Last March, the Network for Public Education released a report written and researched by Carol Burris and Jeff Bryant, titled Asleep At the Wheel. It reviewed grants awarded by the federal Charter Schools Program and found that about a third of the grants went to charters that either never opened or closed soon after opening. It also reported that the CSP administrators did not conduct due diligence reviews and were basically handing out money without careful review. The report was cited by members of Congress when questioning Betsy DeVos. Burris has continued to release state reports on federal CSP awards, and she has found several states where the failure rate was 40%.
As you can imagine, the rightwing charter supporters were not happy. They responded not by calling for greater accountability and transparency by the charters, but by attacking the report! The critique was written by an employee of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. This is the organization that just honored Fernando Zulueta, who runs a highly political for-Profit Charter empire in Florida and amassed a real estate portfolio of more than $100 million.
Carol Burris responds here.
All the links are included.
Thank you, Dr. Burris!!! Your report was breathtaking, and it’s having a HUGE impact!
Thie report is clear and as detailed as it needs to be. Dr. Burris knows how to make data intelligible and tell a story. Thanks also to Valerie Strauss for publishing this rejoinder and to Darcie’s data dives into USDE’ s records.
YES!!!
Hi Diane,
Newark superintendent Roger Leon has embraced charter schools, surprising many. Do you think it is possible for charters and public schools to peacefully coexist? I am about to read Reign of Error again and I am sure I will get my answer, but in the meantime?
Thanks.
No one can rationally explain the need for private management funded with public dollars. The more I learn about charter schools, the less I understand the need for them. They are a triumph of marketing.
yes; the more we know about charters, the less we can understand the adamant and surprisingly dogged support for them which still comes from a few really-should-be-smarter sources
There is simply no reason to have dual systems competing for resources. Better to fully fund public schools equitably. Charters and public schools cannot peacefully coexist because corporatist, market-based competition is the stuff charters are made of. They don’t exist to coexist; they exist to win, and make their competitors lose.
Charters and public schools can peacefully coexist peacefully, just as ticks and humans peacefully coexist.
Ticks spread Lyme disease and charters spread Crime disease.
Education is tragically infested with charter ticks. Many ticks. Poly ticks. ₽o£iti¢$.
Ha ha ha!
Slyme Disease
Polytick
Infested
Snyder, Rick
Ingested
Harvard pick
Invested
If the charter cheerleaders cannot do better than to blame the “union boogeyman,” they should just quit with their false assertions. Their false claims just make them seem biased.
NPE’s report is well researched and documented. The fact that the National Alliance for Charter Schools feels that closing so many charter schools is a sign of “success” demonstrates their ignorance of what is good for poor students. While it is a symptom of the “free market,” it is also a symptom that the organization values marketplace instability over young people. Poor students crave stability as their lives are often unstable and chaotic. Public education provides a much more stable environment.
I put up the article itself, at OEN https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Charter-school-advocates-d-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-School-Failure_Charter-Schools_Education_Money-190703-654.html#comment738182. with this comments, which have embedded links at the above address.
When you talk about ‘faces news’ talk about the disinformation campaign that meddles with your tax-payer money. The endless spin on the privatization of our public schools is paid for by the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Here are 2 links to pieces I posted today which show how Gates and Walton support charters.
Washington State: “Gate’s Bold Experiment” with Charters Is Flunking;
How Walton Money Influences Charter School Debate Amid fierce debate over whether charter schools are good for black students, the heirs to the Walmart company fortune have been working to make inroads with advocates and influential leaders in the black community.
The responses to the WaPo were dominated by a couple of charter advocates. I would like to see some rebuttals.
The paid charter shills turn out in force to fight any criticism. The sure sign of a dying movement is 1) all its spokespersons are paid; 2) it never admits error.
Yeah, I know. I want to make sure that their voices aren’t the only one if someone who is not as familiar with charters reads this article.
“A few days after that piece appeared on this blog, a pro-charter education journal called EducationNext, published by Harvard University’s Kennedy School, published on its website a critique of “Asleep at the Wheel” and a defense of the federal Charter Schools Program.
That critique questioned the findings of the Network for Public Education report, saying, among other things, that there was not enough documentation, that the data sources were a “hodgepodge” and that the data was “misused to support a conclusion that is then advanced unwittingly by credulous media outlets.”
/// End of quote
This is from the same Harvard Kennedy School of Government that just offered former Michigan governor Rick Snyder a teaching fellowship, because he had important things to teach Harvard students (about poisoning towns with lead and Legionnaires bacteria?)
Better a “Hodge-podge” than a (Wall Street)” Hedge-podge” is all I can say.