Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City, announced yesterday that Bloomberg Philanthropies will spend $750 million to expand the charter school sector. Declaring that “the American public education system is tragically broken,” Bloomberg pledged to add 150,000 seats in “high-quality charter schools” over five years, with the intention of “closing the achievement gap.”
As mayor, Bloomberg had total control of the New York City public school system, which he reorganized and disrupted repeatedly. His first pick for chancellor of the schools was antitrust corporate lawyer Joel Klein, who distrusted experienced educators and turned to McKinsey and Goldman Sachs for advice. Bloomberg’s second pick for chancellor was a magazine publisher with no experience in education; she lasted just 90 days.
Bloomberg apparently decided that he couldn’t achieve sweeping change in the public schools, so he became a champion for outsourcing students to privately managed charter schools. As his press release shows, he continues to believe his own puffery. The NYC public schools continue to be plagued with crowded classrooms, while charter schools enjoy privileged status, such as co-locations inside public schools, depriving them of facilities, and rent in private spaces paid by the city.
Although the press release claims that Bloomberg’s decision is based on “evidence,” it completely ignores the large number of charter schools that close every year, the high attrition rates of charter students and teachers, and the multiple studies showing that charter schools are outperformed by public schools, except when the charters curate their enrollment to exclude students who are unlikely to succeed or conform.
One of the richest men in the world, Bloomberg loves market solutions to public problems. In his 12 years as mayor, he did not transform the public school system that he controlled. Evidently he has learned nothing about education in the eight years since he left office.
How does it help the 85-90% of students in public schools to invest in a privately run sector that, contrary to his claims, has not demonstrated success in closing the achievement gap and that poaches students and resources from public schools?
How will it “close the achievement gap” to spend $750 million to add 150,000 seats to the charter sector?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Didn’t you know…once you reach a billion dollars you know everything.
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clearly
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Imagine the outrage from the ed reform echo chamber if a billionaire had given 750 million to public schools and EXCLUDED charters.
You would be able to hear it from space. But because THIS billionaire supports EXCLUSIVELY charter schools and not public schools, the echo chamber all support that.
Once again, charters are “public schools” only when it benefits charters. If it doesn’t benefit charters they have no duty at all to be part of the public system. It’s a one way relationship with public schools. They’re part of the public system when it’s convenient and NOT part of the public system when the billionaires come knocking with bags of cash.
Just admit this “movement” does not support public schools or the students who attend public schools. They support exclusively charter and private school students. They offer absolutely no benefit to students who attend public schools. They do nothing for our students. Because they do nothing for our students, shouldn’t our students be free from their gimmicky and fad-driven mandates? Why are public school students stuck with ed reform policy when they receive no positive support from ed reformers?
It’s lose/lose for public school students. They get junk ed reform policy and no support from the echo chamber. It’s a raw deal for our students.
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I remember the old days when true philanthropists (lovers of humanity) would either establish free public resources for the betterment of society or found elite private schools for the benefit of their soi-disant peers — but no, this neo brand of philatrophists (lovers of decay) deploy their billions as levers to pry the taxes the public pays for its general betterment from the hands of those among us who have the least to spare.
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One of my favorite photos shows Booker T. Washington and Samuel Clemens speaking to a crowd about an initiative funded by Carnegie to open schools for black kids throughout the South. I grew up going to a beautiful Carnegie public library in my hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. A ruthless businessman, he nonetheless said that it’s a sin to die rich.
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Bob, I’m an IU grad, a long time ago, gorgeous campus, pre COVID I returned to listen to a lecture, watch bb and sit in on classes – instruction was impressive… the students are wonderful
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Great school! And yes, a beautiful place! And I am so grateful for the breathtakingly learned professors I had there! They were amazing. And that library! Seven million volumes, maybe? It was like being a mushroom hunter in an old growth forest, that place.
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What lecture, Peter?
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McNutt, sponsored by History Department…
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I got my undergrad degree in English from IU in 1978.
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Some might argue that “true philanthropists” never existed, at least not in the form of those who give money.
Did Carnegie give money because he cared about people or because he cared how people would remember him (as a ruthless robber baron or a magnanimous funded of libraries).
I’d have to say that Jonas Salk (who gave away all rights to the polio vaccine) was a true philanthropists.
As was Tim Berners Lee (who gave away rights to the world wide web).
Financial “billyanthopists” (of which Bill Gates is the poster boy) are basically doing it for themselves.
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Note that certain billionaires—looking at you, Steven Schwarzman and Michael Bloomberg—use their gifts to get naming rights. Schwarzman gave the New York Public Library $100 million to get his name emblazoned on the reference library. He offered his high school in Abington, PA, a gift of $25 million if they renamed the school for him. The school refused to change its name and negotiated a deal to drop the naming rights. Bloomberg’s name is wherever he made a large gift, notably at Johns Hopkins, where the school of public health was renamed Johns Hopkins Bloomberg. The Sackler family had buildings and additions named for themselves, but some libraries and museums stripped their name off because of the deaths attributed to their drug OxyContin. The Metropolitan Museum still has a Sackler Wing.
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Sheltanthropists?
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Sacklanthropists?
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Definition of Sacklanthropist: one who gives money to a destitute Swiss Bank
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Also known as Swisslandthropist.
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Sacklers funneled money from Purdue through Swiss Bank accounts
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-13/sacklers-funneled-money-from-purdue-through-swiss-banks-new-york-alleges
Funny, tge first time I wrote that, autocorrect changed “Sacklers” to “Scammers”
AI is here!
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People who give money anonymously would also be legitimate philanthropists.
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How many federal, state and private programs are there now that exclude public schools and fund only charter schools?
There’s the granddaddy of them all of course, the federal charter school program which no public school may even apply for, although charters may apply for any public school grant program.
Could this “movement” possibly be more biased against public schools and public school students? Is there anyone left in this country who still believes their claims that they are “agnostic” as to school type? Blatant bias against public schools and it’s so baked into the echo chamber they don’t even realize that 100% of their commentary and policy on charters and vouchers is positive, and 100% of their commentary and policy is negative and punishing.
I don’t mind that no one in ed reform lifts a finger for public schools or public school students- they’ve made their opposition to the continued existence of public schools clear, but it is really misleading to the public to continue to claim that they perform some positive work on behalf of our students and schools- they don’t.
They are professional, full time public school critics and charter/voucher marketers and promoters. That’s certainly an occupation, but if offers no benefit to students whoi attend public schools and the public should be aware of it.
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I read some of Bloomberg’s silly op-ed in the WSJ. He wrote that charters are proven to work better than failing public schools. That is so 2009. I’m getting pretty tired of education businesses like charter schools and scripted curriculum platforms calling their products “proven effective” when there is only evidence that they are not effective. I thought we had laws against false advertising.
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Agreed. How about laws against slander? Privatizers have been slandering teachers and public schools for over twenty years. They plant their false narrative that is rarely challenged except on independent blogs. Then, the mainstream media repeats the disinformation over and over. If public schools are so terrible, why are most parents happy with the job they are doing?
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Agreed. Class action lawsuits needed.
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Bloomberg and other charter supporting billionaires should admit that their support for privately operated schools has nothing to do with academic quality. The old “failing public schools’ line is a false hackneyed cliché. The real reason that billionaires support privatization is because they benefit from the creation of a new expanding market that will make the rich even richer. Billionaires also see opportunity for them to reduce their tax burden as they really don’t want to pay taxes to educate other people’s children because, frankly, most of them don’t give a damn about other people’s children, particularly the children of the working class and poor. It is becoming increasing clear that most billionaires don’t give a damn about democracy as it gets in the way of the corporatocracy. While it is true that billionaires are lauded for their charitable donations, and some of them may be donating with good intentions; many of them are simply looking for a charitable tax write-off.
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cx: increasingly
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It’s not just that they don’t give a damn about the little people; it’s that they fear democratic rule.
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They used to fear the little people.
But now that they have much of their money in offshore accounts and their own private, presumably heavily fortified (with Apache helicopters) islands to retreat to, they no longer have to worry.
If the going gets tough, the billionaires get helicoptering.
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Even if just a small fraction of their money is kept in offshore accounts or Swiss Banks, it would be sufficient for them to live quite comfortably for the rest of their lives.
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They’re living in their own private Islandhomes
Islandhomes
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Ah, to be rich, smug, and self-deluded.
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Or even just to be one out of those three.
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As long as one can select which one.
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What is it with these billionaires and their antipathy to the real public schools? Bloomberg is suffering from Bill Gatesism or is Gates suffering from Bloombergism They are both suffering from a Napoleonic complex, megalomania and egomania on steroids. Please, guys, buy some island in the Pacific or a condo on Antarctica and leave the rest of us alone. Or, why not donate millions to the actual real public schools where most of the kids are being educated? Of course not, that would make too much sense. I’m surprised that these billionaires haven’t blamed the school shootings on the public school teachers, the unions and the “evil” public schools that they are constantly disparaging and demeaning. I am so sick of Bloomberg when it comes to public education, he is a destroyer not a helper.
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Bloomberg and NYC Mayor elect Adams have a close relationship and rumor is DanWeinberg, the author of the Widget Effect Report, that began the use of Value-Added Measurements (VAM) and teacher evaluation to test scores will play a major role role in his administration- not a good beginning- chancellor pick momentarily- probably David Banks, who currently leads a five public high school cluster in NYC …there is a cap on new charter schools in NYC, although current charter schools are attempting to add grades …. the battle never ends
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grrr&%!btfsplk@?¡:-(
When will we ever get these buttinskionaires out of public education??
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Meanwhile, if you were wondering what the ed reform echo chamber were working on that might have some relevance to public school students, they assembled another echo chamber roster to promote standardized tests for public school students:
Click to access ERN-Assessment-Bootcamps-Key-Findings.pdf
All public school students will be getting out of this “movement” this year is the same old, same old- testing mandates.
There is no positive ed reform agenda for public schools or public school students in ed reform. All they deliver for our students are assessments. It’s all they’ve ever delivered.
What if public schools just broke free from this echo chamber? What could be the possible downside for students? They don’t offer anything positive or productive for our students anyway.
Public schools don’t need to hire any of these people if all they bring to the table is standardized tests- they’ll already paying the testing companies for the tests- why pay for tests plus a testing cheeleading squad?
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The whole echo chamber are really going to endorse Bloomberg’s editorial, where he summarily announces that all public schools are failing and all charter schools are succeeding?
So can we take this to mean that the whole ed reform echo chamber agree that all public schools are failing? And these people are in charge of policy for public education and public schools hire and pay some of them as consultants or hire them in the public sector?
How can that possibly be in the best interest of students who attend public schools? We’re going to hire and pay a group of people who focus exclusively on replacing public schools with charters and private school vouchers and somehow students in public schools benefit? How? Is this like “trickle down”?
That’s nuts. No charter school or private school would ever hire people who work against charter and private schools to RUN charter and private schools. Why are public schools?
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Bloomberg like all billionaires lives in a bubble of his own making outside the reality of most of the planet’s 8 billion people. So, who does he pay, or what app does he use that controls the flow of information that survives to get inside his bubble, what he wants to hear and read that supports his billionaire biases?
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“Bloomberg Philanthropies…” When the word philanthropy is used to hide “privatization” and “elitism”
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How are a Bloomberg and an iceberg similar?
90% of both lurks beneath the surface.
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Mayor Bloomberg and I agree on one thing:
Schools funded with public money and subsidized with huge amounts of billionaire and federal dollars that are exclusively for the children of motivated, very involved parents AND can still counsel out any of the students of motivated and very involved parents who are too troublesome to teach, are likely to be appealing to parents whose kids are allowed to remain there. By that measurement, they will be “successful” and the students in them will learn.
Where Mayor Bloomberg and I diverge in our thinking is that Mayor Bloomberg won’t just acknowledge the obvious. Bloomberg wants to support a system of publicly funded charter schools that exclude all the students that perform poorly in the existing public school system.
Bloomberg is endorsing more magnet schools but won’t admit that more magnet schools that exclude students doesn’t address how to teach the students excluded from magnet schools. Someone in the media should ask him.
One thing I noticed is the implicit racism of those who support urban charters.
The whole notion of charters performing miracles because the students who are allowed to remain do well on standardized tests or get into colleges begins with the implicitly racist assumption that education reporters never question. And that implicitly racist assumption is that there are so few students in large urban areas who do well academically that it would be impossible for charters to cherry pick students because there simply aren’t enough of those students to cherry pick.
If it wasn’t for the implicit racism in the media, the NYT would have done a lot more investigating of why high performing charters would have high attrition rates instead of attrition rates near zero. If those were high percentages of white middle class students disappearing from a top performing charter school to attend a far lower performing public school instead, the NYT would certainly be noticing that this miracle is not what it appears, and would not be reinforcing the implicitly racist narrative that it is the students and parents who drop out or who are discouraged from enrolling in the first place who are to blame.
Imagine the NYT praising a public high school that only admits 9th graders who have performed at or above standards on their state tests, and then graduates only half of those 9th graders in 4 years. Imagine the NYT not asking any questions about why the other 9th graders aren’t in the graduating class. I do not believe for one minute that NYT reporters would believe it was a miracle if a 99% white high school only graduated half of their incoming 9th graders, especially when the incoming 9th graders were a select group of students who already proved they were academically at or above grade level.
Charters don’t want to teach students in poverty that don’t perform academically. That’s no different than private schools that don’t want to teach students that don’t perform academically.
But lying about that has hurt many children. The students who do well academically aren’t helped by the lies — but the adults who profit from teaching those students are helped by the lies.
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What a terrible idea. Ego expansion growing against the public good.
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“Notre Dame Law’s’ Religious Liberty Initiative Files Amicus Brief in SCOTUS School Choice Case”
10-14-2021, The Atlantic, “How Carson v Makin could unravel freedom from religion”
12-2-2021, Vox, “The religious right wants state’s tax dollars and SCOTUS is likely to agree”
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Notre Dame has been known to have a somewhat (shall we say?) unorthodox interpretation of “religious liberty”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1992/02/04/time-for-a-church-to-search-its-soul/bfab7aa0-c87e-43ff-9567-a46e8e8dc05c/
Perhaps they are not the most qualified to lecture on such.
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In fact, the entire Catholic Church has been known to have a similar interpretation of “religious liberty”.
And the thing they have been most “religious” about is covering it all up.
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Bloomberg said about himself that he was a God. The founder of Davos (World Economic Forum) has described the future- a self- selected coalition of multinational corporations, governments and select civil society organizations that provide international governance, ending democracy.
There will not be state nations, there will be “the state of the world.” Klaus Schwab is the founder of Davos. He is a graduate of the Kennedy School of Government (harvard).
Open Democracy wrote about Schwab, 8-16-2021, “Conspiracy theories aside, there’s something fishy about the Great Reset”. The Great Reset is Klaus Schwab’s proposal.
Schwab was on the board of the right wing Daily Mail and he is a former member of the steering committee of the Bilderburg Group.
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To Diane’s point, we wrote about that her in the Phila Inquirer https://www.inquirer.com/philly/opinion/commentary/abington-high-school-stephen-schwarzman-private-donations-philanthropy-education-opinion-20180420.html
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I have looked but cannot find the list of cities/districts Bloomberg’s money will be sent to. Anyone have that info? Thanks
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