Steven Singer is a teacher in Pennsylvania and a blogger. In this post, he contends with the argument that some charter schools are really very good and not at all like those charters mired in scandal, unaccountable, inequitable, greedy, and a drain on public school resources.
Singer writes:
Not MY charter school!
That’s the usual reaction from charter school fansto any criticism of the industry.
I say many of these institutions lack accountabilityabout how tax dollars are spent…
Not MY charter school!
I say they waste millions of taxpayer dollars to duplicate services already in existence….
Not MY charter school!
I talk about frequent scandals where unscrupulous charter school operators use copious loopholes in state law to enrich themselves without providing services to parents, students and the community…
Not MY charter school!
I mention charter school lotteries, cherry-picking students, not providing adequate special education services, zero tolerance discipline policies, teaching to standardized tests, targeting black and brown kids for profit and feeding the school to prison pipeline….
Not MY charter school! Not MY charter school! Not MY…
Really!?
If the industry is subject to this much malfeasance and corruption, doesn’t that reflect badly on the entire educational model – even the examples that avoid the worst of it?
One model has daily scandals. The other – authentic public schools – is far from perfect but relatively tame by comparison. You can’t blame people for generalizing.
Not My….
Okay. We get it!
But sadly this defensiveness against any criticism hides an enormous ignorance of exactly what charter schools are and how they operate at the most basic level.
Yes, there is a difference between how the best and worst charter schools act.
Yes, there are some charter schools that are run much better, more humanely and responsibly than others.
But that doesn’t mean the very concept of a charter school isn’t rotten to the core.
It’s like colonialism.
Yes, there were colonies where the invaders treated the conquered with more respect and dignity than others.
But not a single colony was a good thing. Not a single colonial enterprise avoided subjugating people who should have been free to determine their own destinies.
The same goes with charter schools.
When I discuss the industry, it’s surprising how many people – especially supporters of the enterprise – don’t understand what charter schools really are.
Let’s start with a simple definition.
A charter school is a school with a charter.
Get it?
And a charter is a contract – a special agreement with the state or some other governmental entity that this school can exist.
Why is that necessary?
Because there are rules laid out by each state in their school codes detailing what schools must do in order to qualify for taxpayer funding.
For example, under normal circumstances they must have an elected school board made up of members from the community where the school is located.
All authentic public schools must follow these rules. But not Charter schools.
Instead, they get to follow whatever rules are set down in their charter.
So without even examining exactly which special rules are stipulated in that charter, these schools are founded on the very concept of privilege.
They get to abide by their own rules tailor-made just for them.
Why does that matter? Because they get public funding.
And, yes, ALL charter schools are publicly funded – they get at least part of their money from taxpayers, usually all or the majority of their funding.
That opens a huge divide in accountability between types of schools….
OPEN THE LINK AND READ ON.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This article gives a great dissertation of how Charter parents and Charter supporters react to any information given about the charter schools.
They need to read also the racist history of the charter school movement and why it’s never talked about.
“A group of people or an organization seeking or receiving special advantages, typically through political lobbying.”
Lobbying for special status is certainly part of the privatization agenda. The main goal is to transfer funds out of public schools and into private pockets, thereby weakening the schools most children attend. In order to keep operating, charter schools depend on always expanding, whether their presence is warranted or not. That is why they are always looking for new markets. Charter schools are businesses first and institutions of learning second. The business and brand will always win over education and student needs in charter schools.
“But not a single colony was a
good thing. Not a single colonial
enterprise avoided subjugating
people who should have been free
to determine their own destinies.”
Let’s start with a simple definition.
Subjugation: Compulsory submission.
Is compulsory schooling an encroachment
on the fundamental liberty:
“Should be free to determine their own
destinies.”?
Is school choice a fundamental liberty?
Steve Singer, First person essay
April 3, 2019:
“We can’t crack open students’
heads and see what they’ve learned
— much less compare what’s in one
head versus another.”
Steve, have you cracked open
parents’ heads to determine
their choice of schools is a
matter of their ignorance,
rather than dissatisfaction
with public schools?
It seems hard to convince
tax payers that the private
use of public funds is wrong
BUT it’s OK when public
funds land in the private
pockets of State actors…
NoBrick (if that is your real name), public schools are not compulsory submission because you get to vote. You get a voice in how those schools are run and how your tax dollars are spent. However, with charter schools you lose that voice. You have no choice whether the charter school opens up in the first place and on how that will impact the neighborhood public school and therefore the education provided at that public school and/or the tax consequences of opening that charter school.
Parents have a right to make choices about how their kids are educated, but they do not have the unrestricted right to our tax dollars. There are limits to their right.
Stop fetishizing parents and their choices about where to enroll their kids in school. Parents are only one part of the picture. All taxpayers of the community are impacted and thus should have a voice. Remember “no taxation without representation”? That’s something I still believe in. I’ll bet most people do.
But you have a choice to send your child to a charter school. You don’t have that choice with a traditional public school.
No, the charter school chooses whether they want your child.
I agree, all taxpayers of the community are impacted and thus should have a voice. Someone should ask the community – wait someone has!!
A 2019 Education Next poll found that 48 percent of the public approve of them, and support for charter public school is bipartisan.
40 percent of Democrats support charter public schools
58 percent of Latinx Democrats support them and
53 percent of Black Democrats support them as well.
61 percent of Republicans support charter schools.
53 percent of voters residing in districts with charter schools favor them.
Misinformation is still a serious problem. Only 27 percent of respondents knew that charter schools cannot charge tuition. Only 22 percent knew that they cannot hold religious services.
from: https://info.ccsa.org/blog/support-for-charter-public-schools-grows-in-2019
While the source is highly partisan, the nunmbers are the numbers.
LOL! 100% of people on the Steven Singer Poll say Steven Singer is the best!
Par for the course…
Analyses are only as good
as the assumptions they
are built on.
“Stop fetishizing parents and
their choices about where to
enroll their kids in school.”
Let’s END with a simple definition.
Stonewalling:
Stonewalling is used to refuse to answer
certain questions.
I would agree that more accuntability wouldbe helpful, but at least charter schoosl are obligated by a contract. Traditional public schools have no such mandate. They are a giant government burreaucracy with a specific mission, just like the VA, Medicare and Medicaid. However, unlike those institutions, traditional public schools too often fail to meet that mission. Also unlike those institutions, which are government produced and mostly privately provided, and work fairly well, people with the means frequently opt out of traditional schools.
Perhaps the question is why?? It’s not some Fox News conspiracy, or other media attack. It’s not because a lack of funding as so many want to claim. The answer to every government problem is to toss more money at it. More money has not made traditional public schools more attractive over the last 60 years.
The reason there are such long waiting lists for spots in charter schools, and why more and more states are creating or expanding vouchers, education Savings Accounts, Tax Credit Scholarships, and other means to assist in providing for alternative education options is that fewer and fewer parents want to send their child to traditional public schools.
This was magnified during COVID-19. Homeschooling doubled in many locations, Public schools lost 3% of their enrollments nationwide. Sadly, public education is much like the Postal Service. It was once a great institution. Bloated burreaucracy, inefficiency, poor performance, and competition from UPS and FedEx, which are faster, more efficient, and competitive from a cost standpoint have driven people away. In many ways, public education is in worst shape than the Post Office. It’s been around longer, and everyone uses it.
As mentioned in the article, charter schools are public schools. By definition, they cannot discriminate who they accept. Lottereis, which involve RANDOM selection are necessary, because so many families want out of their neighborhood school. All the scandals, corruption and malfeasance discussed in regards to charter schools occurs in public schools. Anyone remember Atlanta schools test score falsification? People went to prison over that. Similar problems occurred in several school districts over NCLB requirements. Poor management has led to state takeovers of public school districts all over the nation.
If public schools, particularly in the urban core provided a product valued by those who need it, they would use it. They have to pay for it regardless. As access to charter schools and other choice options expand, more and more people are going to decide they don’t need it and look elsewhere.
Instead of attacking the competition, including in many cases, other schools within the same district, maybe traditional public school should focus on improving what they have to offer.
The bloated bureaucracy argument is not supported by facts. Do you truly believe that the major charter chains do not have a bloated bureaucracy? Study after study has shown that charter schools generally have a more top heavy administration than public schools. Charter schools are much more likely to spend more on administration than public schools.
Charter schools are often operated by management companies that provide lots of opportunities for waste, fraud and nepotism. Taxpayers send their money behind the shroud of “private ownership,” which is essentially taxation without representation. Schools paid for by public dollars should be accountable to the public.
Most of the “long wait lists” are bogus propaganda that lobbyists use when they want more money. The article states that the demand for charter schools is in decline, but they are always looking for more public money to divert into private pockets. That is the aim of the charter game.
I agree with you “aka” and as I stated in the beginning, more accountability would be helpful. However, most data I am aware of indicated that a large majority of charter schools are nonptofit organizations. Do they contract for services.. of course they do, but so does almost every other public school districts.
Also, the attack on for-profit schools is oftern overblown. A study of Ohio schools published in September of 2022 available here:
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/for-profit-charter-schools-evaluation-spending-outcomes
found that “So-called for-profit and non-profit charter schools both outperform traditional public schools, but non-profits also outperform for-profit charters, particularly in mathematics.”
and
“charter schools—which in many major cities receive, on average, 33 percent less funding per student than traditional schools—can increase per-pupil revenue by enrolling more students and realizing economies of scale, which still requires meeting the expectations of parents, authorizers, and state officials to remain open.”
Charters kick out kids that they don’t want to teach. They are INCENTIVIZED to do this because their responsibility to that child ends as soon as the kid leaves. Period.
Just like in the past, health insurance companies kicked out patients who got an illness that was too expensive and required long care. They were INCENTIVIZED to do this because they made a lot more money if they didn’t have to pay for any expensive health insurance.
I guarantee you that people adored their health insurance plan as long as they didn’t get sick. Just like parents loved their charters right up until they realized the charter wanted their kid out and was being ruthless to get their kid out because there was no oversight.
Most people who sign up for health insurance never tested it. They liked it because the company, awash in money, could easily cover the cheapest medical expenses and the consumers never asked them to do more.
Most parents who sign up for charter schools never test them. Their kid is acceptable to the charter and they are happy the ones who aren’t are MIA and don’t ask question. Until it is their kid.
There is a reason that charters haven’t made much inroads in predominately white rural/suburban communities. Because the charters can’t make their nasty innuendo about violent 5 year olds when it is white middle class 5 year old children being characterized as violent.
Charters can’t get away with the same kind of cherry picking when they are cherry picking among white kids because the white parents whose kids aren’t wanted actually have a voice that the media doesn’t ignore the way the media always dismisses African American parents. Education reporters do not say to themselves “it does not matter if some white parents complain because I believe the charter operator who tells me so many 5 year old children of these white parents are violent and worthless and I believe the charter operator who tells me that these white parents who recently celebrated that their kid got into this charter “changed their mind” and decided that they preferred a failing school instead.
No one would believe it. Which is why no charter school in a white suburb has ever had top results unless they proudly admit – like BASIS – that they have no interest in teaching any child of any background who can’t score high on AP Exams by 9th grade.
Why doesn’t BASIS repeat the lies of “non-profit” charters who scapegoat African American kids and families to hide that they only want to teach students who perform well academically and behaviorally?
Because BASIS apparently has operators who are far more truthful than the non-profit charter industry.
Why aren’t charters in affluent suburbs getting the same astonishing results as the charters in urban areas? Because they cannot get away with cherry picking and victimizing white 5 and 6 year old students they don’t want to teach they way they victimize African American 5 and 6 year old students they don’t want to teach.
Well said. Charter schools provide separate and unequal schools, particularly in urban areas, where Black and Brown students are often targeted. That is also why charter schools tend to be more segregated.
As I stated in the beginning, more accountability is necessary. Having said that, it’s difficult to compate central city urban core districts and students with affluent suburbs. They have different problems. In many cases, suburban schools produce better results and spend less doing so. That has more to do with larger societal issues then individual school districts.
There is not a suburban neighborhood public school in the country that gets the results that BASIS Charter School does. And BASIS spends less money and I challenge you to name a single affluent public school that doesn’t have some low-performing kids, while BASIS exclusively has high performing ones.
According to your incredibly flawed reasoning, those affluent suburban public schools should be replaced by BASIS charters so every kid would be a top performing student.
You also seem to believe that the urban charters that don’t ruthlessly cull very young children who they don’t want to teach are far, far inferior to the urban charters that do ruthlessly dump young children. But I notice that you never mention that.
Charter promoters have a different standard when they compare to charters to charters or charters to affluent predominantly white suburban public schools. Then they acknowledge that the supposedly “stellar” charters like BASIS aren’t teaching the same kids because NOT acknowledging that would require them to demonize white parents and white children. Or would require they demonize the complicit operators of other charters who might speak out if they were demonized as incompetent money-wasters instead of financially rewarded for their complicity.
After reading Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality, by Geismer, I realize now that school reform is the same thing as welfare reform from the 1980s and ’90s. The rich and powerful think of everyone in public schools as welfare queens. They think we’re all too lazy to deserve the education of our children and students. They think public schools are unmerited handouts.
Charter schools are intended to make us struggle. That is the goal. The investor class insists we must struggle to keep our public schools open. We have to earn our schools. We have to prove we are worthy of their tax dollars. So, when there are scandalous charters engaging in waste, fraud, and child abuse, no matter to them. When test scores are invalid measures of quality, no matter to them. When public schools starve and close, it’s good to them.
We argue, as the Gadfly does here, that charters are unfair and unjust, whether scandal plagued or not, our arguments fall on the deaf ears of the racist, sexist, elitist-classist Billionaire Boys and Girls Club. They want us to hurt. They want us to stop voting for them to pay taxes. They want everything for themselves, and damn the democracy torpedoes. Remember, you’re a welfare queen.