The "Every Child Ready for College or Career Act of 2015"

Otherwise known as "How to further privatize and sell off our public school system to the highest bidder, Part _".

Those of you who have read my previous posts know that I used to be a public school teacher. I have for a long time now been concerned about the trend in our school system toward charter schools, privatization, and standardized testing. I had some transitory hope that the new reauthorization of the ESEA of 1965 would take heed of the continuing (and widening) educational gap and do more to address it. However, those hopes have been dashed.

The title of the new reauthorization sounds promising, doesn't it? It implies that the intent is to prepare our students for college or careers, right? But what it's doing is continuing the trend toward privatization and the increased involvement of corporate America in the public school system.

My concerns with this are many, and I've discussed some of them in previous posts. My main issue at this point is that the current draft of the legislation appears to open the door wider to the proliferation of charter schools, which are accompanied by a severe lack (in most states) of public oversight or accountability. There are many examples in current studies of the ways in which charter schools are failing to live up to public demands and expectations. To wit:

This study [Charter Schools in Chicago: No Model for Education Reform, Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, University of Minnesota Law School, 2014] using comprehensive data for 2012-13, shows that, after controlling for the mix of students and challenges faced by individual schools, Chicago’s charter schools actually underperform their traditional counterparts in most measurable ways. Reading and math pass rates, reading and math growth rates, and graduation rates are lower in charters, all else equal, than in traditional neighborhood schools. This is true despite the fact that, because students self-select into the charter system, student performance should exceed what one sees in traditional schools, even if charters do no better at teaching their students.

Oversight of charter schools is nominal in many cases. Take a look at the situation in Arizona:

Arizona’s charter school law is unique in allowing charter schools to operate for 15 years before coming up for review...But our evidence also suggests that a 15-year period with little oversight of academic quality may be too long to wait to intervene and potentially close schools that are producing subpar results. A shorter authorization period accompanied by vigorous efforts to measure quality along the way may strike a better balance between autonomy to innovate and accountability for results.

Then there are the widespread financial transparency and accountability concerns revealed by several sources:

A 2014 report by two anti-education-privatization organizations, the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education, found $136 million in fraud and abuse in 15 states. A follow-up study (PDF) in Pennsylvania revealed “charter school officials have defrauded at least $30 million intended for Pennsylvania schoolchildren since 1997.” Some of the questionable dealings may not be illegal because of the intricacies of state laws, but there is little doubt that public money is being wasted.

A recent review of charter school scandals in Florida and Michigan by The Washington Post listed numerous cases of real estate flipping, in which charter schools were used as vehicles for exorbitant profits. Michigan’s largest charter operator, National Heritage Academies gets a 16 percent return on its investment in rent from the state — nearly twice what most commercial properties receive.

In Special Report: Class Struggle - How charter schools get students they want [here]

Charters are public schools, funded by taxpayers and widely promoted as open to all. But Reuters has found that across the United States, charters aggressively screen student applicants, assessing their academic records, parental support, disciplinary history, motivation, special needs and even their citizenship, sometimes in violation of state and federal law.

Further:

Set up as alternatives to traditional public schools, charter schools typically operate under private management and often boast small class sizes, innovative teaching styles or a particular academic focus. They're booming: There are now more than 6,000 in the United States, up from 2,500 a decade ago, educating a record 2.3 million children.

Thousands of charter schools don't provide subsidized lunches, putting them out of reach for families in poverty. Hundreds mandate that parents spend hours doing "volunteer" work for the school or risk losing their child's seat. In one extreme example the Cambridge Lakes Charter School in Pingree Grove, Illinois, mandates that each student's family invest in the company that built the school...

All these give me cause for concern about the health of our public school system as it's forced to compete with charter schools. My biggest concern with the current draft of the College or Career Act of 2015, however, can be found below the orange graphic.