I keep gathering together information on the new trend from public schools to charter schools. In the back of my mind, I know it doesn't matter what I write, or whether I as a retired teacher agree. But it is in my nature to try to inform about the changes going on in the public school system. I treasured my 30 plus years of teaching the little and not so little ones. I loved them very much.
I know that some students will benefit from charter schools since the money is going to them instead of public schools now. It will be beneficial to some. But it breaks my heart to see the callous way Arne Duncan views public schools in relation to his love for charter schools and more testing.
Arne Duncan's goals for the schools and the use of the stimulus fund for education, in his own words."Part of the stimulus money, he told Sam Dillon of The New York Times, will be used so that states can develop data systems, which will enable them to tie individual student test scores to individual teachers, greasing the way for merit pay. Another part of the stimulus plan will support charters and entrepreneurs."
More from the article:
Everything I have seen and learned since Duncan came to office has supported Secretary Spellings' admiring comments about Secretary Duncan. It turns out that Duncan, like the Bush administration, adores testing, charter schools, merit pay, and entrepreneurs. Part of the stimulus money, he told Sam Dillon of The New York Times, will be used so that states can develop data systems, which will enable them to tie individual student test scores to individual teachers, greasing the way for merit pay. Another part of the stimulus plan will support charters and entrepreneurs.
Duncan paid his first visit to New York City last week ("New Education Secretary Visits Brooklyn School," New York Times, Feb. 19, 2009). He did not visit a regular public school, but a charter school. Such decisions are not happenstance; they are intended to send a message. Bear in mind that the regular public schools enroll 98 percent of the city's one-million-plus students.
At the charter school, Duncan endorsed the core principles of the Bush education program. According to the account in the Times, Secretary Duncan said that "increasing the use of testing across the country should also be a spending priority." And he made this astonishing statement: "We should be able to look every second grader in the eye and say, 'You're on track, you're going to be able to go to a good college, or you're not...Right now, in too many states, quite frankly, we lie to children. We lie to them and we lie to their families."
It seems to me that during the primaries President Obama said he was not calling for more testing, though he thoroughly embraced charter schools.
Charter schools are deregulated schools"Deregulation
The second main idea behind charters is that state directives are strangling public school innovations. That's why charters are exempted from many regulations restricting the operations of traditional public schools. The trouble is that deregulation creates opportunities for mountebanks to pilfer the public purse, abuse children, and the like. As a matter of fact, to the extent that charter operators have freedom of action, the confidence tricksters and bunko artists among them find opportunities for fraud and misuse of public funds. What is more, the politicians (and/or their relatives) who push charters often end up feeding at the charter school trough themselves."
Just as we are going through the crisis of our banks due to the deregulation in the last 1990s....we are deciding to deregulate our public school system and allow the schools to be run by various other groups than the school board. In fact, Arne Duncan even thinks that schools should in many cases be turned over to the city mayors. Lord help most of Florida if that were to happen.
Cutting edge chartersCharter schools are hardly the only enterprise to give deregulation a bad name. At this writing the U.S. economy may be headed for its worst crises since the Great Depression. Many commentators cite the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a 1999 banking deregulation bill, as the primary cause. The act, signed by President Clinton by the way, repealed Depression-era regulations and encouraged the creation of sub-prime mortgages, including no-money-down, interest-only loans to individuals with poor credit histories. Those mortgages were subsequently packaged and sold as securities. The Bush administration, blinded by the philosophy that market forces provide all the regulation necessary, ignored numerous warnings of an impending collapse. Thus did deregulation produce the conditions that triggered an economic train wreck, Deregulation similarly precipitated the savings and loan crises of the 1980s and '90s. In that case a new federal law permitted S&Ls to depart from their original mission of receiving savings and providing mortgages and venture into commercial loans and issuing credit cards instead. S&Ls soon were lending money to shaky ventures they were ill equipped to assess. Eventually more than sixteen hundred banks either closed or required federal assistance at a cost to federal taxpayers of $124.6 billion.
What's the common element in both of these financial debacles? Deregulation. What is at the heart of the charter school movement? Deregulation.
Conclusion
Given President-elect Obama's support for charter schooling, the movement may multiply during his administration. If so, expect still more fraud and scandal, because whatever their merits, charters present as big an opportunity for swindlers and charlatans as does televangelism."
When deciding the merits of an issue, you look to who is supporting it.
Walmart one of the biggest supporters of charter schools."A charter school is any school that is funded publicly but governed by institutions outside the public school system. A company, a non-governmental organization, a university, or any group of people who write a charter can become autonomous from a public school board and control the budget, curriculum, and select the group of students in a school. They receive public money, and, in exchange, they set out quantifiable results that they will achieve. One quarter of charter schools are run by for-profit operators (called EMOs, Educational Management Organizations), but most are run by nonprofit entities (usually grouped under CMOs, Charter Management Organizations.)"
"The Walton Family Foundation of Wal-Mart is the single biggest investor in charter schools in the United States, giving $50 million a year to support them.21 The Waltons specialize in giving money to opponents of public education. “Empowering parents to choose among competing schools,” said John Walton, son of Wal-Mart’s founder, “will catalyze improvement across the entire K–12 education system.”22 According to a National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) report, “Some critics argue that it is the beginning of the ‘Wal-Martization’ of education, and a move to for-profit schooling, from which the family could potentially financially benefit. John Walton owned 240,000 shares of Tesseract Group Inc. (formerly known as Education Alternatives Inc.), which is a for-profit company that develops/manages charter and private schools as well as public schools.”23 Wal-Mart is a notorious union-busting firm, famous for keeping its health-care costs down by discouraging unhealthy people from working at its stores, paying extremely low wages with poor benefits, and violating child labor laws. The company has reportedly looted more than $1 billion in economic development subsidies from state and local governments.24 Its so-called philanthropy seems also to be geared to the looting of public treasuries."
Though charter schools are called public schools, there is a difference. They are not the same as a public school in the traditional sense at all. They have an outside group running them.
Charter schools"Although they serve only a tiny fraction of the nation’s public school students, charter schools have seized a prominent role in education today. They are at the center of a growing movement to challenge traditional notions of what public education means.
Charter schools are by definition independent public schools. Although funded with taxpayer dollars, they operate free from many of the laws and regulations that govern traditional public schools. In exchange for that freedom, they are bound to the terms of a contract or "charter" that lays out a school’s mission, academic goals, and accountability procedures. State laws set the parameters for charter contracts, which are overseen by a designated charter school authorizer—often the local school district or related agency.
With their relative autonomy, charter schools are seen as a way to provide greater educational choice and innovation within the public school system. Their founders are often teachers, parents, or activists who feel restricted by traditional public schools. In addition, many charters are run by for-profit companies, forming a key component of the privatization movement in education."
"many are run by for-profit companies"
More details about them.
Charter Schools USA"Charter schools are part of a sweeping educational reform that offers alternatives for parents and students and places the highest priority on providing a better education. Charter schools are funded much like a public school, but each charter school is governed privately. Unlike traditional public schools, every charter school must demonstrate success, or it will lose its charter. Charter schools can be managed by municipalities, private companies or individuals."
More from Derrick Z. Jackson.
Charter Schools Troubled Waters by Derrick Z. Jackson"Published on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 by the Boston Globe
Charter Schools' Troubled Waters
by Derrick Z. Jackson
Despite promising us a compass, charter schools have hit another shoal. More evidence says they are no better than public schools.
"Proponents of charter schools have a deregulationist view of education that says the marketplace leads to better schools," Lawrence Mishel, president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, said over the telephone. "The facts of the matter suggest that this view is without merit."
Mishel and three other university researchers from Columbia and Stanford universities are authors of the forthcoming book "The Charter School Dust-Up." The researchers reviewed federal data and the results from 19 studies in 11 states and the District of Columbia. They found that charter school students, on the whole, "have the same or lower scores than other public school students in nearly every demographic category."
In a politically charged environment where the White House and many governors, including Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, are pushing charter schools, the authors found that federal data "fail to confirm claims that the performance of charter schools improves as these schools accumulate experience." Charter schools four years or older "report lower scores than new charter schools."
..."Also, many charter schools rely on less-experienced, uncertified, and often less-well-paid teachers. In a regular central city school, 75 percent of the teachers have more than five years' experience. In a charter school the percentage is only 34 percent. In public high schools, 70 percent of the math teachers either majored or minored in math in college. In a charter high school, the percentage is 56 percent. "While freedom from certification rules undoubtedly permit charter schools to hire teachers who are more qualified than typical teachers in regular public schools, the data do not reveal evidence that charter schools, on average, are actually using their freedom to do so," the authors wrote.
The charter schools are coming. Some will work well. But the overall picture is one of involving outside entities in public schools, making them answerable to groups who might have their own agendas.