Helen Ladd is one of our nation’s most distinguished economists. She has written extensively about education and poverty, as well as school choice.
Dr. Ladd informed me that she has written some new scholarly articles about charter schools.
I read them and was impressed.
I asked if she would let me post them here. She said that they are on a website that has limited access.
However, she said, the articles are now available and accessible to individuals who download them.
You can find the links on her web site:
https://sanford.duke.edu/people/faculty/ladd-helen-f
Or You may go directly to the links to the articles on the web site.
Dr. Ladd asked me to point out that she was invited to write as part of a Point-Counterpoint discussion in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. The author of the pro-charter paper and response, which are not posted here, was Philip Gleason from Mathematica.
I do not have access to links for the Gleason part of the exchange.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ladd is absolutely correct, “successful” charter school commonly have deep pocketed philanthropical support (see IRS 990 Reports), and, “innovative” methodology is more interesting in the public sector. See the PROSE schools in NYC, and, an agreement between management and labor allows for school to operate outside of management and union rules. Ironically charter schools reflect strict discipline and lockstep test prep instruction.
or, how to game the system
Ladd is willing at least to examine the negative impact on public schools which are largely ignored by the disruptors. Charter schools were always intended to be ancillary forms of education for specialized programs. The disruptors have tried to use private charters to supplant public education, and they will continue to do so as long as there is money to be made with little to no oversight or accountability. Once charters are normalized, the disruptors will continue to create more opportunities to move public money out of public schools through vouchers, tax credits and scholarships and other assorted schemes.
The sad result of all this disruption is little to no improvement in education and a lot of loss to public school students that are faced with larger class sizes and fewer resources. Of course, another byproduct is enhanced segregation. In many cases minority communities have been targeted creating a network of separate a unequal schools for minority students. This was never Shanker’s or any legitimate educator’s vision for charter schools.
I read the two papers by Dr. Ladd and was pleased to see that these were up to date, with many reference citations to reports from 2018 and 2019. Thanks for the introduction to her work.
The charter propaganda machines are taking advantage of the election season to ramp up their marketing efforts. There is a lot of posturing about the wonders of charter schools, most recently initiated by the Walton Family Foundation promo on November 6 of several events on behalf a new book.
I learned of this promo over the weekend, when I tripped on a C-Span rebroadcast of a book interview session. It featured Angela Duckworth of the Character Lab and publication of GRIT and Diane Tavenner, co-founder and CEO of Summit Public Schools. They were introduced by Emily Pengelly, the K-12 Senior program Officer of the Walton Family Foundation. This C-Span program is one of several PR events, sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation to promote the book and a related website. https://www.c-span.org/video/?466048-1/prepared
This is no ordinary PR operation. In addition to the video interview between Duckworth and Tavenner, the book (Yes, the book) has its own website called Prepared Parents. The website is operated under the auspices of a non-profit called Prepared for Success. https://preparedforsuccess.org.
This Prepared for Success non-profit and its website promotes the book and Summit platform for charter schools. The non-profit is managed by Tavenner and two executives withheld from six “advisors,” most of these current or former workers for the Summit charter school franchise. Two advisors are co-founders of Populace, a non-profit “dedicated to promoting the principles of individuality in work, school, and society.” One advisor is a co-founder of Populace. Parisa Rouhani. She has a Harvard doctorate in Human Development and Learning. The other co-founder of Populace is Todd Rose, professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education and president of Harvard’s Center for Individual Opportunity. This affinity for Harvard-based advisors are not surprising. Summit has had an on-and-off fondness for a research alliance with Harvard.
The FAQ section of the Prepared for Success website explains that “Prepared Parents” is a special project of “Summit Public Schools” but is funded entirely by philanthropic support that is not directed to the network of Summit schools. Even so, the “net author proceeds” from the sale of Tavenner’s book will be used “to create, maintain and disburse a college and career scholarship fund for Summit Public School students and graduates.” Those earmarked funds will go to the California-based Community High School Foundation.
In other words, the elaborate promotion of the book and website functions as a fundraiser for Summit school scholarships. Parents are urged to sign up for newsletters and several other (vague) benefits associated with the “Prepared Parents” website and book. They are also reminded that the resources to be posted on the website are not professional recommendations for raising children and that the guidance offered is for parenting children “in middle and high schools.” From the few examples of tips for parenting I judge that the newsletters will be not more than easy to digest quotes and re-written sections of the book, https://preparedforsuccess.org/faq/
As many followers of the Summit School franchise know, this charter school management company has now “evolved” into little more than a free-standing platform for computer-centric delivery of online instruction that pretends to be personalized. Funding and further control/marketing has migrated to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The Walton Family Foundation Support for a ghost of Summit seems to in place for marketing this book and for a larger campaign to enlist parents as champions of charter schools and the concepts they market, even if they fail to deliver on their claims. For more about this evolution of the Summit franchise and the discontents with this entire venture, see https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/diane-tavenners-new-gig-and-our-updated-summit-fact-sheet-as-it-moves-further-into-chan-zuckerbergs-control/
withheld should be “with help” sorry for other glitches
Erica Green and Eliza Shapiro write in the NY Times:
“But this year, in a major shift, the leading Democratic candidates are backing away from charter schools, and siding with the teachers’ unions that oppose their expansion.”
According to Erica Green and Eliza Shapiro, we should dismiss everything Helen Ladd writes because it is a NY Times fact — repeated often and with complete certainty — that every person in America who does not support massively expanding charter schools is doing so simply because they are “siding with the teachers union”. By mischaracterizing all criticisms of unchecked charter expansion with no oversight as “siding with the union”, the NY Times pushes the right wing talking points designed to convince readers that politicians like Warren and Sanders are more than happy to throw kids under the bus to advance the union’s agenda.
(The same mischaracterizations are never implied about all the pro-charter advocates who excuse high suspension rates and high attrition rates for African-American charter Kindergarten students and demand the right to exclude the students they just don’t believe deserve their charter.)
The parents who see how their public schools have been affected by charter expansion are invisible to Green and Shapiro. The parents who testified at the NAACP and the NAACP who came out with their report asking for a moratorium on charters are simply “siding with the teachers union”, according to the viewpoint that Green and Shapiro seem to be pushing.
I notice that Green and Shapiro never ever characterize pro-charter folks as “siding with Betsy DeVos” or “siding with the right wing Walton Foundation” or “siding with President Trump.”
Will the NY Times report that pro-charter Corey Booker has sided with Betsy DeVos over public school parents?
I assume that talking about the negative effects of charter schools will be dismissed by Green and Shapiro. Did Helen Ladd interview all the parents who were happy with their charters? If she did not make their voices the most important part of her study, then it is clearly biased and all her points can be dismissed and ignored.
Helen Ladd, like the pro-public school politicians that Green and Shapiro criticize, is simply siding with the teachers’ union.
And yes, that is how reporters now cover charters. Anyone who isn’t siding with rapid charter expansion with no oversight is simply siding with the union. It is those pro-charter advocates who just happen to be funded by the same right wing billionaires who cut funding for all programs that help poor kids who are the only ones who really care about kids.
Because when deciding who cares more about poor kids of all races, it is Betsy DeVos who is clearly only concerned about kids, and Bernie and Elizabeth Warren who would throw those poor kids under the bus if the teachers’ union told them to. At least, that’s what anyone reading the NY Times would believe.