Only Bill Gates knows how many millions he has poured into getting charters authorized and funded by the state in Washington State. There have been four referendums, the last one in 2012, which passed by about one percent, over the opposition of civil rights groups, unions, and PTAs. Gates and friends (Jeff Bezos’ parents, Waltons, and assorted billionaires) outspent the grassroots groups by several multiples, and at last Gates got charters past the voters. Then the Washington State Supreme Court said that charters are not public schools as defined in the state constitution, so Gates’s friends, led by Jonah Edelman and Stand for Children of Oregon, funded an effort to defeat the naughty justices at the next election. Happily, they were re-elected.
But Gates would not give up. He went to the Legislature and persuaded his friends to fund the charters with lottery money. The Governor Jay Inslee dared not stand up to the richest man in the state, and he neither signed nor vetoed the legislation, allowing it to become law.
When civilrights groups sued, because the charter schools were back to the public trough, the Supreme Court decided not to alienate the multibillionaire Gates again, and they decided to let the charters have lottery money.
Voila! Gates had charters and public money to pay for them.
But oh no, they are struggling, despite the fact that Gates handed out millions more to lure charter operators to open schools.
The Charter-friendly Seattle Times reports:
Two charter schools — one in Kent and another in Tacoma — will shut down at the end of this academic year, bringing the total number of closures to four since the publicly funded but privately run schools first opened in Washington state five years ago.
The board of directors for Green Dot Public Schools voted Thursday to shut down the two schools, which they oversee: Excel Public Charter School in Kent and Destiny Middle School in Tacoma. The Washington State Charter Association, in a news release, attributed the closures to dwindling enrollment.
The news comes five months after Soar Academy in Tacoma announced that it would close at the end of this school year. The school cited financial constraints.
“Both of these schools (in Kent and Tacoma) experienced significant struggles tied closely to low student enrollment and related operational challenges,” the charter-schools group said in its release.
The Kent and Tacoma schools received a charter, or contract, from the state to enroll up to 600 students. But enrollment data from Green Dot show the Kent campus reached a peak enrollment of 188 as of October 2018. In Tacoma, Destiny reached a peak enrollment of 281 during the 2017-18 school year but tumbled to 162 students as of October.
Across Washington, a dozen charter schools enroll about 3,300 students — a fraction of the 1.1 million students enrolled in public schools statewide.
Figure it out. What did Gates and spend? How many millions to ensure that 3,300 students could attend charters?
When CREDO evaluated the tiny number of charters, it concluded that on average they were no better or worse than public schools.
The findings of this study show that on average, charter students in Washington State experience annual growth in reading and math that is on par with the educational gains of their matched peers who enroll in the traditional public schools (TPS) the charter school students would otherwise have attended.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The board of directors for Green Dot Public Schools voted Thursday to shut down the two schools, which they oversee: Excel Public Charter School in Kent and Destiny Middle School in Tacoma. The Washington State Charter Association, in a news release, attributed the closures to dwindling enrollment.”
Green Dot is the L.A.-based charter org that, over the years, has been run by the likes of Ben Austin, Marco Petruzzi, Marshall Tuck, and Steve Barr.
Seattle school activist Melissa Westbrook wrote about this in her blog, stating the accurate, if inelegant conclusion:
“That line from the Washington Policy Center and others (i.e. Green Dot officials) that ‘all the charters have a waiting list’ was just bullsh%#.”
From Westbrook’s blog:
https://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2019/06/two-more-wa-state-charter-schools-to.html
“attributed the closures to dwindling enrollment.”
But the wait lists. We always hear about the (self-reported) wait lists.
There are some public schools in Chicago with longer wait lists than some charters there, which I read in non-ed reform local reporting. Interesting that we never hear about the wait lists in those schools, and it’s never used as a justification for opening new PUBLIC schools.
I don’t know if it’s true in Washington but it seems pretty clear in Ohio that they massage the stats on “projected enrollment” in order to get the charter/start up funding. That’s how they were able to “flood” Toledo with charter schools, many of which subsequently closed. Someone should regulate it.
A legislator will not regulate when he is paid not to regulate
What? No waiting lists at Washington State charter schools? Dwindling enrollments? Can’t be. Say it ain’t so!
exactly: “BUT THE WAIT LISTS…”
After completely ignoring people who work in public schools for 20 years, in many cases actually shutting them out of policymaking and all but silencing them, ed reformers discover this:
“Taken with this story line, I embraced education as both a philanthropic cause and a civic mission. I co-founded the League of Education Voters, a nonprofit dedicated to improving public education. I joined Bill Gates, Alice Walton, and Paul Allen in giving more than $1 million each to an effort to pass a ballot measure that established Washington State’s first charter schools. All told, I have devoted countless hours and millions of dollars to the simple idea that if we improved our schools—if we modernized our curricula and our teaching methods, substantially increased school funding, rooted out bad teachers, and opened enough charter schools—American children, especially those in low-income and working-class communities, would start learning again. Graduation rates and wages would increase, poverty and inequality would decrease, and public commitment to democracy would be restored.”
This is what public schools said all along:
“To be clear: We should do everything we can to improve our public schools. But our education system can’t compensate for the ways our economic system is failing Americans. Even the most thoughtful and well-intentioned school-reform program can’t improve educational outcomes if it ignores the single greatest driver of student achievement: household income.”
Eureka! An inconvenient truth. Maybe dumping every national problem on public schools to solve wasn’t the best way to spend the last 20 years, which we can’t get back. It was certainly easier to sell to wealthy donors, though.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/education-isnt-enough/590611/
Wow, quotable quote : ” Even the most thoughtful and well-intentioned school-reform program can’t improve educational outcomes if it ignores the single greatest driver of student achievement: household income.”
In other words, school choice is just rearraraging the deck chsirs on the Titanic, Precisely what I’ve always thought since I first became aware of the charter movement a decade ago. I remember visualizing the future of “school choice” as parallel to the [already-decimated by NAFTA] shopping situation in a 5–sq-mi radius from my home: Big-box Walmart et al on the highway; sleazy store-fronts on the way into town: town shopping divided between just-about-breaking-even nice anchor store, surrounded by chi-chi boutique stores.
“U.S. Department of Education Retweeted
BetsyDeVosED
Jun 6
More
Congratulations to the nearly 2.25 million 2019 President’s Education Awards Program recipients. I’m honored to celebrate these scholars’ educational accomplishments, hard work, and bright future”
DeVos travels the country giving speeches on how public school students don’t learn anything and are “sitting” in “factory” schools “bored” and not doing much of anything.
So what is she congratulating them for? According to her they all wasted 12 years and shouldn’t have bothered to show up at all, let alone graduate. Just watch a couple of Khan Academy videos and you’re good to go.
This top down trickery and manipulation from the 1% have also given charter schools an unsavory reputation. Wealthy oligarchs should not be able to use their wealth to impose privatization on communities that have no need for them.
We must take the profit out of them and put the control in the hands of local school boards. If a community wishes to use tax dollars to create a charter based on some identified need, they should be able to do so. Local communities can also set up their own specialized public schools for such purposes.
Many factors are giving charter schools a bad name, and the political wheeling and dealing behind closed doors are all part of the picture. The charter lobby continues to game the system and suppress democratic input. Many communities are learning the hard way that once charters set up shop, they continue to push for a greater share of tax dollars. They also try to move decisions about local tax dollars to the state level where it is easier to buy political influence. Improving education gets lost in the quest for profit.
“We must take the profit out of them and put the control in the hands of local school boards. If a community wishes to use tax dollars to create a charter based on some identified need, they should be able to do so. Local communities can also set up their own specialized public schools for such purposes.”– but all of that needs to be under the aegis of the local school boatd,
In my town, we once to set up a district-run charter for 5th-8th-gr SpEd students whose parents felt their kids’ needs were not being met by in-bldg SpEd services. It lasted for 3 yrs, but ended due to low enrollment plus the difficulties of placing PT SpEd staffers there & at other district bldgs. It was replaced by better staffing w/in district bldgs, & spurred a new “bridge” program for devptlly-delayed kids transiting midsch to hisch.
If you trial these experiments w/n the district, the district can learn from it & respondd.
Well, whadda ya know?
Millions upon millions — much of it from Bill Gates — were spent to pass a ballot measure allowing charters in Washington statute, and then later in costly court actions preserving the outcome of that measure, within that outcome being:
“Finally! Privately-managed charters come to Bill Gates’ home state! Yay!”
However, those same Washington state charters created by the measure are now closing, with all that money — again, spent on that ballot measure and, later on, lawyers — seemingly coming to naught.
Green Dot, who wants to go to a school named after a price tag at a garage sale?
That’s a good one!
Where’s that like button!
When can only guess what Gates will do next, but I have an idea.
The Gates Foundation will offer annual salaries to the children that attend publicly funded, private sector corporate charter schools starting at $25,000 a year with bonuses for the highest five percent of test scores.
If bribing and/or intimidating and/or blackmailing judges and elected representatives do not deliver what Gates wants, he will just buy the children, a form of indentured servitude to charter schools and the checks (labeled annual salaries/grants for the children/students) are made out to the parents.
And that’s not all. Charter supporting Senator Palumbo tried a last minute effort in the budget process to allow charters to collect local levy money despite the charter bill passed after the Court decision that specifically prohibited charters from using local levy funding. Fortunately the end run failed and Sen Palumbo resigned to rejoin Amazon as Public Affairs Director. But getting levy funds will be a priority for charter advocates in the next session.
The closing Green Dot charters in Kent and Tacoma blamed their financial troubles on the lack of Access to levy funding.
Easier to blame funding than not enough enrollment.
No waiting lists!
So, in a nutshell …
Green Dot
drove their Chevy
to the levy,
but the levy
was dry.
Them good ol’ boys
were drinking whiskey ‘n rye,
saying this was the day
the charters died.
This was the day.
the charters …. diiiii-ed.
Another poet! Wow!
How about a poet write off? Topic: public education vs charter schools and/or vouchers.
PRIVATE charter schools, folks, PRIVATE charter schools!