The Network for Public Education sent out the following notice to its 350,000 members. Join NPE so you can be on our mailing list (no cost to join). The charter lobby wants your public school.
Dear Diane,
In a rare moment of candor, Nina Rees, the President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said that her organization’s “personal goal” is to make all public schools “like charter schools” that would be “schools of choice.”
If Ms. Rees and her charter trade organization have their way:
- Children would enter a lottery to attend their neighborhood school.
- There would be an appointed private board, not an elected school board.
- Teacher tenure and bargaining rights in most states would disappear.
- The school could shut down based on test scores, enrollment, or even the private board’s whim. 25% of all charters shut down in their first 5 years.
- In most states, the school could be managed by a for-profit corporation.
All of the above are the characteristics of charter schools. Every district in the nation would be a New Orleans–where schools open and close, and citizens have no voice in school governance.
That is why NPE fights so hard each year to ensure that the National Alliance does not get the funding increases it lobbies for from the federal Charter School Programs (CSP). We are so pleased to share the good news below.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Charter schools steal money from public schools. They cook the books so that it looks like they have more students than the do. Betsy DeVos and her gang wants to destroy public education which is one of the foundations for our democracy.
I’ve had many friends teach at charter schools. To a person this was their experience. I’m a public school teacher. I resent charter schools trying to change our system of education.
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Addition:
“Betsy DeVos and her REGRESSIVE XTIAN THEOFASCIST gang wants to destroy public education which is one of the foundations for our democracy.
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It’s always been clear that charters are nothing but a foot in the door toward the hostile corporate takeover of public education.
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This is another example of an attempt to crush democracy as public schools are public assets. They do not belong to corporations and other private entities. Public schools are examples of grassroots democracy in which board members are elected by members of community taxpayers. The charter lobby is trying to hijack public education and privatize it from the inside out by replacing the current public structure with a private scheme so that that only thing that remains is the money that private companies can use as they see fit. This proposal is a mega scam to gain access to public funds. It is somewhat similar to what corporations are trying to do to Medicare. The objective is control and access to public money.
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Thank you so much for your blog.This was sent to me by a friend when I forwarded this article to him. Sent from my Galaxy
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In what Galaxy do you reside?
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Duane Be nice . . . CBK
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If Ms. Rees and her charter trade organization have their way:
De facto segregation will intensify, upending the Civil Rights Movement and everything MLK and Ruby Bridges sacrificed to achieve.
Democracy at the local level will be upended, and much of what George Washington and Ben Franklin risked everything to fight for will be destroyed.
Education in the United States will suck because schools will be led by amateurish clowns and greedy investors looking to pull a Gordon Gekko on America’s youth.
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As absurd as the idea may seem, it may happen in the same red states that are eager to dismantle the common good to benefit corporate interests, particularly in a system that operates on political donations, aka legalized bribes. The will of the people tends to get lost in a sea of cash.
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Retired Teacher A “sea of cash,” indeed. Your point about “legalized bribes” “points to” the inherent difficulty of avoiding the moral hazard that is implicit and sometimes explicit with capitalism as such.
My view is that capitalism has gone way beyond being merely a monetary system . . . to being so distorted that it manifests in our culture (especially in the United States) as rampant, predatory, and even all-consuming as an outsized basis for much of our very thinking.
And the corporate power that it supports has become so self-serving that many are willing to give up democracy and even their own integrity for it.
BTW, if you haven’t seen Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko,” don’t . . . unless you want to gain some perspective on U.S. Capitalism, especially as manifest in the health industry.
Also, BTW, I’m not “here” but only signed on in this section to leave that note for you guys, other readers, and Diane about the National Literacy Association. CBK
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Diane FYI: I forwarded your post to the list serve for AAACE-NLA (National Literacy Association);with the following commentary (all copied below), but see Second for the direct relationship of your post to their work:
Hello David and All: First, your recent notes here raised an old question for me about the relationship between Adult Education programs (now “Foundational” or AFE) and public schools and networks within each AE program’s geographical area.
Maximizing that connection . . . as an open stream of information about AFE services for parents (for all sorts of reasons) . . . seems a ‘no brainer’ precisely because of the potential ease and constancy of communications that can flow through that channel between (a) AFE programs; (b) program-aware teachers/administrators, and (c) the students and parents they serve.
Also, your recent communications were about funding streams; but are programs still suffering from a deficit in public awareness? Bolstering the relationship between AFE and K-12 public schools need not only afford a stream of communication with those who are unaware and who need AFE services but also with voters and even, in some cases, with private wealth willing to help fund in program-specific arenas.
Second, I refer above to public schools. However, the below Digest note refers to the more recent (over 20+ years) insertion/intrusion of private, quasi-private, and (generally unaccountable) corporate power into public concerns, including education in all of its forms in the United States.
So again, anything AFE program leaders do will have to take into consideration the questions of how such intrusions/insertions (between education and its democratic political ground) will and already do influence (a) our own programs (as related to Federal and State funding and policy development) as well as how such intrusions are already influencing (attempting to take over) (b) those institutions and programs that AFE fosters relationships with.
The place for leaders’ heads on this issue is not in the sand.
The digest note below is just one of many explorations and explanations available at the website for Network for Public Education.
BTW, the name ‘Public Charter Schools’ is like ‘Moms for Liberty’ as both would benefit from a thorough screening that would ask how close those labels are to the reality of what they are doing. Stay cool, Catherine B. King
END COPIED MATERIAL
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