The Charter School Process For Cynics

[Last_Stand]

If everything I'm reading on other charter school threads is correct, the basic plan is this:

Siphon funds from the underfunded public school system and "redirect" them to privately owned and regulated charter schools that:

1. can teach whatever they want including religion
2. can hire non-union instructors and pay and treat them however they want
3. can discipline and kick out students however they choose to
4. get to choose which students do or do not attend the schools
5. have corporate donors with representatives on the school boards who make tax-deductible donations to their own schools
6. can find ways to "redirect" government funds back to the politicians and corporations that help them obtain said funds
7. have a million other potentially disasterous possibilities I'm not aware of

While the money is being "redirected" to charter schools and the pubic schools continue to fail, "they" will point their collective fingers and say "see, we told you that privatizing education is a good idea." (sounds similar to another privatizing tactic for another thread...)

Meanwhile, in poverty-stricken areas of the country, public education continues to degrade. Teacher's unions are crushed or starved out, and the working environment for teachers becomes even more difficult.

Students who are relegated to attend and fight through public schools are discarded and expected to either die on the streets, go to prison, work for unlivable wages at entry-level jobs with little hope of improvement, or join the military to fight the next corporate war.

Am I close, or am I too paranoid and cynical? I know for sure that I'm underinformed, which is why I'm asking you for your opinions.

[Hannah Bell]

1. on the money. plus the loss of another decently-paid sector of the middle class drives

down wages for everyone else, too.

it's the same scenario they always use: those (autoworkers, teachers, air-traffic controllers, park workers....) are OVERPAID! Don't you RESENT THEM!! And they're LAZY & INEFFECTIVE to boot! Grrrr!!

And when the top 1% succeed in getting the public behind them to pick off these workers, you'll notice that --- things just get worse. Nothing ever gets better.

Because driving down workers' wages & benefits PUTS MORE MONEY IN THE POCKETS OF THE OWNERS, NOT OTHER WORKERS.


The South had slaves; & slaves (& then Jim Crow, which artificially depressed black wages) KEPT OTHER WORKERS' WAGES LOW, & LIVING STANDARDS LOW.

[noamnety]

2. A good start point for determining fact from fiction:

Try googling "charter school myths."

[Hannah Bell]

3. #1 hit: "Center for Education Reform: Charter school myths". CFER = Walmart

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=+%22charter+school+myths.%22&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&fp=a73b11f867dbecea


In addition to spending on Republican candidates, the Waltons have lavished funds on right-wing ideological institutions--organizations that serve the interest of wealthy individuals and lawless antiunion companies like Wal-Mart....the Heritage Foundation...the Cato Institute...the Hudson Institute...the Goldwater Institute...the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation...the Mackinac Center for Public Policy...the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy...the Evergreen Freedom Foundation....

Many of the WFF's education gifts have a distinct ideological tilt, emphasizing a "free market" approach to education reform, a vision the late John Walton embraced with particular enthusiasm.

The WFF funds advocacy groups promoting conservative school "reform"--otherwise known as privatization--LIKE THE CENTER FOR EDUCATION REFORM and the Black Alliance for Educational Options, as well as the actual programs these groups champion: charter schools and voucher programs....

http://live.thenation.com/doc/20051121/featherstone/3


Why would ANYONE believe a goddamned thing WALMART said about this issue? Who the HELL ELECTED WALMART TO MAKE EDUCATION POLICY?

[noamnety]

6. I assumed the OP was smart enough to check the sources.

But you bring up a good point: when someone obviously has a blinding bias on an issue and is incapable of listing strengths and weaknesses objectively, why would ANYONE believe a goddamned thing they say about it?

That's why I was suggesting the OP does some research. :)

[rpannier]

5. I did and some of what I found

LA Times (KIPP)
KIPP, Aspire and Green Dot don't face that problem. Through what amounts to a contract with parents and students, they screen their applicants and admit a clientele that, in a traditional public school, would do as well or better than they are doing in the charter school.

If Broad's pet charters had to accept 3,000 limited-English, low-income students from ethnic backgrounds that include a high percentage of single-parent families, with widespread gang involvement and little commitment to education, scores that the charters now trumpet would fall significantly. But working with a select group of students who would score well at any school, Broad's charters garner only somewhat better-than-average test scores - despite the massive amount of public and private money poured into them.


NYTimes
A federal study showing that fourth graders in charter schools score worse in reading and math than their public school counterparts should cause some soul-searching in Congress. Too many lawmakers seem to believe that the only thing wrong with American education is the public school system, and that converting lagging schools to charter schools would cause them to magically improve.

snip

On average, charter schools that were affiliated with public school districts performed just as well as traditional public schools. That may be a disappointment to advocates who expected them to show clear superiority. But the real stunner was the performance of free-standing charter schools, which have no affiliation with public school systems and are often school districts unto themselves. It was this grouping that showed the worst performance.

Part of the difficulty in finding good info is the amount of stuff that is on there by Charter School Organizations

[JCMach1]

4. You forgot and are often not held to the same accountability as public schools!