Kris Nordstrom of the NC Policy Watch notes the loud whining by charter advocates who are outraged by the common sense reforms proposed b6 the Biden administration’s Department of Education. They are whining, writes Nordstrom, because they are guilty of every malpractice that the reforms aim to cure.
Nordstrom begins:
Advocates for charter schools have long justified the existence of charters by claiming they serve as laboratories of innovation for traditional schools. They have claimed that operational flexibility and exemption from regulation allows them to operate more efficiently than traditional public schools. And they have claimed that they are not only willing – but better suited – to serve students from families with low incomes.
These premises have been disproven over the course of North Carolina’s nearly 30-year-long experiment with charter schools. There are no examples of charter school innovations that have offered new approaches for traditional schools (after all, traditional schools can’t follow the example of “successful” charters that garner high test scores by pushing out struggling students). Nor have charters delivered efficiency gains. Charters spend substantially more on administration than their traditional school counterparts. Most North Carolina charters outspend their neighboring traditional schools while serving a more advantaged student population and delivering weaker academic outcomes. Meanwhile, North Carolina charters continue to exacerbate racial segregation and raise costs for traditional inclusive public schools.
Charter advocates have long disputed the overwhelming evidence of their ineffectiveness. But now, they are making the case themselves.
At issue are recent changes to the terms of the federal Charter School Program (CSP) grant programs. The CSP provides money to states to run grant programs, “to open and prepare for the operation of new charter schools and to replicate and expand high-quality charter schools.” North Carolina was awarded these federal grant funds specifically to support charters, “focused on meeting the needs of educationally disadvantaged students.”
Unfortunately, the program run by North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction has failed to meet these goals. Much of the federal funding has been awarded to schools with a history of serving as white flight charter schools and that enroll substantially fewer students from families with low incomes than nearby inclusive public schools. Incredibly, Torchlight Academy was awarded a $500,000 grant in 2020. Just two years later, this school has had its charter revoked for rampant corruption and poor student results…
Are high-quality charters unwilling to operate if they can no longer divert as much money as possible into the pockets of corporations? Are charters unwilling to serve as laboratories for innovation that work with traditional public schools to expand promising practices? Are charters unable to craft community impact statements because they are unable to demonstrate community benefits? Are they unwilling to commit to greater school integration efforts because they’d rather effectively pick and choose who their students are?
By opposing the CSP rule changes, charter supporters are implicitly answering the above questions in the affirmative. Their protests affirm the arguments made by charter critics that such schools are overly focused on profit-hoarding, unable to serve as collaborative partners in developing and scaling instructional innovation, exacerbate budget challenges, and contribute to segregation.
The proposed CSP rule changes do not in any way undermine charter schools. They simply ask charters seeking supplemental federal funds to try to live up to the promises made by charter advocates. The protests of charter advocates indicate that – as many of us have been arguing for years – charter schools are largely unable to live up to these promises.
And if charters are – as they now admit – unable to meet these promises, then policymakers should question not just whether they deserve supplemental federal funding through the CSP…but whether such schools are deserving of public funding at all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Rare are the charters that provide innovation. And if they do, they covet the information. In my new book, I recommend “Target Schools”. Fully public, run by public school teachers who know how to innovate.
These schools will share information with all public schools in the best interest of all children. And will serve ALL CHILDREN.
These schools will be evaluated based on how they prepare all children for their pathway to success. And that pathway will not be defined by a standardized test. It will be defined by demonstrated, real life skills.
The current failed system of education allows artificial charters to exist while blaming public school teachers for the systems failures. It is time to put the needs of children first.
All the high stakes testing in public education is designed to put public education on the defensive with the ultimate threat of closing schools with large number of poor students. It also hamstrings teachers’ efforts to teach by narrowing the curriculum. Charters and vouchers attack from the outside, and the imposition of cyber instruction works to privatize from the inside to prohibit teachers from providing effective instruction. From every direction public schools have targets on their backs.
Charter schools want to dip their toes into both wells of the $$$ pot. It has always been convenient for them to claim either public or private status depending on the way the political winds are blowing. Here are the 3 education options that should be offered…period.
public schools funded by tax dollars and subject to transparent school boards
private schools paid for by parents (no vouchers or voucher schemes)
homeschool/pod school/un-school at discretion of parents
And for goodness sake, get rid of the standardized testing that has caused all of this nonsense and keeps it going in circles.
circle after circle: and national teachers’ union leaders let it continue. Why is that?
$$$$$…. The Unions won’t stand up and tell Gates to shove his $$$ up his rump. Sorry, I’m not anti union, but sometimes the truth needs to be stated.
Charters are so BAD, BAD, BAD.
All of the ed reform groups are doing analysis of covid funding and spending by public schools and charters, but excluding the PPP funding that charters got and public schools weren’t eligible for.
How is this a valid analysis of what schools take in and spend, if they just exclude a huge chunk of funding that one set of schools got but another did not?
This is what I mean by an “echo chamber”. It influences the output because it influences the input. The bias is baked in. They can’t produce unbiased work because they come to it with a pro charter agenda.
What is the possible rationale for excluding PPP in an economic/funding/spending analysis other than “political”? They don’t want to talk about the PPP funding? It’s ok to leave it out because it might make charters look like they had an edge? They did have an edge. That this comes out of universities is the worst part. What kind of zany bookeeping allows one to just keep a huge chunk of revenue off a funding/spending analysis? Is there no one in these places who is not in the echo chamber so would call this stuff out?
“Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has given another $700,000 to a pro-charter-school Indiana PAC, which has funneled a big chunk of the money to supporting Republican legislative candidates.
The PAC – called, without apparent irony, Hoosiers for Great Public Schools – reported only one contribution in its 2022 pre-primary campaign finance report, covering Jan. 1 to April 8: the one from Hastings, a California resident with a net worth estimated between $4 billion and $6 billion.”
Don’t expect to see this on any ed reform sites. Their rigorous accounting practices magically exclude huge political donations designed to open more charters.
It’s for charters, so what would ordinarily be called “lobbying” and is called “lobbying” if public schools do it transforms into “Great Public Schools” although public schools and students will gain absolutely nothing.
It’s how Bloomberg can give 50 million to charters and exclude public schools and none of them object, although they would be screaming from the rooftops if there were a 50 million dollar gift to public schools that excluded charters.
Money that goes only to charters “doesn’t count”. Call it ed reform “math”. It’s like how their schools graduate “100%” of students but only if there’s 50% attrition. That’s Arne Duncan “math”.
https://inschoolmatters.wordpress.com/2022/04/20/pro-charter-money-bankrolls-indiana-gop/
Thanks for posting this.
All the hocus-pocus, adulteration of the truth, and non transparency, in education point to money and power being the goals. Nothing is new here. I cringe to see the machinations legislators go through to manipulate and destroy real public education as if they are helping children and providing better quality. Perhaps worse, to use real public education for theatrical politics to activate a specific base, raise funds, and to effectively to buy free media attention. All while chipping away at the real public school curriculum in a way that seems to mimic exactly what what authoritarian governments do to indoctrinator their citizens. Take a look at the wording in Florida’s new history curriculum for an example.
Charter schools? The way to: lower taxes, employ inferior instructors, absolutely control curriculum, manipulate data, have finances close to the public, provide adequate resemblance of education for people who can’t use private schools, legalize segregation, legalize discrimination, to decentralize power, provide money and power on the state level to people who make the laws. All this while making it seem like a favor to the less fortunate masses. Indeed! Why reform when Charters laws were designed with non educational goals in mind?