Slashdot Mirror
25% of Charter Schools Owe Their Soul To the Walmart Store
theodp writes "Among the billionaires who helped Bill Gates pave the way for charter schools in WA was Walmart heiress Alice Walton. The Walton Family Foundation spent a whopping $158+ million in 2012 on what it calls 'systemic K-12 education reform,' which included $60,920,186 to 'shape public policy' and $652,209 on 'research and evaluation.' Confirming the LA Times' speculation about its influence, the Walton Foundation issued a press release Wednesday boasting it's the largest private funder of charter school 'startups,' adding that it has supported the opening of 1 in 4 charter schools in the U.S. since 1997 through its 1,500 'investments.' But as some charter school kids have learned the hard way, what the rich man giveth, he can also taketh away. For the time being, though, it looks like America's going to continue to depend on the tax-free kindness of wealthy strangers to educate its kids. For example, while it was nice to see the value of Shop Class recognized, the White House on Monday called on businesses, foundations and philanthropists to fund proposed 'Maker Spaces' in schools and libraries. Hey, when the U.S. Secretary of Education turns to corporate sponsors and auctions to fund his Mother's afterschool program for kids of low-income families in the President's hometown, don't look for things to change anytime soon."
Due to a technicality Alice was let off of on a DUI charge just recently. Maybe she should spend some of her $27 Billion on Drug and Alcohol education in the schools instead?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I have come to the conclusion that the charter school movement was conceived in sin. born in corruption and is too full of conmen and grifters to give it any support.
There may be some decent, honest people trying to make things better in the movement, but it is not the way to bet.
$60,920,186 to 'shape public policy'...
AKA lobbying. What won't a politician do for money?
I'll bet they'll teach advanced shelf stacking techniques, door greeting, making do on low pay, turning your back on further education. etc. Walmart/Walton Foundation is NOT a charitable institution. Everything they do is profit through exploitation.
Good parenting means not letting your public schools become shit and not letting corporations take over your education system via backdoor like this.
Yes. It's called slashdot. You're stinking it up with your "beta beta blah blah blah" bullshit. Take it to the farmers for composting or something.
Maybe schools should raise some more corporate-sponsored cash by doing product placements. For example, it would be easy to monetize homework assignments:
1a. Juan is planning a picnic. He buys packages of Sara Lee® brand 100% Wheat Home Style® Hot Dog Buns which each contain eight buns. He also buys packages of Osar Mayer® Jumbo Deluxe All-Beef Franks®, which each contain 10 wieners. What is the minimum number of Hot Dogs Juan needs to buy so that there are no unmatched buns or wieners?
1b. Juan plans to put 1/2 ounce of Heinz® Sweet Dill® Relish on each hot dog. How many 12-oz jars of relish does he need to buy? What brand of mustard would best complement the relish: (a) Heinz® Classic Yellow Hot Dog® Mustard (b) some other non-specific mustard?
1c. Extra credit: Juan asks his friend Latoya to buy ketchup for his picnic. List three benefits Latoya would receive if she bought genuine Heinz® Classic® Ketchup instead of the discount store brand. Explain how sometimes what appears to be the least expensive choice isn't the greatest value overall.
It's quite simple really when you distance yourself from the whole thing, like those of us not in that country can do.
Step one: buy out all mass media. Advertise that government is bad and capitalism is good.
Step two: use aforementioned propaganda as a tool to get tax breaks.
Step three: use part of the funds gathered through tax breaks to show the masses that are getting poorer how good corporations are, reinforcing point one.
Step four: repeat step two.
Step five: repeat step three.
Every even step after one: profits increase.
Every odd step after one: chance of revolt against corporate agenda decreases and push for step mentioned above increases from public direction towards the government.
It's a brilliant construct, built to self-accelerate profit generation and increase fund transfer from public to private interests.
My children go to a charter school and they are getting a far better education than they would at the failing local schools. My wife and I are both involved in the school and we both have a teaching background (I taught engineering at the college level for 4 years and my wife was a preschool teacher for 11 years, both sets of grandparents also taught public school for 20+ years). The teachers and organization of the charter school is light years beyond the local public school in delivering an effective learning experience for the kids. There are always a few bad apples, but anyone who tells you that charter schools as a whole are not far better than public schools is a liar in the tank for the teachers union or someone who has been brainwashed by their propaganda.
The money that charter schools get from the taxes that we pay is a pittance compared to what the pathetic, failing state run public schools get. If we don't want charities funding charter schools maybe we should ban teachers unions and give parents vouchers that they can take to any school that is accredited. Let's also institute a ranking system based on the learning the students actually do so even the laziest parents can pick winner schools. That way charter schools won't have to beg for funding and will be on an even footing with public schools; the problem is the teachers unions don't want that because they know that inside of 10 years all of the public schools would be gone along with their power, massive union dues and a huge fundraising/advertising arm of the Democrat party. The bottom line is the teachers unions exist only to further their own power and enrich the teachers, regardless of how well they teach. Until we break those unions, our children's education will always be second place on the political landscape.
They tried vouchers in DC and it has been an unmitigated success which is now trying to be shut down because the unions are scared spit-less that it will spread to other states.
That was indeed the double meaning. Thank you for spelling it out for everyone.
Fact is though, the beta protest movement has its place. And its not in the other discussions. Even a good cause can lose a lot of support if most ardent supporters start to trash everything, rather than focusing their protests on the issue.
It should be called SlashWhiners.
Incessant whining about everything. It's like all the adults have been banished on only 5th graders are posting.
No.
Good parenting means taking _complete responsibility_ for your childs education. If your public school is awesome, great - but that only goes a little way. The culture, values, education, and effort/commitment of the parents has always been the number one predictor of a childs future academic success. Public schools are also limited in what they are allowed to teach your child - forced to comply with what is polically correct, what politicians and businesses have managed to redefine the subjects and ideas to study as, and what the local/state/federal government have compromised as the textbooks and teachers that your kid will interact with. These are usually far from the best choice which you learn about in great detail if you go and investigate on your own and then put together your own educational plan which you implement via home schooling, careful selection of private schools, or selective hiring of tutors.
Having kids was never supposed to be about the state taking over most of the responsibility for education, or for being a gloried childcare center because both parents work, or something that could be handled without careful planning and ensuring one had the necessary resources ahead of time. Politicians and the public can talk all they want about improving public schools and overall childhood education, but the further responsibility and teaching moves away from responsibile active parents - the worse the result will always be. We've had a 100 year slide away from families and responsibile parenting and nothing is going to be fixed in education until we reverse it.
Eh, the public high school I went to was pretty good, certainly produced many good graduates that are doing well now. NW suburbs of Chicago. Many parents even sent their kids to the public school instead of the rather prestigious catholic school nearby.
That's not all Alice has done. My wife and I recently spent a few days at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a world class museum in Bentonville, Arkansas created by Alice Walton, and had an incredible experience. "Located on 120 acres of native Ozark forest, Crystal Bridges' grounds invite visitors to enjoy the natural environment as a continuation of their museum experience. The Museum's distinctive architecture immerses visitors in the landscape, while three miles of nature trails encourage exploration and reflection." And admission is free.
"tax-free kindness of wealthy strangers"
Why do some feel that charitable contributions should be taxed? Say someone makes a billion dollars this year and gives away that billion dollars to feed the hungry or buy clothes for the poor... that should be it. If the government takes half a billion off the top, that is half a billion less for those hungry and poor.
It's the same as giving someone a welfare check and then taxing half of it. Suggesting that would be considered preposterous by the same people who want to tax the hell out of the charitable contributions.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Many many decades ago, I went to a charter school for k-6th grade. The school had to allow everyone in the area as part of its opening up in a richer suburb. I lived along the border and was included in the school map. School had computers while only the jr high and high schools. My parents could have never afforded to to send me to a private school with lower population sizes and computers. I was lucky. And being a poor rowdy kid, they never kicked me out. Lucky that's where I got my introduction into computers.
Only thing I'd like to see is smaller classes, and charter schools on average have higher. This is supposedly with them kicking poor performing kids out. But charter schools differ so much, there is no "standard" model used. I think we can all agree smaller classrooms with more individual help is what schools should have, but thats gets very expensive. I'd rather take all those billions of dollars in state taxes on alcohol and marijuana taxes go to directly fund schools instead...
There's always usenet.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sounds like a horribly inefficient allocation of resources. Even wolves spread teaching amongst the pack.
Or educated by Alice to have the mathematical skills needed to accept a job with such low pay that you need to go on food stamps.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It looks like US education is moving towards a more efficient and profitable business model. Too bad learning outcomes aren't profitable.
Next, the corporations will lobby to de-couple learning outcomes from awarding funding to privatised schools. It might work well for the school-to-prison pipeline; lots of profit to be had from funnelling children into correctional facilities.
Do you have a child in a failing school? Have you spent time time talking to clueless administrators? One of them told me "it was against state law" to teach the multiplication tables. They won't teach fractions except for 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4. That is unfortunate because you don't get to pick your fractions in algebra. One of the (first grade) teachers directly criticized my wife for not speaking more to my son in Spanish. The kindergarten teacher said he "didn't want parents in the classroom". The public school principal spoke with me in very thinly disguised contempt.
I could either run for school district or send my son to a charter school. When we asked about math, the principal of the charter school said, "Oh, so that is why none of the fifth graders who come from the school district can't do math."
So no, my presence, my ideas, my concerns were not welcome at the public school. Your theories fail the actual children in the schools. I like choice. What does it matter that a "corporation" does it rather than the school district? If you don't like charter schools, then don't send your children to one. If enough people don't like them, they will close.
These charter-school folks have a long-term agenda, and that is the conversion of public education from a public service to a fully privatized profit center, with the added perk of eliminating teachers unions as a political force. A key factor in achieving this is that wealth inequality has become so extreme that local governments no longer have the resources to educate the nation's children, but billionaires do. Can parents and boards of education afford to say "no" when, in the face of decaying buildings and teacher layoffs, big-time donors come offering modern, well-staffed facilities, with all the latest IT and other equipment, if only you let the donors do it their way? Once the public school system is reduced to being merely a dumping ground for the worst, most disruptive and unresponsive students, the donors won't have to be so generous, they'll be making handsome profits as the contractors in a privatized fee-for-service education system. It's just like the 1990s when deep-pocketed for-profit HMOs offered healthcare at below-market rates. Once all the nonprofit hospitals and insurers were driven out of business, the for-profits jacked up premiums at double-digit rates for decades. It was a brilliant strategy, and it's happening all over again, in education.
And good statecraft means making sure the population is well educated. Be it through strong public schools or making sure parents have the time, energy, and resources to educate their children themselves.
Taking an interest in your kids is now an "inefficient allocation of resources"?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Public school teachers are all well and good, but from the Parent perspective (who has the strongest interest in the education of their child):
* The parent has no control over which specialist/teacher is chosen. In fact, in many school districts, the assignment of students to classes isn't known until 5pm on the Friday before the first week of school. This just hammers in that the child will be forced to attend the school assigned classroom regardless of the parent's interests or concerns about the teacher.
* The parent has little to no control over what is taught in the class - and has little ability to protest or take their child out if they find some material offensive or inappropriate.
* The school sets the emphasis on the various subjects, which might be completely opposite of what the parent believes is correct for his child.
* Even if a parent is willing to work with the child when he comes home from school on those areas he/she wants to emphasize or reinforce, typically the child will have other conflicting homework or be worn out - simply lose his creativity after attending public school for many years.
* Sometimes the parent believes the teacher/school is actually teaching wrong information, or the child is being exposed to bad influences/culture - How much time does the parent spend every week deprogramming their child when he/she could have been teaching/reinforcing instead?
Taking active direct control of the childs education by reading up, becoming familiar with educational topics and curriculums, which books are good/bad, what teaching philosophies work/etc and then choosing the right educational venue (public, private, tutor, home school, coop) would seem to be a better approach.
But honestly, a lot of parents are afraid of homeschooling because they think they couldn't stand being around their child all day or that they just can't teach effectively....or that the child is somehow losing out. For grades K-8, it honest is not that difficult and with a larger family and some careful planning there is no issue with socialization. And just 2-4hrs/day of direct 1-on-1, or 1-2 education time between a parent and child easily matches or surpases what a child learns by being one out of 30 students during 5-7hrs of public school. All home schooling really requires is an educated parent with a reasonable amount of time, modest resources, and the drive/commitment to make it work. As for specialists, I'm currently home schooling my 3rd and 5th graders and will consider exposing them to community colleges professors or dedicated online classes when they get to high school for those subjects that need substantial expertise.
Charter schools get their money from the public school system. The Waltons are giving money, not to open schools, but to "convince" politicians that what their failing school districts really need is to open a charter school and wind up giving even LESS money to the failing public schools. And if that didn't work, open a second or third charter school. And if the charter schools are failing, deploy the lobbyists to convince the politicians that it shouldn't be closed. (One charter school by us missed their self-reported goals for 6 years. When they were threatened with a shut down, the lobbyists were deployed and they were given another year. The next year, they missed their goals again and were finally shut down, though not without a fight.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I think you have that backwards... in most public schools with a union, it's virtually impossible to fire a tenured teacher... while simply violating school district policy can get you expelled without any conviction.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Good statehood means formatting the populace to a defined set of memes and ways of thinking. Can you imagine if everyone actually took responsibility for their own thinking? It would be anarchy! People would actually give a shit because they would understand how things work instead of just delegating power to others and doing what they were told. People would demand transparency. People would demand democracy.
It sounds like that would be a good thing... but I challenge anyone to show me a truly educated society of any more than a few thousand - any more and it just gets unworkable. Society is global today and that makes it completely impossible.
Some of the public school systems right nearby Bill G. already have something of an alternative to private charter schools.
http://www.lwsd.org/schools/Ch...
So not sure why they have to push so hard to get private charter schools stood up.
Admission is by lottery, which is just as self-selecting for motivated parents as charter schools... that is to say, you will probably get into one of them if you bother to apply. Once in, you're expected to put in so many hours of community service (both students and parents), as well as make a "voluntary" donation of $200 per year (as a public school, they can't really mandate collection).
The schools themselves tend to be small and very tightly-knit. They're usually run entirely by a handful of "star" teachers with free reign over the curriculum and virtually no administration... they usually share a principal from the nearest conventional school. The real "scam" is some legal loophole that allows these schools to be built with none of the extra facilities - usually when school campuses are constructed, they need a certain minimum allotment of athletic fields, gyms, cafeterias, multipurpose rooms, etc. While some of these choice schools have such things, the majority of them are just a handful of classrooms - so funds are purely focused on academics (kids can still participate in sports and activities at their local conventional school). The other scam is no school busses; parents have to drive the kids there themselves, though a lot of them carpool and the kids also get public bus passes.
So it's actually not all that much different than what you describe. Most of them have themes (art/theater , environmentalism, politics, foreign language / history, STEM, etc.). The big complaint is that there aren't more of them, which is funny because they appear to be much cheaper to run than most typical school campuses and draw on a lot of parent involvement.
But to make that money, they have to prove to the kids' parents that they provide value for that money, i.e., good education. There's no such requirement for public schools, so they can provide the bare minimum education because they have no competition. Yet another example where capitalism trumps communism.
Whereas private schools exist solely for the benefit of the kids, and have no need to make money or pay employees?
Why can't they do both? They already do seem to be doing a better job at both.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
It seems that whenever a discussion/argument about occurs, whether it be about charter vs. public or whatever, the conversation almost always comes down to good teacher / bad teacher. There are then anecdotes about their personal experiences in school and that sets the stage for all the commentary afterwards. To begin, each person's experience is unique. Each person had one school experience, in one place, and at one time. This is equivalent to having taken one flight to one place, once and being qualified enough to tell all the other pilots how to fly airplanes. If you say to a person, “Since you know so much, why not become a teacher and show us how to do it right.” That same person will demure, “No, I couldn't be a teacher. I couldn't deal with a classroom of kids all day long. It would be too stressful.” No where did this person mention, charter vs. public, what they were teaching, or anything else outside of dealing with students. Deep down, people know that it boils down to a classroom full of unruly children and the stresses of all the “outside” experts telling you how you should do your job. They are right. If you can't handle the stress, you shouldn't be there. Moreover, you shouldn't make judgments about the people who are. In my experience, there are two basic kinds of teachers. There are those that had a pleasant educational experience. They graduated, went to college, got certified, and began teaching. This is the only career they really ever had or experienced. They got a rude awakening once they entered the classroom. The other kind had a career first. They did this for years, then started a new career in teaching. These teachers have a more realistic view about what these kids are going to face after they get out of school. In both cases, these teachers have the understanding that all the problems in societies boil down to hate, bigotry, greed, and poverty. Mostly, societies act this way out of ignorance and fear of the unknown. The only effective way to make the world a better place is to make the unknown, known. What better place to start than with the young? Teachers, for the most part, are interested in promoting social justice. Unless, something ruins them. Teachers are like cops. Teachers usually have teacher friends. It is the only people they deal with every day except kids. Just like cops and criminals, who else would understand your life? Who else could you talk to? Certainly, not parents. They are only interested in their “little Tommy”. They could care less about any other child. Like all institutions, schools contain many different kinds of jobs, each with their own agenda. So among staff, there is a lot of political intrigue. Whether a school is concerned with satisfying a state's needs for accountability or satisfying a charter's income needs, the politics is the same. The only difference is the cause. The public thinks that teachers get a 3 month vacation every year with pay. The reality is that teachers are only paid for 9 months work and laid off for 3 months. Only, their paychecks are spread throughout the year. The public also thinks those 3 months are a vacation. Many teachers work summer schools, take courses to keep their certifications, or take summer jobs. In any case, they are not “having fun” taking time off. Many teachers plan lessons during the summers, because what they teach and how they teach is constantly being directed and changed by outside forces every year. Pedagogy, the practice of teaching, is both an art and a craft and have to be constantly tweaked to improve practice on an ever-shifting sand, of politics, policies, and educational standards or reform. Teachers do not have as many rights as other people. They are basically public figures without the fame. Anything you say, write, or do publicly could be a career ender even if it is perfectly legal. If a teacher were to promote gay marriage, legalization of cannabis, be caught publicly smoking cigarettes or drinking, that could end their jobs. The
Strange how I live in a country where private schools are all but unheard of, and quality of our public schools is far greater than that of private schools across the US.
How soon should we expect them to become shit, existing only for the benefit of the government and teachers? They're only gone the way they are for about 40 years as far as I know, and they've been fairly steadily improving over at least thirty of those.
Another generation. Two at the most. Basically as soon as your power elite figure out that a stupid, compliant and ignorant society is easier to 'handle'.