The Network for Public Education has issued two reports documenting waste, fraud, and lack of oversight in the federal Charter Schools Program. The CSP was created by the Clinton administration in 1994 at a time when there were few charters; it was intended to give aid to start-ups. Over the years it has evolved into a slush fund for rapacious corporate charter chains and for the advocacy groups that lobby for more charter funding.
In response to the NPE reports, the charter industry attacked them as cherry-picking, inaccurate, and union-funded, none of which is true.
Recently Betsy DeVos attacked NPE and its critique of the $440 million CSP program that is in her sole control.
NPE executive director Carol Burris responded to the critics by using the data offered by DeVos herself. DeVos’s numbers demonstrate that the NPE reports underestimated the number of charter schools that never opened (“ghost schools”) or that closed not long after opening.
She further showed that the charter lobby (which has received millions from the CSP program) has an obvious self-interest in keeping their federal money flowing and that their critiques of the NPE reports are inaccurate and riddled with error.
The worst thing that the industry and DeVos can say about NPE is that we support American public education and oppose privatization. This is true. We do. That doesn’t make NPE “biased.” It makes us good citizens.
Burris’s response is brilliant and well worth your time to read as an example of clear thinking and clear writing, supported by the evidence provided by DeVos herself.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The criticism of the report is that there’s incomplete information, but isn’t that itself a criticism of the charter governance they created?
They invented this sector and wrote all the laws. If the existing schemes they invented don’t require charters to report enough information to evaluate the programs from the outside then they failed on two of their (supposed) tenets, which are 1. transparency and 2. accountability- standards they apply to public schools.
I see this a lot in ed reform. They issue breathless reports on things like “teacher disciplinary actions” in public schools but there’s no reports at all on charter teachers. The only reason they have the records on teachers is that labor unions keep them. They’re not even comparing “apples and oranges”. They’re comparing “apples and a void”. There’s no way public schools can come out on top. Even one bad report on a public school teacher is more than they have on charter teachers, because they don’t keep any centralized, comprehensive records. It’s always “did you VISIT that school?”
It’s supposed to be a regulatory scheme. The idea of it is people don’t have to personally observe each school, especially charter schools, which are regulated at the STATE level. Are we pretending state regulators are fanning out across the state and monitoring? Because they’re not. They’d have to hire an army.
The complete lack of regulation and reporting will increase ten fold with the lockstep echo chamber promotion of vouchers. They’re expanding the vouchers by millions across the country with no regulatory planning or schemes at all. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. There’s now a whole group of echo chamber members who want to fragment it even more- the plan is to hand out public funds to hundreds of contractors in each area, and “design” educational programs for each student. What we’ve seen so far- the “education” funds used for amusement park tickets and car payments will increase a hundredfold and it will take a massive scandal before any regulation goes in at all.
It is now standard in ed reform to proclaim that anything that is publicy funded is public education. They all recite it. Remember when this started and they all claimed it wasn’t about privatization? Now they’re proudly promoting privatization as the end goal.
They’ve redefined “public” to include “private” and it’s come about with no discussion or debate at all. They just changed the definition of a word.
The redefining of words is similar to what happens in privatization. The public is excluded from the process. Crooked politicians, the the DeVosian DOE and private entities collude to impose top down privatization without any public input. The public only gets to pay the bill for all the waste and fraud. This is an anti-democratic rigged political system.
It was deceptive.If the goal was to privatize schools they should have told the public that. Instead they vehemently denied it.
It just isn’t true that it’s about “improving public education”. It’s about replacing public education with their ideologically preferred systems. The public would have rejected that, so they hid it.
Now that they’re all lockstep promoting vouchers that has become clear, but they hid this for 20 years under all this mushy nonsense about “agnostics” and the rest of the blizzard of marketing terms.
If privatization is so popular then why do they all deny they’re engaged in it?
Chiara, you have been consistently right. You will love SLAYING GOLIATH. Obama and Duncan were duped. Charters are a benign way to introduce school Choice. Goal: vouchers. Ohio is now experiencing the big voucher rollout.
“willingly” duped?
This follows from the seeping of acceptance for libertarianism into the public mind: many Reps, most Trump-supporters, Fox dittoheads, shepherded into state legislatures by ALEC.
Buying into libertarian memes happens easily for low-info Rep voters, most of whom have been parroting Reagan’s “Govt is the problem” for decades despite happily benefiting from Soc Sec & Medicare. Judging anecdotally from my rural mid-20thC upbringing, Reagan’s war-cry was long a mantra for rural and small-town, small-biz America; all he did was tap into it.
You can see the true libertarian position on public ed at the comment thread for Strauss’ “The Answer Sheet,” where a couple of regulars routinely cheer for all policies that are anti-union, anti-public goods, pro-privatization: they do not support compulsory education. This is a basic plank for libertarians that flies under the radar and should be exposed. It lies behind the seemingly contradictory position that public funds should be used for privatized schools. They are well aware that splintering public ed funds among unlimited private alternatives will break the bank and bring down any unified public school system, & anticipate it. The goal is to eliminate taxes for schooling PERIOD.
Still on this libertarian theme… their true colors should be exposed. They live in a la-la-land, imagining some anachronistic utopia like maybe the Wild West, where freedom from laws that “impinge on individual freedom” was complete in remote areas, conveniently ignoring that general QOL was rock-bottom for anyone w/o the $ means or power to protect their food/ water supply, safety from marauders, etc—and hilariously imagining their dubious fantasy can be implemented in today’s densely-populated world.
But they are not the enemy. They are stooges. Their ideology is just one of many roped in by neoliberals, who would never in a million yrs promote eliminating the bottomless pit of tax revenue from the clueless salaried workers from whom they skim virtually tax-free profits.
Carol Burris: knows a lot about education, has deep experience
Ditzy DeVoid: has neither and so, ofc, is Trump’s Secretary of Education
To be exact, she is Secretary for the Department for the Privatization and Evangelizing of US Schools, formerly the USDE; the real-life version of Betty Bowers; Cruella DeVille’s younger sister, Clueless.
Another good reason to donate to the Network for Public Education.
Just sayin’….
Isn’t it funny that organizations funded by billionaires attack NPE for accepting any money at all from unions, which are allegedly “evil,” while the Walton and Sackler money is pure?
Absolutely, Diane, and I have never understood this particular theology. I often wonder if people have lost the capacity to recognize hypocrisy, even bald-faced hypocrisy like this.
In any case, I will continue to send my evil money to my union and to the NPE.
It is the same rightwing claptrap that has been spewed since the days of FDR. Unions are evil; no employee should be “forced” to join an organization that will help him or her agitate for higher wages and shorter working hours and reasonable working conditions. Every worker should be “free” to bargain all alone, with no union.
…doesn’t make NPE “biased.” It makes us good citizens.
So true.
Here’s an ed reform article promoting charters and vouchers:
https://projectforeverfree.org/red-pen-needed-for-context-and-fact-free-article-called-the-democrats-school-choice-problem/
Look for anything that is relevant to any public school student in the country. Public schools are simply missing from the echo chamber- except to be used as scores to compare to charter and private schools.
You’re all paying people who are members of this “movement” in the federal government and about half of states. They contribute absolutely nothing of value to 90% of students, because those students attend the public schools they oppose, ideologically. That’s a bad deal for you. You could find and hire people who support your schools and students, or you could find and hire ed reformers.
You’re permitted to insist that the people you’re paying in government contribute some work towards public school students, even if those people are ideologically opposed to the existence of public schools and have a very low opinion of public school students.That’s not a high bar at all- it’s the lowest possible standard. You’re allowed to demand that as a condition of paying them.
For me, the federal charter school program was discredited when they awarded tens of millions to Ohio charters, in the midst of what was happening in the state.
Every newspaper in the state was busily documenting charter book-cooking and fraud, story after story, and the Obama Administration, apparently blissfully unaware of the reality “on the ground”, were working as hard as they could to expand the sector, as fast as they could. They didn’t miss a beat.
A complete disconnect from reality. It got so bad an Ohio Senator had to step in and freeze the funds. They had no earthly idea what was going on. Duncan was cheerleading charters in Cleveland while west of there, Toledo, was shutting half of them down. At the same time.
I can’t imagine where they get these reviewers for the grants. Mars. Some distant planet.
$80million if I remember correctly. The natl laughter was so loud, Duncan had to back-pedal. This is natl ed as a political football. It’s what you get when each successive admin populates the Dept of Ed with ideologues reflecting the new Prez’s football team. What we need in there are longtime govt admins faithful to protecting a govtl institution, operating from unified natl goals regardless of current admin’s party—something more like we observe in Dept of Justice or [pre-Trump] Dept of State. The sad truth seems to be, Americans are not unified behind ed goals the way they are behind natl security & diplomacy.