are listening ….
Your last sentence is rather humorous.
They are listening…
Eskelsen-Garcia makes over $300,000 and Weingarten makes almost half a million(!!) Each year.
Ask yourself “For what?”
Most of the strides made by teachers nationwide over the past year were actually made by teachers and in some cases their local unions , but NOT the leaders of the national teachers’ unions.
Of course, as in the story of the Little Red Hen, the union leaders always seem to show up after all the hard work is done to share in the limelight.
SomeDAMPoet,
What is the solution for the fact that the national union leaders don’t represent their members?
I read your post and see the strong similarities to the Democratic Party and complaints made about their leadership.
Would it bother you if someone who isn’t a teacher started a movement to convince the public to vote against having any teachers unions in America because the union was entirely corrupt with no redeeming factors and the union was never going to change so helping those whose goal is to destroy teachers’ unions get ultimate power is the only thing to be done?
Would you ever think that the best way to change the union leadership is to elect leaders whose only goal is to disband the union altogether and hope that a less corrupt union arises in its place?
I don’t think that if the teachers union is completely destroyed in every community in America, a new non-corrupt union would arise. Reform can happen if the teachers in the union care enough to make it happen — not by punishing those teachers who aren’t voting for the right leadership by destroying the union altogether in every state and in every school and giving all power to those whose only goal is to destroy unions altogether.
Sorry about the delay
I took my grandchildren to see”Aladdin,”. Great fun!
^^my apologies: this comment – currently in moderation – should be from NYC public school parent (not student!)
(If the comment eventually shows up, this reply will make more sense).
I’m feelin’ the Bern!!!
Bernie showed up at the Walmart shareholders’ meeting and told them they can afford to pay people $15 per hour. He is a rarity in politics, honesty and chutzpah.
Way to go, Bernie!
I, too, am waiting to see what our unions will do….will they support their teacher members or will they throw us under the train again?
Since the personal ambitions attached to the last pick didn’t pan out, there’s hope.
Does Bernie offer a way for the guarenteed teacher salary idea to be implemented without too much federal control? While I agree that some national underpinning of teacher salary is needed to guarentee poor children, rural and urban, the best teachers they can get, I am also wary of top down reform in any form.
I’m not sure how the feds can do this.
Maybe through an addendum to Title 1? I agree with Roy. I wonder what strings will be attached to it. Schools do not need more layers of testing.
I love this.
The only thing I wish Bernie would do is also to emphasize that “non-profit” charters drain resources because they ruthlessly cull their charters of students who need more than their per pupil funding to teach and send them back to public schools (which must be responsible for them). The result is that public schools then have a disproportionately high share of students who cost more than “average” to teach because so many charters want only the students who cost less than “average” to teach, and those charters have a disproportionately very low share of students who need more resources.
If charters were public magnet schools that copied the only “best practice” of charters that leads to good results — counseling out students who struggle most in schools — then the cost savings of running those real public magnet schools would be spent in other public schools whose students need far more resources.
But by giving that franchise to charters — and dishonest charters at that — the system has bought into the lie that charters can teach all students for less, told by those who are profiting by humiliating and drumming out students who cost more. So instead of that cost-savings going to the public schools that teach the most expensive students, the cost-savings goes to high administrative salaries for charter CEOs and charter administrators who put their CEO’s needs above the needs of the most vulnerable students. And the budgets of public schools are cut because charter CEOs have “proven” they don’t need more money, holding themselves out as models.
It’s hard for me to believe that anyone at the SUNY Charter Institute or at the NY Times or at Chalkbeat believes one word coming out of the mouth of the woman who insisted over and over again that Betsy DeVos had the talent and leadership to help all students and demanded the Senate confirm DeVos.
Anyone who could lie so blithely about Betsy DeVos and throw public school children under the bus to promote DeVos’ confirmation should not be trusted in any of her dishonest claims about how her charters have developed a “secret sauce” that is low-cost and every public school should be able to match.
And I wish Bernie’s comments always included a strong criticism of the so-called “good” charters that other Democrats seem to embrace – the totally dishonest ones who throw children under the bus and claim to be working low-cost miracles that are the solution for all children.
But otherwise, I’m so glad Bernie is doubling down on his position and throwing down the gauntlet for other democrats.
Some charters are sitting on a mountain of “donations” from wealthy people looking for tax write-offs, and they still get to raid the public school budgets. They take from the many to serve the few.
Bernie should also know that charter teaching jobs pay less, have worse benefits and pensions than most public schools. When public schools lose teachers who then accept a charter school position, they (mostly women) are moving from a middle class job to worse one that pays a lot less and is less secure. Yet, the top heavy administration in charters is paid six figure salaries often for serving a lot fewer students.
Corbin Smith wrote the following, published at the Daily Beast
—Mark Stevens, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists…is a perfect representation of his class, a billionaire…who decides he is entitled to disrespect Kyle Lowry and his labor. Stevens is the pure manifestation of America’s billionaire class who devour every possible cent, do everything they can to keep their money out of schools, healthcare, aid to the poor and, they have the f__k___ GALL to denigrate the labor of everyone who sits under their gilded pyramids. …In the depth of your hearts, who cannot
believe that they should be brought to heel at the soonest opportunity?—–
If the ruling class and their minions fail to recognize that Bernie’s election is the best hope for their survival, they are fools.
At least the robber barons of the first Guilded age actually produced something of value.
Many of these tech barons produce stuff that is either just trashy or downright insidious (made for spying on innocent people, denying people loans based on race, etc)
Unfortunately, because they hold so much personal data on hundreds of millions of Americans, the tech barons have far more power than the robber barons had.
As the East German Stasi understood, information on individuals equates to power over those individuals.
Ugly motives and tech tyrants- America’s failure.
Stevens is a graduate of private colleges, two institutions without values- University of Southern California and harvard.
Linda
I don’t know why the Warriors would tolerate such behavior and not just ban him from games permanently.
The guy would never have done that to a white player.
I’m sure there are lots of people who would be glad to buy up his share.
It’s reported that he will make $180 million if he sells. I think you’re right, he wouldn’t curse at and shove a white player. The fact that he restrained himself from a racial epithet, tells me he was in control of his behavior.