Pandemic Boosts Charter Enrollment

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1. Joe Jersey says:

   September 27, 2021 at 10:30 am

   This report is coming from a pro charter propaganda group, the NATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS, not exactly a disinterested party.
   Assuming that its figures are true and accurate, what does it actually prove? It could be a fluke, anomaly or one time surge, not a trend.

   Reply
2. Beth says:

   September 27, 2021 at 10:32 am

   Of course this has to be taken with a grain of salt, because we all know that charter industry public relations is prone to exaggeration.

   Apparently in NYS charter schools gained 11K pupils and the public schools lost 89K students (reading off a NY Post chart). What happened to the 80K who didn’t choose charters? They chose private independent or religious schools, homeschooled, or moved out of state. Only the charter industry would twist this into a positive. The more accurate analysis is to say that the public schools lost 90K and the charter schools only gained 11K.

   And for more on charter school grift, check out this job posting:

   https://jobs.philanthropy.com/job/26683/lead-principal-gifts/

   Reply
3. Chiara says:

   September 27, 2021 at 10:43 am

   “During the 2020-21 school year, the pandemic forced schools of all types to close their doors and switch to remote learning. Many families were dissatisfied with the quality of what was available to their children. And that dissatisfaction led them to learn more about the other educational options available. For many families, charter schools’ nimbleness and flexibility made them the right public school choice.”

   Ed reform is impossible to distinguish from advertising. No examples of charter schools claimed “nimbleness and flexibility”, just the claim, which all of the ed reform echo chamber will repeat, in unison, with no further inquiry or questions.

   This is marketing- it promotes charter schools and bashes public schools. It’s the only “work” they do.

   I don’t mind that the only work the ed reform “movement” performs is promoting their ideological vision of privatized schools, I just wish they would stop presenting themselves as “working on public education”. They return absolutely no value to students who attend public schools and often harm our students by lobbying against our schools. It is an anti-public school and anti-public school student “movement” and it utterly dominates elite education policy.

   What a shame for students in public schools that their political leaders have been captured by this echo chamber. No one works for public school students.

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4. Chiara says:

   September 27, 2021 at 10:48 am

   Will there be some kind of study that isn’t produced by a charter lobbying group, or are the incredibly rigorous ed reform scholars again going to swallow whatever the charter/voucher lobby pumps out as “truth”?

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5. carolcorbettburris says:

   September 27, 2021 at 10:50 am

   The results are likely accurate. I checked NY. I believe there are three reasons.
   1. No testing the prior spring therefore no push-outs or retentions based on tests. That pumped the 2020 numbers.
   2. Online no-excuses schools–fewer discipline pushouts since they were online.
   3. Most of the increase in online charter schools. NAPCS implies though says it did not explore. (they have the data. They know.) Heavy marketing by Pearson and K12, clumsy rollout by publics, and, in states with no masks and reckless policies, parents wanting an online alternative.

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   • ciedie aech says:

     September 27, 2021 at 2:19 pm

     “heavy marketing by Pearson” = much created panic about “learning loss”

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   • speduktr says:

     September 27, 2021 at 6:38 pm

     I didn’t have the stomach to read the full marketing campaign report, but I do wonder if the “nimbleness” was basically online. I have run into people who are still uncomfortable with sending their children to public school because of the poor enforcement of Covid protocols and legitimate concerns about bringing the virus home to vulnerable family members. With too many districts unwilling or unable to provide robust online schooling at this time, these online charter programs have a golden opportunity to benefit.

     Reply
   • Beth says:

     September 28, 2021 at 11:30 am

     Thank you for your insights. I appreciate all you do on behalf of public schools!

     Reply
6. Chiara says:

   September 27, 2021 at 11:10 am

   You can watch the echo chamber in action with the release:

   “This week, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a new report looking at school enrollment data across the country during the second year of pandemic-disrupted education. The Voting with their Feet report shows that hundreds of thousands of families switched to charter schools during the 2020-21 school year, with charter enrollment growing seven percent. It is the largest such increase in half a decade. The full report is here. You can read some national media coverage of the findings here and you can listen to a conversation with NAPCS senior vice president Debbie Veney about their implications here.”

   Pump it out to all the echo chamber orgs and those orgs take it out broader media, swallowed whole. No questions, criticism or analysis at all. The only people asked about the study are the charter lobbying groups promoting it. An echo chamber closed circle.

   The language isn’t the language of “science” either- it’s the language of advertising. It’s an “exodus” from public schools, people are “fleeing” public schools. 100% negative towards public schools and 100% positive towards charter schools. Lockstep.

   https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/ohio-charter-news-weekly-92421

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7. Joe Jersey says:

   September 27, 2021 at 11:23 am

   The miraculous, wonderful, inter-galactic, terrific, most-innovative-in-the-universe (sarcasm alert) NATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS is funded by, cha-ching, $$$$$$:
   The Anschutz Foundation
   Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
   Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation
   Daniels Fund
   Doris & Donald Fisher Fund
   The Fred A. Lennon Charitable Trust
   Hastings Education Fund
   J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation
   The Lozick Family Foundation
   The Margaret and Daniel Loeb Foundation
   New Venture Fund
   The Norman & Ruth Rales Foundation
   Arthur Rock and Toni Rembe Rock
   The Searle Freedom Trust
   U.S. Department of Agriculture
   U.S. Department of Education
   W.K. Kellogg Foundation
   Walton Family Foundation
   William E. Simon Foundation

   What the hey, this group is also funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the
   U.S. Department of Education?! That’s kind of weird on the face of it.
   Have you ever noticed how the charter school lobby always uses “innovative” as a descriptor for their schools, as if the real public schools can’t be innovative, too. The charter lobby also likes to throw around “miracle.” I think they have a very low bar for “miracle.”

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   • dianeravitch says:

     September 27, 2021 at 12:17 pm

     So the IS Department of Education is funding lobbyists for charter schools?

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   • speduktr says:

     September 27, 2021 at 6:46 pm

     I always cringe when educators start talking about “innovation.” My own district has a Director of Innovation, Teaching and Learning! What the heck does that mean? I think they used to be the curriculum department, but the new title sounds so “21st Century.”

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8. dienne77 says:

   September 27, 2021 at 12:47 pm

   Because whether parents were upset that their public school was in-person or remote, they could find a charter offering the opposite.

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9. Chiara says:

   September 27, 2021 at 1:13 pm

   Here’s a prominent education reformer using the same study to advocate for less funding for public schools:

   “All of this raises questions about the $200 billion or so that has been showered upon schools via federal COVID-19 aid bills, especially when most of these dollars won’t be spent until 2022 or later. It should also call into question the necessity of the extraordinary funding increases that the Biden administration has proposed for traditional district schools, at the same time the administration is seeking to restrict aid to private schools and that Congressional Democrats are attacking charter schools.”

   See how this works?

   Funding for charter schools is promoted, funding for public schools is referred to as “showering” and denigrated. Another popular term in the ed reform echo chamber for public school funding is “windfall”. Charters and vouchers get public funding, public schools get “windfalls”. The intention is to depict any funding of public schools as unearned and a waste of money.

   They all use this language. You would have to be blind not to see the bias against public schools in the ed reform echo chamber. It is PERVASIVE and it’s so accepted within the echo chamber they don’t even see it.

   They simply do not support public schools and that has real consequences for public schools and public school students. Every day it’s like this in the echo chamber- just a constant barrage of charter/voucher marketing and public school bashing. They do no other work.

   https://www.aei.org/education/over-a-million-families-fled-public-schools-last-year/

   Reply
10. Chiara says:

    September 27, 2021 at 1:17 pm

    “All of this raises questions about the $200 billion or so that has been showered upon schools via federal COVID-19 aid bills, especially when most of these dollars won’t be spent until 2022 or later. It should also call into question the necessity of the extraordinary funding increases that the Biden administration has proposed for traditional district schools, at the same time the administration is seeking to restrict aid to private schools and that Congressional Democrats are attacking charter schools.”

    This is utter nonsense by the way. Biden’s covid mitigation for public schools included charter schools, and if anyone knows that it’s the ed reform echo chamber charter cheerleading squad.

    When public schools receive federal funding charter schools do too- what ed reformerrs demand is ADDITIONAL federal funding that goes ONLY to charter schools.

    Reply
11. Linda says:

    September 27, 2021 at 1:41 pm

    4-5-2021, “Learning to Thrive”, posted in City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (Koch), written by the Superintendent of Partnership Schools, a network of 9 urban Catholic schools in NYC and Cleveland. The article propagandizes for privatization, cites statistics from Ohio as proof of enrollment success.

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12. bethree5 says:

    September 27, 2021 at 3:19 pm

    Charter schools in fact ticked up from 6.6899% of all pubschs to 7.5% of all pubschs, when you do the math. In Fall 2019 they were almost 7% of 49.2million students. In Fall 2020 they were 7.5% of 48.1million students.

    Reply
    • dianeravitch says:

      September 27, 2021 at 4:16 pm

      No matter how you count it, it’s a small proportion of all students. If only the politicians cared as much about the schools that enroll the vast majority of students as they do about funding and expanding the 7.5%!

      Reply
      • bethree5 says:

        September 28, 2021 at 11:13 am

        Politicians… sigh. Those whose fat-cat donors favor privatization of private goods cherry-pick charter data just like charters cherry-pick students. Reps have not seemed embarrassed to ignore the welfare of their constituents for quite a while now anyway. Dem Party seems to have gotten the memo it’s no longer cool to bash the schools attended by 92.5 of the nation’s children. But, silver lining: MSM seems to be ignoring this non-story (except Fox of course).

      • Beth says:

        September 28, 2021 at 11:34 am

        A recent report about the sorry state of the NYC DOE’s finances by the state Comptroller cited charter schools as a drain on the agency’s resources. (Everyone who visits this blog knows this was going to be the case, but I digress…) Maybe this press release is a distraction.

13. Lloyd Lofthouse says:

    September 27, 2021 at 3:54 pm

    “Charters gained 250,000 students and grew from 6% to 7% of total national enrollment.”

    I suspect that most of those children have parents that are anti-maskers and anti-vaccine.

    Reply
    • speduktr says:

      September 27, 2021 at 6:49 pm

      If there are a lot of online charter options, I think that may have been a driver, too. Let’s see how many remain in those charter programs if and when we get the virus under control.

      Reply
14. Wait, What? says:

    September 27, 2021 at 10:39 pm

    For districts not offering a virtual option, online charters or those with options are increasing enrollment (in our city).
    Check that %age in November after they get their state funding and then start kicking out – er… counseling out students right and left.
    The charter advocates think .0001 is statistically significant or take one tidbit of information from one place and say what they want (sound familiar? Same playbook)

    Reply
15. leftcoastteacher says:

    September 27, 2021 at 11:55 pm

    Disaster.

    Capitalism.

    Ugh.

    Haven’t we had enough?

    Reply
16. leftcoastteacher says:

    September 29, 2021 at 8:19 pm

    I don’t blame indecisive school leaders for damage to public education done during the never ending pandemic. I blame the way the media portrays our schools.

    Reply