“Are charter schools public schools? Yes, charter schools across the
state are tuition free public schools.”[i]
(CDE)
We do not ask the men and women
running for the State Board of Education to pass any litmus test to see if they
qualify to serve. A range of views is welcome. But we do expect them to understand
the education laws in our state.
|
Val Flores: “I just wanted to remind this board that when we heard from those stakeholders at the very beginning from Adams 14 as a whole… they didn’t want charters. They wanted public schools.” [Board member Joyce Rankin, sitting to the left of Flores, seemed to whisper “charters are public schools,” or something to that effect.] Flores raised her left hand and continued: “You’ve said that, but I just want to use the terminology that I know and that the public knows and they call charter schools one thing and they are private, they’re 501c3s, and then there’s public education, and that is a different thing. And so I support public education and I heard from the community that that’s what they wanted.” State Board of Education, May 9, 2019. |
In following the deliberations of the State Board of Education the past few years, I found it astonishing to see Board member Val Flores give her definition of charter schools (see box). Here is where a litmus test might be necessary. A member of the Colorado State Board in 2019 implicitly questioned whether the (then) 255 or so public charter schools in our state, or the 50 or so public charter schools in her own Congressional district, were public schools. As if she did not know or accept our own state law.
Are charter schools public or private? Are we really not clear about this in 2020? Is the intent of the Colorado charter school law—more specifically, of charter school operators—to privatize public education? Anyone willing to take on the incredibly important (and unpaid) job of serving for four years on the State Board should assure us—whatever their opinion about the pros and cons of charter schools—that they understand that charter schools, in our state, are public schools. (True for local school boards too – see Addendum A, DPS and “for profit charter school.”)
I present
statements from Lisa Escarcega and Karla Esser, candidates for the State Board
of Education, that leave me uncertain of what they believe about charter
schools. I sent questions to both by emaiI; there has been no response.
I write this (and suggest five specific asks, Addendum B) in hopes that
voters and the media will seek clear answers from Escarcega and Esser before the
Nov. 3. election. Their two Congressional districts host over 90 charter
schools.[ii]
How fairly will they represent these schools—and our state law?
It
is common now for the media to report news from the White House this way, “President
Trump said, without evidence, that…” I read statements from these two
candidates for the State Board and want to understand what they seem to
suggest, without evidence, about charter schools in our state. Is this
model, are these 261 schools in our state, all about profits and privatization?
Ten summers ago I challenged one national proponent of the “privatization” charge:
AV #64, “Responding to Diane Ravitch’s The
Death and Life of the Great American School System,” (2010). Excerpt - Addendum C. As I
did four years later in AV #107: “The hoax behind The Hoax in the Privatization Movement - A look at Diane Ravitch’s work of fiction, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization
Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (2014). Excerpt - Addendum D.
If anyone wishing to serve on our State Board is now making this claim,
apparently about Colorado schools, we should expect them to present clear
examples. No innuendo, please. Evidence.
LISA ESCARCEGA,
candidate for Congressional District 1 (Bold mine)
1. From “Primary Preview: State Board of Education for Congressional District 1; Democrat,” Colorado Politics, by Michael Karlick, June 16, 2020 – updated, June 30, 2020.- https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/primary-preview-state-board-of-education-for-congressional-district-1-democrat/article_fca098b0-affa-11ea-b4c6-27c75500d4ae.html
|
NOTE:
Congressional District 1 has the highest number of charter schools—58—of any Congressional District
in the state. |
“Escárcega does not support putting public schools under private
control.”
2. From Ballotpedia - https://ballotpedia.org/Lisa_Escarcega
Who are you? Tell us about yourself.
The current
State Board is moving our state education system into one that … is creating a
business model of competition for public education... I see two competing
issues for the top spot of the most pressing issue for education in Colorado -
Public Education funding and the privatization of Public Education.
Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?
Our lack of funding for PK-12
public education is starving our schools and educators. This is on many levels,
by many people, intentional. By not adequately funding our PK-12 schools, the
narrative of 'failing public schools' gives the cover and support to the
need for alternative, choice programs. The privatization sector has
used this narrative to funnel money into the alternative, choice sector.
Profit is the ultimate motivation which is achieved by the selling of services
and investment of real estate. Our challenge is to secure increased funding
that is directed to traditional public schools and to expose the outside
funding by those that want to privatize education.
|
Sound
familiar? From CEA Policy Guide, 2017-18: “The CEA opposes:
utilizing for-profit charter school management organizations; weakening
public education funding through vouchers, private school tax credits, and
privatization of any public education services; privatizing public school
jobs.” https://www.coloradoea.org/wp-content/uploads/PolicyGuide2017-18.pdf |
I am passionate about policy
that gives control of our schools back to the communities. We need to stop
the privatization push in our districts.
3.
From “Lisa
Escarcega for State Board of Education”
MY PRIOR EXPERIENCE
Prior to
my current position, I worked for Aurora Public Schools as the Chief
Accountability and Research Officer. I worked with the local board and
superintendent on how to apply data and assessment issues. This work also
involved charter school authorizing and innovation zone development. I saw
first hand how the corporate charter system worked to privatize our public
schools. This is why I have pledged that I will never vote for the
privatization of our public schools. https://www.lisaescarcega.com/about
KARLA ESSER, candidate for Congressional
District 7
|
NOTE: By my count, 34 charter schools operate inside Congressional District 7. |
From "Karla Esser
for State Board of Education"
Neighborhood schools
Education should be about kids, not profits. Charter schools can
fill an important need in communities that are lacking strong neighborhood
schools, but we have a responsibility to make both neighborhood and charter
schools as strong as they can possibly be. https://www.karlaesser.com/karla-esser-priorities/
**
Addendum A – “False statement about
‘for-profit charter school’”
“Denver school board election mailer’s false statement
about ‘for-profit charter school’ draws criticism,” by Eric Gorski, Chalkbeat Colorado, Oct 25, 2017. (Four excerpts)
School board elections, like all elections, brim with
harsh accusations, cherry-picked data and political posturing.
An
election mailer from an independent committee trying to influence the outcome
of a hard-fought race in northeast Denver goes a step further, falsely stating
that the school district is “ceding space to a for-profit charter school” on
one of its campuses.
**
The mailer was paid for by Brighter
Futures for Denver Students, an independent expenditure committee that is
supporting the candidacy of Jennifer Bacon, who has worked as a teacher,
administrator and lawyer. As of the last reporting deadline, the group had brought in $139,000 from the Denver teachers union
and the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.
**
In
Colorado, charter schools are required to be run by nonprofit boards. Charter
school boards are permitted to contract operations and management to for-profit
companies, often known as education-management organizations or EMOs, but that
is rare in Colorado. DSST operates its own schools.
**
Bill
Kurtz, CEO of DSST, which operates some of the city’s highest-performing
schools, criticized the mailer’s language about a “for-profit charter school”
in an interview with Chalkbeat. “As adults in this country, we have an
obligation to model integrity, and to model truthful discourse,” Kurtz said.
“It’s disturbing that the adults in Denver are modeling for our young people in
a school board race factually untrue, categorically untrue statements in the
name of trying to elect adults in the city to lead our school system.”
Addendum B
– To ask of the candidates for the Colorado State Board of Education
For Lisa
Escarcega –
Please give an example of anyone a) who supports the charter school law in Colorado and b) who wishes to put “public schools under private control.”
Please give examples you have seen of “the privatization of Public Education” in Colorado.
Please give
examples from Colorado and tell us of whom you are speaking when criticizing “those that want
to privatize education.”
It sounds
like this answer (under "My Prior Experience") - “I saw first hand how the
corporate charter system worked to privatize our public schools” - referred to
your experience in Aurora Public Schools. Please give examples.
Please
provide examples from Colorado to support this claim: “the privatization sector has used this
narrative to funnel money into the alternative, choice sector.”
For Karla
Esser –
Please
explain if you are suggesting charter schools in your Congressional district,
or in our state, are about profits, not kids. If that is what you mean, please
provide examples and evidence.
Addendum C – From AV #64 (July 18, 2010)
“Responding to Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great
American School System”
But in this
chapter—and in recent statements and speeches—she harps on the theme that
charters are part of a movement to “privatize public education.” By the end of
this chapter, she says charters now “are supposed to disseminate the
free-market model of competition and choice” (146).
In a recent
interview on “Democracy Now” with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez she went further:
(The Obama Administration has) said to the states in the
“Race to the Top” … that the requirements to be considered are, first of all,
that the states have to be committed to privatizing many, many, many public
schools. These are called charter schools. They’re privatized schools…. And I
think that with the proliferation of charter schools, the bottom-line issue is
the survival of public education, because we’re going to see many, many more
privatized schools and no transparency as to who’s running them…. (March 5,
2010)
She is wrong; charters are not
privatized schools. Were the parents
overseeing the charters I taught in “privatizing public education”?
Addendum D – From
AV #107 (Jan. 7, 2014)
The hoax behind The Hoax in the Privatization Movement - A look at Diane Ravitch’s work
of fiction, Reign of Error: The
Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools
Colorado – if
there’s a privatization movement afoot, it’s not working here!
If Ravitch and
company have a plausible case to be made about for-profit companies swooping in
and pervading the charter school world in other places, say New York, Illinois,
or Michigan, I trust those states will refute her accusation. Here in Colorado,
it is not hard to poke holes in her charge.
If there is some stealth campaign to
privatize public education through charter schools, it is not working
here. To begin, one need only look at
our state law. Furthermore, note that
out of this year’s 198 charters, only thirteen are managed by for-profits—less
than 7%. I asked Nora Flood, president
of the Colorado League of Charter Schools, to comment on this issue. She writes:
The “private” charter school simply doesn’t
exist. This is a myth. And, Colorado
takes this issue a step further… by law, charter schools cannot exist in this
state unless they are non-profit entities. Charter schools, traditional public
schools, and school districts may contract with for-profit organizations to
manage all or part of a school’s operations if they wish. Very few of Colorado
charter schools contract with for-profit management companies, and if anything,
that trend is shrinking in our state. Last year alone, two charter schools
parted ways with their for-profit management companies.
[ii] Over 90 charter schools in Congressional Districts 1
and 7. Figures taken from:
1) The Colorado Department of Education – Sent me an updated list of
schools in each Congressional District. https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeboard/congressional_district_map
- scroll down to – “The Colorado State Board of Education is composed of seven elected officials representing
Colorado's congressional districts.” - Schools and School
Districts Within Each Congressional District”
2) http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdechart - Colorado Department of
Education - go to link for List of All Charter Schools (2019-2020)
3) List of DPS charter schools, 2020-21, provided by Colorado
League of Charter Schools, Sept. 28, 2020.
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