Several years ago, I endowed a lecture series at my alma mater, Wellesley College, focused on education issues. This year’s lecture will be live-streamed on April 12, and the speaker is Helen Ladd, an emeritus professor at Duke University and one of the nation’s leading economists. I hope you will tune in to the livestream. I will introduce Professor Ladd.
The Diane Silvers Ravitch ’60 Lecture
How Charter Schools Disrupt Good Education Policy
Tuesday, April 12, 4 p.m. ET
LIVESTREAMED at www.wellesley.edu/live
Speaker: Helen F. Ladd ’67, Susan B. King Professor Emerita of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University
Ladd will draw on her many years of education research and discuss the four central requirements of good education policy in the U.S., and how charter schools, as currently designed and operated, typically do far more to interfere with, rather than to promote, good education policy in the U.S.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For those of us with a previous commitment, please make a recording available to watch later.
It will be recorded and I will post a link here
I second Frances’ request.
Thanks for the enjoyable presentation. I agreed with Prof. Ladd’s suggestion about auditing charter schools as part of the need for change in charter schools. As an ESL/ENL teacher in my district, part of my salary was paid for by Title 1. The state sent auditors out three or four times during my career. It was a random audit. The administrators had to verify my credentials. I was observed by the auditor, and I had to present all my student records for review to ascertain that our program was in compliance with state and federal laws. I also had to answer any questions the auditor had. If I was required to do this for the state, I think charter operators that receive so much money from the state and/or federal government should also be accountable when they receive public funds.
Another comment I wanted to add is that although child poverty in the US is about 20%, the percent of poor children in public schools is about 50%. As Prof. Ladd pointed out, charter expansion along with cherry picking students drives an additional disproportionate number of poor students with multiple needs into public school classrooms after schools have lost money from charter drain.
A superbly well-informed survey of what’s wrong with charter schools! Thank you, Dr. Ladd!!!
One note: economists often refer to data from the federally mandated state standardized tests, but that data, for ELA, isn’t valid. There are also problems with the math data from standardized tests, though these aren’t as severe. See this:
That’s why, if I do have occasion to refer to test score data, I always preface my remark with something like, “According to the Education Deformers’ own preferred measurement, state test scores, . . .