Archives for category: Privatization
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Peter Greene: Chan Zuckerberg Partners with Sesame Street and Elmo (Oh, No!)

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2019 //
16

Peter Greene demonstrates here (yet again) that there is nothing that money cannot buy (and corrupt). Now it is Sesame Street (although as he points out, HBO already bought Sesame Street). Is there anything not for sale?

Open the link and read the whole sorry story.

If you haven’t been paying particularly close attention, you may have missed the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative slowly inserting its hyper-wealthy proboscis into a hundred different corners of modern life, using its not-quite-philanthropy LLC model to follow in the Gatesian footprints of wealthy technocrats who want to appoint themselves the unelected heads of oh-so-many sectors.

One of those sectors is, of course, education. Their latest bold new initiative is being trumpeted in People, where it is getting exactly the fluffy uncritical reception one might expect, which is too bad, because there’s plenty to be critical of.

The tech mogul, 35, and pediatrician’s philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is working in conjunction with The Primary School and Sesame Workshop to help fund a “new curriculum” that aims to “integrate social emotional learning into early childhood literacy lessons,” according to a press release.

The Primary School is out in Palo Alto, “expanding the boundaries of traditional education.” It is the elementary school that Chan co-founded in 2016 to bring together issues in education and pediatrics. They have all sorts of business style leadershippositions like “director of talent” and “director of strategic initiatives” and the teaching staff seems to be made of a few “lead teachers” and a whole lot of “associate teachers.” Their CEO comes from the NewSchool Venture Fund and Aspire. Their “director of innovation and learning” spent two whole years in Teach for America. The school’s principal once founded a charter school and stayed with it for five years. Of the lead teachers a little more than half have actual teaching backgrounds, while the rest are TFA or other “non-traditional” approaches to the field. I admittedly didn’t check every single one, but a spot check of the associate teachers turned up zero with actual teaching backgrounds.

In short, it’s very new, very reform, very Palo Alto-y, and yet, wonder of wonders, the folks at the Sesame Workshop, “the global nonprofit behind Sesame Street and so much more” and who have been at this for fifty years (longer, I’m betting, than virtually every staff person at The Primary School has been alive)– those folks feel an urge to team up with The Primary School.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Education Industry, Privatization

Mike Klonsky on Gentrifying (Whitening) Black Communities in Chicago

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2019 //
9

 

 

Mike Klonsky writes here about the advice of former Duncan aide Peter Cunningham to Chicago: When trying to revive devastated black communities, bring in “new people.”

Klonsky begins:

Just when you think we’ve heard the last from the disastrous duo of Arne Duncan and Peter Cunningham, they become media go-to guys on (of all things) gun violence and community development.

Remember, this was the pair that ran the Chicago Public Schools and the U.S. Dept. of Education for years, promoting austerity, mass school closings, privatization and uncapped expansion of privately-run charter schools in black communities. Their policies helped lead to the devastation of urban school districts and contributed to school re-segregation and the push-out of thousands of black and poor families from cities like Chicago.

Why media would turn to them for meaningful solutions to the problems they helped create is beyond me. But here we are.

Cunningham’s Sun-Times commentary yesterday (To revive declining South and West Side neighborhoods, import people) was the most egregious. The headline says it all. Now that 300,000 African-Americans have been pushed out of Chicago over the past few decades, Cunningham sees their replacement with thousands of “new, middle-class people” as the city’s salvation.

How unoriginal. I have referred to it as the whitenization of the cities. But it’s deeper than that.

Read on.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Duncan, Arne, Privatization

Stephen Dyer: Charter Schools in Ohio Get Failing Grades from State

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2019 //
3

Stephen Dyer, former legislator and Senior fellow at Innovation Ohio, reviews Ohio’s school report cards here.

http://10thperiod.blogspot.com/2019/09/charter-schools-overrepresentation-of.html

Remember when charter schools were going to “save poor kids from failing public schools”? What happens when public schools outperform charter schools, as happened in 2019?

Remember when charter schools were going to show public schools how to close the achievement gaps? Not going to happen because the charter industry is failing in Ohio.

Dyer writes:

Ohio’s charter schools, which represent about 10 percent of Ohio’s school buildings, make up about 40 percent of Ohio’s school buildinsg that received overall F grades.

Factoring out charter schools shows that among the 3,029 non-charter school buildings made up the remaining 208 F buildings, or not even 7 percent of Ohio’s public school buildings. Ohio’s charter schools? A full 36 percent of them received overall F grades.

But even the degree of F grades are striking. Of the 45 Performance Index percentages that are below the 33rd percentile, 35 are charter schools, which means about 10 pecrent of all charters are below the 33rd percentile on Performance Index scores — the state’s index of proficiency.

Of the 71 school buildings that received zero gap closing points, 45 were charter schools, which means that nearly 13 percent of all charters received zero points for closing achievement gaps.

The opposite trend continues on the positive end — few charters occupy top performance positions.

Of the 281 buildings that received A grades for Performance Index, only 9 were charter schools. Again, charters are about 10 percent of all buildings, but only are 3 percent of the top scoring buildings on proficiency.

Who will “save poor kids from failing charter schools?”

When will the Ohio Legislature stop pushing failing charters and vouchers?

 

 

 

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

Bill Phillis: Charters in Ohio Are Failing, State Wasted $11 Billion

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2019 //
15

Ohio released its school report cards. Bill Phillis summarizes the results:

 

Charter schools report card grades dismal
 
If there is any value in the state report card scheme, it is that it reveals the failure of the charter experiment.
 
71 charters or 23% received F grades compared to only seven tenths of one percent of school districts. Six charters or .3% received A grades compared to 5% of school districts. 87 charters or 28% received a D grade compared to 122 districts or 20%. 60 charters or 19% received C grades compared to 281 or 46% of school districts. 158 charters or 51% received D or F grades compared to 126 or 20% for school districts.
 
The $11 billion Ohio charter experiment, that was established to show districts the way to improve student outcomes, is a dud.
 
It is time for state officials to admit failure and cancel the experiment.

 

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

Mercedes Schneider on the New Orleans Effort to End Its Teacher Shortage

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2019 //
5

 

Mercedes Schneider writes here about a program in New Orleans to recruit new charter teachers. In the all-charter district, the teachers seem to be dropping like flies. Almost 40% of its teachers have less than three years experience.

The program at Xavier University issues a certification for life, but here is the catch: the certification is valid only in New Orleans!

On September 09, 2019, the Hechinger Report published an article entitled, “A New Teacher Vows to Help in a Classroom Full of Need: ‘Under the Right Conditions, They’d Be Stars.’”

The article features a teaching intern who is part of the Norman C. Francis Teacher Residency, an alternative teacher certification program specifically aimed at recruiting individuals who already hold a bachelors degree in another area to agree to teach three years beyond an initial “residency year” at an assigned New Orleans charter school in exchange for roughly $29K in residency-year financial assistance toward earning a masters degree in education.

From the site’s “about” page:

Who we are

The Residency is a first-of-its-kind partnership not only in New Orleans, but nationally.

And from the “what to expect” page:

Residency Year 1

The Norman C. Francis Teacher Residency merges the best of Xavier University of Louisiana’s teacher preparations practices with the work of five of New Orleans’ leading charter school networks.  During the residency year, a cohort of 30 residents enroll as full-time graduate school students, while also apprentice teaching at schools in the NCFTR network. Residents attend graduate school classes as they work alongside a mentor teacher in a classroom throughout the week.  They build confidence through practice and reflection, and over the course of the year, they gradually take on greater responsibility in the classroom.

Employment in Years 2-4

After year 1, the NCFTR team works with teachers and schools to ensure that the transition into year 2 is smooth. Residents who successfully complete the residency year move into classrooms of their own as full-time teachers of record. While working to complete their remaining Master’s Degree coursework, they apply the skills and knowledge they have built in order to take on the responsibilities of lead teaching. They continue to access the network of support that they have built with their residency year cohort.

…

Residents commit to teach for three consecutive years immediately following the residency year. After Year 1, Residents are highly likely to remain in the same school or CMO for their additional three-year commitment. Participants who leave a NCFTR partner school before their four-year commitment ends may be responsible for paying back a portion of funds received in their residency year.

 

My favorite line in the Hechinger Report article that Schneider cites is this one: Though it was just her first year of teaching, Molière, 49, was already an expert at motivating students, who raised their hands high in the air and vied for her attention, then beamed when they got it.

Presumably the teacher had begun work only a week or two ago (the start of the school year), but she was already an expert!

Only in New Orleans are teachers considered “experts” in this first few weeks on the job.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching

Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change Plead for End to Backlash Against School Choice

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2019 //
33

Feeling the backlash in a big way, Jeb Bush’s “Chiefs for Change” issued a call to end the “Toxic Rhetoric” about school choice, especially charters. 

Chiefs for Change are strong proponents of privatization. Here are the current members. Is your superintendent a “Chief for Change” who wants to divert money from public schools to the Betsy DeVos agenda of school choice?

They say:

Recent attempts to halt or severely limit school choice—including legislative debates over caps or moratoriums for charter schools—are misguided at best. Effective mechanisms of school choice—those that ensure quality, accountability, equitable access, and equitable funding—provide opportunities that our students need and deserve. 

Families with financial means in America have always been able to choose the school that is best for their child, by moving to a certain part of town or by sending their children to private schools. But most American families do not have that opportunity. The school in their neighborhood may fall short in meeting their child’s needs in any number of ways—but they’re stuck. 

Our nation’s history of redlining to separate both housing and schooling based on race and income, along with local zoning ordinances that restrict and confine affordable housing, alongside the recent wave of “school district secessions” by higher-income neighborhoods, have compounded the problem. Our nation’s children often live in neighborhoods just a short distance from each other but worlds apart in terms of school quality. This is unacceptable. Every child deserves school options where they will learn and thrive. 

That is why today we are calling on policymakers across the nation to end the destructive debates over public charter schools. Proposed caps and moratoriums allow policymakers to abdicate their responsibility to thoughtfully regulate new and innovative public school options: like banning cars rather than mandating seatbelts. They are a false solution to a solvable problem. 

The backlash against school choice, the demand to halt charter expansion, comes from an outraged public that supports their community public schools.

Only 6% of the students in the U.S. attend charter schools, most of which perform no better than or much worse than public schools. An even smaller number of students use vouchers, even when they are easily available, and the research increasingly converges on the conclusion that students who use vouchers are harmed by attending voucher schools.

The claim that poor kids should get “the same” access to elite private schools as rich kids is absurd. Rich parents pay $40,000-50,000 or more for schools like Lakeside in Seattle or Sidwell Friends in D.C. The typical voucher is worth about $5,000, maybe as much as $7,000, which gets poor kids into religious schools that lack certified teachers, not into Lakeside or Sidwell or their equivalent.

Perhaps Chiefs for Change should advocate for for housing vouchers worth $1 million or more so that poor families can afford to live in the best suburban neighborhoods where “families with financial means” live.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

What this press release really means is that the advocates of privatization know that the public is turning against them.

That’s good news.

The public wants to invest its tax dollars in strong, equitable public schools that meet the needs of all students, not in ineffective charters or vouchers that divert money from community public schools.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Carol Burris and Leonie Haimson On the Air!

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2019 //
3

 

Here is news you can use! Carol Burris and Leonie Haimson now have a regular one-hour radio show on WBAI In New York. The show is called TALK OUT OF SCHOOL, and it will appear weekly. WBAI is part of the progressive Pacifica Network.

In their first show, they discussed student privacy, a subject on which Leonie is a national advocate and expert, and they analyzed current controversies about diversity, selective admissions, and racial integration, a subject where Carol has extensive experience as principal of a detracked high school on Long Island.

Leonie is executive director of Class Size Matters and co-founder of the national Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. Carol is executive director of the Network for Public Education.

Next week, Leonie will interview civil rights attorney Wendy Lecker.

Of this you can be certain, this show will be a place to hear talk that is characterized by experience, common sense, and wisdom.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Class size, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Network for Public Education, Parents, Privatization, Real Education, Students

Texas Charter Schools: Don’t Believe the Boasting and Hype

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2019 //
14

William J. Gumbert has prepared statistical analyses of charter performance in Texas, based on state data.

Charters boast of their “success,” but the reality is far different from their claims. They don’t enroll similar demographics, their attrition rate is staggering, and their “wait lists” are unverified.

Their claims are a marketing tool.

They are not better than public schools.

They undermine and disrupt communities without producing better results.

Yet Texas is plunging headlong into this strategy that creates a dual system but benefits few students.

 

 

Texas Charter Schools – Perception May Not Be Reality

Part 5: The State’s Efforts to “Privatize” Public Education in Local Communities is “Simply Indefensible”

By: William J. Gumbert

If you are a parent residing in an urban or suburban area of Texas, it is likely that you have received promotional materials recruiting your child to enroll at a privately operated, charter school (“charters”). Charters are taxpayer funded, private organizations that the State approves to independently operate schools in community-based school districts. Despite it being your students, schools, tax dollars and communities, the State has unilaterally decided that a “dual education system”, consisting of locally governed, community-based school districts and State approved, privately governed charters, is best for local communities. The State has also conveniently and unilaterally decided to share the public education funding of local communities with privately governed charters.

To conclude this series on Texas charter schools, Part 5 uses the lyrics of Robert Palmer’s hit song “Simply Irresistible” to demonstrate that the State’s politically driven and orchestrated efforts to “privatize” public education in local communities is “Simply Indefensible”. Since the song was a hit in 1988, feel free to click on the YouTube video of the “Donnie and Marie Show” below to remember the vibe.

Screen Shot 2019-09-03 at 10.26.40 PM

“How Can It Be Permissible”:

Without the approval of taxpayers and local communities: State approved charters:

  • ▪ Transfer the control and governance of public schools from local communities to privately-operated charters;
  • ▪ Divert funding from community-based school districts to privately-operated charters. The State has already provided charters with over $22.5 billion of taxpayer funding;
  • ▪ Increase the debt burden of taxpayers as charters are free to incur long-term bond debt without taxpayer approval;
  • ▪ Increase the segregation of students attending public schools in certain communities; and
  • ▪ Reduce the quality of schools in many community-based school districts as 20.4% of all charter campuses are rated as “low performing” (rated equivalent of “D” or “F”) by the State’s 2018 Academic Accountability Ratings.

    “She Compromise My Principle – Yeah, Yeah”:

    Every community has a fundamental responsibility to provide a quality public education that equally serves the unique needs of every student. As public servants, community-based school districts embrace this responsibility as all students are welcome and no student is turned away. If there is not room, community-based school districts hire more teachers and make room. In comparison, the State’s deliberate intervention in local communities allows privately-operated charters to:

    • ▪ Serve a limited number of students and NOT enroll all students;
    • ▪ Recruit the targeted students and families they desire to serve;
    • ▪ Deny enrollment to students with “discipline histories”;
    • ▪ Serve a lower percentage of “students with disabilities”;
    • ▪ Serve a lower percentage of students “at risk” of dropping out; and
    • ▪ Disrupt the education of over 12,800 “economically-disadvantaged” students due to charter closures in the last 5-years.

    “That Kind of Love is Mythical”:

    The promotion of charters is primarily coordinated by charter advocacy organizations that are intended to support and grow the charter school movement. Although not all-inclusive, these organizations train charter administrators, teachers and parents to be advocates, they assist organizations to start new charters, and they coordinate the political strategy to secure favorable support from the Legislature. But it is not publicized that these advocacy organizations are funded by private donors and fueled by privately funded “public policy” organizations that desire to “privatize” public education across Texas.

    To demonstrate parent demand and to garner political support, charter advocacy organizations have notoriously publicized a “wait list” of students. But charters do not publicize the alarming 33.8% attrition rate of students in grades 7-12 that decided to transfer to another Texas public school to start year 2017/18. Charters also do not publicize that the desires of families on “wait lists” are a lower priority than the desire of charters to expand in other regions of the State. By charters expanding in other regions, without expanding current schools to serve students on “wait lists”, charters are choosing to have families “stuck” on the wait list”. In addition, charters strategically attempt to maintain a “wait list” to ensure that their taxpayer funding is preserved as existing students transfer to community-based school districts or another Texas public school in the future.

    In Texas, the promoted (unverified) “wait list” is 141,000 students. However, taking a deeper dive, a more realistic estimate is closer to 75,000 students or an amount that is very similar to the 73,713 disciplinary students that are intentionally denied service by charters. This estimate was derived from certain enrollment statistics in a study funded by the KLE Foundation entitled: “An Analysis of Austin area Charter School Waitlists and Enrollment”. It is important to note that the KLE Foundation is also funding the expansion of charters in Austin.

    “She’s Anything But Typical”:

    In comparison to community-based school districts, charters serve the unique needs of students by:

    • ▪ Employing teachers with lower experience;
    • ▪ Deploying higher class sizes;
    • ▪ Having higher teacher turnover
    • ▪ Spending less on “student instruction”;
    • ▪ Offering fewer co/extra-curricular activities;
    • ▪ Having limited career and technical training; and
    • ▪ Closing 108 charters

    .

    “She’s a Craze You’d Endorse, She’s a Powerful Force”:

  • The charter movement is coordinated by “public policy” and “education reform” organizations that circumvent the voice of local taxpayers by strategically controlling our elected officials at the State and Federal levels. In politics, money is power and the rich and powerful support the charter school movement. As a result, many elected officials are politically motivated to endorse and support the “charter craze”. The following quote from the Texas Charter Schools Association, an advocacy organization to support and expand charters, provides an indication of the movement’s focus on political patronage:

    “Generally speaking, we have a broad enough bipartisan coalition in the House and Senate that largely will prevent anything existential happening to charters” – CEO of TCSA

    “You’re Obliged to Conform, When There’s No Other Course”:

    It is interesting that the Legislature continues to increase the transparency requirements of community-based school districts to enhance the involvement of taxpayers, but at the same time, the State forces charters upon taxpayers by unilaterally controlling the expansion and taxpayer funding of charters. In this regard, taxpayers do not receive public notice of the charters that the State approves to operate in local communities. The State does not notify taxpayers of the public funding it provides to charters and the State has ensured that taxpayers cannot prohibit or limit the bond debt incurred by charters to finance the construction of new charter schools in local communities (charters are granted the ability to incur bond debt without voter approval). Lastly, with charters having “privately appointed boards”, the State has also ensured that taxpayers cannot democratically elect the governing boards of charters and in fact, the State does not even require charters to meet in the communities they serve.

    “She Used to Look Good to Me, But Now I Find Her”:

    The original purpose of charters was to improve the educational opportunities of “economically-disadvantaged” students in urban areas and to develop and share instructional innovations to enhance the education of all students. However, the charter school movement has evolved into an aggressive, strategic and “non-cooperative” movement that is coordinated by “special interests” to “privatize” and “control” the public education system in local communities. Since charters have introduced “private business practices” into public education, the charter movement could be characterized as a “hostile takeover” of public schools and the tax dollars of Texas communities.

    “Simply Indefensible” … “There’s No Tellin Where the Money Went”:

    The charter facts are “irrefutable”;

    Charter expenditures are “inscrutable”;

    Special interests have made charters politically “irresistible”; and

    By the State providing privately governed charters with taxpayer funding, “there’s no tellin where the money went”.

    With the education of children and taxpayer funding at stake, the State’s deliberate and politically-motivated actions to “privatize” public education in local communities is:

    “Simply Indefensible”

    DISCLOSURES: The author is a voluntary advocate for public education and this material solely reflects the opinions of the author. The author has not been compensated in any manner for the preparation of this material. The material is based upon various sources, including but not limited to, the Texas Education Agency, Txschools.org; Texas Academic Performance Reports, tpeir-Texas Education Reports, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, KXAN and other publicly available information. While the author believes these sources to be reliable, the author has not independently verified the information. All readers are encouraged to complete their own review of the charter school movement in Texas, including the material referenced herein and make their own independent conclusions.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, Lies, Privatization

Note to Rhode Island Officials: Expanding “Achievement First” Charters Will Not Help Providence Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2019 //
10

Rhode Island Officials—Governor Gina Raimondo and State Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green—are looking at the expansion of the no-excuses Achievement First Charter chain as part of the “solution” to the low-scoring Providence public school district.

Achievement First is a national charter chain known for high test scores, high suspension rates, and high teacher turnover. It was launched in Connecticut, funded in large part by Jonathan Sackler of Purdue Pharma, the opioid king, and significant contributions by hedge fund managers and philanthropists.

Let’s do the math.

Providence public schools enroll nearly 24,000 students. Two-thirds are Hispanic, 9% are white, 79% are low-income. Achievement First reports similar demographics in its two schools in Providence.

With now three schools in the state since opening in the 2013-2014 school year, Achievement First cites that the Rhode Island Department of Education in 2016 gave approval to Achievement First to grow to a high school — and add an additional K-8, giving Achievement First the ability to serve 3112 students — up from the current 1150 students in Providence and Cranston.

AF has 464 students in itselementary school, and 201 in its middle school in Providence. That was last year (2018-19), so the numbers might be higher this year.

So here is the question: If Achievement First expands by adding another elementary school and a high school, if its enrollment grows to serve a total of 3112 in two Rhode Island cities, how exactly does that uplift the Providence school district?

Suppose AF grows from its current enrollment of about 700 in Providence. Suppose it doubles its enrollment to 1,500 in Providence. That’s less that 10% of the students in the city.

What about the other 93% of the students?

What plans do the Governor and the State Commissioner have for them?

How does it transform Providence if a charter chain withdraws the students it wants and the funding for them from the struggling public schools?

To learn more about this charter chain, read this 2017 study from Yale. Thisstudy of Achievement First in Connecticut and New York says that its schools are highly segregated and get remarkably high test scores, but do so with a heavily white teaching staff strictly disciplining Black and Hispanic students, and with unusually high teacher turnover. The study is titled, “Achievement First, Children Second?” and suggests that AF’s strict discipline “may harm student development.”

AF likes to boast that if its schools can achieve great test scores, so can all schools. One way to test the proposition would be to turn an entire district over to AF. One candidate would be Central Falls, Rhode Island, the smallest urban district in Rhode Island, which registered the lowest test scores in the state. There are only 2,657 students in the whole district. Since the state is taking over Central Falls, why not invite Achievement First to demonstrate what it can do with an entire district, every single child…no exclusions, no cherry-picking. This would be a valuable lesson for all of us.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Connecticut, Education Industry, Privatization, Rhode Island

Shawgi Tell: Are Charter Schools Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2019 //
8

Shawgi Tell, a professor of education at Nazareth College in upstate New York, has a straightforward answer to the question he raises. His answer: No. Charter schools are not public schools.

He writes:

Charter school advocates have always desperately sought to convince themselves and the public that privately-run nonprofit and for-profit charter schools that operate like businesses are actually public and similar in many ways to public schools.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Charter schools are not public schools.

In reality, privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools differ in many profound ways from public schools that have been educating 90 percent of America’s youth for more than a century.

Below is an abbreviated list of the many ways in which privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools differ significantly from public schools.

Charter schools are exempt from dozens, even hundreds, of state and local laws, rules, regulations, policies, and agreements that apply to all public schools.

At least 90% of charter schools have no teacher unions—the opposite of public schools.
Some charter school owners-operators openly and publicly insist that charter schools are private entities.

Unlike public schools, charter schools are not governed by a publicly elected school board, but by a self-selecting, corporate-style board of trustees.

Many charter schools are not subject to audits, at least not in the same way as public schools.

Many charter schools do not uphold open-meeting laws; they dodge many such public requirements.

Many charter schools do not provide the same services as public schools, e.g., transportation, nurses, food, sports, education services, etc.

Thousands of charter schools are directly and/or indirectly owned, operated, or managed by private, for-profit entities.

Many, if not most, charter schools regularly use discriminatory student enrollment practices. Students with disabilities and English Language Learners in particular are usually under-represented in charter schools. So are homeless students and other students…

Charter means contract. Charter schools are contract Performance contracts are at the heart of charter schools. Contract is the quintessential market category. Contracts make commerce possible. Contract law is part of private law, not public law. Charter schools are legally classified as nonprofits or for-profits. Unlike public schools, they are not political subdivisions of the state. In some places, like New York State, charter schools are not considered political subdivisions of the state. Unlike public schools, charter schools are not state agencies.

He offers many more reasons to support the conclusion that charter schools are not public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization
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