Charter Schools & "Choice": A Closer Look

"Despite widespread public opposition to the education privatization agenda, at least 139 bills or state budget provisions reflecting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) education bills have been introduced in 43 states and the District of Columbia in just the first six months of 2013, according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, publishers of ALECexposed.org. Thirty-one have become law."

For full post, click title above or here: http://www.prwatch.org/node/12175

"...The experiments trotted out by the big-money crowd have been all over the map. But if there is one broad approach (in addition to the importance of testing) that the corporate-style reformers and privatization advocates have united around, it’s the efficacy of charter schools. Charter schools were supposed to prove beyond a doubt that poverty didn’t matter, that all you had to do was free up schools from the rigidities of the traditional public system and the kids would flourish, no matter how poor they were or how chaotic their home environments.

Corporate leaders, hedge fund managers and foundations with fabulous sums of money at their disposal lined up in support of charter schools, and politicians were quick to follow. They argued that charters would not only boost test scores and close achievement gaps but also make headway on the vexing problem of racial isolation in schools.

None of it was true. Charters never came close to living up to the hype. After several years of experimentation and the expenditure of billions of dollars, charter schools and their teachers proved, on the whole, to be no more effective than traditional schools. In many cases, the charters produced worse outcomes. And the levels of racial segregation and isolation in charter schools were often scandalous. While originally conceived a way for teachers to seek new ways to reach the kids who were having the most difficult time, the charter school system instead ended up leaving behind the most disadvantaged youngsters.

For full post, click on title above or here: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-plot-against-public-education-111630.html#ixzz3GwYl2Lhq

By Valerie Strauss -
"The school board in Durham, N.C., has voted 6-1 to end its relationship with Teach For America after the 2015-16 school year, when all of the 12 TFA teachers hired in the past few years will have completed the two years of service they promise to make when joining the organization.
 

What makes it interesting is what school board members said during a discussion about the issue. The Herald Sun reported that several board members said they did not want to continue a relationship with the organization because TFA corps members are highly inexperienced. (How could they not be? TFA recruits mostly newly graduated college students, gives them five weeks of summer training and places them in high-needs classrooms.)

There were also concerns expressed that corps members are required only to promise to stay for two years and though some stay longer, some leave before the two years are up, causing a great deal of turnover in many schools with at-risk students who greatly need stability."...

For full post, click on title or picture above. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/01/why-one-school-system-is-dropping-teach-for-america/

By PAUL BUCHHEIT 

"Free-market capitalists view education in terms of products and profits. The products, to them, are our children. The profits go to savvy businesspeople who use a "freedom to choose" rallying cry to convince parents that they're somehow being cheated by an equal-opportunity public school system.

Education reformers focus on privatization, public program cutbacks, and plenty of revenue-producing testing. There are at least five truths about education reform that suggest ignorance or delusion among its adherents.

1. Privatized Education Steals from the Poor, Gives to the Rich

Eva Moskowitz makes $72 per student as CEO of the private Success Academy in New York City.

Carmen Farina makes 19 cents per student as Chancellor of New York City Public Schools.

More salary shock: The salaries of eight executives of the K12 chain, which gets over 86 percent of its profits from the taxpayers, went from $10 million to over $21 million in one year.

A McKinsey report estimates that education can be a $1.1 trillion business in the United States. Forbes notes: "The charter school movement [is] quickly becoming a backdoor for corporate profit." The big-money people are ready to pounce, like Rupert Murdoch, who called K-12 "a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed."

Meanwhile, Head Start was recently hit with the worst cutbacks in its history. Arts funding overall is lower than ever, with a National Endowment for the Arts budget barely accounting for 2 percent of the National Science Foundation budget. Spending on K-12 public school students fell in 2011 for the first time since the Census Bureau began keeping records over three decades ago."....

For full post, click on title or image above. 

By David Sirota - "At this point, it should be fairly obvious why the technology industry is so high on so-called education “reform.” More computer-based standardized tests and online learning means more opportunity for the industry to sell its wares to school districts.

What has been less clear is why the corporate sector’s Masters of the Universe have involved themselves in the crusade to specifically promote publicly funded, privately administered charter schools – and “involved” is putting it mildly. Indeed, as various news outlets have documented, business heavyweights are dumping millions into the nationwide campaign to promote charter schools as a replacement for public education. That includes, most recently, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

One theory is that business mavens love numbers and data, and simply believe charter schools deliver better empirical educational results than public schools. Except, on the whole, data show those charter schools do not typically perform any better – and often perform worse – than traditional public schools. Charters also seem to contribute to racial segregation in the education system.

Another theory is that while Wall Streeters spend their days making bank off stuff like foreclosures, rapacious fees, job-killing buyouts and other forms of pillage, in the off time these barbarians supposedly devote to public service, they are really just warm cuddly altruists who deeply care about the kids. You tend to see this kind of hagiography in the financial press (see the recent Forbes profile of Paul Tudor Jones).  If you believe it, I’m sure these Gordon Gekkos have a subprime mortgage to sell you.

Of course, if the simplest explanation is most often the correct one, then it stands to reason that at least some corporate titans promote charter schools to do what they do best: make money. And as Hofstra University’s Alan Singer points out in a new Huffington Post essay, there’s evidence that’s exactly what’s happening."... 

For full post, click on title, image above, or here: 

http://pando.com/2014/06/19/the-big-money-and-profits-behind-the-push-for-charter-schools/ 

With its academics and its finances under fire, the Texas sports academy created by Deion Sanders, the Hall of Fame cornerback and N.F.L. commentator, is facing the loss of its state charter.

For full post, click on title or picture above.

"In state after state, charter schools are proving that it is downright risky to turn public money over to deregulated corporations and unqualified individuals to run schools. The Detroit Free Press series on the scams, frauds, and corruption in many Michigan charters was an eye-opener for all those who are not part of the charter movement. The exposé of similar frauds in Florida by the League of Women Voters in Florida was enlightening to anyone other than free market ideologues.

The same level of corruption–actually, even worse–exists in Ohio’s charter sector, where a small number of charter founders have become multi-millionaires, run low-performing schools, and are never held accountable.

One of the most colorful charter scandals occurred when a Cleveland charter operator was tried for funneling over $1million to his church and other businesses. The charter founder was a pastor, not an educator. His attorney said ““his client had good intentions when opening the school on East 55th Street but then got greedy when he saw easy opportunities to make money….”

The leader of California’s most celebrated charter school, with outstanding test scores, stepped down when an audit revealed that nearly $4 million had been diverted to his other businesses."...

For full post, click on title above or here: http://dianeravitch.net/2014/07/05/is-the-charter-movement-imploding/ 

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2014/05/john_thompson_what_will_zucker.html

By Dr. Gordon Lafer -  Economic Policy Institute

"During the past year, Wisconsin state legislators debated a series of bills aimed at closing low-performing public schools and replacing them with privately run charter schools. These proposals were particularly targeted at Milwaukee, the state’s largest and poorest school district.

Ultimately, the only legislation enacted was a bill that modestly increases school reporting requirements, without stipulating consequences for low performance. Nevertheless, the more ambitious proposals will likely remain at the core of Wisconsin’s debates over education policy, and legislative leaders have made clear their desire to revisit them in next year’s session. To help inform these deliberations, this report addresses the most comprehensive set of reforms put forward in the 2013–2014 legislative session.

Backers of these reforms are particularly enamored of a new type of charter school represented by the Rocketship chain of schools—a low-budget operation that relies on young and inexperienced teachers rather than more veteran and expensive faculty, that reduces the curriculum to a near-exclusive focus on reading and math, and that replaces teachers with online learning and digital applications for a significant portion of the day..." 

For full report, click on title above or here: http://www.epi.org/publication/school-privatization-milwaukee/

For EPI's reply to Rocketship response: http://www.epi.org/blog/epi-stands-rigorous-methods-findings-report/

By David Bacon  (Image by Ethan Heitner)

"Nearly every metropolitan area these days has its own wealthy promoters of education reform. Little Rock has the Waltons, Seattle has Bill and Melinda Gates, Newark has Mark Zuckerberg, and Buffalo has John Oishei, who made his millions selling windshield wipers.

Few areas, however, have as concentrated and active a group of wealthy reformers as California’s Silicon Valley. One of the country’s fastest-growing charter school operators, Rocketship Education, started here. A big reason for its stellar ascent is the support it gets from high tech’s deep pockets, and the political influence that money can buy.

Rocketship currently operates nine schools in San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It opened its first school in Milwaukee last year and one in Nashville, Tennessee, this fall. Its first two schools in Washington, D.C., where almost half the students already attend charters, open next year. Rocketship plans include running eight schools in Milwaukee, in Nashville, and in D.C. in the near future.

Rocketship also proposed a charter school in Morgan Hill, just south of San Jose. But there they ran into resistance from parents, teachers, and the teachers’ union. That successful campaign to block Rocketship and protect local public schools highlights the importance of confronting charter chains as they try to infiltrate school systems across the country.

For full post, click on title above or here: http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/29_01/29_01_bacon.shtml 

By Mark Palko

"Charter schools were originally conceived as centers of experimentation and innovation where educators could try new approaches quickly on a small scale with a minimum of paperwork. Many charters have lived up to that promise, but that same openness that allows new ideas to flourish may also have left the sector vulnerable to a dangerous level of corruption.

For decades, Michigan and Florida have been on the cutting edge of shifting public education into the private sector. These policies were based on a deeply held and often explicitly stated belief that choice and market forces could net only solve education’s problems but could also alleviate much of the need for regulation.

Now recent investigations from the Detroit Free Press, South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel, and the Florida League of Women Voters have painted a troubling picture of two out-of-control charter school systems."... 

For full post, click on title above. 

An examination of charter schools in 15 charter markets has exposed nearly $100 million in losses due to fraud, waste, and abuse, according to a new advocacy group report.

For full article and link to report, click on title above or here: 
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/charterschoice/2014/05/report_documents_100_million_in_charter_school_fraud_in_14_states_and_dc.html