truth bombs

same, or oakland

this story about a recently forced out building inspector touches on a lot of problems in Oakland:
https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-corrupt-oakland-official-who-wanted-to-be-a-cannabis-kingpin/Content?oid=23229940

#urlspoilers

sleeve's comment isn't true across the board but in many cases (see: instances of supposedly non-profit charter schools which are in fact run by for-profit management organizations) is indeed a bomb of truth.

― Welcome to Gropelord, TX (Old Lunch)

this is absolutely 100% otm

charter schooling encompasses a broad range of approaches and outcomes and i agree there are many bad charter school operators out there. there are places (like michigan) where charter schooling has devolved into a thinly-veiled voucher scheme and that is certainly not a good thing. but at the same time, there are places (like california) where charter schooling has been an effective way to improve school choice in areas where the districts aren't large enough to support and grow hybrid schools, performing arts schools, language and cultural immersion schools, project-based learning schools, progressive schools, college prep academies, etc

there are also large districts in California that are just fucked up, and some of the charter schools are actually doing way more to serve low-income and marginalized populations than the district does

that's irrelevant to the point. Charter Schools are exactly what sleeve said they are. The fact that some of them occasionally produce good results is incidental to the scheme, and part of the scheme is in fact to worsen public schools so that you get more "just fucked up" public schools.

nope

I mean it's sort of like if someone said "The purpose of the US Army is to administer and increase the power and reach of American empire," responding "Sometimes the army builds dams or distributes food to hungry people" wouldn't really change the overarching point.

regardless of your experience, that's exactly how charters have worked in oakland. they should all be obliterated. xp

xp

not every charter school is run by a private foundation. i have worked in a charter schools chartered by (and located in) the san diego public library (which was a terrible school) and i currently work in a charter school chartered by the state university system (which is a very good school)

i have also worked at a charter school run by a private foundation, and i assure you, there was no scheme in place to worsen public school.

i have also worked in public schools.

otoh OUSD ... like, ideally OUSD would be a well-run entity

non-profit =/= doesn't serve the purpose of profit. But of course there are operators here and there who operate with nothing more than a desire to improve education. That doesn't matter. Charter schools as a whole are a systematic effort to weaken public education and open up the "education market" to private investors, and to weaken the bargaining power of teachers' unions. That's why they exist. Hedge fund managers and lobbyists don't push them because they love children.

I mean it's sort of like if someone said "The purpose of education is to reproduce the means of production and provide the human resources necessary to perpetuate America's superiority," ....

xp if u say so

i mean what do i know, i'm just a practitioner in my second decade, not a freelance ILXdeologue

xp wmlynch - R0ses in Concrete seems like a good school to me, idk

and i'm just a parent who has had to deal with the terrible impact that charter schools have had on my community and my child's education. xp

sorry about your kid

j/k i obviously don't care about kids

ha boom

sarahell, i'm sure there are good ones in the area, but the overall impact has been negative in my opinion.

not if you're a hedge fund managers or lobbyist

i mean what do i know, i'm just a practitioner in my second decade, not a freelance ILXdeologue

― the late great, Wednesday, November 28, 2018 12:47 PM (thirty-seven seconds ago)

this is kinda a standard ilx thing -- I remember going through this re the US income tax system, and dayo wisely said, "you're too close to this topic, you should let it go" (or something to that effect)

heh

I'd honestly favor the abolishment of charter schools in favor of strengthening public schools and would also like to see Betsy DeVos shot into the troposphere but in terms of assessing what we currently have to work with I feel like I at least have to acknowledge that the answer to 'charter schools?' is a little more nuanced than 'pure and unfettered evil'.

i find it sad and funny that ILX has become a think tank for a workers party advocating for strong centralized govt when apparently most ilxors neither a) work in govt or b) work at all

― the late great, Wednesday, November 28, 2018 7:45 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is already in this thread

though i wonder what you call a truthbomb filled with straw

sarahell, i'm sure there are good ones in the area, but the overall impact has been negative in my opinion.

― wmlynch, Wednesday, November 28, 2018 12:49 PM (one minute ago)

I work/ed for non-profits doing arts ed programs in both public and charter schools ... granted most of my experience was in logistics and uh, trying to get OUSD to pay us when they said they would.

xp - isn't that a Challop?

though i wonder what you call a truthbomb filled with straw

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver,

blanket criticism of charter schools surely fits this description

ugh i'm sorry to hear that. i've been dealing with ousd trying to get them to build a new school in our neighborhood. it's two years delayed and double its original budget, and ousd administrators lie to us every chance they get. xxp

to me, it's kinda like saying "Abolish AAA, that way we can make the DMV better! "

that's a good one

blanket criticism of charter schools surely fits this description

― the late great, Wednesday, November 28, 2018 8:56 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

u rite! it took a queer anarchist pal who spent years working in a charter in dc to help me grok the nuance

ah. well, my work here is done.

xp (which is just to say One Can Be Surprised by the sources of arguments for charter schools)

Actual purpose of charter schools is to provide the effectively non-integrated educational environment that white parents demand, iirc.

i've been dealing with ousd trying to get them to build a new school in our neighborhood. it's two years delayed and double its original budget, and ousd administrators lie to us every chance they get.

yeah, that sounds like them ... so many large city of Oakland agencies are like that ... I constantly have to remind myself that not all cities are like Oakland

I guess 'abolishment' is maybe not the best way to approach it but it's more like if public education was functioning optimally then charter schools would kind of be rendered unnecessary.

xxp no you're confusing charter school and honors classes

Set up two schools, one focused on advanced study for “gifted” kids, and the other on “discipline and leadership” and the “problem” such as it is takes care of itself

Actual purpose of charter schools is to provide the effectively non-integrated educational environment that white parents demand, iirc.

― Dan I., Wednesday, November 28, 2018 3:01 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Again, true in some cases but most def not in others.

u rite! it took a queer anarchist pal who spent years working in a charter in dc to help me grok the nuance

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, November 28, 2018 1:00 PM (three minutes ago)

I actually was just thinking about this issue re: anarchist beliefs -- like, in some ways the charter schools thing fits with mine, and in other ways it doesn't ... but it's not like I'm a socialist trying to reconcile this stuff

i actually worked at a (progressive, project-based) school that had a massive influx of non-honors white students who weren't bought in at all to the mission or purpose of the school. the parents just couldn't get their kids into honors classes so they pulled them out of mainstream high school rather than put them in majority brown non-honors classes

boy were they pissed when we decided that our main focus of improvement for our first five-year accreditation cycle would be to increase diversity and recruit minority students to make our school look demographically more like the surrounding district

this is kinda a standard ilx thing -- I remember going through this re the US income tax system, and dayo wisely said, "you're too close to this topic, you should let it go" (or something to that effect)

it's funny how many issues i had direct experience with where i drifted from the hivemind consensus.

xp

Set up two schools, one focused on advanced study for “gifted” kids, and the other on “discipline and leadership” and the “problem” such as it is takes care of itself

― Dan I

can't tell if you're joking tbh

xp - like in theory government-sponsored schools are vested in reproducing the means of production/reinforcing the values of government oppression ... if you could have an alternative institution that doesn't do that, then, why not try to do so?

I kinda regret posting that now, but I think this debate is really interesting and kinda wish there was a thread for it. tlg makes many fair points about how charters can be good (and I have friends who teach in charters or went to them, all positive experiences afaict), but I'm not sure the benefits outweigh the bad actors (cough religion cough) and overall impact on the public sphere/tax base. I get that govt can be dysfunctional in the worst way but I'm not convinced that privatization (correct me if this isn't exactly what charters are) is a good way out of that mess.

I don’t know about elsewhere but in Minneapolis it seems pretty blatant. There are charter schools that are obviously designed to attract (or absorb) very specific ethnic groups. Beyond the academic-focused white school and the discipline/leadership black school, the language-focused ones are even more blatant: what do you think the racial makeup of schools devoted to learning German or Hmong are like? I mean, this shit gets me all “As A taxpayer...”

rich white ppl can send their kids to private schools