Congress Beats Up Charter Schools

The reason congress included this provision is because of the widespread misuse of public funds than comes along with for-profit contracts for charter schools. Along with the Gulen schools mentioned below, another example are BASIS schools.

"Basis contracts with Basis.ed to provide the educational services at its schools. The public school company gives 71 percent of its tax dollars to the private company, according to a Basis audit filed with the state Charter Board.

Basis.ed then pays its teachers. But it doesn't use all the Arizona money for teacher pay.

According to an agreement between Basis Schools and Basis.ed, the Blocks' private firm keeps 11.75 percent of all school revenues — state, federal and local tax dollars — for management fees." [0]

BASIS teachers were underpaid compared to otherteachers in the state.

While the schools themselves may be good (charter schools can be exceptionally selective in the students they take/don't kick out), it reeks of misappropriation of tax dollars that should be used for educating children.

[0] https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-education...

I inherently expect an article about education to talk about outcomes for all students, top to bottom, in an even-handed way. During the Sputnik era, the focus was clearly at the top, and then with LBJ, it shifted focus to employability of the bottom, and now since Obama, on equality of outcomes versus improving outcomes. Even this article posits the entire argument on equality, and as much as I’d like to use that ruse to support escape from this disastrous ideology, it does not fit, and it sets their position up for a compromise that even further violates their own intentions. Parents that want school choice need to stand up for themselves and be more honest, as in, “I only care about the best outcomes for my children. If you want equality, you’re going to have to prove to me that equality is the best outcome for my children individually.” The problem is that it’s easy to achieve equality by targeting the bottom, and probably impossible to do so by aiming for the top. This should all have nothing to fo with race, but somehow the unwritten rule of American politics is that everything must be justified in terms of racial equality, and both sides of any argument must start with this premise, even as before, if it belies the true intention. This premise works mostly for self-appointed stewards of one homogenous ‘other’, but does absolutely nothing for the aspirant individual in that group which now finds themselves as the target of their push toward ‘equality’.

So if you’re going to make a case for charter schools, make it directly in terms of what the voters care about. E.g.: They’re cheaper for the taxpayer with better outcomes for their students, better for everybody. Bringing equality and race into the argument is just arguing the other side, which is that ‘better for everybody’ is bad, and instead it must be better for some and worse for others.

To get specific about the legislation, however, which says that charter schools may not use private contractors, we should understand that this eliminates the possibility of venture-funded education startups. Nonprofits can’t leverage the market to achieve the scale that they may need to drive needed innovation. Essentially, for-profits can also leverage losses that investors pay for, and nonprofits can’t. So why prevent investors from paying for schools?

There is a huge counterpoint to this: the nonprofit Khan Academy, and a smaller counterpoint that venture funds have not delivered much to this market so far. If for-profits are being abused more than the capital markets are providing benefit, then that’s something to look into. It’s hard to say that a for-profit that exists on government contracts is anything like a free-market entity. The main issue I have with this is that it reduces the types of choices available by eliminating one possibility. And clearly this is not about how charter schools are organized, but eliminating their possibility by raising objection to a canard.

If you want to send your kid to a private school, pay for it out of pocket. We live in glorious capitalism, I thought.

Charter schools are a great racket.

Fetullah Gülen, the islamic terrorist who tries to overthrow Turkey in a coup has hundreds of “Gülen” or “Kismet” schools in the USA.

He makes billions scamming governments around the word with his “private” and government subsidized imam hatips / madressaa around the world, especially in USA, Australia and Germany.

The billionaire Amway ponzi scheme heiress and former head of Education under the trump regime, makes similar amounts of money scamming state and federal charter voucher programs.