Response to "Charters hold key to saving state big education dollars" by Andrew J. Coulson in the Detroit News on December 17. 2009.
Cato says: "Charters hold key to saving state big education dollars"
This presentation by the Libertarian Cato Institute is very revealing, both for its content, its timing, and its distortions.
The assumption that Charter schools are the answer to the problems of achievement in academics is both wish-full thinking and deceptive. But the fact that the thrust of this appeal to the public and to the legislature appears in the News at the 11th hour the 59th minute, in the middle of this present "crisis," is very eye-opening and gives great insight as to the thinking of the local brand of radicalism that sees taxes in such a dim light. This piece lights up the dark corner of a class of ideologues who would eliminate the "burden of taxation" for the education of any child in a "public school."
The essential attitude of Cato is akin to the thought that is behind the choice over the use of a public toilet faculty. If an individual had a choice between a "public faculty" and a "private" one, the choice would always be for the private loo.
Let's look at what Cato's Andrew J. Coulson has revealed unto us.
1.) Cato: (I)f Michigan converted all its conventional public schools into charters (also known as public school academies), that tsunami would explode into a refreshing mist -- complete with fiscal surplus rainbow.
RESPONSE: Charters are operating in many areas where fine public schools exist. In fact many private schools simply converted to fit the "charter" designation in the early days of Michigan's charter school experiment. Many of those operations, even given public tax dollars have not survived. Charters exploit the atmosphere of created by the "manufactured crisis" over public schools encouraged and promoted by the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, WalMart heirs, and the radicalized national Republican Party. The GOP, over the years since Reagan and still today, has promoted and festered anti-public school sentiment as a special "wedge issue" headed up by such rogues as Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist. Religiously the GOP argument against public schooling has come from James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, both ardent foes and strong supporters of parents "pulling their children from public schools." The alternative for education monies, of course, is parochiaid a long sought and strongly defeated effort. Ask the Amway DeVos' about how easy it is to get a state like Utah to vote the voucher. Their well-funded effort there went down like it did in 2000 in Michigan by a whopping 2 to 1 margin. Does that tell you how the voter thinks?
2.) Cato: Based on the latest (2006-07) figures, the average charter school in Michigan spends $2,000 less in state and local tax dollars per pupil than the average district school. So the savings from a district-to-charter student exodus would add up to $3.5 billion annually.
RESPONSE: This overly simplistic assertion is only the tip of a dirty, acidic iceberg. Those savings are based in many ways on the fact that "truly public" neighborhood schools exist and continue to serve the charters as a safety net. The charters love to have a "full house" of coupon bearing children enrolled on head count day, after that they can eject the "bad apples" back into the public system.
Like cowbirds they don't see any problem in letting the other birds utilize their funding and facilities to educate their "rejects." The lower costs are built on the backs of many young teachers looking for any place to obtain a teaching job even if it doesn't pay well or provide adequate benefits, and even if it shorts their possibilities of a "public school retirement" down the years ahead.
The recent news from the News has actually pointed out that charters can be tiny "kingdoms," "fiefdoms" where operators and the proprietary interests hire and fire at-will, practice simony and placement of family members and fellow travelers in positions paid by tax dollars which have been siphoned off from the local, neighborhood school. Charter schools don't have to pack into the "foundation grant" the various mandates of Michigan law such as busing, including busing for private schools within their districts.
Charters also avoid wherever possible the high costs of physically and otherwise handicapped children (including blind children) and other students with special needs. Cherry picking for charters is a year around educating-for-profit activity.
3.) Cato: "...Michigan's charter schools not only spend 20 percent less than district schools, they also have 20 percent fewer pupils per teacher.
RESPONSE: One of the "boutique" draws of charters is the system's ability to cut personnel costs, other costs associated with a public school employee's benefits and retirement, the costs of a building built to a higher standard by far for a "public school" than the special zoning and building codes sought and obtained by the chartering industry, which has allowed them to build OSB, balloon trussed, and vinyl clad polebarns (akin to pig farm buildings) for their operations. God forbid one ever becomes engulfed in fire!
Get the facts: The faux public charter school owners have bragged in national media about making up to 12 percent profit from educating children in their privately operated and privately governed proprietary facilities. This means that chartering involves a middleman level of costs and control that must come from cutting something else in the operation and faculties of these completive experiments. So smaller classes, not always the standard, becomes a draw for parents.
It also helps that the parents are "coerced" into "contributing" hours of their labor and efforts into supplementing and off-loading the expenses of the charter's operations. No compliance with mandatory service, no "free" taxpayer-funded charter schooling for your child.
4.) Cato: Thus far, the governor and state Legislature seem unaware of the vast savings to be had from universal charter schooling. But they have shown their willingness to promote charters in response to a far smaller financial inducement.
RESPONSE: The use of the charter movement based on the segregation academies of the south has been a pet project of a cornucopia of private and parochial interests. The heavy push from the Catholic hierarchy to achieve the voucher has been a major ingredient in this movement, privatizing for profit as Jonathan Kozol pointed out in Harpers Magazine is the "giant enchilada" for venture capitalists-so eager to break into the public schools lockbox.
The mantra, education is the sole responsibility of parents, has in it the thought that if you have a child the expense of educating that child is totally on you. That concept is specious, but it motivates a strong undercurrent in the anti-public school ranks. Right thinking citizens see a much larger and more important reason for excellence in public schools, for all children: the survival of our democracy.
One of the significant sources of the perennial "stink tank attacks" on public schools stems from the fact that all our children, from all our ethnic and racial groups, didn't sit in the same classrooms until into the 1970's. The residual fear and resentment over that occurrence has spawned a plethora of academies and private elitist religious school.
Just go the local library and look under the Yellow Pages for the listings of such schools in a city like Charlotte, North Carolina, there peruse the scores of such educational operations listings, the list will astound you.
5.) Cato: If legislators are willing to promote charter schools modestly in response to that modest and transitory incentive, they should be willing to promote charter schools much more intensively for a recurring annual savings that is eight times larger.
RESPONSE: The cost savings in a charter operation would be different if the playing field were level and identical with the local, neighborhood school. We have seen over 40 charters bite the dust this year alone. More will follow. Who gets the buildings, the computers, the equipment? The taxpaying public? Call your representative and ask. The answers will be weak and unrewarding. And then you have to ask yourself why is the Bay Mills Tribe in the tax-funded charter school business? Wouldn't it be more profitable and sensible for them to operate more casinos?
6.) Cato: (S)ignificant though it would be, charterizing the state's education system is not the best that Michiganians could do for their children. Opening the state's educational marketplace completely would be a better option. Some parents, for instance, prefer a religious education for their children, and religious (particularly Catholic) schools have repeatedly been found to be among the most effective and least expensive to operate.
RESPONSE: If a religious institution, say the branch run by Louis Farakahan, wants to run a "private" religious institution; what's the harm in throwing some of the "surplus" Michigan tax monies to them for that purpose? If private sources like the Amway clan, WalMart, the Knights of Columbus, or the Michigan Militia want a "government free" academy let them fund it and operate it as they see fit. To ask the taxpayer to fund indoctrination and sectarian religious training is one bridge too far. Already we have seen a charter run as a Muslim school teaching Arabic and having over a 90 percent Muslim student population.
Let's see now, what other kinds of secular or religious groups should we endow with public tax dollars to educate to their own beliefs and standards?
Incidentally, Catholic schools are not schools-on average-that have just Catholic students or individuals with religious orders as instructors anymore. They are very diverse and eclectic.
During the 1960's Catholic schools slipped in their achievement and desirability, being a Catholic school has not always automatically proven to be a school of excellence, and how they are run; not democratic either. Problems with sexual abuse and physical abuse of students in Catholic schools is a topic worth exploring, but in another venue.
7.) Cato:(P)roviding free charter schools without providing easier access to private school options reduces families' access to both religious and secular private alternatives. The closure of many Michigan private schools during the past decade resoundingly attests to the fact that it's hard to compete with free or heavily subsidized public schools.
RESPONSE: Not every elitist or religious desire for one's children should be the responsibility of the public and the tax dollar. No group should be more certain of this than the Libertarians and their Cato Institute. Did Andrew J. Coulson simply skip-rock this essay across the water or did he get approval from the Cato high council?
8.) Cato: Michigan's Constitution bans giving all families an easy choice between district, charter and private schools. As a result, it is impossible for Michigan parents to give their children the best possible educational options and permanently rein in out-of-control school district spending.
RESPONSE: It all comes down to Cato and fellow travelers finding a way to breach the levees of separation of church and state. On one hand they want freedom, and lots of it. Libertarians want freedom for drug use.
They want to get out of taxes they don't like. Then they want a "government" endowment for religious and private education. How can these ardent proponents of "freedom" be so bifurcated and blind? Perhaps they need to check with Michigan Republicans in the legislature to see how they carry on in their dark night of anti-public school radicalism.
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