Rocketship will open eight charters in Milwaukee. Local leaders have raised $3.5 million to persuade the charter chain to come to Milwaukee. The city already has a large charter sector and a large voucher sector. The three sectors–Charter, voucher, and public–get about the same results on state tests. As the private sector grows, the public sector shrinks and has a growing and disproportionate number of students with disabilities. But the city’s leaders continue to believe that private management will create great schools. Read this article and, as usual, follow the money.
Archives for category: Vouchers
This is a point by point replication of the ALEC agenda to privatize public education and abolish the teaching profession.
Follow this template and your state will get the same performance as Louisiana and DC.
The other dy we learned from an article on the Huffington Post that several top Democratic staff members quit Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst. One of them was Hari Sevugan, who had been a leading figure in the 2008 Obama campaign. Sevugan’s departure set off speculation about why he left: was it Rhee’s union-busting goals? Was it her advocacy for rightwing governors? Was it her support for privatization?
Sevugan dashed off a comment to this blog in which he insisted that he cares deeply about helping children, nothing more complicated than that.
This teacher-parent in Florida was inspired by the exchange to write this open letter to Hari Sevugan:
Hari,
I would like to say to you … I am a teacher and I am a parent. I see this reform from both sides. I see depleted public schools and public programs. I see our public funds channeled to corporate charter schools. I see those schools failing the communities, and most importantly, the children. I am not the only one who sees it.
I read, just today, that Michelle Rhee praised my state, Florida, for their education reform. I disagree. Last year, in Florida, we reviewed the testing results. We found that less than 10% of all Florida schools are charter schools, yet they comprised 51% of the failing schools in Florida. In some counties, such as my own, the only failing school was, in fact, a charter school. The same is true for many counties in Florida, including the very large Broward county.
How can you convince us that charter schools are the answer?
I don’t believe it is possible to convince us, parents or teachers, that lobbying for charter schools is for the benefit of our children. Certainly not when we can drive down our streets and find a failing charter school, or closed charter school, with huge profits that disappeared in the wind. These are our streets … these are our children.
I do not believe it is possible to convince us. I applaud you for coming on this blog and trying … but these are our kids. We know they deserve better. This is the civil rights issue of our generation. The separation now is between the haves and have nots. Charter schools are furthering that division. I get it that the charter vision sounds good on paper, but the reality proves differently.
We need to refuel and revitalize our public schools … not punish and privatize. Remember, It is a core Democratic value to ensure free and equal public education for all. We learned once, not so long ago, that separate is not equal.
Never was … never will be.
Just my opinion as a parent and teacher. I am simply an ambassador for my child… no fancy title or IPhone for me.
Michelle Rhee issued her report card for American education and now we know what she stands for: privatization of American public education.
States that endorse charter schools, for-profit schools, the parent trigger, school closings, vouchers and online for-profit charters get high marks from Rhee.
States that bust unions, take away teacher tenure, and use standardized tests to evaluate teachers get high marks from Rhee.
States that support public education and resist efforts to privatize their public schools get low marks, especially if they support teacher professionalism.
Her top two states are led by the nation’s most rightwing governors and legislatures: Louisiana and Florida.
Rhee has at last dropped the pretense of bipartisanship and shown that StudentsFirst is a branch of ALEC.
Alan Borsuk is a knowledgeable journalist who has covered education in Milwaukee for many years. He is now professing at Marquette, but still keeps a close watch on what is happening to education in Milwaukee.
In this article, Borsuk says that a new vision is needed to get beyond the stale and failed answers of the past. He is right.
Milwaukee has had vouchers since 1990. longer than any school district in the nation. The students in the voucher schools perform no better than those in the public schools.
Milwaukee has had charter schools for about 20 years. The students in the charter schools do no better than those in the public schools.
As the other sectors have grown, the Milwaukee public schools have experienced sharply declining enrollment. At the same time, the number of students with disabilities is far greater in the public schools than in either the voucher or charter schools. The latter are unable or unwilling to take the children who are most challenging and most expensive to educate. Thus, Milwaukee public schools are “competing” with two sectors who skim off the ablest students and reject the ones they don’t want. Most people would say this is not a level playing field.
Governor Scott Walker’s answer to the Milwaukee problem is to call for more vouchers and charters, and for virtual charters. But if the students in those schools are not outperforming the ones in the public schools after twenty years, why should those sectors grow? And we know from multiple studies that students in virtual schools do worse than those in brick-and-mortar schools.
More of the same is no answer. Doubling down on failure is a bad bet.
Yes, Milwaukee needs a bold vision.
It needs a reset.
It needs one public education sector, not three competing sectors. The time for dual- and triple-systems should have ended in 1954, with the Brown decision.
Milwaukee needs one public school system that receives public dollars, public support, community engagement, and parental involvement.
Vouchers and charters had their chance. They failed.
Now it is time to build a great public school system that meets the needs of the children of Milwaukee.
The children of Milwaukee need universal pre-kindergarten so that they arrive in school ready to learn. The children with high needs require small classes and extra attention. The public schools should provide a superb program in the arts for all children in every grade. They should have a rich curriculum–history, literature, foreign languages, the sciences, mathematics, and civics–for all children. Every student should have daily physical education. The schools should have the nurses, guidance counselors, social workers and librarians they need. Children should have after-school programs where they can learn new skills, strengthen their bodies, and get extra tutoring.
It is impossible to achieve these goals in a city with three competing school systems. It is entirely possible to achieve when there is one school system that becomes the focus of the energies of parents, civic leaders, and the business community.
Many children, one Milwaukee.
Tennessee was one of the first two states to win a Race to the Top grant, so of course the governor and legislature are busy thinking of how to privatize their public schools. They heard glowing (if erroneous) reports about the parent trigger in California, so they want one too. They are thinking of vouchers and charters. The only awkward thing is the abject failure of the Tennessee Virtual Academy, a K12 school that is in the bottom 11% of he state’s schools.
Reading about their deliberations reminds me of one of Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander’s slogans from many years ago. He used to say of Congress: “Cut their pay and send them home.”
This request was posted. Please feel welcome to post your comments and help our friends in Spain.
Dear Mrs. Ravitch,
My name is Amadeu Sanz and I am the publishing coordinator of STEPV, a union of teachers in Valencia (Spain).
In Spain, just as in the US, there’s a heated debate on the results of public schools in international assessment tests such as PISA, and our Minister of Education (José Ignacio Wert) wants to impose a reform of the educational system that advocates the de-regulation of the system to favor complete freedom of school choice and the introduction of the principles of accountability and competition among all kinds of schools (public, private and charter ones). this reform hasn’t been passed in our parliament yet, but we fear that the absolute majority that the party in government has will approve of it, even though there is a wide refusal towards it in all spheres of education (teachers and students unions, parents’ associations, prominent scholars…).
In addition to this, the economic and debt crisis in this country is a perfect excuse to significantly cut education budgets, fire teachers, reduce their salaries and increase the ratio of students per classroom.
The situation is becoming really awful, to the extent that we consider this reform and these cuts the biggest attack against the public school system that has been developed after the death of Franco and the transition to democracy in Spain.
As a response to this situation, STEPV, along with two other unions –STEi, from the Balearic Islands, and USTEC, from Catalonia, with whom we share the same language, Catalan- are developing an opposition campaign to the reform designed by our minister.
In order to enrich our arguments and proposals, we are planning to publish a critical analysis of the reform and we want to illustrate how similar proposals to these from minister Wert have worked out in other countries, being yours a very valuable example.
Because many ideas come from the U.S. and because we’re absolute fans of some of your books and videos, we would be really pleased if you would like to contribute to our critical analysis issue by writing an article about the effects of school choice and accountability on education.
Best regards,
Amadeu Sanz
A reader from Oregon explains the destructive consequences of choice. School choice has been a goal of the right for decades and is now embraced by the Obama administration:
“For US education to thrive, charters must go.
“Some Win, Some Lose with Open Enrollment”. The headline in the Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard may seem like an occasion for joy to the winning school districts but, really, it is just terribly sad for all of us. Open enrollment across district lines is the latest and most extreme version of a school choice movement that is on a trajectory to split public education in two – one set of schools for the haves and the other for those left behind.
School choice is probably the most popular of the signature elements of the current school reform movement – and is there any reason why alternative and charter schools shouldn’t be popular? They house some of the best teachers and some of the most innovative programs; they have more opportunities for enrichment because they are exempt from many of the requirements faced by regular schools; and the parents are more involved and more able to donate time and money – the last not because they care more about their kids. Rather it is because the parents need to be able to provide transportation and often are required to agree to levels of involvement not possible for families without a car and a stay-at-home parent.
The result: one set of schools with wealthier, less diverse students and fewer kids with special needs; the other serving children more diverse in ethnicity, income and educational needs (with fewer resources and more requirements). Public education was supposed to be the great equalizer, an inclusive, welcoming place that gives all kids a chance to climb the ladder of success. But current trends create a de facto tracking system based on socioeconomic status.
Of course we’ve always had school choice. Through the 1960s the choice was public or private. Over the last few decades, however, public school districts created alternative and charter schools and encouraged them to draw their students from the surrounding neighborhood schools. In a Darwinian battle the schools would compete for students with the best schools thriving and good riddance to the losers. It is really hard to believe that school “reformers” didn’t foresee the result: the non-charters left with the most needy kids, fewer resources and, inevitably, failure.
The fact that public alternatives and charters have many good teachers and leaders and involved parents is, itself, the strongest argument against public charters and alternatives. Those are the very resources needed by neighborhood schools to make them what they need to be. And it isn’t even a zero-sum game – it’s negative-sum. Services are duplicated and shifting enrollments make long-range planning impossible.
The parents of students who choose schools outside their neighborhoods are not the problem – good parents will always look for the best available school for their children. The teachers and administrators in those schools are not the problem – many of them are among the best. The problem is the system that sends parents school shopping in the first place.
It is a system that takes advantage of the parental instinct to provide our children with the best possible education. You don’t have to be a public school hater to participate; school shopping has become a mark of good parenting for parents of all persuasions. “I can’t send my daughter to the neighborhood school,” said one mom recently. “Those parents aren’t involved.” And, sadly, what used to be a myth is creating a reality as parents like her opt out of their neighborhood schools.
If, as I suggest, we are to end most school choice, it is important to be sure that we are sending our kids to excellent neighborhood schools. To be honest, part of the reason parents have been so willing to drive their kids across town (or now to a different town) is that some neighborhood schools had become rigid, take-it-or-leave-it, hostile-to-change institutions. Parents with concerns or questions were considered pests. Though they can’t be all things to all people, our neighborhood schools need to be what many already are; nimble, responsive, welcoming neighborhood centers providing an outstanding education to all kids.
The successful innovations that charter and alternative schools have devised wouldn’t be wasted. They – including language immersion – can and should be applied in the neighborhood schools. And charters and alternatives that step up to meet the needs of high school students when regular high schools are unable to do so should be allowed to keep working with, rather than competing against, the mainstream schools.
It is a cliché that if you are attacked from both sides of an issue, you are probably correct. But school “reform” seems to call for a corollary: if there is agreement on an issue from both sides of the aisle, it must be wrong. It is truly mind-boggling that free-market educational policies – so obviously counterproductive, ineffective and unsustainable – are supported by both Democrats and Republicans. The deck may be stacked against us but if we are truly committed to equity, diversity and efficiency in our public schools we’ll need keep working to convince officials, parents and educators that it is essential that we stop this suicidal intra- and inter-district competition, phase out school shopping and bring back new and improved versions of the centers of our neighborhoods – our schools.
Jim Watson, Eugene, Oregon
I earlier reported the story on Huffington Post that said a number of top staffers had resigned, including Democrats. Hari Sevugan was a key figure in the article. He here explains his continued loyalty to Michelle Rhee’s mission.
I hope he will write again to explain why he thinks that Rhee’s support for for-profit charters, for vouchers, and for the agenda of rightwing governors helps our society’s most vulnerable children.
Diane – I’ve never posted a comment on your blog, but as one of the subjects mentioned in the article you have extrapolated from to make your point in this entry, I felt that I needed to on this occasion. I’m also writing this on my iphone, so please forgive me any wayward autocorrects.
You have often suggested, as you have here, that folks at StudentsFirst and more broadly the education reform community are working to privatize education and diminish teaching and teachers.
You afforded a story regarding my time at StudentsFirst enough validity to use it to criticize the organization. So, I hope you will afford my opinion based on that time the same credibility when I tell you this:
To suggest that folks working at StudentsFirst or in education reform are doing anything but working for the benefit of kids is plain wrong.
Everyone I worked with at StudentsFirst and in the education reform community was and is exclusively interested in improving the lives of children. They are not out to diminish teachers, but rather they recognize the importance of teachers in ensuring children have the best education possible. They are not out to destroy public education, but rather their fealty belongs to the public school students served by that system.
The thing is – I believe the same is true of teachers unions and many advocates, including you, who are opposed to education reform.
While I no longer work at StudentsFirst on a day-to-day basis, I will continue to work with them in other ways, as well as with other reformers, toward their goal of ensuring every child has access to high quality education.
In this post you ask, “What part of [Rhee’s] agenda is bipartisan?” There are many Democrats, including this one, who work toward reform because public schools are not currently serving every child – too often children of color and from poverty – as they should. These children are being denied a fundamental civil right. It is a core Democratic value to ensure that their civil rights are enforced. It is a core Democratic value to ensure poverty or socio-economic status is not a barrier to opportunity. It is a core Democratic value to ensure teachers are respected for the work they do.
There will be disagreements on how to enact those values at a policy level, on both sides and at times within the same side (see Newark teachers deal) but I hope we can abstain from characterizing motivations or values of those we disagree with. (Or in this case mischaracterizing them). I hope we can raise the level of the dialogue in this debate to reflect the importance of the subject matter both sides are trying to serve – our kids.
Hope this finds you otherwise well and doing better things on a Friday night that reading this.
– Hari
Joy Resmovits at Huffington Post has a revealing story about how top staff at Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst have abandoned the ship.
No one went on the record to explain the exodus but it is hard to see how any Democrat could be part of a campaign to curtail collective bargaining rights and to diminish the rights and status of teachers. Unions and teachers are the base of the Democratic Party.
Think about how frequently Rhee has allied herself with rightwing governors like Mitch Daniels, John Kasich, Rick Scott, and Chris Christie. She has advocated for for-profit charter schools and for-profit universities. She supports vouchers. She was honored along with Governor Scott Walker by the far-right American Federation for Children, which is passionate for vouchers and privatization of public schools.
What part of her agenda is bipartisan?
