The charter industry has set a target on Texas as a new frontier for expansion. With a rightwing Governor and state commissioner who support privatization of public money meant for public schools, the outlook was bright. The state leadership doesn’t care that public schools outperform charter schools and close down with alarming frequency. The big-money fellas don’t care about violating local control or the corporatization of an essential public service. This is a state where a charter chain wanted to lease a private jet for $2 million a year, spent $400,000 on box seats for San Antonio Spurs basketball games, and the CEO left office with a $1 million golden parachute.
As our friends the Pastors for Texas Children reports, the charter lobby fell short this year.
PASTORS FOR TEXAS CHILDREN PRAISES
STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION FOR BLOCKING CHARTER SCHOOLS
The Texas State Board of Education took the unusual step of denying four of the seven new charter school applications today.
California-based Rocketship Charter Schools barely passed on an 8-7 vote, only after an unprecedented push from moneyed Fort Worth interests and last-minute lobbying from Governor Greg Abbott.
This vote comes on the heels of the 87th Legislative session that saw a record 39 charter bills filed. Only one significant charter bill passed, after a procedural slight of hand when many anti-charter members were off the floor and could not vote.
All in all, the charter juggernaut has ground to a halt in Texas.
“We have taken a huge step forward in exposing the corruption of charters—and equating them with the waste
& violation of vouchers,” PTC executive director Rev. Charles Foster Johnson said.
“We still have a long way to go. It is contrary to everything Texans stand for to turn our children’s education over to the control of out-of-state interests—especially those located in California!”
There is no evidence that charter schools outperform traditional neighborhood and community public schools. Many charters fail and fold after several years due to poor educational quality and control. The mediocre oversight of charters has produced a pattern of waste and corruption that is unacceptable.
PTC joins a growing chorus of public education advocates in calling for an extensive study and review of our state’s charter school policy, which has morphed into something far afield from the original intent of charters. Good financial stewardship demands that charter expansion in Texas cease until this inventory can occur.
We thank Dr. Keven Ellis and the State Board of Education for their careful listening to many voices on both sides of the charter issue this week, as well as their careful deliberation.
And we call on all public education stakeholders to unify around the moral and constitutional duty before God to “make suitable provision for public free schools.”
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Pastors for Texas Children mobilizes the faith community for public school assistance and advocacy.
PO Box 471155 – Fort Worth, Texas 76147 http://www.pastorsfortexaschildren.com
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank goodness there is leadership in Texas that refuses to be bought, and thank goodness for the Pastors for Texas Children that can remind policymakers of their duty to the young people of the state.
States are starting to understand the negative fiscal impact of sending public money to unaccountable carpetbaggers outside the local community. In Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf is continuing his campaign to try to tame the fleecing of taxpayers by the charter lobby in the commonwealth. Gov. Wolf is proposing changes to accountability and charter school expenditures in Pennsylvania, and the charter lobby is losing its mind over the proposed changes. https://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2021/02/26/Wolf-proposes-major-charter-school-funding-reforms/stories/202102260136
“This is a state where a charter chain wanted to lease a private jet for $2 million a year, spent $400,000 on box seats for San Antonio Spurs basketball games, and the CEO left office with a $1 million golden parachute.”
There is no discussion at all within the ed reform echo chamber of any of the problems with charter schools.
They spend more time attacking Randy Weingarten than they do evaluating or analyzing any of the privatized systems they have built.
The echo chamber operates almost exclusively as public school critics.All criticism is directed exclusively to public schools, even in areas where they have privatized almost half the system. It self-selects for lockstep adherence. By the time they reach “ed reform expert” status the dissenters have all be weeded out.
Go right now and look for any real analysis of the tens of voucher laws they pushed through just this last session. There is none. Vouchers meet the requirements of the ideological agenda so no further inquiry is needed.
They jettisoned “quality” to meet the voucher goals. They’re now in the ridiculous position of insisting they must harshly police, measure and rank public schools while arguing the opposite for the private schools they promote.
The truth is the ed reform ideological theory is inconsistent with public schools. Public schools must give way to the ideological goals- public schools cannot co-exist within ed reform designed systems, because it’s a fundamentally different view of “public education”. The only way they meet their agenda is universal vouchers. They’re all going to end up there. Most of them are already there. It couldn’t go anywhere else.
Once ed reformers went along with “public” means “publicly funded” they were always going to end at wholly privatized systems funded by vouchers. Always. The one and only question is how fast they get there.
How can public schools possibly operate within systems designed by ed reformers? People really thought that a large group of ideological actors who refer to existing public schools as “government schools” and “cartels” and “a factory model” would IMPROVE public schools?
Why? I believe they’ve made it more than clear they oppose the continued existence of our schools. If the anti-public school rhetoric doesn’t get you there then look at the work- can you identify ONE ed reform initiative that has made your local public school “better”?
It’s been twenty years. Seems like that’s enough time for this “movement” to contribute something of value to the 90% of students who attend public schools.
Are we stuck with this forever? What if public schools went their own way? Isn’t it time public schools started hiring people who serve public school students, instead of this “movement”? What if we hired and elected people who valued our schools and students and wanted to make our schools stronger and better? Wouldn’t that work out better for the students in our schools?
what if we had teachers’ unions smart enough to have publicly and repeatedly and daily held public schools up to the nation as amazing for the past 20 years: we have so many wonderful public schools across the nation to laud and honor and talk about, but the conversation always goes to defense, and then all the public hears about are words like ‘failing’ and ‘deficit’