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Florida: Stand Up to the Big Bully Ron DeSantis!

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2023 //
20

I had the pleasure of speaking by Zoom to a meeting of the Pastors for Florida Children. The event was reported by Baptist Global News.

The morning session was also addressed by Baptist minister and retired Arkansas Judge Wendell Griffen. Although we have never met, our messages were in synch: Do not let the authoritarian Governor Ron DeSantis intimidate you!

Baptist minister and retired Arkansas judge Wendell Griffen stood before an audience of faith leaders and education advocates in Tallahassee, Fla., March 9, pointed to his lapel and dared Gov. Ron DeSantis to have him apprehended for being politically and racially aware.

“I wore a ‘woke’ button on purpose. I want to get arrested for being woke. I plead guilty to being woke. I want to be convicted of being woke,” Griffen said during a prayer breakfast sponsored by Pastors for Florida Children.

Wendell Griffen

Griffen, a BNG columnist and pastor of New Millennium Church in Little Rock, urged the in-person and virtual interfaith and multiracial audience to be equally defiant of Florida’s political leaders. “Be a community of prophets but teach as one and correct, confront, organize, interact, defy, dissent, disrupt.”

Jewish, Christian and Muslim participants who prayed ahead of the speeches by Griffen and education historian Diane Ravitch focused on DeSantis’ prohibition of books that teach about racial injustice and inclusion….

Please open the link and read his bold, wise, and brave advice.

Ravitch opened with a double-barreled barrage at DeSantis’ efforts to dismantle freedom of inquiry in public schools.

“I write a daily blog, and I find that it’s being overwhelmed by the bad news from Florida,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything good coming from your elected officials. If anything, it seems to be building a more and more authoritarian empire to control the thinking of everybody in the state.”

She said DeSantis seems to be going out of his way to disprove Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous saying that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“Your governor and your legislature are trying to flatten that arc so that it does not bend
towards justice,” she declared.

Current political events in Florida do not impact public schools alone, Ravitch said. “Florida today is at the very apex of a movement to turn the clock back a century, to turn the clock back on religious freedom, on racial justice and on all the evolution we have experienced over this past century to make ours a more just society. Your governor is creating a model of thought control and calling it freedom. Every time I see him standing in front of a banner that says ‘freedom,’ I’m reminded of George Orwell’s 1984, where freedom equals slavery.”

The conservative attack on the concept of “woke” is another sign of burgeoning authoritarianism, she said.

“We have to redeem that word. It means being awake — awake to injustice, awake to history, awake to all the things that are wrong in our society and that have been wrong over the centuries. And his (DeSantis’) idea of woke is simply to eliminate critical thinking about history and even knowledge of history. And this is very dangerous.”

And that’s only the beginning.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Gender, History, Injustice, Lies, Racism, Resistance, Supporting public schools, Teaching

Arizona: Republican Legislators File Bills to Micromanage Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2023 //
23

The Arizona Republic reported that Republican legislators are focused on imposing new demands on the public schools, reflecting the rightwing cultural agenda. This is somewhat ironic since they previously used their power, when the Governor was Republican, to create a universal voucher program so that students can use public money to attend private schools that are entirely unregulated by the state.

Arizona lawmakers are seeking to reach deep into classroom operations with proposals to require the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, to designate which students can use which bathrooms and, once again, to limit how race and ethnicity are taught.

Those are in addition to proposals that would require gun safety training at schools and mandate that instructional materials and teacher lesson plans get posted online. Another bill would have the state Department of Education create a list of books banned from classroom use.

To some, these bills, among others, are a replay of recent legislative sessions, where the public school system became the turf for battles over hot-button cultural issues.

That ignores the changed political reality at the Capitol, with the arrival of a Democratic governor after more than a decade of unified GOP control, said Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association.

If the GOP actually cares about these issues, why don’t they put the same requirements on voucher schools? It appears that if you want to escape the GOP mandates, the way to do it to open a private school, where you are free to teach about race and gender, free of testing, free of any accountability.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Censorship, Education Industry, Republicans, Vouchers

When Kids with Diabilities Accept Vouchers, They Abandon Their Rights

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2023 //
16

A reader named JCGrim posted an important fact about vouchers: Voucher schools are not required to comply with the federal law that protects the rights of students with disabilities.

Vouchers are a backdoor scheme to make kids with disabilities disappear. Move them off the books & into unaccountable, unstable, non-transparent places.

The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) oppose vouchers on the grounds that voucher & voucher-like programs fail to comply with IDEA’s provision of a free, appropriate, public education (FAPE).

Position on Use of Public Education Dollars to Fund
School Vouchers and Other Voucher-Type Programs
Approved July 2020
pubpol@exceptionalchildren.org CEC opposes school vouchers and voucher-type programs for all children and youth including those with disabilities. Such programs are contrary to the best interests of all children and youth and their families, the public-school system, local communities, and taxpayers.

Here the link to the full position paper.

Click to access Public%20Funds%20-%202020.pdf

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Education Industry, Inequity, Injustice, Special Education, Vouchers

What Caused the Layoffs at a Successful Tech Company?

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2023 //
30

As you probably know, there have been many layoffs across the tech sector in recent months. At the same time, unemployment is close to a 50-year low, at 3.2%. Employers are raising wages to attract employees for low-wage jobs. Why is the tech sector in trouble? I’m no financial or corporate expert, so I can’t explain what is going on.

But something caught my eye as I read a story about Salesforce, which was both very successful and yet laying off 10% of its employees.

The company has been dogged by five activist investors in recent months, and is being pressured to cut costs, but the layoffs continue in spite of a stellar quarter. In fact, Benioff bragged to Swisher in bombastic fashion: “We had a great quarter. Yeah, it’s probably I think, it’s probably the best quarter of a software company ever.”

I clicked the link to see who those five activist investors who were demanding more cost cutting, no matter how it hurt morale at the company.

The first was Elliott Management. It rang a bell, but at first I didn’t remember why. More googling and soon I see the name Paul Singer.

Singer is a billionaire. Singer is a big supporter of charter schools. Singer is a rightwing Republican. Singer loves Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain; in addition to giving SA millions, he served on its board.

An article in Mother Jones a decade ago called Singer a “vulture capitalist” and a “fundraising terrorist.”

A few years back, the U.K. Independent said that Singer had destroyed Peru’s economy and was threatening Argentina’s. Again, “vulture capitalist.”

Singer has been called a “doomsday investor.” When he takes over, he sucks out the lifeblood.

This guide to “vulture funds” was published only a month ago.

I have been trying to understand the connection between vulture investing and the aggressive charters that suck the lifeblood out of their host, the public school system.

What do you think?

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Disruption, Economy, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy

Texas: What Governor Abbott Does Not Understand About Rural Schools

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2023 //
7

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have been pushing voucher legislation hard this year. Texas is one of the few red states that has not adopted voucher legislation for religious and private school tuition. The big stumbling block in the past has been a sturdy coalition of urban Democrats and rural Republicans.

Writing for ReformAustin, Jovanka Palacios explains here what Governor Abbott does not understand about rural schools.

Gov. Greg Abbott believes that touring rural areas where Republican members of the Texas House or Senate are against vouchers is enough to get them and their constituents on board with the “school choice” idea. But he seems to be overlooking one small detail: “rural public schools are the lifeblood of their communities.”

Keith Bryant, Superintendent of Schools in Lubbock-Cooper ISD, illustrates the effect of a voucher program in rural public schools best:

“They are unifiers, gathering places, and information providers. Many times they are the largest employers in their communities, and, often, school events are the largest draw of visitors to their towns. Disruptions to funding for rural schools are disruptions to the fabric of life in rural communities.”

In a state where the money follows the child, students dropping out of public schools would inevitably affect – an already scarce – budget. Those who oppose a “school choice” program argue that the Legislature should focus on increasing public school education funding, instead of diverting those dollars into a system that holds no accountability.

School funding isn’t that complex, Bryant told RA News, who explains school funding as a pie that everyone in public schools in Texas is sharing.

“Every public school in Texas is sharing this pie. If someone takes a slice out of the pie to fund vouchers for private schools or homeschooling, there is less pie remaining for Texas public schools.”

Open up the link at the Network for Public Education blog, where you will see the article as well as a link to the original.

Consider subscribing to the Network for Public Education blog, which is able to cover many more stories about education across the nation than I do. The blog is curated by the wonderful Peter Greene, who has an eye for great stories.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Democrats, Education Industry, Elections, Rural Schools, Texas, Vouchers

Stop Federal Funding for New Charters!

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2023 //
5

In the late 1980s, the charter idea was brand new. AFT President Albert Shanker thought that charter schools would develop innovative ways to help the students who struggled the most in schools. He envisioned charter schools as “research and development schools” that would learn new ways of reaching the most disaffected and turned off students. He saw them as laboratories created by teachers that would first get the permission of the entire school staff at a regular public school, then get the endorsement of the local school board. In his vision, charter schools would be part of the public school system, cooperating with public schools to share whatever they learned. He also saw them as unionized schools. He imagined them getting a charter for 3-5 years, showing what they learned, then being reabsorbed into the regular public schools if they had finished their mission.

His vision did not include for-profit charter schools. He imagined collaboration between public schools and charter schools, not competition. He did not imagine charter schools run by private corporations. He did not imagine charter schools as privately managed schools run by corporations, chains, or non-educators.

When he realized that the charter idea had been corrupted by privatizers and that they had become a means of breaking teachers’ unions, he turned against charters and concluded that they were no different from vouchers. To Al Shanker, they had turned into a first step on the road to privatizing public education.

Back before the disillusionment set in, the Clinton administration authorized a federal Charter Schools Program to fund the opening of new charter schools; federal dollars were needed to jumpstart more charter schools. At its inception in 1994, the new program had a few million dollars. At the time, there were only a few hundred charter schools in the nation.

Since 1994, the federal Charter Schools Program has grown to a yearly expenditure of $440 million under the astute encouragement of the charter lobby, but between one-third and 40% of the charters funded by the federal government either never open at all or close within a couple of years. The number of failed federally funded charters has grown even larger in the past few years, as Carol Burris’s letter below documents (also see here and here.)

According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, there are now nearly 8,000 charter schools in the nation, enrolling 7.5% of all public school students. (Of course, opinions are sharply divided about whether charter schools are “public” schools, since they are not overseen by elected school boards and court decisions usually rule that charters, unlike public schools, are “not state actors.”)

The time has come to ask, why is the federal government still paying to launch new charter schools? The charter sector seems to be multiplying quite well without federal aid. It is now typical for charter schools to accept not the neediest students, but the most promising ones. They drain students and resources from the public schools, which enroll nearly 90% of students. With so many deep-pocketed backers in the philanthropic sector and on Wall Stree (Walton, Gates, Bloomberg, and a never of hedge funders)t, why do new charters need federal aid?

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, recently wrote a letter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, Deputy Secretary Cindy Marten, and Deputy Assistant Adam Schott, calling on the US. Department of Education to stop funding the federal Charter Schools Program.

I ask you, dear readers, to send a similar letter to urge the end to funding a failed federal program that is no longer necessary, if it ever was.

Here is Carol Burris’s letter:

Secretary Miguel Cardona (miguel.cardona@ed.gov)

Deputy Secretary Cindy Marten (cindy.marten@ed.gov)

Deputy Assistant Adam Schott (adam.schott@ed.gov)

Dear Secretary Cardona, Deputy Secretary Marten, and Deputy Assistant Schott:

On behalf of the 350,000 Network for Public Education members, I am writing to ask that you do not fund the Federal Charter School Programs in the FY 2024 budget. Here are the reasons why.


First, enrollment in charter schools between 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 declined by 5,323 students. That decline was identified using NCES data. The “surge” in charter enrollment was predominantly in low-quality online schools during the prior year. The need for more charter schools is not there. 


Second, a recent program audit by the Department’s Office of the Inspector General report found that of the grants issued between 2013 and 2016, only 51% of the schools promised by CSP recipients opened or expanded. 


Third, there has not been an opportunity to find out whether or not the new regulations are, in fact, being properly implemented by the State Entities and the CMOs. 


The nearly half-billion dollars saved can be used to reduce the budget deficit or, better yet, to fund our public schools.

Thank you for taking the time to read this email, for the courage to withstand the pressures to back down on the new regulations, and for all that you do for our children every day.


Carol Burris

Executive Director

The Network for Public Education

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, U.S. Department of Education

Ohio: Voucher Expansion Will Transfer $1.13 Billion from Public Schools to Adults

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2023 //
11

Steve Dyer is a veteran analyst of Ohio education issues, as a former legislator and think tank budget expert. He writes here about the latest expansion of Ohio’s failed voucher program. When an independent evaluation of the Ohio voucher program was previously carried out, it concluded that kids who leave public school to use a voucher lose ground academically. The evaluation was sponsored by the Fordham Institute. Do not be fooled by the misleading summary written by Fordham staff.

In this post, he shows where the money is coming from and where it’s going:

Now that the Ohio Legislative Service Commission has officially costed out the so-called “Backpack Bill”, we know for certain that this bill has nothing to do with “rescuing” kids from “failed” public schools. It’s all about publicly subsidizing the adults who can already afford to send their kids to private school.

The LSC analysis proves definitively that the bill would instantly provide public funding to about 90,000 Ohio students who do not currently receive it. It would be through vouchers, education savings accounts, homeschoolers (including those being taught Nazi ideology) and other various devices all adding up to an additional $1.13 billion. All while the legislature is talking about massive tax cuts and continues to short-change the needs of the 90% of students in Ohio’s public schools.

These are not students who are leaving public schools. These are students who are already in private schools, whose parents can already afford private schools and who attend schools that are not audited by the state to ensure they are actually educating a single student we’re paying them to educate.

Sounds like a great idea to me! I mean, Ohio’s never had an issue with privately run schools billing the state for millions of dollars to educate kids they never actually had, right? Oh yeah, except for the ECOT scandal that was about 40% bigger than the biggest public bribery case ever brought in the state.

It would be one thing if Ohio’s private schools were doing an awesome job. However, we know that about 90% of the time, kids in Ohio’s public schools test better than students attending private schools in the same cities. We also know that the students taking vouchers are significantly more white than the communities they are from.

At this point on the post, Dyer adds the data from different counties.

This Universal Voucher bill would put an additional $1.13 billion into a program that would provide taxpayer subsidies to adults who send their kids to unaccountable schools that perform markedly worse than Ohio’s public schools all while further segregating our kids and communities by race.

Open the link to finish the post and see the data.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Ohio, Vouchers

Miami Herald: “Parental Rights” Is the Battle Cry of Extremists

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2023 //
22

The GOP is always in search of slogans that rile up their angry base and distract them from the fact that the Republicans have no new ideas or policies to improve anyone’s life, other than tax cuts for the 1%.

Thus, the GOP wants to ban “critical race theory” in the schools, even though it is taught as a graduate course in some law schools, not K-12. They want to ban books about race and gender. Their current slogan is “parental rights,” which means that parents must approve what is taught. “Parental rights” is an insanely slippery slope because parents do not agree. Some white parents want to ban Black history, but other parents—Black and white—don’t. Which parents get to control the curriculum?

The Miami Herald editorial board published an editorial criticizing the far-right extremists of “Moms for Liberty,” who have seized on the issue of “parental rights.”

The Miami Herald editorial board says that “parental rights” is not about “true education. It’s another shot fired in Florida’s culture wars.” This effort to replace the professional judgment of teachers with the grievances of rightwing extremists explains why the state of Florida has thousands of vacancies in teaching.

Perhaps there’s no more potent political strategy — and misnomer — than the appropriation by conservatives of the term “parental rights.”

Gov. DeSantis has announced he is targeting more than a dozen school board members in next year’s elections, including Miami-Dade County’s Luisa Santos, who’s considered liberal. The Republican vision for school boards is “pro-parent” and “pro-kids,” in the words of Republican Party of Florida Chair Christian Ziegler, the Herald reported.

Their narrative goes that to be “pro-parent” you must not want your children exposed to topics like “critical race theory,” or you only support a whitewashed version of this country’s history of racism. Being pro-kid means you don’t want them to learn that there are men who date men, women who date women and people who don’t identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. It means you want school libraries sanitized from content that might offend your sensibilities.

It means that there’s one way to look at America and education and anyone with a different opinion be damned, called names like leftist, communist, anti-American.

It’s as if only groups like Moms for Liberty represent what parents want. The group seems more preoccupied with banning books than concerned that too many kids in our schools cannot read at grade level. The leader of its Miami chapter once called the protests after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police “race wars” and repeated QAnon conspiracy theories on Instagram, Politico reported.

To be a parent, under this definition, means to be a conservative in the most extreme sense of the word. So much for the parents who want teachers to speak freely in the classroom. And what about Black parents who want their children’s life experiences to be reflected in school material and who worry their children will suffer from Florida’s attack on how educators can discuss race? They, too, have a right to recourse when their public schools fail to follow a state mandate that Black history be taught. The Herald reported this month that only 11 of Florida’s 67 school districts have developed a plan for teaching African-American studies, and that DeSantis and the Legislature have in the past rejected requests for more resources.

Very little is said about these parents in the so-called parental-rights movement. But, oh, watch out for teachers and librarians indoctrinating our children!

It’s undeniable that there are many parents who agree with DeSantis, who won reelection in November by a margin unheard of in Florida. Without a doubt, the momentum turned in favor of conservatives after parents of all political stripes became frustrated with school closures and mask mandates during the pandemic. If hindsight is 20-20, closing schools did do some damage, as evidenced by declining student achievement across the country. That has turned the assumption that school officials know best how to educate students on its head. Still, closing schools also likely saved many lives, which should count for something.

However, what should have led to a healthy debate on parental participation in education, unfortunately, has been co-opted by culture wars.

Politics 101 says that anger and frustration are the best motivators. People don’t usually organize to keep things as they are. There’s no organized movement to counter or redefine what parental rights mean. Where are the “Moms for the Truth” or “Dads for the Proper Teaching of History?”

The groups that do exist are getting overshadowed by groups like Moms for Liberty, which DeSantis and the media have propped up as the only valid version of parental dissatisfaction with public education.

DeSantis and the Republican Party aren’t hiding their agenda to transform school boards from local nonpartisan bodies into an arm of partisan politics. Opposition has all but been neutered as the Democratic Party has pretty much given up on Florida.

Without a clear opposing point of view on what parental rights means, the loudest voices will dominate. Soon, local control over K-12 will be replaced with a top-to-bottom remake of education that serves only one type of parent and one — blindered — way of thinking.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida, Parent Groups, Teachers

“Abbott Elementary” Knocks Charter Schools and Pennsylvania’s Richest Man

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2023 //
23

I watched the latest episode of the award-winning “Abbott Elementary” show a few days ago and was pleased to see that the show depicted the predatory nature of many urban charters, as well as their super-powerful rich funders.

The teachers at Abbott, a local public school, heard the rumor that the local charter chain wants to take over their school. They are alarmed. They have heard that the teachers are forced to teach scripted lessons. They know that the charter won’t acccept all the neighborhood children. A mother shows up and asks if Abbott will take her son Josh back: he was ejected by the local charter school, Addington, for not having the right stuff. The teachers say, “That means that his test scores were not high enough for the charter.”

The principal, probably the least qualified educator at Abbott, says that turning charter will mean that the school will be renovated and get more resources. What’s wrong with that? She does not realize that if the school goes charter, she will be the first one fired.

The Philadelphia Inquirer wondered if the popular TV show was taking a swipe at Jeffrey Yass, who has donated millions to charter schools. Yass, an investor, is worth $33 billlion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Abbott Elementary, the ABC comedy about a fictional Philadelphia public school, took what sounded like a shot at Pennsylvania’s richest man in last week’s episode while knocking charter school backers.

At least one Jeff Yass fan is not laughing.

» READ MORE: Who is Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania’s billionaire investor and political funder?

In the episode, teachers worry a charter school operator might take over their school.

“They take our funding, not to mention the private money from wealthy donors with ulterior motives,” said Sheryl Lee Ralph, who plays teacher Barbara Howard, (and is married to State Sen. Vincent Hughes.)

Yass, a Main Line billionaire investor, has spent millions to support charter schools and political action committees that push for the election of candidates who share his goals.

Jeanne Allen, founder of the Center for Education Reform and director of The Yass Foundation for Education, was not amused when folks on Twitter linked that line to Yass.

She tweeted: “It’s pathetic when fewer than 20% of Philadelphia students can even read, write or spell at grade level that there’s a show on television that has the nerve to criticize the schools that succeed, and the people that help them. This has TEACHERS UNION written all over it.”

Actually, 36% of the city’s students scored proficient or advanced on the state standardized English language arts exam in the latest results available. That’s not great. But its certainly not “fewer than 20%.”

Allen, in an email to Clout, called the line a “gratuitous slap against people with wealth” and complained that this was not the first “hollow, evidence-lacking shot at charter schools.”

She also said she has not watched the episode and does not plan to.

Quinta Brunson created Abbott Elementary, inspired by her mom, a kindergarten teacher, and her experiences in a West Philly public school. An instant sensation, the award-winning show is in its second season, with a third planned.

“Abbott Elementary” is a delightful, lighthearted show about life in a typical urban elementary school. I recommend it. It’s a shame that Jeanne Allen refuses to watch it. Undoubtedly she would hate it because it shows a public school in a positive light, where teachers deal with their personal and professional problems and where students are lively and engaged.

It’s not surprising that she hates it because it undermines her core message that all public schools are failing. The fact that she misrepresented the city’s test scores is also not surprising. The Inquirer felt it necessary to correct her.

The fact is that a 36% proficiency rate is impressive for a city with high poverty rates. As I have said again and again, “proficiency” on the NAEP tests does not mean “grade level” or “average.” It means mastery of the material. It is equivalent to an A.

As for Jeffrey Yass, Jeanne Allen has good reason to jump to his defense. She administers the “Yass Prize” for charter school excellence, which awards millions to successful charter schools. Earlier this year, one of the the Yass Prizes was awarded to a charter school with a 100% college acceptance rate but abysmal test scores. A large number of colleges accept every applicant. Poor vetting by Jeanne Allen’s Center for Education Reform.

This is Wikipedia on Jeff Yass’s political contributions, which are tilted far-right:

Yass became a member of the board of directors of the libertarian Cato Institute in 2002[12][13] and now is a member of the executive advisory council.[14] In 2015, Yass donated $2.3 million to a Super PAC supporting Rand Paul‘s presidential candidacy.[15] In 2018 he donated $3.8m to the Club for Growth, and $20.7m in 2020.[16]

Yass and his wife, Janine Coslett, are public supporters of school choice, with Coslett writing a 2017 opinion piece for the Washington Examiner in support of then-incoming Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos‘s views at school choice.[17]

In November 2020, it was reported that Yass had donated $25.3 million, all to Republican candidates, and was one of the ten largest political donors in the US.[1]

In March 2021, an investigation in Haaretz said that Jeff Yass and Arthur Dantchik were behind a large portion of the donations to the Kohelet Policy Forum in Israel.[18][19]

In November 2021, he donated $5 million to the School Freedom Fund, a PAC that runs ads for Republican candidates running in the 2022 election cycle nationwide.[20]

In June 2022 Propublica claims Yass has “avoided $1 billion in taxes” and “pouring his money into campaigns to cut taxes and support election deniers”.[21]

When will Democrats wake up to the fact that charters and vouchers are the tools of the Destroy Public Educatuon movement?

Allen is right to avoid seeing Abbott Elementary. It is definitely off-message for the charter lobby, which insists that public schools are of necessity “failing schools.”

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Humor, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Greg R. Flick: Now This Is a Valuable Role for Charter Schools! I Love It!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2023 //
18

The first charter school opened in 1991. Since then, charters have expanded exponentially. There are now more than 7,000 of them. Originally, charters had bipartisan support.

Bill Clinton loved the charter idea and created the federal Charter Schools Program to fund new charter schools, a modest expenditure of $6 million a year (that has since ballooned into $440 million a year, most of which has gone to grow big, wealthy charter chains).

President Barack Obama also loved charter schools , as did his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. When Congress pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy to stave off an economic collapse in 2009, it allocated $100 for schools. $95 billion went to public schools. $5 billion was set aside for the U.S. Department of Education to use as it wished for “education reform.”

Secretary Duncan, aided by helpers from the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, launched a competition among the states to win a share of $4.35 billion. But the states’ eligibility to participate in Race to the Top depended on their complying with certain demands: the states had to agree to open more charter schools, to evaluate their teachers by the test scores of their students, to restructure or close schools with low test scores, to adopt national standards (I.e., the Common Core, not yet finished, never tested).

Race to the Top gave a huge boost to charter schools.

But reality intruded. Large numbers of new charters opened. Large numbers of charters closed, replaced soon by others. Charter scandals proliferated. Get-rich-quick entrepreneurs opened charter schools; grifters opened charter schools. Some charter leaders paid themselves more than big-city superintendents. Highly successful (I.e. high test scores) charters carefully curated their students, rejecting or removing those who had low scores, excluding students with disabilities.

The charter sector began to act like an industry, with its own lobbyists in D.C. and in state capitols. Sometimes the charter lobbyists wrote state legislation to assure that there was little or no accountability or oversight or transparency Fort the public funds they received.

Of course, the charter lobby maintained a strong public relations presence, booking appearances for their paid spokespeople on national TV and in the press. When state legislatures met to vote in the budget, the charters hired buses to bring thousands of students and parents to demand more money and more charters. They were coached to use the right words about the success of charters.

Since charters have been around for more than 30 years, the research on them is consistent. Their test scores, on average, are about the same as regular schools, even though they have much more flexibility. Some get high scores (typically the ones with high attrition rates who got rid of the students they didn’t want), some got very low scores. Most were in the middle. The Cybercharters were the worst by every measure: low graduation rates, poor academics, high teacher turnover, expensive for the low quality but very profitable.

Were they innovative? No. Those considered “successful” operated with 19th century modes of strict discipline. Some substituted computers for teachers.

Charters fell under a cloud when Donald Trump became President and sooointed choice zealot Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education. She plugged vouchers and charters and choice. Most Democrats in Congress began to open their eyes and understand that charters were a prelude to vouchers. DeVos’s strident advocacy for charters made most Democrats remember their party’s historic legacy as a champion of public schools, real public schools , not privately managed schools that were Public in Name Only.

So, where stands the charter idea now? Charters are admired and thriving (at least financially, if not academically) in red states. Most Democrats understand that the preservation and improvement of public schools is central to the party’s identity.

A reader of the blog came up with a sensible redefinition of the mission of charter schools. Since they have the freedom to try out new ideas, they should serve the neediest children. They should do whatever it takes—not to raise their test scores—but to educate the children who have struggled in regular schools. Let the charters innovate—their original mission—free of the burden of being labeled “failing” or “low performing.” Let them work their magic for the children who need it most, not for the high achievers who would succeed in any school.

Greg R. Flick, a reader of the blog and himself a blogger (“What’s Gneiss for Education”)) sent this perceptive comment about what charters should do to be truly useful to American education and to provide an exemplary service:

It seems that if we believe the narrative the charters push, we should flip the system on its ear. Let the charters be the default schools for the kids who can’t function in the public schools. Let’s have the public schools be able to cream their student populations, select only the students they want to have…the “easier” students, and have the charters be required to take those kids kicked out of the public schools.

Charters with their smaller classes and “freedom” to innovate will finally be able to help those kinds of kids. And since they are public schools (as they keep on telling us repeatedly) they can’t gripe about taking in the hard nuts, the Special ed kids, the ones with behavioral issues, etc.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Class size, Clinton, Creativity, Democracy, Democrats, Deregulation, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Freedom, Funding, Innovation, Obama, Reign of Error, Republicans, Special Education
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