A charter school comeback? Top NYC candidates support the alternative schools - Politico/New York

After years in the wilderness of the de Blasio administration and waning influence in Albany, charter schools are gaining a foothold in the city again — if the race for mayor is any barometer.

The three leading candidates in the Democratic primary are decidedly supportive of charter schools — a dramatic shift from when Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected eight years ago and another sign of the citywide electorate hewing closer to the center in the June 22 Democratic primary.

Last week, “Our City” — a left-leaning political action committee headed by Gabe Tobias — hosted a rally urging New Yorkers to not rank Adams or Yang, referencing the candidates' support from hedge fund billionaires linked to school privatization.  ... Politico

Of course, They're in it for the children

With the latest charge against Stringer -- how more perfectly timed could they be, 20 and 30 years after the fact -- the charter industrial complex is in great position to renew the charter wars. 

Even as charters see a new dawn of sorts this election season, there is still a movement of families and advocates who remain wary of charter growth and are taking steps of their own to fight it. City Comptroller Scott Stringer remains a strong candidate in the race and his skepticism over charters was among the factors that won him the endorsement of the United Federation of Teachers — the city’s powerful teachers union which is helping fund a multimillion dollar, independent expenditure in support of his campaign.

The more charges against Stringer, the better a charter comeback looks. With him and Morales damaged, the best progressive shot might be Wiley - but don't be shocked to see something drop on her in the next week.

The charters have been given renewal by the awful manner in which de Blasio handled the schools during the pandemic and have opened up a dangerous channel of support from people who would risk trying something new as an alternative to any mayor running things for them. Thus the door is open to privatizing as it hasn't been since the height of the Bloomberg years. In three years the jobs crunch will come for the UFT which should take a message from the Chicago Teacher Union which actually has a clue on how to organize charter schools.

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2021/06/02/a-charter-school-comeback-top-nyc-candidates-support-the-alternative-schools-1384871

 

NY Times Pulls Race Card in Report on Charters While The Guardian Exposes Sham Astroturf Protests

Recently a crowd of protesters disrupted a speech by Elizabeth Warren. The activists might have seemed grassroots, but they weren’t... The Guardian, Billionaire-funded protest is rearing its head in America
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/27/billionare-funded-protests-america

But the NY Times (intentionally) fell for it as evidenced by this biased front page article in the Nov. 27, 2019 edition of the Times: Minority Voters Chafe as Democratic Candidates Abandon Charter Schools. 
The NYT doesn't raise the issue: Why is there a charter school industrial complex designed to make a lot of money for a lot of people using kids as a device.

[Addendum since publication - Ravitch on the same subject: Robert Kuttner (and I) Challenge the New York Times Slant on Charter Schools By dianeravitch November 29, 2019]

Contrast the reports from the Times and the Guardian:

NYT:

Outside the Atlanta studio where the candidates were assembling for Wednesday’s debate, more than 300 people chanted “Our children, our choice” to the drumbeats of a marching band from a KIPP school. The next day, black and Latino charter school parents shouted the same refrain at Ms. Warren as she tried to start a speech about race in Atlanta. .... Since 2016, public polling has shown a widening divide on charter schools between white Democrats and their black and Latino peers. White Democrats’ approval of charter schools dropped to 27 percent from 43 percent between 2016 and 2018, according to a poll conducted by Education Next, a journal based at Harvard that is generally supportive of charters. Black and Latino approval for the schools remained basically steady at about 47 percent for each group.

Hmmmm - does this mean the majority of parents of color do not approve and why is that downplayed - note how misleading the NYT headline is: Minority Voters Chafe as Democratic Candidates Abandon Charter Schools

I don't expect anything less from NYT reporter Eliza Shapiro who shows bias in her reporting since she was at Politico - When she moderated a debate on charters I attended with Carol Burris as one of the participants challenging charters, I saw clear evidence of bias so I never trust her ed reporting --- at times Trump is right about NYT fake news -- NYC education activists have known that for decades.

Guardian:

Last week, Elizabeth Warren went to Atlanta to give a major speech about issues of concern to black women. Her speech touched on knotty, existential topics such as the legacy of slavery, institutional racism, voter suppression, mass incarceration and reparations. But the next day’s headlines overwhelmingly focused on the fact that the speech was interrupted by a loud group of pro-charter school protesters.
We were supposed to be talking about challenging centuries of institutional racism, but now we’re talking about charter schools. How did that happen? If you suspect that some sort of nefarious action that can be traced back to plutocratic billionaires is involved – well, of course.

The protesters themselves were, by all accounts and appearances, a group of concerned people who passionately oppose Warren’s plan to bolster public education and crack down on the charter school industry. But they did not all materialize in the crowd together in matching shirts by chance. Their existence was orchestrated by pro-charter school groups that are funded by an array of billionaires, including Netflix founder Reed Hastings, art and philanthropy titan Eli Broad and, most prominently, the Walton Foundation, controlled by the staggeringly wealthy family that owns Walmart. Thus we are all forced to deal with the spectacle of classic tactics of grassroots protest being coopted and fueled by a tiny group of the very sort of people that such tactics were developed to target in the first place.

NYT: their [charters] waiting lists swelling into the hundreds of thousands. ​
What bullshit about waiting lists - charter propaganda. The reporters should ask to see these lists. We know there are empty charter seats in Eva schools here in NY.

And are there also massive waiting lists for some public schools?

Why White Parents Were at the Front of the Line for the School ...

https://www.nytimes.com › nyregion › beacon-high-school-admissions-nyc

Nov 15, 2019 - 

One more bit from the Guardian to highlight how easy the charter lobby can distract from real issues:

One of the emotional backbones of Warren’s speech was the story of the 1881 Atlanta washerwomen strike – a relatively little known incident in labor history that she was no doubt inspired to cite by the union leader Sara Nelson’s recent speech on the same topic in front of the Democratic Socialists of America convention. Yet what should be a shining example of radical ideas rising to mainstream prominence in a presidential campaign has been pushed to the bottom of most news stories in favor of the charter school ruckus. This points to the fact that astroturf campaigns don’t have to be very sophisticated, or even very secret; they just need to make enough noise to weasel their way into a 30-second TV hit to get the job done.

 Oh, and Howard Fuller is one of the biggest pieces of crap and indicative of the slime the charter industry attracts.

Read both articles in full below.

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Billionaire-funded protest is rearing its head in America

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/27/billionare-funded-protests-america