The evidence is clear that privately managed charters can get higher test scores by culling, exclusion, and attrition. It’s equally clear that charters drain resources from the public schools that enroll most students. Most public officials seem to understand that it costs more to run parallel systems, one public, one private.
But not in Rhode Island, where Governor Gina Raimondo is a big fan of charters (she was a hedge fund manager before running for governor). She is eager to expand Achievement First, a no-excuses charter known for high test scores and harsh discipline.
This article by Linda Borg in the Providence Journal lays out the findings of two independent studies that warned about the negative fiscal impact of charters on public schools (one from Moody’s Investors, the other from the Brookings Institution, which is erroneously described as “left-leaning”).
Borg should also have Gordon Lafer’s significant study of the fiscal drain of charters on the public schools of three districts in California.
Click to access ITPI_Breaking_Point_May2018FINAL.pdf
Supporters of expanding Achievement First cite a report funded by the Arnold Foundation, a rightwing foundation that zealously supports privatization and opposes public sector pensions. Billionaire John Arnold was an energy trader at Enron.
The recently appointed state commissioner, a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, dismissed the controversy as an “old conversation,” showing her indifference to stripping nearly $30 million from the needy public schools of Providence.
“State Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green, in an interview Wednesday, called this an “old conversation,” adding that the expansion plan was approved by the Rhode Island Council of Elementary and Secondary Education three years ago after a contentious debate between charter proponents and critics.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Chiefs for Ka-Ching
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We shouldn’t be surprised given the backgrounds of both our Commissioner and dear old Gina…..People are now complaining that Providence’s schools won’t be ready for the opening of school on Sept 3 because the “clean up” is taking too long. Given how many years/decades it took to get the schools into this deplorable condition, they can hardly be cleaned up in two weeks. Granted, Providence schools need help and to a degree, the state can help out, but not by taking them over and cleaning out the coffers to create more/increase the size of, charter schools. But the mayor (who controls the school committee), the commish, and the governor, are all charter proponents. I do, however, personally feel that none of the three of them have any clue about how to run a school system, let alone “fix” or improve one in need of assistance. Who to ask? Why, the folks who work there, that’s who….the teachers (who have already expressed a readiness and willingness to do whatever they can to help out. Duh!
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Reformers follow the same playbook. First they undermine public schools, cutting budgets while forcing them to spend huge amounts of that now smaller budget to pay for ed reform consultants or new ‘test prep’ materials while allowing their buildings to crumble around them.
Then they act as if they are doing a huge favor to the poorest families whose public schools they have been underfunding for years by offering them a “no excuses” charter that receives tens of millions of dollars from pro-charter billionaires and at the same time doesn’t have to spend even a penny of that money to teach any child who they decide is too expensive or whose test scores won’t allow them to have bragging rights so they can mislead the public even more and promote their brand.
I read one of the most inadvertently racist things written by Washington Post writer Jay Matthews praising Success Academy in his rave review of Robert Pondiscio’s recent PR publication (oops, I mean “carefully researched book that tells only what the billionaires who support him want him to tell”)
Matthews writes:
Smug and overprivileged Jay Matthews and his wife did not have their neighborhood public school underfunded and destroyed and then offered a “choice” to go that underfunded school or a charter school awash with money that the billionaires decided was best for Jay Matthews and his wife’s children — a school that requires that their children sit silently and blow mouth bubbles and every time they forget to keep their hands properly folded while sitting on their Kindergarten classroom and publicly rebukes and humiliates their children when they struggle academically so the rest of the class can understand how unworthy their children are.
White parents like Jay Matthews love the idea that these poor families can “choose” schools just like he and his wife do — a school where his children will only be “with the children of other parents who are equally engaged, committed, or ambitious.”
Both Pondiscio and Matthews never ask the main question they would have surely asked people “with nice degrees and good jobs”. And that is whether those parents would prefer a school “with the children of other parents who are equally engaged, committed, or ambitious” that doesn’t force their kids to blow mouth bubbles and publicly humiliate them and requires that their children sit perfectly with hands folded at all times and punished and humiliated if they dare to unclasp their hands.
Matthews implies something so racist without one bit of evidence — that those parents would choose Success Academy over a private school with small class sizes costing $40,000/year because those parents value the punishments for their kids and the public humiliation and air bubbles and forcing children to sit quietly and never unfold their hands except to raise it and immediately fold it again.
White people like Matthews love claiming that poor parents are choosing that charter because they want the over the top discipline that he and his wife likely believe their own children don’t need, There is no need to ask them if they’d like a nice selective private school with small classes and no public humiliation or air bubbles because Matthews already knows they would not.
It’s like saying “I know that those low-income African-American parents really love their public hospital that is falling apart because they are using it and not allowing their children to be left sick and untreated and we are so nice to give them a “choice” that we white folks know is the only choice they deserve even if we would not choose that for our own kids.
For Matthews to be so certain that poor families want their struggling children to be publicly humiliated and would never want the kinds of schools his own family is allowed to “choose” speaks volumes.
Pondiscio and Matthews and the no-excuses CEOs who do what billionaires want believe that poor children don’t want the same choice that affluent and middle class parents demand for their children. They want to give poor children only one choice and then promote that choice as stellar (for poor kids) and the only kind of choice their parents deserve when they absolutely know (but won’t mention) that the only attraction of that choice is that they only teach the kids they want to teach. And if there was not so much dishonesty in the ed reform “business”, there would be more questions about why poor families with high performing kids only get “no excuses” as their option and why billionaires keep giving no excuses charters so much money as if they believe that those are the only choices those kids deserve.
It is notable that when Eva Moskowitz decided to open schools in neighborhoods where the majority of kids are middle class and often affluent, she treated them very differently — shortened the school day after parents complained it cut into their kids’ after school activities, met with middle school parents complaining their kids were being punished too severely, etc. Parents don’t really want the “choice” that Jay Matthews insists should be the only choice for poor kids because their parents just love it.
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The public elementary school in the small low-income New England mill town where I grew up was chaotic. It was 100% white. My parents took me out of it in 5th grade to attend a relatively inexpensive private school so that I could actually learn. Parents who withdraw their kids from low-income schools are not necessarily racist; they just want orderly, safe environments for their kids.
I vividly remember how one of my best black students at a public high school I used to teach at was transferred to a Catholic school by his middle class black parents because of the anti-academic ethos of his majority black peers. Getting good grades was being “too white” and scorned by them.
Public schools in low-income areas are not beyond hope. But their administrators need more power to discipline (I’m not talking no-excuses level discipline), and the curriculum needs to be more content-focused so that kids’ minds get the nourishment they want and need. This kind of curriculum will lead to greater student engagement and fewer behavior problems. The combo of anti-discipline zeitgeist and horrid, convoluted, doing-without-learning skills curricula is a death sentence for these schools. Kids hate the curriculum, rebel and, because they get scanty consequences, disrupt chronically. I would not send my children to such a school.
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It would help a great deal if these chaotic public schools were fairly funded so they would be able to implement smaller classes, more support, books for the library, nutritious food in the cafeteria and a clean, well-maintained building.
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Retired,
I’m all for ample funding. But do you really think funding is the critical variable? I think it’s the students. In general, students from low-income families create more chaotic classroom environments. It’s not because they’re bad or dumb. I suspect it’s that they have different cultural software installed. It is not classism or racism that leads me to say this; it is empiricism. I’m happy to be proven wrong.
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The Providence schools will have less money to solve their problems, things will get worse, providing a pretext for charters, and accelerating a downward spiral.
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“Parents who withdraw their kids from low-income schools are not necessarily racist”
I did not say the PARENTS were racist. I said that the racists are white people who claim that poor, mostly non-white parents love that kind of harsh discipline and that’s why they are “choosing” a school that specializes in it.
Imagine if someone had come into your school district, totally decimated your public schools by years of lobbying for high class sizes, reduced funding and spending huge amounts of funding on test prep while the buildings fell apart, then offered the most well-behaved students who could learn easily 3 choices:
Stay in the underfunded public school which must educate all the most difficult students with less money.
Attend a lovely school run with kindness full of the most motivated parents of well-behaved students with classes of 15 or fewer where kindergarten students are treated the way kindergarten students in private schools are (no blowing air bubbles or humiliation for every infraction of not keeping hands properly clasped). Lots of extras and experienced teachers and trained professionals to address any learning issues.
Attend a harsh no-excuses schools full of the most motivated parents and their well-behaved children that has large class sizes taught by newly minted teachers with expectations that all students will perform well under their curriculum or they are “bad” or “not trying” and therefore must be humiliated and punished. Hands clasped at all times, air bubbles blown, public humiliation.
Affluent white parents like Jay Matthews are very likely to choose #2. But what is racist is when Jay Matthews then turns around and insists that he is certain that the reason that poor non-white parents choose #3 is because they love that harsh no-excuses learning. But it is because those parents are not offered choice #2, they are only offered choice #1 or #3 and choosing #3 is not – as Matthews is so certain it is — because they love their children being treated harshly and taught to blow air bubbles. It is because they aren’t being offered choice #2.
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Glad you drew attention to Jay Mathews latest at WaPo. It’s just a blurb promoting Pondiscio’s latest book, but w/ only a few paras to work w/, he still managed to come off sounding like an ass in a bubble, didn’t he?
I gather Pondiscio was not entirely thrilled w/SA’s no-excuses approach – but finds a silver lining: it forces parental involvement! (?!). Meanwhile, Mathews’ main interest in the book seems to lie in Pondiscio’s apparently extensive & rosy coverage of SA’s curriculum. (That comes out in his responses to comments). This guy (Pondiscio] actually spent a year in SA’s Bronx Academy, & emerges convinced that their special sauce is all about curriculum LOL!
Meanwhile studies from just 3 yrs ago show SA “somehow” loses students at FOUR TIMES the rate of schools in their nbhds between 3rd & 4th gr, i.e., right after the 1st round of stdzd tests wink wink. Average gr-to-gr attrition is 10% (compared to 2.7% in same or nearby school bldgs. And 40% of those comparisons were significantly (i.e. well above random factors) higher than in nearby schools. And Eva herself explained publicly they don’t backfill like tradl publics in older grades because “the incoming students’ lack of academic preparation would adversely affect the other students.” This issue alone – attrition – most likely entirely explains SA’s test scores. (Which BTW are not high enough to get them into selective-admission magnets). Nothing at all to do w/no-excuses methods, nor w/ curriculum.
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Jay Matthews and Robert Pondiscio’s beliefs are typical of white people who believe that all African-American and Latinx students who attend NYC public schools are failures and their racist attitude that the same students in public schools — where at least 1/4 to 1/3 of those students are doing well — just do not exist. Matthew and Pondiscio’s admiration for a charter that teaches 1% or 2% of the NYC public school population depends on their certainty — which is completely racist — that it is near impossible to find even a tiny handful of African-American student in a NYC public school who are anything but failures.
It is absurd. In NYC public schools, anywhere from 25% to 35% of the African-American and Latinx students are proficient on state tests. In a school system with nearly 1.1 MILLION students, it is incredibly easy for a charter with unlimited money and willingness to churn through students to find enough easy to teach students to fill their school.
Pondiscio chose to look at Success Academy Bronx 1, which is located in NYC public school District 7 in the Bronx, where there are more than 10,800 students in K-8 public schools and at least 30% of them were proficient on state exams. I look at the data at the NYSED website and it tells me that the 85 students in the Kindergarten class at SA Bronx 1 in 2017-18 were significantly less economically disadvantaged than the nearly 1,200 Kindergarten students in Bronx 7 public schools. And what is most shocking is that in Bronx District 7 public schools, more than 20% of the Kindergarten students are ELL. At Success Academy Bronx 1, fewer than 6% of the Kindergarten students are. The percentage of disabled students in SA Bronx 1 is significantly smaller than the percentage of disabled students in District 7, where it draws its students.
And yet, starting with that huge advantage in Kindergarten enrollees is only the tip of the cherry picking. Too many students seems to disappear and the class sizes don’t go down steadily as would happen with regular attrition. Instead, look at what happened to the students who started in 3rd grade in 2017-2018 and yet never took the 4th grade state exam the following year.
There were 78 3rd grade students on the books at Success Academy Bronx 1 in the 2017-18 school year, according to the enrollment data on the NYSED website.
And yet only 50 SA Bronx 1 4th grade students took the 4th grade state tests in 2018-2019 that were just released.
Why aren’t any journalists asking questions about where those 28 Bronx 1 3rd grade students went between the start of 3rd grade and test taking time in 4th grade? That is far more than 1/3 of the 3rd graders no longer with the cohort by testing time in 4th grade.
The percentage of students in grades 3 – 8 in Bronx district 7 who are economically disadvantaged is 18% higher than the students in grade 3 – 8 at Success Academy Bronx 1 that draws from that district. The percentage of students in grades 3 -8 in District 7 who are disabled is TWICE as high as the percentage at Success Academy. The percentage of students in grades 3-8 who are homeless in District 7 is 300% higher than at SA Bronx 1.
And yet there were over 2,000!! students in grades 3 – 8 in Bronx District 7 public schools who were proficient on state exams. Over 400 of them were in 4th grade public schools. But I assume they are invisible to Matthews who is beside himself that Success Academy could cherry pick 50 4th grade students to teach. It’s a miracle!
I don’t think Matthews is even aware of how racist his over the top praise for Success Academy is. I don’t think he realizes that having the parents of 50 4th graders who are given few options “choosing” a well-funded charter school that decides their children are worth teaching does not mean that the parents would not prefer a well-funded public school that isn’t so harsh but could also cherry pick easy to teach students.
This year, over 17,000 African-American and Latinx 3rd graders in NYC public schools were proficient on state exams. In a single grade, there are over 17,000 African-American and Latinx 3rd graders who do well in NYC public schools. That tells you why charter chains like Success Academy are bursting at the bit to expand here and ignoring all the other urban areas in NY State where public schools are significantly worse but they would not have enough higher performing students to cherry pick to fill their charters and brag about high passing rates.
The most incriminating fact that supports the idea that Success Academy cherry picks is that Eva Moskowitz has a single Success Academy school in a Bronx district where well over 90% of the students are economically disadvantaged and 3 Success Academy elementary schools in affluent Manhattan District 2 which serves a fraction of the truly disadvantaged students that District 7 in the Bronx does.
Dishonest books like Pondiscio’s refuse to look closely at the cherry picking policies for fear it would undermine the privatization movement. Instead he and his enablers like Jay Matthews continue to assert that poor parents in poverty would “choose” to have their children subjected to blowing air bubbles and publicly humiliated even if they had a different choice of a school that also cherry picks students but does not subject those students to the kind of humiliation and harsh treatment that Success Academy does.
If the DOE opened a lottery school that was run like a private school and simply counseled out all students not easy to teach or well-behaved and replaced them with students who were, Pondiscio and Jay Matthews would never say “wow, look what the DOE has done with their amazing new curriculum”. They would say “but look at all the other failing schools, why aren’t you fixing them?”
The question is why Jay Matthews and Robert Pondiscio are so certain that the “success” of students in SA Bronx 1 isn’t cherry picking when they go out of their way to ignore everything that points to exactly that being the case.
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Great stats, thanks, nycpsp!
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[…] a charter school advocate who backed former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg during the Democratic presidential […]
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[…] a charter school advocate who backed former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg during the Democratic presidential […]
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