Wagma Mommandi and Kevin Welner write in The Progressive about the ways that charter schools select and remove students. These practices are not permitted in real public schools.
Some make it difficult to apply, like the charter in Philadelphia that required parents to travel to a private golf club in the suburbs to seek admission. Or the charter school that sent recruitment letters, but not to the zip codes with the highest number of black and brown families.
Some charters have rules so strict (“no excuses”) that it is easy to suspend students repeatedly to get rid of them
Are charter schools “public schools,” as their advocates claim? Many are not.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Yes, they want to compete to enroll students, but the incentives in place are more specific: to enroll high-scoring, easy-to-teach students who do not require extra resources.”
Cheap and easy to serve are the goal posts of student selection in the private charter sector. Through manipulation and gaming the system, charter schools are often mostly white or Black academies. The article does not mention that the surrounding public schools lose money for each lost student. When the expensive or non-conforming students return to the public schools, classes are larger, and there are fewer resources to serve vulnerable students from charter school funding drain.
Privatization gets no better results. It robs the public schools to transfer public funds to private investors while it enhances segregation.
Enhancing segregation … BINGO!
and now an even more insidious segregation: those who CAN afford tech product and those who cannot
For an entity to be public, the public must own its assets.
In Ohio, the Supreme Court used as rationale for the declaration that charters are private, the fact that charter school records have the protections afforded proprietary information.
Another great comment, Linda!
True!
I posted this at OEN https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/How-Charter-Schools-Select-in-General_News-Charter-Schools_Diane-Ravitch_Public-Education_Public-Education-210726-80.html
“Free-market theorists seem to have overlooked the core competitive realities facing operators of charter schools. Yes, they want to compete to enroll students, but the incentives in place are more specific: to enroll high-scoring, easy-to-teach students who do not require extra resources.”
It isn’t just free-market theorists who supposedly overlook this very obvious reality. It is education reporters at places like the New York Times, where Eliza Shapiro can’t seem to write an article about charters without including a gratuitous “fact” about how certain high performing charters have miraculous results. She will throw in a disclaimer about how some biased pro-union critic “questions” results as if it is simply a “both sides” question because she seems to view the job of education reporter as presenting the hyped and misleading claims of success that charter promoters make as having equal weight to what their (always presented as biased) critics say. Many high school journalists practice better journalism than the education writers who confuse stenography and reporting.
“As long as charter schools face pressures to produce higher test scores, keep costs down, and minimize peer disruptions, incentives will push them to recruit a narrow range of students.”
I’m just a parent and this is so blatantly obvious to me that when reporters and politicians cover this up by not mentioning it, I can’t decide whether it is from ignorance or lack of ethics or principles.
With charters, high performing correlates with more missing students. That simply isn’t true in public schools, because it is counterintuitive that a school that works miracles would see lots of parents pulling their kids. Apparently, too many education reporters think it is not counterintuitive that Black and Latinx parents would “voluntarily” pull their kids from higher performing charter schools, and that demonstrates the implicit bias of so many education reporters. I have always thought that the reporting would be very different if no excuses charter served white students and the parents pulling their kids were white. There is an obvious reason why no-excuses charters haven’t thrived in white suburban neighborhoods – it is because reporters would be far more skeptical about huge numbers of missing white students. I doubt reporters at Chalkbeat and the NYT would write fawning stories about how these no-excuses suburban charters turn mediocre white students into high performing students and the parents who complain and the many kids who disappear simply confirms those education journalists’ own bias that many white parents just prefer their kids to be mediocre. Questions would be asked. Why those questions haven’t been asked about the high numbers of missing students in the no-excuses charters that serve virtually no white students is an indictment of education journalism.
I’m glad the Progressive is noticing.
I’d just like public school supporters to compare the ed reform echo chamber’s coordinated campaign to increase federal funding to charter schools with their “advocacy” work for public schools.
They can’t be bothered to lift a finger on behalf of public schools or public school students, but boy when it’s charter funding that’s at issue the entire echo chamber pitches in to lobby for more funding.
It’s really reached the point where it’s deceptive to describe these folks as working on “public education”. They work for charters and vouchers. They add nothing of value to public schools.
The sum total of ed reform’s contribution to public schools post-pandemic has been mandating standardized tests this year and promoting the ridiculous CRT panic. That’s all 50 million public school students got out of what are THOUSANDS of full time paid ed reformers- two net negatives.
What do ed reformers contribute to PUBLIC schools or PUBLIC school students and if the answer is “nothing” then why do they run public education in a country where most children attend public schools? How did this ridiculous situation come about and are we stuck with them forever?
I think public schools have to break with the ed reform echo chamber, for the simple reason the ed reform echo chamber are in the business of designing and promoting K-12 privatized systems and public schools are in a very different business- public schools are in the business of serving public school students.
Cut em loose and get back to the core job. The core job does not include “inventing new systems of governance” or coming up with elaborate voucher schemes or replacing teachers with 15 dollar an hour “guides”. That’s some job- ideological vision achieving or something- but it isn’t the work public schools do.
Public schools have an advantage over charter schools in that public schools are governed locally. We’re not actually subject to the demands of this “movement”. We don’t have to follow along.
You won’t be punished if you’re a public school and you simply decide to skip whatever the fashionable gimmick of the year is- your constituency is not the Walton Foundation boardroom or the Wall Street Journal editorial pages or the Harvard education consultants. Your constituency is the county where you’re located. That was BY DESIGN and it’s a huge advantage for public schools but they have to have the courage to use it.
“XQ
XQAmerica
·“The mastery approach throws out standard expectations that students learn certain skills in a given grade or semester. It instead recognizes that students learn at different paces and may start a school year at very different learning stages.”
If you’re a public school leader and you think this won’t fly in your system with the people you serve you’re under absolutely no obligation to conduct this experiment because 15 ed reformers employed by this billionaire think it would be super-cool to get rid of grade levels.
Not required. Public schools are local and they’re governed locally. They’re not in the “conducting experiments for billionaires” business. That’s the business of ed reform. Our mission is completely different.
Cleveland has apparently agree to conduct this experiment. It will be, by my count, the 5th “reimaging” of Cleveland public schools in the last ten years. Does that really serve Cleveland citizens and students? Really? Wouldn’t they prefer a stable, solid school system that improves over time rather than this ludicrous private sector “start up” model? Imagine being a Cleveland public school student who started in kindergarten in 2010. It’s been chaos for a decade. AA families in Cleveland are begging for another ed reform experiment? Really?
When we built a new school we employed an ed reformer as a consultant, money wasted as far as I’m concerned, he spent most the allotted time trying to sell us a charter high school, but I’m not in charge so whatever.
He pitched getting rid of grade levels. Parents, in turn, raised the extremely practical objection that they weren’t thrilled with the idea of putting 6th graders in with 18 year olds, for obvious reasons. Have any of these people had children? Do the 12 year olds on your block hang out with the high school seniors? Why or why not? Are their a lot of close friendships between 5 year olds and 10 year olds? Why or why not?
Are class levels really just because we’re all enamored of the “factory model” and not cognizent of ed reform brilliance, or do class levels serve purposes other than strictly academic?
Me n Darlene aint standin for this. Im hyeer to let chew no that we acepts any an all white children without disubilities at Bob’s Real Good Flor-uh-duh School! No discriminashun! Heck, weve even acepted ones what dont even exist! We got more children what dont exist than even most virtue-ul schools! So, come on down to Bob’s Real Good Flor-uh-duh School in the old K-Mart Building between Four Seasons Landscaping South and Wild Rita’s Adult Novelties, rite next to Bob’s Gun, Pawn, n Donnuts to sign yore child up! Cant miss it!
And it sure is safe at Bobs Real Good Flor-uh-duh school cause all are teachers is locked n loaded!
Bob,
I think that ridiculing African American english is not a good way to argue a point.
African American English? Oh my sweet lord, TE.
You are serious, aren’t you, TE. Aie yie yie.
Teachingeconomist,
The fact that you immediately associated Bob’s language as “African American english” — when it is NOT — reveals your racist beliefs.
What made you call that language “African American”? You would have a better point if you had criticized Bob for using language that stereotypes some southern whites.
CRT has made me think about the implicit racism that needs to be recognized by people who believe they aren’t racist at all, and I think you provided a good example.
I agree, NYCPSP. I immediately spotted Bob’s language as that of uneducated southern whites. Nothing racist about it.
Oh sharecropper daughter
She sings the blues of a coal miner’s son
She said that I know what you’re thinking when you hear the way I talk
When you hear the way I talk
When you hear the way I talk …….
SG Goodman
Also wanted to get you attention about a thread on the previous post where Dr. Ravitch, LeftCoastTeacher, and to a lesser extent Jersey Joe argue that there is no systemic racism in public education. I have linked to your discussion with Flerp about this, but perhaps you would like to comment in the thead. I think it is the only thread in that post that you have not commented on)
I never said there was no systemic racism in public education. I said there was more systemic racism in private and religious schools than in public schools.
Dr. Ravitch,
The direct quote is “ Public schools are not systemically racist.”
Public schools are not systematically racist. Unlike private and religious schools, public schools are subject to civil rights laws.
Teachingeconomist,
Are you denying that your identifying the language Bob used as “African American english” is a racist assumption?
I didn’t hear you acknowledge it. I hope you aren’t doubling down, since that seems even more racist.
Bob,
Any thoughts on this?