Charter of Fools

[n2doc]

By Charles P. Pierce

Up here in the Commonwealth (God save it!), our newly elected Republican governor, Charlie Baker, loves him some charter schools. This is partly why the Boston Globe, one of the most reliably pro-charter (and vaguely anti-teachers-union) liberal newspapers in America, loved it some Charlie Baker as fervently as it did.

For instance, lawmakers seem to have cooled lately on education reform. Coakley's positions in this area, such as on raising the cap on the number of charter schools in the state, appear to be a work in progress. Baker would provide full-throated support for the kind of high standards, accountability, and innovation that will give all children in Massachusetts the opportunities they deserve.

You see what they did there, right? They were talking about "raising the cap" on the number of charter schools in the state and, suddenly, that equated directly to "high standards, accountability, and innovation" that will improve the lot of all the kidz, especially the poor ones, in Massachusetts. If only there were some evidence of the benefits of throwing open wide the universe of charter schools. Oh, wait. There is.

At hearings on whether to revoke the Walter D. Palmer school's charter, the questions ranged from hard-nosed ("Isn't it true that you lied . . . about accurately submitting invoices?&quot to humdrum ("Do you have a master's degree?&quot . Daira Hinson, the Palmer school's director of administration, invoked the Fifth Amendment 22 times in the hearings, which ended last week. Richard Troutman, its controller, did so 55 times. "It is the first time in anybody's knowledge that a witness has pleaded the Fifth in a charter hearing," said district spokesman Fernando Gallard. "It's very surprising that two high-level administrators decided to plead the Fifth when we are asking questions on issues of overpayment. We're talking about $1.5 million over one single fiscal year."

If this had happened in a public school, of course, the likes of Chris Christie and Scott Walker would be all over it, talking about union thugs and "rubber rooms." The problem with the charter school movement, and why it has to be regulated and watched very closely, is that there is an inherent contradiction in it, and because the high-minded rhetoric that attends to it, which tends to lean toward pure propaganda, blinds its most fervent supporters to the fact that it also is an open invitation to turn education into a thieves bazaar. (One of the ways we know this is that the various sharks involved in college sports descended on the movement very early on when this was the case, creating "virtual charters" through which to funnel athletes, and those people are attracted to money the way vultures are to carrion. Another way we knew this is because Michael Milken, the former junk-bond felon, is the brains behind this scam.) Public education cannot be profit-driven because the desire for profits -- and, in the case of charter schools, the easy availability of free public money -- will reliably outweigh the educational mission of the schools. And given the decades of fact-free anti-public-school tub-thumping everywhere from the newspapers to our popular culture, any attempt at regulation is going to be greeted with a chorus of What About The Children?!!! by the various wealthy dilettantes behind the school "reform" movement, and I don't think Diane Ravitch can stand alone against the onslaught. Public education was invented, right here in the Commonwealth (God save it!). We should be careful about that which we should know better.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Problems_With_Charters