When Gina Raimondo, now Secretary of Commerce, was governor of Rhode Island, she was an enthusiastic supporter of privately-run charter schools. Her successor as governor was director of a charter school (Blackstone Valley Prep) before he ran for office.
Now, the Rhode Island House of Representatives has proposed a bill that would “automaticallly enter all public school students into charter school lotteries.”
The story reads:
The bill has the support of the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies, which includes the state’s two largest charter networks, Achievement First and the Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy, located in northern Rhode Island. After some initial misgivings, the Rhode Island Department of Education also backs the measure.
Currently, families must apply or “opt into” a charter public school. This bill, which now goes to the Senate, would automatically enroll students into eligible charters and allow them to decline an invitation to enroll if their child is accepted. Most charter schools draw children from specific districts.
But the executive director of the Rhode Island League of Charter Schools, which represents the mom-and-pop charters, said the new approach, while laudable, has serious unintended consequences.
“Highlander is a K-12 statewide charter school,” said league executive director Keith Oliveira. “There are about 140,000 public school children in Rhode Island. Everyone in the state would be part of their lottery.
“This is a nightmare for the school districts, which have to collect the data, places an additional burden on the Department of Education and on the charter schools, which will run the lotteries.” he said. “The bill is intended to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s pretty obvious why the charter schools don’t want this. Of course they could still use their normal standard pick-n-choose methods to keep out the kids they don’t want from families they don’t want, but the much broader pool of applicants would make that a lot more work for them. With friends like this, the charter sector hardly needs enemies.
Somewhat along the same lines, I was thinking maybe this was a good idea (aside from the expense).
The only reason I can think of for charters to keep pushing the false narrative that they teach “the same students as in public schools, just better, and with less money” is because those who promote charters fear they would not get the same public support if they admitted what they did.
And in fact, public magnet schools have always done this — the main difference is that they are honest at the get go. And still have to teach all of the students who are admitted.
Charters that don’t ruthlessly shed students are significantly less successful (in terms of being able to make supposedly “true” claims about how their methods turn nearly all students into scholars) than those who do. The same is true of public schools. The main difference is that public schools that cherry pick don’t make those claims.
Although I have no doubt that charters — since no one is watching — would still find ways to pick and choose.
Oh, charters absolutely would still pick and choose — or impose hurdles that ensure they serve only motivated, compliant children from motivated, supportive, high-functioning families — and they are free as birds to do so. But this bill would remove the initial hurdle that keeps the kids they least want from even hearing about them or knowing how to apply.
Love By Lottery
Yeah, charter schools that somehow get into a situation where they can’t aggressively pick and choose basically collapse. Edison Schools (long-ago for-profit charter operator hailed to the skies as the miracle that would save public education) used to take over existing schools and just start pushing kids out, and they didn’t last too long despite all the gushing and fawning they got from the press, political leaders etc. KIPP once took over an existing school and then gave up and abandoned it. Etc. etc.
carolinesf,
It could not be more obvious that charter schools cherry pick — but somehow education journalists insist that they see no evil. Part of it is due to implicit racism. I knew from the first that any charter that was handing out suspensions to outrageously high numbers of 5 and 6 year olds was not doing so because those children had violent natures that caused them to act out violently, as charters claimed. But too many education reporters clearly believed that it was more likely than not that was the case. Would Elizabeth Green have questioned the truthfulness of a charter school CEO who ran a charter for middle class white children if that CEO claimed that 18% or more of the kindergarten and first graders were acting out so violently that they had to be suspended? Would she have just dutifully reported in a way that didn’t question the absurdity of ridiculously high numbers of white middle class 5 year olds acting out violently entirely because of their own violent natures or would she have immediately known that it was not the children but the methods used by their kindergarten and first grade teachers that were the problem?
Those children being suspended so frequently were almost never white, and I suspect that fact has a lot to do with why education reporters didn’t question why so many lottery-winning 5 year olds were so violent. Just like those education reporters think it is very normal for a high performing charter high school that only admits students certified as top performing scholars by their middle school to graduate a class that is significantly smaller than the 9th grade class 4 years earlier.
Folks who are committed to ed reform and the people whose media organizations are funded by those folks are rewarded for not questioning the obvious. They think they aren’t racist just because they never question the ugly innuendos that those in power make about children who disappear from urban charters.
Ohhh…. I didn’t think of that. Of course. It could level the playing field of enrollment between charter and public schools.
I now think this could be brilliant….if it didn’t have the potential cost of major disruption to the public schools and children…. and the financial cost of the complex process.
This bill should not be passed.
But if it does pass….. at the very least, the legislature should be required to come up with the funding for staffing the data collection and coordination of this new proposed process for the lottery.
I am so tired of decision makers (from law makers to administrators) who have magical thinking. Some think that if they have an idea….and think up something ….. it can just be absorbed by the public schools system – easy peasy. There are always costs and consequences (financial, time and others) that they do not have the depth of knowledge to understand.
I posted th e article itself at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/R-I-House-approves-bill-t-in-General_News-Charter-Schools_Education_Education-Funding_Education-Laws-210625-494.html. and quoted you in my commentary, where I said:
To recognize what is happening in this war on public education you need to know that there are over 15,000 separate school systems in 50 states, and it is the corruption at THE STATE LEVEL that will end public schools… for example, it is no accident that this bill is proposed by the governors; as Diane Ravitch reports: “When Gina Raimondo, now Secretary of Commerce, was governor of Rhode Island, she was an enthusiastic supporter of privately-run charter schools. Her successor as governor was director of a charter school (Blackstone Valley Prep) before he ran for office.”
Wow. It’s been shocking to watch how aggressively anti-public school the ed reform echo chamber has become in just the last 5 years.
There’s no longer even a pretense of working for students who attend public schools. They can’t jam through privatization fast enough.
Just the embrace and marketing and promotion of vouchers is a real lurch Right. The whole echo chamber now promotes vouchers- what once was the extreme DeVos wing of the “movement” is now the middle.
I don’t think public schools will survive. It’s a double whammy- it’s both the complete lack of effort and investment in public schools combined with such an aggressive marketing and promotion push to get people to switch to charters and private schools. Add in their political campaign to invent a “critical race theory” panic and it’ll be tough for public schools to survive.
All charters and vouchers, all the time. I’m hoping the public finally sees this “movement” for what it is- an ideologically-driven push for privatized systems to replace all public systems. I don’t know that any observer who is not a member of the echo chamber can miss it at this point.
They simply don’t serve students who attend public schools. The ideological goals trumped any “educational” goals long ago. I hope the privatized systems they’re engineering live up to their (wildly inflated) claims, or Americans are going to deeply regret allowing this to happen.
They’ve pushed thru so many vouchers just this year that at some point someone outside the echo chamber will begin to measure the claims against the reality of privatization. It will be too late though- we’ll never get public systems back once they’re all contracted out. Privatization is a one way ratchet. No matter “the results” we’re stuck with it.
For a long time with ed reform I assumed there would be some examination, some analysis, a real look at whether privatizing the US K-12 system was really wise and carried no risk.
But it never came. They simply do no real analysis of their own work. There’s no hesitancy at all. They’ll pitch it all in the trash without a second thought.
I think it’s because there is no risk. To THEM. They’re all safely lodged at these universities and think tanks and lobbying shops and if they move at all it’s musical chairs- they just go from one echo chamber to another.
But boy- you destroy a public system that serves 50 million people to replace it with your experiment you better be ready to reap the whirlwind. They didn’t consider downside risk at all. The hubris is breathtaking.
Chiara,
This is not a scientific or theoretical debate. This about money and power. Facts don’t mattter.
“This is not a scientific or theoretical debate. This about money and power. Facts don’t mattter.” – This sums up everything in the public / political world right now.
How will we ever educate the general public how to sift through false narratives and skewed information and be able to make informed decisions based on facts and truth.
Amusing that these schools are supposedly so desirable and yet the ed reform echo chamber has to do all this lobbying to promote them – up to and including automatic registration.
More puffery and marketing presented as “science”. The fabled “wait lists” that no one can ever produce.
They don’t even have full use of the voucher schemes they expanded the last time they did any work and they’re expanding them again. Watch for the marketing campaign. They gotta sell those vouchers.
To survive, public schools are going to have to go their own way.
Depending on charter and voucher supporters and lobbyists to serve public school students isn’t fair to public school students. Public schools should develop their own policy team. Twenty years of following the demands of people who don’t value public schools is not going to benefit public schools and public school students.
Bust out of the echo chamber. They don’t work for your students. They have not delivered any productive or positive value to any student who attends a public school in 20 years. They aren’t going to start now. Proudly proclaim “public” and find and hire some people who share your mission. You won’t find them in the ed reform echo chamber.
Pro-public. Ed reform is pro-charter and voucher. It’s past time students and families who attend public schools had their own advocates.
Currently, 7.4% of RI’s public school students attend charters. But 80% of those students are located in the poor/poor-performing districts in RI’s urban hub: there, 20% of public school students are enrolled in charters.
There’s an article here with a lot of facts & figures on that charter sector https://www.golocalprov.com/news/public-charter-students-outperform-sending-districts-see-ripec-policy-recom
It summarizes RI’s Public Expenditure’s recent analysis and recommendations.
Another article makes it clear that the two-year moratorium proposed earlier this year is for re-working the state’s funding formula—prior to further charter expansion– to stem the disproportionate flow of funding from district schools which is harming the non-charter students SpEd students noted in particular]. https://www.browndailyherald.com/2021/04/08/need-pause-r-legislators-discuss-charter-school-moratorium/
The 100% charter lottery looks like an expensive, time-consuming bureaucratic-nightmare gimmick which accomplishes nothing toward the RIPEC recommendations.
Quote from article.
“Those less-advantaged students are the ones most in need of the extra resources that charter schools offer.”
Really? So charters have extra resources from the public funds that should be going to real public schools.
An awful plan meant to hurry up the charter takeover.
Great point, Nancy. What are the resources that charters have that are not available in public schools? Why?
the heartrending fact being that those of us in the know know that it is those students who are most in need who end up being most quickly discarded in the reform game