Jeremy Mohler of the nonpartisan “In the Public Interest” wrote a clear summary of the reasons to be concerned about charter schools:
The holidays are a time of joy and relaxation but also uncomfortable conversations with family. Will Uncle Tommy go on another rant about windmills causing cancer? Does grandma still think Russia is the only reason Trump won?
So, what should you say when someone starts dissing traditional, neighborhood public schools and hyping up charter schools?
Charter schools generally perform academically about the same as neighborhood public schools.
Study after study show that, just like there are high and low performing neighborhood public schools, there are high and low performing charter schools.
In fact, because some charter schools effectively exclude special education students or expel students with perceived disciplinary issues, charter school academic success often can be overstated.
Charter schools can drain school district budgets, taking resources from neighborhood public school students.
Research is revealing that, in many states, school districts and the students they serve are undermined by policies that prioritize opening new charter schools.
For example, California’s unchecked charter school growth cost San Diego’s school district $65.9 millionduring the 2016–17 school year. That’s $620 less in funding a year for things like nurses, counselors, and computers for each neighborhood public school student.
Charter schools have been co-opted into a market-based model of providing education with winners and losers.
While some charter schools are founded and run by grassroots groups of parents and educators, many are run by large, corporate-like chains, such as Rocketship and KIPP.
Wealthy donors and organizations like the family who owns Walmart are bent on privatizing public education through the creation of a parallel education system in competition with neighborhood public schools.For example, since 1997, the Walton Family Foundation has invested more than $407 millionin charter schools.
The seeds of today’s “school choice” movement were sewn in the years after desegregation.
Charter schools are more racially isolated than neighborhood public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation.
The vast majority of the school districts that have experienced state takeovers in the last 30 years are majority black and Latinx. Many subsequently were forced to allow for the creation of charter schools. Some middle and upper class, predominantly white communities are even using charter schools to opt out of neighborhood public schools.
This harkens back to the years following Brown v. Board of Education when southern legislatures enacted as many as 450 laws and resolutions attempting to discredit, block, postpone, limit, or evade school integration. Many of these acts allowed the re-direction of taxpayer dollars to benefit private schools, such as private school vouchers, as white Americans fled in record numbers from neighborhood public schools.
Even though most charter schools are nonprofit doesn’t mean the people who run them aren’t pocketing tons of taxpayer money.
Running a nonprofit charter school can be a highly lucrative undertaking. Some charter schools hire for-profit charter management organizations. Others rent buildings from real estate investors who specialize in charter school investment.
One charter school in California’s Bay Area rented school space at three and one-half times market rate from a company with business ties to its CEO. Through this and other schemes, the CEO diverted $2.7 million in taxpayer dollars without any supporting documents over a span of five years.
Public school systems should provide a great education to each and every student.
Students (and society alike) don’t need a public school system that creates winners and losers. They need smaller classes, better paid teachers, more support services, and cleaner and safer facilities.
Whatever you do during the holidays this year, don’t buy into the myth that the U.S. public education system is broken. There are countless neighborhood public schools around the country finding powerful and groundbreaking ways to educate students. There are hardworking, courageous teachers in every city and town across this land.
What’s broken is how we fund public education. Public schools simply need more resources, and, for that to happen, we don’t need anything all that complicated. Corporations must pay their fair share in taxes, and more resources must to go to the schools and communities that need them most.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Public school systems should provide a great education to each and every student.” — They should. But they don’t.
“don’t buy into the myth that the U.S. public education system is broken.” — It is not broken. This is how it has been designed. The design has never been perfect, which became glaringly apparent when blue-collar jobs were moved abroad. Someone who could not read well or did not know basic algebra could find a well-paid job on a conveyor line, at a steel mill or at textile factory. The consumer electronics sector was ceded to the Japanese by the end of 1970s. The major electronics sector that the U.S. still controls is key computer components, but many factories are located overseas. The push for mass higher education, at least up to associate level, indicates first and foremost that high school graduates cannot absorb even a watered-down high school program — either because the students are massively unprepared for high school load or because the programs used in high schools are inefficient — so after they enroll in community colleges they are sent to remedial classes only to attain the level of proficiency they should have received by the end of high school. Some states like California enacted laws that now prohibit community colleges to require remedial classes. This, in effect, turns community colleges into expensive high schools.
“What’s broken is how we fund public education. Public schools simply need more resources.” — The U.S. spends significantly more per pupil than most other countries, in particular about one and a half times more than average OECD countries’ spending, and more than Korea or Finland. Throwing more money without changing the system will not change the outcome.
Throwing more money at dinner will not change the outcome. Throwing more money at renovating your house won’t change the outcome. This is just ridiculous talk.
Almost a third of U.S. students live in poverty. But, of course, being hungry and not having eyeglasses or warm clothes to wear doesn’t affect educational outcomes at all. Neither does not having libraries and librarians and nurses and theatres in schools.
Educating the young and feeding the needy are two different issues that are dealt with by different organizations. You do not expect hospitals to teach singing or negotiating with Kim. Feeding the hungry should be dealt, first, by social services, and to fix it at national scale, should be dealt with appropriate national policies. Trying to do it within the school system is similar to busing or affirmative action, which is pretending to solve a national problem by changing small rules here and there, but keeping the overall order intact. If tasking schools with all the social stuff related to children is indeed what this country needs, then this system should not be called school system anymore.
As for libraries and nurses and theaters, these facilities should be covered with the funding already provided, which, if you search for it, is higher than in Finland. If this money is not enough for libraries and theaters, then the money is being lost on some inconsequential stuff or simply stolen.
Let’s start by cutting the 6.7 billion we spend on invalid high-stakes standardized testing and the billions more we spend on proctors and computers to take test on and database systems to record the scores and pretests and benchmark tests and post tests modeled on the standardized tests, not to mention the opportunity cost of the tests and the test prep and the pretesting and the benchmark testing and the data chats and the time lost to testing itself.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-punishing-decade-for-school-funding
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/12-states-spend-less-on-schools-now-than-before-the-recession/
And those don’t address the glaring inequity in the funding. This does: https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/blog/why-our-education-funding-systems-are-derailing-american-dream
Absolutely agree, the whole testing framework is just a feeder for leeches, a bottomless pit. As for school vs school funding inequality, this is what you get when funded by local taxes. The solution is nationalization of public schools and funding them from federal budget.
Absolutely agreed that the funding should be nationalized! Happy holidays, QuelleProf!
Quelle Prof, It’s hard to tell whether Finland spends less, or about the same per-pupil as the US. NCES uses OECD stats which put the numbers a few yrs ago at $12,800 US vs $10,100 Finland (w/OECD ave in the $9,000s). NCEE, which works with and displays the same OECD numbers, has this in their detail on high-achieving countries: “In 2014, Finland spent $13,865 per student in lower secondary school, as compared to the OECD average of $10,235.” [This Finland stat is about the same as we now (2017-18) spend in US, K12 ave.]
But while perusing that, I gathered these numbers which give interesting context.
Finland’s 2014 rate of child poverty 3.6 percent [1/5 of 2018 US child poverty rate]
Finland’s ed expenditure as %of GDP 5.1% [40% less than US]
Finland %GDP spent on social programs 30.8 [43% more than US]
Finland fed:local exp on ed = 60%-40% [virtually zero private schools] [US – some older numbers (2005): 8% fed, 83% state and local, 9% private]
Public school funding declined dramatically after the 2007 crash. This was reflected in the revenues of the big three K12 educational publishers. Houghton went through bankruptcy. Pearson just sold off its courseware division in a firesale. The third, McGraw Hill, which is mostly a college and reference publisher, saw its K-12 division struggle. In 2014-15, there were 77.214 million students enrolled in K-12 schools in the US, according to the US Census Bureau. Total expenditures on K-12 education were 56.4 million by the feds, 309.1 by the states, and 298.1 by local communities. So, a total of 663.6 billion, or $8,592.30 per student. But the real issue is disparity. Since funding comes so much from local sources, there are vast disparities, with some schools operating on a fraction of what other schools have.
P.S., I stumbled across the NCEE site, which is great. They specialize in researching intl ed systems, and seems to be focused on ed as opposed to politics like all those thinky tanks. Among other publications they have a paper calling for abandoning our test&punish accountability system, calling it obsolete blue-collar/ mfg assembly-line productivity-style accountability, and makes very different proposals, based on principles in practice in excellent intl ed systems
The over $1 billion federal dollars that were spent on charters that either didn’t open or closed would come in handy to public schools that no longer have nurses, social workers, libraries etc.
In 15 years of teaching I never once had money “thrown at me”. This phrase over and over is so absurd.
We need to stop throwing money at the testing companies and neo liberal politicians.
I am fully appreciating your last comment: throwing money without changing the current system will not change the outcome — and as we’ve seen, it will often only attract more opportunism and abuse. Money can help, but if it is not directed where it is actually needed, it can turn into a terrible master.
Perfect! And happy holidays to you, Diane, and to all the readers of this blog!
More vocational education would be a very good thing. The country needs cosmologists and cosmetologists. Time to throw over the utterly ridiculous Deformer one-size-fits-all Common [sic] Core [sic] “college and career ready” invariant model foist upon the country by Bush, Obama and Duncan, Gates and Lord Coleman.
Kids aren’t widgets to be standardized.
The need for Mohler’s discussion, ranked by priority, is (1) American Catholic Churches
(2) American Catholics and, (3) the overwhelming majority of Americans who vote and who oppose one religion’s dominance in America.
“To unite and mobilize the Catholic (school choice mission)…In partnership with the USCCB, several state Catholic Conferences, NCEA, and Notre Dame’s ACE, Catholic Education Partners has crafted a vision and strategy…The Catholic community should be an important unified voice for parental choice in education…Catholic Education Partners launched on Jan. 1, 2017…mission…advancing public policy…
Democracy, the American middle class, pluralism, worker rights, and religious liberty, all are at stake, and there are those who refuse to accept that the self-declared enemy is on the attack, even after their plans are publicly announced and implemented.