Several years ago, the Walton Family Foundation and the Gates Foundation decided that it was not enough to open new charter schools. No, they had to devise mechanisms to make sure that school officials put charters on an equal footing with public schools and that the public didn’t care whether schools were run by their elected school board or a private board of directors.
The Gates Foundation created something called “the Gates Compact,” paying districts to treat public and charter schools the same.
The Waltons played a different angle. To advance their agenda of embedding charters and wiping out any differences between public schools and charter schools, they pushed for the adoption of a common enrollment form. The two sectors are intermingled, and neither students nor parents know which schools are public and which have private or corporate management.
In Oakland, where a slate of pro-public school parents won the last school board election, the board voted to eliminate the OneApp system.
Jane Nylund, a parent activist in Oakland, sent the following report:
Elections matter. In a complete turnaround to the common enrollment momentum that we have seen since 2015, our newly elected school board voted by 4-3 to pass the Enrollment Stabilization Policy, which eliminates the ability of OUSD to participate in marketing and supporting charter schools with our tax dollars. The policy ends the shared enrollment system put into place in 2015 by former superintendent Antwan Wilson, who had actively steered the district towards a common enrollment system. When the board voted it down, Antwan Wilson, undeterred, supported the implementation of an electronic school finder, Schoolmint, which combined both district and charter schools on a single platform, thus placing both types of schools on the same footing, which was the intent all along. Families searching for schools using their neighborhood zip codes, would often find charter schools at the top of their search feed, rather than the neighborhood school within their boundary.
Key point of the Enrollment Stabilization Policy: “This prohibition applies (but is not limited) to OUSD’s enrollment system, school maps, family guides and other enrollment materials, any OUSD website, OUSD facilities, enrollment fairs, and teacher recruitment events. Competing schools shall not be invited to participate in or be included in OUSD- or site-run recruitment fairs or OUSD- or site-run enrollment events or to recruit students on OUSD-operated campuses.”
For the first time, district legislation is acknowledging that marketing and competition vs. “quality” are the key strategies to the growth of charter schools in Oakland. While charter proponents have argued that the district is trying to “hide” “quality schools” and that families can pick whatever type they want (district, charter, or private), that’s not the reality of what families do. According to OUSD feeder patterns, it is clear that charters are marketed aggressively as “high quality” from the elementary schools onward and that elementary charter enrollment is the key to future charter school demand at the secondary level. Charter proponents have always known this and have relied on the “all charters are high-quality” tag line to sell this school model to families.
None of this would have happened without constant vigilance and involvement from teachers, as well as support from grassroots parents’ groups such as Parents United. For too long, charter schools have had it both ways: operate like a business with all the usual trappings, but pretend to be a public entity for purposes of revenue generation. If charters want to be in the education business using marketing and competition as proxies for authentic “achievement”, then they need to play by the rules of that game and find their own customer base using their own funds (our taxpayer dollars). While much work remains to be done to defeat privatization in Oakland, the days of feeding at the OUSD trough at the expense of our own district students are finally coming to an end.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
California still believes in democracy. In several red states right wing governors advance privatization by bypassing the school board or neutralizing their power. The result is a loss of local control, and all decisions regarding charters and vouchers are made at the state level where the corruption is the deepest. Statewide authorization is the red state game plan to privatize public schools. Frankly, they do not even want to hear from the voters. Authoritarian governors seek to dictate policy.
The activism of Oakland parents has paid off. Now they have an enrollment system that is fair and balanced. By working together, they stopped the billionaire manipulations to control their schools and give charter schools preferential enrollment policies.
Red states? I wish! Here in deep blue New York Michael Bloomberg and Cuomo the Lesser have done a pretty good job gutting local control and giving charters an edge. NYC charters are overseen by very toothless rubber stamping people at SUNY who then pass the bills onto the city with no hint of any safeguards like bidding or fair contracting.
the hardest truth: there is no divide with education
Gates, Walton etc. supported charters because they though they would be innovate. WRONG! They just did a combination of a watered down system with a con game designed give a fake perception of better schools accepting only those good test takers and pushing out those who weren’t.
The only way we can show them that the charters lacked innovation is by innovating our public schools.
Instead we just sit there bragging about the occasional test score that falsely indicates that we have a good school and completely ignore real innovation that only public school teachers know how to do.
Since it is doubtful that the system of public schools, from the top down don’t seem to be ready to make that level of change and since we know that innovation can only come from the public school classroom up, it is time to advocate for our own target schools, void of any standardized test.
Public education teachers know how to do it. The target schools could break us out of the old time mold and respect the innovative minds of public school teachers.
Like I said 15 years ago, IF PUBLIC SCHOOLS DON’T CHANGE THEY Will PERISH!!
HOE MUCH LONGER WILL WE WATCH THEM PERISH UNTIL WE TAKE ACTION?
Most parents are happy about the job the local public schools do. There are many excellent and innovative public schools. There is already more innovation in many public schools than “one size fits all” charter schools, but public schools cannot hire a Madison Avenue marketing firm to extol their work.
The real crisis in public education has always been the urban schools that serve poor students. Part of the urban school problem is that by using the property taxes to pay for schools provides them less money. Policymakers have totally ignored this fact. Instead, they have embraced privatization as a solution, but we already know it is a failed boondoggle. Billionaires are keeping privatization going because they want to dismantle public schools, kill the unions and destroy teaching as a profession.
I agree that charters do not innovate; they cheapen. I disagree that innovation should be a goal, however. ‘Innovation’ is just a word greedy, hostile, corporate takeover sharks use to break people’s faith in public institutions. If there is one lesson we should learn from the pandemic, it is that we need to restore public education, not reimagine it.
You are right. Cheap, quick “fixes” like technology are not innovations. Real change usually starts from the bottom and works its way up. Top down impositions like the CCSS rarely work.
The Gates Compact, established in 2010, included a promise by the signers to”develop a shared approach to school enrollment” along with other policies to encourage the growth of charters. I believe this was before Walton Foundation entered this game. In return, cities would receive ” a modest investment” from the Gates Foundation, and later would “be eligible to compete for a larger, multi-million dollar grant to work collaboratively to accelerate student achievement across their cities.” Baltimore, Denver, Hartford, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, and Rochester NY were the original signers of the Gates Compact but only Denver and New Orleans did.
The original Gates announcement also said, “Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington will publish annual reports to measure the overall progress of the participating cities and outline the steps being taken to ensure proper implementation.” https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/media-center/press-releases/2010/12/nine-cities-commit-to-new-partnerships-between-local-school-districts-and-public-charter-schools
Indeed, there’s a 2015 report by CRPE on the Denver and NOLA common enrollment systems, which strangely enough doesn’t mention the Compact or the Gates Foundation, but does say it was funded by the Walton Family Foundation.
By Feb. 2016, according to Edweek , only four four cities—Denver, the DC, Newark and New Orleans—had a common enrollment system. Oakland and Boston had proposed this, but “proponents are facing pushback from some parents.” https://www.edweek.org/leadership/in-districts-with-lots-of-choice-simplifying-enrollment-is-not-so-easy/2016/02. Later that same year, Camden NJ joined in, according to the NEA. https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/common-enrollment-newest-page-school-privatizers-playbook
Destruction Of Public Education (DOPE)
Just Say “No!”
More evidence Biden is following the Bush/Obama playbook on public education:
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/4/29/22410371/joe-biden-school-funding-gaps-title-i-incentives
Read the names of the people and organizations setting public school policy- same old ed reform roster. Public schools have been shut out again.
We’re really going to do this again? People who didn’t and don’t attend public schools and don’t even support the continued existence of public schools will be setting mandates for 50 million public school students and families?
It’s a shame. He broke free of the prior economic agenda. Why can’t he find some new people for education? He really wants to the the 4th in the Bush/Obama/Trump line on education?
If Biden goes NCLB and RttT again it will be a huge and tragic missed opportunity, and he’ll be the 4th US President in a row who didn’t support students who attend US public schools.
90% of people in this country use public schools and our entire elite education policy apparatus is captured by charter and voucher lobbyists. They haven’t gotten anything done that is even relevant to public school students, let alone “helpful” or “positive” or “productive”.
Is it a contractual requirement that we continue to hire the same people over and over again? How has that worked out for public school students?
And it isn’t just schools! Ed reformers are moving aggressively into labor and workforce policy. They’re promoting cheap junk as “apprenticeships” and “workplace training” for high school students.
All the progressive policy in the world isn’t going to make a bit of difference as long as we have the ed reform “movement” promoting stale 1990’s era discredited ideas about the workforce and labor.
These are the same people who relentlessly promoted the idea of a “skills gap” to explain away stagnant wages. They were all conclusively proved wrong when the economy picked up and wages rose, but they STILL repeat this slogan like trained parrots. Anyone who used the phrase “skills gap” should not be rehired.
“Good news” from New Jersey (unrelated to schools) – 108 years of discrimination against women ended at the No. 1 ranked golf course in the U.S. The Club’s secret list of members is believed to include George H.W. Bush and Trump-supporting Jack Nicklas.
The U.S. “NEEDS” an Amendment to its constitution that blocks / severely limits the influence of multi-millionaires and billionaires from manipulating the public and subverting OUR political system.
It’s time for the majority of people that vote to demand that the corrupting influence of the 1% at the top of the economic pyramid be stopped.
Parents United in Oakland has written a detailed blog post about this: https://ousdparentsunited.com/2021/04/30/why-elections-matter-the-end-of-common-enrollment-in-oakland/
Thank you, I was anxiously awaiting Oaklandmom’s comment, but this is enlightening.