Linda Blackford, a writer for the Lexington, Kentucky, Herald Leader asks whether Kentucky can somehow manage to avoid the charter scandals that have occurred with startling frequency in other states.
The Kentucky legislature authorized charters but has not yet funded them. The parents in SOS Kentucky have thus far stopped the funding of charters, because the money will defund the public schools that most students attend.
Blackford writes:
In 2016, Jeff Yass, the billionaire founder of a Pennsylvania global trading company donated $100,000 to a political action committee called Kentuckians for Strong Leadership.
The PAC, according to its website, is dedicated to preserving the political fortunes of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and in 2016, ensuring Republican victory in the Kentucky House. [Diane’s note: Yass also contributed $2.3 million to a super PAC supporting the campaign of libertarian Senator Rand Paul, according to his Wikipedia bio, and is a member of the board of the rightwing Cato Institute.]
All kinds of people donate to McConnell, of course, but Yass is interesting because he’s most well known for his passionate advocacy of charter schools and vouchers, including a plan torevolutionize the Philadelphia schools with school choice (as well as cutting teacher pay and benefits).
Yass, along with his business partners, Joel Greenberg and Arthur Dantchik, are major players in political circles in Pennsylvania, donating to pro-school choice candidates. He obviously thought $100,000 was a good investment here, and while it might be pocket change to him, it’s a pretty big donation by Kentucky standards.
I bring this up because in the past two or three years of incessant discussion about charter schools, and Kentucky’s legislation to approve them, we’ve heard a lot about the pros and cons of charter schools, but we haven’t heard that much about what other states have discovered: the vast potential that charter school management has for making money off public tax dollars.
Our charter school legislation, passed in 2017, allows interested parties to start nonprofit charter schools. Less discussed is that the law also allows for-profit management companies to operate them. This is the model around the country, and it’s caused plenty of problems. ProPublica has also detailed numerous examples of management companies that make millions because they rent space and equipment to charter schools, with little oversight or competitive bidding…
Right now, of course, any potential Kentucky charter schools are on hold because the General Assembly hasn’t been able to agree on just how much money they should be allowed to take out of public schools. That’s in part due to the work of Save Our Schools Kentucky, a group of feisty teachers and moms who have followed the money and the politics of Gov. Matt Bevin and wanna-be governor Hal Heiner as they stacked the state Board of Education with pro-charter candidates, then dumped the commissioner for a pro-charter academic with sincere beliefs about charter schools but no experience in running a statewide education system. They’ve met often with legislators to explain how much public schools have to lose from charters.
“This is really all about financial gain,” said Tiffany Dunn, a life-long Republican and teacher. “The public school system and pension system in their mind represents money and they’re all about the free market, competition will take care of everything and we know in education that competition does not improve education.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I hope the moms and teachers of Save our Schools Kentucky continue to fight for their free, public schools. Any project funded by a hedge fund will be a disaster for the state. Yass and his ilk have bilked the people of Pennsylvania out of millions. Privatization has been a big fail in Pennsylvania that has seriously downgraded the financial stability of the commonwealth. Hedge funds know how to extract profit from anything they touch. They know nothing about education. They know about how to siphon money from any enterprise. Yass’ involvement is not about “choice” or any improvement in education. It is about moving massive amounts of public money out of community public schools and transferring it into private pockets including his and his partners through a variety of schemes including crooked CMOs. Hedge funds are toxic!
Charter management organizations are such a very serious problem. They need to be banned. We can’t have public institutions paying and conspiring with self-interested parties, whether those parties are connected to Putin or not.
The answer to the question is: ‘No, your state cannot avoid the charter scandals that have hit others.’
Numerous charters are already operating in your state, and most of them are pulling shenanigans…it’s just a matter of time before they are exposed.
To what charters are you referring? Kentucky doesn’t have any charters at this moment. And I pray they never will.
Which children will be the winners?
Most of the winners will have parents with college educations.
Which will be the losers?
Most of the losers will be the children that need education the most, the children that live in poverty. These children NEED to start the day with a nutritious diet. These children NEED to start learning how to read as early as age two in publicly-managed preschools where the teachers have earned a masters degrees in early childhood education, just like it is done in France.
“These children NEED to start learning how to read as early as age two …”
I suspect that is not really what you mean. NO child NEEDS to start learning how to read that early. There are all sorts of things that two year olds are mastering that supersede any reading instruction beyond reading to them. Even then the emphasis is on story not decoding the scribbles at the bottom of the page.
I know what you meant to say that every young child deserves access to quality pre-school education and that those children who come from environments that are immersed in poverty need them most of all.
No, you do not know what I meant, and since I did not spell it out in detail, how could you know what I meant?
Every parent should start turning their child or children into a lover of books and then later into an avid reader and this all starts at age two or even earlier, the same day they are born.
When the infant is teething, buy that child a chewy toy that is shaped like a book and is a book with a very short children’s story with illustrations that the parent can also read to them before they even know what all those words mean.
“See Jane run. Why is Jane running?” Bla! Bla! Bla!
When the child starts to talk and learn how to understand what parents are saying to them, the parents set aside time every day and/or night where the parent reads an appropriate story (parents decide what is appropriate) to the child during storytime. Hopefully, parents will not start with “Moby Dick”.
Parents should read in front of their children all the time even the day the child is born. Even with the baby is in diapers and can’t crawl yet, that infant must see his/her parents reading from real books instead of thumb texting, playing video games, or watching TV.
As the baby grows, there must be books and magazines and maybe even newspapers scattered around the house that the child sees his/her parents reading. Not on e-readers but printed on paper.
That is what I mean.
That is also part of learning to read starting at an early age.
That is where it starts. It is called modeling.
“Research shows the importance of parents reading with children — even after children can read”
… “Research has typically found that shared reading experiences are highly beneficial for young people. Benefits of shared reading include facilitating enriched language exposure, fostering the development of listening skills, spelling, reading comprehension and vocabulary, and establishing essential foundational literacy skills. They are also valued as a shared social opportunity between parents and their children to foster positive attitudes toward reading.
“When we read aloud to children it is also beneficial for their cognitive development, with parent-child reading activating brain areas related to narrative comprehension and mental imagery. While most of the research in this area focuses on young children, this does not mean that these benefits somehow disappear as children age.”…
“This research suggests that we should not stop reading with our children just because they have learned to read independently.
“We should continue reading with our children until they no longer wish to share reading with us, ensuring that these experiences are enjoyable, as they can influence children’s future attitudes toward reading, as well as building their confidence and competence as readers. It is worth the effort to find time to share this experience with our children in the early years and beyond.”
http://theconversation.com/research-shows-the-importance-of-parents-reading-with-children-even-after-children-can-read-82756
But the same research revealed that nearly three-fifths of children’s parents did not read to them at home.
Yes, actually I did know what you meant and said it too briefly apparently. I mistakenly believed I didn’t need to lay it out. I got stuck on the words “NEED to start learning to read” as in a formal academic process, assuming that you were not advocating for such a program. Apparently that was not clear from my reference to “decoding the scribbles.” A quality preschool would provide the environment that fosters a love of reading and the skills necessary to healthy development in a play based environment to those children whose families cannot provide the same benefits.
You have expressed your ideas about reading in the past more than once and over the years of reading your comments I felt like I had a pretty good grasp of what you were saying. My comments were not meant as a criticism of your position. I agree with it. I took issue with one phrase as a way of emphasizing that you did not mean a formal academic program. From what you wrote, it sounds like I was correct. If not, I am sorry. I had no intention of offending you.
No offense was taken or even considered.
For those children whose families cannot and/or do not provide early exposure to books, stories, and reading, I think public education must be expanded inside the public sector to provide adequate early childhood education programs to make up for the parents that do not introduce their children to books and reading at an early age. Sixty percent of parents is a big number.
France developed a program like that more than thirty years ago and until 9/11 when America launched its endless war all over the world to kill anyone with the label Islamic terrorist attached to their name, along with millions of people without the label who have another label called collateral damage, France’s early childhood education program that accepted children as young as age two was working and reducing the poverty rate in that country … until Europe was inundated with refugees caused by America’s endless war against Islamic terrorists.
“Around the world, 70.8 million people have been forcibly displaced. That’s the most since World War II, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Most people remain displaced within their home countries, but about 25.9 million people worldwide have fled to other countries as refugees. More than half of the refugees are children.”
https://www.worldvision.org/refugees-news-stories/forced-to-flee-top-countries-refugees-coming-from
Why does the United States NEED a similar early childhood education program like France? Because the “research revealed that nearly three-fifths (sixty-percent) of children’s parents did not read to them at home.”
Three-fifths or sixty percent of families in the United States is more than 21-percent of children that live in poverty so poverty isn’t the only problem we have to deal with.
We have to make up for inadequate parenting when it comes to introducing children to books and reading at an early age.
There is no way we are going to convince/force 60-percent of the parents that do not introduce their children to books and read to them at an early age on a regular basis to do what they should be doing as parents.
These parents, for whatever reason, must think (no, do think) teachers are going to do the job for them starting at age five in kindergarten. That is not the case in Finland where most if not all parents introduce their children to books and reading as early as age two so when they start school at age 7, they already know how to read.
But without the proper programs and support, teachers cannot make up for a lack of proper parenting in sixty percent of parents.
What is proper parenting?
Sixty-percent of parents must think proper parenting is letting their children eat and drink whatever they want and provide a place to sleep. And sooner or later, provide their children with a smartphone and/or tablet so the children can learn how to text, watch videos on small screens, play video game in effect isolating those children from the real world. All that texting screen time has become the new babysitter replacing the TV screen. Hollywood can’t be happy about that.
And what do people like Bill Gates do to remedy this problem? People like Bill Gates pushes high stakes, rank-and-punish the teacher tests and more screen time for children to replace expensive teachers and create profits for companies like Microsoft.
“I bring this up because in the past two or three years of incessant discussion about charter schools, and Kentucky’s legislation to approve them, we’ve heard a lot about the pros and cons of charter schools..”
‘Incessant’ is right.
Have people in Kentucky noticed yet that their public schools are being completely ignored?
Two or three “years” working on charters. Nothing accomplished or done for public schools in the state.
Get used to it. After 5 or 6 years of promoting, funding and cheerleading charters they’ll move on to promoting, funding and cheerleading vouchers. Plan on about a 15 year span of total domination of all policy discussions by people pushing charters and vouchers. When the miracle doesn’t happen, lawmakers will eventually remember there are public schools in the state and actually do some work on their behalf.
And this, Chiara, is why this November’s gubernatorial election is so important. Andy Beshear, the AG who’s running against Bevins, lost a court case against Bevin’s reorganization of the state board of education (currently full of charter-lovers and only one true educator). He said that if he’s elected governor he will reorganize the state board of education.
“Beshear put on his Twitter page that if he becomes governor, he would ‘create a new Kentucky board of education that values public education. And we’ll have a new Commissioner of Education too!'”
https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article231513058.html
Let us hope that he beats the least popular governor in the country!
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2019/07/18/kentucky-governor-matt-bevin-least-popular-again-morning-consult-poll/1764726001/