There are many reasons to be concerned about the spread of school choice via charters and vouchers. One is that it reduces the funding available for the public schools that enroll the vast majority of students. Most states are barely willing to finance their public schools, so now they divvy up the funds to support choice schools. Makes no sense. Another is that proponents of choice claim that their schools “will save poor kids from failing public schools,” but we now know that this is a false promise. Neither charters nor vouchers get better test scores than public schools, except for the charters that have selective admission and high attrition. Choice schools are free to choose their students and to push out the ones they don’t want, sending them back to public schools, which now have even less funding. Voucher schools.
Stephen Ruis writes a summary of the problems with choice on his blog, “Class Warfare.”
Here is a sample:
I cannot fathom a scenario in which school competition benefits the students most. We have seen charter school after charter school close business, some do this before they have officially opened. In business this is acceptable, but in educating the youths of our community, this is unacceptable. Those students are required, by law, to be educated. The money spent to educate those students at the closing charter schools is gone. But those students will be lined up for admission at the public schools the very next day and they cannot be turned away . . . no “Sorry, you have already spent your allocation of public education money, you will have to wait until next year to continue your education.” Imagine having been sold a lemon of a car and then dumping that and lining up at a government office for free public transportation. Is that happening anywhere? Does anyone actually want that kind of “education insurance”?
The charter school movement is sucking the funds out of our public schools systems. They are enabled in this effort by supportive politicians which make up supportive laws just for them . . . and these politicians receive “campaign donations,” aka bribes, from the charter operators to do this, often using public funds they were given for other purposes. (Any public school system doing that would result in people in jail.) The charter operators claim to offer “school choice” . . . but do they? Testing shows that charter schools are little different from public schools in educational outcomes. They differ solely in their ability to go out of business, which they do at alarming rates. So, what kind of choice is this? It is a bogus choice. It is like a restaurant making extravagant claims about the quality of their food, so you go and find out that their food is awful. The restaurant doesn’t care because they already have your money and they aren’t dependent upon repeat business. This is the Achilles heel of the “competition” argument. Modern marketing allows people to be hoodwinked into buying what they are selling. When they don’t deliver, you have no recourse. And, they are not dependent upon you being a repeat customer.
There is a word for this kind of business, several actually: scam, con, Ponzi scheme, etc.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“I cannot fathom a scenario in which school competition benefits the students most.”
School choice mostly benefits investors. Any system of choice is never inherently fair. Most public systems already have far more choice options built into them than any amateur, one size fits all charter school that is here today and gone tomorrow. All choice schemes do is make public schools less efficient while they force public schools to do more with less money. Ruis blasts a hole in the theory that choice improves education. Choice robs Peter to pay Paul for no better long term results.
Ruis explains the lack of logic behind the myth of choice. Two items not mentioned were all the waste and fraud and enhanced segregation in choice systems. Almost every day there is a report about missing money in the charter sector, or schools that shut down without warning. There have been FBI raids in charter schools. Tax payers should understand that it is their tax dollars that have been placed into unaccountable and sometimes fraudulent hands. We have squandered millions of tax dollars while we under fund public schools as a result. Choice systems promote segregation, and one of the motives behind so-called choice is racism. It is wrong for public money to be used to enhance segregation. A key social rationale for a quality public school is to unite diverse students across socioeconomic and cultural lines and provide them all with access, equity and, hopefully, excellence.
I commented on an exchange between Graham and Barrett this morning…”.Brown versus Board of education is a handy tool for avoiding the issue. When asked…..is there any chance any state or the federal government would try to re-establish segregation, they agreed….not at all likely. That is an answer which satisfies the black versus white non-controversy.
Several educators should be attacking their smugness……as school choice situations increase, and charter schools are designed to be able to partially segregate students in order to achieve mixtures they desire. Sometimes, it is for better test scores, to falsely indicate more success than is actually being achieved, by cherry picking, and setting rules sure to keep students they do not want away from their schools. (I continued with the negative mixtures, which enable greater profits for charter investors).
smugness. Yes, that is it exactly
In St. Louis….I am never surprised by responses….”There was nothing smug nor dishonest when they mentioned that there was no law or mention of a law being passed that would reestablish segregation.
But I totally understand that your completely myopic agenda here at the post dispatch is to push your charter school love affair.”
What could I say to this bozo of mindlessness about my myopic love affair with charter schools….I am actually…..not….a….fan…..of….charters…
I hope you find my post. I worked hard on it. Regarding what Graham and Barrett said about segregation…..it must have missed the mark?
What ed reformers have done is make it politically acceptable for lawmakers to do nothing for public schools. All they have to do is launch “choice” initiatives and they can check the “education” box and move on. What this results in is the situation in my state, Ohio, where lawmakers spend 90% of their time launching choice initiatives, funding choice initiatives or promoting choice initiatives, and do nothing positive or productive to benefit the 90% of students who attend public schools.
Go to any of the tens of ed reform orgs and look for something that might actually improve or benefit a public school or public school student. They offer absolutely nothing to our schools and students, and this is not only accepted, it’s celebrated. Our schools are mentioned in a throwaway paragraph at the end that mentions “district schools” or used exclusively to cheery pick and set up unfavorable comparisons with charter or private schools.
They simply don’t serve public school students and families and it’s such an echo chamber they don’t even realize the huge, glaring omission. Public school students and families are taken for granted in this “movement” and that would be okay if it were all privately paid lobbyists and policy people, but it’s not. Thousands of them are public employees. They utterly dominate whole state governments, to the exclusion of anyone who is focused on public schools. They have utterly dominated the federal policy side for three consecutive presidents.
Public school students are entitled to have a few of the public employees they are paying actually support their schools and perform some positive, practical work on their behalf. Instead they get a huge group of charter and voucher promoters who contribute nothing to public schools other than criticism. It’s ludicrous and it’s also unfair.
If you have a public school student know this- hiring charter and voucher advocates in government means no one will be working on behalf of your child’s school.
We’ve seen it in every state they have dominated politically. Public schools and public school students disappear from the state legislature agenda, replaced by endless rounds of “choice” lobbying and funding, session after session.
Public school supporters are a numerical minority in the Ohio legislature, by deliberate design and efforts of the ed reform lobby. I don’t think Ohio lawmakers have accomplished one thing that benefits public schools or public school students in the last 5 years. There isn’t time- every single session is consumed with granting the wish list of the ed reform lobby. They can’t even manage a coherent funding scheme for public schools. No one puts any work into it.
They’re hoping the 90% of families who attend public schools will continue to accept being taken for granted and you’ll continue to hire them. You don’t have to. You could hire and pay people who actually intend to put some effort into public schools.
To what do you attribute voter support of charter-proponents in the Ohio legislature? They’ve had more of a wake-up call than most states to the expense involved, with that ECOT fiasco—even the least attentive to news stories couldn’t have missed it. The figures make it pretty clear: all that legislative attention to a mere 5% of students, who have cost taxpayers a pretty penny, says their lawmakers are about $connections & campaign donations, not wise shepherding of the public dollar.
The greedy, corrupt criminal minds and fascists behind the charter school industry that are out to steal as much public money as possible and take control of programming OUR children to become stupid and easy to fool, like Trump’s 22-percent, is worried that this election will strip power away from the Republican Party and boot the biggest liar and crook of them all, Trump, out of the White House and into court where he faces an assembly line of lawsuits and investigations just waiting for him to lose the title of president of the U.S.
All those frauds are worried that without the GOP running interference as their kleptocracy collapses, the charlatans may have to answer to the law and even spend time in prison after the flow of public money dries up.
It struck that this scenario is very much like a restaurant that goes out of business suddenly wiping out all those unused gift cards. It has happened to me on a couple of occasions. The most recent was a popular local eatery that was probably driven out by the current owner of the building in the middle of what has been an obvious catastrophe for the restaurant industry. If they had put up large signs announcing their departure, I would be less miffed. They didn’t, and although I feel sorry that they are gone, I am angry at the way they closed without warning. Charters are wiping out a lot of “unused gift cards” and just pocketing the proceeds after closing with far to little warning. Moreover, the public schools have to service their “customers” with no additional funding even in the face of the losses in funding caused by the charter initially.
I’m taking a cooking class, and I learned how to bake a charter school. I’m so excited to try it out! First, you break into a public school, making sure it’s in someone else’s neighborhood, and you rob enough from the cafeteria refrigerator to make it difficult for the school to serve all the students. Those are the ingredients.
Then, you put teaspoon of the ingredients in bowls and whip up a catchy name, slogan, and logo. Don’t worry what words you use. Just mix them up really well. Dump the bowls somewhere. Again, someone else’s neighborhood. Set peanuts aside, as they will be made into your teacher payroll.
Bake at 350 for a very short time. Serve. Run.
Hey, want to hear a joke? No? Too bad, here it is: A priest, a rabbi, Stephen Colbert, and Bill Gates walk into a bar. Wearing masks, damn it. And it’s an open air bar with everyone staying six feet apart. They walk “into” the bar. No walls. Okay. Bartender says, “What do you want.”
Colbert replies, “Hmm, what do I want? I could sure use a scotch on the rocks after watching the news today.”
The priest answers, “What do I want? I want to uplift the poor,” and the rabbi agrees it’s what she wants too.
Bill Gates hears the priest and the rabbi and says, “I want to help public schools,” so the bartender punches Bill Gates in the face.
…To uplift the schools. Get it? To uplift the schools. He punched Gates to help the public sch— because Gates is destroying edu— ah, forget it.
My only complaint is that you didn’t use two post to present your two equally engaging vignettes. I wanted to savor the imagery in each more fully. 🙂
Glad you liked them. One of the things that makes this blog so powerful and widely read, apart from all the insightful analyses, prescient news items, and inspiring calls to action, is its entertainment value. The poetry, the parody, the singing and dancing, the art, the humor, all draw us in. And they also help us get through tough times. As Diane says, “Humor and art will save us!”
cx: posts
Argh!