It Doesn't Matter

The charter school "movement" may be imploding, but it doesn't matter at all to the privatizers. If you are of the neoliberal mentality, you don't believe any public institution is legitimate since the "right" to make money by any means, even through outright fraud and theft, is paramount.

The "charter movement" is just means to the end to all taxpayer-funded education. The neolib/libertarian view is schools--indeed ALL public institutions--should be paid for with user fees like tuition in private schools. If you don't use it, why should you pay for it is their idiotic, selfish mantra. If you don't have the money to pay for your kids' education, too damned bad. They don't seem to grasp the concept of the interconnectedness of generations and of various groups as a part of a whole, that as a society we are ALL in this together.

The main traits of neoliberals are a complete lack of empathy for others and the overriding worship of unfettered greed.

It's One Hell of a Note

we even have to debate the existence of the institutions of democracy that have worked so well over the decades and centuries. At least this school "reform" bullshit is finally being dragged out in the open:



This is all on Obama and Duncan. Impeach the two of them.

Charter Schools Shouldn't Even Exist in the First Place

If you want to form a school, create one and charge tuition. Just don't ask the taxpayers to subsidize it.

The concept of charter schools was the stupidest, most destructive concept that ever came down the pike in the history of American education. The late AFT president Al Shanker, among others, must have had a brain fart to come up with such an idiotic idea. Never in the history of American public education have teachers, let alone parents, been allowed to have "full autonomy" and take power away from the almighty administrators. It just doesn't happen. But once this nutball idea was let out of the bag, there was no turning back. Al Shanker later repudiated the whole idea later on, but it was too late. "Reformers" attached onto the charter school idea as a way to scam the taxpayers further in order to enrich themselves while shelling out very little money for operations, unlike what would happen in a traditional private school.

There have been scandals upon scandals since politicians have given these charter school crooks the keys to the taxpayer safe:

In My View, Charter Schools Aren't Just a "Mistake,"

they are just another means where the top one percent can get even more corporate welfare while providing inferior services.

Education is simply not a business. You'd think after years of the health care/insurance fiasco, people would realize there are certain things that cannot be done well by the private sector, and charter schools ARE private schools that get public subsidies.

Diane Ravitch look at some of the many problems with them:

Charter schools are "public" when it is time to claim public funding, but they have claimed in federal court and before the National Labor Relations Board to be private corporations when their employees seek the protection of state labor laws.

In Los Altos, a group of wealthy people opened a boutique charter school for their own children. Parents are asked to donate $5,000 per child each year. Local public school parents consider the charter to be an elite private school, albeit one primarily funded with public dollars.

Follow the Money

We know, or should know, charter schools aren't worth a crap, but that is beside the point. The point is it is a good way for operators to get taxpayer money thanks to owning the political hacks in charge:

Charters have a limited admissions policy, and the applications can be as complex as those at private schools. But the parents don’t pay tuition; support comes directly from the school district in which the charter is located. They’re also lucrative, attracting players like the specialty real estate investment trust EPR Properties EPR -0.25% (EPR). Charter schools are in the firm’s $3 billion portfolio along with retail space and movie megaplexes.

Charter schools are frequently a way for politicians to reward their cronies. In Ohio, two firms operate 9% of the state’s charter schools and are collecting 38% of the state’s charter school funding increase this year. The operators of both firms donate generously to elected Republicans

They used to call this sort of thing graft, but now everything is just hunky-dory.

Nobody could care less about the children.

Etc.

Obituary: Actor Richard Griffiths, 65, has died. He died of complications from heart surgery:

Griffiths won a Tony Award for “The History Boys” and appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows. But he will be most widely remembered as a pair of contrasting uncles — Harry Potter’s Uncle Vernon Dursley and Uncle Monty in cult film “Withnail and I.”

Griffiths was among a huge roster of British acting talent to appear in the “Harry Potter” series of films released between 2001 and 2011.

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No surprise here.
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Barack Obama is trying very hard to be the worst president in the history of the United States.

Is there any doubt at all his lamebrained attempts to screw over people on "entitlements" shows he is in the pocket of crook Peter J. Peterson?
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Another obituary: Paul Williams, founder of the music magazine Crawdaddy, has died at the age of 64.

He died from complications of a 1995 bike accident.
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Charter Schools Were a Stupid Idea to Begin With

when the late AFT head Al Shanker and others had this naive notion that teachers and parents could together form schools free of the "restrictions" of the public ed bureaucracy and have more "control" over curriculum and the like. Well, Shanker shortly repudiated charter schools when the far right seized upon them as the perfect vehicle for looting the public treasury and perhaps resegregate public schools all over again.

None of this is meant to deny the reform impulse that is a real part of the charter movement, and no one questions the desire of parents to find the best options they can for their children. But the original idea behind charter schools was to create “laboratories for innovation” that would nurture reform strategies to improve the public system as a whole. That hasn’t happened. While there are some excellent individual charter schools, nowhere have charters produced a template for effective district-wide reform or equity.

This doesn’t mean charter school teachers and parents are our enemies. On the contrary, we should be allies in fighting some of the counter-productive assessment, curriculum and instructional practices raining down on all of us from above. Where practices like greater autonomy over curriculum or freedom from bureaucratic regulations are valid, they should be extended to all schools, without sacrificing the oversight we need to preserve equity and accountability.

This is a naive load of shit. If people want to create schools, nobody is stopping them, but don't ask the taxpayers to foot the bill.

Charter schools don't exist to improve public education but to destroy it for private gain.

I want them OUTLAWED.

Nothing But Legalized Bank Robbery

The public is very, very slowly coming to realize that charter schools are about the biggest scams ever devised and are nothing but a form of bank robbery.

The public, when it refused to vote in vouchers for private schools, got conned into thinking private schools created to get public money was another form of "choice," when all charter schools were was a way to destroy communities and democracy.

Here is another example of charter schools fleecing the taxpayers:

The failed Orange County charter school that gave its principal a payout of $519,000 in taxpayer dollars after closing in June also paid her husband more than $460,000 during a five-year period, audits show.

The payments to Steven A. Young, which averaged more than $80,000 a year, were for performing "certain management services," according to annual audits paid for by the school. The total included about $41,000 for services to be performed after the school closed, according to one of the audits.

Young, husband of NorthStar High School Principal Kelly Young, helped establish the charter school 11 years ago and was its first board president. He resigned from the NorthStar board in August 2008, the same month he was arraigned on charges of soliciting prostitutes while on duty as an Orange County sheriff's commander. He was ultimately adjudicated guilty of three charges and lost his law-enforcement job. He is now a divorce attorney.

The payments to Steven Young appear to violate state law prohibiting public officers and employees from doing business with family members, according to legal and charter-school experts. The law states that no employee or officer may purchase services "from any business entity of which the officer or employee or the officer's or employee's spouse or child is an officer, partner, director, or proprietor."

Remember, these scams are not "public schools":

Under Florida law, charter schools are run by independent governing boards. Although the schools use public money, state and district officials have little to no control over how the money is spent. According to an August report by the state auditor general, a third of state charter schools had accounting problems, legal violations or other problems in their 2011 audits.

Abolish them.

Ditch 'Em

Get rid of charter schools. Now, before our children's lives are completely destroyed by privatization.

Of course they do not make the grade.

The crackpot economist Milton Friedman came up with vouchers as a way for parents to circumvent Brown v. Board of Education. Brown was decided a year before his article about vouchers. Friedman was a racist, classist piece of shit, as are all people from the Austrian/Chicago school of demented economics.

Well, Well

Wonders never cease, as private schools are also being negatively affected by charter schools.

It's an easy problem to cure, of course. Simply hand over money to already existing private schools, you know, those "superior" schools, and with no accountability to taxpayers on how the money is being spent.

Privatization of public education is nothing more than a bank heist to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

Charter Schools are NOT Public Schools

It's one of the biggest lies out there.

This post from Diane Ravitch's excellent blog sums it up.

Charter schools are NOT public schools but private schools designed to rip off taxpayer money. They were force fed on the rest of us when vouchers didn’t get anywhere with the public.

Charter “schools” really need to be abolished. Period. You want a “school” without regulations and strings attached, create your own private school. Nobody is stopping you. But don’t ask the taxpayers to foot the bill. When taxpayers foot the bill, there needs to be a system of accountability. There are none with charter schools, not even those “sponsored” by local school districts.

Charter Schools Behaving Badly--Again

By the way, it doesn't matter if these teachers have a union or not, because the same thing applies to private sector employment. It has been illegal for many years to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy.

"Tenure" has nothing to do with it. If you have civil service protections, yet are supposedly "at will" during the probationary period, a school or school district still can't fire you for pregnancy or in any other protected category. The challenge for anybody wrongly fired is proving discrimination.

However, although both teachers said they had a good relationship with the children, the parents, and the school administration, Suero said that in her case, everything changed when she announced she was pregnant.

“The principal, Evelyn Hey, told me that she wanted a teacher who was going to be with the children for the entire year,” said Suero, age 24, who will give birth in February and promised to only take one month of maternity leave.

Hey told Suero, “I would love for you to come back, but I had a daughter and she got sick with a heart condition, and it took me seven years to return,” indicating to her that teachers have to plan to give birth in the summertime.

[Because the teachers worked at a charter school] “They don’t have the same type of protection that union members have. They can be dismissed without a reason,” said Richard Riley, head of public relations for the United Federation of Teachers.

Riley is either a moron or a liar. That isn't true at all. Pregnancy discrimination is illegal no matter what the employer is or whether or not there is a union.

Reason 2,893 Why NOT to Hire a Broad Academy "Graduate"

Look no further than the mess in Chicago and the mess of a superintendent by the name of Jean-Claude Brizard. He is openly favorable to privatizing the district.

I don't think he will succeed given how strong the union is is.

Charters are far more often than not worse than traditional public schools, so they are a waste of money and shouldn't even exist. You want to form a school, fine. Just don't use taxpayer dollars and provide no accountability to voters on how the money is spent.

But critics — prominent among them the Chicago Teachers Union — say the growth of charters signals the decline of CPS-run neighborhood schools. Additionally, state report card data released last fall suggested many charters in Chicago are performing no better than some of the same neighborhood schools. More than two dozen charters scored below district averages.

Despite the truth, the privatizers continue on their mission because they want to make money by ripping off taxpayers.

Katrina Wasn't the Best Thing That Ever Happened

to New Orleans and its school system. The system has gotten much worse since charters took hold.

You will notice that the statewide average (in a low-performing state) of students who reached basic or above was 75%.

You will also notice that only six of the charter-voucher schools met or exceeded this average (and two more came close).

The average proportion of students in the Recovery School District that reached basic or above was 49%.

Looking for a miracle?

Keep looking.

I believe the student population was shaved almost in half following Katrina. Many of the poor forced out of NOLA never returned.

Despite this record of failure, the governor has decided he wants to privatize the entire state school system.

This is libertarianism gone apeshit, but more accurately this is a wholesale assault on democracy by the top one percent and their political hatchet men.

Of Course They Aren't Public

because there is more to being a public school than just taking taxpayer money. There is also the question of accountability to taxpayers for that money, and there is NOTHING in place in charter schools that holds them accountable. Of course, a few school districts have done away with boards to be replaced by mayoral control--a horrible idea, by the way--but at least the mayors come up for re-election. Not so charter schools.

Purveyors of charter schools like to peddle the myth they are "public schools" just like the rest of them. No, they aren't. They are private schools being given taxpayer dollars. They were being pushed when vouchers to religious schools didn't get public support.

I could kick Al Shanker's ass for EVER coming up with such a stupid idea as "charter schools." He was out of the classroom or was never in it for decades to ever think teachers and parents would EVER have control over educational institutions. It has never been that way and will NEVER be that way. That was just a stupid idea that was too easily exploited by those who have NO desire to have public education AT ALL.

Snip:

Shanker thought that charter schools should be created by teams of teachers who would explore new ways to reach unmotivated students. He envisioned charter schools as self-governing, as schools that encouraged faculty decisionmaking and participatory governance. He imagined schools that taught by coaching rather than lecturing, that strived for creativity and problem-solving rather than mastery of standardized tests or regurgitation of facts. He never thought of charters as non-union schools where teachers would work 70-hour weeks and be subject to dismissal based on the scores of their students.

Teachers have NEVER had that kind of control and never will.

Some People Are Finally "Getting It"

about charter schools and education "reform." These comments are following a news article about a charter school firing most of its teachers because they are "too expensive," i.e., make more than minimum wage:

I find it appalling that our teachers, the people who spend so much time with our children are regarded in such a way as you are talking. I don't agree that it is all about budgets - my two younger children go to a different charter school that happens to pay its teachers very well. I know this as fact because my ex husband teaches their and we are friends with all of the staff. The principals/board at this charter school understand that these are the people that our children spend a majority of their time with, that are shaping them to be productive citizens. They understand that it is important to take care of those that spend so much of their free time and a lot of their own money so that my children and others have what they need to succeed.
I believe then that your charter school is one in which I would not want my children to be a part of if you have not got the best interest of the children in mind. Consistency for kids is more important than saving a little money. I AM SURE YOU AREN'T TAKING A REDUCTION IN PAY AS TO SAVE MONEY. PRINCIPALS MAKE TOO MUCH MONEY ESPECIALLY IF YOU CONSIDER WHAT ALL ADMINISTRATIVE ITEMS THEY REQUIRE OF THEIR TEACHERS.

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Teaching is a profession and teachers deserve to be compensated fairly for their time and expertise. Teaching is an all consuming profession. To worry about making ends meet and how to pay the bills if illness strikes places an additional burden on teachers who, working 60+ hours a week, really can't spare the time to worry.

But maybe you don't want professional educators. Maybe you just need someone to read a scripted curriculum or monitor a computer lab. Good luck with that.

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Education administrators seem to be among the most dysfuntiionl people. Not giving clarification to this Mr. Moon as to why he wasn't being rehired? Not given a chance to adapt to this "new direction"? Perhaps a teacher/student/parent strike is in order about this "new direction"? Now that would be a teachable moment.

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Teaching is both the best and worst vocation in the world.
Leaving a teaching situation is difficult at any time and can be emotionally charged. Such 'firings' should be handled professionally with respect for the teachers and their students.

Moronic charter School administrators (note that anyone can set up a Charter School) have killed professionalism in Education. It has been so for some years now.

This article is horrific. The children who graduate from these ineffectual and damaging institutions will simply perpetrate what they have learned.

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Charter Schools are wrong. They are not the answer. There are too many people with too little experience, knowledge and grey matter out there setting them up. There is no oversight. It is disgusting.

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News, Etc.

The foreclosure business is doing better than ever.
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Education "reformers" absolutely hate low income students, or else they wouldn't push to have shitty curriculum and unqualified or underqualified teachers in the classroom.

The goal, of course, is to limit higher education access, including high school.
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You don't need a Ph.D. in economics to know the whole point of the downturn is to drastically lower wages and thus opportunities for millions of people.

The downturn is a result of deliberate policy, thanks to our corrupt "representatives" in Washington in both parties.
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I thought I'd link this little "appreciation" piece of David Nelson. It sums up nicely his contribution to the success of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

A Good Question Being Raised

in Susan Ohanian's comments before an article about a charter school closing is why there is so much interest by crooks--er, hedge fund types--in scamming the taxpayers by opening up charters?

If you guessed our illustrious elected officials, including a Democrat, Bill Clinton, you'd be right, as she quotes a Democracy Now interview:

There's a lot of money to be made in charter schools, and I'm not talking just about the for-profit management companies that run a lot of these charter schools.

It turns out that at the tail end of the Clinton administration in 2000, Congress passed a new kind of tax credit called a New Markets tax credit. What this allows is it gives enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in underserved communities and it's been used heavily now for the last several years for charter schools. I have focused on Albany, New York, which in New York state, is the district with the highest percentage of children in charter schools, twenty percent of the schoolchildren in Albany attend are now attending charter schools. I discovered that quite a few of the charter schools there have been built using these New Markets tax credits.

What happens is the investors who put up the money to build charter schools get to basically or virtually double their money in seven years through a thirty-nine percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they're lending, so they're also collecting interest on the loans as well as getting the thirty-nine percent tax credit. They piggy-back the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits like historic preservation or job creation or brownfields credits.

If there is anything Congress does anymore or in the recent past that isn't designed to screw over the taxpayers to benefit the few, I'd like to know what it is.

If You Think Racial Segregation of Schools

went out the window with Brown v. Board of Education, you are very much mistaken. Segregation is returning, but this time it is in the formation of those much-touted charter schools, which "Democrats" Obama and Duncan are so big on:

Local black leaders are concerned that York Preparatory Academy, the first charter school in York County open to any student, will be nearly all white.

The academy's organizers are still compiling information about the student body's demographics. But the several hundred people who attended the school's recent enrollment lottery were mostly white, as was the crowd of several hundred who attended a recent board meeting.

The school's governing board of seven members is all white.

Melvin Poole, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Rock Hill chapter, sees the makings of a segregated school.

"I don't think they made a real effort to get blacks in," Poole said. "I think this is just a cover-up way to get back to segregated schools ... creating a school of elites on the taxpayer's dime."

link (H/T Schools Matter blog)

And getting back to Uncle Miltie's voucher schemes, those were designed to reverse Brown. Charter schools, once touted by AFT president Al Shanker, who later denounced them when he found out the idea was being perverted by the right to undercut public education, are now the venue to put the races in their "place."

The Big Argument in Favor of Charter Schools

is that while they can siphon taxpayer dollars which should go to regular public schools, at the same time they have freedom to do whatever they want, including turning their cafeterias into nightclubs.

I mean, you can't make this stuff up:

Books by day, beers by night — at least that is what school district officials in Philadelphia say was offered at a charter school there, where they say the school’s cafeteria was used weekends as a nightclub.

Fernando Gallard, a spokesman for the school district, said his office was investigating whether the school, the Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School itself rented the cafeteria to the bar, known as Club Damani, or if the landlord did so. In the meantime, Mr. Gallard said, the city has asked the bar to cease operating or the school to move.

The school is home to roughly 500 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. When it opened in 1997, it was one of the first charter schools in the city. Now, there are 67 charter schools educating about 34,000 students, Mr. Gallard said.

Harambee officials did not respond to requests for comment. But they posted an open letter on the school’s Web site, saying reports about the school’s operating a bar, which first appeared over the weekend on a local television station, WPVI-TV, were “a biased depiction of the true success story that Harambee truly is.”