NY public schools have $500 to advertise, charter has $325,000 ad budget. [View All]

[madfloridian]

That is the word from GHW Bush's former assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch.

She was speaking at the hearings held by State Senator Bill Perkins to try and hold charter schools accountable.

From the WP's Answer Sheet:

A hearing held in New York City this week about charter schools sounded more like a brawl than the information-gathering session it was intended to be.

In fact the charter advocates are giving millions to defeat Bill Perkins because he is holding such hearings.

Ravitch's speech should be read in full:

Ravitch's testimony:

Mr. Perkins, you must be a very dangerous and powerful man. Yesterday the tabloids were filled with editorials and articles denouncing you for holding hearings about charter schools; today, there are even more.

If charters are public schools and receive public money, why should they object to oversight hearings by a legally constituted body of the New York State Senate?

I am a historian of education, so allow me to provide a brief overview of the origin of charter schools. Charter schools were first envisioned in 1988 by two men who didn’t know one another. Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, had the idea, as did Professor Ray Budde of the University of Massachusetts.

Both of them thought that public school teachers could get permission from local authorities to open a small experimental school and then focus on the neediest students. The school would recruit students who had dropped out and who were likely to drop out. It would seek new ways to motivate the most challenging students and bring whatever lessons they learned back to public schools, to make them better able to educate these youngsters. The original vision of charter schools was that they would help strengthen public schools, not compete with them.

Ravitch then points out the very unlevel playing field for public schools that now have to compete with big money while having their own resources drained. The money the public schools need to flourish is being given to the charter schools that compete with them.

Just last month, on March 9, the New York Times described how public schools in Harlem now must market themselves to compete with charter schools for new students.

The regular public schools have less than $500 each to create brochures and fliers; the charter firm with which they compete has a marketing budget of $325,000. That’s not fair. We have seen stories about non-profit entrepreneurs who are paid $400,000 a year or more to run charters for 1,000 children.

This is one of the charter schools referred to in the NYT article. Eva Moskowitz of Harlem Success Academy has a special friendship with the school head.

Harlem charter school head emails show very special access to NY school chancellor


Lombard for News
Success Charter Network founder Eva Moskowitz and NYC Chancellor Joel Klein sharing a laugh during an event.

On Oct. 3, 2008, Eva Moskowitz, a former city councilwoman and head of four charter schools in Harlem, e-mailed schools Chancellor Joel Klein for help. Moskowitz wanted more space to expand her Harlem Success academies and she had two specific public school buildings in mind.

"Those schools are ps194 and ps241," she wrote to Klein. "It would be extremely helpful to move quickly on."

Less than two months later, the Department of Education announced plans to phase out those schools and use the space to expand two Harlem Success academies.

Arne Duncan enabled this tension and competition between public and charter schools....he used money to get his agenda.

From the website of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools:

May 29: Duncan: "Anti-Charter States Will Lose Stimulus Dollars"

Duncan: Anti-Charter States Will Lose Stimulus Dollars

According to the Associated Press, Education Secretary Duncan said yesterday states that do not embrace charter schools will hurt their chances to compete for millions of federal stimulus dollars. Responding to a question about Tennessee, whose Democratic lawmakers have blocked an effort to make more kids eligible to attend charters, Duncan said: "There are a number of states that are leading this effort, and we want to invest a huge amount of money into them, a minimum of $100 million, probably north of that. And the states that don't have the stomach or the political will, unfortunately, they're going to lose out." Tennessee has one of the most restrictive charter school laws in the country, with the number of charters capped at 50, and only failing students or students at failing schools eligible to attend. Gotham Schools reported that last week Duncan told Congress that he will give preference to states without caps on the number of charter schools. This could put the next round of stimulus funding out of reach for New York, which caps charters at 200 schools statewide.

Public schools do not have the money to compete against this international power play by the charter movement.