Detroit Free Press blows apart charter-school movement

In that case we should abandon the entire charter-school movement immediately, because profit is the motive in 100 percent of those schools.

 

Oh, it's that easy to turn things around? Who knew!

http://thelensnola.org/2014/01/08/rsds-school-closure-process-has-uneven-effect-on-students-at-failing-schools/

 

Oh no! Uneven!

That's so much worse than unending failure, with no hope for improvement in sight.

The reality, however, is messier. Of the four schools that were closed last summer, students from two of them generally attend better ones — in the case of Habans, significantly better. Those who were at the other two mostly ended up in similar, poorly performing schools.

It got better for some, and remained about the same for others.

That's what we're worried about?

We might only help some, while others remain in a similar situation?

To me, we've made progress. Keep it up.

 

Don't ever say I don't advocate for my kids. In many cases, I care more about them than their own parents. Half of them I could claim as dependents on my income tax because of the money I take out of my pocket to make sure they have lunch money. But in the end, it is my job, and I expect to get paid for going to work every day ... just like everyone else. When the electric bill comes every month or when I need gas in my truck, I don't get a pass because I'm a teacher. I still have to have an income.

 

Now, now ...

 

Only an imbecile would ever have believed or proposed, even in a strawman argument, anything different. Most people figure out in about 4th grade what the function of a union is.

 

All right, what's the percentage. 90? 95?

 

Barrett's personal insights from his few years as a teacher 50 years ago lend so much to the discussion.

 

On the topic of charter schools in Michigan, I don't work for the Free Press, but over the last decade or so I have had numerous situations in which I needed to contact somebody from a charter school -- coach, AD or principal -- to do some kind of story, and almost invariably, getting hold of a human being was rarely less than a 2-3 day hoop-jumping phone-email-fax tag obstacle course.

Even for the somewhat more established charter schools, it has pretty much always been utterly impossible to make one phone call or send ONE email and get in touch with any of these people.

It ALMOST ALWAYS requires two or three days phone tag or exchanges of fragmentary emails (you send an email with 8 questions, they answer 2, and tell you 'they'll get back to you' on the other ones). Phone calls always go to voice mail, and are almost always routed through somebody else in the food chain too ('let me forward this to my AD') before any kind of answer comes back.

We started to wonder if maybe it was the result of having a lot of amateur fuckups in coaching positions, and there was certainly a lot of that, but after a while, with ADs and principals in on the obfuscation parade too, we started to suspect there might be other reasons.

We hollered across the office to our schools reporters, and said, "Hey, you guys ever have any problems getting ahold of anybody from P.T. Barnum Charter Academy?" (Among many.)

Our question was answered by hoots of laughter. "Oh, no more so than the last time we dialed up the Pope to try to set up a weekend round of golf."

It turned out, shocking shocking, that we media grunts were hardly the only people having problems making contact with personnel from the charter schools.

PARENTS had been peppering internet message boards with complaints about never, ever, being able to contact teachers, principals or anybody else without having to slog through about a week of delays and obstruction. Seems the one thing the charter schools could do with lightning speed and efficiency was cash tuition checks; everything else seemed to take about six weeks.

We yelled out to newsside, "hey, this seems to be a pretty big story, maybe somebody should do something on it." They retorted, "We'll be happy to do it once our desk, currently 4 people short, adds one or two people so we're not all working 65 hours a week. Maybe one of the big boys like the Freep or Snooz can do something about it."

They did report that a couple times they had sent a reporter over to the charter school during the day to try to catch their interview prey in person on the premises, and were almost always met at the gated security doors with the "he's in a meeting/not in the building today" runaround.

One time they went to talk to the principal, and the voice behind the security speaker claimed never to have heard of him. The reporter demanded to speak to somebody else, and finally on about the fourth try, someone admitted to knowing who the principal was, but reported "he was out of town at a conference."

One charter school actually changed its name one year, two days before the opening of classes for fall term. All the phone numbers and emails were changed, of course -- if you called the old number, all you got was, "this number has been disconnected." Snail mail came back "no forwarding address." Emails just bounced.

So for that joint, for about six weeks until the end of October, contacting them AT ALL, even for voice mail or forwarded email, was like contacting the goddamn Voyager space probe en route to Alpha Centauri. It was like they had departed the solar system.

Oh well. We were plenty short on our sports desk too so we sure as hell weren't going to volunteer to do any long ground-breaking investigative series.

We then absent-mindedly wondered what possible reasons the charter schools would have for their people to not talk to the media. Eventually, we found out.

One thing the charter schools would never ever ever do -- ever -- would be to supply a preseason roster of players, listing full names and grade levels. Hmmmm.


Somewhat although not really off topic; I would estimate probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the charter schools in the metro Detroit area are, in effect, little more than fronts for AAU basketball teams.

 

Starman, I lived in Michigan in the mid to late 1990s, and I seem to recall the Charter School movement was based on two things:

1. Business owners who hated the public school system, and

2. A governor (John Engler) who hated the teachers unions.

With a foundation like that, it's no wonder charter schools haven't been a cure-all for Michigan schoolkids.

Kudos to the Free Press; the links I've looked at so far are quality stuff.

 

There's no doubt that school choice/charter schools/vouchers has made it much easier to assemble all-star teams at the high school level. In Chicago, schools such as Simeon and Whitney Young -- no longer neighborhood schools -- operate no differently than Duke and North Carolina when it comes to assembling basketball talent. Even better, the high school kids, parents and/or handlers/hustlers know well enough where to place kids.

The boys basketball coach at my kids' school, Dwyane Wade High, grudgingly made peace with AAU, and while he won a state title five years ago, it was apparent the rest of his life would be 15-13 records, so he stepped down. He was replaced by Anthony Davis' AAU coach, who was coaching high school at a city charter. I suspect the basketball team is going to have some move-ins over the summer.

 

In looking more at the series, Michigan certainly stands out in giving for-profit companies the run of charter schools, with 78 percent of them run by a for-profit entity. Indiana, which has fallen in love with vouchers and charters, has only 17 percent, and its been riding herd over one company that's pretty much gotten a free pass in its native Michigan.

I'm not sure that many people are as in love with charters and vouchers as politicians may think. Every Republican statewide office holder won his or her election in Indiana in 2012 -- except the superintendent of public instruction, Tony Bennett, one of the most aggressive school privatizers, who lost to Democrat Glenda Ritz, whose background is in actual schools. Her foes -- which are many, including Gov. Mike Pence, who is doing everything he can to strip her of power -- claim Ritz won because she was larded up with teachers' union money, except that Bennett outspent her overall 10-1. Bennett is now working for Rick Scott in Florida.