Study finds publicly-funded (robbed public money from public schools), private sector “high-performing charter schools are successful in part because they screen out the costliest-to-educate students from their applicant pools.”
Two scholars demonstrated what we already knew: many charter schools are skimming and choosing the students they want while excluding the ones they don’t want, the ones likely to cost too much or pull down their test scores.
School choice may allow schools to “cream skim” students perceived as easier to educate. To test this, we sent emails from fictitious parents to 6,452 schools in 29 states and Washington, D.C. The fictitious parent asked whether any student is eligible to apply to the school and how to apply. Each email signaled a randomly assigned attribute of the child. We find that schools are less likely to respond to inquiries from students with poor behavior, low achievement, or a special need. Lower response rates to students with a potentially significant special need are driven by…
“Between 2001 and 2013, nearly 2,500 charter schools closed nationwide, many because of low academic performance or because the private group in charge committed fraud or wasted public money.”
Jeremy Mohler, of the nonpartisan “In the Public Interest” wrote this post:
The phone rings and a cold, automated voice says your kid’s school is closed tomorrow. A sign hangs on the school’s door saying there are “repair issues.”
That’s all parents of students at Florida’s Unity Charter School received. No word of the K-8 school closing for good. No mention that its building was just foreclosed on and will be auctioned off by the end of the year.
Luckily, the local public school district is ready to help. “If Unity Charter School is foreclosed, we’re happy to welcome students into our classrooms,” says its superintendent.
Turns out, it’s a common story. Students at charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, are two and a half times more likely to have their school close than those at traditional, neighborhood schools.
Between 2001 and 2013, nearly 2,500 charter schools…
That’s a trick question. Privatizers fail again and again, and when they fail, they double down on their failure.
After they takeover public schools, their replacement fails (unless it kicks out the students it doesn’t want and keeps only the ones that get high test scores).
After the charter school fails, it either remains open or is replaced by another charter school.
Charter lobbyists fight accountability in the state legislature. Accountability applies only to public schools.
When a charter fails and closes, it is never restored to the public, which paid for the school.
Bill Phillis of Ohio writes:
The anti-public common school horde is conjuring up more tricks to undermine the public common school system
The school privatization movement is being driven by a gaggle of somewhat diverse troops but all, intentionally or unintentionally, are working for the demise of traditional public education. Billions and billions from philanthropic organizations…
The privatization movement used to operate in stealth. It used to pretend to have grassroots support. Those days are over. As the public catches on to the empty promises of the charter industry and its intention to undermine democratic institutions, the charter funders have created a SWAT team to infiltrate targeted cities across the nation, promote charter schools, and buy their school boards.
These guys are not the Red Cross or the Salvation Army. They are paid vandals, on a mission to destroy public schools. They are out to destroy not just public schools, but local democracy. They should be ashamed. Usually, it is illegal to buy elections. This so-called City Fund brashly announces that it has raised nearly $200 million—with more on the way—to disrupt public schools and buy elections. How is this legal?
Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum reports that vandals from the billionaire-funded “City Fund” have targeted seven cities…
The Color of Change, an online civil rights group, posted this online petition addressed to the newly elected leaders of California.
Congratulations on your victories! Many of us campaigned for you, donated to you, and voted for you. Now we write to ask you to represent us – the public school students, families, teachers and taxpayers of the great state of California.
Given that a mere ten percent of California’s public school students attend charter schools, we sincerely request you make the following changes immediately upon taking office:
1. Ninety percent (or 10 out of 11) of your nominees to the State Board of Education (SBE) ought to come from traditional public schools and districts, not charters or pro-privatization groups. Current SBE Members disproportionately represent charters, or have financially benefitted from their relationships to charters.
2. Similarly, staff the California Department of Education’s (CDE) Advisory Commission on Charter Schools (ACCS)…
There has never been an election for State Superintendent of Public Instruction like the one recently concluded in California between Marshall Tuck and Tony Thurmond. Tom Ultican says that $61 Million was spent. It might eventually be even more.
This was an epic showdown between charter supports and charter skeptics.
The charter billionaires spent heavily on former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He didn’t get to the runoffs.
“When Villaraigosa lost badly in the June 6 primary, many of the same billionaires listed above turned their full attention toward electing Marshall Tuck SPI.
“Following a brief career in investment banking, Tuck took a job at the politically connected Green Dot charter schools. Steve Barr a former chair of the Democratic Party who had served on national campaigns for Bill Clinton, Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis founded Green Dot charter schools in 1999. He hired Tuck in 2002 to be…
This is an excellent essay at Medium that I learned about from Peter Greene of Curmudgucation. I copy and paste it in its entirety in case you don’t like signing into Medium.
Let’s consider why so many young educators today are in open rebellion.
How did we lose patience with politicians and policymakers who dominated nearly every education reform debate for more than a generation?
Recall first that both political parties called us “a nation at risk,” fretted endlessly that we “leave no child behind,” and required us to compete in their “race to the top.”
They told us our problems could be solved if we “teach for America,” introduce “disruptive technology,” and ditch the textbook to become “real world,” 21st century, “college and career ready.”
They condemned community public schools for not letting parents “choose,” but promptly…
The Alt-Right is waging a war against what words mean like what “moral” means. They want to normalize white collar crime, racism, and rape as morally acceptable.
Yesterday, I participated in a panel discussion at the Washington Post about national issues in education with Robert Pondiscio of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Dean Bridget Terry Long of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This followed a few other panels, including one in which Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his chosen school superintendent Janice Jackson lavished praise on their successful efforts to transform the public schools of Chicago, with nary a dissent.
Our panel did include dissent, since I was critical of school choice and the other two panelists supported it. I was critical of standardized testing, and Dean Long supported it.
Valerie Strauss did a great job moderating and keeping us on track.
In my opening statement, I argued that the key education issue of our time was the defunding of public schools by the federal and state governments. NCLB and Race to the Top had…
Tom Ultican has written several articles about the Destroy Public Education Movement; this installment examines a failing charter chain in San Diego that continues to rake in big bucks.
When the chain was launched, the San Diego Unified School District staff said it was not ready to open; the founders appealed and were rejected by the staff of the County Board of Education. The founders appealed to the State Board of Education, where its defective application was rubberstamped by Governor Jerry Brown’s pro-Charter State Board.
Ultican says that charter schools are supposed to perform at least as well as similar public schools or show improvement over time.
Thrive charter schools did not meet either benchmark. But that did not deter funders or founders.
They were shameless and kept growing their failing charter chain. And…
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was right, this time. The results of the election between Thurmond and Tuck show that “you cannot fool all the people all the time”.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on November 17, “Thurmond wins race for state school superintendent as Tuck concedes.”
“The tight race saw a record level of spending — more than $50 million. Tuck attracted deep-pocketed education reformers, including Gap co-founder Doris Fisher and philanthropist Eli Broad. A representative from Tuck’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.”
California’s General Election results on November 19, 2018 were: Tony K. Thurmond 4,669,431 (50.9%) votes to Tuck’s 4,514,400 (49.1%).
In 2014, Tuck’s charter school/voucher supporters spent about $13.5 million and failed to get him elected California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction. Four years later, they tried and failed again. to elect Tuck to the same position.
The Sacramento Bee reports, “Charter school backers spent millions on statewide races in 2018. They still lost twice. “Independent groups supporting Tuck spent more than $36 million this cycle. Prominent education reform supporters, including frequent political donor Bill Bloomfield, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and philanthropist Eli Broad were among the biggest contributors to those efforts. Tuck’s official campaign raised another $5 million.”
How much will the public school hating, profit loving, private sector, corporate education reformers spend in the next election in 2022 to elect Tuck or someone like him to destroy California’s public schools? I hope that the majority of California’s voters continue to NOT be fooled by the autocratic, billionaire privatizes that hate labor unions, the public sector, the U.S. Constitution, and democracy.
****
Politico.com reported on November 1, five days before the 2018 election, “In the race to be California’s top educator, charter schools ally Marshall Tuck registered a substantial 12-point lead (48 percent to 36 percent) over state Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, as Tuck takes his second shot at the position. …
“The state superintendent race has attracted the most outside spending of any statewide contest, some $35 million: Teachers unions have showed up big for Thurmond, while rival EdVoice — whose campaign warchest is stocked by a small cast of individuals that includes Bill Bloomfield, Arthur Rock, Eli Broad, Richard Riordan and Jim Walton — have poured it on for Tuck. Both sides are saturating the airwaves; illustrating the stakes, the California Democratic Party just launched a $2.3 million ad blitz for Thurmond, and Sen. Kamala Harris appeared in a new pro-Thurmond.”
If that isn’t enough to point out the FAKE Democrat, maybe this will. At the State Democratic Convention, who did the Democrats in the audience boo off the stage? The Washington Post answered that question: “Both men are registered Democrats, but Tuck has the support of many Republicans. With the state Democratic Party supporting Thurmond, Tuck was booed off the stage at the California Democratic Party convention earlier this year.”
When was the last time a Democratic candidate was support by Republicans?
“They support Democratic touchstone issues such as environmentalism, gun control, gay marriage and abortion rights. But they’re often seen as party pariahs for espousing ideas like rolling back public workers’ pensions, banning transit strikes and making it easier to fire bad teachers.
“They’re a new breed of Democrat politician, and they’re shaking up the state’s political landscape as business interests, independents and sometimes even moderate Republicans pour money into nasty Democrat vs. Democrat battles made possible by California’s new “top-two” primary. And with the state Republican Party still searching for a path back from decades of decline, some political analysts say it’s only the beginning of a long battle for the soul of the California Democrat Party.”
I wrote, “It is obvious that Steve Glazer’s wealthy and corporate supporters are outspending Susan Bonilla at least $8 to $1 if not more.”
Nothing has changed but the name of the FAKE Democrat and that name is Marshal Tuck.
I wrote the following paragraph in 2015, and nothing has changed. “If you aren’t aware of the war being waged in the United States by a few billionaire oligarchs to remake the United States into a country that fits what they think, then it’s time to wake up and learn how to discover the signs of oligarch funded propaganda designed to manipulate and fool voters during elections. These billionaires are buying their way into the Republican and Democratic parties, and they are libertarians, neo-liberals, and neo-conservatives—and all of them threaten our freedom and way of life, because to win, they subvert the democratic process protected by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.”
If you vote for Marshal Tuck, you are supporting liar, a fraud, and if Tuck wins the election, California will end up with a Betsy DeVos clone or worse. The Washington Post said it best: “Betsy DeVos is the worst secretary of education ever”. If Marshall Tuck wins this election, he will be the worst state secretary of education ever.
Tony Thurmond is a real Democrat while Marshal Tuck, running as a FAKE Democrat, was booed at the California State Democratic Convention
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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and disabled Vietnam Veteran, with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005). He is also the award winning author of My Splendid Concubine and Crazy is Normal, a classroom expose.
Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 