Why are liberals so against charter schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1-pulls resources from public schools
2-wont take all kids, like the publics have to, which means the trouble-makers, the special ed kids, etc., all end up in the public, all needing more resources (which the public now has less of)
3-little to no oversight, which means sometimes, no, frequently, these private charters abscond with public money and DO NOT educate children

Wouldn’t an easier and more equitable way to find schools be to reduce per student funding across the board and allocate and tie more funding to children with demonstrable special needs? That seems much fairer than requiring “average” students to attend school so part of the funding that comes with them can be skimmed off and devoted to educating a different child that has special needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In theory, I think charter schools are fine. My understanding is that they were originally justified as places to test experimental ideas to see whether they would work before used in larger settings, or to use a different approach with traditionally more challenging populations who were not being served well in typical public schools.

In practice what I see happening:
1) Truly needy low income kids cannot go because charters are exempt from providing transportation or F/RL.
2) SPED services are almost always inadequate
3) Charter schools can 'expel' or push out kids who they don't want. They then get to keep the $$ from those kids while the public school is stuck picking up the pieces with no funding for that student for that school year
4) for profit schools...
5) UMC people use certain charters as de facto privates when they don't feel like paying for actual private school and don't like their public option; there's no incentive to improve the existing public schools while also taking funding away (which wouldn't happen if these people just went with privates)

I'd add to your list:
6) Anti-union and anti-public education groups push charters specifically as a way to undermine unions and public education. Charters siphon resources and kids with engaged parents away from public schools.
7) Charter schools as a whole have problems with quality, accountability, and corruption. There are tons of stories about people using charter schools as a grift, with the victims being the kids who get a garbage education while charter school execs and their friends make out like bandits. Public schools aren't perfect, but they have a lot more transparency and oversight.

[Anonymous]

Starter schools have not been proven anywhere to be more effective with the same groups of kids compared to regular public schools. Many charters end up shutting down. They have a tendency to not support SpEd students and expel students quickly just to increase their scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Starter schools have not been proven anywhere to be more effective with the same groups of kids compared to regular public schools. Many charters end up shutting down. They have a tendency to not support SpEd students and expel students quickly just to increase their scores.

Shut them down in DC; the population of the city will halve overnight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1-pulls resources from public schools
2-wont take all kids, like the publics have to, which means the trouble-makers, the special ed kids, etc., all end up in the public, all needing more resources (which the public now has less of)
3-little to no oversight, which means sometimes, no, frequently, these private charters abscond with public money and DO NOT educate children

Wouldn’t an easier and more equitable way to find schools be to reduce per student funding across the board and allocate and tie more funding to children with demonstrable special needs? That seems much fairer than requiring “average” students to attend school so part of the funding that comes with them can be skimmed off and devoted to educating a different child that has special needs.

How does that work? And do you assign different dollar amounts depending on the disability since accomodations for a kid who is in a wheelchair is going to be different than a kid who has hearing loss or a kid who has ADHD. And general education students still need funding too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because "pulling resources from public schools" means taking money from public school teachers. Typically, 80% of a school budget goes to salaries. So, when you put a kid in a charter school, the public school has less money for salaries. Teachers unions really, really hate that.

OTOH, most of the research shows that charter schools that are started and run by public school teachers can often be the most successful.

and the same research also shows that charters greatly underperform the public

The best charters are better than the worst publics by a country mile

And the worst charters are garbage

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll add that in FCPS alone, almost 20% of the budget is spent on Special Education, and of that most of it isn’t spent on kids like your child.

We pool resources to care for the neediest kids. Charter schools take away from that.

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
-FDR

We don’t pool those resources enough. I’d like all the FARMs kids to go to their own school that can provide wrap-around services (including after school childcare & housing nearby), and the special education kids to also go to their own school.

Bright middle class kids are mostly ignored in traditional public schools.

Because schools with 99 percent of farms are doing so well...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ll add that in FCPS alone, almost 20% of the budget is spent on Special Education, and of that most of it isn’t spent on kids like your child.

We pool resources to care for the neediest kids. Charter schools take away from that.

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
-FDR

We don’t pool those resources enough. I’d like all the FARMs kids to go to their own school that can provide wrap-around services (including after school childcare & housing nearby), and the special education kids to also go to their own school.

Bright middle class kids are mostly ignored in traditional public schools.

This is segregation by another name.

Dcum is always okay with tracking kids or warehousung kids as long as it's their kids who are not impacted

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unions

Traditional public schools are unionized. Most charter schools aren’t. It’s in the union’s interest to oppose charter schools.

The union supports the Democratic party. Therefore, Democrats have an interest in keeping the union happy, which they do by opposing charter schools.

Most liberals are Democrats and vice versa. While individuals may differ on specific issues, the Democrats are most closely aligned with liberal positions. Even if a liberal’s primary issue has nothing to do with education, their issue will most likely benefit, when Democrats are in power, which union support facilitates.

If it were really about special ed, I think they could tackle the issue through legislation. Moreover, I don’t think public schools are the noble alternative when it comes to providing for special needs. Montgomery County (which is about as liberal as possible) has public schools that are known for calculating the relative costs of providing necessary supports for a child and comparing it to the costs of litigation if they don’t provide the necessary support and the family sues for alternative placement.

Basically, it comes down to everyone acting in their own self interest, a phenomenon which is not limited to the left. Conservatives/Republicans are just as likely to take advantage of issues to augment their power. I honestly think both parties would rather have a problem they can blame the other side for and work to their advantage, than to actually work the problem and possibly make things better.

This is a load of crap.

The whole reason we u charters is because they take $$ from public schools and they tend to be crap. The vast majority are substandard and they are usually very bad at providing a reasonable education for sns students. It has nothing to do with unions.

Have you read the horror stories of financial shenanigans and out right stealing by people running charter schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because "pulling resources from public schools" means taking money from public school teachers. Typically, 80% of a school budget goes to salaries. So, when you put a kid in a charter school, the public school has less money for salaries. Teachers unions really, really hate that.

OTOH, most of the research shows that charter schools that are started and run by public school teachers can often be the most successful.

and the same research also shows that charters greatly underperform the public

The best charters are better than the worst publics by a country mile

And the worst charters are garbage

Name some of these great charters.

At least I know I can deal with a public school that doesn't provide the accommodations my kid's iep provides.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel stuck on this one because I understand the problem with charters with regards to public schools BUT I am so frustrated with our public school for things that are only minimally about demographics and are mostly about what I consider to be outdated, developmentally inappropriate rules and teaching methods. We're trying to go charter just to get away from this environment I think is not conducive to learning.

I know anti-charter people will tell me "work to change your school." But that's such a huge expectation. I have a job, we're not rich. I understand the problems with charters, but it's SO MUCH EASIER for me to find a charter that has an approach I like better and just send my kid there.

My ideal would be for my local neighborhood school to offer a better environment. It doesn't. Charters offer me a choice that I think would be better for my kid. I get why it's complicated, but it's also very, very simple.

To that I will say that sometimes Charters get wrapped up in the promotion of “their approach” and the marketing of that approach to prospective and current parents that the program is diluted.

Also OP just as conservatives don’t like to care for kids after they are out of the uterus, charter schools do not take the kids with involved special needs. Sure they take the easy cases so they can pump up the numbers of sped kids they enroll (think speech articulation IEPs or mild ADHD), but the bulk of that very very expensive therapies etc will fall to public schools that are underfunded as they are.

It is one of those things that sounds good at first (YAY my kid gets to experience ___ cool new program), but when that brought up to mass scale, it results in huge issues across the system.

This just isn't always true though. My ADHD kid got the services we asked for at a DCPS school and IEP implementation was pretty straightforward. But she's had a better experience at a charter because their approach (smaller class sizes, incorporating art and music in ways that keep DD engaged, more experiential learning and fewer worksheets, etc.). My child simply needs fewer services because she is no longer in a large class with a lot of very rigid rules, minimal art, a lot of time in seats doing worksheets or listening to teacher lecturing, so the needs she has that help her engage with school and follow the skills coaching she is getting are actually getting met.

I have not felt that the approach is just about marketing. It's very clearly believed and followed by HoS and the teachers we've interacted with. It's not some high-concept approach. It's literally just "hey what if we didn't treat children like cattle moving through the branding line, and instead sought to meet them where they are at with developmentally appropriate classrooms, schedules, and curriculum?"

Your Larla is EXACTLY the case I was saying a charter school would take. A child with a light IEP who doesn’t really need sped that much, but a few light accommodations. The kids I”m talking about are the ones who won’t be going to college because they are severely disabled. They are in wheelchairs, or learning life skills curriculum. These are the heavy hitters monetarily who need so many services. That number you hear when they say how much per pupil within a county isn’t really spent per pupil. There are kids who have to have 1 on 1 and need their diapers changed well into middle school. Those kids get more of the per pupil spending that the average kid. The busing, the caretaking, the ABA therapy, the speech, OT and PT services are expensive.
Those kids NEED those services and they NEED to be paid for. You kid is a light case particularly when you are talking money.

Charters have corporate backing and will just not take those cases on because they are so intensive.

NP. I get that, and that is why I am torn on the charter school issue. On the macro, I see the issues with them (what you describe). But on the micro...should kids with "lighter needs" get stuck in a school that is emotionally, socially, and academically a horrible place for them because of the macro issues?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Starter schools have not been proven anywhere to be more effective with the same groups of kids compared to regular public schools. Many charters end up shutting down. They have a tendency to not support SpEd students and expel students quickly just to increase their scores.

Shut them down in DC; the population of the city will halve overnight.

That sounds good to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Starter schools have not been proven anywhere to be more effective with the same groups of kids compared to regular public schools. Many charters end up shutting down. They have a tendency to not support SpEd students and expel students quickly just to increase their scores.

Shut them down in DC; the population of the city will halve overnight.

That sounds good to me.

Eyeroll.

[Anonymous]

Here is an article about the rampant fraud associated with charter schools:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2019/12/10/new-report-charter-fraud-and-waste-worse-than-we-thought/

Another:

https://voiceofsandiego.org/2022/06/13/in-one-of-the-largest-charter-school-scams-in-history-no-one-will-serve-jail-time/

More:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/01/27/5-most-serious-charter-school-scandals-2019-why-they-matter/

Good piece:

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-corrupt-charter-myth/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
7) Charter schools as a whole have problems with quality, accountability, and corruption. There are tons of stories about people using charter schools as a grift, with the victims being the kids who get a garbage education while charter school execs and their friends make out like bandits. Public schools aren't perfect, but they have a lot more transparency and oversight.

This.

I taught for a high school charter for 5 years. Not in DC but another very large, major city in the US. It was so corrupt. The original mission was nice. To give kids that were kicked out or dropped out of the major city’s regular public schools a second chance to graduate. It was run by a woman and her whole family which encompassed the administration. Only family members and one friend of the family were administrators. One family member was the vice principal, one the IT person, two were accountants (for a school of 250 they needed 2 accountants), etc, etc. There were 8 teachers and we were the underlings and treated like garbage. Zero budget. Even for art. Occasionally if you asked for supplies you would get it. No windows in any classrooms. Not enough space for a class. We had about 50% kids absent regularly but if they all showed up they would have to sit in the hallway. Sewage would overflow occasionally on the floors.

The worst was that all the family administration, which there were about as many as teachers, each got paid six figures salary. Teacher salaries were below average. Pay checks bounced. If you wanted to get your money you had to go to the school’s bank and wait in line with the other teachers and if you were at the end of the line they would tell you that there was no money left. They did pay you back the fees for their bounced checks.

Teachers were fired for trying to unionize the charter schools in our group. We had extremely high turnover of staff. Several teachers didn’t even make it through one day there. I stayed because I enjoyed the teachers and the students. The guidance counselor used to say that afteryou worked there, you could work anywhere.