It is no wonder that the Teachers Union donates to and promotes politicians that call for the status quo of our pitiful educational system...that fostered by the federal government. They are competing with Charter Schools and the Charters Schools are WINNING!
Blacks need to learn that the political establishment is NOT THEIR FRIEND! The Democrats are NOT IMPROVING THINGS FOR BLACK PEOPLE. They only want the votes!....and stupid blacks keep giving it to them.
Does black success matter?
.............
The Success Academy schools in general ranked in the top 2 percent in English and in the top 1 percent in math. Hispanic students in these schools reached the "proficient" level in math nearly twice as often as Hispanic students in the regular public schools. Black students in these Success Academy schools reached the "proficient" level more than twice as often as black students in the regular public schools.
What makes this all the more amazing is that these charter schools are typically located in the same ghettos or barrios where other blacks or Hispanics are failing miserably on the same tests. More than that, successful charter schools are often physically housed in the very same buildings as the unsuccessful public schools.
In other words, minority kids from the same neighborhood, going to school in classes across the hall from each other, or on different floors, are scoring far above average and far below average on the same tests.
If black success was considered half as newsworthy as black failures, such facts would be headline news -- and people who have the real interests of black and other minority students at heart would be asking, "Wow! How can we get more kids into these charter schools?"
Many minority parents have already taken notice. More than 43,000 families are on waiting lists to get their children into charter schools. But admission is by lottery, and far more have to be turned away than can be admitted.
Why? Because the teachers' unions are opposed to charter schools -- and they give big bucks to politicians, who in turn put obstacles and restrictions on the expansion of charter schools. These include politicians like New York's "progressive" mayor Bill de Blasio, who poses as a friend of blacks by denigrating the police, standing alongside Al Sharpton.
Growing Evidence that Charter Schools Are Failing
by
Paul Buchheim
'While there's little difference in the overall performance of charter schools and public schools,' explains Buchheit, 'charters are riddled with fraud and identified with a lack of transparency that leads to more fraud.'
In early 2015 Stanford University's updated
CREDO Report concluded that "urban charter schools in the aggregate provide significantly higher levels of annual growth in both math and reading compared to their TPS peers."
This single claim of success has a lot of people believing that charter schools really work. But there are good reasons to be skeptical. First of all, CREDO is
funded and managed by reform advocates. It's part of the
Hoover Institution, a
conservative and pro-business think tank
funded in part by the Walton Foundation, and in partnership with Pearson, a leading developer of standardized testing materials. CREDO director
Margaret Raymond is pro-charter and a free-market advocate.
The 2015 CREDO study received much of its
input, according to a Louisiana
source, from the New Orleans Recovery School District and charter promoter New Schools for New Orleans, who together had "embarked on a bold, five-year journey to standardize, validate and export the New Orleans charter restart model...addressing the problem of failing schools by restarting them with schools operated by charter operators."
Regarding national findings, a review of the CREDO study by the
National Education Policy Center questioned CREDO's statistical methods: for
example, the study excluded public schools that do NOT send students to charters, thus "introducing a bias against the best urban public schools."
Charters Are Underperforming
The inadequacies of charter schools have been confirmed by other recent studies, one of them by
CREDO itself, which found that in comparison to traditional public schools "students in Ohio charter schools perform worse in both reading and mathematics." Another recent
CREDO study of California schools reached mixed results, with charters showing higher scores in reading but lower scores in math.
In a study of Chicago's public schools, the University of
Minnesota Law School determined that "Sadly the charter schools, which on average score lower that the Chicago public schools, have not improved the Chicago school system, but perhaps made it even weaker."
In general, as
concluded by the nonpartisan Spencer Foundation and Public Agenda, "There is very little evidence that charter and traditional public schools differ meaningfully in their average impact on students' standardized test performance." Another report from
Data First, part of the Center for Public Education, stated that "the majority of charter schools do no better or worse than traditional public schools."
But there's a lot of data that leans toward "worse" rather than "better." A
Brookings report showed underperformance in Arizona's charter schools. An
In the Public Interest group found that an analyst for the District of Columbia "could not provide a single instance in which its strategy of transferring a low-performing school to a charter management organization had resulted in academic gains for the students." The Minnesota
Star Tribune reported that "Students in most Minnesota charter schools are failing to hit learning targets and are not achieving adequate academic growth." Over
85 percent of Ohio's charter students were in schools graded D or F in 2012–2013. In the much-heralded New Orleans charter experiment, the
Investigative Fund found that "eight years after Hurricane Katrina...seventy-nine percent of RSD charters are still rated D or F by the Louisiana Department of Education."
Charters Won't Tell Us What They're Doing
Performance aside, charters have other serious issues.
The Nation called them "stunningly opaque...black boxes." Indeed, the federal government has
spent billions on charter development without basic forms of accountability, even for the causes and details of school closings. The charter system is so unregulated that oversight often comes from
whistleblowers who feel disturbed enough, and courageous enough, to report abuses.
The report
Cashing in on Kids notes that the Walton Foundation, one of the biggest charter school supporters, has "supported the unregulated growth of a privatized education industry." The Walton-funded New York Charter School Association, which takes considerable
public money and
advertises itself as "independently-run public schools," refused state audits,
arguing that they were run by boards outside the public domain. Charter operators want the best of both worlds. As
Diane Ravitch explains, "When it is time for funds to be distributed, they want to be considered public schools. But when they are involved in litigation, charter operators insist they are private organizations."
Many Charter Systems Are Mired in Fraud
According to
Integrity in Education, $100 million (ballooning in the past year to
$200 million) in taxpayer money was lost, misused, or wasted in just 15 of the 42 states that have charter schools. The abuses are well
documented. The report states: "Charter operators have used school funds illegally to buy personal luxuries for themselves, support their other businesses, and more."
Mounds of evidence reveal the fraud in states around the country: Schoolchildren defrauded in
Pennsylvania; "out-of-control" charters in
Michigan and Florida; rampant misspending in
Ohio; bribes and kickbacks, also in
Ohio; revenues directed to a for-profit company in
Buffalo, NY; subpoenas for mismanaged charters in
Connecticut.
In
California alone, $100 million in fraud losses are
expected in 2015. The California Charter Schools Association
noted in response that the "charter school sector, authorizers and legislators have come together to put into place real solutions." The solutions were not cited.
In a Nutshell: Charter Schools Are Failing
While there's little difference in the overall performance of charter schools and public schools, charters are riddled with fraud and identified with a lack of transparency that leads to more fraud.
In a Nutshell: Public Education Is Working
The
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has confirmed that math and reading skills have improved for all levels of public school students since the 1970s, with the greatest gains among minority and disadvantaged students. Other
results indicate that our schools achieve even greater success when properly funded.
But the
education reformers, who have a lot of
money but little knowledge of the real world of education, don't want to provide that funding. They frighten America with words from people like
Rupert Murdoch: "The failure rates of our public schools represent a tragic waste of human capital that is making America less competitive."
A better reason for fright is the rapid progress made by the charter school reformers. They want our children to be their human capital.
