DC charter schools serve fewer at-risk students than nearby neighborhood [public] schools

Edd Doerr thinks that the  Oct 8 Washington Post online article  by Michael Alison Chandler “DC charter schools serve fewer at-risk students than nearby neighborhood [public] schools” is "Dynamite".

He noted curiously, that the Oct 9 print edition of the paper did not run the story. Here is what Edd posted in the paper online ---

The article details, with maps and charts, how about 90% of DC’s large charter 

school array serve fewer at-risk kids than nearby public schools and are rather selective, which regular public schools cannot be. As the DC charters are regarded as some of the best in the US, what does this say about charters generally? The big question is why did the Post omit this article from its Oct 9 print edition?

There is a strong consensus among educators and others that charter schools – and school voucher plans – are part of an ongoing Republican/conservative campaign to undermine and privatize public education. Diane Ravitch, Mercedes Schneider, and many others, including myself, have been writing about this for a long time.

DC School Vouchers

The Washington Post on Oct 9 did publish this story by Lyndsey Layton, ”8 on [DC] council seek end to private school vouchers.” The story refers to a letter that a majority on the DC City Council sent to a congressional committee on Oct 8 urging no further expansion of the school voucher plan imposed on the District of Columbia by Congress and the George W. Bush administration. You should be able to Google the story. Here is the comment I posted online ---

“Excellent! The Council majority accurately reflects public opinion against vouchers. Remember that in 1981 DC voters voted down a tax-credit voucher plan by 89% to 11%. Remember that DC vouchers are paid for not just by DC taxpayers but by all taxpayers nationwide.

“Let’s note also that the annual Gallup education poll in August showed that Americans nationwide oppose diverting public funds to private schools by 57% to 31%, a supermajority that has held for nearly 50 years and that is reflected in the 28 state referenda from coast to coast from 1966 through 2014.”

Rheeformers & the Vergara ruling against teacher tenure

Edd Doerr (arlinc.org) notes that the Washington Post, 15 Aug 2014, ran a long op ed piece, “The promise of teacher tenure reform”, by Joshua Lewis, a long time “Rheeformer”  supporting the recent LA lower court ruling in the Vergara case that slashed teacher tenure.

 Below is the comment Edd posted in the Post on line. A similarly strong response was posted by “LaborLawyer”. 

Of course Lewis would like the Vergara ruling against teacher tenure. He is on the board of Pearson, the testing and publishing supergiant that makes uncounted millions from its contracts with public schools and which owns some charter schools, which are not friendly to teacher unions. Lewis talks big about "reform" but says nothing about the overtesting of kids that is actually hurting public education and kids. And he says nothing about the real reforms that serious professional educators have been advocating, such as more adequate and more equitably distributed funding for public schools, universal pre-K, smaller classes, wraparound social and medical services for the neediest kids, an end to the diversion of public funds to special interest private schools through vouchers and tax credits (which have invariably been voted down in state referenda), and a pull-back in the expansion of charter schools, which the 2013 Stanford CREDO study found were generally no better than regular public schools despite their selectivity and other advantages.

Doing away with teacher tenure can only harm the teaching profession and the kids. The idea that the quality of in-school teaching is all important ignores the fact that kids are not widgets in a factory, that teachers are not robots on an assembly line, and that at least 1/4 of our students live in poverty.

The Post should run opinion pieces by real educators -- like Diane Ravitch, Mercedes Schneider or David Berliner.