Haha, the charter industry keeps intoning over and over that charter schools are not public schools, but of course they are not. They are private schools that receive public funding and want more of it every year.
David Osborne, one of the loudest cheerleaders for charters, wrote in the Washington Post that charter schools are indeed private schools, and that is what makes them so fabulous.
It seems that the public sector mucks up everything, and the private sector really knows how to make things go well.
Kind of like those brilliant guys in California who figured out how to work the funding stream so they could siphon off $80 million for themselves and their allies.
And like the entrepreneurs who have figured out how to milk government funds by buying the real estate, then leasing it to their charter at exorbitant rates.
And like the legislators in Florida who direct public funding to the for-profit charters owned by their family.
It is refreshing to see a charter advocate admitting what everyone knows: charter schools are private, deregulated schools. Numerous studies have shown that they don’t get better results than public schools unless they cherrypick their students.
Now if someone can explain the rationale for government funding two sets of schools at the same time–one free to choose its students and set its own admissions rules, the other required to accept all students, including those kicked out by the private charters–then we might make sense of this mess.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
David Osborne just gave a justification for vouchers. He just gave a justification for segregated schools being allowed to pick and choose the children who are given vouchers to attend. He just gave a justification for insurance companies to no longer have any regulations preventing them from dropping any and all patients once they get a disease that costs a lot of money to treat.
Osborne just gave a justification as to why he wants us to privatize prisons because we already have privatized prisons so why not have more.
Osborne just gave a justification as to why we should have private fire departments and private police departments. From now on, Osborne would argue, every homeowner can pick their own fire department and their own police department and those private departments can decide at the last minute not to go to a fire or a crime because it is too expensive for them to go to.
His view is the same as any right wing Republican. Osborne will find lots of like-minded people in the right wing Republican racist movement.
The governor of Florida just approved a $91 billion dollar budget by trimming $131 million from the budget. These cuts include public schools and most others for the health and well being of citizens. A lot of the education budget will be used to expand vouchers. People need to realize that voting for right wing libertarian types equals a disinvestment in public service, but it will include an increase in corporate handouts and more tax loopholes for corporations.
Investing in private charter schools or vouchers while undermining the schools most students attend makes no logical sense. It makes sense to libertarians that believe in small government as an ideological ideal. What people really want is a government that responds to their needs, not just a smaller government. We need to stop putting radical right wing people in positions of power. Their bias undermines the common good.
Yes, retired teacher. Educators must educate the public.
Best part of Osborne’s missive is in the comments section: calling the author out for the typical: “Let’s claim the system is broken, then let’s then break the system through legislation, under funding, etc. and point fingers saying, ‘See! It’s broken!’, then suck up public tax dollars to fill private pockets with “market based solutions”.
It’s the same old story with the same old outcomes. In the 1870s it was called “Horse and Sparrows” economics. Reagan rebranded it as “Supply Side” or “Trickle Down” (and Bush the First called it “VooDoo”). It’s also known as “greed”.
Competition by it’s very definition produces winners and losers:
Compete: “To strive against another or others to attain a goal, such as an advantage or victory.”
There is no place for that when it comes to educating our children and securing our future.
The people are waking up.
Where in this piece did Osborne claim that charter schools are private schools?
The entire article is a defense of privatization.
Do the math, and it’s clear that a majority of publicly funded services are now delivered by private organizations….
More than 80 percent of the $50 billion we spent on housing assistance went to private landlords, and most of the $93.5 billion we spent on transportation went to private contractors (almost half to highway construction alone). NASA spends roughly $20 billion a year, and as one agency history put it, “From its establishment to the present, NASA has contracted with the private sector for most of the products and services it uses.”
He is arguing that private landlords, private contractors are more efficient than public sector agencies. A charter school is a private school. It has a private board that is self-selecting, that need not hold public meetings, that in many states are allowed to engage in nepotism and conflicts of interest.
Here is proof that he is wrong:
https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/inside-the-charter-school-empire-prosecutors-say-scammed-california-for-80m/
Interesting. Thanks for your response. I read the piece again, and Osborne definitely doesn’t say that charter schools are private schools. In fact, he put “privatization” in quotes because that’s the word that charter critics use to scare people. You are the one who said Osborne claimed that charters are private schools when, in fact, he didn’t. It doesn’t seem fair to put words in someone’s mouth.
The point of the article is that privatization is good, not bad.
Did you miss the point?
It is fairly obvious to me that Osbourne is arguing that the best way to distribute money is to place public money in private hands because they do the job better. He clearly suggests this with regards to the health care system, which he sees as functioning well with this model. He says that “education was late coming to this 21st century model.” It is clear that he sees charters as following this model. Thus he sees charters as private entities carrying out public duties like health insurance companies administer the public duty of providing health care payment.
In simplest terms, Mr. Osborne is trying to compare the education of children (all children, not just some) with manufacturing airplane parts. While the idea seems amusing, I have no doubt that there are those in education (Gates) who see a future where graduates, are, in fact, manufactured via standardized technology delivered via school-in-a-box, along with standardized tests, and AI instead of authentic teachers. Private isn’t just defined by how a public entity chooses to outsource goods and services; it’s about accountability to the taxpayer and having a voice over how those dollars are spent. The idea that somehow charters do more with less because they possess some magical ability to outsource more efficiently belies the fact that they spend more on administration and less on the kids. It is common to find that charters cut costs based on the populations they serve (fewer SPED and ELL), as well as on services that they don’t provide, such as food, transportation, benefits, health, and afterschool care. In addition, their no-bid consulting contracts and sky high rents to friends/relations shatters the myth of efficiency vs. the reality of a bloated, privately managed business that, in the long run, benefits only those greedy feeders at the privatization trough.
“It is refreshing to see a [PRIVATE] charter advocate admitting what everyone knows: charter schools are private, deregulated schools. Numerous studies have shown that they don’t get better results than public schools unless they cherrypick their students.
Now if someone can explain the rationale for government funding two sets of schools at the same time–one free to choose its students and set its own admissions rules, the other required to accept all students, including those kicked out by the private charters.
The term charter school or charter should always be preceded by the word “private” every time we refer to them as Diane does in the last sentence of the quote and as I have added in the first sentence.