Long before Gabrieli was a candidate for governor, the Boston Globe’s Scott S. Greenberger wrote a fascinating article about Advantage Schools, Inc. In the May 13, 2001 article, readers are told:
Advantage Schools Inc., a Boston-based company at the forefront of a national effort to run public schools privately, has failed to live up to its promises of academic and financial success in charter schools in at least seven states.
Across the country, Advantage has made bold commitments, vowing to make stellar students of children victimized by the worst of public education. The people behind the company – among them, the author of Massachusetts’ landmark charter school law and several other Weld-Cellucci aides – say for-profit companies can succeed where bureaucrats have failed.
But while promising to bring higher standards and sharper management of taxpayer dollars, Advantage has misled parents about teacher qualifications, failed to consistently boost scores on high-stakes state tests, and engaged in financial practices that have prompted censure by at least two states, the Globe has found.
The dots connect to the hard-right gang that controls the State Board of Education, dominated by advocates for and insiders within the charter school industry.
Advantage has used its conservative political connections to drum up business in Massachusetts and nationwide. Cofounder Steven Wilson, a former aide to Governor William F. Weld, tapped state Board of Education member Abigail Thernstrom to serve on Advantage’s academic advisory board. And businessman and leading MCAS advocate William Edgerly at one time chaired the company’s board of directors.
Long before 2001, Gabrieli was a heavy investor and major rainmaker for Advantage Schools, Inc. Look at the Boston Business Journal article from July 17, 1998, in which Advantage gets $10 million in new venture capital. Remember, where you see Bessemer Venture Partners, that’s Gabrieli.
The investment, from several venture capital firms, was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers of Menlo Park, Calif. Also investing were Bessemer Venture Partners of Wellesley, Fidelity Ventures of Boston and United States Trust Co. of New York.
Steven Wilson, Advantage’s president and chief executive officer, said the money will be used to open six new charter schools to go along with schools the company already launched in Phoenix, and Rocky Mount, N.C.
Two of the six new schools, slated for Worcester and Malden, will mark Advantage’s first venture in Massachusetts and will open in the fall, Wilson said.
Why did Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers get into Advantage Schools? Simple.
Kleiner Perkins learned of Advantage, according to Wilson, through Christopher Gabrieli, on leave from Bessemer Venture Partners while running for the open 8th Massachusetts Congressional District seat.
Bessemer was involved in the first round of venture capital funding of Advantage Schools.
In 2001, Gabrieli and Advantage pop up in an article from the right wing Lexington Institute titled Investing in Charter Schools: Markets on the Edge of Change, a quote taken directly from Gabrieli.
While still a long way from achieving profitability, leading charter school companies have attracted investors who see the potential for lucrative, long-term returns, the social value of increased educational options for urban children, and usually both. Many are drawn by the dynamics of a sector Christopher Gabrieli of Bessemer Venture Partners describes as typifying “markets on the edge of change.”
Gabrieli has some curious supporters in a Democratic primary. If you wonder why we lose the governor’s race, it’s because we have people like Barbara Anderson of Citizens for Limited Taxation pulling Democratic ballots and voting for people like Gabrieli. Check out her September 12, 2002 column, where she writes:
Chris Gabrieli has added to the quality of debate in the commonwealth with his support for Mass Inc. and its quarterly magazine, and to some genuine improvement in education with his support for charter schools.
Which leads us back to the July 17 Globe article by Brian C Mooney:
But there is one educational innovation voters aren’t likely to hear the wealthy venture capitalist emphasize, because it was a failure.
In the late 1990s, Gabrieli and his firm, Bessemer Venture Partners, were major investors in Boston-based Advantage Schools, a for-profit charter school company that crashed because of mismanagement of schools in several states, including two in Massachusetts.
According to the article, “Gabrieli’s personal investment in Advantage Schools was in the $250,000 to $500,000 range, according to a 1998 financial disclosure statement he filed in connection with his failed run for Congress.”
Bottom line. If you like the education policies of Weld-Cellucci-Swift-Romney, you can stay the course with Gabrieli.
Gabrieli’s record is overwhelmingly positive in terms of batting average (i.e. # of projects that worked divided by total # of projects he worked on), $ made, and generosity (i.e. donating his time and $ to help others).
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Those $s will also come in handy to set the record straight if/when any distortions arise in the next four and a half weeks.
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Best,
SSG
Which part of my post is a distortion?
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What’s positive about all this?
Pablo – to answer your questions that you posted in response to my post/reply last night…
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Gabrieli’s overall record is overwhelmingly positive. Anyone that works in business has successes and failures, things that they wish went better. Gabrieli’s success rate is incredibly high. He has also put his money where his mouth in projects – some for profit and many others as pure donations in form of time and money. You do not mention that – wonder why? No need to answer, it’s obvious.
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You site something that did not work, but most people who have actually studied Gabrieli’s record know the truth and that his contributions are almost universally positive.
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It is interesting that you reference old stories and a Barbara Anderson note from 2002. If his record were littered with stories like these, there would be more smoke/fire. That we have not heard/seen more says a whole lot. In other words, the silence is pretty deafening. No one is perfect, but that “dog that won’t hunt” reference was meant to suggest that “the beast” will get mighty hungry if this is the path you want to take to try to feed it
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To win a general election, you need to appeal broadly to the electorate – obviously to get the most votes. The object of these things is still to win, correct? Gabrieli appeals not only to Democrats, but also Independents. To win the primary, he will likely need Independents to pull Democratic ballots – given his late start and Patrick’s hold/lead on the far left portion of the party. Luckily for him, there are not many compelling reasons to pull a Republican primary ballot in this state this year – as opposed to say 1990 or 1998 (Weld vs. Pierce; Cellucci vs. Malone respectively).
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If people want to focus on this, that is their right and I would never tell them not to – in fact I encourage anyone to look at Gabrieli’s overall record. If/when they do, I am confident that we will pick up net new votes.
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We are now into the portion of the election where we will all see our candidates take some shots – some legitimate and others much less so. It is an unfortunate part of this business that is not going away. What you site is fair game, I just don’t think it portrays the true overall picture and I do not think this will stick. As I noted last night, Gabrieli’s resources and his willingness to tap them will allow the campaign to respond accordingly to shots such as this one. Just as importantly, he/we will not allow others to define him or his overwhelmingly positive, generous track-record.
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Happy Hunting – have a great Sunday.
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How are Gabs’ education policies the same as Weld/Romney? I bet they’re not.
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I support Patrick, but just as I’m not convinced by the implication that “Patrick’s not really progressive because the corporations he’s worked for didn’t morph into Ben & Jerry’s,” so I suspect that attempts to pigeonhole Chris with our Republican governors are motivated by adversarial feelings rather than by sober analysis. But I’m not an education guru — somebody please educate me/us on this.
Thanks for the question. I’ll take a shot.
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1. President Clinton’s basic plan was invest more in K-12, provide more parent choice and innovation with charters, and create standards with tests to measure basic math and English knowledge. Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind required states to report not just scores by school, but by subgroup.
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2. Part of the reason Ted K supported it was it required suburbs to fess up that the black and Hispanic kids were getting the shaft.
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For example, Pablo’s from Arlington, which has a huge Achievement Gap – black and Hispanic kids do horribly, and there’s little to no improvement over time in reducing this Gap. In past, this was easily swept under the rug – only perhaps 100 or so children at Arlington High. Now it’s more transparent (pdf).
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Does the law work?
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In some places.
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Look at Brookline Public Schools website and strategic plan. After NCLB took hold, people acted. Check out their plan. It’s ambitious and sensible.
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By contrast, mum’s the word in Arlington. Here’s their strategic plan (pdf). Not a word about the Gap. “Nothing to see here, move along, move along.” Closing their racial achievement gap is not even a GOAL.
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3. The bipartisan approach to $+standards+public school choice was pretty much the same as MA’s Ed Reform Act of 1993. Huge new K-12 state investment, combined with accountability and limited public school choice via charters (all students admitted by random lottery, more likely to start in low-income areas, hence more poor and black/Hispanic kids that state averages).
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4. One area where Gabrieli and Reilly part ways with Patrick is over charters. (My frequent disclaimer: I’m in the tank for charters, so discount as needed). Those guys are with other right wing loons who support charters like Barack Obama, John Edwards, Hilary, and the 2004 Dem platform.
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Patrick, to his credit, has visited at least two high-performing charter schools. It’s hard for me to imagine that a kid from inner-city Chicago, who would have faced likely doom if he hadn’t gotten a voucher to Milton and made an incredible run of achievement, really doesn’t want OTHER kids to get a chance to escape the ghetto. Realistically, however, it’s hard for me to fault him on making a deal with the teachers union to get their support – Gabs obviously has $$$ and Reilly has many other unions.
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5. Because charters have 67%-to-28% support in MA, charter opponents tend to:
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a. Claim they “support charters but oppose funding mechanism.”
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b. Emphasize the few charter schools managed by for-profit firms, like Advantage before it flamed out. I think 1 or 2 of the 57 charter public schools in MA are affiliated with for-profit management companies.
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6. Gabrieli invested in Advantage, so he hardly “profiteered.” The remnants of the company were bought by Mosaica, which is privately held. A good guess is that his 250k to 500k is now down to about half of that.
I think you have strayed off topic. This wasn’t a discussion on the merits of No Child Left Behind, but on the privatization agenda and Gabrieli’s joint role as a public advocate and a private investor.
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Since you mentioned Arlington, let me put you on the ground of what is happening in the Arlington Public Schools. Arlington got hammered in the 2005 Coordinated Program Review, and particular mention was made of the district’s English Language Learner program.
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The school committee hired a new superintendent on July 1, 2005. The committee negotiated a pay-for-performance contract contract with the superintendent. One of the goals was to correct the deficiencies in the Coordinated Program Review. The district dedicated considerable effort and resources into building an excellent ELL program, and in one year it became one of the best in the state. ONE YEAR!
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Arlington’s other problem has been low standards for secondary students who were not “high achieving and easy to teach.” The district’s plans surrounding professional development, differentiated instruction, and the realignment of the administrative staff was designed to address this issue. Yes, there is an achievement gap at the secondary level in 2005. (You won’t find the acheivement gap at the elementary level – check out the Thompson School scores.) I think you will see this achievement gap close in the next couple of years.
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As for Gabrieli, just because the company flopped, doesn’t mean he wasn’t profiteering. My dictionary says a profiteer is someone who would “make or seek to make an excessive or unfair profit.” Advantage failed, but he did seek to extract profits from the public schools by (a) pushing for public policy that favors the company he invested in and (b) investing in a company with the track record of Advantage Schools.
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The present State Board of Education is stacked with Republican appointees who have been on the payroll of the charter school industry, or who have come out of the Pioneer Institute, which is heavily invested in the privatization of our schools.
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Just consider James Peyser. His day job at NewSchools Venture Fund is to promote new charter schools. He’s chair of the State Board of Education. When Romney came to office, state aid to public schools was cut 20%, but charter schools (funded through garnishments of local aid accounts) were aggressively expanded. The leader of this effort is Peyser, and here’s an excerpt of his biography from uscharterschools.org
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You’re not suggesting Gabs is for cutting spending for public schools, are you?
Yes I am. Gabrieli’s proposed lifting the cap on charter schools only serves to expand the number of unaccountable private entities that have a right to garnish local aid for public education. He’s following the party line of the charter school industry’s lobbyists.
And I’m torn. I believe deeply in public schools as both providing kids the education that should be their birthright and as an institution of social solidarity.
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But many public schools suck. And many won’t be getting dramatically better in the next few years even if we do increase their budgets. If I was the parent of kids in an awful school system, and couldn’t afford a good private school alternative, I’d be looking for some way out. And I wouldn’t want my kid held hostage in some political game between the right wing nutjobs who think everything should be privatized (and who see the teachers unions as their political enemies) and, yes, the teachers unions, who more than anything want to protect their jobs, wages, and work rules.
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Competition makes most things in our society better. Choice allows consumers to make their own decisions about what serves their interests. Shouldn’t we be both increasing funding for the public schools and supporting alternatives so that those folks with lousy or mediocre schools, who are disproportionately poor and/or people of color, can vote with their feet?
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Darn, this policy stuff is hard. Maybe I should go back to spin and snarkiness.
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For your thoughtful reply…
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1. I was responding to a commenter’s (DP supporter) question: “How are Gabs’ education policies the same as Weld/Romney?”
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So I wasn’t off topic. Essentially, my point is that there’s a bipartisan agenda for a mix of higher funding+accountability+public school choice, both nationally and statewide. NCLB and 1993 in MA are relevant.
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The Republicans also want vouchers, but that’s not broadly popular. The far left want only funding and to strip the accountability and choice, and that’s not popular either.
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2. Also in your original post, you raise Gabs’ “advocacy for charters in the public discourse.” Your suggestion is that he supports them b/c he invested in Advantage Schools, and that his charter support is a Republican position.
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Yet support for charters is bi-partisan, and it was Bill Clinton who pushed their explosive growth in the 1990s.
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3. I’m glad to see Arlington has addressed its Achievement Gap. The kids will benefit enormously. We may have different ways to get there, but we care about the same issues. I look forward to seeing the district’s MCAS next month and beyond.
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4. I’m not sure what your precise issue is with Peyser’s work with a nonprofit philanthrophy whose mission is to start good nonprofit charter public schools for inner-city kids?
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Is someone who leads a university ineligible for the Board of Higher Ed?
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5. By the way, do you favor pay-for-performance contracts for teachers, or just administrators? Just curious.
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6. I think your numbers are wrong. You said charters “aggressively expanded” under Romney, but they’ve grown slower than they did before he was elected.
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Also, you describe a 20% cut in state aid to local school districts. Chapter 70 was $3.2 billion in 2002 and $3.5 billion in the approved new budget. Did you mean 10% increase? Or about even when adjusted for CPI?
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For context, state K-12 aid has almost tripled since 1993 – all Republican governors – from $1.3 billion to $3.5 billion. This does not include state money spent on school construction.
Arlington’s Chapter 70 aid is less today than when Jane Swift was elected. We are not alone. But if you want to see the net effect of privatization on a school system, consider the case of Framingham.
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Framingham’s Chapter 70 aid for the past five years illustrates the problem:
FY03: $10,164,588
FY04: $8,131,670
FY05: $8,131,670
FY06: $8,530,320
FY07: $10,628,154
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Yet charter local payments from Framingham have risen:
FY03: $965,928
FY04: $1,721,560
FY05: $2,049,286
FY06: $2,043,820
FY07: $2,081,811 (projected)
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The following are FY06 numbers, but they illustrate the problem.
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223 out of 335 publicly governed school districts received less state school aid (Chapter 70 funds) in the state’s FY06 budget compared to the Fiscal 2003 budget, the last budget enacted when Jane Swift was governor. 152 publicly governed school districts lost at least 20% of this annual state funding for the first two years of the Romney administraton.
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At the same time, state mandated tuition payments for unaccountable Commonwealth Charter Schools increased 60%.
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Payments to self-appointed charter school trustees and private operators increased from $122,180,645 in FY03 to $195,880,366 in FY06. The charter school industry has grown to represent the fourth largest school system in the state, with virtually no public accountability for their budgets.
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You made a specific claim – “State aid to public schools was cut 20%.”
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I showed that you were wrong.
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When that happens on BMG – we’ve all been wrong before – the right thing to do is to just say “Oops, my bad.”
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2. Instead, you cite a single district, Framingham, then distort.
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You neglect to say that Framingham’s per-student state aid has INCREASED, and you neglect to say that 180 parents felt that they might get a better public school education from a smaller charter.
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When kids leave a Framingham public school for the nearby charter public school, the state money follows the kid. The money pays for the teachers at the new, smaller school, which has longer hours.
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The same thing happens when a Medicaid patient leaves a hospital for another, or a student leaves Framingham State to attend Salem State. Money follows the student.
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The thing is, unlike those other institutions, Framingham School District also gets extra “REIMBURSEMENT” – money to NOT educate departed kids. This covers transition costs.
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3. You say “Virtually no public accountability”
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Despite your Orwellian word twisting, charter public schools are MORE accountable than other types of public schools. For example, 2 years ago, 2 Boston charter schools – both outperforming many traditional district Boston schools in MCAS and despite long waiting lists – were shut down.
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That’s why Clinton promoted charters – increased accountability in exchange for increased autonomy.
Don’t misquote me for the benefit of making a specious point.
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GoldsteinGoneWild said:
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What I said was:
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Here’s my proof. Here’s the 223 out of 335 districts with less Chapter 70 aid in FY06 compared to FY03.
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And here’s the list of school districts that took a 20% reduction for the first two years of the Romney administration. Feel free to look them up on the Department of Education website.
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ARLINGTON
ASHFIELD
ASSABET VALLEY
AUBURN
AVON
AYER
BARNSTABLE
BECKET
BEDFORD
BELMONT
BERKSHIRE HILLS
BERLIN
BERLIN BOYLSTON
BEVERLY
BLACKSTONE
BLUE HILLS
BOXFORD
BOYLSTON
BRAINTREE
BREWSTER
BRIDGEWATER
BRIMFIELD
BROOKFIELD
BROOKLINE
BURLINGTON
CAMBRIDGE
CANTON
CAPE COD
CARLISLE
CHARLEMONT
CHATHAM
CHELMSFORD
CHESTERFIELD
COHASSET
CONCORD
CONCORD CARLISLE
CONWAY
CUMMINGTON
DALTON
DANVERS
DEDHAM
DOVER
DOVER SHERBORN
DUXBURY
EAST LONGMEADOW
EASTHAM
EDGARTOWN
ERVING
FALMOUTH
FARMINGTON RIVER FLORIDA
FRAMINGHAM
FREETOWN
GATEWAY
GLOUCESTER
GOSHEN
GOSNOLD
HADLEY
HARVARD
HARWICH
HAWLEMONT
HINGHAM
HINSDALE
HOLLAND
HOLLISTON
HULL
IPSWICH
LANESBOROUGH
LEE
LENOX
LEVERETT
LEXINGTON
LINCOLN
LINCOLN SUDBURY
LITTLETON
LONGMEADOW
LYNNFIELD
MANCHESTER ESSEX MARION
MATTAPOISETT
MAYNARD
MEDFORD
MELROSE
MILFORD
MILTON
MINUTEMAN
MOHAWK TRAIL
MOUNT GREYLOCK
NAHANT
NANTUCKET
NASHOBA
NASHOBA VALLEY
NATICK
NAUSET
NEEDHAM
NEW SALEM WENDELL
NEWBURYPORT
NEWTON
NORFOLK COUNTY
NORTH ANDOVER
NORTHAMPTON
NORTHAMPTON SMITH
NORTHBOROUGH
NORWELL
NORWOOD
OLD ROCHESTER
ORLEANS
PELHAM
PLAINFIELD
PLYMOUTH
PLYMPTON
PROVINCETOWN
QUINCY
RICHMOND
ROCKPORT
ROWE
RUTLAND
SAUGUS
SEEKONK
SHAWSHEEN VALLEY
SHERBORN
SHUTESBURY
SOMERSET
SOMERVILLE
SOUTH MIDDLESEX
SOUTHERN BERKSHIRE
STONEHAM
STURBRIDGE
SWAMPSCOTT
SWANSEA
TISBURY
TRURO
TYRINGHAM
UPISLAND WAKEFIELD
WALES
WALPOLE
WALTHAM
WATERTOWN
WAYLAND
WELLESLEY
WELLFLEET
WEST BRIDGEWATER
WESTBOROUGH
WESTHAMPTON
WESTON
WESTWOOD
WHATELY
WILLIAMSBURG
WILLIAMSTOWN
WILMINGTON
WINCHESTER
WINDSOR
WOBURN
From my perspective as well as my circle of colleagues (public school teachers), support for lifting the cap on Commonwealth Charters is a huge mistake and a waste of money. As a school committee member, as well, I find it very disappointing that Democratic candidates are talking this way. Haven’t we learned our lesson on this one yet? Despite some tweaking of the funding formula for CC schools, they are still, in my view, nothing but a dressed-up version of privatized public education designed to suck money from the public coffers. They’re a scourge.
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And another thing, as soon as we elect a Democratic governor, we’ll be able to cut loose those nitwits on the Board of Education with Driscoll leading the pack out the door. And that’ll be a good thing. [End rant.]
Scourge 1
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Scourge 2
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Boston charter public schools go out of their way to reach out to black families in particular.
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If you could go back in time, would you also take away a young Deval Patrick’s voucher to Milton?
You forgot one. Parker. Are there successful charter schools? Yes. Would such schools also have been successful had they been implemented within a framework of our public schools? Yes.
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And are scholarships the new vouchers? Are vouchers the old scholarships? Disingenuous semantic games that conflate the two add nothing to the discourse.
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Yet you constantly try to use “public schools” exclusively to mean traditional district schools.
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That is “disingenuous.”
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2. The founders of Parker and Rox Prep have said that they WOULD NOT have been successful within traditional red tape and regulations. Obviously if they could do it the easy way, they would have – and we’d have lots of RoxPreps.
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3. I think you ask a good question. Vouchers give opportunity to even struggling inner-city kids to attend private schools. Scholarships like Patrick’s give opportunity to the highest-performing inner-city kids to attend private schools.
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I believe in public schools. But I also agree with former Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent Howard Fuller:
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What you call “scourge,” others call “the only chance I have for my kids.”
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4. The “Just give us – the business as usual system – more and more money and we’ll handle things” approach you favor does not have widespread political support.
privatized public schools. Not the same as my traditional district public school. However, by dint of the fact they use public dollars, I do not have to view them as a true public school, which has one common meaning among citizens, although I realize it is to the advantage of charter-school supporters to have charter schools viewed on par with their “regular” public schools.
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Commonwealth charter schools vary in substantial ways from their traditional public school counterparts:
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1. They are frequently managed by for-profit companies.
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2. There is no local oversight or control over where the school is situated.
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3. They operate completely independently from local public school districts and siphon money away from those same local public schools.
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4. They may be staffed by unlicensed teachers.
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So, while it may be convenient for you to argue, in fact, that they are a type of public school, they are not “public schools” in the common parlance, and to suggest that they are is disingenuous.
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And, by the way, you claim this:
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Quote me. Where have I ever said that I advocated or favored “the business as usual system–more and more money”? Don’t attribute positions to me that I do not hold. Do our public schools need more money? Yes. As a teacher, I’m not thrilled with having copy paper rationed as it was in one school I taught at. Do I think public schools need work? Yes, I sure do. Don’t presume you know my views simply because I’m a public school teacher.
And the overwhelming majority of businesses fail within the first five yeras. Edison, the company that Philadelphia and California turned large parts of their school system over to, has sold off textbooks because it was in danger of going under. Putting communities in students in a place where their education depends on support for a private company’s stock price is not the way to go.
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And I don’t see how anyone who can live through the Big Dig disaster and claim that “competition” makes private companies turn in quality work. (And of course, that’s the tip of the iceberg…think of what Blackwater is doing in Iraq, what the privatized TSA is up to in the airports, for starters…)
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Funny, how Bill and Hillary and Wikipedia and USA Today evidently don’t speak in the common parlance and are disingenuous!
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Because all say: “Charter schools are public schools”….
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Luckily they have Iris to educate them on the error of their ways, and who also claims:
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Iris, one or two of 57 in Massachusetts are managed by for-profits. I often think of “frequently” as 2% to 4%.
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Of course not. No school district is going to approve a new public school which allows parents to go there instead. Control is held by the state. That’s a good thing in this case. And since you’re on the school board, please not I’m not singling out districts – no monopoly of any sort is going to embrace the competition.
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You even conceded Roxbury Prep was a good school as was Parker – but both were opposed by the localities.
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Again with the language: “siphon.” When a kid leaves a district school to attend a union-approved “pilot” school – and the money follows the kid in exactly the same way – is that “siphoning?”
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Your view is that the taxpayer money belongs to the people who work at the district, whether they do a great job or a terrible job with a student. My view is that the taxpayer money belongs to the kid who needs an education.
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Scary. Might as well shut down that whole, horrible Teach For America thing, too.
We could go back and forth on this all night and accomplish nothing. Not up for it. We’re never agree on this subject, so it’s best to agree to disagree.
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For the record, though, despite your many references to Bill Clinton, I don’t give a rat’s ass what his (or Hillary’s) thoughts are on charter schools.
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Iris, the point isn’t whether you care about Bill or Hillary’s position on anything.
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Instead, you made a specific claim that it’s not common parlance to say “charter schools are public schools.” You went beyond YOUR OWN belief – to which of course you’re entitled – and characterized the positions of the public at large.
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That’s a claim that can be factually tested, via Google.
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So I did.
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So I cited the holy trinity of “common parlance” – USA Today, Wikipedia, and Bill Clinton (Bush says same, btw, but his support of charters, rather than making things bipartisan, in your mind becomes proof of some flaw)….and threw in Hillary. I think there were 36,000 other hits.
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In other words, I have the cites to show that you’re wrong.
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Not that we disagree – certainly we disagree on some issues, and there are many, many legitimate critiques of charter schools – but that you are wrong on a narrow and specific point.
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I wouldn’t give, as you say, a rat’s ass, except you are also fairly quick to insult many on BMG with whom you disagree – in this case not only were you wrong, but you accused me of being disingenuous in my (correct) position.
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In the classroom, when you err on a factual point and a kid points it out, do you thank her and turn it into a teachable moment? Or you downshift into “we disagree” to preserve your sense of authority?
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This is gibberish. If you ask the average person on the street if they thought charter schools were public schools just like their community schools, they’d say no, they’re something different, and couldn’t likely explain why.
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Google as authority. Great. Try just asking the average Joe what his perceptions are. That’s who I’m talking about.
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Wrong about what?? I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Truly. I don’t get it.
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That charter schools are public schools? I don’t dispute that they are funded by taxpayer dollars, hence “public” in a rather specific denotational sort of way.
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I think you are disingenuous in your position. I do not agree that you are “right” in the manner you mean.
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Oooooo….right for the jugular. Notice that I did not attack you personally in all this. Classy.
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I generally sentence the kid to 10 weeks of washing my blackboard and sharpening all my pencils so that they are exactly all the same length.
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You are very quick to judge, apparently, people you don’t know. You are rather authoritative in demanding that others capitulate to your notion of “correct” when, in fact, nuance as well as the real and common understanding of people affect the very thing you so absolutely declare a singular truth.
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It’s a good thing the world is not as black and white as your sense of “fact” suggests. Your “fact” is backed up by Google; my “differing opinion” is informed by my personal experiences living public education daily and talking to people who couldn’t begin to explain the financing of a charter school if their lives depended upon it–and who most certainly do believe, rightly or wrongly, that a charter school is not a public school just like their community schools. Boots on the ground, baby. Google can pound sand.
“If you ask the average person on the street if they thought charter schools were public schools just like their community schools, they’d say no, they’re something different, and couldn’t likely explain why.”
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Ask them who their state rep. or congressman is – bet they can’t answer that either. Does that make them less of an office holder?
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So why would the public being unable to explain the differentiation make charter schools less public?
so your argument comes down to that you have friends who think like you. and they’re right.
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works for me!
I feel like I am trapped into a Karl Rove language trap. Once upon a time, there were charter schools and there were public schools. Everyone understood what we were talking about. Until someone on the charter side of the fence decided that the language hurt their political agenda, and insisted they be called public schools as well. Now we have schools renaming themselves to get the word public in the middle, so you now have names like the Woodrow Wilson Charter Public Regional Middle School of International Good Will and Friendship.
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The only thing about Commonwealth Charter schools is the funding. So, to differentiate between public schools, with elected school committees and budgets voted in town meeting, and those privately run schools that are funded through local aid garnishments, let’s change the adjectives to reflect reality.
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Public Schools have public governance and accountability to the taxpayers that fund them.
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Those other schools, that just take public money, could be called something like “voucher schools” or “preferred provider voucher schools”
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Unless anyone else has a better way to describe the difference. Where’s George Lakoff when we really need him?
…strikes again!
Pablo, cool it with the zeroes. A zero is for something that has really no content at all, except for sheer viciousness. It’s not for posts with which you merely disagree. Give a 4 if you must, or a 3 if you think it’s really dumb. Use zeroes judiciously.
Commonwealth Charter schools are more like a voucher system with a preferred provider list.
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The first charters were truly community-based. There were consotiums that worked with the public system to develop programs they couldn’t provide in a traditional setting, like Lowell Middlesex Academy. However, charters have gone from innovators to an alternative state school system.
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If the average Commonwealth Charter deducts $10,000 from the local aid account of a sending district, consider what happens if the sending district loses 13 kids – one from each grade.
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The loss of 13 kids does nothing to reduce the net cost to the school district. However, the district needs to reduce the local budget by $130,000 to compensate for the lost state aid, because the town is also constrained by Proposition 2.5 and can’t pass the cost of the taxpayers. (I would bet big time that they would put the brakes on Comm Charters if they were exempt from Prop 2.5 and property taxes went up to pay for the additional costs.)
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Anyway, the district loses three classroom teachers worth of funding, and the charters who are first in line for the funding undergo none of the scrutiny that towns give to any other expenditure. There is no appropriation at town meeting. It’s taken off the top. Town meeting is agonizing about cutting services, while the charter operators are happily spending money without regard to the fiscal plight of the sending towns. They just keep lobbying for more money and revised formulas that get them more money out of local aid accounts.
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When the state superintendents’ association presented a charter school reform plan, that deducted from local districts aid at the same rate as a school choice student, and covered the rest through an appropriation by the legislature, the charter school industry lobby went nuts. They don’t want to be subject to anyone’s appropriation or oversight, they just want a guaranteed payment and they don’t care who they hurt in the process.
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Anyway, are Commonwealth Charters really public schools? Was Advantage Schools a private corporation or a public entity? Does town meeting vote to join a charter school regional district, like a regional vocational district? Does town meeting vote the appropriation? How are the charter school trustees chosen? Where’s the accountability to the people who are actually PAYING for the Comm Charters?
It’s sort of a yin and yang thing. When 20% cuts turn into 10% increases, the numbers tend to reverse themselves.
And I sent my kid there, too.
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Iris – I sent him because his own teacher told me that 7th and 8th grade in middle school was just re-teaching what some kids didn’t get in 5th and 6th – and if the new charter school taught BASKETWEAVING, he’d still be ahead.
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He got to study physics, and build a telescope with John Dobson. In person. He helped with a whale necropsy. PLEASE don’t tell me the public schools could do this – the whale would have been gone beofre the wording of the permission slips had been decided on!
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Mine was just a plain vanilla charter school, founded by parents, and still run by a parent board. It’s space is an abandonded shopping mall, and there is now also a charter high school in a former furniture store. It was a risky decision at the time, because chater schools per se were brand new and nobody knew how they would work out.
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I thought my son was more important than the teacher’s union coming to grips with the fact that no matter how long they held their breath, no matter how blue they turned – they would still have to administer MCAS, and they would still have to be accountable. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my child to school district spitting matches.
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Best decision I ever made.
Granted, this may be a good decision for you and your kid, but what is the policy implication for the kids in your sending district?
you two have a way of giving high scores to each other.
If you look at my ratings, you’ll see I’ve given exactly one high rating to Pablo and that was today. No sock puppets here.
I’m not Iris. I’m a bit too male to be an Iris, and I’m from the other side of the state. Of course, I do recognize brilliance and thoughtful discourse when I see it. 😉
Because Iris doesn’t routinely give “0” and “3” ratings to posts only because she disagrees with them. You’re abusing the rating system, and I wish you would stop. (And, frankly, it doesn’t help your credibility.)
Here’s what I am objecting to.
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I say a.
Someone comes along, claims I said b, then attacks me for saying b. That, to me, is a zero post. I appreciate people who can take the core facts of my argument and engage in a discussion that challenges my interpretation of the facts. I appreciate it when people bring in a new set of facts to challenge my conclusions. I don’t take kindly to getting attacked for something I didn’t say or for an argument I didn’t make.
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And any post that personallyattacks another writer instead of the argument, in my opinion, is in the zero to three zone. Go back and read some of the personal attacks. If we start rating personal attacks as zeros, maybe then they will go away.
HAving the temerity to disagree with you?
is filled with students with which parents are involved. Involved with the school as well as the student. Milton Friedman articulated this in the 1970s google video
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Somehow, New Deal thinking created the notion that better student is created with more institutional spending, and the NEA with its affiliates perpetuates the myth.
Ah, yes. Another argument against charter schools. Seems that every major study on quality of education results in places like New England have high scores, and places with large county school systems have low scores.
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I think having town meetings, very accountable local school superintendents and school committees, and the accessibility of local governance is a key to quality schools. Those expensive Commonwealth Charters don’t have any of these advantages.
I said “parent involvement”. As you may figure out I’m not one of those ‘it takes a village’ sorta guys.
Here, parents can easily talk to the governing board and the superintendent. A dissatisfied parent can easily raise a little money and get elected to the school committee. How do we vote out charter school trustees or the State Board of Education?
Pablo – you don’t HAVE to send your kid to a charter school. If you don’t like the curriculum, the students, etc., then leave. Your local school system is another matter.
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I live on Cape Cod, and I think it’s interesting that the first two parochial schools we ever had have been built in the last five years. We used to have much less choice – now, we have religious, charter, on private academy, AND public. Public is losing.
You didn’t answer my question.
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I wouldn’t mind having the choice of a charter school, but I don’t feel as if I have the option when that choice has such a highly negative impact on my local district.
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I support Horace Mann charters. I would support independent charters if they were organized in a manner consistent with a regional vocational school district. Towns vote to become a member. The state sets a minimum net school spending requirement and a minimum local contribution. Town Meeting can vote an assessment above state minimums.
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Also, there needs to be a way to eliminate the duplicate bureaucracies for the charters. Every little charter has a charter school director, a business manager, and a whole layer of administrators that rival a medium-sized school district.
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So, if the local charter school has only 104 students enrolled in the school, and budgets $436,500 for full time teachers and $393,750 (plus benefits) for administrators pages 43 & 44 – Who do I vote out of office for wasting taxpayer money?
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That’s a very big list!
..and Roxbury’s looks NOTHING like Lighthouse! We do not HAVE a large bureaucracy, we REQUIRE parental work at the school as a condition of attendence, lottery system – MANY differences.
But how many public school districts could get that budget past a Fincom and Town Meeting?
I’d love to know what the demographic of the charter is compared to the district or the state since I think that required work would at school would be a tough thing for poor families or those who work two jobs etc. So, is this a case of creating a charter school to serve a different population than the town?
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As said before, the problem with charters is the funding…when a single student leaves a district, the district saves at most $2500 in supplies and perhaps an occasional lost salary when there are enough losses at the same school at the same grade level to eliminate a class, but loses about 10,000. Still the same # of buildings, secretaries, heat systems, etc. Some charters are fabulous and innovative, others poor. Most in MA seem to do about as well as one would expect given the demographics of the kids/parents who go. I find it funny/odd that people who are all about business efficiency look the other way when results suggest than some/many charters biggest achievement is creating a duplicate administratitive cost.
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But, some charters really do try new stuff that would be hard to test at a bigger scale in the public schools. If a charter is serving a diverse population racially, language wise, severe special needs wise, my hat is off to it. That’s what we expect/require from our public schools. I’d just like to see the state fund them in a way that doesn’t take away triple what the district saves.
See, the great thing about charters is that they can make their own rules. We don’t have to ring down the curtain at 3 pm sharp.
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I painted walls and built bookcases – at night. In fact, MOST of the parents did their work between 6 and 9 pm.
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And please – we’re talking about a rural area – there ISN’T a ‘different’ populatuion than the one served by the town. And to stem the criticism before it starts, YES, there ARE special needs students at the school. Many special needs parent s hope their kids win the lottery, because of small class size, etc. – it’s better for their kids. Racially, Lighthouse is slightly more diverse than the Cape overall (we had two black kids commute to Orleans from HANOVER).
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And since we get squat from the state anyway, the impact on the regionals isn’t as great as in boston.