Steven Singer, a teacher in Pennsylvania, has concluded that there are no good charter schools. The problem, he says, is not implementation but the concept, which, he insists, is wrong.
He writes:
The problem with charter schools isn’t that they have been implemented badly.
Nor is it that some are for-profit and others are not.
The problem is the concept, itself.
Put simply: charter schools are a bad idea. They always were a bad idea. And it is high time we put an end to them.
I am overjoyed that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are starting to hear the criticisms leveled against the charter school industry in the face of the naked greed and bias of the Trump administration and its high priestess of privatization, Betsy DeVos. However, I am also disappointed in the lack of courage displayed by many of these same lawmakers when proposing solutions.
Charter schools enroll only 6 percent of students nationwide yet they gobble up billions of dollars in funding. In my home state of Pennsylvania, they cost Commonwealth taxpayers more than $1.8 billion a year and take more than 25 percent of the state’s basic education funding. That’s for merely 180 schools with 135,000 students!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The original idea — I recall it was something like Summerhill — was not bad. But no person of good will anticipated how it would be corrupted and perverted once the capitalist corpserations (sic) and their minions among the church-state missionaries and the white-supremacist charterbaggers discovered what a handly wedge in the door it gave them.
All ideas are good until they aren’t.
All ideas are good until Bill Gates and the billionaire boys and girls get involved.
As Senor Swacker would say, there’s no right way to do the wrong thing. Doing the wrong thing righter only makes it wronger.
Thanks for this. I consider myself to be a neo-Swackerian
Hey, hey, hi hi, Swackerianism will never die.
Hear, hear!
Thanks Steve Singer. The entire idea of Charter Schools is a BAD.
The DFERS and GOPers are wrong. Pearson, Gates, and the rest of those ninnies aren’t teachers and would be dismal failures as teachers, esp. public school teachers where students come from different homes and backgrounds.
it’s up at OEN, but you should go see the comments I posted. Each one contains links back to posts here, the show the corruption.
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Time-to-Close-Every-Single-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Education-Funding_Educational-Crisis-190912-574.html#comment744500
Charter schools are another example of a liberal idea being subverted. We had horrific problems with mental health facilities and clamored to fix them. The Reagan administration was to put the mentally ill on the streets rather than invest in real improvements in mental health. Along with closing charters, we need to do our best to restrict home schooling. We need children in school together more now than ever, especially with the divisive politics that we are experiencing. As a waitress at our local Diner pointed out it is important for children to learn how to get along as her grandchild and our 3 year old granddaughter go to preschool at our local public schools in NJ. Sure, we are in a high tax state, but this is a benefit of that.
administration solution…..
You say: “Along with closing charters, we need to do our best to restrict home schooling.”
How do you propose to restrict home schooling? The Supreme Court affirmed (unanimously) the right of parents to control their children’s education in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925).
see
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/268us510
This case is the “bedrock” of the home school movement. Already over a million families, nationwide, are home-schooling their children.
How do you propose to restrict them?
The unanimous Court held that “the fundamental liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”
Jeff, I agree. There is no way to restrict homeschooling. It is puzzling to me that parents would choose to deny their children access to certified teachers and interactions with their peers. Very few parents have the education to give their children what every public school offers: a full curriculum with qualified educators. A few do, but their numbers are small.
Jeff: you are correct, restricting homeschooling will be well nigh impossible. That said, dialogue about what you lose by homeschooling will bring the kids back. Also a halt to the inane practices foisted upon the public schools by homeschool advocates turned political powers (we have a homeschool governor in Tennessee). Some of these people have little more on their mind than the purposeful ruin of public education.
I have been observing the goings-on in Tenn for a while. Please let me know what “inane practices” that homeschool advocates are foisting upon the public schools? It seems counter-intuitive. You would think that homeschoolers would want nothing to do with the public schools.
Roy, that state commissioner of education in NH is a homeschooler. And he makes policies for public schools that he abhors!
“Along with closing charters, we need to do our best to restrict home schooling.” — sure, instead of improving the living conditions so that the citizens would not flee let’s build the Berlin Wall to keep them inside.
“We need children in school together more now than ever” — yeah, the kids are dreaming about spending six hours a day thirteen years of their life crammed into small classrooms with prison-like furniture.
“it is important for children to learn how to get along” — in my day if someone was bullying you, smashing his face usually worked just fine. Nowadays kids are required to turn the other cheek and then, if they are still able-bodied, tell-tale on their offender. Then the kids who endured the suffering in public school buy themselves a firearm and come back to their school to right the wrong.
While the original idea of charters was to establish “laboratories of innovation,” what we have seen are dens of profiteering. Charters were supposed to collaborate with public schools, but today they compete with public schools. The only collaboration occurs is that charters get to drain the budgets of public schools, and in many cases the public schools have no way to stop the financial bleeding. The whole assumption that we can operate a public system and a parallel private system for the same dollar is absurdly wrong.
Research has informed us that private charter schools get no amazing results unless they cherry pick students and have high rates of attrition. Private charter schools enhance segregation, have overpaid, top heavy administrations, and they often waste or embezzle funds. Unregulated private charter schools circumvent democratic practice. Private charter schools are not accountable to the tax payers that are paying the bill.
It is time to “pull the plug” on privatized education. Public education should be a public service. Private charter schools offer no value add to communities. Quality public schools are a tremendous public asset that helps to build better communities while private charters work to undermine them.
The blame goes both ways. Public schools do not want any help. First, this would show the inadequacy of public schools. Second, it is impossible to spend money on free advice and curriculum, supposedly developed by experimenting charter schools, and you need to spend money, because otherwise you won’t get any money next year, and because the businesses are leaching from that money. Public schools do not want free quality stuff, they want to spend funds. Public school system is a money pit.
Diane, I’m sorry to post somewhat off-subject, but I was wondering if you had seen Dale Russakoff’s review of Robert Pondiscio’s new book in the NY Times from Sept. 10th? The headline is: “The Secret to Success Academy’s Top-Notch Test Scores” although maybe the NY Times was trying to bury it as it is hard to find!
From the review: “He tells us, in fact, that language arts lessons at Success “do not seem appreciably different from what countless other schools serving low-income children offer.” This speaks to Steven Singer’s point.
I think Pondiscio’s book unwittingly reveals a very odd premise embraced by those like Pondiscio. They know that the only unique thing these charters offer is the ability to “save” a very select group of somewhat disadvantaged kids with the most motivated parents willing to make sure they do at home whatever is necessary for their kids to succeed (regardless of the mediocre teachers their kids may have). Pondiscio claims that well-off families can “choose” to move to the suburbs — although I find Pondiscio’s insistence that good suburban schools exclude all parents who do not faithfully take orders from teachers and have the means to be at school (or hire someone to be at school) at 12:30 on Wednesday to be absurd and frankly, somewhat racist.
But Pondiscio – terrified of saying anything that doesn’t justify the existence of charters no matter what he learns — sees nothing wrong with charters blatantly lying and claiming they are teaching the same kids as in public schools. Pondiscio sees nothing wrong with spending millions of dollars and requiring parents to attend rallies with slogans like “don’t steal possible” when Pondiscio has just made it clear that he is absolutely fine with charters stealing possible from any low income student whose parents do not have the means and time to do all that the charter requires from them. And it doesn’t bother Pondiscio that parents of special needs kids are told that their kids are asked to meet the same high standards and if they do not it is clearly the parents’ fault.
I think the discussion about closing charters — all charters — should really be about whether public schools should offer separate schools only for the most motivated parents and give those schools huge amounts of resources and allow those schools to dump every kid who isn’t thriving despite his motivated parents. Robert Pondiscio says that having those schools is a wonderful and valuable thing. He celebrates having those schools, which could easily be established as public schools. But what Pondiscio doesn’t like to mention is the other students. The other students – well, apparently they can all rot. Given that Pondiscio’s concern is only for the “best” of the at-risk kids, I wish someone would ask him why he believes the franchise to teach those kids should go to a private organization and why he and his reform movement haven’t been lobbying to simply set up those kind of “choice” schools within the public system. As Pondiscio makes very clear, the only difference between those schools and the “failing” public schools is that they cherry pick the parents whose kids are most likely to succeed. That could be done as a “choice” public schools.
And the unasked question is what happens to the other students but I notice that people like Pondiscio have no concern about how the lies of the charters that exclude those students harm them. I guess he knows where his bread is buttered.
I did read the review of the Pondiscio book by Dale Russakoff. I was surprised that she did not note that his employer, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is dedicated to the DeVos agenda of charters and vouchers. It would be unthinkable that he would write a book criticizing any charter school, and certainly not the Queen of no-excuses.
I agree! The crazy thing is that Pondiscio did report relatively honestly on what he saw, which was actually appalling on its face! (There is also an excerpt from his book on Chalkbeat in which you hear how the principal at the Bronx school tells lottery winning parents that if they can’t do all that is demanded of them exactly when it is demanded of them, they should not enroll and also that their special needs kids are expected to meet same standards as other kids and she certainly implied if they did not then it would be the parents’ fault and they should blame themselves.)
(If you want to read something unintentionally hilarious, read the Chalkbeat excerpt and the principal’s explanation about how Eva Moskowitz considers her school like a “marriage” with the family. Moskowitz tells her marriage partner what to do and the “partner” must obey her orders immediately, and also do everything they can to please her. The Eva Moskowitz view of marriage is appalling.)
But after reporting on this honestly, Pondiscio basically said “I do not care at all about the fact that this school and its CEO have been blatantly lying to the public and claiming that they welcome all the students “trapped” in failing schools. The cherry picked kids do well and that means they should continue to get disproportionate money to continue!”
He should be ashamed. What Pondiscio embraces is the philosophy of the Republican party. If you have to lie to get what you want, it’s perfectly okay because what you want is worth lying for.
I always say that if you are lying about it, it is because you know it is wrong. Pondiscio says the opposite, that lying is fine because he says the kids who matter are helped and the rest do not matter at all.
It is sad that Pondiscio praises himself in an over the top way because he smugly believes he did an honest report that both sides would criticize. He honestly reported what he saw, but made sure not to draw the conclusions that any person with an ounce of integrity would draw but instead said that it was all justified because some kids who he believes matter most are helped, Of course, they could be helped in a school that didn’t lie about what it did so that all the other kids were harmed, but to Pondiscio, lies that cause great harm to other kids is a small price to pay for helping the ones he believes matter most. So he is more than willing not to mention that.
And there is something really racist in what he implies — that the Success Academy kids with the most motivated families need harsh discipline that middle class kids don’t need in order to succeed. The subtext he implies is that those kids would NOT succeed if their families moved to the suburbs, because they would not get the harsh discipline that white folks like him want them to get. it is the paradox of his entire justification for his book. He says that affluent parents can move to suburbs and escape “failing” public schools, but he insists that without the harsh discipline and humiliation tactics that no suburban school has, those poor kids with motivated families won’t succeed. Racism in its ugliest incarnation.
In reading through Singer’s post, one thing came to mind relating to the last item in the California Ed Code on the Legislative Intent for charters:
(g) Provide vigorous competition within the public school system to stimulate continual improvements in all public schools.
When the CA charter law was created in 1992, the idea of “competition” might have sounded like a good idea. But, 17 years later, it’s become all too clear that it was never a fair fight with one side siphoning off funds and cherry picking its students.
Worse yet, is the daily revelation of charter waste, fraud and abuse resulting in little to no oversight of charter operations. All these represent a giant waste of funds that could have and should have been brought back into the public school system.
Well stated! Private charters are unnecessary, even if we look at the notion of “choice.” Most public systems offer far more options for students than the one size fits all charter schools.
From Quartz, “Walmart dodged up to $2.6 bil. in U.S. taxes… former executive says”.
Organizations that have Walton representatives on their boards, especially education organization, are facilitating…..
I don’t think Steven Singer really wants to close every single charter school in the country. This would require closing the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, for example.
okay, that is all but one.
As it turns out, Steve would not make an exception of WPSD. He would require that it become part of the local school district and abide by all the regulations and rules that apply in that district.
TE, I thought I made this clear in the article. I don’t think all charter schools need to be disbanded though I think most of them will need to be. Those charters that are offering a valuable service to the students, parents and community should be kept open – but they should have to give up their charters. They should have to become fully authentic public schools and everything that entails. No more special rules for some institutions and not others. Transparency, accountability and equity for all. Otherwise become a private school and continue functioning the way you already are but not on the public dime.
Steven,
Do you really think a school devoted to educating the deaf can exist as a district school? Are there enough deaf students in the district to justify the local tax payers supporting the school?
If all charter schools met a need that the district cannot fill, I would support them, but ONLY if the district made that decision and had the power to supervise the charter and close it if it violated its charter.
TE, I don’t think you understand how authentic public schools work. There are some districts that can’t provide certain services and have tuition agreements with other schools to do so. For instance, the Duquesne District only has a K-8 program. They send their students to other participating districts for 9-12 grade. Yet this agreement doesn’t do away with transparency, accountability or elected school boards. We also have career and technical schools like Steel Center. Many districts send students there and the career and technical school is governed by a consortium of elected representatives from participating communities. We can manage quite well without privatization, thank you.
TE,
The Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf was established in 1869. It has a residential program.
Are you completely unaware of the fact that the Pennsylvania Department of Education has had a reimbursement plan for instruction at that school since 1927? That’s more than 90 years!
And their highest enrollment was in the 1960s, long before “charters” as we know them existed.
It seems rather disingenuous for you to bring up this school that existed long before there was any “charter movement” for public schools. Why did you do so?
Because he is a provacateur?
NYPSP,
I am certainly aware of the history of the institution, but it does not matter that it was founded in 1869. As he has made clear, Steve Singer wants it closed as well. There are no exceptions.
No, that school is not a charter school. It has nothing to do with Singer’s point.
It certainly is a charter school. It holds a charter from the state of Pennsylvania. It is funded with taxpayer money from the state department of education with money that could go to traditional district schools. It is governed by a board of trustees, not a democratically elected school board.
In any case, Steven Singer has stated explicitly that he would require this school, like every other charter school, be closed or put under the jurisdiction of a school board or a consortium of school boards. He is undoubtedly familiar with WPSD as it is just a seven mile drive from the school where he teaches.
The school existed for a century before the charter law.
Teachingeconomist,
Clearly a school like this one that existed for many decades before anyone ever heard of a “charter school” would revert back to what it was previously since it did not start as a “charter” school.
I would think that you would have too much integrity to argue semantics like that. Am I wrong?
Steve Singer says that his post applies to Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. Certainly that settles the discussion of whether he considers it a charter school.
A school founded over a century ago is not a charter school