Lost Federal Funding For Charters

Following last week's piece about charter schools wanting some action this year on expanding their numbers, there's an interesting editorial in today's Tribune that charts mis-steps by ISBE and the state about funding charter schools (Chortling over charters).  It's no big surprise that the Tribune comes out pro-charter, of course, but they do make a pretty good case that as long as they're going to have charters serving kids they might as well get federal funding especially that's available.  Let the drumbeat continue.

Comments

[Disillusioned]

I guess I'll be the Bizzaro George here and ask the question: Why are teachers unions so hell-bent on breaking charters? Are they that deathly afraid of charters? And more importantly, do they understand how much harm they are causing the kids in charters? In true Bizzaro George spirit I dare say: maybe they don't care about the kids and care more about that their own positions may be threatened (how's that for lashing out wildly at anti-charter opponents-ridiculous but perhaps George needs a taste of his own medicine here).

And let me close by wishing everyone a healthy and happy holiday season.

Chicago has over 30 charter schools. Why did the Tribune article only cite Noble and Locke performance? If they reported the performance on the other charters lofty statements like performing better than neighborhood schools couldn't be made. The hype continues.

It's so ridiculous to hear from the Trib AGAIN that charters must be better because they have waiting lists. It couldn't be more obvious that there is NO proof that Chicago charters are better and that the CPS PR machine is nothing but gas. But that doesn't matter to the Trib.

"It's so ridiculous to hear from the Trib AGAIN that charters must be better because they have waiting lists."

Actually, nowhere in the editorial does it say that charters must be better BECAUSE they have waiting lists.

This is becoming an anti charter blog, interupted only ocassionally by people who seem to be willing to argue from other perspectives. Weird. Disheartening. Sure it is easy to pound on the little guys (30 charters vs 600 traditional ones). But show me a bad charter school and I will show you 20 traditionals that are worse - that are not even at risk of closing. Show me a good one, and I will have a hard time finding 20 better. Which seems the right calculus, given the overall number of schools in chicago.

Let's look at the Trib's argument.

Chicago's charter schools are an impressive lot.
(Are they? Based on what? Compared to what? This comment has no substantial meaning but is made to create the effect of praise without having to offer any real reason.)

Charters often do a better job educating the most challenging students in the poorest neighborhoods and getting them into college than regular neighborhood schools do.
(And often they do not. Again, there's an effort to communicate a positive image without substantial evidence.)

Around the country, states and cities look to Chicago's rigorous system of authorizing and monitoring charters as a model to emulate.
(Wow- that sounds "impressive". Again, no substance)

"That record begs the question: What's with our own state's hostility toward charters?
(That record? What record? Maybe our state is actually looking at facts and not lame rhetoric).

People use this blog in part to challenge the lies and overblown rhetoric of powerful, moneyed media and business types who support charters for a variety of reasons that have less to do with the education of children and more to do with their own interests. We have a long way to go before we get equal time.

2:35 - what a powerful argument.

[MG]

I always find it amusing when someone like 4:46pm speaks of "powerful, moneyed media and business types" influencing public education while the teachers unions throw their power and money around Springfield trying to eleveate their own interests above everything else.

I wish the CTU would follow the lead of the teachers union in NYC and spend less time sniveling about charters and start their own school.

If you knew someone who was married and their marriage was not perfect, but they had kids, a house, and some love for each other, would you "find it amusing" and recommend that they "spend less time snivelling..." and have an affair with a prostitute"? Charter schools are not sustainable investments. They defy the economic logic of educating people who cannot afford to pay for their families' schooling. In opening charter schools and closing regular public schools you are effectively leaping from the frying pan over a cliff.

Just got my card from Barry Obama and family. It is a classic black and white outdoor picture of the family, taken by famous Annie Leibovitz-- looking to be taken on his Kenwood estate. The return address is on trendy and expensive Hubbard Street, which can be afforded when your spouse has a plum job at the University of Chicago and your children can have an exclusive, free and private education at the lab school because of it.
As my friends gather ‘round the wreath and candles, we ask, “What has Barry done for Illinoisans lately?”
No one seems to be able to answer this question.

The Tribune is starting to follow the journalistic style of George and Substance. (Except George is honest.)
Shame on the Trib--yellow journalism at its best at the Trib.

8:02 The Trib doesn't use the toilet without asking Eden Martin if it's OK. Sick group of sell-outs.

Once IMPACT goes online, everyone should be able to see the impact charter schools have (unless I misunderstand IMPACT) as all kids' tests scores will be online to CPS. If this is true, we'll be able to see if there is any jump in their score from when they go from public to charter.

[George Schmidt]

Good morning, colleagues:

I just reread the following before hitting "Post" and despite its length I'm sending it along. Those who don't like length can get in touch with me for the Cliffs Notes version. But since I've always believed in teaching the actual text, I have to suggest that some things are complex enough that they deserve to be discussed at length, with serious people sorting through the dialectics of the realities, not the oversimplifications fed to us by propagandists. Before I was fired and blacklisted from teaching, I had my students read all of Tolstoyr's "Anna Karenina" in AP English. It took some time, but there were no short cuts. Today discussing the crude but effective hype behind Chicago's charter school problems -- and the amazing role of the Chicago Tribune in promoting those crudities -- you just have to spend some time on some topics.

In what follows, I'm only looking at a couple of aspects of Chicago's charter school hoax and hype. Not included are the "campus" fraud (which so far enables CPS to approve charters beyond the Illinois cap of 30). Nor does this take a close look at all the tens of millions of dollars of foundation money that are being poured into Chicago charters (and not elsewhere in Chicago) as part of the hype and hoax.

YOU CAN STOP HERE...

OR CONTINUE...

Since the Tribune has again raised the question of how to evaluate Chicago charters, the question is fair game.

Basically, Chicago charters are selective enrollment schools. They pre-select their students and most get rid of those they don't want after they identify problems. This distinguishes them fundamentally from most public schools. Therefore, the only accurate comparisons are to Chicago's magnet and selective enrollment public schools, not to the local neighborhood elementary school or to the general high schools that take in anyone. "Studies" that purport to show Chicago charter successes by comparing charters with local public schools are flawed (and dishonest) whether they come from local sources (CPS studies beginning with those under Gred Richmond) or outside propagandists (the Hoxby "studies" that use Hoxby's Harvard connection as a source of legitimization).

Any claims about Chicago charters made based on comparisons other than those with magnet and selective enrollment schools are fraudulent.

One thing's for certain, when evaluating Chicago charters it is very important to dig beneath the hype and surface spectacle. Charter people in Chicago spend an immense amount of time honing their messages and marketing materials. Every charter is ready to put on a dog-and-pony show for anyone who asks. They are also unwilling to go over all the numbers. These include the pushouts, which charters do with even the youngest kids. But they also include information like their ADA and IDEA compliances. Once you stip down the charters and review them in the context of all the information necessary to make a fair comparison with the public school down the block, a different picture begins to emerge.

I watched the Tribune go over the original Greg Richmond hype "study" five years ago, and nothing has changed there since. Chicago's charters have always begun by cherry picking the data to cast the charters in a favorable light and to present local democratic neighborhood elementary schools and general public high schools in an unfavorable light. The charters in Chicago cherry pick the data and populations, then use those to "prove" they are doing better. When the data don't fit the hype, they simply ignore the data.

A good example (among many) is the recent conversion (no pun intended) from Good Counsel High School to "Chicago International Charter School -- Northtown Campus" during the past five years.

The charter school that succeeded Good Counsel had not even produced its first real class when Arne Duncan and the Gates Foundation showed up there to showcase "Chicago International Northtown" as a model for urban education reform.

When Good Counsel became a charter, it kept the same girls who had been going there. That didn't stop the Gates Foundation from touting it as an example and model to "save" urban education. Since the last Good Counsel girls' class graduated "Chicago International Charter, Northtown Campus" has been changing.

But you'll never read about those twists and turns in the pages of the Tribune, or if you go to those privatization seminars sponsored by CPS or by outfits like Gates. And Gates is still circulating that booklet featuring Good Counsel nationally, with no truth in advertising warnings. This is really a microcosm of how Chicago's charter hype has been operating.

The current Chicago Board of Education consists of members all of whom are committed to the charter fraud and the underlying "choice" propaganda that passes for analysis when critical questions are raised. The Board members also sit there to Oooh and Ahhh on cue when the charter touts strut their stuff at each Board meeting. (Watch Clara Munana and Rufus Williams on the tape Saturday if you don't believe me).

"Oooh. Please tell me again how noble your visions are, Mrs. and Mr. Charter Entrepreneur..." At this point in history, they are becoming a caricature of neoliberal "free market" nonsense, but unabashedly they forge ahead.

This stuff would be rejected on the main stage at Second City if someone proposed it as satire. But thanks to the Chicago media (primarily the Tribune) and the imprimatur of CPS, the Chicago model was exported to New Orleans this year.

[I have to interject that the same kind of Chicago models were used in Chile after September 11, 1973, and it took more than two decades for those horrors to come out for most people to see clearly. Same thing here now].

The horror for the poor people of New Orleans (who tried to return to their communities to find that the charter "vision" had replaced neighborhood public schools their kids could attend) is no joke, but an example of how noxious the Tribune's propaganda power can be.

Once again, at yesterday's Board of Education meeting, charter school touts were on parade. The only thing more disreputable than KIPP Ascend taking one of their students out of class (like the charters always do) to play the game was the fawning of the Board members and Arne's people over the charters that don't even exist yet. Last month, when some of the top students in CPS took a day off to protest the removal of the Lincoln Park High School librarian, Rufus Williams and Arne both asked about why those kids weren't in class. That kind of stuff goes back a way, with the most dramatic example being two years ago this month, when Senn High School emptied out and hundreds of students went downtown to protest the impostion of the "military academy" on Senn. They were threatened with arrest for truancy until cooler heads prevailed.

But had they walked in and said they were at CPS to praise charter schools or talk about how wonderful the "choice" of the military academy was, the Board and Arne would have been gooey with them, just as they are every month when the charter touts strut their stuff.

There is no honest way to compare Chicago's charters with schools in their communities, which is what the Tribune claims it has done, or had done. Since the charters are recruiting just like the magnet schools do, and the neighborhood schools are required (and blessed, democracy still meaning something) to have to take in anyone from the community, the neighborhood schools will always suffer when compared to a charter down the block.

Until the charters pioneered this kind of dishonesty (with the full support of the editors at the Tribune), nobody would have thought to "compare" the magnet and selective enrollment schools with the neighborhood schools down the block. To do so would have been ridiculous. Beasley is "better" than Farren? Whitney Young proves it can "beat" Crane? Northside College Prep versus Mather? Everyone knew that was a dishonest and unfair way of doing it, so nobody thought about doing it until the charter juggernaut hit Chicago with "Renaissance 2010" and Eden Martin's "Left Behind" mendacities.

At this moment, the chaarters are in the same place as the magnet schools. Tomorrow, applications for the public magnets have to be in. Between now and April (with most by February) applications for the Chicago "public" charters have to be in. The charter applications are all on line now for anyone who wants to see the pre-admission requirements. But the most important one is that the child is coming from a family that has taken the time to learn about these things and has the time to complete the application and go through the process. That's pre-selection in this town.

But the charters don't stop when they pre-screen their kids in Chicago. Then there is the trick of kicking out the kids they don't want. This is done a little more subtly. They get rid of the kids don't keep their "contracts" with the charters, which is the covert way they skim down their populations before the annual tests are given.

A year ago, the Paul Adams (Providence St. Mel's) charter that was going into the old Bunche school made it a requirement that parents attend training sessions. It was quite clear that those who didn't live up to those "expectations" would be kicked out and counseled (love those Orwelleanisms) back to their neighborhood schools. Same stuff is going on this year. If you keep establishing enough rules, eventually you will have enough to justify getting rid of those you took in but don't want to keep.

One of the ironies about yesterday's Chicago Board of Education meeting (there were too many to count) was how many of the charter schools have an African American child (usually female) coming on stage to talk about how great the charter is (KIPP) or will be (Englewood), then the white corporate person (er, "entrepreneur") who will be or is running the charter gets up and talks about what an honor it all is, etc., etc., etc. These staged events are CPS Board meetings are almost as scripted as the lessons the charters like KIPP use on their kids.

If you're a reporter with the time and inclination, Chicago's charter scams will take years of investigative fun to unravel. They've now reached large enough populations and have long enough histories that they can be looked at closely from multiple perspectives.

Nationally, the charter hype has already been debunked by legitimate researchers, and the remaining praise for the charters comes from the paid propagandists of the right. Chicago is just about all they have left to crow about, because Chicago has been so sealed off from a serious critique that it's all been various types of hype and marketing here. That's what happens in totalitarian places, from Romania or Chile in the 1970s and 1980s to Chicago school "reform" today.

It will take a lot of contorting for the Tribune to find anyone legit to tout Chicago at the AERA (American Education Research Association) convention in Chicago in April. Of course, they will. But for every charter tout, there will be a dozen legitimate studies that debunk all or most of the claims of charters in general. Then the real fun begins when you look at each one specifically.

One of the many sad things about all this hypocrisy is how the capital budgets are being distorted on behalf of the charters. While the roofs have recently been weakened at Holden (evacuated) or Lincoln Park High School (library closed), charters get repairs -- not just decorative fencing from some clout heavy company like Tru-Link -- even before they move in.

Earlier this week, I went by Calumet High School to see how much money they were pouring into the building before they give it to Perspectives. Check it out for yourself -- New roof. Scaffolding across the entire southern half of the structure.

The (minimum) $4 million they poured into Bunche (65th and Sahland) before they gave it away to Providence St. Mel's two years ago was peanuts compared to what they're pouring into Calumet and other places preparing them for charterization.

And, of course, there is always the $21 million (plus, plus, plus) "Aspira Haugan" building that CPS built new -- based on community needs and demands -- then did a bait and switch and turned the brand new building over to Aspira as a charter school.

Even with its recent troubles, the Tribune still has the resources to investigate and find out what's going on. Some parts of the Tribune's print empire (especially the Los Angeles Times) have both the editorial courage and the reportorial talent to do the jobs necessary to look behind the hype. In Chicago, the "news" is what the Board's charter people and the charters' marketing people feed directly to the Tribune's editors.

When the Tribune decides to publish propaganda as news (and source their stuff with nothing but quotes from those right-wing echo chambers, like they do when touting charters either in Chicago or New Orleans), there is a cynicism as great as ever in this city's history underlying the whole thing. Eventually, the whole truth will come out, since at this point thousands of children and parents are learning the hard way that hype has little to do, ultimately, with what makes effective democratic public schools for the children of complex places as big as Chicago.

Hey George, statistics work much better. Do everyone a favor and show some statistics instead of so much hot air. And, when you say crap like "Nationally, the charter hype has already been debunked by legitimate researchers," you should really include a reference to said researchers, otherwise you sound like a windbag.

Why can't we just leave it at this: the charters in Chicago are doing a good enough job that parents of all stripes want to send their kids there. Parents and families are the customers, and as educators we should serve them. End of story -- right?

Tell us what you did as chief of security at CTU and how much you were paid George.

[cermak_rd]

George,

I don't believe it's fair to compare Charters to Magnets and selective enrollment. Those latter two are able to admit children whose scores are at a certain level. Charters are unable to do this. Yes, Charters do disenroll children who are unable to adapt to the environment in the charter school. And Charters no doubt get children from families that are more motivated about their childrens' education, so I would say they can't be compared to neighborhood schools either. So in the end I suspect you have a case of bananas, apples and oranges. I just don't see how the diversity is harmful, especially when parents are queued up to get their children into these charter schools.

[kat]

Why is it that there is no residency requirement for charter school emloyees?

[Alexander]

isn't the real question why is there one for CPS employees?

Wow! What a post. Charter schools sure do bring out the worst in many people. To begin, I don't necessarily like the idea of charter schools (only because I don't understand the reason why people want to educate children all of a sudden). However, I don't hate charter schools -instead, I want CPS schools to start to be more innovative. We can do the same things that charters are doing, if we think outside of the box sometimes. They don't have a "magic pill."

I do agree with a previous statement that it is unfair to give charter schools huge amounts of money to improve CPS facilities, when neighborhood schools are dilapidated (and ignored). My school is constantly told that there are no capital funds when we ask for minor structural improvements; although we watched as the system improved an already 'rehabbed' Bunche school in preparation for the opening of the St. Mel school. Again, I don't mind the St. Mel is operating a school - more power to them. Instead, I am more disturbed that we (CPS schools) are not afforded the same luxuries as charters...something has to change. There must be more equity in the system!

[JulieWoestehoff]

The research on the lackluster performance of charters compared with regular neighborhood schools is everywhere, from the USDE and National Center for Education Statistics to a 2005 book by Richard Rothstein, "The Charter School Dust Up" which reports on numerous studies and concludes “there is no evidence that, on average, charter schools out-perform regular public schools. In fact, there is evidence that the average impact of charter schools is negative.”

The fact that the public is mostly unaware of the powerful and consistent research that charters and other privatized schools just aren't performing as well overall as regular public schools simply proves George's point about the media conspiracy.

Two more points. Most magnet schools do not have academic requirements but use lotteries, like most charters.

Finally, a test of a good school should be an objective evaluation of its performance, not how many people believe its hype. If that were the case, then MacDonald’s would have to be considered the finest food available and we’d have shut down Mom’s kitchen in favor of this superior product. We are all vulnerable to a good marketing strategy, and CPS and others are pouring millions into marketing Renaissance 2010, charters, and other such programs.

Is it wrong to have choices? Well, that depends on what has to happen for some people to have choices. The problem is that it is the most vulnerable children and communities who are being hurt by these strategies, and the benefits are not equally accessible.

How many charters are housing students above building capacity?

People are asking, "Why does everyone hate charters so much?" or commenting, "Charters sure bring out the worst in people."

I think the above question answers why. I don't believe anyone hates the idea of having good schools for students. It is the inequities people can't stand. It's hard enough as it is to do the job we do in neighborhood schools. It frustrates hardworking people to then be compared to others in situations like magnets, charters, suburban districts.

George compares his writing to Tolstoy's?

Here's my challenge to anyone out there who honestly believes that the average public charter school is doing no better than the average traditional public schools.

When school is back in session, after January 8th, take a day off of work or an extended lunch break and visit a couple of charter schools. Then the next day visit a traditional CPS school in the same neighborhood. Before we jump to conclusions based on test scores, or the political machines that may or may not be behind these schools, at least have the decency to take an up close and personal look at what you're talking about. Until you have done this, you have absolutely no right to comment on this subject, certainly not in the demeaning and at times slanderous way many of you have chosen to here.

Approach both schools objectively and without your political biases and report back to this blog then. Tell us what you saw in terms of quality of instruction and the overall learning environment. Ask to sit down and talk with an administrator or a teacher at both schools, or better yet look for a parent or a student. Then let's come back and have a sensible discussion about the issue without resorting to politics.