Charter schools in the United States

thank you! the previous conversation that I was quoting silby from was a discussion in the SB51 California Politics thread, starting here:

SB 51: the California politics thread

Fuck charter schools! Thread over lol

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lock thread

they’re bad, folks

Let's clap go clap

btw i assumed this is what silby was referencing in the first place:

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education/2018/11/28/farnsworth-net-13-9-million-benjamin-franklin-charter-school-sale/2126183002/

"When the Benjamin Franklin charter chain completes the purchase next month of its four East Valley campuses from founder Eddie Farnsworth, ownership will shift to a newly formed nonprofit company.

But the $56.9 million deal, from which Farnsworth will pocket $13.9 million, won't be the state lawmaker's last payday from the schools he's owned for decades.

Records show he will loan Benjamin Franklin $2.8 million over seven years, earning himself $478,000 in interest while ensuring the schools have enough cash to keep operating.

He'll collect another $79,600 a year in rent on the building that currently serves as Benjamin Franklin's corporate headquarters.

And Farnsworth, who has been a staunch defender of charter schools at the Arizona Legislature, will continue to be paid as a consultant to Benjamin Franklin."

I said this in the other thread but the fact that there are some good charter schools and some good people working in charter schools doesn’t change the systematic and structural purpose and effects of the movement at large, which is mostly to weaken public schools, weaken teachers’ unions, and move us toward privatization of education. Therefore I unreservedly oppose all charter schools.

I have nothing to add on this topic 😎

On related issues I believe the world should be reorganized around semi-autonomous city-states with alll major enterprises owned and operated by the municipality, food production should be subjected to rapid robotification, and children allowed to terminate the custody of their parents starting around age 7.

The ideal is to eliminate both the disparities and the opportunities for profit that prompt the creation of charter schools. But they're currently part of the world we inhabit so they have to be reckoned with. I have my own knee-jerk reactions to their existence, but at the same time I tutor a smart, STEM-centric Latino kid who's understandably bored as hell with rote LCD public school busywork, and as I see his boredom starting to affect his grades in a way that his unengaged teachers misinterpret as underperformance in common core standards, I'm increasingly reminded of the well-regarded STEM-centric charter high school right in his neighborhood that I think could help him avoid sinking into a morass of DGAF-dom. And I also think back on my own public school education and think, 'wow, that sure was some stupid bullshit.' So...yeah, this isn't a particularly cut-and-dry issue.

they're currently part of the world we inhabit so they have to be reckoned with.

You can reckon with them by opposing their proliferation, requiring more transparency from them, funding public schools better, etc.

I think you can say "this isn't a particularly cut and dry issue" in the micro sense, e.g. there are myriad situations where a particular charter school is better than the particular neighborhood school option at a given moment and therefore you can't fault a parent for wanting the charter school. I'm speaking more in the macro sense.

I mean, as far as I personally am concerned, you're preaching to the choir. Regardless of the probably insignificant relative impact, the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education is probably the thing from the past two years that gutpunches me with the most consistency.

I believe the world should be reorganized around semi-autonomous city-states with alll major enterprises owned and operated by the municipality, food production should be subjected to rapid robotification, and children allowed to terminate the custody of their parents starting around age 7.

*leans down to pat the ilx hivemind fondly on the bonce as i let out a wry & learned chuckle* ah, the sweet follies of youth... i too once thought this way, twas only the bitter lessons of mine own (considerable) personal experience that have allowed me to transcend the limitations of your naive analyses and become the radiant voice of very mature sense you all know and secretly love despite yourselves

Yo fuck these things

kingfish not a shot at you here but you've just reminded me of an old occupy thing -- we had a guy in the DC camp who, at one point early on, wasn't able to get a proposal approved by the general assembly ("the GA"). from that point on, every night we had our GA, he would pop up walking by the outskirts of the group yelling precisely once "YO! FUCK THE GA!"

"fuck the GA" thus came to be both a rallying cry about the maddening ineffectiveness of a consensus process among people with no deliberate points of unity, and also a shorthand for the way people angrily sloganeer over really complex processes and problems which (having no real dog in the race of this thread) may well fit in here

that is beautiful and so ... true

agree

it even inspired a short lived tumblr that was just memes that were like

https://i.imgflip.com/2nv7yo.jpg

anyway i'll leave it at that lol

I feel like there are people that are drawn to activism because they are into slogans, and shouting slogans, and shouting the same slogan over and over again. ... or rather, they stick with activism because they like that part

My Occupy memory was going on a march, and I was with two noise scene pals, and we just started making up slogans to shout that were in the same rhythm as what everyone else was shouting, because we didn't want to be dicks, but also we were bored.

fabulous first sentence of a noel

*novel too

Yeah. Shouting repeated slogans at protests and marches is on the same level of crowd participation as music groups who have their lead singer do that "Hello, Modesto! Are you ready to ROCK?!... I can't hear you... Louder!" crap.

i think college was my first introduction to the differences of mentality between arts and activism ... I was helping making signs for a LGBTQ thing, and the other members of the group commented, "Wow, your signs are so creative!" in the way that people that tend not to do very creative things with their lives will respond.

btw silby was right about charters from jump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/28/ed-school-dean-urban-school-reform-is-really-about-land-development-not-kids/?postshare=7611445550109548&noredirect=on

I tutor a smart, STEM-centric Latino kid who's understandably bored as hell with rote LCD public school busywork

Not your issue I know, but my kids go to a public school that is surrounded by charters, and in the PS some parents got together, realized STEM education was lacking there, formed a STEM committee, and now a ton of STEM related stuff happens at the school. It didn’t even take much to get it going, and we all meet and email and figure shit out whenever we get a minute because, frankly, fuck the charters, for all the reasons man alive lists up there.

not feasible for all communities

eg: low income, non-college educated iimmigrant communities

but hey, congrats! i really respect that. kids are lucky to have you :)

don’t get me wrong, our families are incredibly involved. we have a full time pta and community volunteer coordinator on staff.

but many of my kids have parents who are not literate. they don’t have email at home or work. they can help in many ways, but probably not in building STEM education

you know we are embroiled in a massive labor dispute rn. we have unionized and though the university claims to have accepted it, they also appear to some people to be retaliating against us

anyway in response to these charges, they (university admin and legal) sent us a letter in which they repeatedly argued that we as teachers need to view their actions “with the lens of positive intent”.

in my experience, i have found that all teachers i know have extended me this courtesy, as have district staff. at least to my face!

i mean to say district employed teachers - not charter school employed teachers - have generally extended us that courtesy, of not seeing our efforts as efforts to undermine them

though there are definitely people who show up to school board meetings arguing that we should have our charter revoked - in the most recent case, affluent and college-educated families were apparently lobbying for access to our school

anyway, i hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into the banality of evil, that’s my story and i’m sticking to it

I think the con argument have been laid out pretty well.

I think is on you to make the pro case tighter and more convincing.

I am willing to listen, but please understand that DeVos et al make your case harder.

heh

it’s not on me to do anything

for the sake of my mental health i’m not committed to changing minds in any way other than doing my job

prolly good cause i’m not that good at it, amirite?

This is online the only thing on any of us is....line

anyway in response to these charges, they (university admin and legal) sent us a letter in which they repeatedly argued that we as teachers need to view their actions “with the lens of positive intent”.

lmao I legitimately love reading things like this, panicked bosses scrambling for moral high ground is up there with "thank you for joining us on our startup journey" as a schadenfreudegenre

"we don't think of you as employees you're family until you're no longer useful"

not feasible for all communities

― the late great, Friday, November 30, 2018 11:43 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eg: low income, non-college educated iimmigrant communities

― the late great, Friday, November 30, 2018 11:44 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It’s a title 1 school, so obviously a huge amount of the community there are low income. I do agree it’s not feasible in all schools, but I think mostly due to how receptive the schools are to adapting to new ideas. My wife works in a transfer school, many of the stories she comes home with are impossibly sad and/or terrifying, but the administration there are very open to just tying shit and seeing if it works.

lmao I legitimately love reading things like this, panicked bosses scrambling for moral high ground is up there with "thank you for joining us on our startup journey" as a schadenfreudegenre

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, November 30, 2018 10:18 PM (yesterday)

Agreed! ... I would hope that any boss with a shred of self-awareness feels their soul slowly dripping out of their body when writing stuff like that. This one is a classic too: "We are grateful for all your hard work and commitment (but we are going to stab you in the back now, just fyi) "

speaking of the thread title, charter teachers in chicago have just gone on strike--first time union-backed charter instructors have struck in america:

https://www.facebook.com/ctulocal1/videos/611496532599239/

that's our union too (AFT)

speaking of which, another local high-profile charter in our town just decided to unionize and reached out to us for advice

wonder if charter unionization is going to become a trend

some folks like jane mcalevy in labor have been hollering for a while now that charter teachers & health care workers are the most strategic sectors of the economy (both growing & increasingly essential) and so the places all organizing should be concentrated (e.g., decidedly not in fast food restaurant organizing where the 'strikes' have little to do with what we'd have called a strike 50 years ago)

“all”?

this thread really took off while I was away!

short notes: I feel like it's lazy to generalize tlg's employers as "the good ones" but overall in the charter school landscape, that might be somewhat close to true? there's something useful to building things up incrementally, especially when districts have a lot of social and infrastructural constructs that are slow to change. the unionization of charter schools is a good hint as to what might be essential that the less scrupulous charter school organizers, i.e. corporations, might be trying to work around

as for non-charter solutions to provide specialized education, which I think came up on this thread or the california one: the school system I attended had a magnet high school w/vocational programs that shared a building with a magnet academy with AP classes. they've since split into different adjacent buildings. my experience having taken a lot of courses (three in eighth and ninth grade, two class periods in 10th/11th, and four my senior year) at the magnet was that it worked really well despite the transportational logistics. having all of the area high schools within a 10 - 20 minute drive of the magnet school was how it worked -- the class periods were staggered so buses were available at multiple times during the day for transit to/from the home high schools.

since then, the academy school with AP classes has changed so that all teachers are cross-certified as instructors with a local community college, so any college accepting credit hours from the cc means kids don't necessarily have to take AP tests. the district has at least one montessori-style elementary school and a downtown elementary school for commuters now as well, although I'm not sure about the admissions policies. fwiw it's a district with about 32k kids from grades K - 12

“all”?

― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Wednesday, December 5, 2018 7:53 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk the vast majority, i'm overstating to underline the relative emphasis

charter teachers & health care workers are the most strategic sectors of the economy (both growing & increasingly essential) and so the places all organizing should be concentrated

I was actually just thinking about this the other day and how that is otm

if that's interesting to you you oughta check out jane mcalevey's most recent book! it is all about this and has good case studies

oh i guess i also said that in the post. it's just very good is all

cool!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dw4XLa3WsAA3bWo.jpg:small

said the man whose wife is, uh, involved in charter schools

what the FUCK does that even mean?

I mean I understand what it means, but it's so question-begging as to be almost nonsensical

he's got to be winding people up deliberately, that's so stupid

he's said dumber

How a couple worked charter school regulations to make millions

nice juxtaposition with the chait tweet image in the previous revive

So gross. I don’t know how anyone can choose to make money like that. And I’m *shocked* that they’re super-religious.