The Charter Lady, former Representative Marty Walz, who is now associated with the hedge funders DFER, thinks that the schools of Massachusetts are in awful trouble. Why? Because they have elected school boards. If only Wall Street financiers and friends of the Walmart-Waltons ran all the schools, then the state might amount to something.
How stupid is that? Massachusetts is far and away the top scoring state in the nation.
School boards across the state are furious. More than 112 have passed resolutions opposing Question 2. Not a single school board supports it.
If Walz had her way, then there would only be individual, non-elected boards comprised of corporate and financial executives to oversee a school or a network of schools. So, if any students leave a school or network (whether encouraged to do so by that school/network or not), then the school (or network) responsibility ends there.
Massachusetts would be free to emulate Louisiana’s all-charter Recovery School District (RSD), a “portfolio” district (one where “there is no single entity responsible for all children”)– and one where assistant superintendent Dana Peterson publicly admitted that he doesn’t know how many students just disappear from those portfolio-ed, New Orleans schools.
Mercedes adds:
Walz does not like that Boston Public Schools receives funds to offset its losing students to charter schools. Yet if there is to be compulsory education, there must be a system of schools in which students might enroll at any time. There must be a default system, a “catch all.” Otherwise, there will be students without a school to attend, for whatever reason, including the fact that Massachusetts charters are not required to backfill empty seats in all grades– which means the charters are off the hook for adding a single latecomer student to a number of grade level cohorts.
Unfortunately, the need for a catch-all combined with non-locally-controlled charters tends to create a dual school system– and a dual school system tends to foster segregation.
The Charter Lady is thrilled that out of state money is pouring in to destabilize communities and privatize public schools.
Her reasoning is seriously flawed, as is her knowledge of education and research.
Our reader Jack Covey watched the Boston Globe debate about Question 2 closely and reports here, with links. Question 2 seeks to add a dozen charter schools every year without end. The state board already demonstrated in Brockton that it is willing to impose a charter school even if the community opposes it. The “choice” is made by the state board, not by parents.
Charter critics complained that charter boards have few if any parents of the children or members of the local community on them. The charter advocate explained that it’s a very good thing to have school boRds run by financiers because democracy is the problem. Charters can simply close if they don’t produce test scores. Of course, we know that’s not true. There are thousands of charter schools that have lower scores than the neighborhood public schools, and the charters are not closed. As many readers on this blog have noted, scores are not the only or best way to measure the value of community public schools. Closing public schools doesn’t help them, and a policy of charter churn doesn’t help children or communities.
What the charter advocates seem to say is that affluent communities can have democracy, but poor communities are not ready for self-governance. I think that’s called colonialism.
How embarrassing for Massachusetts that the “reformers” there rely on the Waltons and Wall Street to extinguish democracy in black communities.
At one point, the Female Moderator cites how,
with rare exceptions almost none of the Board
Members for charter schools are parents, or
live in the community. Instead, they are
corporate and financial executives who are
not elected by onyone. The charters are in
low income communities, and everyone on
their boards of directors are businesspeople
from upscale communities. Therefore, there’s
no mechanism by which thisparents or taxpaying
citizens in the communities in which these
charters are locatedcan execute any kind of
decision-making power, or that those charter
boards can be held accountable.
The response from Charter Lady Marty Walz is
basically.
“So what?”
… or that such a “local control” democratic system —
via democratically elected school boards — sucks
and should be done away with anyway.
BOSTON GLOBE:
“It is local control that got us into this situation that we’re in, where tens of thousands of children are being left behind by their local district schools,” said Marty Walz, a former Democratic state representative, fending off a question about the large number of corporate and financial executives who sit on the boards of Massachusetts charter schools.
MARTY WALZ:
“The reason charter schools exist is because local school districts have wholly failed to educate far too many children in this state,”
Walz said at the debate, which featured an audience of partisans hissing and clapping at various points.
Walz then says that the accountability mechanism — the only one needed, she claims — is that if the charter schools fail to perform, they can be closed. That’s ultimate accountability, she argues.
That’s like recommending the Death Penalty — going only to that — rather than fixing the schools while the schools are alive.
I guess the response to that is …
“How about parents and taxpaying citizens being able to hold charter governance accountable WHILE THOSE CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE STILL IN OPERATION… before the “ultimate accountability” of closing those schools occur?
… is complaining about. The scenario that Charter Lady Walz is defending and promoting creates a scenario for major corruption and egregious mis-management … and discovery and correction of such malfeasance can only happen IF— and it’s a big IF — the charter industry operates with some transparency in regards to the tax money is is spending, which they, as a rule, most certainly DO NOT. Indeed, it’s a big IF because those same charter folks fight tooth-and-nail any attempts to audit their books, or their admissions and expulsions policies, etc.
Eva at Success Academy has sued multiple times to prevent any examination of her organization.
The whole controversy regarding funding S.A.’s Pre-K is about this.
KIPP got Arne Duncan’s Ed. department’s okay to hide all this information from the public
The Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch reported that the KIPP charter chain received permission from Arne Duncan and U.S. Dept. of Education one that can only be discovered and corrected AFTER these outrages occur.
Here’s that part from the debate:
(34:30 – )
(34:30 – )
FEMALE MODERATOR: “Representative Walz, for some who oppose Question 2, one of the issues that it comes down to is this, and I’m going to paraphrase Carol Burris, she’s a former New York high school, and she says:
CAROL BURRIS:
” ‘The democratic governance of our public schools is a American tradition worth saving.’
” … and then the Annenberg institute for school reform at Brown University earlier this year released a study, and they analyzed EVERY board for EVERY charter school in the state of Massachusetts. and they found that ..
“31% of trustees (school board members) statewide are affiliated with the financial services or corporate sector. Only 14% were parents.
“60% of the charter boards had NO parent representation on their boards WHATSOEVER.
“Those that DID were largely confined to charter schools that served MOSTLY WHITE students.
“Here’s an example: City on a Hill (Charter) Schools in Roxbury — again, this is according to the Annenberg Institute Report — has schools in Roxbury and New Bedford, (has a) 14-member board, trustees for all three of those schools.
“ONLY ONE member of the board lives in New Bedford. Three live in Boston, but NONE in Roxgury. The rest live in (upscale communities) Brookline, Cambridge, Cohasset, and Hingham.
“So they (at Annenberg) ask:
” ‘How can those charter schools be considered locally controlled and locally accountable?’ ”
Charter Lady Walz responds by claiming — and winning applause from the charter folks stacked in the audience — that local control through school boards has “wholly failed’ to produce quality schools and educate children, and need to be wiped out. Those in the audience are cheering the end of democracy? Really?
Wait. Isn’t Massachusetts the highest achieving state in the U.S.? Really? She says that democratically-governed schools with elected school boards in Massachusetts have “wholly failed” students? Really?
At another point in the debate, Charter Lady claims their group is about improving all types of schools, but here she is recommending replacing all of them with privately-managed charter schools. So which is it?
The Moderator interrupts by insisting that Charter Lady answer the question about accountability, and Charter Lady brings up the only method needed — the Death Penalty AND THAT’S IT…. but no accountability while those schools are actually open. And we need to watch John Oliver again to find out how well that works out:
Charles Pierce is an incisive blogger for Esquire. Whenever he writes about schools, he is right on. In this post, he warns people in Massachusetts against a Question 2, which would expand the number of charters by 12 a year forever. Pierce knows that hedge fund managers and billionaires the funding this campaign, and the proposal is deliberately deceptive, appealing to people to improve their public schools. The real purpose, as we know, is to undermine public schools and fund privately managed schools that do not answer to the community that pays the taxes to support them.
Pierce quotes liberally from Carol Burris’s excellent report on the lack of oversight of charters in California.
He writes:
“There’s now a bill before Governor Jerry Brown that would tighten the public accountability standards for charter operators within the state. The evidence is now abundantly clear in a number of states: As it is presently constituted, the charter school movement is far better as an entry vehicle for fraud and corruption than it is for educating children. The fact that the charter industry is fighting to maintain its independent control over taxpayer funds is proof that the industry knows it, too.”
Wow! I have seen billionaires put money into elections on behalf of charter schools around the country, but this one takes the cake.
Alice Walton and Jim Walton of Arkansas really want Massachusetts to have more charter schools. They must be very unhappy that the public schools of the Bay State are #1 in the nation. Clearly, the state needs disruption and market forces to shake up its highly successful school system.
Mercedes Schneider writes that the two Waltons gave $1.828,770 to the campaign in Massachusetts to increase the number of charters in the state by a dozen a year in perpetuity.
Mercedes writes:
According to the September 09, 2016, filing of the Massachusetts ballot committee, Yes on 2, billionaire Arkansas resident Alice Walton is one of two individuals providing the $710,100 in funding to promote MA Question 2, raising the charter school cap.
Alice Walton provided $710,000.
A second contributor, Massachusetts resident Frank Perullo provided $100 in order to establish the committee.
And then, the Alice Walton cash was moved to another Question 2 ballot committee: $703,770.29 of Alice Walton’s Yes on 2 committee money was expended to fund Question 2 ballot committee, Campaign for Fair Access to Quality Public Schools, where it was combined with billionaire Arkansas resident Jim Walton’s contribution of $1,125,000, thus making the total Walton contribution to the two committees $1,835,000 (and total Walton contribution to the latter committee, $1,828,770.29).
The Campaign for Fair Access total on its Sept 09, 2016, filing was $2,292,183 for 43 contributors– with 79 percent of that money ($1,828,770 / $2,292,183) arriving from two out-of-state billionaires.
In other words, 95 percent of contributors (41 out of 43) provided only 21 percent of the total funding on the Campaign for Fair Access Sept 2016 report.
I can almost hear the conversation between Alice and Jim:
“You buy this Massachusetts ballot committee, and I’ll buy that one.”
“Done.”
The Waltons are not the only out-of-state billionaires using their wealth to influence the charter cap in a state in which they do not reside. According to the September 09, 2016, filing of the Question 2 ballot committee, Great Schools Massachusetts, other out-of-state billionaire/lobbying nonprofit contributors include the following:
John Arnold (Texas), $250,000
Michael Bloomberg (New York), $240,000
Education Reform Now (ERN) Advocacy (New York), $250,000
Families for Excellent Schools (FES) Advocacy (New York), $5,750,000
She points out that the lobbying groups need not report their donors, so no one will know which billionaires chipped in to the campaign to privatize the public schools of Massachusetts.
This is a disgusting display of oligarchs undermining not only public education but democracy.
People of Massachusetts, send the Waltons and their ill-gotten gains, squeezed out of the wages of underpaid employees at Walmart, back to Arkansas. Let them fix their own state’s low-performing schools. Tell them to go away by voting NO on Proposition 2 on November 8.
He points out that pro-charter forces based in Wall Street spend more than $2 million on ads during the Olympics that were beamed to viewers in Massachusetts.
The purpose of the ads was to promote Question 2, the expansion of privately managed charters in Massachusetts.
The ads are deceptive, pretending that the vote is about improving public schools when it is about diverting funding from public schools to charters.
Cohen notes that the surprising victory of public school supporters in Nashville should give hope to their peers in Massachusetts. The same corporate forces backed a pro-charter slate in Nashville and lost, despite an overwhelming advantage in funding.
Supporters of public schools in Massachusetts, keep up your organizing and tell the public the facts about Question 2 to combat the propaganda on television. #NoOn2
In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into a race in Massachusetts for a State Senate seat.
The incumbent Pat Jehlen opposes Question 2, the measure on the state ballot in November to increase charter schools by 12 a year forever.
Her opponent, Leland Cheung, supports Question 2.
Jehlen was supported by the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Cheung was financed by the hedge fund managers’ group Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).
Jehlen debated a representative of DFER, instead of debating Cheung.
Jehlen won overwhelmingly, by a vote of more than 13,000 to less than 4,000.
Some think this race presages the vote in November, in which pro-charter groups are prepared to spend millions of dollars to promote Question 2.
The top officials in Massachusetts are gaga for charter schools and eager to see Question 2 passed in November. Question 2 would allow 12 new charters to open every year forever. Dark money is pouring in from hedge fund managers to push the spurious idea that expanding charters will help public schools, when we know from experience across the nation that more money for charters means less money for public schools.
Andrea Gabor has been following the drama of the Brockton Charter School, which was passed by state officials despite the strong opposition of people who live in Brockton. The charter was supposed to open this fall but has encountered delay after delay. Now it has been authorized to open 22 miles away. As Gabor explains, that is only one of many problems.
After multiple construction snafus that kept a controversial charter school from opening in Brockton, MA, the commissioner of Massachusetts public schools granted conditional approval yesterday for the school to temporarily move to a site in Norwood, 22 miles away from Brockton.
The decision to allow New Heights Charter School its last-minute move to Norwood is “political,” wrote Sue Szachowicz, the recently retired long-time principal of Brockton High, in an email. It shows how badly the Massachusetts department of education “wants to be sure that this school gets its opportunity.”
Adds Szachowicz:
“This will be interesting to see what happens. Norwood is a pretty affluent town, and not particularly easy to get to. Parents who thought they would be sending their kids to school in downtown Brockton will get their kids to school over twenty miles away in Norwood??? I do not understand this one! Politics, politics…”
Mitchell Chester along with Jim Peyser, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education and Gov. Charlie Baker, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, are all major proponents of an upcoming ballot initiative, known as Question 2, which would raise the Bay State’s cap on charter schools.
Chester did impose a number of conditions on New Heights, according to The Enterprise, the local newspaper: The school must offer two days of childcare to make up for pushing back the start of school. It must also establish occupancy in Brockton by January 3 or face charter probation or revocation. The school also must issue daily reports on student attendance on each of the first seven days of school, followed by weekly updates on enrollment counts, staffing and monthly financial statements.
“While it is not unusual for a new school to have challenges with a single site, it is rare to have it happen at two places,”said Jacqueline Reis, a spokesperson for Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “Nonetheless, this is not the first charter school to open temporarily outside its region. … While a temporary site is not ideal, families appear willing to try to make it work.”
The Enterprise writes:
There will not be any additional taxpayer cost from the move, Reis said. Based on the maximum first-year enrollment of 315 students from the sixth to eighth grade, New Heights is receiving $3.96 million in combined state and local funds for its first year, which it supplements with grants and privately raised money.
Here is more background on Brockton-now-Norwood charter fiasco from an earlier post:
Amid an escalating battle over a statewide ballot initiative, this November, that would lift the cap on charter schools in Massachussetts, the Brockton charter mess highlights the greatest fears of charter skeptics, including:
–A sloppy approval process, and this in a state that prides itself on having the most rigorous charter approval process in the nation.
–A political establishment that ran rough-shod over the wishes of the local community.
–As families give up on the charter, which has enrolled about 200 students so far, well below its expected first-year enrollment of 315 students, for grades six through eight, they have already begun to return back to the public school system, wreaking havoc with enrollments.
The NEA recounts the story told by Amanda Ciede, a mother of a child with special-needs in Malden, Massachusetts. She signed up her five-year-old son for a charter school. His experience was a disaster. He was repeatedly suspended. When his mother realized the harm inflicted on him by constant negative reinforcement, she withdrew him and enrolled him in the neighborhood public school where he is getting the services he needs as well as regular consultations between family and teachers. She is now working to defeat Question 2, which would increase the number of charters in Massachusetts.
The mother said:
“He never felt like he could succeed. He was always being told no and you have to stay in your seat,” said Ceide. “When you’re constantly being told no, as a five-year-old, you’re not getting the positive reinforcement you need to feel successful and that you’re a good person.”
In Massachusetts, charter schools are not legally required to hire licensed teachers or anyone formally trained in early, secondary, or special education. Ceide believes the school was not equipped to adequately educate and nurture her son.
“It went from him not staying in his seat to him screaming at the top of his lungs because he doesn’t know what else to do,” said Ceide. “He was being put into a small room, the ‘time-out room’, and he’d be screaming and clawing the space. Then he’d get suspended.”
Certain charter schools in Massachusetts are notorious for their high suspension rates:
The average suspension rate for schools is Massachusetts is 2.9 percent. However, at several charter schools within the state, the rate is much higher, and suspensions are disproportionately directed at disabled and minority students.
For example, the Roxbury Preparatory Charter suspended 40 percent of its students last year, including 57.8 percent of students with disabilities and 43.5 percent of black students. The City on a Hill Charter School in New Bedford suspended 35.4 percent of its students, including 50 percent of students with disabilities and 52.9 percent of black students.
(Secretary of Education John King was one of the founders of Roxbury Preparatory Charter, where he was co-director for five years and developed its curriculum and rules of behavior. He subsequently joined Uncommon Schools, one of the nation’s “no excuses” charter chains, which is noted for its strict discipline.)
Peter Piazza earned his doctorate in 2015 and wrote his doctoral dissertation about the activities of Oregon-based Stand for Children in Massachusetts. He is now working as a professional researcher. SFC is an organization that started out as an advocate for children, but then received millions from corporations and foundations to fight teachers’ unions and advocate for charter schools.
Piazza wrote this summation of his research for the blog:
Stand for Children: Misadventures in Massachusetts
In the upcoming school year, a new law restricting teacher job security will become effective in Massachusetts, after having taken a winding road to its fruition that was at best nonsensical and at worst deeply undemocratic. Better known as the Stand for Children compromise law, MA 2315 prohibits public schools from using seniority as the primary factor in teacher personnel decisions, ending a long tradition that had allowed districts to make these kinds of decisions themselves, through the collective bargaining process.
The law was originally proposed by Stand as a ballot question that would have had even more far reaching consequences for teachers. Then, Stand and the state’s largest teachers’ union worked out a compromise bill in private negotiations with their lawyers. That bill was passed through the state legislature in order to remove the original (and worse) proposal from the ballot in 2012.
I tried to follow as many of the twists and turns as I could in my doctoral dissertation, relying most heavily on interviews to reconstruct a deliberately obscure policymaking process. Much of this story will be frustratingly familiar to public education advocates-
• As others have noted on this blog (here and here) and elsewhere (see here, here and here), Stand was initially created as a genuine grassroots advocacy group. Following Race to the Top and Citizens United, the group abruptly turned away from local level membership and towards big money grants from national foundations, especially – of course – Gates and Walton (2010, 2011). Research found that in 2010 Stand’s Leadership Center – its 501(c)3 wing – was among the top 5 recipients of grants from venture philanthropy in educational advocacy.
• In Massachusetts, Stand, a registered 501(c)4 group, began accepting large donations around 2009 from “dark money” sources, including a shadowy but extremely influential organization called Strategic Grant Partners. Local donors to Stand’s (c)3 wing also included The Boston Foundation, a prominent Boston donor that launched the state’s Race to the Top Coalition which continues to advocate for neoliberal reform, and Bain Capital. Because (c)4’s don’t have to disclose their donors, however, it’s hard to trace the money all the way through. Reporting, however, has linked Stand’s MA office to the usual suspects of hedge-fund managers and investment bankers. In all, it was widely believed that Stand had nearly $10 million to spend on the ballot initiative, though, the group saved some money in compromise, ultimately spending a little more than $850,000, according to state campaign finance records.
• Long-time members in the state left publicly, in an open letter expressing both critique and confusion regarding Stand’s new direction. Without an active base of volunteers, most of the money spent on the campaign went to paid signature gatherers or lobbyists.
• Even worse: Stand’s national CEO, Jonah Edelman – the son of Marian Wright Edelman – told everyone on YouTube that the organization would bring its anti-union agenda to states like Massachusetts. After passing restrictions on job security in Illinois, Edelman referred to teachers unions when he infamously trumpeted that Stand was able to “jam this proposal down their throats.” He then stated baldly that “our hope and our expectation is to use this as a catalyst to very quickly make similar changes in other very entrenched states.”
But, in the Massachusetts example at least, there are potential sources of hope for public education advocates –
• Stand was almost completely conflicted within every major level of the organization. National leaders wanted a quick win, state leaders wanted more time to build relationships, and Stand’s community organizers genuinely wanted to do good community organizing.
Here’s my best short summary of the whole process: As told to me by a state level leader at Stand, “the original Great Teachers Great Schools campaign plan was over a three year time period. So we had the intention of building a coalition around it, spending a significant amount of time lobbying on it.” This would have lined them up to try to pass a traditional bill through the state house in 2014.
Then, the organization abruptly changed its plans, deciding instead to pursue a ballot question for the 2012 election. Another state level leader told me that this decision was made “basically five weeks” before the deadline for filing ballot measures. Potential allies in the business community and even their own staff assumed that the decision to go with the ballot question was likely driven by national leadership because the state office “wasn’t big enough to tell national ‘here’s the deal’.”
Then, amazingly, it turned again. When the campaign for the ballot question wasn’t going well – because Stand hadn’t built a state coalition of any kind – national leadership put clear and direct pressure on state leadership. As reported by a former staff member, during a visit from national in the winter of 2012 staff were “told explicitly that we need to win the campaign or essentially the Massachusetts chapter is going to cease to exist.” Thus, the compromise.
• Absent a major outreach effort, Stand had a very limited number of local allies. Only a few spoke at the legislative hearing for the ballot question, including (of course) a local investment banker; a parent and teacher member of Stand, each of whom had joined the campaign after it started; and a Boston city councilor, who would later – in his mayoral campaign – return a half-million dollar donation from Stand, stating that he did not want to accept money from outside special interest groups.
• The media praised the compromise as a big victory for Stand, but they largely got it wrong. Instead, the organization found itself almost completely isolated in the state. Likely allies in the business community balked at a partnership “because of that national-local issue, you don’t know who you’re talking to.” Community organizers told me that principals wouldn’t return their calls. When I asked Stand leaders what they might have done differently, they responded frankly: “I would have drafted the ballot question with more time. We drafted it in no time.” Without a chance to build a broader coalition, the organization was largely left standing on its own.
• In the compromise, they gave up a lot. More dramatic changes to teacher tenure and collective bargaining were removed from the compromise law, with the restrictions on seniority – not tenure – the only major parts that remained and even those were watered down. The compromised also pushed the effective start date from 2013 to the 2016-2017 school year.
In the end, this all contributed to a process that was troublingly undemocratic. Contrary to how they might be portrayed more broadly, state leaders and community organizers at Stand wanted to organize parents and teachers in Boston schools and wanted to work on other issues completely unrelated to the ballot campaign. They just couldn’t. Under pressure from national leadership, community organizers went out instead to find “folks that would be predisposed to arguing in favor of this anyways whether they had something substantive to say or not and get them on board” often by “giving a 30-second pitch to somebody at Stop & Shop” and getting them to sign an apple-shaped card.
Grad students are often asked to name/label things. I called this “neo-democracy” – an umbrella term for cases like this where big money and high-stakes pressure lead to shallow forms of democratic engagement at the local level, an increasingly common occurrence as neoliberal advocacy groups – like Stand, StudentsFirst and DFER among others – gain influence over state policy.
That’s the bad part, of course. But, it can be reversed, and it is every day by the many, many people who work to bringing public voice to public education. What can’t be reversed, at least not any time soon, is Stand’s reputation in Massachusetts. As others have noted, Stand hasn’t been very active in Massachusetts since. But, this wasn’t a page out of the astro-turf playbook. It was an unintended consequence of a clumsy advocacy process led by heavy-handed “direction” from the national level. And, it suggests that these kinds of groups may not be the smooth operators they appear to be, that without relationships and meaningful connections to the local level, money can of course buy something, but it may only be a flash in the pan.
First came the devastating resolution passed by the national convention of the NAACP, calling for a charter moratorium.
Then came the attack on charters by Black Lives Matter.
And the topper was John Oliver’s funny and accurate portrayal of charter school graft.
But the privateers (or privatizers, as I usually say) continue their assault on public education with propaganda and lies.
In Massachusetts, they claim that expanding charter schools will “improve public education,” when in fact it will drain money from neighborhood public schools and take away local control.
In Georgia, a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November authorizes the creation of a state district that will eliminate local control, like the failed Tennessee ASD, yet says it will empower communities.
This is Orwellian. That means when you say one thing but mean the opposite. Another word for lying. Like saying “reform” when you mean “privatization.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 