Detroit Free Press blows apart charter-school movement

Another fun charter school search is "Kevin Johnson" and "St. Hope."

 

Some charter schools are innovative and have excellent academic outcomes — but those that don’t are allowed to stay open year after year.

A majority of the worst-ranked charter schools in Michigan have been open 10 years or more.

LOL.

How long have failing public schools been allowed to remain open?

 

Charter schools are popular with politicians because they see it ultimately as a way to privatize education and get public education off the books ... never mind that whole silly nonsense about every American child being entitled to a free and appropriate public education.

Some charter schools in my state recently got busted because, thanks to the standardized testing bullshit, they were kicking out lower performing students mid year and sending them back to public schools so they wouldn't be counted on test scores. The city school system in my county does the exact same thing. They except "county" kids for tuition. If mid year one of the tuition students doesn't look like they will do well on the year-end standardized tests, they kick them out and send them back to the county system.

 

Wayne Barrett in the Daily News:

I am a progressive, have been one since the 1960s, when I became a New York City public school teacher for a few years and learned that my union, the United Federation of Teachers, was much better at representing my interests than those of the kids I taught. It shouldn't have come as such a surprise.

What was true then is true now.

Though the union masquerades to this day as an advocate for children, its job is to advance the interest of teachers. On some issues, like class size, decent salaries and school funding, teachers, parents and students are natural allies. On others, like protecting bad teachers behind seniority and tenure walls and resisting any form of effective evaluation, they are on a decades-long collision course.

As someone who's spent a lifetime on the left, covering politics for nearly 40 years at the Village Voice, I've long been angered by the refusal of many on my side to even acknowledge that the UFT is a special-interest group. It's never been more disturbing than it is now, six months into the first term of a mayor who is simultaneously a progressive paragon and an advance man for the union. We haven't lived with that kind of contradiction before.

Mayor de Blasio, at this moment, has the power to define what's progressive in New York. He has unfortunately transferred the credibility he's earned on other fronts to a union, embracing its positions on charter schools, a new contract and tenure and seniority protections that are anything but progressive.

With de Blasio and the UFT-financed Working Families Party as allies, the union is hijacking the very language of movement politics, annexing left journalism to defend its narrowest interests and even recruiting progressives to join its war against charter schools that work for kids.

Seen through a progressive lens, all that should matter in these school skirmishes is whether a charter, a contract or an employment rule benefits students. Whenever progressive Democrats instead choose teacher power over the futures of minority kids, they are putting a big bucks lobby ahead of a core but comparatively powerless constituency.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/unholy-alliance-article-1.1838112

 

It would be nice if you would at least address the ideas presented in the Free Press article, about the $1 billion sinkhole with no accountability. That's something you aren't supposed to like.

But that's probably asking too much of you.

 

Shut 'em the fuck down.

I'm not for bad charter schools.

But, don't tell me the sky is falling -- over there! -- when it crashed all around you two decades ago.

 

Actually, the trouble with charter schools is evidence that the problem is less about teachers and curriculum and more about the demographics and parental presence and support in the community. "Failing" public schools stay open because, constitutionally (in states), you have to provide equal access to education for all students. So even if you shut down a "failing" school (all the rage in Chicago), the kids are still going to have to go somewhere.

This doesn't mean all principals and teachers are 10 pounds of awesome in a five-pound bag, or that spending unlimited amounts of money will get you unlimited amounts of return. But casting public schools as the evil on our children isn't doing anyone any favors. At the least, you might ask why legislators seems far more comfortable spending enormous amounts of money on prisons rather than on schools.

http://www.money.cnn.com/infographic/economy/education-vs-prison-costs/

Another factor over the last number of years: more property tax caps, TIFs and other legislative moves that end up taking money away from schools. As a nation, we seem dedicated to the lip service that education is important while spending as little as we possibly can on it, and outright sucking money out of the system for businesses that don't need the money.

 

Chicago didn't close a single high school. Not one.

 

Pick a school, any school. Close it.

Where do those kids go? Do they do better as a result?

 

Complaining that the teachers union advocates for teachers is a pretty fucking stupid argument. I get $430 taken out of my paycheck every year in dues. If they aren't advocating for me, what is the point?

 

If a school is a complete failure, then yes, blow it up (figuratively).

Reassign the administrators. Reassign the teachers. Reassign the kids.

Repopulate the building with new administrators, teachers, and kids.

Fresh start.

 

Fair enough. Just don't pretend you're fighting for the kids, when you're actually fighting for yourselves.