charter schools and the attack on public education

8/6/2019 Charter schools and the attack on public education

1/23

Charter schools and the attack on public education

By SARAH KNOPP

In a stock market prospectus uncovered by education author Jonathan Kozol, theMontgomery Securities group explains to Corporate America the lure of privatizingeducation. Kozol writes:The education industry, according to these analysts, represents, in our opinion, thefinal frontier of a number of sectors once under public control that have eithervoluntarily opened or, they note in pointed terms, have been forced to open up toprivate enterprise. Indeed, they write, the education industry represents the largestmarket opportunity since health-care services were privatized during the 1970s.... Fromthe point of view of private profit, one of these analysts enthusiastically observes, TheK12 market is the Big Enchilada.1

The idea that our education system should serve the needs of the free market and even berun by private interests is not new. Those parts of education, wrote the economistAdam Smith in his famous 1776 work, The Wealth of Nations, for the teaching of whichthere are not public institutions, are generally the best-taught.2 More recently, MiltonFriedman introduced the idea of market-driven education in his 1962 book Capitalismand Freedom. With the economic downturn of the early 1970s, Friedmans ultra-right-wing free-market ideas would become guiding principles for the U.S. government and beforced onto states throughout the world. The push toward privatization and deregulation,two of the key tenets of what is known as neoliberalism, havent just privatized formerlypublic services; they have unabashedly channeled public money into private coffers.

Philanthropreneurs,3

corporations, and ideologues are currently using charter schools toaccomplish these goals in education.

Friedman chose as his last battle before dying in 2006 to use his clout to push for theprivatization of New Orleans public schools.4 He advocated for vouchersgovernment-funded certificates permitting parents to send their child to the school of their choicebut those who support his ideas have switched tracks slightly, pushing now for charterschools.

A charter school is any school that is funded publicly but governed by institutions outsidethe public school system. A company, a non-governmental organization, a university, orany group of people who write a charter can become autonomous from a public schoolboard and control the budget, curriculum, and select the group of students in a school.They receive public money, and, in exchange, they set out quantifiable results that theywill achieve. One quarter of charter schools are run by for-profit operators (called EMOs,Educational Management Organizations), but most are run by nonprofit entities (usuallygrouped under CMOs, Charter Management Organizations.)5


2/23

Charter schools take many different formsindependent charter schools, those that areoverseen only by the state board of education, and dependent charter schools, those thatreport directly to the local school board. In both cases there is little oversight. There isalso a difference between freestanding, start-up charters that are created from scratch,and conversions, where a charter operator takes over all (or part) of a previously existing

public school, building and all.

Credit for the concept of charter schools has been given, depending on the source, to RayBudde, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, and Al Shanker, the conservativeleader of the American Federation of Teachers. But the early pioneers of the smallschools movement, which has been transformed to some extent into the chartermovement, were progressives who believedrightlythat bureaucracy and mandateswere harming children. Most of the early small schools were intended to belaboratories that could create best practices and pressure all public schools to adoptthe same. People like Deborah Meier, who helped to create Central Park East Elementary

School in Harlem, believed that they could create better schools by winning a degree ofautonomy from school districts. And in many cases they did. The impulse today to winautonomy from school-district bureaucracy, mind-numbing standardized curriculum, andstifling and militaristic climates is even stronger, since No Child Left Behind legislationhas accelerated these trends.

But many of the original small schools have largely been dismantled. They havecollapsed or been taken apart under the pressure of the enormous weight ofstandardization pushed since No Child Left Behind. Many have also been gobbled up bythe corporate sector.

An important book by Michael and Susan Klonsky, early participants in Chicagos smallschools movement, Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society,tells an important story. The Klonskys, longtime advocates of small and autonomousschools, chronicle in great detail how the concept of autonomywhich the pioneershad hoped would mean democracyturned into privatization when it crashed into theslick and well-funded strategists of the Ownership Society.

The first decentralizing wave of Chicago school reform was decimated by the 1995mayoral takeover that saw many of the leaders of the small schools movement recruitedinto the district administration, charter school organization, or the foundations. Others

were encouraged to become charter school operators themselvesand did. Survivingsmall schools were pressured to give up many of their innovations and conform tostandardized, and even scripted, modes of instruction and assessment.6

Still, because the noble intentions of some of the pioneers of the charter schoolmovement (to create laboratories that prove what all educators know: that creativity,individual attention, and curricular relevance are the roots of good education) took shapeso recently, and because there are some good charter schools, many progressives are


3/23

disoriented in the current climate. Teachers who support the idea of public education,while recognizing the horrible state of some of our schools, arent sure what to do orwhat position to take when their unions fail to oppose charters, or worse, even endorsethem. Some of the best books on the topic, like Keeping the Promise? The Debate OverCharter Schools, published byRethinking Schools, provide a wealth of crucial

information and perspectives for those concerned with education. While it argues thatschool reform cannot be isolated from solving societys larger injustices, it isambivalent about the impact of charter schools: The question facing the charter schoolmovement is whether it will fulfill its founding promise of reform that empowers thepowerless, or whether it will become a vehicle to further enrich the powerful and stratifyour schools.7 Founding promises notwithstanding, an honest look at the balance of forcesinside the charter movement makes a strong case for the latter. In another example, SmallSchools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society ends up supporting thesupposedly pro-union charter school Green Dot.

Liberals who support the idea of charter schools give cover to politicians who championprivatization schemes. One of the main platforms for Barack Obamas presidentialcampaign is support for charter schools. He told Teach for America, I have been a bigfan of public charter schools throughout my career. In the Illinois legislature, I was aleading advocate of public charters and helped pass legislation that authorized Chicago tocreate 15 new charter schools. Ive said before that more resources alone will notimprove our schools.8 In a speech to the National Education Association this summer,Obama made two concrete policy suggestions about educationteacher bonuses basedon students test scores, if the unions approve (merit pay by another name), and anincrease in charter schools. Not surprisingly, Republican presidential candidate John

McCain agreed totally, adding only that any obstacles to the expansion of charters shouldbe wiped away. The candidates both recognize that charter schools can shift the blame forbad schools onto bad management, and can be used to justify the underfunding ofpublic schools. They recognize that the dominant force within the charter schoolmovement is that of corporate and nonprofit entrepreneurs. And so should we.

If we recognize the rapid acceleration of corporate-style charters, and admit thatprogressive forces are dwarfed by the billions of dollars invested in this movement by theprivate sector, we should try to group our forces around a completely different movementwith a different vision rather than trying to recapture the charter movement (if it wereever ours).

Charter schools are, according to Kozol, a bridge toward vouchers:

In the long run, charter schools are being strategically used to pave the way for vouchers.The voucher advocates, who are very powerful and funded by right-wing foundations andfamilies, recognize that the word voucher has been successfully discredited.... Theyhave now shrewdly decided the best way to break down resistance to vouchers is by


4/23

supporting charters, which represents a halfway step in the same direction. One of theintentions of this, by creating selective institutions, usually with extra forms of funding, isto discredit the entire public enterprise in America. We already have the privatization ofthe military, as weve seen with the private military contractors in Iraq; weve seen theprivatization of the prison system. Well, the next step is the privatization of public

schools. Its a matter of ideology. In rare occasions, a charter school created by teachersin the public system and in collaboration with activist parents in the community have hadat least short-term success.... They tend very quicklyeven when theyre started byteachers with the best intentionsto enter into collaboration with the private sector.9

Whos driving the charter school movement?

Today more than one million children attend some four thousand charter schoolsnationally.10# The Chicago Teachers Union has shrunk by 10 percent since the onset ofRenaissance 2010, a program to break away one hundred schools from the ChicagoPublic School District. In Los Angeles 7 percent of children in public school, 45,000

students, attend charter schools.11 And that number is growing rapidly: in California,charter schools grew by 13.2 percent in 2006/07, increasing to 617 schools.12 Joel Klein,chancellor of schools in the New York public school system, has announced his intentionthat all of New Yorks schools should be charters.13 Thirty percent of the students inDayton, Ohio, attend charter schools.14 About 30 percent of the children in Washington,D.C., attend these schools, and 9 percent in Arizona. Georgia has sixty charter schools,double what it had in 2005. Florida has 334, and Texas 237.15

The different pace at which states and districts are becoming charterized depends onthe differing state laws governing charters and the degree of centralization in these areas.

For example, charter schools seem to be moving most quickly in areas where control ofthe school district is centralized in the hands of a mayor or has been put into receivershipby the state. The pace is especially quick in areas where local politicians have an explicitpro-charter and free market agenda, in areas where people are more disenfranchised (likein Washington, D.C.) or in areas where a shock (to use Naomi Kleins metaphor) haswiped the slate clean for charter laboratories (like in New Orleans).

In New Orleans, 57 percent of public school students attended charter schools at the endof 2007, and that percentage has probably increased. Before Hurricane Katrina, NewOrleans Public School Board ran 123 schools. After the storm, they were taken over by

the state of Louisiana and most were turned over to subcontractors. There is now a three-tier school district; select students attend publicly funded charters, others attend state-runschools (the Recovery School District) with a student-to-teacher ratio as high as 40:1 insome schools and no local school board to complain to, and still another group attends theleast desirable Orleans Parish schools, where there is a security guard for every thirty-seven students.16


5/23

An important article by Bill Quigley describes this system and tells how Secretary ofEducation Margaret Spellings and the U.S. Department of Education had already put$20.9 million in special funds on the table for charter schools by September 30, 2005.(Another $20 million followed.)17 About two months later all 7,500 public school teachersand other school employees in New Orleans were fired and forced to reapply for their

jobs, effectively busting the United Teachers of New Orleans. Over a year and a halflater, as chronicled in the New Orleans Teachers Union Report No ExperienceNecessary: How the New Orleans School Takeover Experiment Devalues Experienced

Teachers, well over three hundred students were still on wait-lists to gain admission topublic schools. The shortages of classroom spaces in the public schools were so bad in2007 that the NAACP filed suit on behalf of a wait-listed student.18 But the money wasreadily available, and the red tape not so thick, for privately run charters.

In one heroic case, parents, teachers, and students began squatting in Martin Luther KingJr. School in the Lower 9th Ward, in an attempt to force the reopening of the school.

They were offered several million dollars if they would reopenas a charter.19

In suchcases, teachers and parents who decide to form charter schools dont do so out of hostilityto public schools, but out of necessity. In New Orleans in particular, this is a consciousdesign on the part of the charter movement.

Road to privatization?

This flood tide of charter schools leads some to believe that our school system may soonbe wholly broken apart and effectively privatized; but what about the role of publiceducation in supplying a steady stream of workers that have basic proficiencies in mathand English necessary in the workplace?

Charter schools fit the needs of the establishment perfectly. Education is still compulsoryand paid for by the state. Children are still controlled while their parents are at work, andthis is still supported by our regressive tax structure. And charter schools are excellentteachers of free-market, personal responsibility ideology. The American Dream ispromised to all those who strive to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. If you want yourchild to get ahead, make sure that he or she is one of the lucky few to get a seat in acharter school. For the rich, charters have added benefits; they are being used todismantle the power of teachers unions, and they are excellent tools for channeling taxmoney into the pockets of enterprising individuals. This is true even when the charter

schools are run by nonprofit companies. And no matter what the rhetoric dished out forpublic consumption, siphoning public money into private hands is the goal, as thestatement by the Montgomery Securities group quoted above shows.

According to U.S. Census data, well over $800 billion is spent on education, public andprivate, at all levels in the United States each year.20 This makes it roughly the same sizeas the U.S. trade deficit with China. The private sector wants to get its hands on this


6/23

money. Along with politicians, it is determined to break the power of the teachers unionsand to attack one of the last bastions of decently paid American workers. The budgetproblems resulting from the current recession will provide them cover in doing this.

The Walton Family Foundation of Wal-Mart is the single biggest investor in charter

schools in the United States, giving $50 million a year to support them.21 The Waltonsspecialize in giving money to opponents of public education. Empowering parents tochoose among competing schools, said John Walton, son of Wal-Marts founder, willcatalyze improvement across the entire K12 education system.22 According to aNational Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) report, Some critics arguethat it is the beginning of the Wal-Martization of education, and a move to for-profitschooling, from which the family could potentially financially benefit. John Waltonowned 240,000 shares of Tesseract Group Inc. (formerly known as EducationAlternatives Inc.), which is a for-profit company that develops/manages charter andprivate schools as well as public schools.23 Wal-Mart is a notorious union-busting firm,

famous for keeping its health-care costs down by discouraging unhealthy people fromworking at its stores, paying extremely low wages with poor benefits, and violating childlabor laws. The company has reportedly looted more than $1 billion in economicdevelopment subsidies from state and local governments.24Its so-called philanthropyseems also to be geared to the looting of public treasuries.

As for a coordinated effort, the private incursion into public schools is being pushed by aband of jackals grouped around Bill Gates and the $2 billion that his Bill and MelindaGates Foundation have sunk into the education reform movement. The foundationfunded a 2006 study by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforcecalled Tough Choices or Tough Times, signed by a bipartisan collection of prominentpoliticians, businesspeople, and urban school superintendents, which

called for a series of measures including: (a) replacing public schools with what thereport called contract schools, which would be charter schools writ large; (b)eliminating nearly all the powers of local school boardstheir role would be to write andsign the authorizing agreements for the contract schools; (c) eliminating teacher pensionsand slashing health benefits; and (d) forcing all 10th graders to take a high school exitexamination based on 12th grade skills, and terminating the education of those who failed(i.e., throwing millions of students out into the streets as they turn 16).25

In the beginning, the Gateses used their dollars and employees to push school districtssuch as Los Angeles to break up mega-high schools into small learning communities.But now they are advising superintendents to give up that project and go straight forindependent charters. Gates $60 million project, Ed in 08: Strong American Schools,26will use the elections this year to influence politicians to accept their three mandates:standardization of curriculum nationally, merit pay for teachers, and more time inschools. The campaigns money comes from Bill Gates and Eli Broad, a Los Angeles realestate magnate. Roy Romer, the former superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified


7/23

School District, is its spokesman, and it counts among its supporters a diverse crowdfrom Rod Paige, the former secretary of education, who once called teachers unionsterrorist organizations, to Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the corporate-backedNational Council of La Raza. It trumpets success stories, like its Mission Possible:Greensboro, North Carolina,27 where 383 teachers were paid bonuses in direct relation to

their students test scores.

The movement also has regional boosters. In Los Angeles, Eli Broad, the billionaire whotried to engineer the mayoral takeover of Los Angeles schools, gave Steve Barr and hisnonprofit Green Dot $10 million. Last spring Green Dot took over the 2,600-studentLocke High School from the Los Angeles Unified School District and has a goal ofexpanding to forty-one schools throughout Los Angeles.28 Green Dot is supported byMayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who invited Green Dot executive Marshall Tuck onto hisfive-person educational advisory board. Villaraigosa is currently pushing for a $7 billionbond measure for the November ballot in Los Angeles, $450 million of which would be

earmarked for charter schools if his friend (and former school board member) CapriceYoung has her way.29 Its not surprising that Green Dots ties with Democratic Partypoliticians are so strong, since founder Steve Barr cut his political teeth campaigning forGary Hart, Bruce Babbitt, and Michael Dukakis.30

Globally, companies are being coached about how to get their hands on state moneyallocated for public services. An important new book called The Global Assault onTeachers and Their Unions: Stories for Resistance chronicles an international movementto privatize education.31 Education corporations are popping up in China on the ashes ofpublic elementary schools. City Academies in England are being handed over toprivate sponsors. Reports shared among these policy-makers offer strategies for how toaccomplish this deregulation. One such report is The Politics of Education Reform:Bolstering the Supply and Demand: Overcoming Institutional Blocks, published by theWorld Bank in 1999.32 (The institutional blocks are, of course, teachers organizations.)

There is no monolithic bloc of evil government and corporate forces marching along asingle road map to privatization. Some charter schools were created on the genuineinitiative of community members or teachers and parents. In some schools, like onesbased specifically on antiracist curriculum, students are undoubtedly learning in a betteratmosphere than they were before. But in Los Angeles, for example, while theserepresent only a handful of the 147 charters, dominated by EMOs and CMOs, they are

used to blunt criticism of the dominant, corporate trend in the charter school movement.

There are a few pernicious assumptions shared by almost all charter operators, large andsmall, for-profit and nonprofit, dependent and independent, start-ups or conversions. Thefirst assumption is that government education budgets will stay the same or continue todecrease. If it is given that public schools will be underfunded, the charter movementtouts the belief that schools can succeed by having better managementless bureaucracy


8/23

and corruption. The second shared assumption is that there is a role for the private sectorin decision-making. Those who realize that money does make the difference in schoolsare attracted by the lucrative partnership contracts and money being dangled in front ofcharter schools by corporate interests. Others simply believe that private forces will bemore efficient managers of schools than public school boards. And the corporate interests

simply want to get their hands on the money. But all concede a role for private forces inrunning the schools. A third premise is that teachers right to collective representationand bargaining is an institutional block to progress, because teachers are in some wayto blame for the abysmal state of the schools. We have to push back against theseassumptions if we are to win quality education for all.

On what grounds do we object to charter schools?

While nonprofit charter schools are more pervasive than their for-profit counterparts,

for the quarter of charters that are for-profit, the obvious problem is that the drive to

make a profit will compromise educational quality. And for-profits and non-profits areunder similar pressure to expand as quickly as possible.

Edison Schools Incorporated is one of the largest for-profit charter school companies. Itran twenty schools in Philadelphia alone until it was discredited this year. With boardmembers like John Chubb of the Hoover Institution and Brookings Institution, it made abald-faced attempt to turn millions of dollars in profits by controlling 157 schools. (Notvery successfully, though; it was traded on the NASDAQ for four years but only showedone quarter of profitability.33) The most fundamental problem with a private model ofeducation is that a companys profits depend directly on cost-cutting. The cheaper theservices they provide, just as in private prisons and hospitals, the more profit they turn.So there is always an incentive to do things on the cheappoorly maintained physicalplant and equipment, low pay for teachers and other staff, and larger class sizes meanbigger rates of return.

The dynamic works in fundamentally similar ways with nonprofit entities. The pressureto cut costs in order to have money left over for expansion forces nonprofit entities to actin a similar fashion to their for-profit cousins. Every nonprofit charter operator is underimmense pressure right now to expand as quickly as possible and to measure success byhow quickly they are able to replicate themselves. The newest mandate from the Bill andMelinda Gates Foundation is that we need to close thousands of broken inner-city schools

and replace them with charters. There is fierce competition over who will get thecontracts, especially among nonprofits. And nonprofits are, of course, allowed to paytheir administrators very high salaries as well as keeping a small profit.

And then there is corruption. Celerity, a nonprofit charter school that made an attempt toco-locate on the campus of Wadsworth Elementary in Los Angeles, contracts out all itsservices to a for-profit firm, Nova, run by the same owner. This backdoor modelof a


9/23

nonprofit funneling dollars to a separate, for-profit entityis common. Kent Fischerexplained it in the St. Petersburg Times:

The profit motive drives business. More and more, its driving Florida school reform.The vehicle: charter schools. This was not the plan. These schools were to be incubators

of innovation, free of the rules that govern traditional districts. Local school boardswould decide who gets the charters, which spell out how a school will operate and what itwill teach. To keep this deal, lawmakers specified that only nonprofit groups would getcharters. But six years later, profit has become pivotal.... For-profit corporations createnonprofit foundations to obtain the charters, and then hire themselves to run the schools.34

Whether its technically legal, contracting out or direct corruption and profiteering,abounds. In their article The Corporate Surge Against Public Schools, Steven Millerand Jack Gerson cite many cases of such corruption. Brenda Belton, charter oversightchief for the D.C. Board of Education, admitted to arranging $650,000 in sweetheart

contracts for herself and her friends, and C. Steven Cox, CEO of a large chain of charterschools in California, was indicted on 113 felony counts of misappropriating publicfunds.35

Charters dont perform better.

As far as teaching American kids high-level skills to get them ready for the job market,data conflict (at best) as to whether charter schools fail more often than public schools do.The New York Times, in an editorial titled Exploding the Charter School Myth, usesstatistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress to argue that fourth-graders in freestanding charter schools showed worse performance than their publicschool counterparts in math and reading scores. (The data were different, however, forthose students in charter schools affiliated with public school districts.) As the editorialargues, the problem with failing public schools is that they often lack both resources andskilled, experienced teachers. While there are obvious exceptions, some charter schoolsembark on a path that simply re-creates the failures that they were developed toreplace.36

According to the important book Charter School Dustup: Examining the Evidence onEnrollment and Achievement,37 a study published in 2005 by scholars with the EconomicPolicy Institute and the Teachers College at Columbia University, an analysis of

California found that socioeconomically disadvantaged Asian-origin and Latino studentsin charter schools had composite test scores (literacy, mathematics, science, and socialstudies) that were about 4 to 5 percent lower than their counterparts in public primaryschools. Overall, in every state besides Arizona, they found charter schoolsperformance is no higher than that of public schools in every demographic category. Thecomparisons were no better for low-income Black students.


10/23

The charter school movement cooks the books to try and prove otherwise. KIPP Schools,a nonprofit company that runs fifty-two schools nationwide and was formed in apartnership between exTeach for America (an anti-union organization) teachers andDonald Fisher, cofounder of Gap Inc., illustrates this point. It claims the highest testscores in the Bronx. But one comparison found that 42 percent of entering fourth-graders

entering the KIPP school passed state reading tests, as compared to 25 percent for thesurrounding public schools. They are starting with a group of students who already havebetter test scores.

In California, charter schools did worse than regular public schools at achieving theirAdequate Yearly Progress goals, even though those goals are flawed because they are setby No Child Left Behind mandates.38 By a slightly better measure, academicmomentum, which tries to measure improvements in schools, 24.8 percent of charterschools, and only 19.6 percent of public schools earned a high ranking. But by thesame token, 26.3 percent of charter schools got a poor ranking, as compared to only

19.6 percent of public schools. The best charter schools seem to be improving slightlyfaster than California public schools, but a higher percentage of charter schools performpoorly. Perhaps charter schools arent the great equalizers that they claim to be.

When charters do succeed, its because they have lots of extra money. All schools

should have access to these extra fundsespecially the ones that need it most!

This is seen most acutely in New Orleans, where charter schools are in most casesgenuinely better than the public schools because they receive a higher rate of funding.The charter schools funded by the Walton family, according to Liza Featherstone of theNation, receive a higher per-pupil allotment than public schools.39They are then used as astick with which to beat public schools as though they were on a level playing field.

Additionally, at Granada Hills High School charter in Los Angeles, the governing boardhas been able to increase the amount of money flowing into the classrooms by cutting outthe larger district bureaucracy to an extent. The fact that schools with more money can dobetter simply serves to make our point: that more money will make a better school. Theyall should have it, not a select few. If this means dramatically cutting bureaucracyeverywhere, then thats what we should stand fornot eviscerating public schooling.

The point is that public schools are of poor quality when they are underfunded; the poor

quality is then used as an excuse for gutting public education even more. Using classicsharp business practices, the promoters of for-profit schooling are willing to pump somemoney into the charter schools in order to prove they are better, only to cut corners andboost profits once the charters have won the day.

Charters choose their students, which decreases the amount of power and due process

that students and parents have. They are more likely to exclude English language


11/23

learners and special education students. They pursue a different goal than fighting for

quality education for all.

At KIPP schools, like many other charters, a condition of admission is that studentsparents have to spend a certain amount of volunteer time at the school. This automatically

excludes children whose parents already spend the least time with them (due to workingmultiple jobs, lack of child care, or any number of difficult issues). While in some casesstrictly competitive admissions cannot be used in charters receiving federal funds(although the rules are very flexible, as in New Orleans), these schools can select theirstudents and transfer or expel students with less due process than they are afforded inregular schools.This means, firstly, that charter schools select for students with the most resourcefulparents, the children who already have a head start in the race. Miranda Restovic told theNew Orleans Times-Picayune that she felt like she was applying to college when shetried to get her three-year-old into a charter school. Although I am thrilled with the

increased public school options, I am skeptical as to the (admissions) processes beingfriendly to all families, Restovic said. Its really difficult if you dont have the time tomake constant inquiries and dont have connections at the school to call and prod.40

A study of California charter schools by USC bears out Restovics observation. Theparents of students The parents of students in California charter schools are moreeducated than their public school counterparts. Sixty percent of parents whose childrenattend charter schools had attended at least some college, as compared to 54 percent ofparents of their public school counterparts. Forty percent of children in charter schools inCalifornia are on free or reduced lunch, as compared to the 50 percent average inCalifornia public schools overall.41

English language learners (ELL) are less likely to go to charter schools; in California, 16percent of charter school students are ELL, as compared to 25 percent in other publicschools.42 Charters, whether consciously or unconsciously, select for those students whoare going to boost their test scores the most. Once English language learners get tocharter schools, they may not be getting the services that they need: 44.9 percent ofcharter schools in the USC study ranked poorly for reclassification of students to FluentEnglish Proficient.43

Secondly, charters ability to select students fundamentally changes the dynamics of the

relationship between parents and schools. Parents of struggling students, or those whodisagree with the charter board, or who dont fulfill obligations for the school are alwaysunder threat of transfer to another school. They dont have the same potential power anddue process that they do in a public school that their child is required to attend by law.

Autonomy for whom? Who calls the shots?


12/23

Green Dot, the Broad- (and Gates-?) funded nonprofit that runs twelve schools in LosAngeles, takes over schools by promising equality and evoking civil rights language likegrass-roots control. For teachers, it promises more local control over curriculum. Wewant to get away, it argues to teachers hungry for such promises, from mandates andscripts. The problem is that this academic freedom is a lie. These schools are measured

by the same standardized tests that all schools are, and they are well aware of it. There isno lessand arguably morepressure for a charter to teach to the test since theirraison dtre is that they can help students to perform better.

Green Dot promises more academic freedom and local control. A couple of paragraphsfrom Green Dots own website, however, illustrate the limitations of these promises.

While the Home Office provides Recommended Practices to schools, principals andteachers have ultimate autonomy to decide whether to follow those RecommendedPractices or take different approaches.

Local control works in Green Dots school model because schools and all stake-holderswithin them are held accountable for student results. If students in a particular school orclassroom are not performing up to expectations, then teachers and principals are held

accountable and local control can be taken away. Green Dots accountability systemdefines quarterly and annual performance targets for each school and teacher as well asthe period of time that a school or teacher can under-perform before Green DotsEducation Team will intervene with supports and/or take away a schools local control.44[emphasis added]

In addition, Green Dot can, unlike regular public schools, refuse to admit new students ifit is full.

In the agreement between Green Dot and the Asocia?cion de Maestros/NEA/AFT, thebargaining represen?tative of the teachers, it is made clear in no uncertain terms that theBoard maintains final authority over decisions regarding adminstrative decisions. Unlikemost charter school companies, Green Dot accepts unions. However, according to a NewYork Times report, The union representing Green Dot teachers...has a 33-page contractthat offers competitive salaries but no tenure, and it allows class schedule and otherinstructional flexibility outlawed by the 330-page contract governing most Los Angelesschools.45

An NPR report describes the tremendous pressure put on teachers in a KIPP school.

Many of the teachers here are young; Feinberg is in her third year. Charter schools havethe freedom to hire whom they want, and for this school, being young and enthusiasticcounts for a lot. Feinberg knows that she and the school face tremendous pressure toimprove the test scores of the citys most challenging students. But its great pressure, I


13/23

mean its pressure that makes you work harder, that gives you a sense of urgency everyday that they must learn these skills, Feinberg says. If you dont produce the resultsthat need to be produced, its very possible that you could lose your job.46

The same report explains that during the nine-hour school days at KIPP academies,students practice call and response style learning; in other words, they are taught torespond in unison as the teacher snaps her fingers; a traditional rote method notparticularly designed to encourage teacher or student creativity. The picture ofconformity is reinforced by the fact that most charter school companies require theirstudents to wear uniforms.

Schools will be better when teachers are paid more and the profession is more

attractive. Teachers unions are a fundamental part of winning this; and the charter

school movement is an attack on these unions.

Its clear that the high-powered think tanks and business-driven efforts to promote charter

schools are part of a package that includes eliminating teachers unions. In New YorkCity, for example, right-wing foundations, with the support of billionaire Mayor MichaelBloomberg and his Department of Education chancellor Joel Klein, are working to keepunions out of the citys charter schools. In November 2005 the Atlantic LegalFoundationa legal arm of the most stridently anti-union corporations and allied far-right interest groups47held a seminar in New York City at the prestigious Harvard Clubto discuss union prevention in the citys forty-seven charter schools.48 The conferencesopening session was entitled, Leveling the Playing Field: What New York CharterSchool Leaders Need to Know About Union Organizing. Among the scheduled speakersat a main panel were Caryl Cohen, a representative of New Yorks Department of

Educations charter school arm, the New York City Center for Charter SchoolExcellence, and Norman Atkins, one of the the founders and leaders of two charter schoolnetworks Chancellor Joel Klein has invited to New York. According to Atkins, theconsensus of the panel was that good charter schools organize themselves in ways thatkeep unions out.49

Local control should include the right to teacher self-representation as well as anindependent voice for parents and students. But most charters, even those that wear theprogressive mantle, are hostile to this idea. An excellent example is the Los AngelesLeadership Academy run by Roger Lowenstein. It is a social justice school that

encourages teachers to use lessons from movements for social change, and encouragesstudents to attend antiwar demonstrations. The school recruits teachers who have beeninvolved in community organizing and who are committed to progressive, antiracistpedagogy.

The teachers learned a lesson in social justice, though, when they tried to win the right torepresentation and collective bargaining by affiliating to the California TeachersAssociation. Roger Lowenstein hired high-paid anti-union law firms to keep the union


14/23

out in what one veteran union organizer called one of the toughest oppositions ateachers union has possibly ever faced.50 Lowenstein argued to the Public EmployeeRelations Board that it should have no role in overseeing the union election orinvestigating unfair labor practices because the Leadership Academy is not a publicschool. If he was referring to the decision-making processrather than the source of

funding, which is, of course, publiche is absolutely right. Teachers quickly found outthat the schools advocacy for struggle, protest, and collectively speaking truth topower rang hollow when it came to their right to organize themselves.

The main source of poor school quality (and poor performance) is that public schools, atleast in poor and working-class communities, are deliberately underfunded and resourcestarved, precisely in communities where more resources are needed for these schools tosucceed; they are then expected to perform according to criteria that their lack of fundingmakes difficult for them to fulfill. The failure is then used to justify more public schoolcuts and the diversion of public funds into charter schools.

The next biggest factor in the quality of the school is the quality of teaching. This isdirectly related to the ability of teachers to shape the curriculum, the amount ofcollaborative planning time and individual tutoring time that they have, and their rate ofpay and experience. All these things increase with the power of teachers unions. So ifone accepts the idea that unions can play the role of fighting for better quality schools,more democratic accountability of schools, and better compensation for teachers, and thatthese are essential for good schools, then unions for teachers should be a communitydemand. This may not happen, however, until teachers unions prove through action thatthey support the needs and struggles of the parents and students in their communities. Butteachers cannot have a serious voice in any process of school improvement unless theyhave the right to collective bargaining.

The slow destruction of union power that occurs when subcontracting creates lots ofsmall workplacesin place of large, highly unionized oneshas been a fact across manyindustries. Whipsawing is a term used to describe the effect on unions like the UAWwhen workers in smaller, spun-off shops get inferior contracts, and those contracts areused to pressure workers in bigger plants to accept similar concessions. The same couldapply to the effect of charter schools in education.

Some suggest, then, that we have to seek out pro-union charter operators and make

deals with them. But if we are speaking of privately run CMOs, then genuine power fortheir teachers would threaten the boards hegemony in the schools. Some, like Green Dot,are willing to allow teachers a contract, and claim to be pro-union. But in their contractwith the AMU/CTA/NEA teachers union, one can find few guarantees of any kind ofreal teacher voice (in the form of voting). According to the contract between Green Dotand the union, in effect until 2010,


15/23

It is understood and agreed that the Board retains all of its powers and authority to direct,manage and control to the full extent of the charter school law and the regulations of a501.C3 California corporation. Input from the staff will be considered and decisions willbe derived in a collaborative model; final decisions will rest with the Board. Included in,but not limited to, those duties are the right to: ...establish educational policies with

regard to admitting students; ...determine the number of personnel and types of personnelneeded; ...establish budget procedures and determine budgetary allocations; contract outwork and take action on any matter in the event of an emergency. 51

The Board will make all staffing decisions. By contrast, the United Teachers of LosAngeles contract with Los Angeles Unified District requires faculty votes on key aspectsof running the school, like the schedule and certain discretionary budget items, andguarantees that class assignments will be chosen by the teachers, through seniority, andnot arbitrarily by the administration.52 This vision of unionism, typified by SEIU (arepresentative of which sits on Green Dots board) is antithetical to real power ordemocracy for teachers. A large union cuts a deal with the employer, quickly begins to

collect dues from members, and in exchange for neutrality on the part of the boss givesaway key workplace rights. Green Dot specifically aims to hire younger, moreinexperienced teachers and gives incentives for senior teachers to leave.

Many suspect Green Dot of signing somewhat toothless union contracts as a way ofkeeping more combative unions out. This wouldnt be surprising given the presence ofSEIU on their board of directors. SEIU is currently engaged in undermining thelegitimate teachers union of Puerto Rico (the FMPR) in the wake of the strike that theFMPR led last spring. After the strike, the Puerto Rican government decertified theFMPR. SEIU helped the Asociacion de Maestros (coincidentally, the same name as the

teachers union at Green Dot schools) to try to win representation of the Puerto Ricanteachers. The FMPR was not allowed to contest them.53

Their strategy and ours

New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein has openly declared his wish to make allNew York public schools charter schools. Rather than oppose the idea outright, then-United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten chose to play ball on thechancellors field. In addition to inviting Steve Barr of Green Dot to New York to partnerwith the UFT in opening Green Dot schools, she also conceded that New York teachers

would be willing to accept some form of merit pay. Merit pay hooks teacher bonuses(money that otherwise could be spent on salaries) to student test performance.

If this appeasement strategy was designed to convince Klein to stop blaming teachersfor the problems in New Yorks schools, it didnt work. Shortly thereafter, Klein teamedup with civil rights figure Al Sharpton to launch the Education Equality Project, whosemain goal is to remove the block that the teachers union supposedly creates toreform. Sharpton said, But we cannot say that were going to close this achievement


16/23

gap but protect ineffective teachers or principals or school chiefs or not challengeparents.54 Perhaps if the teachers in New York had decided to build genuine allianceswith New York parentsparticularly in communities of colorto fight for access tomore resources, against dictatorial mandates, and to define what quality educationmeans from the ground up, then Sharpton wouldnt have gotten any traction for blaming

the teachers. A more convincing explanation for failure of Black students is grossunderfunding and pervasive segregation.

Weingarten may also justify her actions on the basis that we have to make concessions tosome charter schoolsand so we may as well pick the pro-union ones. But rather thantrying to play an appeasement game with charters, we should oppose them. The charterschool movement may have to slow down under the weight of their own contradictionsthey promise better scores but cant deliver because their modus operandi rests onstripping teachers of their rights and, in many cases, maximizing profits. But anotherfactor that will determine the pace of privatization is the amount and quality of struggle

that we can wage, and the clarity with which we can wage it. And whether, in theprocess, we can begin to cooperate as parents, teachers, and students to formulate thosedemands that would begin to shape public education to meet the goals and vision thatmost people have for it.

A few examples illustrate the kind of struggles that might hold out hope for our side. InFebruary 2008, 26,000 Puerto Rican teachers struck for more than a week against thecolonial governments plans for education. The strike had many demandsopposingLaw 45 that outlaws public sector strikes on the island, just salaries for teachers, and theright to democratically choose their representation in collective bargaining. Among thosedemands, though, was one to stop the creep of charters into Puerto Rican education. Atthe conclusion of the strike, an agreement was signed by teachers union president RafaelFeliciano-Hernandez and the minister of education on the island guaranteeing to keepcharter schools out. The agreement will be hard to enforce, but it established a precedentof teachers fighting the seemingly inevitable tide of privatization. (Its also important tonote that the Puerto Rican teachers resistance to charters began in 1993, which mayexplain why theyve staved them off). Yet, as we can see from the above-mentioned jointattack from Puerto Ricos governor and SEIU, the struggle is far from over.

The other examples are smaller in scope. In 2004, as many of Chicago public schoolswere threatened with mass closures, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system developed

a plan to close Senn High School on the North Side and turn it into a Naval Academycharter school. The ominous move to establish military charter schoolsspurred by themilitarys shrinking pool of willing volunteers as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grindonis not limited to Senn, nor to Chicago alone, as one 2008 report outlines:

Chicago has the most militarized public school system in the nation, with Cadet Corps forstudents in middle school, over 10,000 students participating in JROTC programs, over


17/23

1,000 students enrolled in one of the five, soon-to-be six autonomous military highschools, and hundreds more attending one of the nine military high schools that are calledschools within a school. Chicago now has a Marine Military Academy, a NavalAcademy, and three army high schools. When an air force high school opens next year,Chicago will be the only city in the nation to have academies representing all branches of

the military. And Chicago is not the only city moving in this direction: the public schoolsystems of other urban centers with largely Black and immigrant low-income students,including Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Oakland, are being similarly reformedanddeformedthrough partnerships with the Department of Defense.55

According to Jesse Sharkey, a teacher at Senn,In [some] ways, our school is a remarkable community resource, with plenty of morale.Our students come from 70 nationalities, speak 57 different languages and still maintain asense of unity and mutual respect. Senn students have performed 70,000 hours ofcommunity service over the past five years and have been recognized with a nationalservice award. Senn has also developed some of the citys most successful academic

programs for at-risk kids. So instead of waiting for the ax to fall, we began to fight back.We researched the effect that the military takeover would have on our school andcommunity, and wrote fact sheets. We made flyers about our concerns and put up 3,500of them, with another 500 in Spanish. We reached out and met with communityorganizations, launched a Web site, wrote press releases and organized to get people outto support us. On October 5, we brought about 700 people out to the CPS forum at ourschool. The mood in the room was electric. Students had been preparing all weektheyhad written speeches, drawn dozens of handmade signs and brought along many of theirparents. When CPS officials tried to show us a slick promotional video about the NavyROTC program, the room rebelled. The entire audience stood up and turned its back to

the presentation.56In the end, the Senn students, parents, and teachers won a partial victory. The schoolstayed open. However, in compliance with a December 2004 decision by the schoolboard, one wing of their building was occupied by the Naval Academy. The charter fixedup their wing of the dilapidated building, including adding new air-conditioning, newcomputers, and science labs. The academy students, housed in the same building asregular Senn students, wear their own uniforms, have their own teachers, and operateby their own rules. The body of Senn was saved through the activism of its communitybut one of its limbs has been infected by the viral creep of the charter movement workingin conjunction with the military.

In a similar vein, teachers and parents in Los Angeles mounted a fight against chartertakeover of school space in 2008. In California, Proposition 39 states that charter schoolsshould be given access to space in public education buildings that is not being utilized.This seems like a strange concept in a city where tens of thousands of students go toyear-round schools due to overcrowding, and trailer-like bungalows have taken overthe recreation areas of most schools to create extra space. Nevertheless, forty charterscompleted applications to co-locate on Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD)


18/23

campuses in the fall of 2008. They had receptive friends on the school board. However,in some notable cases, they were stymied. A group of more than seventy parents as wellas teachers from Wadsworth Elementary spoke at and protested an LAUSD boardmeeting to keep Celerity Charter School off their campusand won. Similar organizinghappened at Logan Elementary, where a proposal to house middle-school children on an

elementary school campus was being considered. In fact, according to an estimate byCrenshaw High School UTLA Chapter Chair Alex Caputo-Pearl, parents, students, andteachers at fifteen of the forty schools facing co-location with charters organized againstthem. At the time of writing, only sixteen of the forty applications for co-location hadbeen accepted by LAUSD. The protests are widely seen as the reason why more charterswere not accepted onto LAUSD campuses.

It appears that the charter school movement can be opposed, but it has to be foughtschool by school. In schools where there are parents, teachers, and students whounderstand the issues and can oppose charter takeover, charters can be stopped. These

small struggles will not, however, stem the national tide until they are strong and viableenough to cohere into a powerful movement for a different vision of public education.The only way to challenge charter schools is to show that they are a stepping stone toprivatization, that is, to the denial of publicly funded education as a basic right for all.Also, in their current status, in most instances, charters offer opportunities for privateinterests to profit by siphoning state funds. We must show that public education suffersnot because it is public, but because it is poorly funded by states with other priorities,such as funding corporate handouts.

Here are some ideas for what we can do to begin to win the battle for public education:

1. Fight for resources

We cannot accept the logic that the amount of money available to schools is fixed, evenin the current economic meltdown. At the state level, corporate tax rates are criminallylow, and at the federal level, a tiny fraction of the money going to the war in Iraq wouldmake giant strides toward fixing our schools. In every case the charter schools that do thebest are the ones that receive extra money (usually from private foundations who want tosee public schools replaced by charters). There is nothing complicated about the fact thatmore resources make better schools. If politicians didnt believe this, they wouldnt sendtheir students to private schools that spend ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars more

per student per year than our public schools do. Granted, only a massive struggle on thescale of the civil rights movement will force them to give us what we want for allchildren, not just their own. Students should not have to compete to get into the bestschools while others are abandoned to horrible conditions in schools festering likewounds in already devastated neighborhoods. All schools need to be made better.

2. Wage an educational campaign against charters.


19/23

To date, none of the large teachers unions has launched a public relations battle againstthe charter takeover. Often the objection is that this is too politically difficult, since thepublic supports charters. This is not surprising, though, given that no national force hasever made the case against them. No doubt well lose a battle that we choose not to fight.

3. Welcome charter schoolteachers into our unions but demand that they have all thekey provisions of our contracts.

Charter schoolteachers arent the enemy. We welcome them into our unions, but mustdemand that they have all the key contract provisions that larger locals have. We shouldtry to group them into larger bargaining units to avoid the fracturing of our power thathappens when we are balkanized. We also cant allow organizing to try to improve anddemocratize these charter schools to rob resources from our large public schools. If wewage these fights, charters cant gain the traction that they need to continue theirexpansion. Teachers unions need to resist the temptation to fall into an organizing model

that values representation at whatever costa model to which much of the rest of thelabor movement has resorted. If we dont have strong contracts that help to win betterconditions for students and teachers and democratize the decision-making process in theschools, unions arent worth much.

4. Fight all mandates and corporate incursions into our schools.

Charter schools are just the extreme end of the whole spectrum of the corporate takeoverof our schools. Already, schools that are wholly public are being forced into serving themilitary and business interests of this country. The tendrils of Corporate America reachdeep into our schools via nepotistic contractsfrom the $3 billion testing industryaccelerated under No Child Left Behind, to McGraw-Hill and its Reading First programpushed through by the Bush administration. And as Jonathan Kozol chronicles in Shameof the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, teaching childrenobedience and corporate values (such as kindergartners being asked to role-playworkplace managers) is, along with drill-and-kill methodologies, increasingly erasing allthe best practices that came out of the educational reforms of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Weneed to oppose mandates and all incursions of the private sector into the running of ourschools.

New visions for the kind of schools that we want for our children will rise out of the

struggles against the attacks that we are facing. This is fundamentally about fighting fordemocracy in the schools.

At Woodland Hills Academy, the parents and teachers at the school have appealed for(and won) a degree of autonomy from Los Angeles Unified School District, even thoughthe school is not a charter. They have set up a Humanities Academy that makes financialand curricular decisions democratically. The school is known as a college- prep middle


20/23

school, and has very good performance by all measures. The example of Woodland HillsAcademy suggests that the things that are most tempting about some of the bettercharterscontrol over what is taught, escape from drill-and-kill mentality, anddemocratic decision-makingcan be achieved inside the public school system as well,by teachers, parents, and students organizing.

In other areas, too, teachers unions have partnered with others to try to create innovativeschools that attempt to wriggle out from under the grasp of mandates and bureacraticdecisions. In Boston, the Pilot School project has done this, and in Los Angeles,Innovation Division schools are experimenting with more collaborative and autonomousdecision-making within the schools.57

Teachers who are committed to social justice should put themselves in the camp of thosewho have fought through direct action for equal access to quality public education. Ourrole models should reach from the former slaves who forced the Freedmens Bureau to

create the first public schools in the South and the students who pushed for integration ofthe public school system during the civil rights movement, to the undocumented studentsfighting for access to public universities in the United States today.

As long as we have a system built on inequality, the policy makers will attempt to useschools to institutionally and ideologically buttress the division between the haves andhave-nots. They will mostly succeed. But in the struggles to come for genuine equality,access to schools to meet the needs ofevery single child, not a select few among thosewho live in poverty, will be a call and a slogan of our movements. For the vast majority,this means quality education in public schools. Those who join that fight will determinewhat the word quality means, and will have an opportunity to force these concessionsfrom policy makers until people decide that concessions are not enough.

Sarah Knopp is a teacher in Los Angeles.

1 Jonathan Kozol, The big enchilada, Harpers Magazine, August 2007.

2 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 1937), 721.

3 Term coined by Steven Miller and Jack Gerson. Their article The corporate surge against public schools can befound at www.educatorroundtable.net/showDiary.do?diaryId=718.

4 See Milton Friedman, The promise of vouchers, Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2005.

5 Michael Klonsky and Susan Klonsky, Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society (NewYork: Routledge, 2008), 93.


21/23

6 Ibid.

7 Leigh Dingerson, Barbara Miner, Bob Peterson, and Stephanie Walters, eds. Keeping the Promise? The DebateOver Charter Schools (Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools, 2008), xv.

8 Teach for Americas alumni magazine, One Day, allowed alumni to submit questions for Obama and McCain,

www.teachforamerica.org/alumni/one_day/summer2008_electionwatch.htm.

9 Separate and unequal: Americas apartheid schools, interview in ISR 45, JanFeb 2006.

10 American Federation of Teachers, Charter schools, www.aft.org/topics/charters.

11 Howard Blume, Ask a reporter, Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2008.

12 Charter schools indicators: A report from the Center on Educational Governance, University of SouthernCalifornia, www.usc.edu/dept/education/cegov/CSI_08_v6.pdf, 3.

13 One has to wonder whether this is because he recently received the $1 million Eli Broad Excellence in Education

award.

14 Bill Quigley, A special report on Katrina and education: experimenting on someone elses children; fighting forthe right to learn in New Orleans, CounterPunch, August 6, 2007, www.counterpunch.org/quigley08062007.html.

15 Klonsky and Klonsky, Small Schools, 118; and Zein El-Amine and Lee Glazer, Evolution or destruction? Alook at Washington, D.C., in Keeping the Promise?, 53.

16 Leigh Dingerson, Unlovely: How the market is failing the children of New Orleans, Keeping the Promise?, 17.

17 Bill Quigley, Fighting for the right to learn: the public education experiment in New Orleans two years afterKatrina, Black Agenda Report, August 8, 2007,www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?Itemid=33&id=307&option=com_content&task=view.

18 No experience necessary: How the New Orleans school experiment devalues experienced teachers. A jointreport of the United Teachers New Orleans, Louisiana Federation of Teachers, and the American Federation ofTeachers, June 2007.Available online at www.aft.org/presscenter/releases/downloads/NoExperReport_07.pdf.

19 Privatization and the Katrina Solution, Michael Molina interviewed by Gillian Russom and Sarah Knopp,Socialist Worker, May 28, 2008.

20 U.S. Census Bureau, School expenditures, by type of control and level of instruction in constant (2003-2004)dollars, 1970-2004, www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2007/tables/07s0205.xls.

21 Klonsky and Klonsky, Small Schools, 115.

22 Brian C. Hassell and Thomas Toch, Big box: how the heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune have fueled the charterschool movement, November 7, 2006, Education Sector Connecting the Dots series,www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=422193. John Walton died in a plane crash in 2005.

23 Quoted in Bill Berkowitz, Philanthropy the Wal-Mart way, Media Transparency, October 12, 2005,www.mediatransparency.com/story.php?storyID=88.


22/23

24 Joe Allen, The horrible house of Walton, Socialist Worker, December 2, 2005. See Shopping for subsidies:how Wal-Mart uses taxpayer money to finance its never-ending growth, Good Jobs First, May 2004; Amy Joyce,Labor deal with Wal-Mart criticized, Washington Post, November 1, 2005.

25 Steve Miller and Jack Gerson, The corporate surge against public schools,www.educatorroundtable.net/showDiary.do?diaryId=718.

26 See the Ed in 08 site at www.edin08.com.

27 Strong American schools: mission possible: Greensboro, North Carolina, Ed in 08,www.edin08.com/uploadedFiles/FAQs/SAS.MissionPossible.Nov14.2007.pdf.

28 Green Dots Board of Directors includes SEIU Local 1877s president, Mike Garcia. SEIU has a very cozyrelationship with those sections of Corporate America who have government contract services, and has a plan toorganize charter schools, but they intend to do so by making deals with charter operators who will underminesome of the key elements of teachers power in collective bargaining.

29 Howard Blume, Mayor pushes school bonds, Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2008.

30 Howard Fine, Unsentimental education, Los Angeles Business Journal, June 4, 2007.

31 Mary Compton and Lois Weiner, eds., The Global Assault on Teachers and Their Unions: Stories for Resistance,(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

32 The politics of education reform: Bolstering supply and demand; Overcoming institutional blocks. World Bankdocuments and reports. http://www-wds.worldbank.org:80/servlet/main?menuPK=64187510&pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=

523679&entityID=000094946_01082504044865.

33 Helen Huntley, Legislators, teachers balk at deal for Edison Schools, St. Petersburg Times, September 26,

2003, www.sptimes.com/2003/09/26/Businness/Legislators__?teachers.shtml.

34 Quoted in Klonsky and Klonsky, Small Schools, 108.

35 Miller and Gerson, Corporate surge against public schools.

36 Editorial, New York Times, August 27, 2006.

37 Martin Conroy, Rebecca Jacobsen, Lawrence Mishel, and Richard Rothstein. The Charter School Dustup:Examining Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, 2005).

38 See Charter schools indicators: a report, 10.

39 Quoted in Klonsky and Klonsky, Small Schools, 145.

40 Sarah Carr, Getting into New Orleans schools can be a tough task, New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 17,2008.

41 See Charter schools indicators: a report, 15.

42 Ibid., 16.


23/23

43 Ibid., 8.

44 See www.greendot.org/school_model.

45 Sam Dillon, Maverick leads charge for charter schools, New York Times, July 24, 2004.

46 Larry Abramson, For charter schools, New Orleans is a citywide lab, NPR, July 16, 2008.

47 Leo Casey, Whos afraid of teacher voice? Charter schools and union organizing, November 17, 2005, Edwise,http://edwize.org/whos-afraid-of-teacher-voice-charter-schools-and-union-organizing.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Personal communication.

51 See Agreement between Green Dot Public Schools, a California not-for-profit corporation and the Asociacion

de Maestros Unidos/CTA/NEA effective through June 30, 2010. An earlier version of the contract is availableonline at http://amunidos.org/pdf_docs/AMUContractFinal%20FY2006.pdf.

52 Ibid.

53 Marazan, Cesar Rosado. SEIU to Raid Union Representing 40,000 Teachers in Puerto Rico. Labor NotesOnline, www.?labornotes.org/node/1517.

54 Greg Toppo, Sharpton, education plan may tear union ties, USA Today June 11, 2008.

55 Therese Quinn, Erica Meiners, Bill Ayers, Child soldiers, ?January 8, 2008,http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/child-soldiersby-therese-quinn-erica-meiners-bill-ayers/.

56 Jesse Sharkey, Get the military out of our schools, Socialist Worker, October 14, 2008.

57 See Dan French, Bostons pilot schools: an alternative to charter schools in Keeping the Promise?, 67.

charter schools and the attack on public education

Documents