We have seen for many years that celebrities and billionaires love charter schools, though it is not apparent why since they are typically no better–and often much worse–than district public schools.
But there are a few signs of change.
The legendary singer Tony Bennett created the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts as part of the New York City school system. He and his wife Susan Crow Benedetto have established arts partnerships in nearly 40 more public schools, located in New York City and Los Angeles. They created an organization called “Exploring the Arts,” which promotes the arts in public schools and encourages youngsters to develop their creative talents. They began their mission in 1999, and it continues to grow.
In Los Angeles, two well-known figures in the entertainment industry asked Superintendent Austin Beutner if they could sponsor a public high school modeled on a successful program that they had created at the University of Southern California. He gave his consent.
This account appeared in Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog:
“It can take years for a public school district to conceive, design and build a new school — but here’s a story about the incredibly fast creation of what could be America’s coolest new high school.
“It started a few months ago, when a friend asked Austin Beutner, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, if he wanted to open a new public high school. He wasn’t asking for himself but, rather, on behalf of Andre Young, better known as Dr. Dre, and Jimmy Iovine.
“Young and Iovine, both successful producers and entrepreneurs, had, nearly a decade earlier, helped found a namesake school at the University of Southern California. It combines art, design, technology and entrepreneurship in a multidisciplinary academy that has about 120 to 130 undergraduates and at least 200 graduate students.
“The two men, along with Erica Muhl, dean of USC’s Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy, wanted to introduce younger students to the same ideas being taught in the academy, so they investigated the best way to bring their program to the high school level. They decided they wanted to do it in a public district school — not a private or charter school — and that’s where Beutner and Los Angeles Unified came in.
“After a difficult year leading the country’s second-largest school district through the coronavirus pandemic, Beutner is ending his three-year tenure as superintendent on June 30, turning down an offer from the school board to stay. He could have dismissed the idea as too difficult to get through the bureaucracy in the short amount of time he had left in the district, whose student body is 84 percent Black and Latino.
“He didn’t. Instead, he jumped in.”
George Clooney and a bevy of other entertainment industry figures recently announced that they are also underwriting a new high school in the Los Angeles public school system. Clooney is a graduate of Augusta High School in Augusta, Kentucky.
“For the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, the phrase “giving back to the schools” has often meant a cameo appearance on career day or, perhaps more typically, a fat check made out to your own child’s elite private academy.
“But on Monday, the nation’s second-largest district unveiled the latest in a string of star-studded collaborations: a new high school underwritten by, among others, George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Eva Longoria and principals at Creative Artists Agency.
“The magnet school is intended to diversify the pipeline of cinematographers, engineers, visual effects artists and other technical workers in the city’s signature job sector, and is one of at least three joint initiatives started in the past two months between the Los Angeles schools and entertainment industry benefactors.
“Last week, the music producers Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine announced they were starting their own specialized high school in South Los Angeles. In May, a few hundred middle schoolers performed on free guitars with the pop artist H.E.R., signaling the expansion of a yearlong partnership with the Fender Play Foundation. And more high-profile initiatives involving robotics and music are in the works with major entertainment figures, district officials said.”
The chair of the California State Board of Education, Linda Darling-Hammond, disparaged these efforts as “charity,” when what is need is justice.
Since so many media stars like John Legend and a bevy of billionaires from the Walton family to the Broad Foundation to the DeVos family to Charles Koch, and billionaire hedge funders with less familiar names have spent hundreds of millions to support alternatives to public schools, I salute those celebrities who put their money into public schools, not charter schools.
“The Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, founded by the singer Tony Bennett, has operated for decades within New York’s public school system, for example. And LeBron James has opened a highly successful public school with wraparound social services in Ohio. But a group of Texas charter schools founded in 2012 by Deion Sanders, the former N.F.L. player, closed in insolvency after three scandal-plagued years.”
It seems unfair to criticize private philanthropy to public schools while remaining silent about the billionaires (and the federal government with its Charter Schools Program, funded at $440 million annually) pouring hundreds of millions every year into the aggressive expansion of corporate charter chains that defund public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I laud the interest in public schools on the part of celebs, and I appreciate the civic contributions of those who become financially capable of helping their communities and step up to do it. That said, there are problems with this.
When urban areas, especially those ringing cities get programs, it is usually because the pecuniary nexus in those areas produces the ability for those communities to provide for students in ways impossible in rural areas. As a part of a rural area, it leaves me feeling left out. This makes many of my rural brethren vote for political leaders who voice ideas I find distasteful.
I know there are places where things are worse. Inner city schools face mountains compared to my hills, with larger populations of students with greater needs. Reservations are often even less funded, depending on their location and how many people like their casinos.
It is good for celebs to give money. Andy Griffith Gabe Mt Airy, NC a nice facility. Johnny Carson built an auditorium in Norfolk, NE. My old friend Sam Kennedy gave a community library to his hometown of Kowana, OK about forty years after the dust bowl drove him out of town with a biscuit in his pocket. But that generation came from these rural and small town places. We have ignored these places over the last forty years. Ironically, their votes are now cast for the very political leaders responsible for ignoring them.
I know. This is off the subject. Maybe.
No, it’s perfectly on topic and spot on. It’s marvelous when philanthropy gives without seeking returns on investment, but philanthropy doesn’t provide for everyone equally. Syrian refugees are getting so much more philanthropic aid right now than are Venezuelan refugees. If, for example, the federal government gave $440 million a year not to charter chains but to help rural public schools do what celebrities are doing, that would help. Maybe the new philanthropists can convince the government to do better by no longer listening to the vulture venture philanthropists. Then, people in rural areas would feel they have good reason to vote for that government.
Movie stars are out of touch with reality and do what they do to have their names blasting with lights and horns.
This is an unfair and overly broad statement. Please direct your criticism toward the actual effectiveness of schools, curriculums and programs in educating children, not the egotism that may motivate certain contributors.
“And LeBron James has opened a highly successful public school with wraparound social services in Ohio”
I’m thrilled that LeBron James chose to open a public school, and it’s off to a good start but I would hate for public schools to adopt the marketing language and exaggeration of ed reformers and deem it “highly successful”.
It looks like it will be a good solid school. But it’s not miraculous and it has no “secret sauce” or any of the rest of that nonsense. It’s worthy of support for what it really is. We don’t have to exaggerate. Public schools are not, in fact, commercial entities nor were they intended to be. The nice part of LeBron’s school is he refrained from seizing the whole district and barking out orders. Let’s retain the humility he had when he opened it.
The LeBron James school is a good example of a community school.
LeBron did everything right with that school. His is a model. Great respect for LeBron James.
LeBron did everything right with that school. Great respect for LeBron James.
My other comment, which included another sentence, went into moderation. If this one doesn’t go into moderation, shame on you, AI, you have a dirty “mind”.
Oh, well. WordPress is not to be figured tonight by me!
Really interesting to see the ed reform echo chamber go lockstep “fund students, not systems”
Universal vouchers. Wow. That’s the mainstream position of ed reform now? REALLY far Right.
They always had to get to universal vouchers. The ed reform ideological framework doesn’t work without them.
This is much further Right than even any of the countries who have privatized schools. It’s the end of public systems completely and they’re all chanting it in unison,as usual.
The whole Grand Theory of Ed Reform will wind up a 6200 voucher to go purchase educational services. They could have done that with 5 people working for two weeks.
It’s a rip off but I suppose the public won’t figure that out for a while.
This has to be the biggest bait and switch in US history. A flim flam to end all flim flams. They’re giving them a low value coupon to replace an entire public system.
You start to realize why billionaires fund the entire ed reform movement when you realize “students and not systems” is effectively a 50% cut in public education funding.
They’ve done the same thing to public universities. It’s just extending the ideological goals to the K-12 system.
It’s a shame. I think the public will really, regret following this merry band of ideologically motivated free marketeers as they eradicate the last remaining universal public system in the US.
There’s no dissent from within the ranks. As usual.
Perhaps celebrities have awakened — as should Democrats, progressives, and all liberal thinkers — to the fact that in corporate-run charter schools the conservative corporate/Republican view is incorporated into every lesson that the children are taught. Democratic Party support of charter schools is self-defeating because charter schools are indoctrinating children to the corporate/Republican world view.
would that that were true, but surely most ‘celebrities’ who get involved with “fixing schools” do so only because their financial advisor tells them it makes for great hedge funding opportunities
And I say just as surely that many celebrities like Tony Bennett get involved because they want to pass on the richness of the arts and art education that was was so important in their own lives, and they have the resources to do so. Not all are shallow, self-centered opportunists.
I know many retired teachers and tradesmen who have no hedge fund opportunities. Yet they work locally with children’s programs, cultural organizations, mentoring, and substitute teaching. I doubt any of them do it because some advisor told them it would provide advancement opportunities within their community.
Your sources, please, especially for the Democratic Party support of charter schools that “are indoctrinating children to the corporate/Republican world view.”
Also, please explain how you reached the conclusion that “the conservative corporate/Republican view is incorporated into EVERY lesson that children are taught,” and that this applies to all “corporate-run charter schools.”
Have comprehensive studies been made? In my limited experience of 18 years in public schools and 2 in charter schools, I have seen no indoctrination-from-the-top in either; I HAVE seen individual teachers in both types of schools express their particular interpretations of world events, history, and literature.
TFA. The Broad Academy. The ESSA. The NCLB…
Valerie Strauss writes in her Answer Sheet blog: “It can take years for a public school to conceive, design, and build a new school–“.
Is it possible that some reformers and funders believe in and would prefer to work in public education, but feel they have no choice but to work in the field of private, charter, and/or voucher education simply to get around what can be a resistant and stifling bureaucracy?
Perhaps, but rules and regulations keep us from waste, fraud, and abuse. To be perfectly honest, while I love the idea behind the magnet school being co-located in Los Angeles, I’m nervous the district my try to upend the collective bargaining agreement reached at the end of the teachers strike, to force teachers on that campus to reapply for their positions in order to teach at the magnet, or be displaced from the school. That’s not how it should work. It’s not bureaucracy slowing things down, it’s proper procedure to make sure no one gets hurt. There also need to be environmental studies done before a new school is opened. No one gets hurt.
I agree in general, but there are plenty of examples of rules and regulations that did NOT protect from waste, fraud, and abuse (such as lead paint and asbestos abatement, procurement policies, etc.). Proper environmental studies should be done in any and all cases, regardless of the type of school being built.
Regarding collective bargaining agreements: we always say “The children come first,” but of course in many cases they don’t. I’m a lifetime member of NY State United Teachers and–theoretically– I see nothing wrong with teachers being transferred to another building if they do not qualify AND cannot be retrained to teach in the new program. However, they must be offered the same position at the same pay. Also, I understand that in a metropolitan area like Los Angeles, there can be additional concerns about distance of commute and school safety. (The largest district I worked in had 8,000 students.)
In my district, certain billionaires have spent millions to buy school board seats. These are the Billionaire Boys and Girls Club that profit from the cheapening of public education. The district therefore has a long history of breaking up schools to force out teachers. They wind up as pool teachers or subs. They lose pay. They used to lose jobs. In a sprawling district with wide, geographic, economic disparities, being displaced is life disruptive even if you get picked up by another school, and even for the same kind of teaching assignment. I, for one, might also be troubled by a lack of academic freedom if I were forced to use a different program, especially if scripted, as are many.
So, We have some different circumstances, but there are some principles involved. Teachers should not be forced to use new programs or products. Teachers should not have to move across the county. Teachers should not be forced out of positions in which they have gathered years of experience and materials, and gotten to know the community and vice versa.
And my teachers union, bargaining collectively, is practically the only thing in the way of the Billionaire Boys and Girls Club Los Angeles Chapter.
Also, environmental studies don’t usually happen in my city unless teachers and communities come together to force the district to do them. That’s because the district rushes to co-locate, shrink, and privatize its schools so often. Forcing the district to study the effects of new schools on traffic, parking, water, sanitation, etc. can stop a charter school.
As a matter of fact, let me go off on a tangent I’ve personally been very concerned about lately. Not only is the CCSA’s preferred leadership of LAUSD continually breaking schools into smaller pieces, weakening the collective power of teachers at the school; the CCSA’s closely allied LA Times ran an article a couple weeks ago suggesting that breaking up the whole district into five smaller districts is in the works. It suggested that they want to sell the district headquarters one day. That would make it easy for charter companies to compartmentalize their attacks and swarm East and South L.A., all the while weakening the collective power of UTLA across the county. I wouldn’t want UTLA to have to negotiate five separate collective bargaining agreements. It would be impossible. It would cost too much. I’m worried. There was a reason Bill Gates wanted smaller schools, and it wasn’t that he wanted better schools.
LeftCoast, I agree with your “principles involved.” When I said “theoretically I see nothing wrong with teachers being transferred,” I was speaking specifically about the original topic of the gift of a public school of the arts. Most of those new arts courses could and should be filled by district teachers–trumpet fingerings don’t change, the basics of good singing don’t change, nor do the principals of the visual and stage arts. If all these great new opportunities caused a reduction in the number of non-arts courses, perhaps a few of those teachers would have to transfer elsewhere. That must be done with attention to all the things you mention, with no ulterior motives or manipulation. The devil of course is in the details of our union contracts. As Hazel Dickens sang in the movie “Matewan”, “We won’t pull another pillow, or load another ton, or lift our little finger ’til a union we have won.”
Well said!
Mark asked:
“Is it possible that some reformers and funders believe in and would prefer to work in public education, but feel they have no choice but to work in the field of private, charter, and/or voucher education simply to get around what can be a resistant and stifling bureaucracy?”
That’s like asking “is it possible that Trump and his White House cronies would prefer to work within the regular system but felt they had no choice?”
When someone is patently dishonest and, when caught out, either denies reality or scapegoats others for making them dishonest, then no, it’s not possible to believe that people who choose with full intent to be dishonest are doing so for worthy reasons.
Charters choose to be dishonest. If they don’t practice blatant dishonesty themselves, they are complicit – via their silence – in pushing the false narratives of the charters who are blatantly dishonest because their silence also benefits them. Having people believe false narratives benefits them.
I can respect the choice to work for a charter as long as you also have no problem acknowledging that top performing charters (whose results are used to support the expansion of charters) don’t teach the same students, are ruthless about getting rid of students, and are ruthless in demonizing the students who leave if those students tell the truth. And as long as you are willing to point out that charter supporters who deny this reality are lying.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for charters who whine about “a resistant and stifling bureaucracy” that won’t let them abuse and humiliate the students that they don’t want to teach. I don’t have any sympathy for charters that tell Americans to trust them as expert educators – that the fact that they had to give out of school suspensions to 18% or 20% of their Kindergarten and first grade students at a charter with virtually no white students was because all of those young children acted so violently in the classroom due to their own violent natures, and it has nothing to do with inexperienced charter teachers or wanting to get rid of students. And I don’t have a lot of sympathy for anyone in the charter school industry who is complicit with their silence, thus enabling the same kind of ugly, racist false narratives about needing to aggressively discipline students in urban charters that are used to excuse racist policing that promotes the same false narratives of “having no choice” but to use aggressive police tactics on “dangerous” people.
NYC: My question has NOTHING to do with Trump and his cronies. You are talking about ONE known crook and his cronies, I am asking about a possible FEW people of principle among the MANY unprincipled reformers.
Show me your evidence that EVERYONE who has advocated for alternative schools is crooked, that EVERYONE is dishonest, that EVERYONE is racist, that EVERYONE is an abuser, that EVERYONE is promoting “aggressive tactics”, etc etc.
Have you personally examined every charter school in the country and interviewed every reformer?? Your tirade is absurd. There are people in public education who have these behaviors you ascribe to charters and reformers.
The appropriate and accurate answer for you to give to my serious question is simply, “Not that I know of.”
The answer to your tirade is that public schools are a fundamental element in our democracy. They were created in the 19th century to build a society with shared values, where people of many different backgrounds would learn the civic values of a new American society. Common schools are needed today more than ever.
Diane, Are we therefor obligated as good citizens to stay enrolled in public schools no matter what? If the school refuses to stop our child from being bullied? If the school refuses–despite its clear policy– to advance our daughter to a higher level class that she qualifies for? If our school or personnel discriminates against black kids? If the school requires our son to attend remediation instead of going to art and music with the rest of his class? If the school cuts band to save money? If the school reduces or eliminates recess time in order to raise test scores? If the school is unable to find qualified teachers? If the school will not hire sufficient aides for the special ed kids–as required by law? If girls don’t have the same number of sports options as boys? If class sizes are too large? If the school can’t or won’t correct chronic maintenance problems? What if state aid allows our city school to spend $11,000 per student, but the suburban school a mile away to spend $15,000 (actual figures from the Campaign for Fiscal Equality in NY, 2003)?
You are obligated to pay for your community public schools, as you are obligated to pay for police and firefighters. So are citizens who have no children, citizens whose children are not school-age, and citizens who enroll their children in private schools. If you don’t like your public school, meet with the principal. If you are still unhappy, put your child in a private school and pay for it.
“I am asking about a possible FEW people of principle among the MANY unprincipled reformers.”
I am sure there were people who were willing to speak the truth and who got immediately marginalized for it.
RiShawn Biddle is someone who acts on principle. I don’t always agree with him, but I respect him.
There are others who likely spoke out and paid a price.
But I don’t know what your definition of “principle” is. If you run your charter correctly — which means you won’t have the kind of extraordinary “success” that other charters do — does that make you a person of principle if you allow the dishonesty of the system to continue by not speaking out to correct false narratives?
There are many decent and honorable police officers. Their own actions are beyond reproach — except that they remain silent when they see other officers not behaving correctly and pushing false narratives about how dangerous the person who was victimized by aggressive policing appeared.
Are they principled or not?
There are people who started charters to do the right thing. I don’t know why their voices were not heard as the ed reformers pushed false narratives. Maybe they did and no one paid attention. I don’t know where they are now.
“Are we therefore obligated as good citizens to stay enrolled in public schools no matter what?”
Mark, I know you didn’t address that question to me, but for the record, I would never put that obligation on any parent, nor blame them for seeking out whatever school – charter, private, public – works for their child.
But I do think that parents who seek out charters still have an obligation to speak honestly about that charter and not push false narratives.
“If the school refuses to stop our child from being bullied? If the school refuses–despite its clear policy– to advance our daughter to a higher level class that she qualifies for? If our school or personnel discriminates against black kids? If the school requires our son to attend remediation instead of going to art and music with the rest of his class?”
“If the school reduces or eliminates recess time in order to raise test scores? If the school is unable to find qualified teachers?”
What happens when those events occur in charter schools? As a parent, you either accept it or leave.
“If the school will not hire sufficient aides for the special ed kids–as required by law? ”
When that happens in a charter school, you either accept it or leave.
Public schools are far from perfect, and all those things happen, but a student does have rights. If those things happened in a public school and the school was responding badly, other parents might join you to advocate for something better. Would parents in a charter school be as willing? Maybe.
What happens when a charter school has more money to spend on your kid because after years of lobbying by pushing dishonest narratives that reduce public school budgets, your neighborhood public school has to cut art or music?
What happens when the system becomes charter schools for the students charters want to teach and public schools for the ones they don’t?
NYC asks, “–does that make you a person of principle if you allow the dishonesty of the system to continue by not speaking out to correct false narratives?”
Nikole Hannah-Jones answered a similar question when asked about accepting the long-delayed and denied complete offer, with tenure, from UNC, and using that as a platform–
“I also get to decide what battles I continue to fight. And I have decided that instead of fighting to prove I belong [at UNC]…I am instead going to work in the legacy of [Howard].”
We have different skills, aspirations and goals. Some want to work within a system, others outside. Some of us just want to teach; we did not choose the fields of law or law enforcement. But yes, I agree we should speak up when we witness thieves, liars and assaulters.
Nikole Hannah-Jones didn’t push any false narratives and she didn’t remain silent when false narratives were pushed. In fact, it was hearing lies that made her realize she had to speak out.
The president of UNC did not participate in the attacks against NHJ. No doubt she would have been happy to have her on the faculty. But she remained silent. She didn’t have to quit her job. All she had to do was speak the truth. But she did not. She just didn’t speak at all and continued to do work that I’m sure she justified as helping many students. Does that make her principled?
“I also get to decide what battles I continue to fight. And I have decided that instead of fighting to prove I belong [at UNC]…I am instead going to work in the legacy of [Howard].”
I am concerned that you are insinuating that NHJ’s statement somehow is a rationalization of keeping quiet. It isn’t. There is a difference between expecting the university president to speak the truth and expecting that president speak up when he or she sees a false narrative being pushed, and expecting that president to “go into battle”. Please don’t equate the two.
In fact, when speaking the truth means “going into battle” then something is very wrong with the system. NHJ is saying it isn’t her job to fix it by going into battle. NHJ is certainly not saying “it’s okay to remain quiet because speaking the truth and going into battle are the same thing”.
^^^
Mark, I apologize for a somewhat incoherent post.
But there is a way that one silently goes along and a way that one doesn’t:
Nikole Hannah-Jones cites “Dean Susan King who, in a vacuum of leadership, has exhibited courage, integrity, honesty, and a refusal to be bullied even if it cost her. This is why I wanted to come work under her leadership.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones cites other UNC administrators, including the Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz:
“Nor can I work at an institution whose leadership permitted this conduct and has done nothing to disavow it. How could I believe I’d be able to exert academic freedom with the school’s largest donor so willing to disparage me publicly and attempt to pull the strings behind the scenes? Why would I want to teach at a university whose top leadership chose to remain silent, to refuse transparency, to fail to publicly advocate that I be treated like every other Knight Chair before me?
The university’s leadership continues to be dishonest about what happened and patently refuses to acknowledge the truth, to offer any explanation, to own what they did and what they tried to do. Once again, when leadership had the opportunity to stand up, it did not.”
There aren’t 2 choices — remaining silent or “going into battle”. There is simply speaking the truth. That is what NHJ means. One doesn’t have to take or give up a position to speak the truth.
I would prefer that those celebrities who wish to start a new public school, which, as stated above, takes years to do, would instead contribute to existing public schools in our neediest areas – the inner city and the very rural. Neither of these areas have the resources needed to help their students to be as successful as possible, both in school and later on down the road.
Yes! You have made the most important comment in this discussion!
That would be better. At least they’re apparently not buying charter schools anymore.
If only they put their kids in public schools….that’s the most frustrating part.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
While greedy, power-hungry billionaires continue to support the growth of the private sector, publicly funded Charter Schools that often fail and end up closing their doors, some celebrities are supporting OUR public schools in innovative ways.
I’m glad this post gives a shout out to Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, a choice public school overseen by the public school system.
Some charter advocates want to push the false narrative that charters must expand to give parents “choice”, but if this was about choice, those advocates would have been opening choice schools like Frank Sinatra or LeBron’s school or this new one in LA.
Charters were never about choice — they were about privatization. Charter advocates insisted that “choice” must include privately operated schools that can decide who they want to teach without having to play by any rules by their own. That’s privatization, not choice.
Good to see some celebrities get behind public schools.
Is private donations to the public cause a bad thing? Is a PTA bake sale over the last 70 years a bad thing, because it lets the taxpayers off the hook for a societal obligation they really should be paying? I suppose in that sense Linda Darling-Hammond is right.
Were Carnegie libraries a bad idea because they coddled society and government’s responsibility to provide that need?
On north 405, near where Bill Gates lives, the state has resorted to using the shoulder of the highway as a driving lane. If Mr. 99 billion dollars were to build a few more lanes with his own money, would it be a bad thing?
Thank you….on behalf of the thousands of children I was blessed to be their Arts teacher in East Los Angeles …Every child every day, every year, All the Arts.
Yes “every child every day…”, but ESPECIALLY for those children forced to attend remediation instead of arts classes because “it’s the only time we can fit them in.”