This post was published by the Network for Public Education. The authors remind us that the only thing innovative about charter schools is their marketing practices.
Cynthia Roy and Richard Rosa are co-chairs of the New Bedford Coalition to Save Our School. In this op-ed for SouthCoast Today, they explain why a newly proposed charter school is not something that Massachusetts needs.
One of the most morally disturbing aspects of the Innovators Charter School proposal for New Bedford and Fall River is the joining of considerable political and economic power to withdraw resources from public education systems that have been historically underfunded. What is appalling is the deliberate indifference to the impact on our public school systems in New Bedford and Fall River which, together, serve 22,563 students. As students and families are seduced to exit their public schools, the operating costs in these schools remain the same. This proposal is just more of the same looting of the public school system that we have seen with charter schools.
The Innovators Charter School is not an incubator of innovation for public education reform; rather, it is part of a movement to treat public education as a market opportunity for entrepreneurs and business that has proven to be catastrophic for communities across the state.
Virtually every “innovation” that charter schools utilize to decorate their proposals was born in public schools. Charter schools have been on the scene since the 1980s, and yet there has been little to no shared innovation even though they are released from significant regulations that public schools must abide by.
The greatest innovation that charter schools have engendered is that they are very seductive with their false narratives of “failing public schools.” The application is loaded with these references, insinuating that public schools are dated in their assumptions about learning and educator development.
The ICS application places great emphasis on its educators being knowledgeable about adolescent development. There is nothing innovative about this. All licensed public school educators in the state have taken various courses in adolescent development. Many hold advanced degrees and possess a deep understanding of child psychology and how students learn and grow, including students with disabilities. We also wonder how ICS will recruit and retain professional educators who are knowledgeable in adolescent development when they intend on paying their educators ten thousand dollars less than their counterparts working in our public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for this informative post on charter expansion in New Bedford. While there is no legitimate reason for ever expanding charter growth, there is a profit motive to do so. The impact that charter growth has on public education has been largely ignored.
” This Innovators Charter School proposal is not the case of a charter school being an exemplar of innovation or a policy engine for public education reform. It is a zero-sum game of resource allocation, and it threatens to severely negatively impact children living in poverty and communities of color. “
Most if not all of the virtual and charter school industry is driven by greed.
Even the Bible warns us about the dangers of greed.
1 Timothy 6:9 ESV /
“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”
1 Timothy 6:10 ESV
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
Luke 12:15 ESV /
And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
It seems that there were wise people thousands of years ago trying to warn us in the future. And greed has been around much longer, as long as our species has walked this earth.
“The first Biblical stories were passed down orally and only written down later by various authors. Most Biblical scholars believe the Book of Genesis was the first book to be written down. This would have happened around 1450 BC to 1400 BC. So perhaps about 3400 years or so ago.”
I’d add in one word which I find to be both telling and important: “written down later by various MALE authors…”
The Matrilineals probably dictated this good advice to their scribes, who wrote it all down but failed to follow it. The 1973 OJAY’S warned us of exactly this in their song “For The Love Of Money”.
“People will steal from their mother. People will rob their own brother.” And that is exactly what it is when one ROBS a community of its public school and its resources simply out of GREED.
“Read the complete op-ed here” writes Diane at the end of her excerpt. Yes, this is required reading, particularly for the DETAILS of how the charter school proposes to handle bilingual and special needs students, compared to the number of specialists on staff at Roosevelt Middle School in New Bedford.
From the complete op-ed: “The ICS application….raises significant concerns. For instance, pulling emergent bilingual students out of specials, such as art and music, for services is an equity issue. ESL educators in public schools have specific guidance not to pull students from specials for instruction.”
As a retired arts teacher, this is music to my ears. Replacing specials with remediation is discrimination and malpractice. In particular, including in the curriculum songs, art materials, games, literature, and historical events from the countries of immigrant families (and the cultures of those already here) is an important part of helping them feel valued and welcome.
Privatizers have an instrument used to measure impropriety down to the width of one hair on Max Planck’s head. Every word in the privatization lexicon is used to mean the precise opposite of its dictionary definition. Precisely to a hair. The Innovators must be the unimaginators because reform is regression, choice is Hobson’s choice, personalized is canned, public is private, and progress is knee-jerk conservative libertarianism.
LCT, you overlooked “innovation,” which means that students line up in silence and practice strict obedience.
That’s what “innovation” is all about: overlooking.
In privatization-speak, that is.
The impartial, non-political watchdog Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report warning that so much taxpayer money is being skimmed away from America’s genuine public schools and pocketed by private corporate charter school operators that the IG investigation declared that: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting goals” because of financial fraud and their hidden ways for skimming of tax money into private pockets.
The racial resegregation of America’s school systems by the private charter school industry is so blatant and illegal that both the NAACP and ACLU have called for a stop to the formation of any more charter schools. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA summed it up, stating that charter schools are “a civil rights failure.”
There is NO SUCH THING as a “public charter school”. Charter school operators spend a lot of taxpayer money telling taxpayers that charter schools are “public” schools — but they are not. As the Supreme Courts of Washington State and New York State have ruled, charter schools are actually private schools because they fail to pass the minimum test for being genuine public schools: They aren’t run by school boards who are elected by, and therefore under the control of and accountable to voting taxpayers. All — ALL — charter schools are corporations run by private parties. Taxpayers have no say in how their tax dollars are spent in charter schools.
The Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) — which is funded by pro-charter organizations — has been conducting years-long research into the educational quality of charter schools. And yet even this charter-school-funded research center’s findings are that charter schools don’t do any better academically than genuine public schools. Moreover, CREDO reported that in the case of popular online charter schools, students actually lose ground in both reading and math — but online charter schools are the fastest-growing type of charter school because they make it easiest to skim away public tax dollars.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2019/03/29/report-the-department-of-education-has-spent-1-billion-on-charter-school-waste-and-fraud/#ab1fbdb27b64