Reminder: Charter and Voucher Schools Suck

Charter schools will absolutely be at the top of the agenda for the Kentucky General Assembly in three weeks, if only because the Beshear administration needs authorizing legislation in order to compete for the Obama administration's ridiculous, destructive, public-school-killing "Race to the Top" bribery.

So remember two things:

The purpose of charter/voucher schools is to transfer taxpayer dollars from public schools to private corporations and freakazoid madrassas.

The purpose of Race to the Top is to force states to allow charter/voucher schools that transfer taxpayer dollars from public schools to private corporations and freakazoid madrassas.

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

It's been about eight years since congressional Republicans first created a D.C. school voucher system, overriding the wishes of local elected officials and voters in the District. The program has been a mixed bag, but the Washington Post had an interesting piece over the weekend on one of the system's more glaring flaws.

Congress created the nation's only federally funded school voucher program in the District to give the city's poorest children a chance at a better education than their neighborhood schools offer.

But a Washington Post review found that hundreds of students use their voucher dollars to attend schools that are unaccredited or are in unconventional settings, such as a family-run K-12 school operating out of a storefront, a Nation of Islam school based in a converted Deanwood residence, and a school built around the philosophy of a Bulgarian psychotherapist.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's because there's a similar problem unfolding in Louisiana, where Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) has established a voucher program that uses tax dollars to finance truly bizarre lesson plans, by some religious leaders who are, shall we say, a little eccentric.\

To reiterate what we discussed in July, this has always been one of the key problems voucher proponents couldn't resolve. The basic framework is easy enough to follow: (1) identify underperforming public schools; (2) give some of the students at those schools tuition money for private schools; (3) watch those kids' test scores improve thanks to the unproven wonders of private education; and (4) wait for the struggling public schools to get better with less money and fewer smart children.

Aside from the faulty assumptions and serious constitutional questions surrounding giving tax dollars to religious ministries, there's the basic question of accountability.

 Read the whole thing.

Charter/voucher schools are a scam to enrich the friends of politicians. Right this minute, Kentucky legislators are scrambling to get on the charter school gravy train. Every vote for charter schools is a prima facie acceptance of a bribe.

Make sure your legislators know that you know they are taking bribes by supporting charter schools. And lying about the reasons why.

Go Charter - or the Kids Get It

You people are just not rejecting public schools in favor of corporate drone factories fast enough. Time for some Two-Minute Hate!

karoli at Crooks and Liars:

There is a frontal assault on public schools coming (Saturday), courtesy of Phil Anschutz, ALEC and Wal-Mart. ProPublica has the story:

The world’s largest private-sector employer and the country’s most prominent conservative entertainment company have teamed up to sponsor a fundraiser called “Teachers Rock.”

Backed by Walmart and Anschutz Film Group, the August 14 event will feature live performances from musicians like Josh Groban and appearances from actresses like Viola Davis; it will be broadcast August 18 as a CBS special with messages from actresses like Meryl Streep. And it will promote the upcoming feature film Won’t Back Down, Anschutz’s entry in the “education reform” wars.

Won’t Back Down is reportedly a highly sympathetic fictional portrayal of “parent trigger” laws, a major flashpoint in debates over education and collective bargaining. Under such laws, the submission of signatures from a majority of parents in a school triggers a “turnaround option,” which can mean the replacement of a unionized school with a non-union charter. Such laws have been passed in several states, but due to court challenges, the "trigger" process has never been fully implemented.

SNIP

The point of the movie is to get parents all excited about the ALEC-created "parent trigger" law, or what is more commonly referred to among teachers as the "parent tricker law." The "parent trigger" law is effective here in California, but efforts to actually pull that trigger have been turned back, at least so far.

The law allows parents to petition school boards to take over the school and then close it, turn it over to a charter management firm, or firing all of the staff. All three options are a way of scapegoating and shaming teachers. Oh, and nullification of the teachers' union contracts. Big surprise there.

SNIP

Post parent-trigger, the WalMart model for public education kicks in. Inexperienced teachers with no seat at the table and a corporate profit model make a school into something else, something that's not necessarily good for students or their parents. Worse yet, the so-called trigger is based upon test results that are not necessarily reflective of the school's performance or student achievement.

SNIP

At any rate, this parent trigger isn't being pulled by parents. It's being pulled by outside organizations like StudentsFirst and for-profit organizations who stand to profit.


SNIP

The movie, due to open September 28, is produced by 20th Century Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch, and Walden Media, owned by Philip Anschutz. Murdoch’s right-wing politics are well known. Anschutz is an oil-and-gas billionaire who co-produced the anti-teacher film, “Waiting for ‘Superman’.” He contributes to organizations that oppose gay rights and support teaching creationism in schools. Anschutz has also donated to Americans for Prosperity, founded by the Koch brothers, which opposes environmental regulations and union rights, and to the political career of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Because of how this event and the movie is being marketed, it's playing like a big parent empowerment movie that everyone should march out of with a song in their heart and triggers in their hand. It's soft-played from the privatization side, just like Paul Ryan's Medicare-murdering proposals. Using terms like "choice" and "voice", they soft-pedal the end of universal education and universal health care for seniors with equal alacrity.

Spread the word. They lie.

Don't be fooled by school "reform" that promises to bring corporate efficiency to education. Think Wall Street and Bain Capitol, and look to Louisiana, where the repug "public' education vision is coming true:

Casey Michael at TPM:

Only a month before nearly 120 Louisiana schools are set to welcome their first voucher students, the state has finally released a slate of standards that approved schools must meet in order to receive both students and concurrent state dollars. And while the standards, created by Superintendent John White and approved by the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) this week, are widely considered a step in the right direction, voucher opponents say the standards fall far short from the accountability they sought.

Where every public school in Louisiana is subjected to a standardized slate of testing, the voucher students — who will bring an average of $8,000 in tuition from “failing” public schools to many that are affiliated with religious denominations — will only need to face testing if their new school has taken an average of 10 students per grade, or if the schools have accepted at least 40 voucher students into the grades testing.

 SNIP

Opponents say the greatest weakness in the standards is not that 75 percent of the schools accepting voucher students aren’t subjected to any penalties, or that many of the schools in that 75-percent umbrella teach an amalgamation of Christianist creationism and anti-scientific methods — including rebuts to evolutionist theories and proof that the Loch Ness Monster still exists.

Rather, they say, the big problem lies in the fact that the students may be transferring, on the taxpayers’ dime, to a school that will score worse than the one from which they left. That is, a student can leave a public school if it scores a “C” or below on state standardized testing — but if the new private school scores the minimum of 50, the equivalent of a D-minus, it could still recruit new voucher students.

“There are still 19 schools that we know about that are blatantly teaching creationism … [and] we’re funding them with state money,” Zack Copplin, who monitors Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education reforms, told TPM. “White says he’s waiting on state testing and things like that, and that’s absolutely absurd. We know that the these schools don’t meet the public schools standards that they’re supposed to be better than.”

Students in charter and voucher schools nationwide will learn less than a 16th-century serf, but they will make excellent obedient, underpaid and unquestioning corporate drones.

Snake Oil, Magic Wands and Vouchers

Kevin Drum reviews the most recent studies and concludes:

Unfortunately for voucher fans, when kids all take the same test it's way too obvious that voucher schools don't really outperform traditional schools. Nor do they outperform schools in poor neighborhoods (that's the blue line in the chart). At best, they perform about the same, and at worst they perform more poorly. Not only does this undermine the case for vouchers, but it also undermines the case that, for example, it's the troglodyte teachers unions that are holding back Wisconsin's kids. That can hardly be tolerated, so the best bet is to simply not allow comparisons to be made in the first place.

Read the whole thing.