Andrea Gabor is one of the most interesting education writers around. She holds the Bloomberg Chair in Business Journalism at Baruch College. Her articles appear on sites read by people in the business world. Yet she has a firm grasp of education issues. Her latest book, After the Education Wars, has the best discussion of New Orleans education issues that I have seen. Her book The Man Who Invented Quality, about W. Edwards Deming, has a brilliant chapter #9) utterly demolishing merit pay. Follow her articles.
Her latest appears on the website of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Gabor tells the story of the reversals of fortune of the charter industry in California. Its billionaire funders spent heavily on losing candidates in the last election and are now playing defense.
The article was written before the indictment of 11 people in the charter industry in California for scamming the state of $80 million. That got lots of press and increases pressure on the Legislature to plug some holes in its charter laws.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
California and some other states made the mistake of allowing the state to be a “free market” playground for billionaires and grifters. The free wheeling lack of rules made the state the target of frauds and embezzlers. Now with a change of leadership in the state and the rejection of the charter lobby in some elections. California is ready to tighten its belt buckle and regulate this out of control industry.
The ideological shift seemed apparent in the NEA’s Democratic forum yesterday. Most of the candidates had attended public schools, and many of them had family members that were teachers. Several candidates also mentioned the need for stronger unions in this country. The only pro-charter comment came from Beto O’Rourke that still believes non-profit charter schools are fine. There was some “booing” from the audience in response to this comment. Cory Booker must have withdrawn. His people probably told him it would be a no win spectacle for him.
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retired teacher,
You wrote this and it sure is worth repeating again:
“California and some other states made the mistake of allowing the state to be a “free market” playground for billionaires and grifters. The free wheeling lack of rules made the state the target of frauds and embezzlers.”
YES indeed.
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may the conversation about support for or resistance against expanding charter schools end up on the Pres. debate stages over and over: so often the question is never brought to light
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The people that got the best support from the crowd were Bernie, Biden and Warren. There were also a number of supporters for Beto from Texas. Warren was the most specific in her answers. She said she would reject standardized testing. Most of them promised to appoint a real educator to lead the DOE.
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I’m glad to hear that Warren spoke out against standardized testing at the NEA. IN 2015, when the reauthorizatuon of NCLB was debated, she and all the other Democrats on the Senate Committee fought to preserve federal mandates for annual testing and to preserve NCLB punishments for teachers. The issue was called the Murphy Amendment, introduced by Democrat Chris Murphy from Connecticut. All the Democrats fought to preserve the NCLB legacy of test-and-punish.
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I watched some of the forum on-line (it is on youtube) and I loved what Bernie said about protecting and paying for Social Security (even though it was off topic a bit.) Bernie was excellent and I thought he came off much stronger than at the debate.
I also was very glad Bill de Blasio came out strong against charters and did not mince words as other candidates did. I’m glad he is in the race and will hopefully keep pressure on the other candidates not to get away with the mealy mouth platitudes so many Democrats like to use.
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NYC PSP,
I wish Bill DeBlasio were as strong against charters as he claims. He is in charge of the schools and gives charters the names and addresses of children in public schools to help them recruit with promises. No other city does that. Public school parents have protested but to no avail. The charters complained bitterly when public school parents tried to stop this practice. Why are they recruiting if they have those fabled wait lists?
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Leonie Haimson wrote this on the NYC parents Blog:
Bill de Blasio, now running for President and courting teacher union support, made a big deal about how he opposed charter schools at the NEA conference: https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/07/05/warren-high-stakes-testing-democrats-forum-education/
“Too many Republicans, but also too many Democrats, have been cozy with the charter schools,” de Blasio said. “Let’s be blunt about it. We need to hold our own party accountable, too. And no one should ask for your support, or no one should be the Democratic nominee, unless they’re willing to stand up to Wall Street and the rich people behind the charter school movement once and for all.”
And: “I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize public education. I know we’re not supposed to be saying ‘hate’ — our teachers taught us not to — but I hate the privatizers and I want to stop them.”
And yet NYC is the ONLY district in the country that I know of that voluntarily gives charters access to family contact info to help them recruit students – a practice that he has so far refused to stop. Hypocrisy, anyone?
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