Rachel M.Cohen wrote in the American Prospect that the Democratic candidates are distancing themselves from the charter school issue, which only a few years ago was deeply embedded in the Obama administration education policy.
This is progress. In 2016, it was nearly impossible to get any candidate to discuss K-12 education. At last they notice that it is not cool for a Democrat to support charters. Most are trying to play the issue cautiously, being against “for profit” charters, but not acknowledging that large numbers of nonprofits are managed by for profits.
This far, Bernie Sanders is the candidate who has taken the strongest stand against charters, endorsing the NAACP call for a moratorium.
Other candidates are hedging their bets.
Hours after Sanders’s education plan was released, Elizabeth Warren told reporters that she agreed for-profit charters are “a real problem.” She has not yet released her own K-12 plan. While the Massachusetts senator has supported charter schools in the past, in 2016 she came out against a high-profile ballot initiative that would have allowed charters to expand much more quickly in her state. The measure ended up failing, with 62 percent of voters siding against it.
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg also came out to say he supports Sanders’s proposal to ban for-profit charter schools, though he affirmed a month earlier that charters “have a place” in the education landscape “as “a laboratory for techniques that can be replicated.”
Beto O’Rourke, who opposes a national moratorium on new charters, told the NEA presidential forum that “There is a place for public nonprofit charter schools, but private charter schools and voucher programs—not a single dime in my administration will go to them.” O’Rourke has supported charters in the past, and his wife is a former charter school leader who now sits on the board of a local education reform group that supports expanding charters in El Paso.
A friend in California forwarded an email showing that charter zealot and billionaire Reed Hastings is hosting a gathering for Mayor Pete, which suggests that he would be a strong charter guy. His background at McKinsey points in the same direction.
The Network for Public Education Action will be following and grading the candidates on the issues that concern us. Feel free to let us know what you learn at town halls.
If you meet one of them, ask them if they will pledge to eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program, which currently funnels $440 Million each year to charters, mostly the big corporate chains like KIPP, which do not need a federal subsidy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I will pay $100 to the first person who asks Beto O’Rourke to explain the difference between “private charter schools” and “public charter schools”, and actually gets a cogent answer. Because I’m pretty sure he’s trying to thread a very narrow needle between “for-profit” and “not-for-profit,” a needle that Peter Greene has already destroyed as a difference without a distinction. Or he really doesn’t understand that the only thing “public” about charter schools is their funding–but they are all technically “public schools”.
This is why every time a candidate says something about only supporting “not for profit” or “public” charter schools, we should scream bloody murder and force them to acknowledge the damage these charters are doing to the “system” of public education in this country, and demand they withdraw their support for ALL charter schools if they want teachers’ votes.
Make them choose: teachers or charters. You can’t have both.
Charter schools are not public schools, anymore than Boeing is a public airplane manufacturer.
Diane–
Remember when Duncan was ruining–er, running–the “show” that RT3 was analogized as “building the plane while flying it?”
Sadly, that analogy has become truth in the case of Boeing (in all their corporate greed glory).
ESSENTIALLY SAID: public school advocates must “force them to acknowledge the damage these charters are doing to the “system” of public education in this country, and demand they withdraw their support for ALL charter schools if they want teachers’ votes.”
We can’t keep letting candidates off the hook with, “Oh, the candidate doesn’t know the difference between a public and a private charter,” or, “Candidate doesn’t realize what charters do to public schools.” The vast majority of them have financial ties to charter schools, or have close family members with ties to charters.
They know, and they act ignorant, because they, or those close to them, make money from the destruction of schools, and they HAVE to “be ignorant.”
“Ignorance” was never really a defense, and it is NO DEFENSE now. Charters have been destroying public education for more than 20 years. They ARE the “status quo” now. People need to realize that.
Exactly, TOW.
Just as “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
GO BERNIE!
Aye, Aye!
Politicians who support charter schools are inequity enablers: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/2/15/1834968/-Inequity-Enablers-Politicians-Who-Support-Charter-Schools
Tell them to stop!
Thank you for your insightful post. Charters do not address the larger systemic problems of poverty and inequity. “Charter schools do not mediate toxic inequity. They are inequity enablers.”
Yes. I think it could even be stated: Charter schools not only do not mediate toxic inequity, they encourage and sustain it.
The central problem is that the candidates hear or read “public charter school” and are they are either clueless about why anyone might object to these schools or hoping that voters do not care about the “nuanced” difference from their local public schools. The Center for American Progress (CAP),a think tank for Democrats, claims that charter schools are a great way to address inequity in education. (CAP) also loves the “high standards” in the Common Core, school choice, teacher accountability based in part on the test scores of students, Candidates running for office as Democrats, not just for the office of President, who look to CAP for ready to use talking points are being set up to perpetuate myths about charter schools created by the charter school industry.
Some people and some think tanks are paid to think and speak the way they do.
Just as a hanging concentrates the mind, so does a check for $5 million.
In a 2011 article posted at the Center for American Progress, co-authors, Frederick Hess and CAP’s Cynthia Brown, praised the same reformers, Deborah Gist, Tony Bennett, Paul Pastorek,…. And, they called for the same reform agenda i.e. philanthropies changing the system. (No mention of democracy.)
Evidently, the optics of a “progressive” group sidling up next to the libertarian AEI to work in concert to privatize America’s most important common good for the benefit of the wealthy caused suspicion in the years following, except not for Jonathan Chait, David Leonhardt and the neo-liberals at harvard and CAP.
The fact that a candidate makes a point of drawing a distinction between for profit and “non-profit” charters indicates that they know enough about the issue to realize that they are up to no good.
Say this for George W. He may have been an alcoholic earlier in his life (before meeting Laura) but he never hung out with Jeffrey Epstein!
I think Democrats need a positive agenda for public schools. So far, Bernie Sanders is the only one who has a real one.
Part of what the ed reform “movement” has done has limited debate and discussion to “choice” and “accountability”, which in practice means charters, vouchers and testing.
The only part of that that is relevant to 90% of students and families is testing.
I think it’s an indication of what an echo chamber this “movement” is that none of them notice this. They offer absolutely nothing of value to public school students and families. If all public school students and families were in “wealthy suburbs” I could (somewhat) understand that, but that is not at all true. Public schools serve a WIDE variety of students, all over the country – poor, working class, middle class, upper class, rural, suburban, urban. To deliberately ignore 90% of students seems nuts to me. It IS nuts and would be considered nuts in any public policy area outside of education.
I don’t think this at all reflects the attitudes of the general public, either. Most people really only want to hear about charter and vouchers, although the vast majority of those people attended public schools themselves and send their children to public schools? That’s..odd. I’d have to see some proof of that.
If both leaders of the two teacher unions straightforwardly declared no support for any candidate who supports charter schools, the Dem candidates would pay attention.
That is true, Ira, but the NEA already voted down a proposition to endorse only a candidate opposed to charter schools (i.e., private schools that are non-union and publicly funded)
The American Federation of Teachers has sent the charter-loving Center for American Progress at least $250,000 for each of the last five years. CAP is supposed to be a Democratic think tank.
On July 1, CAP put its “editorially independent”, Think Progress site up for sale. If a billionaire from the tech industry or, the corporate Third Way buys it, the staff at Think Progress will be able to continue hatchet jobs on Bernie.
Has Weingarten left the establishment Dem tent that is Neo-liberal and anti-democracy or, is she still a Neera Tanden/Gates/Tom Daschle/Clinton minion?
It also amazes me that none of these incredibly savvy political pros on the Democratic side figured out the obvious way to persuade people to support their beloved charter schools:
Support public schools.
People didn’t object to this at the start because of “charter schools”. What they objected to was ed reformers either abandoning existing public schools or actively opposing them and excitedly celebrating their imminent demise.
What a ridiculously clueless “ask”. Support charter schools AS YOU WATCH US either completely ignore or actively harm the public schools most of you use.
It’s probably too late now but ed reform made an ideological decision to position themselves contra to existing public schools, which was, frankly, dumb. I’m convinced they did this because it’s an echo chamber so people like Arne Duncan assumed the whole country has as much disdain for public schools and public school students as he does, and that’s not true. They don’t.
They STILL don’t offer public school students or parents anything. Go look at any of the ed reform sites from the perspective of a public school student or parent. You’re simply not there. Out students DO NOT EXIST in this world other than as a counterpoint used to promote the schools they prefer- charters and private schools.
The charter cause has been captured by the far-right: the Waltons, the Koch brothers, ALEC, every red state governor.
The real puzzle is how it happened that Republicans, who once fervently believed in local control, came to agree that their local public schools should be outsourced to national corporations.
As I see it, it is the victory of Wall Street over Main Street.
Wall St. over Main St.
Great line, Diane.
—And yet…Call me naive, but I’m not caving.
My sincere love and respect to all who are in this fight. My 35 years of public school teaching Latin—-ironically, the focus of several ‘Classical Academy’ charters—will never yield to Dumb Disruptive Deformers.
You see the disappearance of public school students in the language they use. They refer to charter school STUDENTS and public SCHOOLS. I mean, often we don’t even get “public school” most often we get (insanely) “teachers unions” used as proxy for our actual schools, but what we never get is public school STUDENTS.
In this world there are charter school students and there are private school students and then there are “buildings” or any of the other dismissive terms they use.
This is wacky. I mean, it’s a standardized test question. “Students, Students, Schools” – which one of those doesn’t fit with the other two?
I’m a public school parent. I’m supposed to join up with people who don’t even acknowlege that there are students in my son’s public school? People who refer to him as a “district” or (most ridiculously) as a teachers union? Why would I do that?
Please, Chiara, the children at charter schools are SCHOLARS, not students.
Chairs in charter schools are known as “high-quality seats,” whereas in public schools they are simply chairs or seats.
The US Must support public schools. All our children must be well educated.Charters are taking money from public schools with little to show for it. Think of this,the students of today are the adults of tomorrow.
I also love the cluelessness of this concerted political campaign to tell KIDS that their teachers are stupid and greedy and self-interested and that school is boring and completely irrelevant to 16 year olds because of some “futurist” nonsense that none of them will have jobs, because, robots.
50 million public school parents all over the country are doing the best they can to tell their students to show respect to their teachers and work hard and that all of this is worthwhile while 10,000 paid lobbyists use their megabucks and huge platforms to tell those same kids THE OPPOSITE.
Stop “helping” us. Please.
I am blown away by the fact the US Department of Education travels to public schools so Betsy DeVos can tell students how bored they should be because they’re in a factory.
Thanks for that. I mean, her grandkids won’t need paid work but mine will. Maybe she can forgo trashing the school she’s standing in. Put aside her ideological mission for a second and realize WHO she is talking to. Students. In public schools.
From Rachel M. Cohen’s article that is linked to:
“To fight back, many charter supporters have sought to cast Sanders as uniquely extreme on the issue, especially in his efforts to link charter schools with segregation. But it’s hard to target Sanders as extreme when the entire 2020 field has joined and even surpassed Sanders on the issue.”
That is a notable point. Although they are desperately trying, the pro-charter forces can’t target Sanders as extreme when some of the 2020 field has actually surpassed him on this issue. That is a good thing for those who support public schools.
Rachel Cohen explains how Bernie is benefiting from other candidates being in the race who have actually surpassed him on this issue because it makes it much harder for his view to be painted as extreme.
From her article:
“Earlier this month, at a presidential forum hosted by the National Education Association (NEA), New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio came out swinging against charters, which educate 10 percent of public school students in his city. While de Blasio has long been known as a charter school skeptic, and has battled with Eva Moskowitz, the leader of New York City’s largest charter network in the past, he also has sought to assure voters that he does not outright oppose charter schools**, and can negotiate compromises with them.
At the forum he made clear he was no longer seeking such nuance or compromise. “I am angry about the privatizers,” he told the crowd. “I hate the privatizers and I want to stop them.” When asked a question about standardized testing, he responded, “Get away from high-stakes testing, get away from charter schools. No federal funding for charter schools.” His last point goes beyond what what Sanders has called for. ”
This is why it is important to have more pro-public school candidates in this race, which helps Bernie because it makes it much harder for opponents to mischaracterize Bernie’s views as “extreme”. Gov. Jay Inslee is another candidate who has been a strong supporter of public schools: From the article: “Inslee has been critical of charters in his home state, where just a dozen currently operate. In 2012, when he first ran for governor, he opposed a ballot initiative to allow the creation of charters and in 2015 he emphasized that his position remained unchanged. “I opposed the initiative that created charter schools because I did not believe that public money belongs in schools that lack public oversight and accountability,” he said.”
** It is interesting to read the link in the article to a June 2016 Politico article. In it, de Blasio is supporting DREAM charter: “DREAM, for example, constitutes something resembling the platonic ideal of a de Blasio-style charter school. The school has a special education population that is higher than its community school district average, a new pre-K, a public park for use by the community after school hours, 88 new affordable housing units in the area, and afterschool programs. The school’s new building opened last year; it is the first new public school building in East Harlem in nearly 50 years. De Blasio said Monday that DREAM has a “deep, deep commitment to inclusion.”
de Blasio also makes it clear in that link that his support of charters like DREAM that seek out special needs students is not support for charters like Success Academy and he made it crystal clear why: “then there is the category of charters that de Blasio and his schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, do not support or want to symbolize the city’s charter sector. Success Academy is the prime example of such a charter for de Blasio and Fariña, a fact that de Blasio did not shy away from on Monday.
“There is a very clear area of disagreement we have with some charter networks which is about exclusion first and foremost,” de Blasio said. “Either not taking enough special education kids consistent with the district you’re in, not taking enough English language learners, or a teaching methodology that tends to discourage and remove kids who don’t test as well. And we obviously have some evidence now of kids being removed from the school or discouraged from staying if they don’t test well,” he said, referring to a New York Times report that revealed one Success school kept a “got to go” list of unruly students the principal wanted to leave the school. ”
We should be welcoming people who have been fighting against charter expansion for many years to the national discussion about charters because they can make important points that need to be said and help paint the newcomers to this fight as less extreme. It is important to hear their voices as well as those who have less familiarity with this issue but have – to their credit – finally joined them in standing up strong for public schools.
Also, from the article, Biden states,”I do not support any federal money for for-profit charter schools, period,” Here will go again with the for-profit game of bait and switch. Somebody should ask him the CMO question.
Yes, in fact, that was kind of Bernie’s position in 2016. “I only support “public” charters.” Now Bernie has progressed to having a much more admirable position in 2019. He should get many kudos for that.
I think the point that some pro-public education voices are making is that Democrats should stand up strongly and say they are against all charters, period. Privately run schools run by CEOs with no local oversight should not be given any public money to teach public school students, period, even if they are “non-profit”. Even if they have “accountability”. Because unfortunately, “accountability” usually means “what percentage of students did well on state tests” and not “how many students who won the lottery mysteriously disappeared because the school doesn’t find it financially rewarding to teach those kids.”
Instead, the candidates should explain that there have always been public magnet schools that do the same things charters do, except that they protect the rights of the students and the cost savings the system has by running schools that exclude students does not go to charter CEOs but goes to support schools that don’t exclude the most difficult to teach students.
That’s why I think it is important to have de Blasio’s voice in there. There should be more candidates in this race saying all charters are a problem and able to explain why.
Biden’s comment is concerning as we have trusted Democrats before and have been disappointed. He needs to define terms more.
I agree with your point about Biden’s comment being concerning.
Of course, if the candidates are just willing to say “I oppose all charters, period, whether for-profit or non-profit”, then they have no need to define their terms!
I believe they should be saying “I support public magnet schools, which may be similar to charters but are run for and by the public school system. Not charters that are run by private operators and do not answer to the community.”
Beto, Pete, and Cory are all in love with Betsy DeVos. The July 17 Quinnipiac poll had Buttigieg at 3% and O’Rourke and Booker at 1%. In almost every poll conducted so far, none of the three reached double digits. They like charters. Voters don’t like them. The front runners, on the other hand, all have taken a much stronger stand against charters than in the past. Maybe that’s why they’re front runners.
Mayor Pete is having a fundraiser in Los Angeles hosted by Reed Hastings, the main funder of charter schools in California. The ticket is $500.
Pete lives in Indiana, where the privatizers have wreaked havoc on public schools, and where charter corruption is rampant.
He should know better.
I made several contributions to Beto when he ran against Ted Cruz.
I went to Beto’s first fundraiser in NYC, held in a small coffeehouse on the Bowery, at a time when Beto was an unknown.
I asked him about charters, and he assured me that he supported public schools, not charters.
I did not learn until much later that his wife ran a charter and the organization where she works is facilitating the invasion of El Paso by IDEA charter chain, one of Betsy DeVos’s favorites; she just gave IDEA $116 million of federal funds to grow more charters in El Paso.
I must have given Beto a total of $1,500, hoping he would beat the horrible Cruz.
I want my money back.
Reed Hastings engages in almost Koch-level political meddling, in both intensity and intent.
A couple of surprises….I do not know how any candidate could offer any sense about this.
I read some news which inspired me to look up what the wealth of Bill Gates used to be. I guess he had sort of a bad year, falling to second place with only $107 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index. I can imagine having a million dollars. A hundred million dollars? A hundred of those millions ten times…that would be one billion. Gates supposedly has that much 107 times, one billion dollars behind the person who is in first place with 108. Gates is a a good guy……he gave away 35 billion to the the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which uses that money to expand information technology and other good things. One shocker…..the list I found said he had gone from 50 billion in 1998 to 136 billion in 1999, By 2002, he was down to 40 billion…..Obama and Trump helped him recover. the last year for Obama they mention…..2014…says 81 billion. I am not sure how much it matters after accumulating the first billion. I would rather he not be given a place of influence upon public education.
Gates and Zuck, as individuals, not their foundations are invested in the largest for-profit seller of schools-in-a-box which had at inception an anticipated return to investors of 20%. Then, there’s Gates’ venture philanthropy related to his Monsanto stock.
Because a woman in Africa couldn’t afford to care for her children she told Melinda to take them. Melinda declined. When you have $107 bil. and a PR machine that paints you as a saint, you blather like Melinda does and continue to concentrate wealth..