NPR released a new poll showing that, despite the loud mouths attacking public schools, most parents like their public schools and teachers.
They like their schools despite the hundreds of millions, if not billions, invested in promoting school choice, charter schools, vouchers, and privatization.
This poll suggests that Democrats should go after people like Ron DeSantis and other politicians trying to harm a civic institution that most Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, appreciate.
Say this for Jeb Bush: he is not dissuaded by failure. No matter how many studies show the failure of vouchers, he doesn’t care. No matter how many studies show that charter schools do not get better results than public schools, he doesn’t care. No matter how many grifters have drained millions through privatization of schools, he doesn’t care. No matter how little evidence he has for any of his proposals, he still pushes them.
His ideas are old and tired and incoherent. But count on him to package them as fresh and innovative, which they are not.
He is the male counterpart to Betsy DeVos.
He just cares about destroying public schools.
He wrote recently in The Miami Herald:
Last month marked two years since the pandemic swept across the country, causing the largest disruption to our nation’s education system in modern history. But at last, this spring brings an academic revival of sorts. Schools are remaining open, mask mandates are disappearing and plexiglass dividers between students in their classrooms are coming down.
In the rush to return to normal, we owe it to our nation’s children to emerge from this pandemic transformed, not by going backwards, but ready to forge a better future for them with all we’ve learned.
Our starting point is challenging. Prior to the pandemic, America’s public schools were struggling to serve the needs of students, and since the pandemic, a study by McKinsey found students have fallen months behind as a result of school closures and disruptions. There were severe impacts on student mental health, too. Pew Charitable Trusts found students are reporting significantly increased levels of grief, anxiety and depression.
It’s also no surprise that there’s a growing distrust in public education. A survey by Ipsos found trust in teachers declined during the pandemic, and there’s been a subsequent decrease in the number of students enrolling in public school.
Those are serious setbacks, but there are reasons for optimism. The pandemic put a spotlight on a myriad of possibilities for the future of education. Notably, it illustrated a desperate need by families for a broadened ecosystem of options for their children, with funding flexibility to create more equity in choice. And it elevated the power of parents to blaze new educational pathways for their children.
The Associated Press recently reported that homeschooling remains a popular choice for parents, despite schools reopening. And, private schools and public charter schools have witnessed increased enrollment. But choice, in and of itself, isn’t enough. Policymakers must continue to seek new ways to unbundle education systems, transforming old approaches into new and better learning options.
In Indiana, lawmakers, led by House Speaker Todd Huston, took the first step toward creating the nation’s first “parent-teacher compact” law. This innovative policy would allow parents to directly hire teachers. Educators would continue to be paid by the state and receive their health and retirement benefits, but this policy would enable parents and educators to enter into a peer-to-peer relationship to benefit individual students, without the hurdle of a district middleman. This individualized approach to education would give educators more freedom, families more flexibility and individual students the personalized experience they may need.
As we unbundle education, we need to reimagine all aspects of how education is delivered to students. One approach is enacting new part-time enrollment policies. Right now, students are defined by the school in which they’re enrolled.
Lawmakers can improve the education experience by allowing students to have more flexibility, whereby a student can enroll in their local public school and easily access a portion of their education funding to also enroll part-time in a private school, with an online provider, or engage in another learning experience that benefits the child’s education.
Another approach that complements unbundling is rethinking education transportation options. Last year, Gov. Doug Ducey awarded $18 million in grants to modernize Arizona’s K-12 transportation system, including direct-to-family grants to help close transportation gaps. In Oklahoma this year, Gov. Kevin Stitt proposed changing Oklahoma’s school transportation funding formula to expand how public school buses can serve students. And Florida’s Legislature recently passed legislation to create a new $15 million transportation grant program that encourages districts to create innovate approaches to school transportation, including carpooling and ride sharing apps, for both school-of-choice families and traditional school students.
Those are just a few examples, and we must continually look for more ways to unbundle and reimagine education. The pandemic saw an explosion of families, in all communities and from all demographics, embrace micro schools, homeschooling and customized learning pods. Rather than trying to limit these families, we should give them access to direct funds to further personalize and benefit their child’s out-of-school learning experience.
That’s what Gov. Brad Little has championed in Idaho. In response to school closures in 2020, Little used federal emergency COVID relief funds to provide direct grants to families to support students who were no longer learning in school. And this year, Little signed the Empowering Parents Grant Program into law, giving qualifying families up to $3,000 to use for tutoring, educational material, digital devices or internet connectivity….
Transforming our nation’s education system and ensuring students receive the individualized experience to unlock potential and lifelong success require continual forward momentum, especially after two years of disruptions. We have to keep moving, keep reimagining, keep transforming. This commitment to excellence is a point of pride for Florida.
Last year, Florida’s Legislature passed some of the most significant improvements and expansions to the state’s school-choice programs. And this year, lawmakers strengthened the charter school law, expanded the Florida Empowerment scholarship program, created a new financial literacy requirement for high school graduates and ensured parents are better informed of their child’s progress through online diagnostic progress monitoring and end-of-year summative tests.
This Pied Piper plays a tune meant to deceive. Ignore him.
Gloria Nolan is a parent of children enrolled in St. Louis public schools. She recently joined the board of the Network for Public Education.
She wrote the following article, which was published in the St.Louis Post-Dispatch.
She begins:
For about three years I worked for an organization that was invested in growing the charter school movement locally and around the country. Thankfully, I moved on, and now I fully support charter school reform, such as the reforms included in the new regulations for the federal charter school program proposed by Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. Here is why.
I fully began to realize what I was a part of during lunch when I had a chance to talk to the chief executive of The Opportunity Trust, Eric Scroggins. I rattled off a list of ideas I had for turning the public schools in the St. Louis district around.
That wouldn’t work, he responded. He said the objective was to burn the system down.
For Opportunity Trust and so-called reform movements like it, the key to school improvement is to replace public schools with charter schools, or public schools that act like charter schools. That is when I lost all faith in what charter proponents were selling.
And where do these charter schools go to get start-up and expansion funds? The federal Charter School Program…
The same special interest groups that promote organizations like The Opportunity Trust are fighting the very reasonable rules that [Secretary Miguel] Cardona has proposed to help clean up the mess. With a campaign of misinformation, the charter lobby led by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools promotes the extreme right’s support for stopping the proposed regulations.
As a Black woman, I find it hard to believe any news outlet that promotes fearmongering about critical race theory and features an op-ed that criticizes the regulations because their frequent use of the words “diversity” and “racial” has the best interests of my children at heart…
The one regulation that the charter lobby objects to the most is the requirement to do an impact analysis to see if the school is needed or wanted by the community. Given that more than 40% of charter schools close within their first 10 years, an impact sounds like common sense to me. This particular regulation is also in line with the implementation of the City-Wide Planning Committee and its call for a moratorium on the opening of new schools. The guidelines here locally were met with strong opposition from The Opportunity Trust and its supporters.
I have been on the inside of the reform/charter school movement. Its ultimate objective is to destroy our public school system by replacing it with a system of charter and voucher schools. These new regulations will not stop that. I wish they were stronger. But at the very least they could help ensure that our federal tax dollars will be given to charter schools that have better intentions than many of the schools that are receiving Charter School Program grants now.
Kerry McKeon recently received her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy from the University of Texas at San Antonio in December of 2021. Her dissertation focused on neoliberal rhetoric and its use in advancing the privatization of public schools. It is titled Neoliberal Discourse and the U.S. Secretary of Education: Discursive Constructs of the Education Agenda (2017-2020).
She writes, in a summary:
Corporate reform of education has taken hold in the U.S., with neoliberal values regularly propagated and normalized—even among some public-school leaders. I witnessed this transition firsthand, beginning as a U.S. Senate aide, and then over decades as classroom teacher. In recent years, one voice has echoed above the rest, as a consequence of her privilege, power, and opportunity: former Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.Listening to her stump again and again for the privatization of public education while pursuing my doctorate in educational leadership and policy, I became fixated on her language choices. The right words can make or break a given argument, and as a teacher, I know that language is the portal to meaning-making. So, I set out to investigate her linguistic and rhetorical strategies, as she sought to drive her neoliberal agenda forward.
Using a corpus of twenty-eight DeVos speeches over her four years in office, I explored the ways she tried to influencethinking around public education in favor of privatization—and how she aimed to normalize and naturalize certain neoliberal beliefs, while minimizing, discrediting, and ignoring other problems and solutions. Given the strength of her platform as education secretary, her messages were often replicated and amplified, while other vital voices in the education community were muted.
While others have explored the causes and effects of neoliberalism’s incursion into public education, little research explores how strategic linguistic maneuvers can reshape American ideas about public education over time. To understand and unpack her persuasive strategy, I identified and mapped thelinguistic formulas and frameworks she used to influence audiences in favor of neoliberalism. When I dissected her speeches, I found neoliberal ideology layered throughout—in everything from her word choices to the personal stories she shared.
For example, DeVos repeatedly expressed disdain for the federal government’s role in education, and advocated more power to individuals and to the private sector. Even with a D.C. officeaddress, she regularly attacked all things “Washington,” including education-advocacy groups, teachers’ unions, and other experts in education policymaking. She also lambasted the elusively defined “elites,” ranging from Democratic political donors to university scholars. While distancing herself from present-day government structures, she averred a near-mythical allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and founding fathers—arguing that current federal oversight in education violates the founders’ intent for the role of government.
Likewise, DeVos expressed economic values that criticize government spending and regulation, while promoting the private sector, marketplace competition, and the rights of the taxpayer. Her economic values were articulated through keywords that celebrate the free market: innovation, results, metrics, efficiency, prosperity—all while presuming that all free-market participantsare equally capable to prosper. In doing so, she disregarded stark and obvious social inequalities that make the market an unequal space.
DeVos eschewed virtually all discussions of inequity, except when it helped her make arguments for school reform or choice. In fact, she regularly employed keywords such as opportunity, choice, freedom and options, and downplayed language relating to economic, racial, or social injustices. DeVos also decentered and discounted teachers and teacher-led classrooms, advocating instead for increased use of classroom technology, including the much-touted personalized learning (technology-enabled learning that is moving schools to a greater reliance on data, data systems and other technology products).
Over and over, DeVos proposed radical change to public schools by rooting educational values in a marketplace reality. In order to do this, she distanced herself from public schools through “othering.” She described public schools as flawed, failing monopolies, consistently underperforming, and failing to innovate. At the same time, she glorified all manner of non-public schools—charter schools, magnet schools, online schools—regardless of their records, eschewing the results and metrics she so strongly promoted elsewhere. And she often plugged a skills-based curriculum with a jobs focus. DeVos sought to create a market of education choices and so-called freedom by depicting families as customers and education as a product, while paying no mind to how communities or the democratic purposes of education may be compromised by a commoditized education system. Rarely did she speak of the important role teachers play in advancing education, and ignored any equalizing effects of education on child poverty. Indeed, she asserted, without evidence, that school-choice fixes all problems with public schools and even went as far as to say that public schools are un-American when choice isn’t an option.
In my exploration of her speeches, I identified a pattern of strategies—a framework—which I call tiered operations for ideological impact that is rooted in how we think and process information. I found that DeVos’s neoliberal ideological language is evident on three levels in her speeches: the micro, the meso, and the macro.
On the micro-level, I found that her word choices delivered a constellation of concepts to the listener. By repeating a set of neoliberal keywords, the scene is set. DeVos aligns educational values with market values, including the belief that school systems should provide “profit opportunities” for capitalists, and the primary outcome of education is to produce employees with skills employable in the free market. She continues by dividing people and things into divisive categories like good or bad, friends or enemies. Just like a novelist focuses on character development, DeVos instructs her audience on who to love and who to fear. In her narrative, the public school system is a disaster. Her anointed heroes want to dismantle the system, while her anointed villains wish to protect it. DeVos is creative with word-formation, whereby two or more words are combined to create a word cluster. These blends are sometimes charged, seeking to provoke audience anxiety or anger. For example, her phrase “the shrill voices of the education lobby” may trigger the sensation of high pitched voices or scraping chalk on a blackboard). Conversely, the blends are sometimes intended to inspire (so-called, hooray words) and thereby assist in the marketing of her ideas to her audience. In both cases, the word clusters impact the way the brain processes information by blending two concepts into a new, unified concept.
On the meso-level, she uses topics to organize her individual speeches, selecting which topics are included or left out, which topics are foregrounded or backgrounded. Through her argumentation strategy, she asserts that opponents of school choice are attacking core American values such as freedom, patriotism, and human rights. By promoting such a polarized perspective, DeVos flattens the complexity of issues, to offer a simpler version of the world in line with her own perspectives. The process of limiting audience attention to a smaller focus is known as windowing. In the current discursive climate, where individuals are exposed to huge amounts of information every day, windowing is one way to manage information overload and guide an audience to embrace a particular worldview.
On the macro-level, DeVos uses her speeches to align with the cultural climate of the current historical moment. Of particular note are ways DeVos engages in relentless “othering.” She depicts a society divided between patriots who value educational freedom and choice, and a corrupt elite who value public education in the form of community schools. Her biased and misleading claims contribute to a crisis of confidence in education. She promotespublic education as a commodity to be bought and sold in a competitive marketplace, rather than as a collective common good. She elevates choice, while humanitarian discourse is undervalued. In the process, she damages the reputation of public education, contributing to the erosion of America’s commitment to public schools an equalizing institution.
Essentially, her discursive strategies amount to a cognitive suppression of certain humanitarian, social-justice values.Furthermore, DeVos participated in populist, anti-elite, and anti-establishment discourses by positioning the privatization of education as a grassroots effort to overthrow an oppressive system. In addition, she embraces an anti-expert and anti-intellectual worldview, as she attacks education advocates, teachers, local leaders, while elevating the education outsider: the education entrepreneur. These post-truth discourses characteristically appeal to emotion and partisanship over reason and rationality. DeVos may also be furthering anti-democratic work by disparaging others in the democratic process, including public schools and teachers’ unions.
Some might highlight that DeVos’s legislative accomplishments were few. Yet, ideological acceptance almost always comes before policy change. Thus, her impact may reveal itself in time. While she failed to meaningfully impact federal law in favor of neoliberalism, she succeeded in further normalizing ideas that continue to be taken up by Republican-led state legislatures. She succeeded in shifting the federal discussion on education from matters of equity and inclusion, to delivering a manifesto on the importance of flexibility, choice, and opportunity. Increasingly, Americans are more focused on individual educational needs than the needs of the larger community. She also reframed the shortcomings of public schools as an existential threat. By invoking a narrative of crisis and a politics of fear, she commands an increased power of persuasion and betrays the possibility of pursuing more practical, modest, and cooperative modes of change.
Neoliberal political and cultural values that currently inform education policy creation can be identified and decoded, by deconstructing and analyzing the political speech of prominent actors like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. A close look at her speeches revealed various cognitive triggers that attempt to persuade audiences. DeVos’s political speech contributes to a symphony of powerful voices in the education-policy community, whose messages are replicated and amplified, while other vital voices in the education community are muted. Public education advocates would do well to learn more about the rhetorical strategies through which neoliberal ideology is promoted
The National Education Association issued an appeal for educators and other concerned citizens: Raise your voice to stop the federal funding of corporate charter schools!
Now is your chance to be heard.
NEA writes:
Email the U.S. Department of Education to advocate for the end of corporate charter schools and support accountability and transparency for all schools taking our tax dollars.
Instead, big business boards and billionaires turned it into a money-making machine that benefits only themselves. The growth of these corporate charters has undermined local public schools and communities—taking taxpayer money with no oversight or any overall increase in student learning and growth.
The U.S. Department of Education is taking these very real issues seriously and is proposing an end to the support of corporate charter schools. We applaud this effort, but there will be loud voices paid by the billionaires running these schools to speak out against this positive step.
That’s why we need your voice. You can speak out in support of the Department of Education’s proposal to ban for-profit schools from applying for grants and receiving funds to open charters, and demand that charter schools be held to the same standards as traditional public schools.
You may use the sample message provided, but we encourage you to share your personal stories and examples. Tell the U.S. Department of Education how important it is to you personally that for-profit charter schools be held to the same accountability and transparency rules as public schools.
The Department of Education is seeking comments from the public about the proposed standards. When you send your letter through this form, it will be added to the federal register as part of the official request for comments and be made public. Written comments on this final rule should be received on or before April 13, 2022.
You can help by writing a personalized letter detailing stories and examples. The more personal the better!
Open the link to see the sample letter and instructions about contacting the Department of Education.
Tom Ultican, chronicler of the Destroy Public Education movement and retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics, investigated a strange occurrence in the District of Columbia: Two respected, experienced black educators were fired for refusing to adopt the practices of the so-called Relay “Graduate School” of Education. Relay is not a real graduate school. It has no campus, no research, no graduate programs. It was created by charter schools and recognized by their allies so that charter teachers could teach the tricks of raising test scores to other charter teachers and enable them to get a “master’s degree” from people who had never earned doctorate degrees. Relay’s textbook is Doug Lemov’s “Teach Like a Champion.” Relay does not offer the wide range of courses offered in real graduate schools.
He begins:
School leaders and teachers in Washington DC’s wards 7 and 8 are being forced into training given by Relay Graduate School of Education (RSGE). West of the Anacostia River in the wealthier whiter communities public school leader are not forced. When ward 7 and 8 administrators spoke out against the policy, they were fired. Two of them Dr. Carolyn Jackson-King and Marlon Ray, formerly of Boone Elementary School are suing DC Public Schools (DCPS) for violating the Whistleblower Protection Act and the DC Human Rights Act.
Jackson-King and Ray are emblematic of the talented black educators with deep experience that are being driven out of the Washington DC public school system. They are respected leaders in the schools and the community. When it was learned Jackson-King was let go the community protested loudly and created a web site publishing her accomplishments.
In 2014, Jackson-King arrived at the Lawrence E. Boone Elementary school when it was still named Orr Elementary. The school had been plagued by violence and gone through two principals the previous year. Teacher Diane Johnson recalled carrying a bleeding student who had been punched to the nurse’s office. She remembered fighting being a daily occurrence before Jackson-King took over.
In 2018, Orr Elementary went through a $46 million dollar renovation. The community and school board agreed that the name should be changed before the building reopened. Orr was originally named in honor of Benjamin Grayson Orr, a D.C. mayor in the 19th century and slave owner. The new name honors Lawrence Boone a Black educator who was Orr Elementary’s principal from 1973 to 1996.
Jackson-King successfully navigated the campus violence and new construction. By 2019, Boon Elementary was demonstrating solid education progress as monitored by the district’s star ratings. Boone Elementary is in a poor minority neighborhood. It went from a 1-star out of 5 rating when Jackson-King arrived to a 3-star rating her last year there….
Marlon Ray was Boone’s director of strategy and logistics. He worked there for 13-years including the last six under Principal Jackson-King. Despite his long history in the district, Ray was apparently targeted after filing a whistleblower complaint over Relay Graduate School. Ray questioned RGSE’s relationship with DCPS, the Executive Office of the Mayor and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. He implicated Mary Ann Stinson, the DCPS Cluster II instructional superintendent who wrote Jackson-King’s district Impact review that paved the way for her termination. In the lawsuit, Ray alleges that DCPS leadership responded by requiring him to work in person five days a week in the early months of the pandemic while most of his colleagues, including Jackson-King’s replacement Kimberly Douglas, worked remotely. This continued well into the spring of 2021.
In October of 2020, Ray joined with about 30 Washington Teacher’s Union members, parents and students to rally against opening school before it was safe. Ray reported that he received a tongue lashing from a DCPS administrator for being there and then 2-hours later receive a telephoned death threat. He reports the caller saying, “This is Marcus from DCPS; you’re done, you’re through, you’re finished, you’re dead.”
Ray’s position was eliminated in June, 2021…
In Washington DC, the mayor has almost dictatorial power over public education. Therefore, when the mayor becomes convinced of the illusion that public schools are failing, there are few safeguards available to stop the policy led destruction.
In the chart above, notice that all of the key employees she chose to lead DC K-12 education have a strong connection to organizations practicing what Cornell Professor Noliwe Rooks labeled “segrenomics.” In her book Cutting School (Page 2), she describes it as the businesses of taking advantage of separate, segregated, and unequal forms of education to make a profit selling school. Bowser’s first Deputy Mayor for Education, Jennifer Niles, was a charter school founder. Her second Deputy Mayor, Paul Kihn, attended the infamous school privatization centric Broad Academy. She inherited Kaya Henderson as DCPS Chancellor and kept her for five years. Kaya Henderson, a Teach For America alum, was the infamous Michelle Rhee’s heir apparent. The other two Chancellors that Bowser chose, Antwan Wilson and Lewis Ferebee, also attended the Broad Academy and both are members of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change….
The State Superintendent of Education who awarded $7.5 million in public education dollars to five private companies was Hanseul Kang. Before Bowser appointed her to the position Kang was a member of the Broad Residency class of 2012-2014. At that time, she was serving as Chief of Staff for the Tennessee Department of Education while her fellow Broadie, Chris Barbic, was setting up the doomed to fail Tennessee Achievement School District. In 2021, Bowser had to replace Kang because she became the inaugural Executive Director of the new Broad Center at Yale. Bowser chose Christina Grant yet another Broad trained education privatization enthusiast to replace Kang.
For background information on the Broad Academy see Broad’s Academy and Residencies Fuel the Destroy Public Education Agenda.)
Bowser and her team are in many ways impressive, high achieving and admirable people. However, their deluded view of public education and its value is dangerous; dangerous for K-12 education and dangerous for democracy.
The root of the push back against Relay training by ward 7 and 8 educators is found in the authoritarian approach being propagated. NPR listed feedback from dismayed teachers bothered by instructions such as:
Dr. Jackson-King noted, “Kids have to sit a certain way, they have to look a certain way. They cannot be who they are. Those are all the ways they teach you in prison — you have to walk in a straight line, hands behind your back, eyes forward.”
RSGE does not focus on education philosophy or guidance from the world’s foremost educators. Rather its fundamental text is Teach Like a Champion which is a guidebook for no excuses charter schools.
In her book Scripting the Moves Professor Joanne Golann wrote:
No excuses charter school founders established RGSE. In the post “Teach Like its 1885.” published by Jenifer Berkshire, Layla Treuhaft-Ali wrote, “Placed in their proper racial context, the Teach Like A Champion techniques can read like a modern-day version of the *Hampton Idea,* where children of color are taught not to challenge authority under the supervision of a wealthy, white elite….”
‘“Ultimately no-excuses charters schools are a failed solution to a much larger social problem,’ education scholar Maury Nation has argued. ‘How does a society address systemic marginalization and related economic inequalities? How do schools mitigate the effects of a system of White supremacy within which schools themselves are embedded?’ Without attending to these problems, we will not solve the problems of educational inequality. ‘As with so many school reforms,’ Nation argues, ‘no-excuses discipline is an attempt to address the complexities of these problems, with a cheap, simplistic, mass-producible, ‘market-based’ solution.’” (Page 174)
Legitimate education professionals routinely heap scorn on RSGE. Relay practices the pedagogy of poverty and as Martin Haberman says,
“In reality, the pedagogy of poverty is not a professional methodology at all. It is not supported by research, by theory, or by the best practice of superior urban teachers. It is actually certain ritualistic acts that, much like the ceremonies performed by religious functionaries, have come to be conducted for their intrinsic value rather than to foster learning.”
So these two courageous black professionals were fired for refusing to accept the harsh “no excuses” pedagogy designed for black children, designed to make them servile and obedient.
Their jobs should be promptly restored. Mayor Bowser has been captured by the forces of privatization and conformity. She should wake up. Some of the “no excuses” charter schools have recognized the harm they do to black children by treating them as clay to be molded, instead of human beings with vitality and interests who need to discover their talents and the joy of learning.
#BustEDPencils Live tonight at 8pm EST.
Michigan Public Schools Under Attack!
Mitchell Robinson for State Board of Education
CALL! 844.967.2789
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A writer who identifies here as quickwrit sent a comment to the U.S. Department of Education commending it for the proposed regulation of the federal Charter Schools Program, which dispenses $440 million a year to start new charter schools or expand existing ones. During the Betsy DeVos years, she showered many millions of dollars on some of the nation’s largest charter chains. Some, like the IDEA chain in Texas, received more than $200 million to grow their brand. Back when the program started, its founders envisioned small mom-and-pop charters or teacher-led schools that needed some money to get started. What they did not envision was the Walmartization of schools into giant corporate chains.
CHARTER SCHOOL FRAUD: The impartial, non-political watchdog Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report warning that so much taxpayer money is being skimmed away from America’s genuine public schools and pocketed by private corporate charter school operators that the IG investigation declared that: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting goals” because of financial fraud and their hidden ways for skimming of tax money into private pockets.
This is quickwrit’s message to the U.S. DOE:
There is NO SUCH THING as a “public charter school”. Charter school operators spend a lot of taxpayer money telling taxpayers that charter schools are “public” schools — but they are not. As the Supreme Courts of Washington State and New York State have ruled, charter schools are actually private schools because they fail to pass the minimum test for being genuine public schools: They aren’t run by school boards who are elected by, and therefore under the control of and accountable to voting taxpayers. All — ALL — charter schools are corporations run by private parties. Taxpayers have no say in how their tax dollars are spent in charter schools.
The Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) — which is funded by pro-charter organizations — has been conducting years-long research into the educational quality of charter schools. And yet even this charter-school-funded research center’s findings are that charter schools don’t do any better academically than genuine public schools. Moreover, CREDO reported that in the case of popular online charter schools, students actually lose ground in both reading and math — but online charter schools are the fastest-growing type of charter school because they make it easiest to skim away public tax dollars.
The racial resegregation of America’s school systems by the private charter school industry is so blatant and illegal that both the NAACP and ACLU have called for a stop to the formation of any more charter schools. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA summed it up, stating that charter schools are “a civil rights failure.” The catch-phrase “school choice” was concocted by racists following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that required racial integration in public schools. After that, racist organizations used racist politicians to conduct a decades-long attack that underfunded public schools and crippled their ability to provide the full measure of education and to “prove” that public schools were “failing”. Public school “failure” is an issue manufactured by racists organizations and politicians.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2019/03/29/report-the-department-of-education-has-spent-1-billion-on-charter-school-waste-and-fraud/#ab1fbdb27b64
Please send your own comments to:
Ohio knows charter schools. A lobbyist for the charter school industry wrote the law. Charter schools are mistakenly called “community schools.” Most charter schools in the state are failing schools, but that does not dim the enthusiasm of the GOP legislature for them. Ohio welcomes for-profit charter schools. Charters drain money from public schools.
For the first time in the history of the federal Charter Schools Program, which started in 1994, the federal U.S. Department of Education has proposed regulations to exclude for-profit management of charters that seek federal funding to expand and to require charters seeking federal funding to present a summary of their charter on the locality where they plan to open.
Jan Resseger, who lives in Ohio, sent the following appeal to her followers.
Please Support the Proposed USDOE Rule Changes for the Federal Charter Schools Program
Submit a comment supporting the Department’s new stronger regulations. You can submit your comment HERE, and you must submit the comment before April 13, 2022.
Please read Ohio Public Education Partners’ explanation of an urgently important development that requires our immediate attention. The U.S. Department of Education has published a notice in the Federal Register proposing new rules to strengthen oversight of the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP). It is urgently important for each one of us to write and submit a formal comment expressing support for stronger oversight of the Charter Schools Program.
First, even though the Elementary and Secondary Education Act forbids the allocation of federal dollars to for-profit charter schools, the owners of for-profit charter management organizations (CMOs) have learned how to get around the law. The U.S. Department of Education has proposed to stop the misallocation of federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) dollars to for-profit charter school management companies that hide behind the nonprofit charter schools they manage under sweeps contracts.
Second, when a charter school asks for Charter Schools Program startup funds, the Department has declared its intention to require a community impact statement to ensure that there is a need for a new charter school in the community and that the school won’t promote racial segregation. Neither should rapid expansion of charter schools undermine urban neighborhoods. The most serious consequence of out-of-control charter school expansion has been evident in large cities, where charter schools advertise lavishly to attract families from public schools.
Here is the language of the two urgently important rules the U.S. Department of Education proposes to add:
First — “Each charter school receiving CSP funding must provide an assurance that it has not and will not enter into a contract with a for-profit management organization, including a non-profit management organization operated by or on behalf of a for-profit entity, under which the management organization exercises full or substantial administrative control over the charter school and, thereby, the CSP project.”
Second — “Each applicant must provide a community impact analysis that demonstrates that there is sufficient demand for the proposed project and that the proposed project would serve the interests and meet the needs of students and families in the community or communities from which students are, or will be, drawn to attend the charter school, and that includes the following: (a) Descriptions of the community support and unmet demand for the charter school, including any over-enrollment of existing public schools or other information that demonstrates demand for the charter school, such as evidence of demand for specialized instructional approaches. (b) Descriptions of the targeted student and staff demographics and how the applicant plans to establish and maintain racially and socio-economically diverse student and staff populations, including proposed strategies (that are consistent with applicable legal requirements) to recruit, enroll, and retain a diverse student body and to recruit, hire, develop, and retain a diverse staff and talent pipeline at all levels (including leadership positions).”
Please submit a comment supporting the Department’s new stronger regulations. Don’t let yourself be intimidated by the complicated language and presentation of the new rules in the Federal Register. Begin your comment by thanking the Department of Education for strengthening long-needed accountability in this program. In simple prose, explain your support for each of the proposed new rules for the Charter Schools Program. In your comment, if you like, you may quote the language (above) of each rule followed by your reason for believing the new regulation is so important. Your comment may be as long or as short as you like—a few sentences or several paragraphs. Longer comments must be submitted as attached documents.
You can submit your comment HERE, and you must submit the comment before April 13, 2022.
If you are not planning to write your own comment, you may send the Network for Public Education’s action alert letter, but I urge you to personalize your letter by adding a few sentences of your own.
Jan Resseger
The federal Charter Schools Program was launched in 1994 with a few million dollars, when the Clinton administration decided to offer funding for start-ups. At the time, there were few charter schools. In the early, idealistic days, charter enthusiasts asserted that charters would set lofty goals and close their doors if they didn’t meet them. They were sure that charters would be far better than public schools because they were free to hire and fire teachers.
Right-wingers jumped on the charter bandwagon as a way to undermine public schools and to bust teachers’ unions. In short order, a gaggle of billionaires decided that charter schools would succeed because they operated with minimal or no regulation, like a business.
What no one knew back in 1994 was that the charter industry would grow to be politically powerful, with its own lobbyists. No one knew that the “most successful” charter schools were those that excluded the students who might pull down their test scores. No one knew that for-profit entrepreneurs would set up or manage charter chains and make huge profits, mainly by their real estate deals. No one knew that one of the largest charter chains would be run by a Turkish imam. No one knew that charter schools would develop a very old-fashioned militaristic discipline that prescribed every detail of a student’s life in school. No one knew that the little program of 1994 would grow to $440 million a year, with much of it bestowed on deep-pocketed chains that had no need of federal money to expand. No one knew that charter schools would become a favorite recipient of big money from Wall Street hedge-fund managers and billionaires like Bill Gates, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, John Arnold, Betsy DeVos, Reed Hastings, and many other billionaires and multi-millionaires. No one anticipated that by 2022, there would be 3.3 million students in more than 7,400 charter schools.
Perhaps most important, no one expected that charter schools, on average, would perform no better than public schools. And in many districts and states, such as Ohio, Nevada, and Texas, charter schools perform far worse than the public schools.
School choice has been a segregationist goal ever since the Brown Decision of 1954, when southern states created segregation academies and voucher plans to help white students escape from racial integration. It should be no surprise, then, to see that the same states that are passing laws to restrict discussion of racism, to ban teaching about sexuality and gender, and to censor books abut these topics are the same states that demand more charter schools. Coincidence? Not likely. These are culture war issues that rile the Republican base.
How strange then, given this background, that the Washington Post published an editorial opposing the Department of Education’s sensible and modest effort to impose new regulations on new charter schools that seek federal funding. The education editorial writer Jo-Ann Armao very likely wrote this editorial, since she has that beat. Armao was a cheerleader for Michelle Rhee when she was chancellor of the D.C. schools and imposed a reign of terror on the district’s professional staff, based on flawed theories of reform and leadership.
In the following editorial, she makes no effort to offer two sides of the charter issue (yes, there are two, maybe three or four sides). She writes a polemic that might have been cribbed from the press releases of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the amply endowed lobbyist for the industry. She gives no evidence that she has ever heard of the high closure rate (nearly 40%) of the charters that received federal funds from the Charter Schools Program. She seems unaware of the scores of scandals associated with the charter industry, or the number of charter founders who have been convicted of embezzlement. She doesn’t care about banning for-profit management from future grants. She thinks it’s just fine to set up new charters in communities where they are not needed or wanted. She seems unaware that the new regulations will not affect the 7,000 charters now in existence. Charters can still get start-up funding from Michael Bloomberg, the Waltons, or other privatizers. New charters can still be opened by for-profit entrepreneurs like Academica, but not with federal funds.
Here is the editorial, an echo of press releases written by Nina Rees of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (Rees previously worked at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, served as education advisor to Vice-President Dick Cheney, and worked for financier Michael Milken).
The editorial’s title is: “The Biden Administration’s Sneak Attack on Charter Schools.”
Advocates for public charter schools breathed easier last month when Congress approved $440 million for a program that helps pay for charter school start-up expenses. Unfortunately, their relief was short-lived. The Biden administration the next day proposed new rules for the program that discourage charter schools from applying for grants, a move that seems designed to squelch charter growth.
On March 11, a day after the funding passed, the Education Department issued 13 pages of proposed rules governing the 28-year-old federal Charter Schools Program, which funnels funds through state agencies to help charters with start-up expenses such as staff and technology. “Not a charter school fan” was Mr. Biden’s comment about these independent public schools during his 2020 presidential campaign, and the proposed requirements clearly reflect that antipathy.
The Biden administration claims that the proposed rules would ensure fiscal oversight and encourage collaboration between traditional public schools and charter schools. But the overwhelming view within the diverse charter school community is that the proposed rules would add onerous requirements that would be difficult, if not impossible, to meet and would scare off would-be applicants. Those most hurt would be single-site schools and schools led by rural, Black and Latino educators.
Consider, for example, the requirement that would-be applicants provide proof of community demand for charters, which hinged on whether there is over-enrollment in existing traditional public schools. Enrollment is down in many big-city school districts, which would mean likely rejection for any nonprofit seeking to open up a charter. “Traditional schools may be under-enrolled, but parents are looking for more than just a seat for their child. They want high quality seats,” said Nina Rees, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.Hence the long waiting lists for charter school spots in cities with empty classrooms in traditional schools. Also problematic is the requirement that charters get a commitment of collaboration from a traditional public school. That’s like getting Walmart to promise to partner with the five-and-dime down the street.
The Biden administration surprised the charter school community by what charter advocates called a sneak attack. There was no consultation — as is generally the case with stakeholders when regulations are being drafted — and the public comment period before the rules become final ends April 14.The norm is generally at least two months.
The proposed changes, according to a spokesperson for the Education Department, are intended to better align the Charter Schools Program with the Biden-Harris administration’s priorities. “Not a charter fan,” Mr. Biden said, and so bureaucratic rulemaking is being used to sabotage a valuable program that has helped charters give parents school choice.
If you disagree with this editorial, as I do, please send a comment thanking the Department of Education for proposing to regulate a program that has spun out of control and urging them to approve the regulations. Give your reasons.
If you think that charter schools have no need for federal funding when so many billionaires open their wallets for them, if you think that your community has enough charter schools, if you think that public schools must be strengthened and improved, if you want to stop federal funding of for-profit entrepreneurs, if you are tired of funding schools that never open, please write to support the U.S. Department of Education’s reasonable proposal to regulate the federal Charter Schools Program.
