Sara Roos, a blogger who writes under the name “Red Queen in LA,” reports on a dangerous development in California. Charter school insiders took charge of writing the California Democratic Party’s education platform and made changes that undercut longstanding Democratic Party opposition to charter schools. Suddenly, charter schools are referred to not as privatization but as “public charter schools,” the preferred language of the charter lobby. The new language dropped the Democratic Party’s insistence that the boards of charter schools must be elected and replaced it with the requirement only that they be authorized by local school boards. A big change, among others that put the Democratic Party platform in the pocket of the charter billionaires.
Roos wrote:
What actually happened with the CA Democratic Party’s (CADEM) platform adopted Sunday (3/6/22) at its convention?
At the eleventh hour, following an eleven-hour meeting finalizing draft proposalsfor updating the 2022 CADEM platform, it came to light that one of its 23 platform “planks”, that of Education, had been tampered with by charter school (CS) industry insiders.
As a consequence, CADEM delegate and California Federation of Teachers legislative advocate, Tristan Brown, urged from the floor that fellow delegates vote “no” on the entirety of the proposed platform changes, since the rules forbade focusing on specifics to excise.
It was argued that the new language altered the hard-won, former mandate that charter school boards must be elected, because democracy demands public, elected accountability. The platform’s new language morphed this fundamental demand, requiring instead that charter schools simply be authorized and monitored by a school board. The language of conditional support was removed altogether.
On the strength of the Union recommendation by the statewide federation of teachers, and the leadership of several key caucus chairs and leaders, the final floor vote passing the platform was far shy of consensus at 57% aye (691 votes), 43% nay (510 votes). [The absolute numbers are extracted from the meeting transcript and are a little different from the poll result percentages shown to delegates via zoom].
From a convention of 3,037 elected delegates + 80 proxies, that translates to passage by just 22% (=691/3117) of total eligible voters at the convention. But the total number of delegates voting for the platform was not presented. If quorum were just reached for the vote with its 1559 members, then a bare minimum of 358, or nearly one-quarter of delegates (23% of the eligible quorum (=358/1559)), abstained from the platform vote altogether. The sum total of those failing to vote for the platform {“nay”+abstain} far outstrips those who did.
As it happens, the reality of the platform language change is far worse than what was hastily presented on the floor. And befitting their shepherding by charter school operators (including the board chair of the charter school lobbying association), these changes do very much advantage charter school operations.
The former language of bullet 23 in the K-12 Education plank conditioned circumstances for the Party’s support of charter schools on five contingencies [emphasis mine]:
- Support only those charter schools that are managed by public and elected boards, not-for-profit, and transparent in governance; have equitable admissions; adopt fair labor practices and respect labor neutrality; and, supplement rather than supplant public education programs.
The draft language posted in advance of the convention eliminates rules for conditional support altogether. Instead conditions are replaced by definitions. The term “charter school” is redefined through use of the modifying adjective, “public”. A list of characteristics is simply inserted, absent any conditioning on support. And the long-standing federal exhortation acknowledging and specifying the fungibility of money to ‘supplement not supplant’ (ie, do not rob Peter to pay Paul), is lost:
- Support public charter schools that are governed by not-for-profit, elected, public boards with transparent governance, have equitable admissions, adopt fair labor practices, respect labor neutrality, and supplement public education programs for students in historically low performing subgroups such as low income, English learners, Black, American Indian, and Alaskan Native students, foster children and students with disabilities
The real problem came from a change inserted after the posted draft platform. Support is urged for these entities now defined not by their governance but by the circumstance of their chartering: authorization and monitoring [emphasis mine]:
- Support public charter schools that are authorized and monitored by public and elected boards, not-for-profit, and transparent in governance; have equitable admissions; adopt fair labor practices and respect labor neutrality; and, supplement public education programs for students in historically low performing subgroups such as low income, English learners, Black or African American, American Indian, and Alaskan Native students, foster children and students with disabilities
The change amounts to saying “I exist therefore I am”. It asserts support of charter schools no matter what, and defines them as “public”, a characteristic denied by the courts. Reversing the stringent conditional acceptance terms delineated formerly, this incarnation accepts charter schools as the choice of the Democratic Party.
Another change instigated by the charter school lobbyist who volunteered their services to the platform committee, softens the field for two competing ballot initiatives to privatize our public schools through the use of vouchers.
Under cover of redundancy, bullet 14 that unequivocally and expressly “opposes voucher systems for schools,” is eliminated. Its declaration is diluted by sending it lower in the long list of bullet points, and combining it with Education Savings Accounts. The real problem comes in conditioning this opposition to their effect. Since charter schools are defined in the platform now as “public”, vouchers would not be found to “take away from public school funding”.
- Oppose K-12 Education Savings Accounts, school vouchers, or any programs that would take away from public school funding;
This change was not a mere correction of duplication, it substantively prepares the field for a statewide fight about “school choice,” launched and led from the left. The platform now states that because we define charter schools as “public”, vouchers are a system we no longer oppose because they do not take money away from the public-charter entity. Just as this new platform accepts charter schools de facto, we also now fail to oppose voucher systems.
Trickiness gonna be tricky. Voters gotta be vigilant. Special, monied-interests are persistent and focused; the rest of us are harried volunteers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One word: SICKENING.
Charters are BAD and so are vouchers.
California will be SORRY. Those CA charter fans are so WRONG and UPSIDE-DOWN.
How about we name NAMES. Identify exactly who did this and then follow the money back to the entities bankrolling this DEM assault on Public Schools. Good piece but action requires more info.
and we need a lot more great journalism: we need to believe the people writing up the story
I call out Martin West; he has direct ties to NAEP, on our MA BESE and Harvard; Paul Peterson I call Schumpeter Peterson in his faithfulness to the early Viennese economists (a la Friedman). In MA we have astroturf…. and they are promoting local parents to carry their ammunition ; promoting vouchers, taxpayer funds for parochial schools etc. I don’t know the actors in CA — trying to make my colleagues aware in MA … I write to Ellen Lubic in CA she is pretty much up on what is going on there.
One of those not mentioned is Margaret Fortune, who is a leading charter advocate and a member of the California Democratic State Central Committee. She has a chain of charter schools, has her own graduate school of education, and is a member of the charter school “hall of fame.”
She’s also the CA Charter Schools Association (CCSA) board chair, and recording secretary of the CDP Black Caucus. She’s Prez& CEO of her own charter chain and brains behind a series of events sponsored by the Black Caucus called Black In School (great name!). The events associated with this initiative are recorded and can be found here: https://cdpblackcaucus.org/black-in-school Ms Fortune’s bio is here: https://www.ccsa.org/team/margaret-fortune ….
and all this info is in the article linked by Diane above, Please Read It and follow the links. https://redqueeninla.com/2022/03/12/ad54-turns-55-democratic-politics-springs-into-2022/
The CDP Children’s Caucus will be starting up a “Conversation” about charter schools pursuant to the issues the Black Caucus – rightly – puts on the table — the achievement gap, the systemic inequities and injustices, the challenge of… Education. I IMPLORE you-all to become involved, we will need your clarion voices. Thanks all. I’ll post more info on how to help us out in CA this way soon.
Those who control the language, control the masses….. how Orwellian.
They’ve been at this for a long time. It’s a shame the CTA didn’t see it coming and didn’t galvanize with parents to prevent it. A few of us parents saw this coming back in 2018. No one listens to parents.
True, but as well they are far out ahead now and able to launch attacks on so many fronts it is difficult to stop them. One will get through and hit its mark.
The only thing public about charter schools is the money they siphon from public schools. These neoliberal Democrats are DINOs that seek to suppress democracy in order to tax people without legitimate representation and shift public funds into private pockets without public input. Maybe it is time to go back to the courts to stop the charter lobby from calling corporate schools “public charter schools.”
Marty West who is on the Board of Ed in MA; published a book with Paul Peterson and it has a chapter by John Eastman. I have been trying to notify the colleagues I have in MA about this. The extreme “Right” ideology has been propped up everywhere and the MA Board of Education has Harvard profs behind them and places like Pioneer Institute. Pioneer I. released a scathing report attacking pretty much all of our civics education in MA that was formulated as part of the 2018 MA legislature bill. I have been beating the drum locally and with the people in the legislature on our Education Committee… Pioneer says the Hillsdale College deserves a A for civics education/courses and they pretty much dump all of our work in MA overboard …
I’m going to borrow a Trumpism, meaning, I’m going to lie and brag but probably not exactly like Trump. I will do my best though:
“I talk to a lot of smart people, because I’m very smart, but they are not as smart as me. And these smart people that are not as smart as me say that Charter School Insiders are undercover agents for Putin. Now Putin is a very, very smart person. We are very good friends, the best friends, and I think anyone that works for my very best friend Putin is my very good friend, too. If Putin hired them, I trust them because I said we can trust them and I’m a very smart person.”
Sara Roos is amazing, such a powerful ally. I am so thankful for her.
Regarding the Dems here in California, we always knew they would drop any pretense of being Democrats and support Republicans in any way, shape, or form if properly bribed. Billionaires know it too. It’s just shameful. We fight and fight and fight, and we win when we fight. Then, some billionaire drops some money and the fight begins anew. But, in the long run, when we fight, we win.
gee, thank you!
Some of this is semantics though. The real thing that’s happened here is they’ve codified a semantic blurring in party politics. By instituting the jungle primary (top two from an open primary, regardless of party, on the general ballot) in 2010, many subtle, bad things have fallen out. (1) is that everyone’s a Democrat. Which obviously isn’t true. The bipartite political system is +/- conserved, we just label things differently. And (2) pressure is on a homogenizing middle from the top two system, particularly when it becomes dem-on-dem. Since the world of the right wing still exists, there’s pressure to capture that from the left, and everything blunts and moves to the center. It’s a problem. A really, really, really big problem, devised, plotted and funded by…. Republicans (why are they so good and so devious and so long-game at all this?).
So yeah, some of these Dems have adopted the neoliberal mantle of “Choice” and are Dem in name alone. However, they lay claim to that label as strongly as everyone else. So the problem is not the Dems, but the heterogeneous label. They are “Dems”. But it is meaningless that they are.
Thank you libertarians for this, and your insidious, pernicious, vile jungle primary….. (not).
The system is set up by those in charge.
The California Democratic Party has just put a gun to its head and pulled the trigger.
The push behind charter schools comes from Republican arch-conservatives because in those corporate schools that Republican corporate ideology is subtly infiltrated into every lesson and children are indoctrinated into conservative Republican thinking.
The recent anti-Biden chant “We want him out” that children in a California religious school were recently shown singing is just the tip of the iceberg of the anti-Democrat indoctrination that goes on in private schools, many of which receive public tax dollars — and make no mistake: Charter schools are private, not public, schools. There is no such thing as “public charter schools” because charter schools are not operated by boards of directors who are directly elected by the public.
How self-destructive can Democrats in the California legislature be?
In grabbing the money dangled in front of them by the charter school industry, Democrats are like the monkeys captured and cooked in Asian nations where hunters hollow out a coconut and make a hole in one end just large enough for a monkey to squeeze an empty hand into. They make a small hole in the other end, insert rope, tie the coconut to a tree, and then fill it with fruit. A monkey comes along, reaches in and fills its hand with fruit — then the hunter comes, but the monkey just won’t let go of the fruit in order to get its hand out. And the result is monkey stew.
Well, Democrats have just grabbed a handful of Republican money from the charter school industry and the conservative Republicans behind the charter school industry are going to have Democrat Stew by raising the next generation of voters who will be thoroughly indoctrinated with the Republican ideology.
Yikes, that’s a grizzly image. As it were. Apt, though.
I’d quibble, though, that it’s not a Dem/Repub setup, it’s a 99%/1% problem. Corporate schools are setup to train and filter cogs into a corporate machinery. That’s not so much a Repub or corporate-Dem-drive problem as a plutocratic one. Don’t forget many of our ickiest plutocrats here in CA are…. Democrats.
Privatization does not respect party lines.
Hi All,
I have worked for a public charter school for over 20 years. We provide an excellent education AND we work diligently to serve the needs of all of our populations–special needs, socially and emotionally challenged students, etc. We do not pick and choose which students attend, we do not waste money on fancy buildings or pay our teachers/admins exorbitant salaries. We have a small campus of bungalows on what used to be a dirt lot where we’ve established a nurturing community. We follow a university-style meeting schedule that allows us to have small class sizes. We are an alternative to the large public high schools where many students get lost and often bullied.
This is a very complex issue, one where a reductionist “us or them” stance only makes things worse for everyone.
Public charter schools that are held to high standards by authorizing districts are a good alternative to vouchers that support private schools where there is no oversight.
And our teachers are members of CTA, just like you.
There are bad apples in every profession, and they can hide much more effectively in large public schools than they can in a small school where everybody’s work is under everyone’s else’s scrutiny.
I’m not saying all charters are run like ours, but can you say that all traditional public schools make the most of their funding, treat their employees and students well, and ensure that every child is treated like a valuable part of a learning community? Are all traditional schools fostering an atmosphere of goodness and hope in our young people at this difficult time?
Our school was founded by a teacher; our principal/CEO was one of our teachers. She works harder than anyone I’ve ever seen and always has her door open to parents and students–even while drowning in the paperwork that charter opponents have foisted off on us.
Please think about educators working together to make a difference instead of joining the polemic endemic to our current political system. We have to help our students find a way to make things better rather than digging in our heels and fighting each other to maintain a toxic status quo.
Most Sincerely,
J. Cohen
Sadly, Mr. Cohen, the charter idea is pushed by Rightwingers like DeVos, Koch, Trump, ALEC, and every red state Governor. Why?
Please, Mr J. Cohen, can you explain why the charter lobbyist (the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools) is fighting so hard to block Biden’s sensible regulation of the federal Charter Schools Program? It has even taken out ads on national TV to oppose the regulations, which would ban for-profit charters from obtaining federal funding for new charters. Do you support for-profit charter chains?
“Public charter schools that are held to high standards by authorizing districts are a good alternative to vouchers that support private schools where there is no oversight.” Actually, neither one is a “Good Alternative.” Someone has sold you the Brooklyn Bridge. Unfortunately, in my city the charter industry has told parents “the public schools are lousy” (that is the actual sentence from a guy who ran for City Council.). Steven Lynch who is in the Washginton cadre for his district said on NPR “in my. district, there are no good schools; so I tell parents to sign up for charters.” That is a total lie because his district has excellent schools. It is a vast marketing scheme that is devised to do what Gov Abbot in TX proposed; we have known about it for 6 years in MA when the voters chose to “keep the cap on charter schools”. (It was Proposition 2 on the ballot). We have one woman Andrea Campbell who is running for Attorney General and she has accepted large donations from Walton Foundation/SuperPAC. The outside “Dark money” should be buying up the Attorneys General .