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Julian Vasquez Heilig Critiques a Study of Charters’ Productivity and Return on Investment

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2018 //
19

That choking sound you hear is me writing the headline for this post.

Just when you thought the charter advocates could not sink any lower in seeking rationalizations for privatization, they go lower yet again.

Writing for the National Education Policy Center, Julian Vasquez Heilig critiqued a University of Arkansas study that purports to show that charter schools are more productive and profoppduce a higher return on investment than public schools. The study under review is called “Bigger Bang, Fewer Bucks.”

What would you care about when comparing two sectors, one of which is staffed by professional educators, the other staffed mainly by TFA temps? Would you care about test scores? Parent satisfaction? Teacher turnover? Student projects? Graduation rates? College acceptance rates? Would you consider how the creation of a second sector affects the health and vitality of the first sector? Would you Permit the Second sector to cripple the first sector?

How about return on investment?

This is a mode of thinking with which I am not compatible. I’m reminded of reading I did in the 1990s, when I learned about efficiency experts who studied the curriculum. I was writing a book called “Left Back,” published in 2000. These scientific curriculum experts worked out a way to compare the cost and value of different subjects. They concluded that Latin was not worth teaching because the unit cost was too high. They would understand this new Arkansas study.

Heilig writes the abstract of his critique:

“A report released by the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform contends that charter schools produce more achievement per dollar invested, as compared to public schools. This newest report is focused on city-level analyses in eight US cities (Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, New York City, San Antonio, and Washington D.C.) and uses cost effectiveness and Return on Investment (ROI) ratios. It concludes that charter schools deliver a weighted average of an additional 4.34 NAEP reading points and 4.73 NAEP math points per $1000 invested. The report also argues that that charter schools offer an advantage of $1.77 in lifetime earnings for each dollar invested, representing a ROI benefit of 38%. However, there are a variety of methodological choices made by the authors that threaten the validity of the results. For example, the report uses revenues rather than actual expenditures – despite well-established critiques of this approach. The report also fails to account for the non-comparability of the student populations in charter and comparison public schools. Three other problems also undercut the report’s claims. First, even though the think tank’s earlier productivity report included a caveat saying that causal claims would not be appropriate, the new report omits that caution. Second, the report’s lack of specificity plagues the accuracy and validity of its calculations; e.g., using state-level data in city-level analyses and completely excluding race and gender. Finally, the authors again fail to reconcile their report with the extensive literature of contrary findings.“

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, National Education Policy Center, Privatization

William Mathis: Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2018 //
12

William Mathis, managing director of the National Education Policy Center, wrote this post for the Blog.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

A Closer Look at the Changing School Privatization Claims

​
​Flashed on a 1939 version of a jumbotron, the great and mighty Wizard of Oz appears, wreathed in great billows of green smoke, as a reverberating announcement commands Dorothy, the Tin man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion to “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Of course, as we all know, the mighty wizard was all pretense, magnification, and illusion flanked by great balls of fire.

​And so it has been. The privatization wizards have issued countless press releases saying that charter schools In Boston, Florida, Chicago or almost anywhere else are a great success because of standardized test score increases.

For years this omnipresent claim is that turning schools over to outside contractors will result in grand progress as measured by great leaps – in standardized test scores. All we have to do is follow them down the yellow brick road.

Indeed, Chris Lubienski and Jameson Brewer note in a NEPC review, “a whole generation of school reforms has elevated test scores as the predominant metric by which to judge the worth of policies, as well as of schools, teachers, and even in some cases subjection of public schools to choice regimes through federal policies like No Child Left Behind (NCLB).” (1)

Yet, lately, things have not been so rosy in Oz or for the school privatization wizards. Several recent, large scale and well-designed studies have concluded that privatization has not produced the mighty test score gains promised.

Yet, Toto persisted in chewing on the curtain and ERIC, IES and a host of other scholarly and well-respected organizations concluded there really wasn’t much difference in test scores between public and non-public schools. In fact, in places such as Washington, DC, Indiana, and Louisiana, statewide evaluations have shown no advantage and, ominously, some have found actual test score losses as a result of privatization reforms. (2)

​Since their primary argument doesn’t look so good, the reformers now say, “Don’t look behind the curtain! Instead, look over there at attainment.” Attainment is the new goal which is a potpourri of indicators such as graduation rates, higher education attendance, higher education graduation, absenteeism and the like. These are certainly worthy goals which would be embraced by most people. Now, the pro-privatization purposes and measures are being shifting away from testing. In a complete about face, they ask, “Do impacts on Test Scores Even Matter?” (3)

​Lubienski and Brewer address this “Don’t look here, look over there” shift-the-goal phenomenon in a recent NEPC think-tank review of an American Enterprise Institute paper presented at the Association for Education Finance and Policy’s annual spring conference. While the study has not been peer reviewed, it was provided with booming publicity by charter advocates. (4)

​Fordham’s Michael Petrilli, a prominent advocate for test-based reform, shows remarkable agility (perhaps realizing that the test score results were not very impressive), by concluding that “focusing on test scores may lead authorities to favor the wrong school choice programs. It’s a legitimate concern, and one I share…the experience of attending a private school in the nation’s capital could bring benefits that might not show up until years later: exposure to a new peer group that holds higher expectations in terms of college-going and the like; access to a network of families that opens up opportunities; a religious education that provides meaning, perhaps a stronger grounding in both purpose and character, and that leads to personal growth.”

​Buttressing this maudlin appeal to national pride, religion and personal growth, Petrelli shuffles the studies to get a different result and says, “yes, impacts on test scores matter” and urges caution in making too much of research literature that comes to a contrary conclusion.

​Robin Lake joins the shift saying, “We now believe effectiveness must be considered more broadly, as preparing children with the knowledge, skills, and analytical capacities necessary for them to navigate the new realities of an information economy and be able to prepare for rapid changes in workforce demand.” (6) The shift from mechanistic hard test scores has the reformees saying “look over there!’ (7)

​What’s missing is that we’re more in Kansas than in Oz. This is not Dorothy waking from a bad dream proclaiming “there’s no place like home.” It is a bad reality as many children have no home and society provides Dorothy and her classmates with only ersatz opportunities and facile shifts of words, phrases and promises rather than the reality of good schools for all.

Endnotes:

[1] Lubienski, C. & Brewer, T. J. (2018). Review of “Do Impacts on Test Scores Even Matter? Lessons from Long-Run Outcomes in School Choice Research: Attainment Versus Achievement Impacts and Rethinking How to Evaluate School Choice Programs” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center.

[2] Barnum, M. (July 12, 2017). Do School vouchers “work.” As the debate heats up, here’s what research really says. Chalkbeat. Retrieved April 30, 2018 from https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/07/12/do-school-vouchers-work-as-the-debate-heats-up-heres-what-research-really-says/
Dynarski, M. (2016, May 26). On Negative Effects of Vouchers. Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/research/on-negative-effects-of-vouchers/
Turner, C, & Kamenetz. (June 26, 2017) School Vouchers Get 2 New Report Cards. NPR https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/06/26/533192616/school-vouchers-get-a-new-report-card
Spector, C. (February 28,2017). Vouchers do not improve student achievement, Stanford researcher finds. https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-student-achievement-stanford-researcher-finds/

[3] Hitt, C., McShane, M., & Wolf, P. (2018) Do impacts on test scores even matter? Lessons from long-run outcomes in school choice research: Attainment versus achievement impacts and rethinking how to evaluate school choice programs. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute. http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Do-Impacts-on-Test-Scores-Even-Matter.pdf

[4] Lubienski, C. & Brewer, T. J. (2018). Review of “Do Impacts on Test Scores Even Matter? Lessons from Long-Run Outcomes in School Choice Research: Attainment Versus Achievement Impacts and Rethinking How to Evaluate School Choice Programs” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center.

[5] Petrilli, M, (April 17, 2018). For the vast majority of school choice studies, short- and long-term impacts point in the same direction. Fordham Institute. https://edexcellence.net/articles/for-the-vast-majority-of-school-choice-studies-short-and-long-term-impacts-point-in-the

[6] Lake, R. (May 1, 2018). How Can We Get Serious About Successful Pathways for Every Student? Center on Reinventing Public Education.

[7] Saultz, A. et al.(April 2018).Charter School Deserts: High-Poverty Neighborhoods with Limited Educational Options. Fordham Institute. Retrieved May 1, 2018 from https://edexcellence.net/publications/charter-school-deserts-report

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

AP Analysis: Bill Gates Can’t Stop Meddling in Education

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2018 //
41

The Associated Press reviewed the Gates Foundation’s education spending and found that Bill Gates is now engaged in “helping” shape the ESSA plans of the states. He just can’t stop telling everyone how to run their public schools even though everything he has tried until now has been a failure.

Does he care that teachers in several states have walked out due to underfunding? Is he trying to persuade governors and legislators to tax billionaires to raise school funding? Don’t hold your breath.

Presumably he wants to make sure they are sticking with high-stakes testing, Common Core, and charters, his three favorite reforms to which he never subjected his own children or their school. If it is not good enough for Lakeside Academy in Seattle, why must it be mandatory for the rest of the nation?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

NonProfit Quarterly: The New Balancing Act of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2018 //
10

Martin Levine has become one of my favorite writers on education. He writes for NonProfit Quarterly (free online) and other publications. He really understands that privatization is about “me first, to hell with the rest of you.”

Here is his commentary on the recent Gordon Lafer study of the fiscal impact of charters on the public schools they leave behind.

Oakland is a textbook example of a district that is being systematically hollowed out by the proliferation of charter schools. Oakland has lurched from deficit to deficit, while controlled for years by Broadie superintendents, who encouraged the destruction of the district by charters.

He writes:

A recent look at public education in Oakland raises important questions about whether maximizing choice comes at the cost of equity.

Choice advocates have said all students would benefit from maximizing a parent’s ability to choose their child’s school. The introduction of independent charter schools, they believe, harnesses market forces to reward better schools and ultimately force poor schools to close. Following this logic, we will be left with better schools. But while charter schools can focus only on the students who choose their programs, traditional school districts remain responsible for all of the children in their districts. When funding follows each student to their school of choice, those choosing to remain in public schools are finding themselves resource-starved. Overall, educational equity and school choice may not be able to coexist.

Charter schools are about what is best for “me.” Public schools are about what is best for all.

In the age of Trump, individualism trumps the common good.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Oakland, Privatization

ECOT Stuff Up for Auction, Right Now: Who Will Get Proceeds? The State or the Charter Owner?

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2018 //
9

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy is a steadfast critic of charter schools, which, he says, have absorbed $10 billion in funds that should have gone to Ohio public schools. Now that ECOT is in bankruptcy, the state is trying to claw a few million of the $1 billion that ECOT collected since 2000, when it was founded.

Phillis writes:

Auctions of charter school stuff-another manifestation of tax dollars squandered

The ECOT auction is just another going-out-of-business sale in the charter industry. About 250 charters have closed in Ohio and many have had auctions. These kinds of sales recover only pennies on the dollar.

The ECOT exposure has helped shed light on the waste, fraud and corruption in the industry. Previous charter closures and auctions usually had gone unnoticed by the general public.

Ohioans should assume that the ECOT auction ends the charter fiasco.

Of course, the charter fiasco will go on in Ohio even after ECOT is dead and buried and its stuff auctioned off.

The auction is today. You are not to late to pick something up if you bid online. Maybe a pencil engraved ECOT as a memento of a Teapot Dome type scandal in Ohio, a tribute to privatization and corporate reform. DeVos wants more of the same. Hold on to your wallet.

Goodbye ECOT: School auction begins today; key computers not included
Updated May 11, 2018

By Jeremy P. Kelley, Staff Writer Dayton Daily News

The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) is auctioning its corporate headquarters building and most furnishings and business equipment beginning at 4 p.m. today, according to a news release from the auction firm Gryphon USA.

The auction includes everything from flat-screen TVs, tools and furniture to first-aid kits and pencils, according to Richard Kruse, president of Gryphon Auction Group and court-appointed deputy interim master for ECOT.

Kruse said the computer servers used by the school are not included in the auction. Auditors and prosecutors have suggested there could be evidence of criminal activity by ECOT on those servers.

“The media and government attention has been focused on the servers used by the school, but those are not included in the auction,” Kruse said in the news release. “Due to this, the auction is proceeding on schedule.”

ECOT was Ohio’s largest online school, at one point claiming more than 15,000 students, but the Ohio Department of Education said an enrollment review showed the school was not counting student participation correctly. The state began clawing back millions in funding that ODE said the school should not have received, eventually leading ECOT to close in January.

More than 2,000 students from southwest Ohio were listed as enrolled at ECOT in 2016-17, including 627 who lived in the Dayton school district, 168 in Hamilton, 94 in Springfield and dozens from suburbs ranging from Kettering to Troy.

ECOT’s headquarters building, a 138,000-square-foot facility originally built as Southland Mall, sits on 26.5 acres in south Columbus, near the intersection of U.S. 23 and Interstate 270.

The auction is viewable to the public online at http://www.ecotcre.com for the real estate, and http://www.ecotauction.com for the rest of the items. The online auction is open for bidding until June 12.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Ohio, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

California: DeVos’ Allies Supporting Villaraigosa for Governor

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2018 //
35

A close ally of Betsy DeVos just made a $2 million contribution to the campaign of Antonio Villarigosa for Governor of California.

The former Los Angeles Mayor is running solely on the charter issue, which is the source of his biggest campaign contributions.

Who knew that the California governor’s race would be determined by a single issue: Do you support public schools or charter schools?

The gubernatorial campaign of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa got another big boost this week when William Oberndorf, a San Francisco philanthropist and ally of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, contributed $2 million to a committee set up by charter school advocates to promote the former Los Angeles mayor’s bid to be the next governor of California.

Oberndorf, a Republican and major GOP donor, replaced DeVos as chairperson of American Federation for Children in 2016 when she was named by Donald Trump to join his cabinet.

The goal of the organization which DeVos co-founded is to promote greater “school choice” for parents, especially low-income ones, by providing taxpayer supported subsidies to offset the cost of private school tuition. That could include vouchers, tax credits, education savings accounts and other strategies.

Oberndorf’s contribution went to Families and Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa, an independent expenditure committee established by the Charter School Association of California Advocates. Under state law, the committee can promote a candidate but can not coordinate their activities with the candidate’s campaign.

Also this week former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg contributed another $1 million to the pro-Villaraigosa committee, to supplement the $1.5 million he had already contributed earlier this month.

Their contributions bring the total amount raised by the committee to just over $16 million over the past month, mostly contributed by a handful of high-wealth individuals. With these funds, the committee has been running television ads and sending out colorful materials to boost Villaraigosa’s odds in the June 5 primary.

Categories Betsy DeVos, California, Charter Schools, Privatization

EdNext: Charter School Rate of Growth Drops to an All-Time Low

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
12

Education Next, the pro-charter, Pro-Choice publication, reports that the growth of charter schools fell to an all-time low of only 1% between 2017 and 2018.

Despite the $200 Million the Waltons give annually for charters, despite the hundreds of millions of federal dollars for new charters, the rate of growth has slowed. How is this possible?

“Despite educating more than 3.2 million students, the annual rate of charter school growth has reached an all-time low: a 1 percent increase in charter schools during the 2017-18 school year. This represents the fourth consecutive year that charter growth has slowed. In an article in our Summer 2018 issue of Education Next, Robin J. Lake, Trey Cobb, Roohi Sharma and Alice Opalka discuss barriers to charter-school growth in the San Francisco Bay Area and explore what charter leaders, policymakers, and communities can do to regain momentum and keep pace with demand. Derrell Bradford also addresses the slowing growth-rate of charter schools in our Summer 2018 issue, asking: what is the future role of single-site schools, given that charter management organizations (CMOs) and for-profit education management organizations (EMOs) are increasingly crowding the field? Finally, Adam Peshek proposes a way to tackle some of the obstacles to charter-school growth through the Opportunity Zone program (part of the 2017 tax reform package)—and hopefully create more high-quality public school options for children along the way.

—Education Next”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

NEPC’s 6th Annual Report on Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools:

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
15

The National Education Policy Center released its sixth annual report on full-time virtual and blended learning schools. The report was written by Gary Miron, Christopher Shank, and Caryn Davidson of Western Michigan University.

As in the past, these schools get worse results than traditional public schools. Nevertheless, their enrollments continue to grow.

“Compared to prior years, there has been a shift in source of growth, with more school dis- tricts opening their own virtual schools. However, these district-run schools have typically been small, with limited enrollment. Thus, while large virtual schools operated by for-profit education management organizations (EMOs) have lost considerable market share, they still dominate this sector.”

“This report provides a census of full-time virtual and blended schools. It also includes stu- dent demographics, state-specific school performance ratings, and—where possible—an analysis of school performance measures.

“• In 2016-17, 429 full-time virtual schools enrolled 295,518 students, and 296 blended schools enrolled 116,716. Enrollments in virtual schools increased by 17,000 students between 2015-16 and 2016-17 and enrollments in blended learn- ing schools increased by 80,000 during this same time period.

“• Thirty-four states had full-time virtual schools and 29 states had blended schools. Four states had blended but no full-time virtual schools (Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and Rhode Island). Nine states had virtual schools but no full-time blended learning schools. The number of states with virtual schools in 2016-17 is the same as in 2015-16, although there was an increase of eight states with full- time blended learning schools over the past two years.

“• Virtual schools operated by for-profit EMOs were three times as large as other virtual schools. They enrolled an average of 1,288 students. In contrast, those op- erated by nonprofit EMOs enrolled an average of 407 students, and independent virtual schools (not affiliated with an EMO) enrolled an average of 411 students.

“• Although private (profit and nonprofit) EMOs operated only 35.9% of full-time virtual schools, those schools enrolled 61.8% of all virtual school students.

“• Just under half of all virtual schools in the inventory were charter schools, but to- gether they accounted for 75.7% of enrollment. While districts have been increas- ingly creating their own virtual schools, those tended to enroll far fewer students.

“• In the blended sector, nonprofit EMOs operated 30.4% and for-profit EMOs op- erated 22.6%. Nearly half (47%) of blended schools were independent. Blend- ed schools operated by nonprofits were most numerous and substantially larger than others in the sector. Rocketship Education remained the largest nonprofit operator, with 16 schools that enrolled just over 7,700 students—almost 7% of all students in blended schools.

“• Blended schools enrolled an average of 394 students, but blended schools man- aged by for-profit EMOs had a far larger average enrollment of 1,288. There were more charter blended schools (68.9%) than district blended schools (31.1%), and they had substantially larger average enrollments (456) than district blended schools (257).”

There is much more, covering student demographics, student-teacher ratios, and student performance.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Chicago: “You Can Thank Karen Lewis for the National Wave of Teacher Insurrections”

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
17

There are very few people I have met in my lifetime where I had one meeting and was instantly smitten. Karen Lewis is one of them. In the fall of 2010, I was traveling the country to talk about my somewhat explosive new book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” Within the world of education, it was a bombshell, because I was renouncing many years of advocacy, switching sides, and losing many friends in the process. On the substantive side, I was explaining and describing the true nature of the powerful movement that would reveal its ugly face later that same year with the release of “Waiting for Superman.”

I had two speaking engagements one week, first in Detroit, then in Los Angeles. I planned to change planes in Chicago. But before I embarked, I got an e-mail from Karen Lewis, whom I had never met. She asked if I would change my flight and arrange a stopover of several hours in Chicago. I did. She and her husband John met me at O’Hare. We drove to a nearby hotel where they had rented time in an empty conference room, and Karen and I talked nonstop for four hours. When we were done, we left as close friends. She is brilliant, funny, passionate, compassionate.

We met from time to time after that and emailed often. She led a historic teachers strike in 2012 to protest the city’s underinvestment in the schools and Rahm Emanuel’s endless school closings. The year before, the legislature had passed a law to curtail teachers’ job rights and prevent teschers’ strikes, saying that a strike vote had to be approved by 75% of the members, thinking that would never happen. This was when Jonah Edelman of Stand for Children showed that he and his organization had sold out to the hedge funders. He engineered the deal and hoped to crush the Chicago Teachers Union (when caught on tape bragging about his coup at the Aspen Ideas Festival, seated next to James Crown, a prominent Chicago equities guy, he had to apologize. The session was about outsmarting the teachers’ unions by buying up the best lobbyists and was titled “If it Could Happen There, it Could Happen Anywhere.”)

The CTU didn’t get 75% of the membership, it got more than 90%. It went out on strike. While the national press was almost universally hostile, hated the very idea of a teachers’ strike, the parents and working people of Chicago supported the teachers.

Ben Joravsky writes here that Karen Lewis was the inspiration for the current wave of walkouts, insurrections, protests, but this time the teachers are winning broad public support. In Chicago, the teachers wore red. Today it is #RedForEd.

Rahm got even with the CTU in 2013 by closing 50 public schools in one day. It too was historic, in an evil way. Charters continued to open.

Karen Lewis planned to run against Rahm for Mayor in 2014–she was far more popular than he and would have likely won. But she discovered she had a malignant brain tumor. Her life changed. She had surgery and survived. Last fall she had a minor strike. She took these blows with courage, dignity and even humor.

I last saw her when The Network for Public Education held its annual meeting in Chicago n 2015. I interviewed her and the video is here. She was physically weak but spiritually strong.

Yes, she showed us that teachers must work in and with their communities to build public support. She said that those ties were essential. She showed us what teachers could do even in the worst of circumstances. And now that she is in the worst of circumstances, we remember her and thank her for her leadership, her example, and the life lessons she taught us.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Courage

A Bizarre Report from The Century Foundation about Those Exceedingly Rare “Diverse” Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
18

The Century Foundation is a liberal think tank in New York City that is on the wrong side of the charter school debate. For years, it has issued reports claiming that charter schools would lead the way on racial integration. It’s not true, but TCF thinks that if it keeps saying it, it might someday be true.

Yesterday, TCF had a press conference to congratulate charter schools that were diverse by design. It identified 125 charter schools out of a sector of more than 6,000 charters.

To assert that charters are promoting diversity and integration requires cherry picking and willful blindness.

Last December, the AP reported that charter schools were among the nation’s most segregated schools. The AP said: “National enrollment data shows that charters are vastly over-represented among schools where minorities study in the most extreme racial isolation. As of school year 2014-2015, more than 1,000 of the nation’s 6,747 charter schools had minority enrollment of at least 99 percent, and the number has been rising steadily….

““Desegregation works. Nothing else does,” said Daniel Shulman, a Minnesota civil rights attorney. “There is no amount of money you can put into a segregated school that is going to make it equal.”

“Shulman singled out charter schools for blame in a lawsuit that accuses the state of Minnesota of allowing racially segregated schools to proliferate, along with achievement gaps for minority students. Minority-owned charters have been allowed wrongly to recruit only minorities, he said, as others wrongly have focused on attracting whites.”

Andre Perry, a one-time charter leader in New Orleans, has called out charter advocates for their indifference to segregation. See his article for Brookings here, where charter leaders say they really don’t care about integration. Perry was even more blunt in an article posted on The Hechinger Report, where he said that any educational reform that ignores segregation is doomed to fail.” And he included charter schools on his doomed-to-fail list of reforms.

If charters were doing such a terrific job promoting integration, which they most definitely are not, why would the National NAACP have passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on new charters?

The UCLA Civil Rights Project has repeatedly called out charter schools for causing more segregation. Look what they said about the role of charters in promoting segregation in the once well-integrated Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina. (January, 2018)

“Charter Schools in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County are directly and indirectly undermining school district efforts to desegregate public schools, according to a new study released today by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA with researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

“Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools were once the nation’s bellwether for successful desegregation. Today, the district exemplifies how charter schools can impede districts’ efforts to resist re-segregation,” said Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, UNC Charlotte’s Chancellor’s Professor and professor of Sociology, Public Policy and Women’s and Gender Studies at UNC Charlotte. “This research has important implications not only for schools and communities in the Charlotte Mecklenburg region, but for the national debate over the growth and role of charter schools in our nation’s education system.”

In its 2017 study of segregation in Washington, D.C., the UCLA team concluded that the city’s charter schools “have the most extreme segregation in the city.”

Given that the overwhelming evidence from reputable sources—nationally and internationally—says that charter schools and choice are drivers of segregation, why is The Century Foundation supporting the agenda of Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration?

Perhaps this explains The Century Foundation’s charter love: “This case study is part of The Century Foundation’s project on charter school diversity, funded by The Walton Family Foundation.” The Walton Family Foundation is the rightwing, anti-union, anti-public school foundation of the family made billionaires by the non-union Walmart empire. The Walton Family Foundation is spending $200 million a year to expand charter schools. Ninety percent of charter schools are non- union. Walton has given tens of millions to Teach for America to create a ready supply of inexperienced, non-union, non-career teachers for charter schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration
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