In her education plan, Elizabeth Warren proposed eliminating the federal Charter Schools Program. This program was started in 1994 to help jumpstart new charter schools at a time when there were fewer than 100 charter schools in the nation. Now there are 7,000.
Today, the CSP has a budget of $440 million a year (which BETSY DeVos proposes to increase to $500 million a year). DeVos uses CSP as her personal slush fund to expand corporate charter chains. This past year, she gave $89 million to KIPP, $67 million to IDEA, and $10 million to Success Academy. None of these charter chains are struggling financially. All receive huge grants from the Waltons and other billionaires.
The Network for Public Education studied the expenditure of $4 billion by CSP from 2006-2014, predating the DeVos era. It’s report “Asleep at the Wheel,” determined that at least $1 billion of the funds spent by CSP during that period were wasted on charter schools that either never opened or closed soon after opening. Warren cited this report in her education plan, to justify eliminating the wasteful CSP.
The empire strikes back:
The CEO of KIPP (and husband of Wendy Kopp) sent this email to his mailing list:
Friends,
We can’t let Senator Warren’s plan of cutting charter school funding become reality. Join us today and help all kids achieve their dreams.
Richard
Richard Barth
CEO
KIPP Foundation
A friend received this email from the founder of IDEA, which has received $225 million from CSP in the last two years. Bote that it was sent during the workday.
From: Tom Torkelson <info@charterpac.org>
To:
Sent: Thu, Oct 24, 2019 2:26 pm
Subject: FW: Warren Proposes to Stop Federal Funding for Charter Schools
|
It is not surprising that charter chains that enjoy many millions of dollars from the CSP would fight to keep the federal spigot of cash flowing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Warren’s education plan is comprehensive. Interesting that the ed reform echo chamber
completely ignores everything except the charter piece.
Once again, public school students are not valued enough to even admit they exist.
All I ask is truth in advertising. These aren’t K-12 education advocates- they’re charter and voucher advocates. Why not just come clean about that?
In the echo chamber, “analysis” consists solely of what is good or bad for charter school students. Public school students merit no effort or attention at all.
What they want is a plan that promotes charter schools and private school vouchers and offers absolutely nothing to students in public schools, because that is aligned with their “movement” which ALSO offers absolutely nothing for public school students.
Why can’t public school students have an advocate in government? The entire ed reform echo chamber advocates on behalf of charter and private school students. Why are our students excluded? How did it happen that the entire elite policy structure is dominated by people who don’t support the schools 90% of kids attend?
It’s ludicrous. Everything in education is seen thru the narrow lens of privatization enthusiasts. Public schools, and public school students, simply have no value in this world. No wonder they have fared so poorly under ed reform political leadership.
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“Dr. Steve Perry
I can’t engage in the mind numbing charter v traditional debate bc at its core it’s silly. It’s like debating water v orange juice. Both have a role. Neither is expected to do it all. Only the bottlers or growers want you to chose one over the other. Consumers want both.”
Everyone in the ed reform echo chamber recite this as if by rote, but I would just ask the public to try something.
Go to any ed reform site and look for a positive mention of a public school or a public school student. Look for an actual IDEA that applies to students in public schools. Look for ANY advocacy on behalf of public school students. Heck, you don’t even have to have that high a standard- look for any recognition at all that public schools and public school students EXIST.
It’s SUCH and echo chamber that a Presidential candidate can release a plan that is MOSTLY about public schools (because most students attend those schools) and all the ed reform gang see are charters. They’re blind and they don’t even know they’re blind, so marinated are they in this cloistered little club.
Public school students are such a low priority in this world that their interests may not even be discussed, let alone analyzed. They’ve disappeared them.
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Perry called teachers unions “cockroaches”
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See, if I were claiming to be “an agnostic” on schools and a Presidential candidate released a plan that calls for a huge funding boost for 90% of schools in the country I might actually look at that plan and discuss public schools.
Ed reformers don’t. They look only at the schools they support- charter schools.
So they should stop claiming to be agnostic. It’s not true and it’s blindingly obvious to anyone outside the club that it’s not true.
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It’s also true at the US Department of Education. The only mention of public schools or public school students is in one of three areas: school shootings, drug abuse prevention, and bullying prevention. Contrast with the promotion of charter and private school students, who are lauded for academic achievements and good character.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what they think about our students in ed reform. They tell us every day. They see our students as violent, drug addicted bullies that charter and voucher students must “escape” from.
That it’s not true and unfair doesn’t concern them. The Movement must be served and if every public school kid in the country is collateral damage, well, who cares? They never valued public schools anyway.
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The Washington Post says “Children are the losers” in Warrens education plan.
Except for public school students. Who are quite clearly “winners” because it’s a big boost in low income school funding.
Ed reformers seem to have overlooked 50 million students again. Oops. The whole public school population of the United States somehow evaded “analysis” from these “public education” experts.
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Wealth buys power; both are addictions more powerful than opium, caffeine, sugar and crack cocaine. Once corrupted by wealth and the power it buys, the corrupt and “addicted” will do anything to keep it … ANYTHING!
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“But we know that 5 million more families would choose a charter school if one could open near them.” Charter enrollment is stalling, the waiting lists are falsified, Betsy DeVos is the widely despised face of charters, and #Red4Ed is on the move with great public support. How do “we” “know” there is demand for more charters? We don’t, but we sure do like to make stuff up!
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The waiting lists are fake.
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Ha! Very entertaining horse hockey from the charter chains.
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Diane,
As you know, millions of school children are getting an excellent education in charter schools. Before the teachers’ unions began turning the screws to Sen. Warren, she supported charters in Massachusetts. He reasons for now opposing charters are pure political calculation: win union support and sacrifice the interests of kids in the process.
We are public. We are overseen by the state. We are non-profit. And we do have a board of directors. And we are severely under-funded relative to school districts. The federal program goes a small way in closing this gap.
I have offered to take you on a tour of our schools, to debate you in public, or to discuss this with you in private. Yet you decline.
Why are you so afraid?
Tom
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Mr. Torkelson, you are so full of “it,” and I am not talking about the truth.
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No, Mr. Torkelsen, I do not know that “millions of children” are getting an “excellent education” in charter schools. I do know that you have collected over $200 million from Betsy DeVos to replace public schools with your privately managed schools. No one pays me for my views. You have a pecuniary interest in keeping the federal funds flowing into your bank account. I am not impressed by your self-dealing. I have no reason to believe that Senator Warren was influenced by teachers unions. Do you have any evidence for this assertion?
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Torkelson’s either ignorant or a liar. Either characteristic discounts him for a debate with a person of knowledge and integrity like Dr. Ravitch. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled charter schools are not public. Michigan’s charter schools (80% for-profit) are “brutal on black families”. The scandalous, now defunct, ECOT is in court -.citizens want refunds for their school districts.
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Think of Thomas Torkelson as another Besty DeVos and/or Donald Trump.
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Think of Torkelson’s PAC as cannibals. Concentrated wealth dried up opportunities for Wall Streeters to fleece in the regular way so, they resorted to cannibalization of middle class and poor kids. Wall Street paid politicians to plate the kids for the hedge fund chow down.
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A “KIPP Pioneer” co-founded a religious school chain with a fast-track-to-management TFA’er from the Neo-liberal Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The chain faced questions this spring from the community’s parents and from the press. The TFA’er’s credentials include (1) Five years at Philanthropy Roundtable, which has a magazine that posted the privatization goal of New School Venture Fund (Gates-financed) -“…brands on a large scale” and, Frederick Hess’ advice to the wealthy to use their money to buy influence at university schools of ed in lieu of the ed reformers’ plan, which was “…to blow up the ed schools” (2) strategic planning for the archdiocese of New York school system and, (3) authorship of “Saving America’s Urban Catholic Schools”.
For broad context about the PR value of the messaging, “save Catholic schools”, there is an article by a Yale professor who is expert in the growing right wing politicians in Europe who are funded by right wing Americans, “The Populist Right is forging an Unholy Alliance with Religion” (Guardian, 6-11-2019).
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