Washington State has experienced a long history of turmoil over charter schools.
It has held four state referenda over whether they should be allowed in the state. They are opposed by school boards, teachers’ unions, PTAs, and civil rights groups.
Bill Gates and his billionaire clique really wanted the state to have charter schools. So in 2012, they amassed a war chest and outspent the parents, teacher’s, and civil rights groups by a ratio of 17-1. The referendum passed by 1%.
Then the state’s highest court declared that charter schools are not public schools and can’t draw from the public school fund, because they don’t have elected school boards.
Next step, Gates and his friends spend big money to defeat the state court judges that opposed charter schools, but the justices won anyway.
So Gates’ surrogates go to the legislature and seek to get lottery money to support the charters that Bill wants so badly. Eager to please one of the state’s richest people (Bezos is the richest), the legislature dedicates the lottery to Bill’s charters.
After a few years, Gates commissions a CREDO evaluation of his charters, and CREDO says they don’t get different results than the state’s public schools.
Meanwhile, some of the charters close because of low enrollment.
But undaunted, Bill Gates presses forward.
Last week, Governor Jay Inslee signed bipartisan legislation to make sure that the Washington State Charter School Association could hire an e ecutive director and other staff.
Questions: since the charter schools serve no public purpose, why should the state pay for the employees of their lobby? Since the charters don’t get better results than public schools, why are they needed? Since the whole charter sector is tiny and ineffective, why doesn’t Gates pay for it himself?
Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill Wednesday that Rep. Paul Harris, R-Vancouver, sponsored to enhance administration capabilities at state charter schools.
House Bill 2853 will allow the Washington State Charter School Commission to hire an executive director and other employees.
The House and Senate approved the bill by large bipartisan majorities.
Harris did not attend Wednesday’s bill signing due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, but he put out a statement applauding the action.
“I’m very happy for our charter schools,” he said. “I believe every school in Washington, whether it’s public, private or chartered, deserves the opportunity to be successful. When our schools are successful, our kids are successful.”
Makes sense. The public must fund the charter lobbyists so that charter schools get more money. Don’t expect Gates to pay for his hobby, even though his net worth is more than $100 billion.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Follow the money
And you can bet
It flows in circles
Pocket to pocket
And down the toilet.
BURMA SHAVE
Bill Gates is badly in need of a Burma shave — of all his billions.
Burma Shave
Burma shave of billionaires
Such should be their fates
Shaving billion$ of the hair$
From Bezos and from Gates
Maybe “Perma shave” would be a better title (so they can’t make it all back)
Always amazing how Gates’ money creates bipartisan support for this stuff.
Yes, funny that.
Biparti$an $upport.
What is most amazing of all is that many people don’t catch on, despite the fact that Gates keeps doing the same card trick over and over.
A good point, SDP. Of course, some are paid to miss the trick.
“creating” support — or how to find personal convictions after the fact
Gates needs a reality check. His weaponized wealth gives him access to state coffers despite the repeated failure of his initiatives. Instead of ‘swinging for the fences,’ Gates should give it a rest, and let the state serve needs of the people instead of his wish list.
Gates surrounds himself with yes men and yes women (including his wife) who spend all their time fawning over how great and smart he is.
It is not surprising that he has ignored all of Diane Ravitch’s offers to meet with him. He does not want to be confronted with reality.
I’m very disappointed in Inslee, I thought he was better than this. The big buck$ always win out when it comes to these phony baloney “miracle” charter schools. Is Gates spending some of his lucre on abating the pandemic? He’s too busy trying to sabotage the real public schools.
He was only in remission from conservatism.
Before corona, there was a “75% staffing shortage in nursing homes nationwide”. Nursing homes are the hotspot for the virus.
Where’s Gates been and continues to be- finding quick ways to help Wall Street take profits and packaging it as charity.
Melinda Gates,Catholic, avoids taxes on the amount that she spends plotting to privatize public schools. Meanwhile, the rest of us pick up the tab for 45% of nursing home costs when we pay taxes for Medicaid. Nursing homes, with a 75% staffing shortage nationwide prior to COVID 19, are the hot spot for the virus. Shout out to the Bill Gates family.
Melinda had a Catholic education.
I think she and Bill should put up a billion or two as an endowment to save Catholic schools so they don’t seek or need public funding.
But then Bill could easily fund the charter schools he adores but prefers to put them on the public payroll. He insists that charters get public money, even when it is taken away from public schools, which most students attend.
The Gates’ don’t believe in direct funding but only in using a relatively small amount to force the public to “invest” a much bigger amount.
It’s a leverage game, which they played with Common Core and also with charters.
Much of their money is actually used to convince the public how “great” the investment of public dollars in their project will be.
By the time the public realizes that it was mostly (if not all) just advertizing hype, it’s too late. At that point, the public has already “invested” so much time, effort and money (billions of dollars in the case of Common Core) and there is so much inertia, it’s hard to stop the program which continues to persist and suck dollars long after things have gone south.
That’s what the Gates’ count on, in fact. It’s a key part of their strategy, if you will, to get their program so firmly embedded and to get the public so deeply “invested” in it that it is difficult if not impossible for the public to stop it. That was/is precisely what has happened with Common Core.
And if the Gates’ feel at any time that the public will not go the whole nine yards, well, they just yank their own funding. That’s what they did in the Florida district (Hillsborough) where Elia was Superintendent. They pulled their funding and left the district on the hook for $20 million dollars that Gates Foundation had originally promised.
The Gates are amoral, authoritarian leeches on society.
From the Tampa Bay Times
“The district was to raise $102 million for its part, much of it by aggressively pursuing grants from local corporations and other entities. Gates was to kick in $100 million, for a total of $202 million. But as the project stands in its final year, the district’s contribution will total $124 million in money and labor, while the Gates organization is paying only $80 million, the reports state. What’s more, the district has put the total cost of the program, so far, at $271
million”https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/hillsborough-schools-shouldering-millions-more-than-expected-in/2246528/
Note that the above article also supports my contention above that once involved in a Gates project, the public finds it difficult (if not impossible) to just dump it.
“Brown and Carol Kurdell, the School Board’s liaison to the Gates effort, pointed out that after six years of work and changes in state law, it’s virtually impossible to roll back the clock on the program.
“It’s our way of work,” Kurdell said. “There’s no way to walk away from it. It is now a part of our evaluation system, which is the state law.”
// End quotes
In other words, once the district had committed themselves , they could not extricate themselves from the program because they were bound by state law.
The Gates’ love to run their experiments on other peoples children but never have to shoulder any real responsibility for the outcomes. If they decide something is not worth further funding, they just wash their hands and walk away. If you are lucky they will say “sorry, it didn’t work out” but that’s only if you are lucky.
Note that the Hillsborough school district nearly exhausted its reserve fund to keep the Gates program of test-based teacher evaluation going. The board terminated the Gates “gift” before he bankrupted the district. He put up only $80 million of the promised $100 million. He commissioned an evaluation of the project by RAND-AIR, which judges the project a failure. For details and links, read SLAYING GOLIATH. Any state or district that continues to use his approach is stupid or foolish or both. It failed. It hurt children and teachers.
Gates is not a creator — he’s a parasite and a pirate. He built his company by stealing the work of others, took open software and locked it up with lawyers. When the feds came after him for unfair practices he got off the hook by promising them a back door into all the software he sells us, which is why it’s so full of holes for hackers and scammers. Wedging his wingtips in the door of public schools to hawk his vacuum-ware is just his modus operandi.
The vacuum may be overpriced but it doesn’t destroy the fabric of the community like the Gates’ garbage product does.
Diane, there’s a very substantial error in your post. The bill funds the Washington State Charter School Commission, which is the state’s primary authorizer of public charter schools and is responsible for their oversight — not the Association.