To amuse myself this month I have been following Pioneer Institute’s “lift the charter cap” road show which began with a trial run commentary by Chieppo and Gas at, of all places, the Providence Journal. Pioneer has been touring the cloud since, dropping down in Massachusetts towns like Milford to plea the cause for charter schools – but only in the state’s 10% lowest performing communities! There are no charter schools in Milford.
There is so much misleading spin coming from Pioneer Institute on so many levels I’m having difficulty in knowing just where to begin. In Tuesday’s, Huffington Post, Pioneer’s Kate Apfelbaum cited, once again, the “Stanford CREDO Study”, never mentioning that it has been discredited because the CREDO study is flawed and everyone knows it. I think Pioneer believes that if you say something enough times people will believe it is true! “Credo, Credo, Credo”…don’t they think anyone will check, maybe read it? In a review published by the National Education Policy Center, Andrew Maul and Abby McClelland, research experts and statisticians, have criticized the CREDO study for the weakness of its data and methodology. Charter school student’s performance was compared to the scores of hypothetical “virtual” traditional public school students that were invented by the study authors.
CREDO researchers created a “virtual twin” for the students attending Traditional Boston Public Schools. Then they used a computer to figure out how that charter school kid MIGHT have performed if he had attended a Traditional Public School. This “virtual twin” research method has been criticized by those researchers who are really in the know, why? Because it is highly subjective and easily manipulated as a point of reference! Even Charter School Queen and Advocate Jeanie Allen, from the Center of Education Reform says this Stanford CREDO study is bunk!
Then there is the cost burden that charter schools create to the sending urban district schools. Boston Public Schools will pay $108,661,809. in tuition for two-dozen charter schools in the city! Quest, a REAL grassroots group of traditional Boston Public School parents, notes, “the majority of 128 schools face significant cuts in staff, in programs and in resources to support the education of more than 57,000 of our children.” Boston charter schools will receive 42% of the total amount of Chapter 70 aid to service 12.3% of charter students, where is the fairness to the 87.7% of Boston neediest, “not the right fit,” students remaining in our traditional public schools? These are the kids that cost more to educate!
As a Boston Public School Teacher, I found it odd that Representative Alice Peisch was advocating for charter schools in Boston, and going against Senator Chang-Diaz (whose district actually has charter schools that are seriously impacting the traditional schools) and the Joint Committee on Education who were ready to table this. It was especially disconcerting when I found out there are no charter schools or “turnaround/spinning” schools Wellesley, Weston and Wayland, the toney suburban communities that Representative Peisch represents! Since Ms. Peisch is such a fan of charter schools, I would have thought when Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School wanted to open a regional charter clone in Weston, that she would be right up there advocating for it, given Weston’s large 12.6% Asian population. What happened to their “parent choice?” Why didn’t Representative Peisch advocate for a charter school for them?
Peisch didn’t advocate for charter schools in the toney suburbs because Massachusetts State Legislators have come to realize the negative impact that charter schools and “turnaround” have created in our state, and especially in urban school districts like Boston. Elected officials in these suburban communities are saying no to charter schools, in the communities they represent. They understand how a charter school would drain resources from their traditional public schools in their “unified” school district!
The Andover School Committee said no to STEAM Studio charter’s proposal even though a school committee member proposed it! The Andover School Committee believes that funds available for education should be invested wisely in their existing schools in order to move Andover’s Strategic Plan forward. Well, guess what, Boston Public Schools has a Strategic Plan too, that we won’t be able to actualize if charter schools are allowed to proliferate!
Let me be clear, charter schools make people money! It isn’t about our elected officials saving SOME urban children from low performing district schools. This is about sacrificing the kids in our urban cities, to keep charter schools from proliferating in suburban communities! It is about rich people making and keeping their money. Massachusetts has been awarded $11,786,000 Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZAB) and $130,000,000 in New Market Tax Credits (NMTC). This money could uplift our urban areas if used for housing, community and business development, but charter schools are an easier investment vehicle to sell. Think about it, not much venture capital risk here in Massachusetts, which is considered to be the Number 1 school system in the nation! Or Boston Public Schools, which is considered the Number 1 urban school district in the United States!
Increasing the cap on charter schools will do nothing to reduce poverty in our urban areas. It will just create a windfall for philanthropic “consulting” groups whose goal is to “strategically” place hedge fund investors charitable donations where they can benefit financially from recycling money back into their foundations as tax credits!
What everyone needs to know is that If a charter school fails, and DESE revokes the schools charter, the state cannot claim ownership of the building or school assets because they are owned by the charter schools foundation! QZAB interest free bonds and Federal New Market Tax Credits, provide a 39% Tax Credit to investors, and this money is used to build and renovate charter schools. The charter school foundation owns the building the school resides in; the school then pays rent to the foundation. Down the line, nothing prevents the charters foundation from under-resourcing the school, which will lead to its failure, if it determines a better use for the building!
Finding this out gave me a whole new perspective on “The Boston Compact.” Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded Boston $3.25 million dollars to promote a compact between Catholic, public, and charter schools. As part of accepting the grant the City of Boston agreed to lease or sell several of its school buildings to charter schools! What benefit is that to Boston Public Schools? In fact, that could create a whole new set of problems for Boston Public Schools in the future if DESE doesn’t renew a failing schools charter! Where would they put the students returning? The Catholic schools did not agree to this, they have a moratorium on selling their school buildings to charters.
Massachusetts’s charter schools had 20 years to prove themselves to be “beacons of light” and “innovation.” They have only proven themselves to be segregation academies, pushing out any student who would threaten their test averages, students with disabilities, and English-language learners. Look what is happening in Boston and other urban cities. Please do not impose charters on our urban school districts, think of the 87.7% “have not’s” in Boston! Charter schools have failed the public trust. Our State Senators shouldn’t add their names to that list. It’s ugly! Don’t be hoodwinked, Keep the Cap!
The privatization of public education by the charter schools is a real threat to the success of public school students that are not in charter schools. Charters drain money from the publicly funded programs that the ELL and special needs students rely on.
to students who are in charters, too.
This debate always makes my head spin. But —
– Alice Peisch represents Wellesley. Why would she advocate charters there? Is it supposed to be a sign of hypocrisy that she doesn’t, when Wellesley already has good schools?
– Why do anti-charter people (I think I am one, by the way) search for elaborate motives? Is anyone really getting rich building charter schools? Hasn’t Bill Gates made enough money — the Gates Foundation gives away a million dollars a day — that we might assume he’s not in this for money? Does the vaccination program make money too?
I understand the stakes are enormous, and I do wish charter advocates weren’t so quick to dismiss public education or blame teachers (and teachers’ unions, by implication). But charter opponents who paint with broad brushes hurt their cause.
Yes.
Even the non-profits can be pretty sleazy in that a lot of them are funded through private charter-linked organizations which they then have to pay rent toward, at whatever prices are set at.
It’s also no accident that the “charter movement” has almost unlimited resources from the backing of people like the Walton family and the Koch brothers (and the Gates Foundation, which is not nearly as benevolent as their PR people would have you believe) — and it’s not because charters are such a wonderful thing for America or inner cities.
These rich and powerful families (may or) may not “profit” from charters themselves, but if charters are a way of paying less taxes because they emphasize elevating the few ‘Gifted and Talented’ students over a comprehensive approach toward education that lifts all boats, it’s still an example of them indeed getting rich(er) through charters.
There are no doubt some good actors out there and some charters that may even deserve some expansion. I think Senator Chang-Diaz’s bill though is a very, very savvy approach and would allow for that, while holding charters more accountable.
If charters are so great for Massachusetts, they should be running to get behind Chang-Diaz’s bill. People should ask themselves why not — especially those who think charters sound like a good idea, but haven’t looked at it in depth.
Karen Lewis reported, and the mayor did not deny, that he explicitly said he wanted to balance the budget by ending spending on the bottom 25% of students. It’s no accident that charter openings are occurring alongside public closings. It’s a way to replace union schools with teachers that are paid less and have less rights, while educating only the most exceptional of students in inner cities. They can get the education for free that Emmanuel pays my alma mater 30k a year for each of his daughters. But every student in Chicago? Not on their dime. Those kids have no future anyway, and it’s another way to perpetuate the inner city brain drain by getting a token number of kids into the Fortune 500 pipeline that now starts at the high school level.
Where oh where are people coming up with the idea that charter schools result in “less taxes”?!?!
The 1% aren’t sending their kids to charter schools, it’s generally low income parents.
Charters only help a very tiny number of kids. They toss aside many of those who do get in.
By focusing on charters instead of the whole system, it’s a tactic of raising up a small few – screw the rest.
It would be more difficult and more expensive to attempt to left all boats – charter proponents have no interest in even trying.
Charters lead to a reduced need for public school teachers. Public school teachers tend to be union and stick around for a long time, moving up in pay grade. Charter school teachers tend to be young and last only a few years, barely going up in pay at all.
Major labor cost savings can lead to lower taxes. But you’re leaving the kids not in charters in even more underfunded public schools rather than spending a bit more to reach the kids who start out at a major educational disadvantage. It feels like we’re cutting bait.
re: elaborate motives.
If I’m rich enough to support the charter school movement, there are way better, more efficient ways for me to make money.
I think this debate moves along better if we stop assuming charter people are evil capitalists. Some of them probably are, but most of them must mean well.
PS. I truly didn’t get what ryepower was saying; thank you for translating.
Fair enough. There are some education “entrepreneurs” who believe that any money spent by the public sector is potential profit being lost. And killing a major union is a nice ancillary benefit for such people.
But you’re right. I know charter people who mean well. I just don’t see it as a good policy answer and there’s an annoying condescension among some of the philanthropic backers. The debate also moves along better when people stop assuming union teachers are lazy hacks who don’t care about their students.
Exactly, I’m not a fan of charters because they seem to rely on exploiting their teachers. It seems that every year, every single charter school is advertising for numerous teaching positions because half their teachers quit. Contrast this with Catholic schools where many teachers gladly stay despite low pay and leave reluctantly for better jobs.
I also think this whole argument that charters are a bid by corporations to make money is a bit looney tunes. The Gates Foundation has spent billions to fight AIDS in Africa. If you want to paint it as a greedy, self-aggrandizing monster, go ahead. But the voting public is going to see you as a fool and dismiss all of your positions – even the sensible ones.
Bottom line, a lot of parents in urban districts don’t like the regular public schools and that’s why charter schools are popular there. The parents in Wellesley love their school system, that’s why no charter is even thinking of opening there.
We have to face reality.
In Massachusetts there are restrictions in place but we still have situations like the school in Gloucester. But in New York City a former city council members makes nearly half a million to run a non-profit foundation administering two charter schools. Ohio just shut down a charter school whose principal was paying herself a large salary and her husband and daughter for maintenance contracts and clerical work. The three of them were pulling in a combined $700,000 from this school. In many other states there are for-profit charters, and that’s where things really can get ugly.
This is clearly true. But adding more charters makes the remaining public system in the cities worse. You can only maintain a shell public system so long. At some point you either end up educating all urban kids in charters, which will remove any advantage they have, or just not educating them at all, which is unacceptable.
It does some real good, but it also spends its money with a very, very large agenda – charters a great example of that.
Take a look into how they spend some of that African AIDS money, too. I think it’s a great demonstration that money can be spent in ways that make things worse, not better, because of agendas. We’d be much better off if Gates was properly taxed and we just increased our government aid on AIDS.
Since you’re keeping an eye on this: Two days ago the Springfield Republican ran a story that was barely distinguishable from Pioneer’s own press release in its print edition as its front-page lead. Biggest headline of the day, above-the-fold, just as if the “non-partisan study” it was reporting were an article in Nature or the New England Journal of Medicine announcing a cure for Ebola.
I’m kind of flabbergasted at the sheer level of journalistic malpractice involved. I know there’s serious money behind Pioneer — it’s linked in with the 50-State Project and ALEC and the rest of the network — but still. Is this kind of thing happening all over the state, or is the Springfield area just that special?
…but I would put an end to this entirely, or at least a moratorium. I have seen contexts in which public-private partnerships work and was willing to say the jury was out on this for a long time, but I feel the jury has now come back and they failed to answer the question I’ve had all along about why not try innovation in the public schools (and why does it seem to require union busting) to my satisfaction.
Charters Bad!
There. I’ve pretty much summarized the argument, and this is after reading hundreds of posts here. I would have to say that I would at least say that my opinion has moved from “Charters Good” to “Skeptical that the Charter Movement Overall is as good as proponents say” (caps intentional). The challenge is the data. Sure lots of charters do well on tests, but motivated parents and cutting loose under-performing students has to play a role in that metric. I think more study is needed to determine why (of even if) they work better than public schools.
Chang-Diaz’s very, very reasonable bill would make getting that data easier — and require it to demonstrate the need to lift the cap on any particular school.
If charters want to expand or if we want to lift the cap on the number of charters, they have to prove that they’re doing at least as well as the surrounding schools and that they’re graduating at least the same percentage of kids as surrounding communities.
That’s exactly what Senator Chang-Diaz’s bill does — and it’s a very, very reasonable bill that would do as much to protect kids in charter schools as it would to protect the tax dollars of communities that could be robbed by them.
And it’s the kind of reasonably crafted policy that has become her hallmark.
That does sound like a reasonable plan.
Just to clarify something in the post: The Milford Daily News (linked to above) is an edition of the MetroWest Daily News. The Sunday opinion section (which I edit) is the same in both papers. The MetroWest Daily News/Milford Daily News serves communities that do have charter schools, including Framingham, Marlborough and Franklin. The author’s implication that readers out in MetroWest, greater Milford and the 495 Corridor have no interest in charter school policies, shouldn’t be discussing it and shouldn’t be exposed to the issue – I guess because we’re not supposed to care about the children of Boston, Worcester or Lowell – well, never mind.
My bad Rick, please accept my sincere apology. I was hot off the Providence Journal, which I’m still wondering about, when Milford appeared. Even though I grew up in Massachusetts and have spent my life here, I’ve come to realize, more and more, that I haven’t left my backyard. Certainly, you are correct, MetroWest, greater Milford and the 495 Corridor, the whole state should be concerned, and knowledgeable about both sides of the charter school issue, so they can make an informed decision. Again, my apology.
In general, charter schools represent the one percent’s recreating public schools in their own image. They create the policy based on their top-down view of how education should operate, that is, guided by a firm, managerial hand and carried out by a largely interchangeable workforce that enforces ridiculously strict behavioral codes that teach compliance to a student body that typically doesn’t stay in the school.
Oh, come on!
The current public school system is about as top-down, micromanaging and narrow minded as you can get.
Keep the Cap!
The Boston Globe just reported that the Massachusetts Senate has decided to KEEP THE CAP! 🙂
Here’s some random thoughts on charter schools that I had the other night while talking with a friend:
What if there was a charter school that was not-for-profit, was a teachers union closed-shop, was funded by the state directly (not out of money for cities and towns), and was required to accept a racially representative sample of the population of its community? Then I would support the concept.
Until then, let’s keep a tight cap on.
with a school committee elected by school parents.
Educationally representative. Similar proportions of ESL students and number and seriousness of IEPs.
H. 4108 — Question on passing the bill to be engrossed Senate — Roll Call #408
YEAS.
Barrett, Michael J.
Finegold, Barry R.
Forry, Linda Dorcena
Hedlund, Robert L.
Humason, Donald F., Jr.
Petruccelli, Anthony
Rodrigues, Michael J.
Ross, Richard J.
Tarr, Bruce E. − 9.
NAYS.
Brewer, Stephen M.
Brownsberger, William N.
Candaras, Gale D.
Chandler, Harriette L.
Chang-Diaz, Sonia
Creem, Cynthia Stone
DiDomenico, Sal N.
Donnelly, Kenneth J.
Donoghue, Eileen M.
Downing, Benjamin B.
Eldridge, James B.
Flanagan, Jennifer L.
Jehlen, Patricia D.
Joyce, Brian A.
Keenan, John F.
Kennedy, Thomas P.
Lewis, Jason M.
McGee, Thomas M.
Lovely, Joan B.
Montigny, Mark C.
Moore, Michael O.
Moore, Richard T.
O’Connor Ives, Kathleen
Pacheco, Marc R.
Rosenberg, Stanley C.
Rush, Michael F.
Spilka, Karen E.
Timilty, James E.
Welch, James T.
Wolf, Daniel A. − 30.
If current population trends continue, we’re going to see more families choosing city living instead of moving out to the exurbs. That’s not just in Boston proper, but in smaller cities throughout the state. What we could see is a shift from the old “I’ve got to move to the burbs so junior get a good education” mentality to “I’ve got to get junior into a charter school to get a good education” mentality.
If there’s enough flight out of the public school system, that becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Engaged parents are the ones who fill out the paperwork and figure out how to negotiate the system. If you locate a charter in one of the city’s tonier neighborhoods that’s hard to reach from some of it’s more disadvantaged neighborhoods, then that helps skew the student population. The hardest kids to educate are the ones who are constantly moving (because the have an unstable family situation or unstable economic situation). Those kids almost never end up in a charter school and, if they do, they’ll be moving on soon enough.
Point is, the charter system naturally weeds out a lot of tough-to-educate kids as it is. As we get more urban families the question is going to become do we bolster our public schools or do we give those better educated, firmly middle class families an escape hatch via charter schools? We ought to be choosing the former, using the influx of kids who come from families with higher educational expectations to help lift all boats. My concern is the proliferation of charter schools will just enable a new kind of white flight (perhaps not white so much as educated and middle class) where families stay in the city, but enroll their kids in public-funded educational enclaves. One geographic location, but a tale of two cities.
I wouldn’t expect it to be purely on racial or ethnic lines, but we’re creating two systems within the cities. Whether it’s vouchers or charters, hollowing out the public system invariably leaves it worse off, leading to calls for more “reform” or less funding, since would-be reformers are so enamored of “merit-based” funding. It’s an endless downward spiral.
Once you account for all factors, neither charters nor private schools really do any better at what should be the goal – educating all of our kids, including those who are hard to educate. Pouring more and more resources into these alternative systems just leaves a shell of the preexisting public system.
Like I said above with the Rahm comments, the cream of the crop among minority students get to go to Charter Schools, while the rest are intentionally left behind in prison schools. The one I tutored in had more police officers and metal detectors than some airports I’ve been in. And these charters sadly have a lot of the conservative tropes about behavior, uniforms, and character overcoming poverty and racial discrimination built right into their mission statements.
Even a pro-charter propaganda film like Waiting for Superman basically makes the case that these kids are lucky for winning the lottery. Kids shouldn’t have to win the lottery to get a good education, it’s a right, not a privilege that has to be earned by being ‘the right kind’ of minority nor one that can be paternally dispensed from on high by corporate benefactors.
Sorry! Not even a phone issue. I’m on a computer and my hand slipped. Hadn’t even read the comment yet, but now I have and give it two thumbs up.
I cannot even discuss Waiting for Superman. Blood pressure and all.
And since I am probably the most frequent offender on BMG, I take no offense at all.
Pretty sad that movie and the dreadful one with Maggie Gyllenhal were both playing at the DNC in Charlotte.
I had an extended conversation with a Finn, and what struck me so much was how simple their system seemed to be. For all the focus against centralization, bureaucracy, and federal control by the critics of public education-the Finn example is far simpler than the two tiers they are advocating here. Full federal funding in bloc grants meted out to local school boards to spend as they see fit. Record low levels of childhood poverty, malnutrition, and ill health. Obviously much lower crime as well since there is a far more generous safety net.
Now he was an Econ Phd at U Chicago, and was self conscious that he was going through an inevitable libertarian phase that happens there, but this quote struck me the most
As an economist he admired our wild west economic system and hoped to profit from it, but, after ten years or so, he hoped to go back to academia and raise his family in Finland. He was shocked that for all our focus on public religiosity we were a piss poor place to raise kids, in his estimation. It’s really a question of priorities, and it’s the same thing fueling our healthcare debate. As long as big business, even well intentioned ones, are setting the agenda, the public interest is drowned out.