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Tag: Charter Schools

  • More Than 1,650 Charter Schools Closed in Seven Years

    According to the U.S. Department of Education, 1,654 charter schools closed between 2010-2011 and 2016-2017.  That is an average of 236 charter school closures per year, which is a big bite out of the total number of charter schools in a short period of time. Today there exist roughly 7,300 charter schools, which is less than 7% of all schools in the U.S. Given the endless problems with transparency and open accurate reporting in the charter school sector it is not unreasonable to assume that the number of charter schools that have closed in this time period is actually larger than what the U.S. Department of Education reports.

    Privately-operated charter schools are notorious for over-promising and under-delivering on many commitments and assurances. The chasm between charter school rhetoric and charter schools reality has always been large. The massive onslaught of disinformation about privately-operated charter schools has created a situation where facts like the closure of thousands of charter schools over the years have been drowned out by never-ending happy news about charter schools. The pressure to not engage in a conscious act of finding out what is really transpiring in the unstable charter school sector has left many at a disadvantage that harms everyone. Only systematic research and analysis can arm a person to see and appreciate this persistent gap between charter school words and charter school deeds.

    For decades the public has been told by charter school promoters and their allies that public schools are lousy and incapable of “saving” students, particularly minority students. The public has been repeatedly told that charter schools are a silver bullet that will deliver a bigger bang for the buck and be more accountable than public schools.

    Instead, corruption, fraud, arrests, poor performance, school closures, shady real estate deals, scandalous headlines, and more have increased alongside the surge in charter schools. More segregated charter schools run by unelected individuals has meant more problems for everyone, including charter schools themselves.

    To be sure, charter schools have failed thousands of minority families, distorted the economy, undermined nation-building, and increased many inequalities. No amount of hullabaloo or hype can conceal these realities.

    Privately-operated charter schools have not reduced poverty, inequality, or structural racism. They have not closed the “achievement gap” or stopped the school-to-prison pipeline. They have siphoned money from public schools and intensified segregation, controversy, de-unionization, secrecy, and competition. Cyber charter schools in particular have taken fraud and scandal to levels not seen in even the most irresponsible large corporations.

    If high scores on punitive, time-consuming, expensive, educationally unsound high-stakes standardized tests produced by big for-profit corporations is the measure of a “good education,” then thousands of charters schools have failed to provide a “good education.” More than 3,000 privately-operated charter schools have closed since 1992.

    No doubt, many more charter schools will fail and close in the coming years, leaving even more minority families abandoned and angry. It does not matter much if the reason for closure is financial malfeasance, mismanagement, or poor academic performance, the result is still the same: the public deprived of billions of dollars and thousands of minority families betrayed and left out in the cold. The same worn-out “failure narrative” used by neoliberals and privatizers to justify a private takeover of America’s public schools applies to charter schools themselves.

    Neoliberal school reform has proven time and again to be a major block to progress in education and, by extension, society, the economy, and the nation.

    Charter schools must be prohibited from accessing any public school funds, resources, and buildings. These belong to the 100,000 public schools that serve the nation, economy, society, and public interest. This precious wealth produced by workers must not find its way into the hands of the non-profit and for-profit corporations that run charter schools.

    This article was posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2021 at 8:24am and is filed under Charter Schools, Education.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Public Opposition to Charter Schools Steadily Growing

    Over the years, as more problems with charter schools have been exposed, analyzed, and critiqued, more people have come to see the need for opposing them and for defending public education and the public interest. Criticism and rejection of these privately-operated schools has become more mainstream in recent years and it is safe to say that opposition to charter schools will keep growing so long as neoliberals and privatizers impose more charter schools on society.

    Public school boards and many different education advocacy groups, along with more legislators, former charter school teachers, many public school teachers, countless teacher educators and teacher education students, teacher unions, and myriad rights and justice groups are just some of the forces that are increasingly speaking out and taking action against charter schools. Many others have also heard of charter schools, and even with little or no investigation, they tend to approach charter schools with some skepticism. The days when charter schools were blindly embraced and investigation was deemed unnecessary are gradually fading. More people are doing their homework and learning about the numerous problems these segregated contract schools create.

    Recent Actions

    In April 2021, the Buffalo Public School Board voted to close two Buffalo charter schools that have been failing for years. There is also a legal push to pass a moratorium on charter schools for the next three years in the city. And in the past year even the New York State legislature has also become a little less supportive of charter schools.

    In recent months and years, many more public school boards across the country have also rejected charter school applications or been less hesitant to close failing or corrupt charter schools. For example, the Leon County School Board in Florida recently denied the application of a proposed new charter school. In 2020, the Lee County School Board shut down a charter school in Fort Myers (Florida). In March 2021, the Philadelphia school board unanimously denied five new charter schools. Also in March of this year, the Escondido Union School District (EUSD) board in California unanimously rejected a five-year renewal for Epiphany Prep Charter School. And in January 2021, the Montgomery County Board of Education in Alabama rejected a charter school application. In late 2019, parents and community members called for closing of a Memphis, Tennessee charter school under investigation. Reasons for rejection or closing a charter school usually include poorly-written and poorly-conceived charter school applications, a long record of mismanagement, and/or years of poor academic performance. Such actions are becoming more commonplace from coast to coast. These examples represent a small fraction of public actions against non-profit and for-profit charter schools.

    In Oklahoma, about 200 public school districts have consciously banded together recently to legally challenge the funneling of public school dollars to privately-operated charter schools.

    In New Jersey there is a new court case challenging the expansion of charter schools in that state. And in Pennsylvania, by a margin of 3-1, hundreds of Propel Charter School staff recently voted to form a union to defend their rights because they are routinely violated by their charter school operator. Late last month, 15 members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, and various other officials requesting a significant reduction in funding for the federal Charter School Program (CSP) as well as a commitment to ensuring better oversight of charter schools to minimize chronic waste and fraud.

    Many other examples of opposition to charter schools and their practices could be given.

    It should be noted that charter schools, which are run by unelected individuals and are heavily focused on revenue and profit, have been controversial and mired in scandal, corruption, and controversy for 30 years. Thousands have closed since 1992. And collectively, charter schools have deprived public schools of tens of billions of public dollars, leaving them, the economy, and society worse off. With such a record, and given their very nature, it is no surprise that there are even some divisions and conflicts within the crisis-prone charter school sector itself (e.g., brick-and-mortar charter schools versus cyber charter schools).

    The main issue is that social consciousness about the harms of school privatization is growing and that individuals and organizations are increasingly combining action with analysis to oppose school privatization and defend the public interest.

    More actions against charter schools and in favor of public schools is slowly activating and galvanizing the human factor and the social consciousness needed to change the direction of education and society to benefit the public interest. Over time, more possibilities to unite and collaborate against school privatization will present themselves and enable people to resolve problems in a manner that favors them instead of narrow private interests who strive to deprive the public of enormous sums of public wealth.

    The public does not benefit from the ongoing multiplication of charter schools. These contract schools only create more headaches for public schools and for charter schools themselves.

    This article was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2021 at 12:18pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Education, Public Schools, School Privatization, Teachers/Teachers Unions.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • No Justification for the Existence of Charter Schools

    Non-profit and for-profit charter schools are privatized, marketized, corporatized education arrangements that appeared 30 years ago in the U.S. They are legal in 45 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam. About 3.3 million youth are currently enrolled in roughly 7,400 charter schools.

    Charter schools openly embrace “free market” ideology and siphon billions of public dollars a year from public schools, many of which are chronically under-funded. Their academic track record is unimpressive and often very poor. Many do not provide employee retirement programs. Like a private business, charter schools spend lots of money on advertising and marketing and have high student, teacher, and principal turnover rates. They are also frequently mired in controversy, scandal, and corruption. They cannot levy taxes, are run by unelected individuals, and regularly hire uncertified teachers. Most charter schools are segregated and thousands have closed over the course of three decades, leaving many minority families out in the cold. The three main reasons for charter school closures are: financial malfeasance, mismanagement, and poor academic performance. Charter schools also dodge many public standards and laws followed by public schools. Moreover, about 90% of charter schools have no teacher unions and charter school authorizing is defective in many states. Many other problems could be listed.

    It is also worth observing that the vast majority of individuals who enroll in teacher education programs do so in order to graduate and teach in a public school. Few, if any, teacher education candidates enroll in teacher education programs because they want to graduate and teach in a charter school. That is typically not the goal or outlook of people enrolled in teacher education programs. Further, as more problems with charter schools are exposed and publicized, the larger the number of people who oppose them. Criticism and rejection of charter schools has steadily increased over the years.

    To be sure, charter schools did not start out as a humble, virtuous, principled, benign grass-roots effort. The charter school idea did not come from ordinary everyday parents, students, and teachers. There was never anything grass-roots or pro-social about the charter school movement. It is no surprise that many millionaires and billionaires are involved in charter schools. From the very beginning, charter schools have been a top-down initiative to break the public school “monopoly” and outsource education to the private sector under the veneer of high ideals. Charter schools did not emerge 30 years ago free of the influence of narrow private interests. They are a textbook product of the neoliberal period and project.

    The notion that charter schools began as a way to empower teachers, serve as a laboratory for innovative replicable practices, provide parents with “choices,” reach kids who are “at-risk,” or some other lofty goal is designed to fool the gullible and divert attention from their inherently privatized and marketized character. It is not the case that charter schools started out as a great desirable idea that everyone could get behind but later on were hijacked by “the wrong people” and turned into the crisis-prone controversial schools that they are today. Such a perception implies that there is something legitimate or worth supporting about charter schools, which is another way of saying that there is something legitimate or worth supporting about the privatization of public schools.

    From a human-centered perspective, privatization only increases problems, it does not solve them.

    Privatization usually leads to more corruption, less transparency, poorer services, higher costs, diminished worker voice, more inequality, and less efficiency. Privatization negates the public interest. Privatization leaves workers and the public with fewer funds to serve workers and the public.

    Private literally means the opposite of public. Private and public are antonyms. Blurring or trivializing the distinction between public and private serves only private interests and creates the illusion that the public sphere and private sphere do not have irreconcilable aims and practices. Public-private “partnerships” (PPPs), for example, have nothing to do with benefiting the public. PPPs, which are growing rapidly at home and abroad, mainly transfer public money to private hands under the banner of high ideals.

    The aim of privatizers is not to advance the public interest but to seize as much public wealth as fast as possible through neoliberal state restructuring, that is, through state-organized corruption to funnel money to the rich. This harms education, society, the economy, and has nothing to do with a modern nation-building project.

    The challenge confronting the society as a whole is how to ensure that the country has fully-funded, publicly-governed, world-class, integrated public schools in every neighborhood. Treating education as a commodity and parents and students as consumers and “school shoppers” is not the way forward. It reinforces a “winner-loser” ethos, which has no place in education. A modern society based on mass industrial production cannot operate and develop well on such a basis.

    Creating the impression that there is something legitimate about charter schools  or that they can somehow be improved and become something other than charter schools does not serve the public interest or jibe with the results of investigation. More charter schools equals more problems, including for charter schools themselves.

    Closing all charter schools will help improve education, society, the economy, and the national interest in many ways. The deepening crisis in these spheres cannot be solved by further empowering the rich while further excluding people from making the decisions that affect their lives.

    This article was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2021 at 4:57pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Neoliberalism.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Inflated Charter School Waitlists

    With great frequency, promoters of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools like to claim that charter schools are so great that they have very long lists of students waiting to get into them. They use such claims and “data” to argue that more charter schools are needed and that more public money should be spent on creating and multiplying more privately-operated charter schools.

    However, many reports show that such waitlist numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt because they are usually inaccurate and misleading for various reasons. For example, a recent report from the North Carolina State Board of Education reported that:

    During the 2019-2020 school year, over 117,000 North Carolina students were enrolled in [200] charter schools. As of October 1, 2020, over 126,000 North Carolina students are enrolled in charter schools. Self-reported data from the state’s charter schools indicate that 78% of charter schools had a waitlist totaling nearly 76,000 students statewide. (p. 3)

    But in a footnote attached to this observation, the report notes that this “Figure may include duplicates, as students are often waitlisted at multiple charter schools.” An article from NC Policy Watch states: “76,000 names on waitlists aren’t the same as 76,000 students.” Names that appear on waitlists at multiple schools can result in a large overcount. Thus, for example, when one student is on multiple school’s waitlists, they are counted as being on each school’s waitlist. In other words, one student could be counted two, three, or more times, thereby inflating the final waitlist number. Such data could cause people to “mistakenly think that demand for charter schools is a lot higher than it actually is.”

    A related waitlist overcounting problem is highlighted by Durham (North Carolina) school board member Natalie Beyer:

    Families apply to multiple magnet schools, charter schools and private schools often in multiple counties for individual students. After lottery results, families choose a single school but do not remove their child from waiting lists and as a result those individual school waiting lists often include multiple duplications and are not an accurate reflection of demand for charter schools. (emphasis added)

    The real number of students on charter school waitlists is usually significantly lower than what is officially misreported.  While school privatizers profit from such misleading data, the public does not benefit from misrepresentative data.

    In 2014, the National Education Policy Center produced a policy memo titled: Wait, Wait. Don’t Mislead Me! Nine Reasons to be Skeptical About Charter School Waitlist Numbers.  Researchers showed that student waitlists for charter schools are highly inflated and misleading.

    Similar overcounting problems were reported in a 2016 Massachusetts news article titled Charter School Wait Lists May Not Be What They Seem.

    In March 2021, Texas AFT had this to say about bogus charter school waitlist numbers:

    In the past, the charter industry often claimed there were anywhere between 150,000 to 200,000 students on a “waitlist” they maintained and used this number to argue for even more state dollars for a duplicate education system—one that is more costly than real public schools and lacks any voter accountability. A new law required TEA [Texas Education Agency] to request waitlist information from charters and found only 55,000 on this self-reported “waitlist.” The numbers still seem inflated considering the millions that charter schools spend on television advertising (including Super Bowl and World Series ads), glossy mailers, and even billboards on IH-35 trying to attract students.

    Additional research would likely show that inflated charter school waitlist numbers are more common than initially thought.

    While it is understandable that the private interests that own-operate deregulated charter schools would make misleading data claims to advance their school privatization agenda, the public must not tolerate such distortions and should take action to stop misreporting and the flow of public funds to privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools. Public money belongs to public schools and the destiny and use of this money must be determined by the public without the influence of any private interests. Public money must stay in public hands regardless of whether or not charter schools have waitlists. No pretext should be tolerated for funneling money from the public sphere into the crisis-prone charter school sector. Even if 20 million students were on charter school waitlists, this is not a justification for transferring public money to private interests. Public funds must not fall under the control of narrow competing private interests. This will only distort the economy and exacerbate many other problems. Pay-the-rich schemes harm the general interests of society.

    Charter schools are not public schools; they are privatized, marketized, corporatized education arrangements that serve a fraction of the nation’s youth. Charter schools have no legitimate claim to public funds. They are run by unelected individuals, focus on revenue and profit, cannot levy taxes, are frequently mired in corruption, regularly engage in numerous shady real estate deals, often hire uncertified teachers, and usually intensify segregation. Homeless students, students with disabilities, and English Language Learners are consistently under-represented in charter schools. And unlike public schools, charter schools spend millions of dollars on advertising and marketing their schools to mostly vulnerable minority families. This enormous sum of public money would be better used for classroom teaching and learning. If privately-operated charter schools wish to grow and multiply, they must do so without public funds, assets, and resources.

    This article was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2021 at 2:00am and is filed under Charter Schools, Education.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New York State: 50 Charter Schools Closed in 20 Years

    by Shawgi Tell / April 7th, 2021

    According to New York Charter School Fact Sheet (January 2021) from the New York State Education Department, the number of charter schools issued in New York State since the passage of the state’s charter school law in 1998 is 397. The total number of privately-operated charters permitted statewide under 2015 legislative amendments is 460. It is worth noting that a conversion of an existing public school to a charter school is not counted toward the numerical limits established by Article 56 of Education Law. This amounts to about 10 charter schools.

    A separate but related document from the New York State Education Department, New York State Charter Schools (January 2021), claims that 46 privately-operated charter schools closed or never opened in the state. Fifteen of these charter schools closed since 2010.

    It is not unreasonable to assume that more investigation and more recent data would reveal that more than 46 charter schools have actually closed in the state over the past 20 years. For example, the Buffalo School Board voted in April 2021 to close two failing charter schools in Buffalo.

    Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures From 1999 – 2017 provides a more comprehensive picture of the high failure and closure rate of charter schools nationwide. Equally problematic, persistently poor oversight and weak accountability in the charter school sector have kept many failing charter schools open.

    The frequent failure and closure of privately-operated charter schools is part of the constant instability in the crisis-prone charter school sector that has left thousands of black and brown families out in the cold.

    This article was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2021 at 11:29pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Education.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter Schools: “Choice” Is Not An Argument

    Advocates of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools have long ignored serious criticisms of charter schools in a variety of ways. They have always believed, for example, that simply repeating worn-out phrases like “charter schools provide choice” will automatically cause everyone to dismiss the need for any discussion, investigation, and critical thinking about the well-documented negative effects of charter schools on education, society, the economy, and the national interest.

    “Choice,” however, is not an argument for the existence or expansion of privately-operated charter schools.

    When charter school promoters use the language of “choice,” they want people to:

    1. Not recognize that education is an inalienable human right that must be guaranteed in practice by a public authority worthy of the name.
    2. Believe that “free market” ideology is the best and most pro-social way to organize education in a modern society based on mass industrial production.
    3. Ignore how “choice” leads to greater stratification and segregation in charter schools through their geographic location and selective student enrollment and attrition practices.
    4. Disregard the fact that by “choice” charter school promoters really mean education is a commodity, not a social responsibility, and parents and students are consumers, not humans and citizens, who fend for themselves while shopping for a “good” school that hopefully does not close in under 10 years.
    5. Think that there is no need to analyze how and why public schools have been set up to fail by privatizers so as to justify the rise of deregulated charter schools.
    6. Get used to the disinformation that public schools are automatically bad and charter schools are inherently superior.
    7. Ignore the fact that charter schools usually choose parents and students, not the other way around.
    8. Overlook the fact that “choice” does not guarantee excellence, stability, or equity. Several thousand deregulated charter schools run by unelected individuals have closed in recent decades.
    9. Believe that it does not matter who “delivers” education, but what kind of “results” are produced.
    10. Dismiss the fact that “choice” means taking money away from under-funded public schools that educate thousands of students and that public schools in many instances are even compelled to provide some free services to charter schools.

    It is not possible to conceal the fact that deregulated charter schools fail and close regularly, educate far fewer students than public schools, are continually mired in fraud and corruption, are governed by unelected individuals, have high teacher and principal turnover rates, spend a lot of public money on advertising and marketing, dodge public standards for meetings and accountability, and siphon enormous amounts of money from public schools every day. Privately-operated charter schools also have more inexperienced and lower-paid teachers than public schools. In addition, many charter schools offer fewer services and programs than public schools. It is also worth noting that the performance of cyber charter schools is consistently abysmal. This is what “choice” has delivered.

    The 50 problems plaguing privately-operated charter schools will not disappear by endlessly repeating “choice is good” and by treating parents and students as consumers and shoppers instead of humans and citizens with rights that must be guaranteed. Turning major human responsibilities like education into a “free market” commodity is not a modern way of educating people in the 21st century. It will not solve any problems. Over the past 30 years, segregated charter schools have only given rise to more problems, including many problems for themselves.

    Parents and students do not need more problematic “choices” or choice just for the sake of choice. They need locally-controlled, world-class, fully-funded, non-demonized, free schools completely uninfluenced by narrow private interests. A modern nation and economy can’t be built on an education system based on the ideology of “survival of the fittest.”

    To be sure, the rapid multiplication of privately-operated charter schools under President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona will go a long way toward nation-wrecking, undermining public education, harming the public interest, and dehumanizing the natural and social environment. It is no surprise that intense controversy and upheaval have characterized the charter school sector since day one and seem to increase every month.

    Now is the time to step up defense of public schools and the public interest. The public matters more than ever. The privatization of schools and many other public enterprises through neoliberal state restructuring harms the majority, the economy, society, and the national interest. Privatization increases corruption and inefficiency, while lowering quality, increasing costs, and restricting democracy. The public must not permit neoliberals and privatizers to wreck public schools that have been serving 90% of America’s youth for well over a century. Schemes based on the “free market” and a “fend-for-yourself” ethos will certainly benefit a tiny handful of owners of capital, but they won’t solve deep problems that have worsened due to the actions of major owners of capital desperately hanging on to an obsolete economic system.

    This article was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2021 at 9:47pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Corruption, Education, Neoliberalism, Public Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter School Disinformation About Families Being the Most Important “Stakeholders”

    Since day one, advocates of privately-operated charter schools have tried to convince everyone that segregated charter schools “empower parents” and that parents are not only “stakeholders” but the most important “stakeholders” in education. Everything in education is supposedly all about parents first and foremost. Parents are the end-all and be-all. Education apparently serves no one else or 10 other broad functions. Education exists mainly to serve parents. Everyone and everything else is secondary at best. Oddly enough, while the “parent empowerment” theme is central to charter school disinformation it is actually charter schools that choose parents and students, not the other way around.

    Such a narrow notion of parents-first-last-and-always deliberately degrades and debases the historical, cultural, social, political, and economic role, significance, and importance of public education in a modern society based on mass industrial production. The days of petty production, small estates,  small farms, and feudal manors are long gone. Humans today are born to a complex modern society in which all production is highly technical, scientific, advanced, large-scale, and cooperative. Everything is interdependent and impossible without millions of skilled working people. The problem is that this modern mass production system is based on outdated relations of production, that is, it is owned and controlled by competing private owners of capital whose only aim is to maximize profit as fast as possible no matter the damage to the natural and social environment. Such a set-up reinforces old ideas such as consumerism, individualism, competition, and a fend-for-yourself culture. It renders education a commodity and parents become consumers who individually shop for schools the way they shop for a car. If things work out, that’s great, but if they don’t work out, then you are screwed. “Buyer Beware” is the only defense you have against getting ambushed in a “survival-of-the-fittest” society. In such a society, government abdicates its responsibility to people and nothing is guaranteed. Privileges, competition, and opportunities replace rights. Education is never upheld as a right that must be provided a guarantee by government, it is simply a commodity and an opportunity.

    Neoliberal “Stakeholder”

    The core idea behind the neoliberal notion of a “stakeholder” is that there are no social classes. We supposedly live in a “no-class” society. In this way, the 50 problems that exist in class-divided societies magically disappear. All that exists is isolated, abstract, allegedly equal self-interested calculating consumers with an “equal stake” in capitalism. We are to casually ignore massive and constantly-growing inequality and the fact that only the top 1% have a stake in capitalism and that the majority of humanity urgently needs an alternative to this crisis-prone economic system that leaves millions behind every year. The neoliberal idea of a “stakeholder” is a way to apologize for capitalism and to block any thinking that considers a modern alternative to this obsolete system.

    Parents are not stakeholders. Nor are students, teachers, and principals. Women, workers, and senior citizens are not “stakeholders” either. They are human beings and citizens with basic human rights, not consumers, shoppers, or “market citizens” who fend-for-themselves in a chaotic and insecure “dog-eat-dog” world. Parents are members of the polity, just like everyone else, and they necessarily share the same objective interests as students, teachers, principals, and others. Education serves parents, as well as students, teachers, principals, society, the economy, and people who are not parents. The value of education is not based on parenthood. A modern society based on mass industrial production would not be possible without a modern mass public education system that is world-class, fully-funded, and locally-controlled.

    The role of education is to pass on the accumulated knowledge of humanity to the next generation so that society can progress. Everyone has a “stake” in education. The same can be said about healthcare, transportation, postal services, food production, municipal services, and more. Everyone needs these services—parents and non-parents. Education must serve everyone in a modern society, not this or that “stakeholder” or “special interest.”

    Government must take up its social responsibility to provide the rights of individuals and collectives with a guarantee in practice, not leave everyone to fend for themselves in a society that perpetuates insecurity, poverty, debt, unemployment, and inequality. Everyone should reject all attempts by narrow private interests to impose neoliberal ideas and arrangements on people, institutions,  public enterprises, and different spheres of life. Defend the right to an education that serves all individuals, collectives, and society.

    This article was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2021 at 9:26am and is filed under Charter Schools, Disinformation, Education, Neoliberalism.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter Schools’ Obsession With Test Scores Deliberately Misses the Point

    Putting aside the endless problems with punitive high-stakes standardized tests produced by a handful of large for-profit corporations, charter school advocates have never stopped making a fetish out of students’ scores on these political instruments. Charter school promoters obsess endlessly over racist psychometric tests that have been rejected by many for decades. They appear to be immune to all criticism of these widely-rejected tests. No critical examination of these top-down corporate tests is even attempted. It is as if everyone is expected to automatically embrace them and treat them as being useful, flawless, and meaningful.

    What is odd, however, is that thousands of charter schools, which frequently cherry-pick their students, actually perform poorly on such corporate tests, more poorly than many under-funded public schools, and about the same as some under-funded public schools. There is really not much to boast about. The charter school record is not impressive, especially when viewed in its totality. Thirty years after their appearance, segregated charter schools cannot seem to claim victory for much.

    It is no surprise that more than 150 privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools close every year due to academic failure (and financial malfeasance). Literally thousands have failed and closed in three decades, leaving many black and brown families out in the cold.

    Overall, it remains hard to make a compelling argument for the existence of private business like deregulated charter schools. Why have another “system” of schools that undermines public schools and still fails to deliver? What is the reason for such wasteful redundancy, especially when it undermines the public interest? Competition makes losers out of everyone. If it was indisputable and crystal clear to everyone that deregulated charter schools are the silver bullet that advocates keep stubbornly claiming they are, there would be little or no controversy surrounding these contract schools. But every year the controversy around charter schools only intensifies.

    Even if all students in a charter school scored 100 on an unsound corporate test, there is no justification for the existence of privately-operated charter schools. The main criteria for judging whether a school should exist is not whether students pass or fail unsound corporate tests.

    The tests and students’ scores are meaningless at many levels—for both charter schools and public schools. They are methodologically, philosophically, and statistically flawed. Focusing on the tests pressures people to ignore the core issue regarding charter schools, which is whether they are public or not in the proper sense of the word. They are not. Charter schools are privatized marketized schools. Once it is recognized, understood, appreciated, internalized, and not forgotten that charter schools are not public schools, then all other issues become moot or secondary. The “publicness/privateness” of segregated charter schools is the key issue. Thus, for example, because they are private businesses, charter schools were able to seize hundreds of millions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds from the CARES Act. Public schools were not permitted any access to PPP funds because they are not private businesses, they are public entities.

    Once it is grasped that segregated non-profit and for-profit charter schools are not public entities then the issue becomes: why are they receiving any public funds, assets, facilities, resources, or authority? What valid claim do private entities have to such things? Public and private cannot be equated, they mean very different things. The public and private spheres have different aims, agendas, and preoccupations. The dictionary even defines public and private as the opposite of each other. Why confound terms that are antonyms?

    It is helpful to recall that charter schools are contract schools that are segregated, deunionized, run by unelected officials, have high teacher turnover rates, siphon money from public schools, regularly under-perform, dodge many public laws and standards, frequently over-pay administrators, often cherry-pick their students, and are constantly plagued by endless scandal, fraud, and corruption. Charter schools on average also suspend students at a significantly higher rate than public schools. Who supports any of this?

    If charter schools wish to exist, so be it. But like private schools they must not be permitted to have access to any public funds, assets, facilities, resources, or authority. They must fund and support themselves without any reliance on the public sphere. Public funds and resources belong to the public and public schools, not someone else.

    This article was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2021 at 7:52pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Education, Public Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • What is a “Strong” Charter School Law?

    Every year the billionaire-funded National Alliance for Charter Schools (NAPCS) produces a glossy report ranking state charter school laws. This year’s 72-page report is titled: Measuring up to the model, a ranking of state public charter school laws, twelfth annual edition.

    The main goal of the report is to rank state charter school laws in terms of how “strong” or “weak” they are. This is supposed to signal to privatizers and neoliberals which states are most conducive to privatizing public schools and which are the least conducive to privatizing public schools.

    When the report refers to a state’s charter school law as being “strong” what it means is that the door is wide open in that state to unfettered privatization of public schools. In other words, a state with a “strong” charter school law enables and empowers privatizers and neoliberals to create more privately-operated segregated charter schools than a state with a “weak” charter school law. States with “strong” charter school laws, for example, have less charter school accountability and fewer laws, rules, and regulations upholding public standards for non-profit and for-profit charter schools. Being able to dodge teacher unions and being exempt from collective bargaining agreements is also considered a feature of a state with “strong” charter school laws. States with “strong” charter school laws also tend to have more “charter school authorizers,” which means that it is easier to start a charter school in that state because if one authorizer rejects a charter school application, the applicant can always “hop” down the road to another charter school authorizer and see if they will authorize the school’s charter, which they usually do. This reveals the arbitrary and chaotic nature of charter school authorizing. Further, in states with “strong” charter school laws segregated charter schools can operate with a large degree of impunity and not be held accountable for a range of widely-reported unethical practices.

    “For the sixth year in a row,” Indiana, according to this latest NAPCS report, is number one in the nation because it has the “strongest” charter school laws in the country. This is terrible news for public schools and the public interest but great news for privatizers and neoliberals. What makes Indiana particularly attractive to privatizers and neoliberals is that it allows an infinite number of deregulated charter schools, multiple charter school authorizers, and almost no rules or regulations for charter schools to uphold. Indiana has also taken steps to funnel even more public school funds into the hands of the private interests that own-operate segregated charter schools.

    The NAPCS states that Maryland “has the nation’s weakest charter school law, ranking No. 45 (out of 45).” In other words, Maryland is the least attractive state to privatizers and neoliberals because it limits the number of charter school authorizers, upholds some rules and standards, and limits the amount of public funds that can be seized by private owners-operators of segregated charter schools. The report considers Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, and Kansas to be insufficiently friendly to owners of capital as well.

    The issue at stake here is not whether charter school laws are “strong” or “weak” but rather: why are privately-operated charter schools permitted to exist in the first place? A related question is: why are private businesses like charter schools allowed to access public funds, assets, and resources? Charter schools are not public entities in the proper sense of the word. They are not state agencies like public schools. They are not political subdivisions of the state. They differ legally from public schools. They are contract schools that represent the outsourcing of public education to the private sector. Why are they legally permitted to siphon billions of public dollars that belong to public schools?

    Currently, 45 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and Guam have laws enabling the creation of charter schools. At this time, about 3.2 million students are enrolled in roughly 7,200 deregulated non-profit and for-profit charter schools. Privately-operated charter schools are notorious for consistently enrolling far fewer special needs students, homeless students, and English Language learners than public schools. It should also be noted that every 1-2 days a news report documents fraud, corruption, and arrests in the charter school sector.

    This article was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2021 at 10:00pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Discrimination, Education, Public Schools, Students.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter Schools Distort the Modern Socialized Economy

    Every year billions of public dollars and assets flow into the hands of private businesses like charter schools, leaving public schools, the economy, the public interest, and the nation worse off. This is due to the fact that competing owners of capital are using deregulated charter schools to atomize the socialized economy for private gain. As pay-the-rich schemes, privately-operated charter schools drain the large-scale socialized economy of a huge amount of social wealth produced by working people and meant for the public interest.

    When public funds leave the public sector and end up in the hands of deregulated private entities like non-profit and for-profit charter schools, that means narrow private interests are benefitting at the expense of the public. It means less added-value is used by and benefits the public. It means all public wealth is not reinvested fully and directly back into the public sector. Instead, a large portion of social wealth produced by workers is illegitimately claimed by external private claimants whose aim is to maximize profit as fast as possible. This distorts the economy and undermines public schools and the public interest. It is a net loss for society. It is socially irresponsible. Funneling public funds to private interests undermines modern nation-building that relies on a diverse, self-reliant, balanced, and pro-social economy under public control.

    It may be asked: Why don’t public funds stay in public hands? Why aren’t public funds used for public enterprises and for public purposes only? Why do public funds have to go through the private circuit and still leave society with poor results? Why are narrow private interests even permitted to access public funds in the first place? Why do so many social programs and public enterprises have a pay-the-rich component to them? What legitimate claim do owners of capital have to wealth produced by workers?

    Public and private are antonyms and should not be confounded. Public is the opposite of private. They do not mean the same thing. They should not be casually mixed up and used in intellectually lazy ways. It is problematic to mix them up because it denies the distinct properties of each category. There is a world of difference between the common good and exclusive private interests. What is good for major owners of capital is not good for the general interests of society. The aim of maximizing profit as fast as possible clashes head-on with the aim of serving the common good. These aims cannot be harmonized because one negates the other. Pursuing one comes at the expense of the other. There is no middle-ground or “safe mixing” of the two. Blurring the contrast between public and private is self-serving and invariably results in antisocial consequences. This is why so-called “public-private-partnerships” (PPPs), for example, are really pay-the-rich schemes that undermine the public interest instead of advancing it. There is little that is public about PPPs. The public does not need private “partners” to serve the economy and society; private “partners” are a big drain on both.

    Public funds for public schools must not flow into the hands of narrow private interests; this does not solve anything, it just destabilizes education and the economy. Now more than ever public schools need more public funds and greater investments. This is especially true given that at least $600 billion has been cut from public education since the 2008 recession.

    Public schools have been educating 90% of America’s youth for more than 150 years and must be fully funded, not continually starved of funds, over-tested, over-controlled, set up to fail, demonized and discredited, and then handed over to narrow private interests as a source of profit in a continually failing economy. Deliberately and persistently starving public schools of funds, over-testing them, demonizing and punishing them, and then letting neoliberals and privatizers privatize them only serves the rich and garbles the economy. It does not improve schools. It leaves the majority worse off.

    The “starve-them, test-them, demonize-punish-them, and privatize-them” strategy is straight out of the neoliberal playbook and has been used in dozens of cities across America. It is a deliberate setup for failure. Neoliberals and privatizers are now directly responsible for thousands of failing charter schools and for mandating public school failure. Society is now stuck with two failing education arrangements thanks to neoliberals and privatizers. How is this helpful? Instead of solving anything, neoliberals and privatizers have made a mess of everything and humiliated the personality of society. An August 6, 2020 article from the Washington Post titled “New report finds high closure rates for charter schools over time” reported that:

    A comprehensive examination released Thursday of charter school failure rates between 1999 and 2017 found that more than one-quarter of the schools closed after operating for five years, and about half closed after 15 years, displacing a total of more than 867,000 students.

    How is this a good thing? In what sense can this chaos and instability be called a success? Is this what students, teachers, parents, the economy, and society need? Is this what charter school promoters mean by “success”? Over the past 30 years more than 3,000 segregated charter schools have closed, usually for financial malfeasance and/or poor academic performance. This is staggering when considering the fact that there are currently fewer than 7,500 privately-operated charter schools in the country. Charter school promoters are consistently silent on these damning and indicting facts.

    Wealth is produced by workers who must have first claim to it. Wealth is not created by owners of capital. Owners of capital mainly control the wealth produced by workers. Workers do not control the wealth they themselves produce; they are alienated from the fruits of their labor, which means that the social product cannot be used to serve the general interests of society.

    The state must be organized to advance the public interest using the social wealth produced by working people. Instead, the state is increasingly being used to pay the rich using the wealth produced collectively by working people. When the state prioritizes narrow private interests over the public interest in this way the socialized economy, workers, and nation-building suffer. The ability to reproduce the economy on a healthy sustainable basis is undermined. It means socially-produced wealth cannot be used to develop a diverse, self-reliant, and balanced economy that upholds the rights of all and provides a crisis-free life. This puts the future in peril.

    The egocentric rich are only interested in expanding their class power and privilege, not the public interest, the socialized economy, or nation-building. Their objective position in the economy makes them blind to anything other than their private unlimited greed. They see the world only from their narrow business-centric perspective. The antisocial consequences that result from their seizure of social wealth for private gain does not concern them. This wrecking of society and the economy is presented as a “natural” and “normal” feature of a dog-eat-dog world that we are all apparently helpless to overcome.

    Great strides can be made by blocking neoliberals and privatizers and by advancing a pro-social agenda that recognizes the need for new human-centered relations in society and the economy. Pay-the-rich schemes are socially irresponsible and make life worse for everyone except the rich. Enlarging the private fortunes of owners of capital at the expense of the entire society must be opposed in order to open the path of progress to society and strengthen and balance the socialized economy. There are much better ways to organize people, the economy, and society.

    Socially-produced wealth must be plowed back into public schools and public enterprises, not handed over to private interests to do with as they please. If private businesses like segregated charter schools wish to exist and multiply, that is OK, but they must not have access to a single public dime, asset, or resource. Public funds and assets belong to the public and public enterprises. There is nothing public about charter schools.

    Owners of capital must not be permitted to cannibalize the state for their narrow private interests. Education is not a commodity or “market opportunity” for “investors,” it is a public good, a social responsibility, and basic right that must be provided with a guarantee in practice.

    This article was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021 at 6:34pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Economy/Economics, Education, Neoliberalism, Privatization, Public Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter School Accountability Will Remain Weak in 2021

    Segregated charter schools have a high failure rate and are notorious for lacking accountability and oversight. Charter schools are also well-known for being non-transparent even though they are ostensibly “public” schools. This has been the case for nearly 30 years when charter schools first came into being. Over the years, endless reports, articles, and books have documented the chronic lack of accountability in the troubled charter school sector.

    Privately-operated charter schools have always over-promised and under-delivered on accountability. This is closely related to why fraud and corruption remain entrenched in the charter school sector. The worn-out assertion that charter schools will deliver “results” and be accountable in exchange for autonomy and independence has always been a pretext to privatize education and fool the gullible. It has nothing to do with improving schools. The closing of several thousand charter schools over the years shows that charter schools are not a worthwhile “innovative experiment” or a “better alternative” to public schools. So much for “results-based accountability in education.”

    As “free market” schools charter schools operate according to market accountability, which really means no accountability. Market accountability is a way to dodge public oversight and do as you please. The “free market” mainly delivers chaos, anarchy, and instability and allows many “bad actors” to stay in business. Market accountability also means treating parents and students as consumers, not as humans with a right to education that must be provided with a guarantee in practice. None of this is a modern, responsible, human-centered way of doing things.

    The recent appointment of Karega Rausch as the new president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) will not result in any improved accountability for non-profit and for-profit charter schools, no matter how much fanfare surrounds his appointment. The former long-time president of NACSA, Greg Richmond, was well aware of the absence of meaningful accountability in the crisis-prone charter school sector. He made many direct and indirect references to this stubborn problem in different statements, press releases, and reports.

    Karega has been a long-time promoter of deregulated charter schools and has worked in a range of organizations and settings funded by billionaires that advocate school privatization and the elimination of the public interest. Experience, facts, theory, analysis, and logic show that there is no reason to believe that charter school accountability will improve in 2021, with or without Karega. Without a change in the aim, direction, and outlook of education, society, and the economy things will actually go from bad to worse. Rosy words, grand promises, and repeating the word “innovation” 50 times a day will not change this.

    The fact that charter school accountability bills drafted by legislators in many states over the years have usually gone nowhere is a testament to the power of the rich and their representatives to wreck the public sphere and promote school privatization with impunity. The rich are vigorously opposed to anything that hinders profit maximization and use every means at their disposal to restrict public right.

    Moving forward, the rich are more determined than ever to privatize more schools as a way to avert the falling rate of profit under capitalism. This will further reduce transparency and accountability.

    No one should be fooled by lofty phrases that promise all kinds of things that never materialize. Social consciousness must rise to a level that overcomes disinformation and unleashes the human factor to bring about change that favors the people. Old ideas, words, platitudes, practices, and institutions no longer work; they just contribute to going from bad to worse and leaving people frustrated, overwhelmed, and disempowered. Pressuring and begging politicians to serve the public interest is not going to suddenly start working in 2021. The existing political arrangements stand discredited and cannot provide a path forward. How many times has begging politicians and “leaders” left people feeling humiliated, exhausted, and with no meaningful solutions? Why keep doing the same ineffective thing over and over again? Why not learn from this experience and draw the warranted conclusions?

    A new way of thinking and acting is the necessity of the times. This includes relying on and organizing ourselves and speaking up in our own name. It means paying attention to our own organizational, political, and ideological needs instead of relying on others to serve our interests. In this sense, accountability begins at home.

    Workers, students, youth, and women must step up resistance to all aspects of the neoliberal antisocial offensive and strengthen action with analysis. They must establish their own reference points and abandon the reference points imposed on them by the rich and their political and media representatives. The retrogressive vision and agenda of the rich must be replaced by a vision and agenda that advances the public interest.

    More privatization and marketization of education means less accountability.

    This article was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2021 at 1:00am and is filed under Charter Schools, Education, Free Market.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter Schools Have Fewer Nurses and More Inexperienced Teachers than Public Schools

    According to two recent U.S. government reports, private businesses like segregated charter schools have far fewer nurses and more inexperienced teachers than public schools: School Nurses in U.S. Public Schools (April 2020) and Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary and Secondary School Teachers in the United States (April 2020).  Both reports cover many years of data.

    It is also well- known that privately-operated charter schools have higher teacher, principal, and student turnover rates than public schools, ensuring instability in the school milieu.

    These and other facts stem directly from the privatized and marketized character of segregated charter schools, whether they are non-profit or for-profit. Privatization is usually associated with greater corruption, higher costs, less efficiency, lower quality services, less transparency, and restricted public access. The so-called “free market” ensures a law of the jungle fend-for-yourself atmosphere.

    It should also be noted that privately-operated charter schools, which are governed by unelected individuals and are ostensibly “open to all,” have long offered fewer services, programs, and resources than public schools while also engaging in selective enrollment practices. This is not due to a shortage of funds, as charter school promoters often like to claim. Privately-operated charter schools receive enormous sums of public and private money from multiple sources while not having to uphold dozens of laws, rules, and regulations that public schools must follow. Public schools are required to sustain many important public standards that charter schools are exempt from, and this is one of the many ways segregated charter schools cut corners.

    According to the first report, “In the 2015–16 school year, a higher percentage of traditional public schools than public charter schools had at least one school nurse (84 percent compared to 52 percent).”  That is a 32% difference. Given health problems such as asthma, diabetes, the flu, the Covid virus, and more, this is a significant problem. This puts charter school students in a vulnerable position.

    According to the second report, “On average, public and private school teachers had about 14 years of teaching experience. Teachers in traditional public schools had 14 years of teaching experience, and public charter school teachers had 10 years of teaching experience, on average.”  That is another big difference. It is well-known in the sphere of education that experience counts for so much. Public school teachers also tend to have more degrees and better salaries than charter school teachers. Most parents prefer to send their kids to schools with more nurses and more experienced teachers.

    There are roughly 100,000 public schools and 7,300 privately-operated charter schools in the United States. Approximately 3.2 million students attend charter schools while about 50 million youth attend public schools. About 150-250 charter schools close every year due to financial malfeasance and/or poor academic performance, leaving many low-income minority families out in the cold.

    This article was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2021 at 10:42am and is filed under Charter Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter School Promoters Comfortable With Cardona

    President-elect Joe Biden recently nominated Miguel Cardona to serve as the next U.S. Secretary of Education. Hardly anyone in education circles has heard of or spoken about Cardona, let alone in an open and serious way. For weeks there was endless speculation and confusion surrounding the “top potential pick” for this position. All kinds of illusions, diversions, and false hopes predictably came to the fore. As in previous elections, emotions ran high while analysis, theory, and experience took a back seat.

    The notion, according to many, that Cardona is a “non-controversial,” “non-party-splitting,” “unifying choice” is meant to intensify opposition to analysis, theory, and experience. The idea that Cardona is a “middle-of-the-road” kind of guy is designed to cover up harsh splits, profoundly different visions of education, and worsening class divisions in society. Objectively, a capital-centered agenda cannot be reconciled with a human-centered agenda; they are based on diametrically-opposed aims and visions.

    Then there is the widely-held notion that public education can only benefit from a person at the helm who has experience in public education. Many insisted that the next U.S. Secretary of Education must have “real public school experience.” This demand is usually made spontaneously and uncritically, as if nothing dreadful or harmful could possibly happen in public schools so long as someone from public education is leading American education. It is a textbook case of mixing up personal will and class will. It also feeds off the “anyone-but-DeVos” frenzy. Is it safe to blindly assume that public education students and teachers will automatically be served well if the Education Department is managed by someone who has public education classroom experience? Is there any guarantee of that? Public education has suffered relentless attacks for generations regardless of who has been in charge of the Education Department. These assaults are the result of historic political-economic dynamics and forces larger than this or that individual. This is why school privatization, high-stakes standardized testing, and other antisocial policies in education will not come to an end just because a person with public education classroom experience leads the Education Department.

    Cardona is Connecticut’s first Latino commissioner of education, and he served in this role very briefly. Cardona himself started as an English Language Learner when he was a student. Over the years Cardona has been a teacher, a principal, and assistant superintendent in the public school system. His children attended public schools as well.

    Many are using words such as “equity,” “diversity,” and “opportunity” to describe Cardona’s vision of education. Many also claim that Cardona is concerned about the 150-year old “achievement gap.”

    Not surprisingly, in addition to being comfortable with neoliberal “accountability” and punitive high-stakes standardized tests produced by big corporations, Cardona also appears to be comfortable with privately-operated charter schools that siphon billions of dollars a year from public schools. Many have noted that he is not opposed to charter schools, which is really another way of saying that he supports charter schools. Not being opposed to charter schools is always music to the ears of charter school promoters. Thus, it is not surprising to hear many leading promoters of privately-operated charter schools express their support for Cardona; they do not seem to be too upset or bothered by Cardona’s nomination. The fact that charter schools reject teachers unions and that Cardona was not the “teachers union pick” favored by many “progressives” and democrats, is just one of the main sources of relief for school privatizers.

    For her part, Nina Rees, president and CEO of the billionaire-backed National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, congratulated Cardona on “his historic nomination for U.S. Secretary of Education.” She went on to say that:

    We call upon him to place students and families first and to be agnostic about PreK-12 instructional delivery and governance models, so long as they are effective and meet the needs of all students. The Secretary must be committed to supporting the entire public-school ecosystem—both district and charter (emphasis added). 

    In plain English this means: Cardona should maintain his support for charter schools and remain committed to never asking any serious questions about the core nature of privately-operated charter schools or look at their poor track record. Cardona should be narrowly focused on “results” and support any “education delivery model” (public or private) that produces “results.” He should not oppose school privatization so long as it delivers good “results.” Deploying more neoliberal education discourse, Rees said:

    We look forward to working with Secretary Cardona and his team to ensure the voices of parents are heard…. Black and Latino parents overwhelmingly support charter schools, and we expect Cardona’s commitment to educational equity will include protecting their ability to access these [charter] schools.

    For its part, the Center for Education Reform, perhaps the most aggressive supporter of charter schools and school privatization in the U.S., had this glowing statement about Cardona:

    President-Elect Joe Biden’s choice of Connecticut Commissioner of Education, Miguel Cardona, is good news for the millions of parents and students whose fates have been so derailed by the Coronavirus this year. Had Biden picked a union leader or equivalent, it would have been akin to an act of war on the progress of the last three decades of pushing power to parents, and on those who have fought to get their kids educated this year, whether back in traditional schools or by their own hand (emphasis added). 

    The remaining 4-5 paragraphs of the CER statement drip with exuberant support for Cardona.

    Long-time charter school supporter Andrew Rotherham also chimed in and had this to say about Cardona:

    He’s a Goldilocks on charter schools — not too hot or cold. He didn’t champion opening new ones, but renewed existing ones while he was commissioner. Charter leaders have nice things to say about him even as he states that his focus is district-run schools (emphasis added). 

    Clearly, promoters of school privatization are not too unhappy with Cardona, and they have no reason to believe that test-obsessed segregated charter schools will stop multiplying and siphoning billions of dollars from public schools under Cardona.

    Focusing on individuals and the personalities and careers of individuals will not open the path of progress to society. The pressure to not investigate and analyze, to avoid and reject theory, will ensure that progress remains a casualty in the U.S. An entirely new conscience, outlook, and agenda is needed to avoid the endless downward spiral education finds itself in. Instead of solving anything, school privatization has only intensified problems.

    This article was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2020 at 5:24pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Education, Public Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter Schools Spend Millions On Advertising and Marketing

    Unlike public schools, private businesses like charter schools spend millions of public dollars a year on advertising and marketing.

    Putting aside widespread fraud and corruption in the segregated charter school sector, this is an enormous waste and abuse of public funds, especially at a time when public schools are being starved of much-needed public funds and struggling to meet the needs of students. This is money that can and should be invested in teaching and learning, where it is most needed.

    Many are also wondering why privately-operated charter schools need to spend so much public money luring students and families through advertising and marketing if, as charter school proponents repeatedly claim, they are so good, so attractive, and so superior to public schools?

    The situation is doubly absurd when it comes to cyber charter schools, also known as virtual charter schools. These privately-operated online charter schools have even fewer “costs” and less overhead than poor-performing brick-and-mortar charter schools, yet they feel comfortable diverting precious public dollars to lure parents and students. Perhaps the worst part is the bang-for-the-buck part: virtual charter schools are notorious for their abysmal academic record and very low graduation rates. Cyber charter schools consistently rank among the lowest-performing schools in the country. While many parents may be flocking to cyber charter schools due to the “COVID Pandemic,” many are in for a rude awakening. Their kids will receive a poor quality education.

    A typical example of financial waste and misuse comes from Pennsylvania, home to 14 cyber charter schools operated by unelected individuals. The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa. reports that the state’s cyber charter schools spent nearly $13 million on advertising and marketing last year, with some spending almost $1,000 per student to convince others to enroll. This is staggering. Public schools do not do such things. On top of all this, crisis-prone cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania will siphon nearly a billion dollars from the state’s public coffers this year, leaving many public schools worse off. And to add insult to injury, these privately-operated virtual schools that receive huge sums of public money are not audited or held accountable in any meaningful way. Half of the state’s privately-operated cyber charter schools have never even had their finances reviewed by the auditor general.

    Sadly, pay-the-rich schemes are wreaking havoc not only in the sphere of education but in other spheres as well, for example, healthcare, transportation, prisons, and infrastructure. At home and abroad, private interests are redoubling their efforts to use the state to funnel even more public money into their pockets as more sources of profit dry up and disappear. Such arrangements are destroying the fabric of society.

    A modern standard to emerge with the rise of modern society with a public sphere is that public funds belong to the public and must not be diverted to narrow private interests for any reason. During the 16th and 17th centuries humans cognized a major distinction between public and private and began to take steps to protect and nurture the public interest and the common good. It is from these ideological, theoretical, historical, and political beginnings that today we have the conclusion and standard that public money must be used for social programs and projects that serve the public interest.

    The more public funds the rich siphon from the public purse the worse it is for society, the economy, and the national interest. Such a trend intensifies the massive inequality we see in society and leaves working people with even less say over the direction of their lives. In this sense, pay-the-rich schemes are extremely retrogressive and take humanity backward. Private businesses like segregated charter schools should secure funds from non-public sources.

    This article was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2020 at 7:14pm and is filed under Advertising/Marketing, Charter Schools, Public Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Why Are Embezzlement, Fraud, and Indictments So Rampant in the Charter School Sector?

    The simple answer is that there are lax standards, poor oversight, and little accountability in the segregated charter school sector. This decades-old set-up is consciously built into many charter school laws, which exist in 44 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

    It is no accident that charter schools are deregulated schools.   Charter schools are not required to uphold most of the laws, rules, and regulations public schools are required to follow. Public schools, which educate 90% of America’s youth, have to uphold many public standards that charter schools do not have to even consider. In many cases, charter schools even dodge the federal laws they are supposed to follow. In addition, charter schools frequently do not report on things they are supposed to report on. Some commentators have aptly called charter schools “schools with no rules” or “free schools.” The official literature goes so far as to call charter schools “autonomous schools” or “independent schools.” These are all different ways of saying charter schools can essentially do as they please, often with impunity. This is all connected to the antisocial idea that charter schools are “free market” schools that should be treated like any private business. In French, the term “laissez-faire” means “hands off” or “leave us alone.” The “logic” here is that you live and die by the market alone and only “the fittest” survive in this inhumane dog-eat-dog world. Apparently, there is no alternative to a life based on instability, insecurity, and “might makes right.”

    While fraud, corruption, nepotism, and embezzlement are endemic to most institutions and organizations in capital-centered societies, charter schools out-do most institutions, organizations, and sectors in this area. Pound for pound there is far more corruption and embezzlement in charter schools than other organizations and institutions. Segregated charter schools serve fewer than 7% of all students in the United States, yet they are in the news ten times more than public schools and other organizations for corruption and racketeering. And there are many instances of charter school corruption that never even make the news.

    In the 21st century society needs a stable, integrated, fully-funded, publicly-controlled, world-class modern education system completely free of the influence of narrow private interests and their state. More privatization, more marketization, and more pay-the-rich schemes like segregated charter schools, make matters worse for everyone except owners of capital. Education, society, and the nation need less privatization, less corruption, less embezzlement, less fraud, and less scandal, not more of all of the above.

    This article was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2020 at 12:33pm and is filed under Charter Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.