The charter industry has lobbied for years to promote the idea that public schools and their teachers and teachers unions are uniquely responsible for denying educational opportunity to children of color. Ever since the propaganda film “Waiting for Superman,” produced by billionaire charter supporter (and rightwing evangelical zealot Philip Anschutz), the charter industry has promoted the claim that supporters of public schools are hostile to children of color while they—funded by billionaires like the Waltons, the Sacklers, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and every Republican governor—claim to be champions of civil rights.
”Malarkey!” says FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting).
FAIR offers a “close reading” of media bias against public schools and demonstrates how the charter industry has deceptively labeled any opposition to charters as the work of teachers’ unions, never admitting that supporters of public schools include parents, grandparents, and graduates of public schools, as well as members of the public who understand the importance of public education in a democracy.
After thirty years of charter advocacy, only 6% of American students are enrolled in them. In the only city that is all-charter, New Orleans, the only choice that is forbidden is a public school. This decision was not the result of a vote by the citizens of New Orleans, but a decision imposed by the white Republicans who control the State Legislature. Southern white Republicans are not typically perceived as concerned about the well-being of children of color.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The problem is there’s never any accountability for ed reformers.
Remember this?
“It was called the “Texas Miracle,” a phrase you may remember because President Bush wanted everyone to know about it during his 2000 presidential campaign.
It was an approach to education that was showing amazing results, particularly in Houston, where dropout rates plunged and test scores soared.
Houston School Superintendent Rod Paige was given credit for the schools’ success, by making principals and administrators accountable for how well their students did.”
This was 19 years ago. They’re getting ready to take over Houston schools again, except this time they’re privatizing all of them. None of them mention that they did this once before. It wasn’t that long ago. It’s as if it never happened and it’s the SAME people.
You’ll notice where ALL of it inexorably leads,too – privatization. That was always the end game. They only ever had two ideas- testing and privatizing. The testing has been discredited and the public is sick to death of it, so now they’re left with ONE. They’ve renamed it “portfolio” but is identical to privatization. Twenty years of rebranding the same one idea. Twenty years of no work, investment or effort put into existing public schools while they all chase charters and vouchers. It’s long enough.
it appears to be a step-by-step process toward the end game: the reformers are getting to be more controlled and aware of what must be done at each level of the game
About New Orleans, don’t forget that thousands of teachers, mostly African-American women, were fired when the schools were “made over.” That had a devastating effect on the middle class, though because it was all mixed up with the impact of Katrina, it wasn’t in the spotlight as it should have been. (I’ve seen figures ranging from 4,600 to 7,000 teachers fired, though the larger number might include non-teaching school staff as well.)
I cannot understand how any city can take entirely eliminate public schools and not get sued. How can they impose the loss of rights without impunity? Students do not have the same rights in a charter and neither do parents. It really shines a light on the separate and unequal nature of private charters.
The hurricane was used as an excuse to get rid of the “undesirables” (is, African Americans) in New Orleans.
Firing teachers and charterizing the district was just one aspect of that.
What was done to New Orleans was deeply racist, but even Obama seems to have no problem with Dubbya “Heckuva Job Brownie” Bush.
Its not that public schools themselves are bad, nor is it that public school teachers and unions are bad. No its the children that occupy the public schools that hurt the reputation of under achieving, misplaced students.
I am in fear of having my child attend a public school not because of the school or the teachers but rather because of the thug kids that attend them. Charter schools right now are able to send the thugs back to the public schools and rid themselves of these kids who nobody seems to want. Sooner or later charter schools will have to prove that they can still operate successfully with students who want to be in the streets rather than in the classroom
The current system of dividing resources into separate systems leaves less money for programs and instruction. It is imposed inefficiency. Charters set up a separate campus, administration with a whole array of fixed costs. We cannot operate separate private systems and public schools for the same dollar. Adequately funded public schools can provide necessary supports for troubled students, and they sometimes offer a alternative schools where students can get the attention and services they require. Today many public schools must serve these troubled students in large classes due the siphoning funds for charters. This discourages many parents from sending their children to public schools. Perhaps this situation is created by devious design to get parents to send their children to charters. It is a recipe for chaos, and no one benefits, least of all the students.
You bring up here something that seems verboten to discuss on this board. When I was a kid, students who aggressively defied teachers and bullied other students were out-of-school suspended. If they did not improve their ways after a few trials, they were bounced to juvenile reformatory-style schools. For some of those recidivists, it was indeed a school-to-prison pipeline [& I’m talking upstate-NYS white rural kids]. It sure seems to me that today’s bend-over-backwards attitude, created by stats showing black/ brown kids are discriminated against via that paradigm– hence bureaucratic resistance to out-of-school suspensions– has simply spawned impossible pubschs to which students are offerred escape-hatches via charters/ vouchers which merely make the remaining distr pubschs worse. What is the answer?
The argument would carry more weight if Bellwether hadn’t introduced a privatization plan for rural communities.
I’m not making an argument about rural schools, just connecting to the only personal experience I have on the subject. Reformatory schools may have helped somebody, but pushed the childhood friend I knew further toward delinquency. He could have been helped by the sort of treatment retired teacher describes. Instead he was out-of-sight, out of mind, shut out of society early, just like the developmentally-delayed kids of that era who were shunted to a basement classroom in jrhi and kept there until drop-out age. I think what I’m trying to say is that the pressure to avoid suspending non-white kids does nothing but point to an issue and exacerbate it, absent well-funded, well-thought-out support system—just like the charter school “solution.”
Can’t see how Bellwether’s rural charter initiative will ever get traction given the baked-in issues they themselves identify.
The corporate media represents corporate interests. Teachers’ unions are convenient scapegoats. Even among minority parents support for charters is less than 50%. That is the story the media would tell if they were impartial.
It’s all here:
The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman on Vimeo
I wish FAIR would do a close analysis of the articles by Eliza Shapiro, who writes pro-charter articles in the NY Times as their sole education reporter in NYC.
Most notable is to analyze the one article that Eliza Shapiro herself cites as clear evidence that she is unbiased because if anything proves her extreme bias it is that one.
Remember, this is what Eliza Shapiro herself cites as an article showing “the other side” of her rabidly pro-charter article this month — that article where Eliza Shapiro believes she “stood up” to the rich and powerful charter supporters who criticizes it for being so “anti-charter”!!
NYT July 5, 2019:
“Why Some of the Country’s BEST Urban Schools Are Facing a Reckoning
Amid a growing backlash against charter schools, leaders within the movement are acknowledging that some criticism of their schools is warranted.”
This supposedly “critical of charters” article that Shapiro claims she was so brave to write contains multiple interview with charter executives at KIPP and Ascend and Achievement First, Success Academy and from pro-charter advocacy groups and the entire article was about defining the “criticism” in the way that those many charter leaders who were quoted by Eliza Shapiro chose to define it. Shapiro devoted most of the article to quoting charter leaders to demonstrate how they have made all the right changes to be even more perfect charters.
After including the voices of multiple charter executives, charter advocates, charter teachers, and charter spokespeople, Eliza Shapiro literally included a single voice of criticism from someone who did not make their living by promoting charters. A Manhattan politician! Shapiro doesn’t have a politician make the case for charters — she lets multiple voices from the charter industry make their case without her questioning any of their self-serving comments. And for the other side, Shapiro includes a single quote from a Manhattan politician! Representing the charter side — a dozen people who make their living promoting charters. On the other side — a single Manhattan politician skeptical of charters.
And that is the article that Shapiro herself is so proud of as an example of how she always reports on “the other side”. Shapiro’s reporting would have readers believe that the two sides are: charter CEOs who don’t think charters are perfect versus charter CEOs who do think charters are perfect! And Shapiro truly believes with every ounce of her entire being that reporting the view of charter CEOs who don’t think charters are perfect is going up against the man and she is so very proud of how brave she is to stand up agains the rich and powerful and prudent the view of charter CEOs who don’t think charters are perfect but just very close to perfect
Shapiro’s citing of that article to defend her reporting should make her a laughingstock, but I suspect that she lives in that overprivileged person’s bubble in which her view of her own superiority is so ingrained that she will continue to brush off all criticisms from those who she clearly knows are beneath her. Clearly, the only criticism that matters to Shapiro is that from rich pro-charter billionaires who tell her that reporting the views of any charter leaders who dare to offer the least bit of criticism while wildly praising their charters is being very biased against charters.
To Shapiro, the only voices that matter in public schools are the affluent white Beacon parents who she claims to know many. The many African-American and Latino students in public schools and their parents do not exist for Shapiro, especially if they were previously in charters that showed them the door.
Her reporting at the NY Times needs to be analyzed by the Columbia Journalism Review. Will the J School be willing to criticize one of their own family? Or are they now teaching that having a dozen pro-charter voices and one politician is the proper way to report on problems with charters and that should be held out as a model of unbiased reporting?
Thanks for exposing Shapiro.
When Bellwether introduced its campaign for rural schools, new talking points were needed which I speculate, Shapiro will find a way, at the right time, to weave into her convenient pov.
This year, Bellwether advised ed reformers to reach out to churches to achieve their goals. It seems unlikely that Louisiana’s unique position in the south, predominantly Catholic, was coincidental to New Orleans’ privatization. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote at its site that the organization has been strong advocates for parental school choice since the beginning. Max Eden at Manhattan Institute ( Koch-linked) praised Catholic schools in an article about New Orleans privatization.
We have been warned about theocracy’s attack on democracy by Dartmouth’s Udi Greenberg in his article in the, Journal of the History of Ideas, “Catholics….Religious Liberty”, which echoes a warning at Theocracy Watch where the Weyrich training manual is posted. Weyrich was Catholic . He was co-founder of the religious right, ALEC and was the founder of the Koch’s Heritage Foundation.