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Jersey Jazzman goes through the reasons why the corporate elites and rightwing think tanks love charter schools.

It is not because they get better results. They don’t.

It is not because they save money. They don’t.

They are very effective at busting unions. Nearly 90% of the nation’s charters are non-union. This makes possible a flexible workforce that works long hours, accepts whatever pay management wants to pay, and makes no demands.

Last week Vanderbilt hosted an education writers seminar. It was a pretty big deal. Such a big a deal that it brought Arne Duncan to town. Arne spent some time making appearances with his good buddy Kevin Huffman touting all the wonderful things that Mr Huffman was responsible for in Tennessee. There were quite a few quotable quotes dropped. My favorite was, “The biggest challenge of our nation isn’t the knowledge side of things but the courage. There is a courage gap.” That’s the one that got me thinking.

The more I thought about it, the more I saw its relevance. You know holding children accountable is very difficult. I’ve got a three year old and a 4 year old in my household, so this is a constant running battle. My wife and I attach a great deal of importance to instilling accountability in them. Its important to us that they understand actions have…

Charter schools were created to help the neediest students. Now, however, many charters skim off the most advantaged students and avoid those who are needy. This harms the public schools, removing their best students and overloading them with the students who require the most services.

It doesn’t get any clearer than this:

“Woodland Community Consolidated School District 50 in Gurnee filed a lawsuit against Prairie Crossing Charter School and two state agencies Tuesday, alleging that millions in state aid that should have been spent on instruction for low-income and at-risk students have been “siphoned away” to pay for a small number of charter school students, officials announced.”

“The district has asked a Cook County court to reverse a five-year reauthorization of Prairie Crossing Charter School approved in April by the Illinois State Charter School Commission, which is named in the lawsuit. The district also named as a defendant the Illinois…

In her testimony to the New York City Council Education Committee, education activist Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters exploded several common myths about charter schools.

First is the myth that they are public schools. They are not. They are private corporations with contracts to run schools, exempt from most state laws and from most state oversight. In court after court, the charters themselves have argued that they are NOT public schools. We should take their word for it. They are not public schools.

Second is the myth that charter schools enroll exactly the same demographic of students as the real public schools. This is patently false. With few exceptions, they take smaller proportions of students with disabilities and almost no students with severe disabilities, and they enroll smaller proportions of English language learners. They have the power to kick out students who do not meet their stringent disciplinary codes…

A new report reveals massive waste, fraud, and corruption in the charter industry, where private corporations control public funds with minimal oversight or accountability.

“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 5, 2014

CONTACT:

Kyle Serrette: KSerrette@populardemocracy.org, 202-304-8027
Sabrina Stevens: media@integrityineducation.org, 720-295-0238

A new report released today reveals that fraudulent charter operators in 15 states are responsible for losing, misusing or wasting over $100 million in taxpayer money.

“Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud And Abuse,” authored by the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education, echoes a warning from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General. The report draws upon news reports, criminal complaints and more to detail how, in just 15 of the 42 states that have charter schools, charter operators have used school funds illegally to buy personal luxuries for themselves, support their other businesses, and more.

The report also includes recommendations for policymakers on how…

Prologue: What if, following the end of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation, formerly enslaved black and brown people created an amazing resurgence of economic, educational and political successes? (They did). Would the elite in power squelch that budding success with New Jim Crow laws? And, what if to counter the gross systemic and violent inequities created by Jim Crow, decades later people fought back and demanded Civil Rights bills which included non- discriminatory hiring practices and desegregation in public spaces including public schools?  What if those new Civil Rights policies led to a rising black and brown middle class, and opportunities for success?  What if, decades later, there were a powerful elite who wished to re-segregate society and roll back the clock to a time of profound inequality that served to the advantage of a privileged few? How would the elite in power find ways around those Civil Rights anti-discriminatory…

This week marks the beginning of testing week in Tennessee. All week long students will be taking the annual TCAP assessments. These tests will establish their worth, their teacher’s worth, their school’s worth, their state’s worth, their countrie’s worth, and… well you get the picture. These tests are so important that people feel the need to create pep rallies, special festivals and even video’s to relieve some of the pressure. Initially I saw the one above on the Tennessee Department of Education web site but before writing this post I perused YouTube and probably found 100 more.

That’s over a hundred video’s dedicated to celebrating a test. Yes, I said test, not a school, not books, not learning in general. They celebrate a test. Think of all the resources that went into producing those pieces that could have been applied to actual learning, not to mention the creativity wasted. Some of them are…

It will take only a few minutes to read this post and less than an hour to watch the five videos. The question is: If you’re an American, are you willing to give up that much time to learn about the threats against your democracy and the loss of the freedoms you take for granted? In fact, you don’t have to give up an entire hour in one sitting. You could read the Blog post and watch the first video, and then return to watch the second, etc., spread over several days.

“A new report shows that top CEOs were paid 331 times more than the average US worker in 2013. At the same time, the poorest fifth of Americans paid an average tax rate of 11 percent while the richest one percent contributed half that rate at state and local levels. In this essay, Bill reflects on the forces…

In May 2009 , Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and former State Education Superintendent Paul Pastorek signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). This CCSS MOU would become “Appendix B” for the US Department of Education’s (USDOE’s) Race to the Top (RTTT) program.

In June 2009, the National Governors Association (NGA), in conjunction with US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, announced that 46 states were already signed on for what would become CCSS.

The formal document, the CCSS MOU, outlines in detail the different groups of individuals and what their roles would be in “developing” CCSS.

The document signed by Jindal and Pastorek in May 2009– the CCSS MOU that would become RTTT Appendix B– is the same document I wrote about in this post.

The CCSS MOU makes it clear that the chief decision makers for CCSS were the individuals on the…

The Vergara Nine surrounded by handlers.

It is a peculiar, dark and unhinged world in which we dwell and it seems to grow more so all the time. Consider the extraordinary case of Vergara v. California, now winding down and awaiting a judgment. Here we have nine students, bankrolled by Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur David Welch, co-founder of Infinera, and founder of the advocate group StudentsMatter, suing the state of California. The suit claims that teacher tenure laws have denied them their civil rights.

Yes, for those who have not been following the case, you read that correctly.

The claim is that tenure laws — which merely insure that a teacher who has already passed through a probationary period of at least three years has the right to a hearing or due process before he or she is fired — are denying the nine students, a multicultural lot who…