In Case You Missed It – February 27, 2023

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column to be informed when our blog posts are published.

THIS WEEK

Republicans in the legislature are working against public education. News about charters, vouchers, and Ron DeSantis -- a full menu of horrible updates.

ICPE UPDATE

2023 Legislative Update – The Sucker Punch

ICPE, the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, provides an update on the damage that the Republicans in the Indiana legislature are proposing for the state's public education systems.

From the Indiana Coalition for Public Education

2023 Legislative Update We’re well into the 2023 legislative session, and some of us are asking:

• Do our legislators understand that public schools* are essential infrastructure in communities across Indiana—rural, urban, and suburban?
• If so, why do they keep moving bills that would defund public schools?
• Why do they want to send more public funds to private and privately managed environments, with little or no public oversight?
• Who is the supermajority working for?

Damaging bills this session fall into two broad categories. The first has to do with money. Adequate funding is necessary to maintain a vibrant and well-resourced school system, so attacks on school funding are also attacks on the quality of our public schools.

ARE CHARTERS PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

This Potential SCOTUS Case Could Change the Course of US Charter Schools

Charters like to brag that they're "just public schools" until they run up against requirements that public schools must follow...then they become "private corporations."

Can school officials force girls to wear skirts or dresses?

From Jacobin

Can public school officials, acting under state authority, forbid girls from wearing pants? Bonnie Peltier didn’t think so.

In 2015 Peltier, the mother of a Leland, North Carolina kindergartener, complained about a rule at her daughter’s charter school compelling girls to wear skirts or dresses. Baker Mitchell, owner of the private, for-profit company that manages the school, responded by explaining that the policy was designed to preserve “chivalry” — which he later characterized as a code of conduct wherein women are “regarded as a fragile vessel that men are supposed to take care of.”

The following year, three future “fragile vessels” — Peltier’s daughter, a fourth grader, and an eighth grader — became plaintiffs in an ACLU lawsuit alleging that Charter Day School (CDS) had violated the US Constitution by imposing a rule that made it harder for girls to stay warm, feel comfortable, and play freely. An extensive legal battle followed, with a federal court ultimately deciding that CDS had indeed run afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits gender-based discrimination, by making the girls wear skirts.

DEMS SUPPORT FOR CHARTERS WANING

Hakeem Jeffries Will Downplay His Support for Charters Now That He Is Party Leader

Are Democrats really supporters of authentic public schools or is it just because Republicans are pro-privatization?

From Diane Ravitch

For a time, during the Obama years, Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sold charters as a “progressive” idea that would nurture innovation. After thirty years, the charter claims dimmed. Too many scandals, too little innovation. Too many charter chains making profits or paying outlandish salaries. Too many charters that opened and closed within three years. Too many charters that believed harsh discipline was “innovative.”

The charter lobby considered Hakeem Jeffries one of its best friends, but that was before Trump chose Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. She was an outspoken friend of School choice, including charter schools. In recent years, red states have embraced charters and vouchers in their frenzy to privatize public schools and transfer public funding to private organizations.

Now, it’s clear to most Democrats that Republicans own the issue of charters and vouchers, not Democrats.

VOUCHERS ARE NOT ABOUT CHOICE

Peter Greene: Vouchers, “Choice,” and the End of Public Schools

School choice: where the school gets to choose the students.

From Diane Ravitch

Vouchers are not about choice. Just look at Florida, which has worked to disrupt, defund and dismantle public schools for years, while simultaneously shutting down and limiting what choices schools are allowed to offer. Look at every state’s voucher law; they all enshrine a private “education provider’s” right to deny and discriminate as they wish, thereby denying choice to any students they wish to deny choice to. One of the biggest limiters of school choice is not the public system, but the private system’s unwillingness to open their doors to all these students who, we hear, are just thirsting for choices.

We know what a free market education system looks like–it looks like the US post-secondary education system. Occasional attempts at free-to-all schools are beaten down by racist and classist arguments, along with charges of socialist indoctrination. You get as much choice as you can afford, the private schools only accept (and keep) the students they want, and those who aspire to certain levels of schooling have to sink themselves in debt to get it. Meanwhile, state’s slowly but surely withdraw financial support from the few “public” universities left.

RESEARCHERS: VOUCHERS ARE A SWINDLE

Researchers: Vouchers Swindle Taxpayers, Students, and Families

At one point Indiana Republicans told us that public schools were failing and that students needed vouchers to go to "better quality" private schools. It turns out that vouchers damage public schools and don't deliver a better product. Instead, we should fully fund public education...

As of this writing, the Republican supermajority in the Indiana General Assembly is set ready to increase money spent on religious and private education

From Diane Ravitch

School vouchers are a taxpayer swindle that fails to raise achievement while eroding public schools and the principle of equal protection under the law outlined in the U.S. Constitution. If more states adopt school voucher systems, most parents will find their top choice — a neighborhood public school — largely defunded and unable to recruit and retain high-quality teachers due to a transfer of funds into unregulated private schools.

Americans from all backgrounds have fought to gain access to public schools, including freed slaves, immigrants and people with disabilities. These struggles have led to a free universal public education system that propels each child into our democracy, communities and economy. Public schools also serve as community hubs where neighborhoods gather to vote, watch sports, participate in townhalls, among many other public events.

Vouchers jeopardize all of this because they transfer money from public schools to individual parents through grants, savings accounts or scholarships to pay private school tuition. It is a system where self-interest replaces the common good, culminating in separate education systems for children living on the same street in the same community.

What does academic testing really measure?

FLORIDA STILL FIGHTING COLLEGE BOARD

Florida: State Officials Consider “Classical, Christian” Test as Replacement for the SAT

Not that we love the SAT...

From Diane Ravitch

Governor DeSantis is unhappy with the College Board because it had the nerve to disagree with him. He said he might find an alternative for the Board’s products, the SAT and AP courses. The Miami Herald says that the state is in discussions with a new test vendor whose was designed for Christian schools and home schools...

Will there be another test for students who are not Christian?

FWCS ASKS FOR FUNDING FOR SAFETY, SECURITY

Fort Wayne Community Schools to ask voters to fund safety, security initiatives

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Fort Wayne Community Schools plans to ask voters to support a safety and security referendum as early as this fall, Superintendent Mark Daniel announced at a Wednesday news conference.

It is too early to quantify the additional property tax dollars FWCS will seek to collect over eight years through a possible November referendum, or ballot measure, Daniel said. He stressed the value of investing in safety measures, such as increasing the number of student resource officers and installing devices that can alert officials to an open door.

“If you don’t pay it up front now,” Daniel said, “you’re going to pay forever.”

The superintendent recognized that making schools safer can’t be entirely achieved with money, however. Other aspects – including mentors, mental health counseling and discipline practices – also contribute, he said.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is important, and one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

###

In Case You Missed It – January 4, 2020

Here are links to last week's articles receiving the most attention in NEIFPE's social media. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column to be informed when our blog posts are published.

NO MONEY FOR TEACHER SALARIES YET REPS TALK INCREASE TO VOUCHERS

Legislators may push voucher expansion

Even with the teacher pay report suggesting a large increase in teacher salaries, Indiana's educators will likely not see any increase. The best they can hope for is that nothing will be cut. Cue the legislature to hypocritically ignore the "lack of funds" and ask for more money for private and religious school vouchers. 

When the voucher program started it was to "save poor kids from failing public schools" (the fact that the schools were "failing" was because of state neglect is beside the point). Now the voucher for poor kids will pay for families who make over $100,000!

From School Matters

At least eight House Republicans include this question in their surveys, which are posted on their internet sites: “Do you support increasing the income eligibility for Indiana’s CHOICE scholarships, giving more low- and middle-income families the option to send their children to the school that best meets their needs?”

Note that the question contains a falsehood. Increasing the income eligibility for vouchers, officially labeled Choice Scholarships, won’t change anything for low-income families. They already meet income qualifications for the program, which provides state funding for private school tuition.

Under current law, students can qualify for vouchers if their family income is less than 150% of the threshold for reduced-price school meals. They remain eligible if their family income rises to 200% of the reduced-meal level. For a family of five, that’s $113,516, two times Indiana’s median household income.

In other words, low-income families and many middle-income families already meet the income requirements. According to the 2019-20 Indiana Department of Education voucher report, a quarter of voucher recipients came from families that made over $75,000 and 7% made over $100,000.

FW JOURNAL SAYS CUT VOUCHERS, DON'T EXPAND

Pay increase for teachers priority over tuition grant

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The panel's 37 recommendations for raising teacher pay all have some merit. But FWCS' Steve Corona, one of the state's longest-tenured school board members, offered another: Reduce the amount of tax money sent to private and parochial schools as vouchers.

"If they're serious about raising teacher pay in public schools, this is the fund that they need to take a look at," he said.

He's right. The cost of Indiana's voucher entitlement program grew by 924% in just seven years, from 15.5 million in 2011-12 to 158.8 million in 2018-19. More than 25% of voucher recipients come from households earning 75,000 a year or more. More than 7% of the students come from households earning 100,000-plus.

It's no coincidence that Indiana's public school teacher salaries have slipped as the cost of the voucher program has skyrocketed. Lawmakers can stop the decline by tightening income eligibility for an entitlement program sold as a way for poor students to escape failing schools. Support for today's public school teachers and the next generation of teachers should take precedence over private-school tuition for families with the means to pay it themselves.

UNION HATERS GO AFTER TEACHERS

Another Round Of Teacher Bashing

Can we stop blaming teachers and their unions whenever we disagree about school issues? Why don't we figure out what schools need to open safely.

From Curmudgucation

The level of bash, of demeaning insult, in this "selfish teachers close our schools" argument is huge. Because there are only a couple of possible explanations for the picture critics like FEE [the Foundation for Economic Education] paint:

Teachers are stupid people who don't understand the settled science.

Teachers are stupid and also lazy people who went into teaching hoping they would have to never actually work and the pandemic shut-downs are their idea of a gift from God, and they want to stretch out this paid vacation for as long as possible.

Teachers are big fat liars who are pretending not to understand the settled science so they can milk the taxpayers while providing nothing in return.

Teachers should be martyrs who want to give up their entire lives for their students, and if they don't want to do that (or, incidentally, want to be well-paid for it), they're lousy teachers and terrible human beings.

Note that all of these include the assumption that distance learning is a big fat vacation. Also, people who chose teaching as their life's work don't actually want to teach. Also, as FEE makes explicit, teachers do not have students' interests at heart. They don't care about the kids at all (which adds to the assumption of their stupidity, because if you don't care about children, teaching seems like a pretty dumb career choice, but hey--maybe you became a teacher because you couldn't manage a real job).

IT'S TIME FOR DEMS IN DC TO SUPPORT PUBLIC EDUCATION

Democrats Need A New Theory Of Action

"'We can run three or four school systems for the cost of one' was always a lie, and it's time to stop pretending otherwise."

From Curmudgucation

Trouble is, the old plan, the one spanning both the Clinton and Obama years, is not a winner. It went, roughly, like this:

The way to fix poverty, racism, injustice, inequity and economic strife is to get a bunch of children to make higher scores on a single narrow standardized test; the best shot at getting this done is to give education amateurs the opportunity to make money doing it.

This was never, ever a good plan. Ever. Let me count the ways.

DIANE RAVITCH INTERVIEW

My Interview on “Democracy Now”

From Diane Ravitch

I was interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan González about President-Elect Biden’s choice of Miguel Cardona. He needs not only to reverse Betsy DeVos’s four disastrous years, but 20 years of bad federal policy.

Here it is.

BIDEN'S EDUCATION DEPARTMENT PICKS

Biden Picks Connecticut Commissioner Miguel Cardonas as Secretary of Education

President-Elect Biden's choice for Secretary of Education is mostly an unknown...

From Diane Ravitch

...if he wants genuine reform, he will begin the process of writing a new federal law to replace the Every Student Succeeds Act and dramatically reduce the burdens imposed by clueless politicians on our nation’s schools.

Dr. Cardona is known for his efforts to reopen the schools during the pandemic. He knows that this can’t happen without the resources to reopen safely. The pandemic is surging again. It is not over. He knows this, and he will have to move with caution not to put the lives of staff or students at risk.

I will not judge him until I see how he handles not only the present dire moment, but the legacy of twenty years of failed federal policy. I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised. Hope springs eternal. We can’t live without it.

Connecticut: A Teacher Remembers Cardona

From Diane Ravitch

...he is someone who is more interested in getting things right and in making true improvements than he is in seeing his name in lights. He acts like someone who wants to be in positions where he can make a difference for the benefit of others, not for his own aggrandizement. I can’t speak on his positions on this or that issue. We’re not friends, just former colleagues, and I’ve not said more than “hello” to him in over seven years. But there is no one I’ve dealt with in administration whom I respect more.

Biden Picks Former President of Broad Foundation as Deputy Chief of Staff

...but this choice is definitely not supportive of public education.

From Diane Ravitch

Reed has been an outspoken proponent of charter schools for decades, championing their rise inside the Clinton White House, where he led the Domestic Policy Council. But although Reed has publicly drawn the line at for-profit charter schools and vouchers, the Broad Foundation funded organizations that support both.

Reed also frowned on community, or “mom-and-pop” charter schools, telling the Los Angeles Times in 2014, “There are high-quality charter management organizations that do extraordinary work.” He said, “School districts have made the mistake of thinking they know best.”

SACS WANTS TO RAISE PAY FOR SUBS

SACS considers pay boost for subs

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

A school district that's seen its substitute teacher pool shrink dramatically because of the pandemic is looking to boost those employees' pay.

But leaders of Southwest Allen County Schools acknowledge the $5 boost to the daily rate might not expand the roster of subs.

"I'm not sure how much more we're going to attract," said LuAnn Erickson, human resources director. "I think people want to be at Southwest, they want to be subs here, and everybody's struggling with finding enough subs."

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has changed its online access and is now behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both, are available with a subscription. Staying informed is important, and one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/

###

In Case You Missed It – Sep 23, 2019

Here are links to last week's articles receiving the most attention in NEIFPE's social media. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column to be informed when our blog posts are published.

UNACCOUNTABLE CHARTERS IN PENNSYLVANIA

PA: Zombie Board Says Charter Free To Do Whatever The Heck It Wants

See the similarities with Indiana?

From Curmudgucation

The charter in question is Franklin Towne Charter. The charter has attracted attention in the past for a variety of reasons.

There's the time a fired principal filed a whistle blower suit, charging that he's been terminated because he pointed out that some Franklin Towne practices such as non-serving ESL students, serious nepotism, and billing the Philly school district for a non-existent all-day kindergarten program. Also, that they had lied to him in his initial interview in order to cover up their high principal turnover rate (it was only later that he learned that the Chief Academic Officer who helped interview him had been removed from the principalship because of outcry over shoplifting and excessive use of force against students). After a pattern of retaliation developed against him, he took it to the board president who allegedly replied, "You know we cannot move forward with you as principal."

Franklin Towne's CEO also pulled the old "rent the building from yourself" dodge, a great way to rake in those public taxpayer dollars (Franklin Towne was not the only charter to pull this stunt). You can (and they apparently did) make even more money by mortgaging the building to the hilt-- essentially extracting the equity value, converting it to cash, and sticking the cash in your pocket.

ED-REFORM WASTE

How a Minnesota Foundation Wasted $45 Million on a Failed Plan to Reform Teacher Education

From Diane Ravitch

Rob Levine, a Resistance-to-Privatization blogger in Minneapolis, reports here on the failure of the Bush Foundation’s bold “teacher effectiveness” initiative, which cost $45 million. All wasted.

The foundation set bold goals. It did not meet any of them.

INDIANA TESTING

One-third of Indiana 10th graders passed ISTEP in 2019. Find your high school’s results.

A great thing to ponder about both ILEARN and ISTEP is how the cut scores are decided upon. And what do those scores show or prove exactly? It also might be good to ponder the overall question of why we are wasting our tax dollars on these tests and how they are used against our public schools in terms of funding.

From Chalkbeat*

Low-income students saw a passing rate more than 25 percentage points lower than students who don’t qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

DON'T WAIT FOR THE DEMS TO SAVE OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda

Democrats at these meetings have included Colorado Governor Jared Polis, Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Michael Bennett, Former Secretaries of Education Arne Duncan and John King, Senator Chris Murphy, and for 2019, former US Attorney General Eric Holder.

From Diane Ravitch

Every year since 2014, Democrats who fervently support the privatization of public schools have gathered at a conference they pretentiously call “Camp Philos.”

https://campphilos.org/

Check the agenda of meetings present and past.

There you will see the lineup of Democrats who sneer at public schools and look on public school teachers with contempt.

These are the Democrats who support the DeVos agenda of disrupting and privatizing public schools.

CHARTERS FUDGE NUMBERS #1

Hidden dropouts: How Indiana schools can write off struggling students as home-schoolers

Charter Schools USA doesn’t seem to be a good choice for Indianapolis.

From Chalkbeat*

A Chalkbeat analysis of Indiana Department of Education data found that of the roughly 3,700 Indiana high school students in the class of 2018 officially recorded as leaving to home-school, more than half were concentrated in 61 of the state’s 507 high schools — campuses where the ratio of students leaving to home-school to those earning diplomas was far above the state average. Those striking numbers suggest that Indiana’s lax regulation of home schooling and its method for calculating graduation rates are masking the extent of many schools’ dropout problems.

“There’s no accountability or follow up or monitoring” of students who leave public education to home-school, said Robert Kunzman, managing director of the International Center for Home Education Research and a professor of education at Indiana University. “That’s clearly working against children’s interests.”

HOW TO IMPROVE STUDENTS' READING COMPREHENSION

Want better readers? Spend less time teaching kids to find the main idea, ‘Knowledge Gap’ author Natalie Wexler argues

This is why teachers, not legislators, should determine how to teach Indiana's students. Excessive testing has caused (and will continue to cause) great harm to students. When we focus only on reading and math -- because those are on "the test" -- we're hampering our children’s ability to read by cutting out all the learning of background knowledge (science, social studies, the arts, etc.) that allows them to comprehend what they read. If you are not outraged about this, you are not paying attention.

From Chalkbeat

In the average public elementary school, third graders spend nearly two hours a day on reading instruction, according to a recent federal survey. That far outstrips any other subject, with math coming in second at around 70 minutes a day, and science and social studies getting about half an hour a day each.

Teachers may think this approach is the best way to improve students’ reading ability. But in her new book “The Knowledge Gap,” journalist Natalie Wexler argues against skimping on science and social studies and emphasizing specific reading skills. She says that this approach, paradoxically, hurts students’ ability to make sense of what they read. (Find an excerpt of the book here.)

She builds her case with cognitive science that suggests that once students have learned to sound out words — “decode” — the key to understanding a text is having solid background knowledge on the subject.

In other words, if you already know a lot about education, you’ll probably have an easier time making sense of articles in Chalkbeat than, say, in Foreign Policy.

The implication, Wexler says, is that schools should start teaching science and social studies content early and often. Wexler draws from the work of E.D. Hirsch, the University of Virginia professor and prominent advocate of these ideas.

99% OF INDIANA VOUCHER MONEY GOES TO RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS

Over 99% of Indiana voucher money goes to religious schools

From the Indiana Coalition for Public Education -- Monroe County

Since there are no financial reporting requirements for voucher schools, Indiana’s citizens have no way of knowing. Unlike public schools, which are held to transparency standards, private schools do not publish budgets and are not subject to public records requests. Neither are the private schools receiving vouchers audited by the State Board of Accounts. Are schools spending the money on teachers, curricular materials, and academic programs? Are they constructing new buildings, like the St. Nicholas School in Ripley County?

Are they directing some of it to the churches that historically supported them? Are they providing deserved benefits to their employees or outsized salaries for administrators? The legislators who lifted the voucher legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council model bill did not think the public deserved to know.

BACKLASH AGAINST SCHOOL "CHOICE"

Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change Plead for End to Backlash Against School Choice

From Diane Ravitch

The backlash against school choice, the demand to halt charter expansion, comes from an outraged public that supports their community public schools.

Only 6% of the students in the U.S. attend charter schools, most of which perform no better than or much worse than public schools. An even smaller number of students use vouchers, even when they are easily available, and the research increasingly converges on the conclusion that students who use vouchers are harmed by attending voucher schools.

The claim that poor kids should get “the same” access to elite private schools as rich kids is absurd. Rich parents pay $40,000-50,000 or more for schools like Lakeside in Seattle or Sidwell Friends in D.C. The typical voucher is worth about $5,000, maybe as much as $7,000, which gets poor kids into religious schools that lack certified teachers, not into Lakeside or Sidwell or their equivalent.

DEMS TALK ABOUT EDUCATION DURING DEBATE

Finally, Democratic candidates talk about education in a debate. But nobody raised this key issue.

From the Answer Sheet

Finally, after three debates among Democratic presidential candidates with scarcely a question about education, a moderator, Linsey Davis of ABC News, raised the issue Thursday night. She asked some good questions — even if some candidates tried to skirt them or stated as fact things that may not, in fact, be true...

Some important issues were briefly raised, such as when Julián Castro, the former housing and urban development secretary in the Obama administration, said that improving schools cannot be divorced from housing, health care and social policy: “Our schools are segregated because our neighborhoods are segregated.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) raised another key issue when he noted that the United States has one of the world’s highest child poverty rates, which is a factor in academic achievement.

But the one thing that nobody discussed onstage is what many public education activists see as the root of public education’s problems: the funding system, which relies heavily, though not exclusively, on property taxes. The obvious result is that poorer neighborhoods have fewer funds and more cash-strapped schools. Federal money intended to help close the gap hasn’t come close.

WEST LAFAYETTE SCHOOLS SUES INDIANA

Indiana: West Lafayette Public Schools Sues the State for Taking Their Property and Giving It to Charter Industry for $1

From Diane Ravitch

Rocky Killion, superintendent of the West Lafayette, Indiana, public school district, is a fighter for public schools. A few years ago, he helped to launch an outstanding film about the extremist assault on the public schools by privatizers; it is called Rise Above the Mark, and it showcases the good work done in Indiana’s public schools.

Now Rocky Killion is suing the state of Indiana for permitting an “unconstitutional land grab.” The legislature passed a law in 2011 declaring that any unused schools must be sold to charter operators for $1. Rocky Killion says this is wrong. The schools were paid for by the taxpayers, and they belong to the district, not to charter operators.

CHARTERS FUDGE NUMBERS #2

Texas Charter Schools: Don’t Believe the Boasting and Hype

From Diane Ravitch

William J. Gumbert has prepared statistical analyses of charter performance in Texas, based on state data.

Charters boast of their “success,” but the reality is far different from their claims. They don’t enroll similar demographics, their attrition rate is staggering, and their “wait lists” are unverified.

Their claims are a marketing tool.

They are not better than public schools.

They undermine and disrupt communities without producing better results.

Yet Texas is plunging headlong into this strategy that creates a dual system but benefits few students.

CHARTER INDUSTRY HISTORY

Two excellent articles about the charter privatization industry from blogger Steven Singer.

Charter School’s Two Dads – How a Hatred for Public School Gave Us School Privatization

From Gadflyonthewall Blog

...Nathan and Kolderie proposed that schools be authorized by statewide agencies that were separate from local districts. The state had the power, not communities or their elected representatives. That meant charters could be run not just by teachers but also by entrepreneurs. And that’s almost always who has been in charge of them ever since – corporations and business interests.

This was the goal Friedman and the deregulators had been fighting for since the 1950s finally realized – almost the same goal, it should be noted, as that behind school vouchers.

From the start, this was a business initiative. Competition between charters and authentic public schools was encouraged. And that included union busting. Thus charters were free of all the constraints of collective bargaining that districts had negotiated with their unions. The needs of workers and students were secondary to those of big business and the profit principle.

Shanker eventually realized this and repudiated what charter schools had become. But by then the damage was done...

Charter Schools Were Never a Good Idea. They Were a Corporate Plot All Along

From Gadflyonthewall Blog

America has been fooled by the charter school industry for too long.

The popular myth that charter schools were invented by unions to empower teachers and communities so that students would have better options is as phony as a three dollar bill.

The concept always was about privatizing schools to make money.

It has always been about stealing control of public education, enacting corporate welfare, engaging in union busting, and an abiding belief that the free hand of the market can do no wrong.

*Note: Financial sponsors of Chalkbeat include pro-privatization foundations and individuals such as EdChoice, Gates Family Foundation, The Walton Family Foundation, and others.

###