A screen grab of the deceptive logo and slogan for this front group for for-profit education companies.
This November, Georgia voters will go to the polls and be asked to approve or disapprove a constitutional amendment (Amendment 6) that would allow for the state to go over the heads of local school boards to create charter schools.
Opponents of this amendment, led by local schools boards and progressive leaders, point out that this would drain money from public schools and remove local control from communities.Ai??Even Georgia’s Republican Schools Superintendent John Barge agrees with this argument and opposes the amendment.
But proponents of rapidly expanding, privately-managed charter schools have always countered that these schools are indeed part of the public system.
Yet a look at the finances of those campaigning for the approval of Amendment 6 shows that their push is being bankrolled largely by out of state for-profit corporations.
The deceptively named pro-charter group “Families for Better Public Schools” (FBPS) filed its financial disclosures with the state ethics commission on Thursday. Here’s a rundown of the corporations who are financing the group:
- Edison Learning Inc.: This for-profit education management corporation based in Tennessee gave $2,000 to the group.
- National Heritage Academies:Ai??This Michigan-basedAi??for-profit company that manages charter schools gave $25,000 to FPBS. Its chief executive J.C. Huizenga gave another $25,000.
- Charter Schools USA: Based in Florida, Charter Schools USA, which bills itself as “oldest, largest and fastest-growingAi??education management companies” in America, gave $50,000 to FPBS.
- K12 Inc.:Ai??K12 Inc. is a massive online education company. It donated $100,000 to FPBS.
The single biggest donation came from Alice Walton, a Wal-Mart heir. She gave a quarter million dollars to FPBS.
As Georgia voters prepare to go to the polls this November, they will be barraged by pro-charter schoolAi??propaganda. They should know that this campaign isn’t being funded by allies of public schools, but rather for-profit education companies looking for their slice of the pie.
The stupidity of Americas taxpayers is astounding, in that they’ll denounce healthcare that supports all citizens, yet dive headlong into a proposal that will destroy the public education system as we know it. What REALLY pisses me off is that this isn’t just a GOP partisan agenda; it’s supported by Michelle Rhee and Rahm Emanuel, to name a couple of notable democrats.
Rhee-ject and Rahmpulstiltskin are democrats in name only. Do not be fooled by party affiliation, look at policy positions first and foremost. The attack on public education is driven by profiteers who have purchased the politicians on both sides of the aisle who never worked for you in the first place in spite of the fact that you voted for them. Get schooled at http://www.parentsacrossamerica.org
How is this scheme suoppsed to benefit rural school districts like mine, which have no nearby private schools and no public transportation? I keep saying Greene County is Pennsylvania’s third world and official sacrifice zone.
Just another attempt to ruin public education. If charter schools want to operate then take away ALL PUBLIC FUNDING. In many places public schools have to subsidize charter schools. Chareter schools must be self-funded. Also, it seems charter schools are not subject or wouldn’t be to state laws and standards especially, teachers, as public schools are. Charter school super-rich owners are hard at buying politicians to get their way.
I believe in public education. Unfortunately there are too many groups who deliberately look for the loopholes so they can drain funds intended to support free public education. I’ve also heard that the money they drain is not well represented in the education you pay for as children are not achieving in the for profit schools any better than in public schools. The only (possibly good) thing I’ve been able to determine is the K12 provides a way to get some education for kids who are subject to too much bullying in regular school or just cannot deal with the necessary structure. Or for parents who feel the need to micromanage their childrens lives including school.
Georgia should know that charter school students DO NOT have the same constitutional rights as public school students. Also see the follow up story on this post at the same site. http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/charter-schools-are-public-private-neither-both/
I, too, believe the Public School idea is still valid. However, public education has many problems in America and needs fixing. I AM against those Charter Schools which are being financially supported by corporations which interfere with curriculums to advantage themselves. These Charter schools are thus part of the corporate propaganda network that has engulfed television, radio, newspapers and magazines, and is desperately trying to control the internet. But all public schools should adopt those strategies from Charter schools that benefit students and will ultimately benefit society.
One factor with many “successful” Charter schools, such as the original ones founded by Feinberg and Levin, is the demand for commitment. Both parents and students in KIP schools must agree to support and work through the programs respectively. No matter how competent and effective any teacher may be, learning will NOT occur without the cooperation of the student. No teacher can “open the pupil’s head and pour in knowledge.” Each student must do the actual learning, which is why commitment from students is essential, and why holding ONLY teachers accountable for their students’ performances is an injustice. Commitment is demanded in KIP schools because many operate for longer daily hours and continue year-round. I have noticed that most students where I live (Kentucky) attend public school for little more than half a day; by 2:00 P.M. all of them are home or are in after-school care situations. Strangely, in the Fifties, the elementary school I attended started at 7:00 A.M. and ended at 4:00 P.M. I arrived home from high school at around 6:00 P.M. each day. Why were school days shortened? Two or three months of summer vacation has not made sense since the American population shifted from rural to urban. It would be much more logical to divide the school year into quarters of twelve weeks each and give students one week vacations between the quarters. That would be ample time for students to have a break but would not allow them enough idleness to become bored. A corollary benefit to lengthening daily school hours would be to eliminate the need for so much after-school supervision that costs working parents money, time and inconvenience to arrange. One-week school vacations would also be easier to accommodate than two or three months. Yes, such schedules would require deeper commitments from teachers because it will cost them time and efforts. Don’t we want dedicated teachers and quality education for our children? Commitment from everyone involved is what it takes.
It has often been suggested that better teachers create better schools. To a certain extent, this is true. But how does one get better teachers? Not by salaries alone. I confess I had some genuinely excellent teachers, some mediocre teachers, and a few rather poor teachers as I moved through school. I still remember my first grade teacher fondly; she was a brilliant woman from Massachusetts, who was very patient and taught me to speak English. (I grew up in an ethnic neighborhood where the community spoke a German-English mix.) In the Fifties and Sixties, teachers were paid barely livable salaries by the standards of today and yet most of them were dedicated, conscientious, and reasonably successful at imparting knowledge and skills. When my daughter began school in the Eighties, teachers earned much better salaries but seemed less able to teach whichever school she attended. I had to supplement her education to keep her learning and developing until finally she reached college. While earning my own baccalaureate in education during the Eighties, I discovered that training for teaching emphasized methodology over content in its curriculum. We teaching candidates were required to have twice as many credits in methodology courses than we were in the subject courses we would be teaching. These methodology courses repeated the same material over and over. Behind this was the idea that having these teaching “skills” would empower teachers to teach any subject, even ones in which he or she was not particularly knowledgeable. But teaching is communication and no one can communicate that which she or he fails to understand. To form better teachers, programs in education need to require more content courses and less methodology courses so that these teacher possess the appropriate knowledge.
Another reason for success in non-corporate Charter schools is that they sometimes employ as teachers people who are very knowledgeable but may not have degrees in education. Physicists teach physics, musicians teach music, historians teach history, writers teach English. These individuals have the knowledge to teach their subjects. Another reason for success is that some administrators give teachers more autonomy and permit more innovations in teaching techniques. While learning differences among students were discussed in my education classes, innovations in methodology to accommodate those students’ differences were not really encouraged. I tried innovations anyway and was reprimanded every time by administrations, which brings up the curious rule of “last in, first out.” Whether or not a particular teacher has been effective, if he or she were the last one hired, then she or he is the first one fired. If quality education is desired, then effective teachers need to be kept and ineffective ones discharged. Of course, Charter schools often do pay better salaries and that, too, is a factor for keeping competent people.
Every public school needs adequate funding because every student deserves education, not merely socialization, to achieve his/her human potential. Schools located in wealthy neighborhoods should not receive more funding from property taxes than schools in slums. Rather, funding to each school needs to be allotted on an enrollment basis with an equal share per student. Say, at the kindergarten level, maybe a flat sum of $5,000 per each child enrolled each year; at the elementary level, maybe $10,000 per each student enrolled each year; at the middle school level, say $15,000 per each student enrolled each year; at the secondary level, $30,000 per each student enrolled each year; at college level, $60,000 per each student enrolled each year. (My amounts are probably not adequate, but the principle should be equality per student with increases as the level of education becomes higher.) Such funding should be divided among local, state, and federal sources because SOCIETY reaps the benefits of having skilled and educated individuals. For example, with my $5,000 per kindergarten child, $1,000 could be furnished by city or county governments, another $1,000 from state government, and $3,000 from federal.
Furthermore, public school needs to become free of costs to individuals from early childhood education through college and graduate schools for EVERYONE in order to produce the kind of skills and expertise to meet the demands of the future. We CURRENTLY no longer live in a culture that requires a large number of unskilled laborers. Most available “jobs” demand technical skills and/or professional degrees. By making individuals or parents pay the costs of post-secondary school, government is again privileging the wealthy elite over the majority of its population and LOSING talent and potential that could fill those technical/professional positions. Kindergarten should begin at age 3 and continue until age 6. The reason it should begin so early is because numerous scientific studies have shown that the human brain is hardwired to RAPIDLY learn skills, especially language skills, between 3 and 6 years. Here is a window of time when much learning is easier than it becomes later, and schools ought to exploit this for every child born. Programs like Headstart work well because of this window, but early childhood learning should not be privileged to only the disadvantaged. I began teaching my own daughter the alphabet at fifteen months of age; when she went to Kinder Kollege at age 3, she astounded the owner of that daycare by being able to read a book on her own; at age 7 she could understand Shakespeare, and today she has two Master’s degrees. A high school diploma is no longer sufficient to get a real job in any field. One has to have technical or professional training, which is why free public education needs to continue through technical schools and colleges. But right now, most parents and/or most students cannot afford post-secondary education. Those who still strive for an education after high school and have not given up their ambitions must take out enormous loans to supplement any grants or scholarships they are awarded, ending up after graduation with debtloads perhaps in the hundred thousands of dollars, which will require their lifetimes to pay back, provided they find employment.
At this point, you must be asking, who should pay for educational opportunities through graduate school? EVERYONE! As I mentioned earlier, society as a whole benefits from having an educated and skilled population, not just the individuals who receive that education. If our taxation system were reformed, we would not only have enough money to pay for such educational opportunities, we would have enough to pay off the deficit! It is ridiculous that millionaires and billionaires either pay no taxes owing to loopholes and exemptions or pay pittances when everyone else pays the rest to run the government. It is even more ridiculous that Exxon and other corporations which made billions in profits every quarter received refunds on their taxes from the government. And some members of Congress want to “lower” the tax rates on the rich and corporations even further? This is outrageous! First of all, ALL corporate profits without any exemptions should pay taxes at a minimum of 50%, which is similar to what corporations paid in the Fifties, when America was most prosperous. In other words, if a corporation or a business of whatever kind makes $500,000 as profit in a year, $250,000 should be paid to the government as taxes. Individual income tax ought to be a straight 10% across the board. So, if an individual’s income in a year equals $1,000,000, then tax for that year (no exemptions) would be $100,000; if the individual’s income were $200,000, tax would be $20,000; my income for last year was around $29,000, so under this scheme my tax would have been $2,900; if the individual works at fast-food and makes only $3,000, the tax would be $300. This scheme WOULD work and would be simpler to figure. Of course, exemptions for anything would need to be eliminated and no refunds would be paid to anyone. Income tax could still be deducted from individuals’ paychecks. Non-profits should only be exempt from taxation if they are truly non-profit; by that I mean, if all their donations are directed towards activities and they are staffed by volunteers, then these non-profits should not be levied with taxes. However, if so-called non-profits, including churches, pay salaries to keep the organization running, then they should pay taxes like corporations and businesses on their fundraising.
But the first step towards improvement of education is to define what it really is and what goals it should achieve. In all cultures from before Sumer through our own, teaching has had two opposing goals to balance: socializing individuals into their cultures and thus preserving those cultures AND stimulating individuals into creating innovations to improve cultures, which simultaneously destroys those cultures. Socialization is the process of inducing conformity with its virtues of obedience and righteousness, with its tactics of categorization and repetition, with its rewards of belonging and safety. Education is a more difficult process of inspiring creativity by permitting ambiguity and freedom, by using analysis and imagination, by accepting risks and failures. It is easier for both teachers and students to be better at socialization, and most schools weigh their efforts heavily on that side of the scale. However, educated minds adapt better to changing situations.
Standardized tests only measure degrees of socialization WHEN they are effective, not of education, since there are patent answers. Essays or problem-solving projects are better at measuring levels of critical analysis, but therein comes the risk of evaluator bias. As a seventh grade teacher in Knoxville, I tried to institute a new method of evaluating student progress. I called it QQII and explained the system to my students on the first day of classes. The acronym stood for Quantity/Quality/Initiative/Improvement. Final grades at any point would be an average of the four component grades. Quantity naturally referred to how much productivity any student contributed — was work done on time or late, was there participation in class activities? Quality referred to how well each assignment was completed — error-free, originality, imagination, style, et al. Because students function at different speeds in any class, I constructed an alcove in my room where extra-credit work could be done; these above-and-beyond assigned projects completed at students’ own initiative were counted as separate grades. Marks for improvement were given by comparing the current work with the immediately previous work. Midway through each grading period, I set up conferences with each of my students and discussed how he or she could improve and progress. (By the way, this latter practice got me fired because our principal explained that teacher-student conferences were not the norm at her school.) My point, however, is that evaluation of any person’s intellectual development is tricky business that cannot be accurately measured by standardized tests. Thus, to gauge students’ and teachers’ abilities by them and to allot or withhold funds from schools on their basis by government is utter farce.