The Hijacking of the Charter School Movement, revisited

(The responses were very informative.)

As my handful of fans will recall, several months ago I wrote about how the charter school movement – conceived as an opportunity for teacher empowerment and educational innovation – had been “hijacked” by those who recognized in Pennsylvania’s charter school law an opportunity to make money.

I thought it would be enlightening to also examine some of the responses to that article.

Tellingly, there were two very quick responses (here’s one) from outside our local community, from two men who just happen to be employees of the state charter school industry. It is their job, quite literally, to scan newspapers from across the state each morning, to see if anyone has popped their head up to challenge their highly lucrative business model, and then ‘rapidly-respond’ in their version of whack-a-mole. (In this metaphor, I am the mole.)

The great irony is that you, dear taxpayer, are paying their salaries! (Albeit, indirectly)  This happens because Pennsylvania’s charter school industry makes so much money that they can afford to hire lobbyists! To protect their business model!  One almost has to admire the evil beauty of it.

Now, let me ask: how much of what they said did you understand? I would guess not much, because that’s not the point. Their entire goal is to sow enough confusion so that the average reader doesn’t know what to think. (Well, this guy says “A” and these other guys say “not A”. I’m not an expert, so who am I supposed to believe?) And they live to fight another day.

The other point to be made here is this rhetoric is what our legislators hear every day.  Money, mostly in the form of campaign contributions, buys access. So it should be no surprise that they were able to gut the proposed charter school reform legislation in the final days preceding the vote.

I bring up the third letter of interest mostly for comic relief. It came from our local “I’m against everything,” curmudgeon. (Every community has one.) The irony is that for many years this gentlemen has promoted himself as “the friend of the taxpayer”, so I naively anticipated having him weigh in. Ha!  Apparently, “curmudgeon” carries more weight than “friend of taxpayers.”  

Did you understand a word of what he said, either?  I didn’t think so.

The fourth letter was the most disappointing. Written by the leadership of one of our pretty good local charters, their message was essentially “we would never do that!”; which misses the point entirely. As for what’s happening in the rest of the Commonwealth, our heads are firmly buried in the sand.  But as I pointed out to them, the hundreds of millions of dollars that the charter school chains skim from taxpayers aren’t being used to educate anyone’s children – theirs or ours.  We ought to be on the same side, as advocates of good public policy - but then, they’re also afraid of a disruption to the business model. Don’t rock the boat! 

Well, this boat needs rocking.