vincentML
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THE CHARTER SCHOOL MOVEMENT IS A SCAM
Apologies to the OP for this thread divergence into the pros/cons of charter schools. The topic was originally offered by a critic of public schools, which is really unrelated to the topic in the OP. However, the critical poster evidently has an obsessive anger against teachers’ unions and public schools, which he apparently holds accountable for all the world’s ills. The credentials for his critical expertise? He worked in a factory, on a construction project, had conversations with criminal teens who were in shackles, was nominated (presumably not elected) to a PTA, attended school board meetings but offered no notable comments or challenges to the board (probably watched on TV) So, in rebuttal, I give you a litany of what’s wrong with charter schools. I do this with a privileged career of teaching maybe 5000 kids and touching many lives, hopefully for the better.
The following are excerpted from an investigative article in the Miami Herald in 2011 “Florida charter schools: big money, little oversight “
• Florida’s charter school movement has grown into $400-million-a-year powerhouse backed by real-estate developers and promoted by politicians, but with little oversight.
• they continue to operate with little public oversight. Even when charter schools have been caught violating state laws, school districts have few tools to demand compliance.
• Charter schools have become a parallel school system unto themselves, a system controlled largely by for-profit management companies and private landlords — one and the same, in many cases — and rife with insider deals and potential conflicts of interest.
• Some schools have ceded almost total control of their staff and finances to for-profit management companies that decide how the schools’ money is spent.
• The Life Skills Center of Miami-Dade County, for example, pays 97 percent of its income to a management company as a “continuing fee.” And when the governing board of two affiliated schools in Hollywood tried to eject its managers, the company refused to turn over school money it held — and threatened to press criminal charges against any school officials who attempted to access the money.
• Many management companies also control the land and buildings used by the schools — sometimes collecting more than 25 percent of a school’s revenue in lease payments, in addition to management fees.
• The owners of Academica, the state’s largest charter school operator, collect almost $19 million a year in lease payments on school properties they control in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, audit and property records show.
• Charter schools often rely on loans from management companies or other insiders to stay afloat, making charter school governing boards beholden to the managers they oversee. Loans to two Pompano Beach schools were disguised as gifts in financial documents to avoid scrutiny from the school district and make struggling schools appear solvent, the schools’ former managers said in court papers.
• At some financially weak schools, tight budgets have forced administrators to cut corners. The cash-strapped Balere Language Academy in South Miami Heights taught its seventh-grade students in a toolshed, records show.
• The Academy of Arts & Minds in Coconut Grove went weeks without textbooks.
• Schools have also been accused of using illegal tactics to bring in more money — charging students illegal fees for standard classes, or faking attendance records to earn more tax dollars, court records show.
• Charter schools in Miami-Dade take a disproportionately lower share of black, poor and disabled children, records show. One in three students in Miami-Dade traditional public schools are black, while one in five charter school students are black.
• School district officials also suspect some charter schools have deliberately sought out high-performing students — contrary to the schools’ contracts.
• This year, several South Florida charter schools made headlines for violating local rules or state laws, including Arts & Minds, which was accused of charging illegal fees to students,
• and Balere, which the school district said turned into an after-hours nightclub on weekends.
• In Miami-Dade and Broward, about two in three charter schools are run by management companies, which charge fees ranging from 5 to 18 percent of a school’s income. These fees can exceed $1 million a year at a large charter school.
• Statewide, about one in four charter schools have shut down since 1996, either voluntarily or at the command of local school districts — double the national average. Most schools close for financial rather than academic reasons. A Miami Herald review found 19 schools in Miami-Dade and Broward with rents exceeding 20 percent of their income in 2010 — about one in seven South Florida charter schools renting property that year. One Miami Gardens school spent 43 percent of its income on rent, according to audit reports.
• Many of the highest rents are charged by landlords with ties to the management companies running the schools, The Miami Herald found. At least 56 charter schools in Miami-Dade and Broward counties sit on land whose owners are tied to management companies, property records show.
• For example, the Lincoln-Martí Charter School in Hialeah paid $744,000 in rent last year — about 25 percent of the school’s $3 million budget, even after the landlord reduced the rent by $153,000. The previous year, the school spent one-third of its income on rent, audit records show.
• Records show the landlord, D.P. Real Estate Holdings, and the management company are run by the same man: former Miami-Dade School Board member Demetrio Perez Jr. Perez’s son, Demetrio J. Perez, works at the management company, which operates three Lincoln-Martí charter schools.
• The Lincoln-Martí charter schools were established by three friends of the elder Perez, who owns a string of well-known private schools and daycare centers also called Lincoln-Martí.
There are so many more apparently crooked deals and overly cozy relationships in this article, you won’t know whether to laugh or cry. I only gave you enough to taste the texture of the debacle. I don’t mean to say there are not some successful charter schools in the state but they are few and far between. Miami-Dade has answered the challenge of these few successful charter schools with the birth of specialized “magnet schools.”
The birth of the idea came from Al Shanker, the gutsy boss of the NYC Teachers Union back in the 60s or early 70s, who suggested groups of talented teachers should be allowed to set up their own schools and design their own curricula without the constraints of the Administrative bureaucracy. I think Al would cry, tough as he was, if he could see what happened to his idea.
The rest of these items come from articles in ERIC, Educational Research Index whatever. And address specific bullshit arguments made by proponents of charter schools in vain attempts to grab the public money.
Research Comparing Charter Schools and Traditional Public Schools. Information Capsule.
• Most studies have found that charter schools produce achievement gains that are about the same or lower than those found in traditional public schools, although a few studies have concluded that charter schools have a positive effect on student achievement. These inconsistent findings have led some researchers to conclude that the rapid growth of the charter school movement has significantly outpaced the evidence supporting its impact on student achievement. ….
• there may never be a single definitive study that determines if charter or traditional public schools provide students with better learning opportunities
• This Information Capsule also reviews research comparing the qualifications of teachers at charter schools and traditional public schools and student segregation in charter schools. Most studies have found that charter school teachers have less teaching experience than teachers at traditional public schools
• In addition, charter schools appear to intensify racial and economic segregation.
Charter Schools and Student Achievement in Florida
• by their fifth year of operation new charter schools reach a par with the average traditional public school in math and produce higher reading achievement scores than their traditional public school counterparts
• Among charters, those targeting at-risk and special education students demonstrate lower student achievement,
• Controlling for preexisting traditional public school quality, competition from charter schools is associated with modest increases in math scores and unchanged reading scores in nearby traditional public schools.
Do Charters Retain Teachers Differently? Evidence from Elementary Schools in Florida
• Among all teachers, those in charter schools appear more likely to exit the profession than those in the traditional public sector, and in both sectors the least effective teachers are more likely to exit than their more effective counterparts. [snip]
• We interpret these results as indicating that whatever administrative or organizational differences may exist in charter schools, they do not necessarily translate into a discernible difference in the ability to dismiss poorly performing teachers.
Critical Race Theory and the Proliferation of U.S. Charter Schools
• the majority of students in charter schools do not significantly outscore their traditional school peers on measurable indicators of academic performance.
• Additionally, students in charter schools do not have comparable schooling experiences to their middle-class, White peers in affluent urban and suburban schools.
• Using critical race theory to analyze recent charter school research, we challenge the notion of marketplace theory as a viable reform strategy to create more equitable education,
• and we suggest that the substantial financial profits associated with charter schools are one reason policymakers continue to ignore the negative outcomes of charter schools and push for the creation of more charter schools.
Teacher Satisfaction and Turnover in Charter Schools
• Charter schools see as many as one in four teachers leave annually, and recent evidence attributes much of this turnover to provisions affected by collective bargaining processes and state laws such as salary, benefits, job security, and working hours
Charter Schools' Discipline Policies Face Scrutiny
• But in a few urban districts where high discipline rates at charter schools have drawn scrutiny, school officials have recently taken steps aimed at ensuring that students in both charter and other public schools are treated fairly.
• Some experts on charters, though, say increased accountability on disciplinary issues in the sector is overdue.
Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation
• Our findings suggest that charters currently isolate students by race and class. This analysis of recent data finds that charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation. In some regions, white students are overrepresented in charter schools while in other charter schools; minority students have little exposure to white students.
• Data about the extent to which charter schools serve low-income and English Language Learners is incomplete, but suggest that a substantial share of charter schools may not enroll such students.
• As charters represent an increasing share of our public schools, they influence the level of segregation experienced by all of our nation's school-
aged children. After two decades, the promise of charter schools to use choice to foster integration and equality in American education has yet to be realized. (Contains 50 footnotes, 46 tables and 9 figures.)
Charter Schools, Equity, and Student Enrollments: The Role of For-Profit Educational Management Organizations
• Research suggests that charter schools operated by for-profit entities may take a more entrepreneurial approach when expanding their operations and thus may be more inclined to serve less disadvantaged and less costly students
• They seem to seek out more Black students but are also focused on selecting fewer poor students than we see among regular public schools. When examining differences in the size of EMOs, we find that these effects appear most likely to occur among schools operated by large-sized EMOs.
The Qualifications and Classroom Performance of Teachers Moving to Charter Schools
• I find that less qualified and less effective teachers move to charter schools, particularly if they move to urban schools, low-performing schools, or schools with higher shares of nonwhite students. It is unclear whether these findings reflect lower demand for teachers' credentials and value added or resource constraints unique to charter schools, but the inability to recruit teachers who are at least as effective as those in traditional public schools will likely hinder charter student achievement.
Finally, just to reply to a few of my counterpart’s dumbass questioning of my own experience: Yes, I worked in a factory, the Hyatt Bearing Division of GM; Yes, I worked in constructing as a laborer building new houses in the Florida summer to earn some extra cash for my family; yes, I served two years in the army; Yes, some years I was a union member and some years I free loaded, depending on my mood; yes, I went to university and earned the equivalent of a PhD without dissertation because I was a single parent; yes, I am living off the pension money that so generously allows me to summer at Trump Tower Uganda every year; yes, the pension system administrators are pissed because I am still alive and collecting after all these years;
but mostly I am proud and satisfied I was able to touch the lives of more than 5000 kids, better than constructing or manufacturing some shit that people have to be persuaded to buy.
I will be happy to read your weak-ass reply to the picture I presented of a corrupt and ineffectual charter school movement.
For profit hospitals, for profit jails, for profit schools.
What a con job. For profit, private sector waste is just as rampant as public institutional waste.
School choice? snark! 
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