My guess is that Charlie Baker believes the charter school propaganda he spouted last week. He might be skilled, politically and governmentally, but it’s doubtful he’s a policy wonk when it comes to charter schools. Few people are deeply informed about education; most have no idea how much they do not know. I suspect our governor isn’t that much different than anyone else. His proposal to add as many as 12 charter schools per impoverished school district, however, is as radical as it is potentially destructive.
Professor Mitchell Robinson does a great job framing charter schools as the kind of weird experiment that could only arise in education. He gave me permission to reprint his blog post in full:
Imagine that your town established a private fire or police department, funded with your tax dollars, and staffed by young inexperienced college grads with no previous experience in fire fighting or law enforcement.
Imagine that these parallel organizations were given prime locations in existing facilities (built and paid for with public monies), displacing the professionals that had served your community for many years.
Imagine that these “new” fire and police forces could pick and choose which calls for their assistance they would respond to, choosing only the easiest and least dangerous cases and referring the difficult calls to the “old” departments–who were now understaffed and under-resourced. And that the “new” departments’ artificially high success rates would be trumpeted by the media as evidence of their effectiveness.
Imagine that these “new” employees only spent a year or two in their jobs as fire fighters and police officers, and then moved directly into positions as fire and police department chiefs and town mayors, promoting their former colleagues into positions on their town councils, and enacting changes to town guidelines and ordinances that promoted the “new” departments while continuing to siphon off resources that had previously been dedicated to supporting the “old” departments.
Imagine that as the “new” fire and police departments became more prevalent in your community, the numbers of damaging fires and crime rates showed a steady increase, but your mayor and town council ignored the evidence and passed laws lifting the “caps” on the number of “new” fire and police departments could be established.
Imagine that these “new” departments were clustered primarily in urban centers, while the fire and police departments in the suburbs remained well-funded and staffed by experienced, well-trained professionals.
Imagine that the leaders of these “new” fire and police departments paid themselves inordinately high salaries, became wealthy and powerful, and their investors received strong returns on their initial investments.
Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be if we did this to our schools?
H/T: The Answer Sheet
is wrong on education and this brilliant analogy proves it.
I say this as the proud son of a card carrying union public school teacher.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
the state’s human services system (which started earnest in the early ’90’s while Baker was secretary of health and human services under then Gov. Weld).
In that case as well, the starting premise was that the private sector can provide public services better than the public sector can. The Weld administration started closing state-run facilities for the developmentally disabled and mentally and chronically ill, and sent hundreds of those people to corporate-operated hospitals and group homes.
Administrations succeeding Weld’s have continued to do the same thing. The privatized facilities are funded by state dollars. The executives running the companies that operate these facilities pay themselves inordinately high salaries, yet they hire direct-care personnel to work for low wages, with little training. Meanwhile, resources continue to be drained from remaining state-run facilities that still provide high-level care via highly trained staff.
The abuse, neglect, and other rampant problems with this privatized system are ignored by the media, which completely buys the message from the corporate providers and their allies in the administration and Legislature that the privatized system has been a huge success. To the extent that the failures become too big to ignore completely, the response is “we need to get rid of the Pacheco Law so that we can privatize more.”
…”Whoever pays the piper calls the tune”? In other words if the state is giving all this money to these private entities, it seems the state should also have and demand a large say in how they operate, how much people are paid, etc.
has been piping the tune? It’s not the state. The money comes from the public schools that are blamed for the problems of the public and the 1 percenters and philanthrocapitalists that give them more. The latter are the same people who have an outsized say in our governance.
Charlie Baker and Bob DeLeo. Arne Duncan of the charterized City of Chicago. The senate put the breaks on expanding the number of schools.
The people operating the schools “pay” the state by dumping money into campaign accounts. The piper is being paid not to call any tune.
I heard Charlie Baker testified using that “37,000 kids on the waiting list” statistic again. And a commenter on the Edushyster blog, Sarah B., found an excellent point in Auditor Suzanne Bump’s audit of charter schools:
I think Auditor Bump’s staff is more trustworthy on this fact.
Remember when Charlie Baker gave us bad numbers on the employees at MBTA? Remember when Charlie Baker gave the Commonwealth bad numbers on the Big Dig?
There’s pattern here…and it’s not in the Commonwealth’s interest (nor the taxpayers’) to trust Charlie’s numbers.
A kid applies to ten different charter schools. He is waitlisted on all ten. The kid is counter as ten. At the end of the year, schools maintain their waitlists, even if the child is no longer interested, or even has graduated from another school. Thus, one child can end up counted as 20 or more.
…and these people want to teach your child math.
I haven’t tried to pick the count apart. I don’t have any time to look at the data closely. But the number is 37,000 and change.
http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/enrollment/fy2016Waitlist.html
Maybe the count goes along with Baker’s evaluation of the state’s fiscal status after Patrick?
The lawsuit.
Imagine that the leaders of these “new” fire and police departments sued the state, claiming that those families who were restricted to the “old” services were being deprived of their constitutional rights — a deprivation that could be remedied only by giving the “new” fire and police departments more money and power.
involuntary class action lawsuits around the country
to privatize care for the developmentally disabled. I say involuntary because the suits are ostensibly filed on behalf of remaining residents of state-run developmental centers. Yet, in most cases, those residents and their families and guardians do not want to leave their longtime homes. They have no legal option to opt-out of the suits, however.
I was involved in the founding of a charter school here in MA.
All of the teachers had at least 5 years experience, and most had more than 10. 20 years later, these numbers are still accurate. And, the charter schools here are unionized (which is the dog whistle against them among Democrats). The current principal of the one I was involved with and sent my child to was one of the original teachers.
I’m curious – did Prof. Robinson do any research in the charter applications/re-applications to determine if, in fact, the charters here are fully staffed by new college grads? Or is he just imagining they could be?
And about the police and fire analogy. In fact, many towns choose to have water and fire districts that are Districts rather than town Departments. Barnstable has (I think) 4 fire departments and three water districts. My own town has a water district instead of department. They have their own town meetings, set their own rates, issue their own bonds, etc. So the horror scenario actually is a bona fide method of operation outside of cities.
They are political jurisdictions rather than private corporations, same with regional school districts.
I question your generalizations. Charter schools where? The Cape, you mean? Massachusetts? Robinson is a music and music education professor in Connecticut. Charters may unionize. Some in Massachusetts have done so. Most have not.
And fire and water districts are like charters how? As quasi-municipalities, these districts are completely public and democratic. The people who live within their boundaries elect their representatives. Charters are not quasi-municipalities. The communities in which they are located have no say in their existence and can’t elect their leadership. The comparison between charters and water and fire districts is spurious.
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