Did you know that the United States Treasury is the single biggest founder of charter schools? In 1994, when there were only a small number of charter schools, the Clinton Administration started the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) to help new startups get off the ground. The program offered only a few million dollars. At the time, no one gave much thought to the prospect of large corporate chains or charters displacing public schools. Today, the CSP hands out $440 million each year. Most of the money goes to big chains like KIPP and IDEA. Some states get $40-50 million for charter schools even though the states didn’t ask for the money.
Jan Resseger writes here that it’s time to end the CSP. The original idea was that a small amount of federal money would stimulate innovation and accountability. Nearly three decades later, we have learned that public financing of private contractors has not produced innovation, that the contractors fight accountability, and that the charter sector is marred by scandals and corruption. As the Network forPublic Education showed in its reports—Asleep at the Wheel and Still Asleep at the Wheel—nearly 40% of the federally funded charters either never opened or closed soon after opening. This waste, fraud, and abuse are the result of not only a lack of public oversight, but the result of private contractors financing state legislators.
Resseger writes:
Charter schools originated in the early 1990s, and now, nearly three decades later as the charter school sector has matured, we discover what might have been predicted in an education sector paid for with public tax dollars but at the same time operated privately with little oversight. The Network for Public Education has set up a web page to track the hundreds of scandals reported year after year across the United States in local newspapers.
She goes on to describe recent scandals, which barely scratch the surface of the systemic waste and misuse of public funds that should have been paid for instructional purposes but were deposited in private bank accounts. She doesn’t mention the most historic scandal in the charter sector: the theft of at least $200 million by entrepreneurs in California who ran a virtual charter school with phantom students and who pleaded guilty only a few months ago.
Considering that the charter industry is already richly endowed by billionaires like Betsy DeVos, the Walton Family Foundation, Charles Koch, Reed Hastings, and Bill Gates, and substantial corporate support, no federal subsidy is needed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Essentially, charter schools are private schools funding with public funds. If asked whether taxes should pay for private schools most Americans would say, “No.” What has developed is a way to get what conservative ideologues and segregationists have always wanted but knew they could not get due to public opposition. Time to end the ruse.
Yes, and unfortunately that ruse was helped by progressive politicians who kept using the charter-approved language of “public charters”.
and time to expose the ruse: it is almost impossible to get most citizens to know that there is a problem with lying, stealing and cherry-picking
Under the guise of so-called choice, millions of dollars have been transferred out of public schools and into the pockets of private contractors. Too much money has been spent on waste, fraud and embezzling while public school budgets are slashed, and services are cut. There is zero educational evidence that shows sending students to separate, unequal and segregated private schools is beneficial to students. All students should have the right to attend a well resourced public school, and Jim Crow privatization is not the answer to better education for our young people. The federal government should not be supporting anti-democratic privatization and the weakening of our public schools.
The CSP SUCKS!
I blame BOTH parties (the DENSE DEMS and rePUG-no-CONS) and of course uninformed and “conned” parents.
Charters are BAD.
A relevant example- tax-funded Kamloops residential school in British Columbia, run by a private religious group. An estimated 6,000 children died, many from hunger and neglect. How much money intended for the kids did the church siphon off for itself?
Research in the U.S. found that in a least one parish, school vouchers generated more revenue for the church than worshippers did.
There can be no analysis or even questioning of federal charter school funding in the ed reform echo chamber.
100% cheerleading, promotion and marketing of charters is all that is permitted because all charter schools are “high quality” and any charter school is vastly superior to any public school.
I have no idea why anyone would object to a huge group of paid charter promoters determining US public education policy. Completely unbiased and extremely “scientific” marketing campaign that consists of a wholly negative evaluation of any public school and lockstep cheerleading of any charter school.
In fact, public schools should also pay these “experts” as consultants and hire them in government- that way we can use funding that is supposed to be used to benefit public school students to pay charter school promoters and marketers.
Still waiting for the part of ed reform where they “improve public schools”. 20 some years and these folks haven’t delivered a single benefit or positive contribution to any public school student anywhere, but we sure have plenty of charter/voucher lobbyists!
I would just ask public school parents and supporters to observe the effort and funding and energy ed reformers put into promoting and funding charters and vouchers and compare that to their “work” on public schools.
They don’t do anything for your schools. If you’re hiring them as consultants or taking direction from them ask yourself why you’re paying people who contribute absolutely nothing to public schools.
If your goal is “more charters and more private school vouchers” absolutely you should hire/elect/pay ed reformers. If your goal is “stronger public schools” you should probably start hiring people who do that work, because you aren’t going to get it from the charter/voucher crowd.
They don’t work for public school students.
It’ll be a shame if Biden doesn’t break with the ed reform echo chamber during his Presidency.
Haven’t we followed Jeb Bush’s education plan long enough? It’s been 20 years. Are we stuck with this market dogma and the exact same set of “experts” forever?
Biden has the opportunity to solicit and then hire for diversity of opinion or he can choose to follow the same set of stale charter/voucher cheerleaders and anti public school activists for yet another Presidential term.
Biden broke with some stale economic thinking with his working class/middle class economic efforts. Can he bust out of the ed reform echo chamber too?
Biden broke with some stale economic thinking because a group of progressive politicians (including Bernie and AOC and Elizabeth Warren) with very loud bully pulpits took up the mantle and repeated their new vision over and over again. And people finally listened.
But there isn’t anyone in Washington taking up the mantle of public schools who will educate America so that instead of reporting the false pro-charter narrative (“look how many poor disadvantaged kids in urban areas are thriving in charters, how dare you take money from these poor disadvantaged children”). Public schools need prominent truth-tellers who force the media to report the truth instead of that false narrative. And the truth is that those children would thrive in any well-funded public school that only taught students who had parents committed to their education if those students have no learning issues and so why are we using taxpayer dollars to give the franchise for teaching the easiest to teach students to charter CEOs so they can get rich?
The answer, of course, is that giving the franchise to run those schools to greedy CEOs does absolutely nothing for the majority of students who struggle in public schools, but it does a whole lot for the greedy CEOs and their greedy overpaid ed reform cheerleaders who are generously paid because they mislead and lie to the public about how they perform miracles with students who would otherwise be complete failures without their charters.
Public education needs a prominent politician to be a truth-teller and inform of the truth and to point out how obvious it is that the emperor has no clothes. Because the co-opted media needs someone to challenge the racism in their wholehearted embrace of the pro-charter ed reform narrative that non-white urban kindergarten students need the harshest discipline and humiliation to learn in school but middle class white students do not.
It’s disgusting and it is long past time for the media to recognize that their embrace of this big lie is no different than the right wing Republicans embracing and defending harsh police treatment of non-white folks who Republicans claim need to be treated that way by police, the same way that the ed reformers and education journalists accept without question that non-white kindergarten students need to be treated in the harshest way by their charter teachers.
I hope Jamaal Bowman takes up the mantle and has Bernie and AOC join him to educate the public.
The pro-charter folks are like the “cut taxes on billionaires” folks. It doesn’t matter how many times it is proven that cutting taxes on billionaires does nothing for the economy except create a huge deficit, that lie continues to be spouted with journalists having convenient amnesia about the past and how many times that lie has been shown to be false by reality.
Well said! Supporters of public education must cultivate some political skills. In our current climate we should reach out to the progressive caucus, particularly Jamaal Bowman, as he has firsthand experience in public education. I hope the progressive caucus continues to grow so the DNC cannot afford to ignore them. If they start talking about all the problems with privatization, hopefully, the press will come around as well. Politically active parents that are tired of public schools’ only role being the host for an array of private parasites would be a welcome addition as well.
if you’re wondering why the ed reformers you’re electing and hiring and paying never seem to get anything done for students who attend public schools, all you have to do is read ed reformers themselves:
“And, there has never been a better time for educational pluralism than now. Polls are in our favor and parents have warmed to a host of our proposals. We would do better to seize the moment by showing parents all the possibilities for educating their children while the traditional systems are bogged down in bureaucracy, instead of reliving “Birth of a Nation” or pretending there is only one way to see race and history.”
100% negative towards public schools and public school students.
A charter chain would never hire an anti-charter activist to set policy for their schools. Why are public schools hiring anti-public school activists to set policy for our schools?
Public school students are not permitted to have advocates for their schools? All advocacy is reserved for charter and private school vouchers?
It’s nonsense. If we want strong public schools we have to start hiring people who support the concept of “public schools”. Ed reformers don’t. They’re working for a privatized system that excludes public schools. It’s not an accident they get nothing done for your schools- it isn’t the work they do.
Public funding of private organizations is often (if not usually) a bad idea.
And so are tax breaks for private organizations (including churches and foundations with billions of dollars) which are really a backdoor method of funding.
There are some legitimate nonprofits but there is also a huge amount of abuse associated with them.
Some churches are effectively corporations with holdings exceeding entire countries.
Here’s the voucher law the ed reform echo chamber backed in Florida:
“More Florida families will have the opportunity to send their children to private schools on public dollars now that Gov. Ron DeSantis has approved legislation raising cap on the household income eligibility to participate in school choice scholarship programs.
During a press conference Tuesday, DeSantis signed HB 7045 into law as Republican officials including bill sponsor Rep. Randy Fine, a Republican who represents part of Brevard County, and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran looked on.”
They got nothing done for public school students. They don’t even bother to go to public schools anymore- all of these ed reform events are held at Catholic schools.
Just know that when you hire/elect charter/voucher cheerleaders nothing gets done for the students who attend public schools. One can check the legislative accomplishments of ed reform- it’s all a public record. Look for plans or programs that benefit public school students- there are none. They’re either entirely irrelevant to public school students or actively harming them.
Thank you for identifying where the events occur. The state Catholic Conferences heavily politic for school choice. In at least two states, the Directors of the Conferences took credit for the passage of their states’ school choice bills.
The history oof the Kamloops residential school in British Columbia serves as warning.
When the Clinton Administration launched the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP), did they have any clue that they were signing a death warrant for the United States of America as defined by the U.S. Constitution?
“One fundamental principle of democracy is that it allows people to participate in decisions that affect their lives. … Pupils and teachers meet to discuss classroom practices, and these sessions inform decisions about how the curriculum is organized.”
The private sector, abusive, racist, often corrupt, and secretive “Reform School” Charter School movement removes parents, students, and teachers from the discussion and decision making, someone else makes all the decisions, a corporate board and/or one CEO.
I really don’t think they did. Remember, charters were something that even the owner of this blog thought might do some good. Back in those days, I was one of those young voters who had heard of Deborah Meier and Central Park East doing amazing things and being glad that students could experience that.
I thought charters were teachers and parents running schools, like Palisades Charter High School, in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles. There weren’t outside corporate CEOs running the school.
I never thought that charters would become corporations subsidized by billionaires’ whose main agenda was pushing a false narrative designed to undermine public schools by underfunding and demonizing them.
Anything/everything the Bill-Ary Administration launched was business friendly. It was just an extension of Reaganomics and trickle down economics.
I don’t understand these kinds of comments. This is simply not true. It would be true to say that some of what the administration did was business friendly and some was a happily progressive change from Reaganomics.
Among the more progressive legislation that you have forgotten but that is thanks to that administration is: the Family and Medical Leave Act, Children’s Health Insurance Program (a true godsend for so many people), the largest single increase in the federal minimum wage, an assault weapons ban, and an executive order that preventing the federal government from contracting with businesses that hire permanent replacements for employees engaging in lawful strikes. There was food and water quality protections and (despite the failure to achieve universal healthcare) there was legislation that prevented people from being denied coverage because of preexisting medical conditions. I am old enough to remember what it was like before that preexisting conditions legislation.
Were you an adult living in the time before 1993? Because I was and I can tell you that the Clinton administration was a huge change from Reaganomics and trickle down economics, which is why Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court.
I get it — I was a new voter in 1980 who would have told you how Jimmy Carter was just an extension of the right wing Nixon regime and I was just as right as you are about what happened from 1993 – 2000.
Jimmy Carter was not progressive enough for me and that made me so mad that I could not see that he was actually a big change from Richard Nixon. (Leaving out Gerald Ford’s brief tenure under odd impeachment circumstances)
NYC
The comments of Lisa M and Beth indicate that they are either Republicans or DINOS.
Bethree… is not a variation on Beth, I suspect he is similar to Flerp.
Followed by GWB’s NCLB, followed by Obama’s RTTT, which put charter school funding on steroids.
And now we have the upper tier of the federal education department well-populated with folks committed to keep the privatization-charter trough filled to the brim with out tax dollars.
Secretary Cardona has not suggested cutting or eliminating the $440 annual grant for charter schools, even though the program has been riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse and has enabled the expansion of corporate charter chains. Real Democrats support real public schools, not private run charter schools.
Quite frankly, I’m tired of the commentary on this blog by a few of the frequent posters (NYC PSP and Linda mainly). I drop by and read the posts and sometimes the comments, but I choose not to comment much anymore since a few of the “woke” crowd have taken over the conversation. It seems like no one is allowed to have an opinion outside of the far, far Left. I’m tired of being stuck in the middle of Left vs Right wing ideology.
Just an FYI. I’m an Independent sitting left of center yet I consider myself fiscally responsible due to growing up very blue collar to parents born during the Depression era. I’m pro Union and believe we should have M4All. It’s none of anyone’s business, but I voted for Bernie Sanders and most of my votes are for Dems. So, call me all the names you want! I vote for who I think is the best candidate for the office.
@NYC PSP: You have in the past referred to me as a Nazi, which I find VERY offensive. Why you weren’t put in “time out” I will never know? I have chosen to just ignore you since I don’t feel like replying to your screeching screeds. I’m married to a Jew which means that my children are 1/2 jewish (culturally). You are a bully and down right mean to posters who don’t agree with you 100%. There is no give and take or compromise with you. If you want people to agree with you, you need to turn down the volume, stop the name calling, shorten the rants and accept that others have an opinion or different view. People are allowed to disagree politely and calmly. I’m allowed to dislike HRC politically….that’s kind of what living in a Democracy is about!
@Linda: Your attacks on organized religion are odious. If you are an atheist, that’s your right. Believe as you will. Attacking the Catholic church (as a whole) time and again for the views of the few far right is getting you no where quick. I consider myself a Christian (yet I very rarely step foot in any church or engage in organized religion), but I often times find your comments in reference to others religion very cringe worthy. “Most” who are religiously active use the good parts of the religion to engage in their lives as decent human beings and ignore the rest. They enjoy the comfort of congregation and the human interaction of “church/shul/etc”.
Attack me as you feel free! What the 2 of you do here is stop the dialog between critically thinking adults. Notice those who have stopped posting? Just keep it up and this blog will be just like reading an online magazine/op-ed and nothing more.
LisaM,
I hope you will continue to comment. I don’t want the views expressed here to be monolithic or to reflect mine. I learn from comments but I can’t learn anything by reading the same things over and over. NYCPSP, to my knowledge, forcefully disagrees with others but I was not aware that she called you a Nazi. Had I seen it, I would have removed it. Only Nazis should be called Nazis. On the other hand, we definitely have fascists in the political world today. Demands for censorship are commonplace.
As for Linda, I am tired of her nonstop attacks on the Catholic Church. I know many Catholics, and none of them share the hard right views she writes about. I wish she understood how strident and offensive her anti-Catholic rants are. If anyone wrote the same way about Jews or blacks or Hispanics, I would have banned them. I hope she finds other ideas to write about in the future.
The only thing Linda may hate more than Catholics is “white males.”
@LisaM
I have never referred to you as a Nazi – I have no idea what you are talking about but I don’t call people names as anyone who read my posts can see for themselves.
Maybe you are mischaracterizing something I wrote the way you mischaracterized the “Bill-Ary” Administration and mischaracterized what you call being “woke”.
You are probably more to the left than I am — I don’t support labels, I support truth.
You are allowed to dislike HRC — I don’t particularly like her. You are allowed to dislike “wokeness”. You can even write things that aren’t true or are factually incorrect.
But if you write them on this blog, Diane Ravitch allows people to respond with the truth. The fact that you want her to censor me so that you can continue to distort the truth is beyond my understanding.
If I get something wrong, I like it when people tell me because my agenda is not to spew falsehoods. It is to have a truthful discussion.
If you get something wrong, you want everyone to just shut up and let you keep getting it wrong? I know you aren’t a Trump supporter, but how does that make you any different than them?
I wish you gave the same understanding to Democrats like HRC that you give to unions, who as Joel points out, often rabidly opposed Medicare for All. It is a prime reason why some union-supporting Democrats opposed Medicare for All. It’s complicated.
LisaM, you called me all kinds of nasty names in your reply. If anyone belongs in a time out, it is you. I know you aren’t a Trump supporter, but you certainly use their playbook of accusing others of the things that you yourself do.
LisaM,
I challenge everyone on this blog to read your comment and my reply to see which of us is interested in a thoughtful discussion and which of us wants to spew nasty things and then attack anyone who responds:
LindaM: “Anything/everything the Bill-Ary Administration launched was business friendly. It was just an extension of Reaganomics and trickle down economics.”
I re-read my response to you and it was perfectly fine. I didn’t call you names. On the other hand, your response to me did all that and more. You could have defended your position about the “Bill-Ary” Administration being just an extension of Reaganomics, or pointed out where I used an incorrect fact.
Instead you called me names. Right out of the Republican playbook to accuse others of doing what you do.
By the way, every administration of every party is and will be business friendly. The issue is not whether they are helping businesses to thrive but whether they act to lower tax rates for big corporations and are swayed by the demands of the 1% without regard for the well-being of the 99%. My hope for Biden is that he is able to retain control of Congress in 2022 and to enact his ambitious plans to rebuild the middle class and reduce poverty.
Diane Ravitch says:
“but I was not aware that she called you a Nazi. Had I seen it, I would have removed it.”
Diane, if you are really taking seriously a poster who just wrote something that is patently untrue: “Anything/everything the Bill-Ary Administration launched was business friendly. It was just an extension of Reaganomics and trickle down economics” who says I called her a Nazi, then I don’t belong on this blog.
I hope I have some credibility after my years of posting – if I get something wrong I have always apologized. I don’t call people names, but the poster who you assume is telling the truth about my calling her a Nazi does. You can read it for yourself where she attacked me as a “bully”, “screeching screeds” and threw out other insults. And yet you replied to her as if she genuinely wanted to have a conversation when she just wanted to call me names and play the victim. What names did I call her in my reply? When did I call her a Nazi as she claims?
“forcefully disagrees”??
If you found something wrong in my reply to LisaM, then I am open to hearing more specifically what was wrong with it. It was too “forceful”? You condone people who insult and call names at me, and accuse me of calling her a Nazi because I’m too “forceful” in my replies?
“Anything/everything the Bill-Ary Administration launched was business friendly. It was just an extension of Reaganomics and trickle down economics”.
If you allow someone who should have no credibility after that comment to attack me and claim I called her a Nazi because I wrote a perfectly acceptable reply that did not attack her or call her names, then I clearly don’t belong on this blog. I see why GregB left.
You belong on this blog. What I said to LisaM is that you express your views forcefully and that I would not permit her or anyone else to call another reader a Nazi. You are entitled to express your views forcefully. She is not entitled to call you a Nazi.
Like you, I am not a Clinton hater. In retrospect, some of his “Third Way” ideas didn’t work out (like charter schools), but he was overall a good president, probably the one who came closest to achieving peace in the Middle East. He actually got Arafat and Rabin to agree on a compromise but Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist, and the sides retreated.
Like you, I get infuriated by anyone who can’t see the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.
Like you, I think the Republican Party has fallen into an abyss of lies and has become a party that represents no one but the 1%.
With the exception of education, I think Biden has done a great job. Not perfect, but who is?
Unlike you, Bernie and AOC are not my north stars. I have been politically active for 65 years, and I base my judgments on experience and common sense.
I try to express my views truthfully, not forcefully.
I don’t care which politicians someone likes or hates. I just don’t understand why someone posts things that are not true and then professes to be victimized because someone posted to correct the record. It is right out of the right wing playbook to accuse critics of doing what they themselves are doing. The right likes to call their critics “bullies” for challenging their lies because calling them bullies means they don’t have to defend their lies.
Diane, sometimes we disagree, but I respect your opinion because it fact-based. As someone far wiser than me said, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.
I don’t like Trump, but I don’t lie about him to justify my opinion. There is plenty to criticize “Bill-Ary” about so why condone those on this bog who resort to dishonest characterizations and exaggerations and demand silence from anyone who disagrees? Same goes for Biden. He has plenty of flaws, but also some strengths. His education policy is bad, and I suspect will continue to be bad until some prominent Democrats like Warren or AOC or even Tim Kaine start taking up the mantle for public education.
My replies are too long-winded because I respect those I disagree with enough to cite facts, and if my facts are wrong, I welcome corrections. But when their response is to play victim and accuse me of doing what they themselves are doing — attacking and bullying — then they are the ones who are wrong.
There are many posters on here who I greatly respect despite them having different political views. They want to have a real discussion instead of playing victim when their views are challenged.
I used to think charters were a fine idea until I saw charter leaders answering critics by either saying things that were not true or playing victim instead of answering valid criticism with facts. Then I knew that there was something patently corrupt about the movement, and patently corrupt about those who condoned that behavior even if they didn’t do it themselves – because they benefited from that dishonesty. That’s when I found this blog and found it so energizing because people wanted to talk about issues using facts – even when they disagreed.
But if those who aren’t interested in discussions based on facts are taking over and playing victim the way the charter movement does to silence critics, I feel like it’s not a place for me.
When the Catholic Church leadership stops its political campaign to take away the rights of women and gay people, when they stop the campaign to privatize public schools, when they stop trying to take my tax dollars intended for local students’ education, I will stop calling them out unless they think of some added way to make the U.S. a colonialist society. When they stop being successful in getting GOP candidates elected, I will plan to rest.
I would expect no less of myself if a huge, powerful and well-funded organization defended its treatment of black people as 2nd class citizens taking away their rights, if they worked to privatize Social Security and if they hijacked tax dollars for themselves.
On Feb. 23, 2021, the USCCB wrote a letter to the Senate and House about the Equality Act. It is available on-line.
p.s. People who find comfort in the rituals of a patriarchal church are not uncommon. Their comfort comes at a cost to others. My silence will not add to their comfort.
LisaM, I hope you will continue to engage. Your viewpoint is welcome (to me anyway!). Your description of your path re: politics and religion are almost identical to my own, BTW. Personally, I’m not ready to apply the term woke to anybody, it’s a label thrown around too loosely IMHO. I for instance am interested in CRT, because I’ve been learning about postmodern history theories thro a lit course I’m taking – & also because I’m leery of sophisticated grad-level concepts being squeezed into K12 teaching [as we saw done to ELA standards via Coleman’s fascination with New Criticism theory]. Doesn’t make me woke, just curious and wary.
You mustn’t be so hard on nycpsp, she doesn’t mean to be insulting, and I learned a long time ago she is very willing to be corrected and carry the discussion further. As to Linda, her anti-Catholic harping can be annoying, but I’ve learned plenty from her along the way about my erstwhile church, even if just through researching to prove her wrong. They may seem to ‘dominate’ at this particular moment, but—having tuned in here daily for many years—I assure you others have done that too, & lots of times no one’s ‘dominating.’ Yours is a relatively new voice & the more the merrier.
I also think this has been a difficult year for everyone, where many haven’t gotten to bounce ideas off people face to face as they’re accustomed to do. Social cues are hard to read through written commentary at any time, & personally I find I am more prickly/ vulnerable for being out of practice.
LisaM
My mother too was a product of the Depression. It made her family FDR Democrats. She was the first in her family to get a college degree. As a nurse she saw the poverty of mothers and fathers unable to feed the children they had and the difficult decision they made to get backroom abortions and the consequences. Working in a Catholic hospital she saw doctors refuse D&C’s on women whose fetuses died in utero- their refusal to save the mothers’ lives even when the fetus wasn’t viable. My mother fought vigorously for the political rights for me, my sister, my friends and other women to make their own medical decisions. I make no apologies for fighting for my daughter and her generations’ rights.
“Critical thinking”- The USCCB does not qualify as a “few far right”. The largest lay organization in the world led by a former legislative aide to Jesse Helms does not qualify as “a few far right”. Leonard Leo, who received an award from a religious organization for what he and the Federalist Society have done to this country, does not qualify as, “a few far right”. Legatus (Tim Busch’s creation of an organization for Catholic CEO’s) does not qualify as “a few far right”. Underfunded groups of progressives in the Catholic Church opposing the hierarchy qualify as a “few far left”.
Bethree, “proving Linda wrong”, unless your correction to what a “scholar” at Catholic University of America posted at one of the many Catholic media sites he writes for convinced Lawrence Grayson not to politic for Trump (thinly veiled), your personal take on Grayson’s view served minimal purpose. As a parallel, I wouldn’t pat myself on the back for “correcting” a person who quoted Trump in order to expose his attempt to install authoritarian rule.
bethree5,
I appreciate you trying to defend me, and I’m sure you don’t mean to be insulting.
But I wonder if you could say the same about the poster who gets all your sympathy. Read her reply to me. Do you think she means to be insulting with all the insults she directed at me? Is it okay because she DOES mean to be insulting?
I appreciate that you said: “I learned a long time ago she is very willing to be corrected and carry the discussion further.”
I learned a long time ago that there are many posters with whom I disagree sometimes (like you) who want to carry the discussion further. Read my reply to LisaM’s post that stated as fact that “Bill-Ary” was entirely an extension of Reaganomics and trickle down economics. Is there something in LisaM’s attack on me for daring to challenge her view that the “Bill-Ary” Administration was an extention of Reaganomics that leads you to believe she is interested in a discussion. Have you ever seen her respond to anything when you replied to her that leads you to believe she is interested in a discussion? Because I don’t recall that (although I concede I might be forgetting something).
I honestly think this is part of the problem in our society. So many Democrats in leadership bend over backwards to treat their Republican colleagues spewing the most outrageous lies as if both sides are interested in carrying a discussion further. Both sides are NOT interested in carrying the discussion further. Only one side is. But that one side gets hammered in the media and in the public’s eye for not being “more willing to compromise”. Which serves only to make the side unwilling to have a discussion appear as if that side is the one who is willing to discuss!
Just because one side claims to be victimized does not make them the victim. Look closely at people claiming to be victimized, especially when they themselves are pushing a false narrative and then spewing insults and attacks and then using the mantle of “I’m a victim” to silence anyone who challenges that false narrative.
Flerp-
The differences among men, among women, among Catholics, among
Muslims, among …, are likely greater than the differences between the segments.
As a person who wants to live in an advanced society, I prefer people, regardless of race, religion, sex,… who don’t vote Republican nor enable the success of GOP politicians. I have sympathy for individuals like Josh Duggar’s wife whose only experience is patriarchy. I have sympathy for congregants who have been told by their faith leaders that they will go to hell unless they vote conservative. As a poll worker, I observed a husband telling his cowered wife how to vote. I have sympathy for people like her.
Discussions men have with other men where damaging sexist and racist statements are made are as difficult as those conversations when they happen among women. Each person makes a decision of conscience in the situation.
Charters were supposed to promote innovation and cooperation. Instead, they are about competition, politicking and destroying the common good so Wall St. and Silicon Valley can share in the spoils and profiteering.
The purpose of school vouchers is to enrich and further empower churches.
“Considering that the charter industry is already richly endowed by [rightwing Republican] billionaires like Betsy DeVos, the Walton Family Foundation, Charles Koch…” Democrats like President Biden have no business going along with them. The right to a fully funded, local public schools is just as important to democracy as the right to fully funded, local voting stations. The hypocrisy of Democrats claiming they care about democracy while paying off charter companies to leach off public schools is maddening, and the hypocrisy is on public display.
Off topic (again), I just want to mention how much I appreciate this scholarly article posted by Peter Greene on the Network for Public Education blog: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/against-metrics-how-measuring-performance-by-numbers-backfires.
Thank you, a very interesting read.
“…some surgeons will improve their metric scores by refusing to operate on patients with more complex problems, whose surgical outcomes are more likely to be negative. Who suffers? The patients who don’t get operated upon.
When reward is tied to measured performance, metric fixation invites just this sort of gaming.”
It is astonishing to me that the education media is so ignorant of how this gaming works and I am disgusted with their (intentional?) gullibility in amplifying the absolutely false narrative that charters can take a random selection of students and turn 99% of them into high performing scholars. Education journalists should be laughing stocks for their unquestioningly parroting the most ridiculous claims from charter press releases about their success, and I do believe that one day those embarrassingly gullible articles – and the education reporters who wrote them – will be taught as case studies in journalism classes the way the articles in the run up to the Iraq War were case studies for the damage wrought by journalists who either forget or never learned to be journalists and instead become rabid cheerleaders for people who lie.
If science reporters covered education, I imagine the reporting would be much different. Instead of writing how awesome the emperors’ new clothes are, those science reporters would likely notice that the emperor isn’t wearing any. And that’s something the education journalists never do notice.
Thanks for the link. I always enjoy Greene’s common sense logic and perspective. There is a type of mysticism surrounding metrics that implies acceptance, but as Greene shows, metrics can also be distorted and misleading.
I love Greene’s writing too, but this one was just posted by him.
This is one of the hundreds of pro charter articles the ed reform echo chamber churns out every year:
“As Congress doles out billions of dollars for K–12 schools, charter schools already receive a much smaller portion of the education-funding pie. Currently Congress appropriates $440 million for the CSP, which is just 1 percent of U.S. Department of Education spending on K–12.”
Completely dishonest. They want people to believe that charter schools don’t receive federal funding and it all goes to public schools but this is (of course) a lie.
When Congress “doles out billions” to K-12 schools charter schools receive a share of that funding. The “1%” they all repeat in unison is deliberately deceptive.
Go to any ed reform site and look for any advocacy or promotion of a public school that comes anywhere near their constant marketing and promotion of charter schools. You won’t find any.
Yet they continue to insist they work on behalf of public school students. They don’t.
I don’t mind that ed reformers have an ideological preference for privatized and private schools but they should stop telling the public they work on behalf of public school students- they don’t. They do no advocacy or work of any kind for our students. Pretending they do in order to advance their own careers is not fair to public school students.
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/dont-believe-haters-federal-charter-schools-program-deserves-full-funding