Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California, writes frequently about school “reform,” aka school choice, as a substitute for adequate funding.
In this post, he explains the fraud of school choice and why billionaires and rightwing zealots promote it. To read it in full,as well as his kinks, open the full post.
He begins:
Birthed in the bowels of the 1950’s segregationist south, school choice has never been about improving education. It is about white supremacy, profiting off taxpayers, cutting taxes, selling market based solutions and financing religion. School choice ideology has a long dark history of dealing significant harm to public education.
Market Based Ideology
Milton Friedman first recommended school vouchers in a 1955 essay. In 2006, he was asked by a conservative group of legislators what he envisioned back then. PRWatch reports that he said, “It had nothing whatsoever to do with helping ‘indigent’ children; no, he explained to thunderous applause, vouchers were all about ‘abolishing the public school system.”’ [Emphasis added]
Market based ideologues are convinced that business is the superior model for school management. Starting with the infamous Regan era polemic, “A Nation at Risk,” the claim that “private business management is superior” has been a consistent theory of education reform promoted by corporate leaders like IBM’s Louis Gerstner, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Wal-Mart’s Walton family, Bloomberg LP’s founder, Michael Bloomberg and SunAmerica’s Eli Broad. It is a central tenet of both neoliberal and libertarian philosophy.
Charles Koch and his late brother David have spent lavishly promoting their libertarian beliefs. Inspired by Friedman’s doyen, Austrian Economist Friedrich Hayek, the brothers agreed that public education must be abolished.
To this and other ends like defeating climate change legislation, the Kochs created the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This lobbying organization has contributing members from throughout corporate America. ALEC writes model legislation and financially supports state politicians who promote their libertarian principles.
Like the Walton family and Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch promotes private school vouchers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes southern Segregationists used a form of school choice.
But there are a variety of school choice plans, some of them predating the 1950’s. The history of choice options is far more nuanced than suggested by the above. For example:
* A small percentage of youngsters were admitted to the “public” Boston Latin School beginning in 163. This school today is one of 3 Boston “Public” Schools available only to those who score very well on a standardized test https://www.bostonpublicschools.org/Page/6594
I oppose and like many others, have worked hard for many years to challenge any public school that uses standardized tests or other forms of admission tests.
Dr. Kenneth Clark, co-author of the “Doll Test” used in Brown versus Board of education advocated in 1968 for new public schools outside the control of local boards. This is one of the central principles of chartering.
Beginning in the 1960’s, progressive educators created new options within districts, open to all. Sadly, many of these have been closed, not because they did not help youngsters, but because, among other things, powerful interests were threatened by delegating considerable authority to educators at schools.
School choice programs vary widely. IMHO, school choice is a powerful tool that can be used wisely or woefully.
Joe, the choice programs you describe were within the public schools. They were not privately managed. Handing public money over to private entrepreneurs is new. And it started in the 1950s as resistance to the Brown decision. You are really reaching to justify your role in writing the first charter law, which opened the door to schools run by non-educators, grifters and corporate chains. I’m sure Betsy DeVos and Charles Koch are happy to have your support for their goal of eliminating public schools.
Still waiting for answers to the following:
Do you oppose allowing district schools to use standardized tests to select students (I oppose and have fought at local, state and national levels on this)
Do you oppose allowing wealthy families to choose suburban districts where 90% or more of students are not eligible for free/reduced income.
Some other questions
1. Do you oppose chartered public schools, open to all, no admissions tests that are 30-60% students with special needs, created by families who have tried and been frustrated by district attitudes toward their children and their families? There are a variety of such schools.
DO you oppose allowing families with special needs to choose state schools focusing hearing or sight impaired? These are not run by elected boards. This is another form of school choice. Do you oppose this form of school choice?
Do you oppose the “Running Start” program in Washington State and the Post Secondary Enrollment Program in Minnesota. These are programs in which high school students can take college courses with state funds following them, paying their tuition (and in Mn, their books, lab fees and for low income students, transportation).
I oppose public funding of privately managed schools. There is too much corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse by private individuals who pay themselves outrageous salaries and use the school’s credit card for personal expenses.
The A3 scandal in California is a case in point: $50-80 million in public funds went missing, and the charter founders left the country. Can you defend that?
“IMHO, school choice is a powerful tool that can be used wisely or woefully.”
By “wisely”, Joe Nathan seems to mean “privately” and “unwisely” means “part of the public system”.
Two things seem to be sacred to Joe Nathan that can ONLY be achieved if school choice is private and not part of the school system:
If choice schools were part of the public school system, Joe Nathan well knows that that charter CEOs and their enabling administrators could not get the outrageously high salaries that Joe Nathan knows they deserve. That would certainly be “woeful” to charter CEOs and their handpicked enabling administrators who look the other way to keep the CEO happy.
If choice schools were part of the public school system, Joe Nathan well knows that charter CEOs and their enabling administrators could not target and punish the kids they don’t want to teach in order to have them ‘disappear’ from their sight forever. (Private schools have always been free to do that, and now charters demand the same right as private schools, where children must give up their rights for the benefit of charter administrators.)
There is something really off about Joe Nathan professing concern about SOME public choice schools using grades or standardized tests for admissions, while he is perfectly fine (and won’t ever criticize) when white charter CEOs punish, harangue, humiliate and even publicly release private records of African American children they don’t want to teach if their parent refuses to quietly pull their child and slink off. Clearly, Joe Nathan agrees that if a white charter CEO identifies a child as unworthy of a seat in that school because of his violent nature, that white charter CEO should always be believed.
Joe Nathan knows very well that he could have a choice school within the public school system that didn’t use a standardized test for admission. But he could not have a choice school within the public school system where administrators have total freedom to treat kids like dirt if they don’t want to teach them. And release their private records to publicly humiliate and demonize that child if their parents don’t slink off privately!
People who support racist policing say that they don’t think all African American men are violent, but because so many of them are, there is nothing wrong with targeting and mistreating them when the police identify those men as “very dangerous”.
People who support racist charter schools say that they don’t think all African American children who win lotteries for kindergarten seats are violent, they just insist that because so many of them are, there is nothing wrong with targeting and mistreating them when the white charter administrators identify those 5 and 6 year olds as “very dangerous”.
That couldn’t happen if “choice” was part of the public system. Is that why Joe Nathan wants “choice” to be privately run?
well said
Having spent much of the day working as part of a district, charter coalition to help the number of youth and families experiencing homeless in Mpls/St Paul and the rest of the state, I apologize for not fully engaging in this conversation. A few points
Yes I agree that there are some terrific district public schools – urban, rural and suburban, open to all (no admissions tests). Our 3 children attended and graduated urban district public schools open to all, K-12. In the last year several of us helped coordinate a national zoom meeting where we learned from Ann Cook and Deborah Meier about their wonderful approach to graduation based on portfolio. A recording of that webinar is available.
Yes, I agree that some people working in chartered public schools are being paid outrageous amounts of money. Education Week and other publications have printed articles in which I’ve criticized lack of transparency and corruption in some chartered public schools. In various newspaper and professional education columns I’ve criticized a variety of behaviors by some in the charter world. Glad to send links to anyone who wants to see examples.
Yes, I agree that release of student records to the public is wrong.
I’ve described a variety of public school choice plans. I strongly oppose public school choice plans that allow existence of “public” schools that use admissions tests based on standardized tests or other forms of performance to admit students. Having seen lots of criticism of standardized tests, do you, Diane, or others oppose the use of standardized tests to determine who gets into Bronx Science, Boston Latin, etc etc?
“Retired teacher” wrote, “The school choice movement has demonstrated that “choice” is a harmful policy due to all the useless disruption and enhanced segregation.” Does that mean you, RT, are opposed to all forms of school choice for low income families? Are you opposed to allowing affluent families to choose a wealthy suburb where 90-95% of the students are NOT low income?
Re Which state has a moratorium on new chartered public schools and well funded public schools?
According to Chalkbeat, New York City recently spent $28,808/student
“New York City spends $28,808 per student, on average, according to the annual report analyzing three decades of school spending. That number includes pension obligations and debt service, which make up a chunk of the total budget but are costs that have grown since 1990, the report shows. Without accounting for those factors, the city spends significantly more per student than most other large, urban districts — in some cases, upwards of $10,000 more.”
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2020/1/27/21121084/nyc-spends-a-record-28k-per-student-but-the-state-is-footing-a-smaller-portion-of-that-bill
Part of the problem in some large cities is that so much of this money does not get to the school level. One of the reasons that chartering has attracted many district educators is that they are deeply frustrated with this – and with the unwillingness of some districts to give educators the power to create the schools they think make sense.
What do you think of the ‘teacher led” school movement – which involves both district and charter educators?
I oppose private management of public schools. Period.
I believe that all teachers should have the right to engage in collective bargaining.
More than 90% of charters are non-union, which is why they attract the fervent support of Betsy DeVos, the Walton family, Charles Koch, ALEC, and other far-right billionaires.
While we are led to believe “choice” is empowering to poor students and their families, in choice schemes it is generally the schools that have power to do the choosing. By using a variety of tools to screen and determine what students they want, private charter schools skim the students they want and cast off the problematic or expensive to educate. It is no accident that expensive classified students and English language learners are under represented in private charter schools. The selection process is established by design.
If you read Joe Nathan’s above refusal to reflect on the wrongfulness of paying private companies to spend public school dollars with little to no oversight, draining funds from public schools, you’ll maybe notice that what he’s really fighting against is the existence of pensions. He doesn’t want teaching to be a lifelong profession. He wants it to be a cheap, low paying, temp gig. He believes not in choice, but in shortchanging children with lower quality, less qualified, less experienced, less expensive teachers at charter schools. Cheap. He want to cheat they kids by cheapening the teaching force. Any by the way, they are not “chartered public schools”. They are privately (and usually secretively) owned and operated charter schools.
I believe one of the compensations for public school teaching should be a pension program. My wife and I both have been Urban district public school educators. One of our children is a district school educator, I am very familiar with and am supportive of pensions for public school employees.
Do you believe that all teachers in publicly funded schools should have the right to forma union for collective bargaining?
Ninety percent or more of charter schools are non-union. Is that an accident?
Yes, I agree all teachers in a publicly funded k-12 school should have the right to form a union. That was built into the Mn and many other state charter laws.
Do you believe it’s ok for a publicly funded k-12 to use performance on standardized tests to determine who is admitted?
Joe
I believe in public funding for public schools. I do not believe in public funding for private schools, including privately managed schools.
I think it is disingenuous to use the examples of Stuyvesant High School or other public schools that admit students based on test scores to justify the existence of privately managed charter schools. I am not a fan of selective admissions but they are not dangerous to the future of public schools. Charter schools suck resources and high-performing students out of public schools and undercut their stability and viability.
For decades, I’ve opposed permitting any public school to use admissions tests. Clearly that is ok with you.
One of the reasons we have a chartered public school movement is that there were and are families of color and low income families all over the country who children were being excluded from “public” schools like Boston Latin, Bronx High School of Science, because they did not do well on standardized tests.
The standardized tests regularly criticized here.
I’m with John Merrow – public schools should seek to help youngsters learn how how are smart, not seek to determine “how smart are they.”
Thanks to John Merrow, who helped create a national network of independent chartered public schools, committed to a variety of progressive practices. https://www.indiecharters.org/our-principles
Joe,
When you renounce funding from the Walton Family Foundation, whose sole goal is to destroy public schools, let me know. When you disassociate yourself from the agenda of Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos and ALEC, all of which support privatization and charter schools, let me know. In the meanwhile, get off my blog.
Having talked/listened to district, alternative and chartered public school students for more than 40 years, I think we sadly have way too many kids whose needs are not being met in conventional schools.
This in part because the too many schools are following strategies developed decades ago. The reasons some youngsters attend alternative (district) schools is that they were “treated like dirt” in large conventional junior and senior high schools. Same is true of some youngsters attending chartered public schools. And some students have left charters because they felt “treated like dirt.”
This is in part why we’re working hard to promote service-learning here – a district charter community student coalition encouraging greater use of service learning to build on the assets, strengths, skills, energy and insight of many youngsters.
Stop using the names of Jonathan Kozol and Deborah Meier. Neither of them support private management of public funds. Both support choice within the public school system, with full transparency and accountability to the public. They are not supporters of privately managed charter schools that are non-union.
It is pretty sleazy to cite a 1968 article by Kenneth Clark in support of charters. The charter idea first surfaced twenty years later!
A central part of the charter idea is that educators and families will have the opportunity to create new public schools either under the control of or outside the control of local school boards. That’s what Dr. Kenneth Clark proposed in 1968.
He suggested such schools might be created by unions, non-profits organizations, the military, companies and other groups. (This is one of the reasons I’m delighted by the appearance of teacher led schools, in both the district & charter sector). Yes, unquestionably there has been some corruption with companies. Same is true of some unions.
DO you think unions or companies should be eliminated because some are corrupt? I don’t. I think we should demand among other things transparency, accountability using multiple measures, and make them subject to federal laws.
Dr. Clark wrote:
““Alternatives – realistic, aggressive, and viable competitors to the present public school systems must be found. The development of such competitive systems will be attacked by the defenders of the present system as attempts to weaken the present system and thereby weaken if not destroy public education. This type of expected self-serving argument can be briefly and accurately disposed of by asserting and demonstrating that truly effective competition strengthens rather than weakness that which deserves to survive. I would argue further than public education need not be identified with the present system of organization of public schools. Public education can be more broadly and pragmatically defined in term of that form of organization of an education system which is in the public interest….alternative forms of public education must be developed if the children of our cities are to be educated and made constructive members of our society.
https://hepgjournals.org/doi/abs/10.17763/haer.38.1.vj454v36776725q7
It is very clever to quote what Kenneth Clark wrote more than 20 years before the first charter opened.
Neither of us knows what he would say today, as black children are harshly disciplined for the least show of individuality by young white teachers in “no-excuses” charter schools that cherrypick the families and students they want.
I’m not so sure you have Joe Nathan pegged. I have often read him pushing district-run choices like Montessori & the like. Not so sure he is about privatization. Or perhaps is interested in privatized alternatives which are held to the same transparency/ procurement policies as publics. Perhaps he will elucidate.
The Center for School Change, which I direct, has published severa; reports citing outstanding practices of both district & chartered public schools. These include
A report on the value of shared facilities – also known as community schools. If more communities had adopted this approach, there would be various groups sharing the cost of building costs. There would be better services for kids and families. Lots of research on this, which we summarize. http://centerforschoolchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/saneschools.pdf
A report on using multiple measures to assess student growth – again, using district & chartered public school options:
Click to access What-Should-We-Do-Report.pdf
A report on school/community collaborations that help students
Click to access schoolsworkingtogether.pdf
A project involving districts and charters to help increase the number of low income, students of color to earn college credits while still in high school – something may are ready to do
We also helped lead a coalition that successfully challenged the NCAA. It was trying to tell every American high school which courses were and were not acceptable college prep. This brought together people and organizations across the spectrum, from Jonathan Kozol, Herb Kohl and Deborah Meier to Jeanne Allen
(more about this in the completed projects section of CSC website)
https://centerforschoolchange.org/projects/completed-projects/
Why Crumbling buildings
Secretary of Education Richard Riley made this speech about the need for more investment in school buildings and and more shared facilities/community schools:http://schoolconstructionnews.com/2005/12/10/interview-outgoing-us-secretary-education-richard-w-riley/
Do you like being funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the most rightwing foundation in the United States? Do you like carrying forward Betsy DeVos’s agenda? Do you feel good about undermining our democratically controlled public schools and replacing them with corporate management?
Center for School Change was funded by Walton to create and run a school leadership program that brought district & charter educators to learn from each other. They also visited a variety of outstanding district and chartered public schools. Each of them had mentors. That was many years ago. The program would have continued except that I had a major heart attack and had to cut back. Yes, I very pleased with that program.
My opposition to 98% of the Trump/DeVos agenda has been quite clear. That includes opposition to vouchers. And has been mentioned, our children from kindergarten through high school graduation attended district urban public schools. unlike some who post here.
The Trump-DeVos agenda includes CHARTER schools as a key element. DeVos has handed out more than a billion dollars to corporate charter chains, all non-union. The Walton Family Foundation supported your efforts, Joe, and claims credit for 1/4 of all charters in the nation.
Why don’t you just apologize for creating this monstrosity?
Joe Nathan and Ted Kolderie wrote the first charter law in the nation, in Minnesota. Al Shanker imagined that charters would first be approved by their local school district. He imagined that they would be unionized (why would a union leader approve the creation of non-union schools?). He thought they would be small schools within districts, given a charter to innovate, then close down after demonstrating their ideas. None of that was in the Minnesota legislation. Nathan and Kolderie opened the door to entrepreneurs, corporations, and hucksters. Joe likes to declare his love for public schools even as he supports corporate organizations that are defunding public schools.
Joe, “Part of the problem in some large cities is that so much of this money does not get to the school level. One of the reasons that chartering has attracted many district educators is that they are deeply frustrated with this – and with the unwillingness of some districts to give educators the power to create the schools they think make sense.”
But establishing publicly-funded privately-run alternatives is not a solution. It is merely an end-run around serious public-school issues that benefits only a few while, by drawing funds away from publics, harms the many. These are issues that must be addressed head-on.
How can it be that in many large pubsch districts, per-pupil expenses are exorbitant, yet classes are crowded into crumbling facilities? It is not enough to say poor kids need higher per-pupil funds [which they do], when higher per-pupil funds are clearly being wasted on high-level admin that never reaches the classroom. And it is ridiculous to say that it’s OK for fed/ state DofEd’s to suppress innovation & creativity by pubsch teachers via spurious accountability systems, yet relax regs on publicly-funded charters whose unmonitored principals take advantage w/fraud et al waste that does not reach classroom.
The school choice movement has demonstrated that “choice” is a harmful policy due to all the useless disruption and enhanced segregation. It has failed to deliver superior education, and it is responsible for large scale disinvestment in public education. This article is well written with lots of scholarly references that support it.
I keep waiting for some brilliant attorney to file a civil rights lawsuit. There is a great deal of research on the bias of standardized testing. Privatization unfairly targets poor, minority students. In some cases so-called choice is not real choice when public schools are closed. Poor minority students are sent to separate and unequal schools, and they cannot fairly compete in market based education. The whole privatization operation is rigged against the most vulnerable students. What I cannot understand is why this racist practice is not in violation of civil rights laws.
Apparently millions of low income, students of color are finding that they LIKE having choices – they’re attending (district public schools of choice, Pilot schools, contract alternative schools and chartered public schools).
With the right marketing, you can sell anything.
Charters are not better than public schools.
Most are worse than public schools. The few that get higher test scores have high attrition rates.
Correct. retired teacher. NCLB / ESSA high-stakes testing, & the resultant “choice” between sub-par charters & depleted pubschs is a massive civil rights case waiting to be filed. How long will it take civil rights leaders to acknowledge that their decades-long push for standardized testing ‘accountability’ & demand for charters has resulted only in defunded pubschs & lousy alternatives for poor/ minority kids?
It was rigged from the day Bush/ Congress’ NCLB law as passed reneged on the deal that low test scores would result in increased funding to those schools. I’ve read that Ted Kennedy backed off in disgust from handshake deal w/Bush.
Ted Kennedy was one of the four sponsors of NCLB. He later complained about the lack funding, but he never complained about the outrage of high stakes testing.
The ed reform focus in the pandemic is really revealed in the funding they lobby for.
Every public school in the country got 13 billion dollars distributed as discretionary funding for covid.
Yesterday every single GOP senator save one voted for 5 billion to go to private schools.
13 billion for every public school in the country, 5 billion for the private schools and private school students ed reformers prefer. 90% of students get 13 billion- 3% of students get 5 billion.
This is the “ed reform movement”. That’s what they deliver for the 90% of students and families who rely on the unfashionable public schools.
Oh, and the end result of their work on “public education”? It’s September and public schools are still waiting for funding. Private and charter schools got funding thru PPP.
Public school students are once again the dead-last priority of this “movement”, even in a pandemic. Our students are at the back of the line in DC. They may never get anything. But ed reform’s ideological wish list was given top priority. None of it benefits public school students. Public school students weren’t even discussed in their months long effort to jam thru a huge national voucher program in the middle of a pandemic.
Perhaps the thousands of public employees at the US Department of Education have performed some actual work for public school students in this pandemic, since Congress is apparently too busy to bother with the 50 million students in the public schools they didn’t attend and don’t use:
“Secretary Betsy DeVos
Appreciate the majority of US Senators who voted to put students and families first today! It’s past time to put politics aside and ensure EVERY student can continue learning in the ways and places that work best for them. #SchoolChoiceNow”
Nope. They spend every work day lobbying for funding for private schools too.
7 months and nothing accomplished for public school students. That’s the ed reform pandemic response.
If your public school managed to open and stay open in the pandemic, give them an atta boy.
No one lifted a finger to help them. They’re unfashionable in elite policy circles.
In the meantime, where we have a state legislature that has banned almost all forms of charter schools, where public school funding is one of the highest in the nation, our schools are not educating well. Money does not fix poor pedagogy and poorer instruction. The issues plaguing education are more complex than funding woes.
Sam, which state has banned privatization and has well-funded schools?
Sam, you claim your state pays among highest per-pupil expenditure yet has “poor pedagogy and poorer instruction.” Whatever the yardstick that causes you to bash your states’ pubsch quality, don’t look to ushering in charters as a means of improving it. You can look to stats for states that have tried it. They definitely don’t support your thesis.