Valerie Strauss notes on her blog “The Answer Sheet” that charters are losing their luster. With the ascent of Choice Champion Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, Democrats are losing interest in charters. 

Almost 90% are non-union, and Democrats are not as keen about charters as they were when Obama was president. DeVos has made clear that her goal is privatization, and charter schools advance her goal. Today, Democrats running for office are backing away from charters.

The number of charters is not growing as it once did.

Most embarrassing are the escalating charter scandals. The public has begun to realize the absurdity of giving out public money without oversight or accountability.

There is most definitely a backlash. The NAACP call for a moratorium was part of the backlash. So was the referendum in Massachusetts in 2016, where voters overwhelmingly rejected an effort to lift the cap on charters.

Part…

I’ll point you to two sources on this hot tip: Washington City Paper and Curmudgucation, which can point you to other sources as well.

In general, the heads of charter schools – who receive lots of tax dollars but who don’t have to let the public know how they are using those funds, not even through FOIA requests – make a LOT of money, much more than a mere principal or superintendent, even though they are in charge of WAY fewer students or staff.

Charter school teachers? They often don’t earn even as much as their public-school colleagues.

I’m cutting and pasting the WCP article, and also suggest you read Peter Greene’s post at Curmudgucation.

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Following the passage by the Los Angeles schoolboard of a request for a charter moratorium, other counties in California are taking a look at doing the same.

Charter Moratorium to go Before School Board

WCCUSD Trustee Consuelo Lara is bringing a resolution supporting a Statewide Moratorium on the Growth of Charter Schools and strengthening oversight and transparency of current charter schools.

The resolution puts the WCCUSD in step with the recent resolution passed by the Los Angeles School Board joining with the NAACP, the Journey for Justice Alliance, Black Lives Matters and many other organizations and governmental bodies which have demanded a stop to the expansion of Charters at the expense of publicly run schools.

The meeting will beWednesday 2/6

Lovonya DeJean Middle School
Multipurpose Room
3400 Macdonald Avenue

It is expected that the Charter Schools will use their money and buses to turn out in force to oppose…

This post is an unabashed appeal for your contribution to a vital political race in Los Angeles. The billionaires (Broad, Walton, Hastings, etc.) have poured millions into buying control of the LAUSD board. That board hired a clueless hedge fund manager, Austin Beutner, who is bringing in every Reform retread to help him figure out how to do maximum disruption to the district.

I am asking you here and now to send Jackie Goldberg whatever you can afford.

The race for the empty seat on the LAUSD board is important for Los Angeles, but it is also important for California and for the nation. If Jackie wins this seat, her voice and her experience and knowledge will command a Quisling board.

Jackie Goldberg is a dynamo. She taught for many years, then won a seat on the Los Angeles school board. She then ran for the State Assembly and eventually…

Audrey Watters writes here about the promises and realities of EdTech.

Why the boom in education technology? Is it the pursuit of the total transformation of schooling? Is it marketing, competition and the pursuit of profits? Is it an effort to cut costs by replacing humans with machines?

Watters writes:

OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS, more than $13 billion in venture capital has been sunk into education technology startups. But in spite of all the money and political capital pouring into the sprawling ed-tech sector, there’s precious little evidence suggesting that its trademark innovations have done anything to improve teaching and learning.

Perhaps, though, that’s never really been the point. Rather, it may be that all the interest in education technology has been an extension of a long-running campaign to make over American schools into the image of corporate endeavor—to transform education into a marketplace for buzzword-friendly apps and instruction…

Just received. He gets it!

Bernie Sanders
Sisters and Brothers –

There is something happening in Los Angeles that you need to know about and that we all need to do something about.

Today, for the first time in 30 years, more than 30,000 Los Angeles public school teachers are on strike fighting for smaller class sizes and decent wages, for nurses, counselors and librarians in their schools, and against a coordinated effort from billionaires on the right to make money privatizing public education.

Public education is fundamental to any functioning democracy, and teaching is one of its most valuable and indispensable professions.

So how is it that the top 25 hedge fund managers in this country make more money than the combined salaries of every kindergarten teacher?

How is it that the billionaires of this country get huge tax breaks, but our teachers and children get broken chairs, flooded…

One of the marks of market-based ed reform is the issue of mushrooming nonprofits. Want an instant platform for advancing school choice? Non-career, instant teachers? Test-driven classrooms? Drumming up grass-roots-styled support for an outside, billionaire-funded, corporate ed project?

Start a nonprofit, and create a vague-yet-stylish website to promote it.

Discovering details behind newly-created nonprofits is difficult because of their newness. One might even wonder if the self-proclaimed nonprofit is actually a nonprofit in its own right.

For example: A colleague wrote to me about his search for information on two new organizations: Wayfinder Foundation and Memphis Lift. One question concerned whether these two orgs were nonprofits in their own right or simply programs operated by other nonprofits (namely, ed reform nonprofits) that were choosing to hide in the shadows.

In order to discover if these two orgs were orgs in their own right, my first though was to see…

Shaina Cavazos of Chalkbeat in Indiana reports on the startling graduation rate of Indiana’s publicly funded virtual charter school: 2%. Two percent.

“About 2 percent of Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy’s 1,009 seniors graduated, putting the school’s graduation rate below just two others — a school that caters to students with significant intellectual and behavioral disabilities and an adult high school that enrolls only a couple dozen students each and graduated no students last year. Across the state, the vast majority of schools graduate at least three-quarters of their senior students.”

Do you remember when charter advocates promised that charters would be more successful, more innovative, and more accountable than public schools? They are not. For-profit Virtual Charter Schools are scams. They are a waste of money. They are a public embarrassment. Why are they allowed to open?

Peter Greene explains here about this Indiana cybercharter, which buys its existence…

Governor-Elected Gavin Newsom has let it be known that he plans to use California’s large reserves to expand pre-K.

As we have learned in New York City these past few years, expanding pre-K is great, but it is far from enough.

The most pressing problem in California’s schools are:

1. Reducing class sizes in K-12
2. Increasing teachers’ salaries
3. A moratorium on charter schools, which take money away from public schools
4. Providing the counselors and support personnel that schools need

Governor-Elect Newsom should not forget that the billionaires spent huge sums of money funding former Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa, who came in third.

And they spent millions more trying to defeat new State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and losing.

Put the money where the kids are.

Pre-K is nice but not enough.

From the LA Times:

Seeking to frame his new administration as one with a firm focus on…