Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools

by Diane Ravitch

  But consider the contrast between the Rocketship charter model and the schools that the high-technology experts choose for their own children. Three-quarters of the students at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula in Los Altos, California, the heart of Silicon Valley, are children of top executives at Google, eBay, Apple, Yahoo!, and other giants of the industry. The Waldorf School has no computers at all; it emphasizes physical activity and creative, hands-on projects.38

  The connoisseurs of technology know that it has a place in education. But they don’t want a Model T education for their children.

  To date, charter schools have not fulfilled the hope that they would produce superior academic results. There is wide variation among charter schools just as there is wide variation among public schools. Most studies conclude that on average the scores are no different if charter schools and public schools enroll the same kinds of students. No generalization is true for all charter schools. Some charters are excellent schools by any measure. Some charters have unusually high scores because they accept students only in kindergarten or first grade, or only in fifth grade; over time, the weakest students tend to leave, because the school’s academic or behavioral demands are too high. Some charters with high test scores have a series of admissions hurdles, like the Philadelphia charter school that “required applicants to complete an 11-page application, write an essay, respond to 20 short-answer questions, provide three recommendations, be interviewed, and provide records related to their disciplinary history, citizenship and disability status.” Or the Philadelphia charter school that accepted applications for admission only one day of the year, available only on the premises of a private golf club in the suburbs.39

  Some charter schools have disproportionately small numbers of students with disabilities. These students are expensive to educate and, depending on their disability, may lower a school’s test scores. In 2012, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report concluding that while 11 percent of students in the nation have disabilities, charter schools enroll only 8 percent.40 The GAO report may have underestimated the underenrollment of special education students in charters; most charters are concentrated in urban districts, where the proportion of students with disabilities is significantly higher than 11 percent. Most charters refuse students with severe disabilities; in Minneapolis, a Gulen-related charter school took control of an existing public school and asked forty autistic students to leave. In 2010, civil rights lawyers representing students with disabilities filed a class action lawsuit in federal court against education officials in New Orleans and the state of Louisiana, complaining that charter schools discriminated against them.41

  To be sure, there are good community-based charter schools that do not skim the easiest-to-educate students and do not “counsel out” the students they don’t want. Some are trying to fulfill the original vision of schools that fill a niche, doing something that public schools can’t do or can’t do well. Some are run by teachers or others seeking a refuge from the overscripted, hyper-regulated, and overtested public schools. Such schools do not trumpet their superiority over the public schools. In the current climate of competition for market share, however, the aggressive and entrepreneurial charter chains are driving the growth of the charter sector.

  Corporate reformers believe that charters are the answer to the problems of urban education. In city after city, corporate leaders and their allies promote charter schools, promising academic success. As charter schools open, enrollments in public schools decline; then corporate reformers close public schools because of declining enrollments. In Chicago, dozens of public schools were closed in the first decade of the twenty-first century and large numbers of charter schools opened. In 2013, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel decided to close another fifty-four public schools, the largest mass closing of public schools in the history of the United States. In Cleveland, the mayor devised a plan to replace many public schools with charter schools, even though charter schools in Ohio perform worse than public schools. In Philadelphia, a major local foundation hired a management consulting firm—the Boston Consulting Group—to write a report on the public school system (which has been under state control for many years); the consultants recommended privatizing numerous public schools. The report did not note that Philadelphia had tried a privatization experiment a decade earlier, which had failed, or that many of the city’s charter schools had been under federal investigation. In Indianapolis, a corporate reform group called the Mind Trust recommended expanding the charter sector to cure the ills of that city’s educational system. In Memphis, where the public schools were merging with those of the county, a planning commission recommended swift expansion of the charter sector from 4 percent to 19 percent of the city’s pupils. In Michigan, the state put emergency managers in charge of two small school districts—Highland Park and Muskegon Heights—that were operating in deficit; both districts are predominantly African American. The emergency managers’ solution was to dissolve the public school system in both districts and turn the students over to for-profit charter operators. In Detroit, the city’s emergency manager devised a plan to eliminate large numbers of public schools and open more charters. In city after city, district after district, the answer to fiscal distress and low academic performance has been privatization, despite the absence of any evidence that corporate managers would either produce savings or provide better education. Rather than making thoughtful and sustained efforts to improve public schools, the corporate reform leadership has responded by closing public schools and replacing them with charter schools.

  The opening of charter schools has had a particularly devastating effect on urban Catholic schools. Parochial schools were already experiencing financial problems and declining enrollments in response to the movement of many Catholic families to the suburbs and the loss of low-wage religious teachers. With the arrival of charters, the collapse of Catholic school enrollments accelerated. As charters open, mimicking Catholic schools with uniforms and strict discipline, many parents remove their children from Catholic schools, which charge tuition, expecting to find the same values at charter schools, which are free. Despite their admirable record of serving the children of poor and immigrant families, Catholic schools are forced to close their doors as families take their chances on charter schools with no track record or history. Some have suggested that Catholic schools could survive if they turned into charters, but to do so, they would have to abandon their religious identity and cease to be Catholic schools.42

  The charter issue cannot be fully assessed without taking into account the impact of charters on the local public schools. Inglewood, California, was once an iconic district for conservatives, who warmly praised its high test scores despite its high poverty. Inglewood allegedly proved that an ordinary school without extra resources could overcome poverty if it stuck to the basics of phonics and strict discipline. Some wrote about “the Inglewood Miracle.” The Heritage Foundation singled out the district’s Bennett-Kew Elementary School as one of the nation’s very best schools, a school that accepted “no excuses” for low performance. President George W. Bush paid the school a visit. But from 2003 to 2011, the district lost one-third of its eighteen thousand pupils to charter schools, and the model district was a model no longer. Because of the lost enrollment and lost revenue, the district was forced to lay off teachers and custodians and increase class sizes. At the end of 2012, the state took over the Inglewood district, appropriated an emergency loan of $55 million to stave off bankruptcy, and installed an interim administrator to take control of the schools and make deep cuts in spending. Reports on the state takeover of Inglewood noted that “at the heart of the district’s financial demise is an exodus of students that refuses to let up. Despite taking active steps to bring students back—such as the January opening of a sparkling new La Tijera K–8 school—the district lost 900 students last year, many of them to nearby charter schools, leaving it with a total enrollment of about 12,000.”43

/>   In Pennsylvania’s Chester Upland School District, a charter school operated by the governor’s biggest campaign contributor absorbed half the district’s children. The owner of the for-profit corporation that manages the charter school receives nearly $16 million annually in fees for goods and services. The public schools in the district have lost so much funding as a result that they are near bankruptcy and may eventually be forced to close, with their remaining students handed over to private charter corporations. Other districts are in financial trouble. The conservative-dominated legislature in Pennsylvania seems eager to give away fiscally stressed districts to charter managers, whether nonprofit or for-profit, effectively finishing public education in those towns. The charter operators can then cut costs and increase their profits by firing teachers, slashing salaries and benefits, eliminating programs, and increasing class sizes.44

  Albert Shanker’s worst fears have been realized. The charter movement has become a vehicle for privatization of large swaths of public education, ending democratic control of the public schools and transferring them to private management. The charters seek to compete, not to collaborate, with public schools.

  The charter movement began with high hopes in the early 1990s. Charter schools were supposed to enroll the neediest students. But in the era of NCLB, it was dangerous to enroll the students who had a hard time sitting still, those with disabilities, and those who couldn’t speak or read English. They might pull down the school’s test scores. Few charters want the students for whom charters were first invented.

  Charters were supposed to be laboratories for bold innovations, but the most successful charters follow a formula of “no excuses”: strict discipline, eyes on the teacher, walk in a straight line, no deviation from rigid rules and routines. Some of the most successful charters seem determined to reinvent the schoolhouse of a century ago.

  As the charter movement continues to grow, with the unwavering support of the U.S. Department of Education, major foundations, Wall Street, big corporations, think tanks, school choice advocates, and politicians in both parties, important questions are unasked: What is the endgame? Will charter schools contribute to the increasing segregation of American society along lines of race and class? Will the motivated students congregate in charter schools while the unmotivated cluster in what remains of the public schools? Will the concentration of charter schools in urban districts sound a death knell for urban public education? Why do the elites support the increased stratification of American society? If charter schools are not more successful on average than the public schools they replace, what is accomplished by demolishing public education? What is the rationale for authorizing for-profit charters or charter management organizations with high-paid executives, since their profits and high salaries are paid by taxpayers’ dollars?

  The developments of the past two decades have brought about massive changes in the governance of public education, especially in urban districts. Some children have gained; most have not. And the public schools, an essential element in our democracy for many generations, have suffered damage that may be irreparable.

  CHAPTER 17

  Trouble in E-land

  CLAIM Virtual schools will bring the promise of personalized, customized learning to every student and usher in an age of educational excellence for all.

  REALITY Virtual schools are cash cows for their owners but poor substitutes for real teachers and real schools.

  New technologies appear almost daily, and schools are rightly expected to help young people learn to use them. Computers and access to the Internet are nearly ubiquitous, and no one doubts that if used appropriately, these are valuable tools for teaching and learning. Ingenious teachers integrate technology into their lessons and engage young people in science experiments, historical research, and projects of all kinds. Students today can vicariously visit other lands, not just read about them in a textbook. They can see and hear presidents giving their major speeches. They can watch the historical events that changed the world with their own eyes, as if they were there. The possibilities for making learning interactive and lively are limitless, and a new age of teaching and learning is within reach, one where students can learn at their own pace and explore topics far beyond the assignment.

  Yet with all its great potential, technology can never substitute for inspired teaching. Students will respond with greater enthusiasm to a gifted teacher than to a computer with the world’s best software. Electronic technology has its charms, but it can’t compete with the lively interchange of ideas that happens when students discuss a book they read or a math problem they wrestled with or a play they saw or an unsolved mystery in history or the most recent elections. Ultimately, it is imagination, joy, and disciplined inquiry that make education valuable, that distinguish real education from seat time, that constitute the difference between learning and a credential.

  Faced with tightened budgets and the incessant demand for more high-stakes testing, our policy makers have been all too willing to sacrifice such nebulous concepts as imagination, joy, and disciplined inquiry. After all, they can’t be measured, so why should they matter?

  Entrepreneurs look at declining budgets and see an opportunity, not a problem. The biggest cost in education is teachers’ salaries, so they devise online programs, new devices, and new kinds of schools to cut costs by replacing teaching with technology. They see public education as a new business opportunity, an emerging market. For years, equity firms have circled what they call the “education industry” with interest, uncertain how to break in or how to find a niche. After the passage of No Child Left Behind, many entrepreneurs started businesses to offer tutoring and consulting services to districts. Many of these businesses, however, were small-time, able to obtain only a small chunk of the federal revenues for after-school activities or for professional development in one or several districts.

  After the launch of Race to the Top, however, equity investors saw new possibilities for major returns on a statewide or national scale. Now that the federal government was firmly planted on the side of privately managed charter schools, many investors poured millions into the expansion of charter chains. Others saw possibilities in the development of technological resources, hardware, and online curricula for the new national Common Core State Standards. National standards and national assessments created a national marketplace for products. A journalist attended a conference of private equity investors in Manhattan where a consultant predicted that if the Common Core tests turn out to be as rigorous as advertised, “a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They’ll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.” He added, “You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up … It could get really, really big.” Some reformers hoped that the Common Core standards would cause suburban parents to lose faith in their public schools and demand charters, perhaps even vouchers.1

  The biggest pot of gold for business-minded reformers was the for-profit online charter school market. The first to see this opportunity, and to act on it, were the founders of a new company called K12 Inc. The brothers Lowell and Michael Milken and their associate Ron Packard started the company in 2000. Michael Milken was known as the 1980s junk bond king. Since his release from prison, he had become a philanthropist with a particular interest in education. Packard had worked at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. The founders invited the former secretary of education Bill Bennett to serve as chairman of the K12 board. At the time, Bennett was a skeptic about electronic learning; he was co-author of the book The Educated Child, published in 1999, which asserted there was “no good evidence that most uses of computers significantly improve learning.” Given the opportunity to join the Milkens and Packard in this new venture, however, he changed his mind. The investors thought he would be a magnet for conservative Christians and parents
who were schooling their children at home.2

  In 2007, K12 went public and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. K12 soon became the leader of the for-profit online school industry. By 2012, there were more than 200,000 full-time students enrolled in virtual charter schools in the United States. K12 claimed at least 100,000 in twenty-nine states plus the District of Columbia. The next in size was Connections Academy, established in 2001, which enrolled about 40,000 students (it was acquired by the testing publisher Pearson in 2011). Others soon joined the lucrative marketplace. The online charter schools were cash cows. Once they got permission from the state legislature to open an online charter school, they could enroll students from anywhere in the state. They recruited students through the Internet, radio, television, billboards, vans, meetings, and telemarketing. According to an analysis by The New York Times, K12 spent $26.5 million on advertising in 2010, funded with public dollars.3 Some students were homeschoolers who previously received no tuition money from the state. Some were homebound for health or other reasons. Whatever their reason for enrolling in a virtual charter school, the school welcomes them because its revenues rely on growing enrollments.

  The virtual charters receive tuition payments from the state that far exceed their costs. Even though they receive less funding per student than brick-and-mortar schools, they still make handsome profits. Because they have no school buildings, their costs are minimal. They have no custodians, no heating or cooling costs, no libraries, no gyms, no cafeterias, no social workers, no guidance counselors, no playgrounds, no after-school activities, and no transportation costs. In addition, they are able to have a larger “class size,” because one teacher can monitor forty, fifty, a hundred, or more computer screens. And the teachers may or may not be certified. The cost savings are enormous, and the savings go to the schools, not the taxpayers. Even when the virtual school gets less money than the local public school, the business is profitable.