8 March 2005
Bernadette Medige
Charter Schools Initiative: Not Dead Yet, and Why Bill Gates Needs More Homework
On Friday, the Buffalo News reported that the Buffalo Board of Education’s Charter school initiative is dead. They did not call the Renaissance Project Schools Initiative by name or mention any vote. It simply stated that the withdrawal of three charter applications from the city signaled the end. In addition to a school district, applicants can apply to state charter entities, the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York or the Board of Regents, however only the latter may actually issue the charter. The applications approved by the Buffalo Board of Education failed to pass muster with the Board of Regents. All three applicants are expected to take their applications to a state charter entity.
The issue remains cloudy given that the search firm engaged to find a new superintendent has ties to the charter school industry. In case you missed it, Altpress published an article outlining numerous relationships between several Heidrich and Struggles’ officers/board members and various charter school interests. The search, and part of the superintendent’s salary, will be paid for by M&T Bank, which sponsors Westminster Community School and encouraged its conversion to a charter school. Central to the debate surrounding whether to accept the money was the question about how much influence M&T would have on choosing the superintendent, and whom the superintendent would be answerable to. The choice of search firms is not encouraging. The corporate backers haven’t weighed in, including M&T and the Education Innovation Consortium, the think tank paid millions to think up the Renaissance Project.
But the political winds are changing; support for the Renaissance Project has diminished and there are now precedents for denying charters due to financial hardship on other districts. Buffalo has more charter schools per capita than any other district in New York; Buffalo Schools CFO Gary Crosby has demonstrated that charter school payouts are hurting the district, which is under control board oversight. The issue and the Renaissance Project aren’t dead yet, but at least now there is some public debate.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates made a grand speech about the state of Public High Schools. Buffalo Report linked the story. It seems Bill Gates wants expectations raised for poor students to include graduation and college, and that all kids should be given the tools to do those things. A laudable goal, if Bill Gates were prepared to hire a million college grads rather than open factories in India.
The Seattle Times noted “The speech struck a sour chord in Washington State this week with some lawmakers who are grappling with a $2 billion budget shortfall this year. They note Microsoft and other big companies have lobbied hard to keep their own tax bills down.” Taxes that fund education. "They seem to have a bad case of corporate cognitive dissonance," said Jacobsen, D-Seattle.
Sue Allison, head of Marylanders Against High Stakes Testing, wrote “Bill Gates' biggest mistake was to hitch his wagon to Achieve Inc. guys… These fellows insist that they are fighting to lower the drop-out rate and to get more kids into college while in truth they are fighting to make sure we deny diplomas and thereby ruin college plans of students who have earned their diplomas fair and square by doing acceptable work in our classrooms…. I am happy to consider the ideas of Bill Gates—-just as soon as he disassociates himself from diploma requirements based on a one-size-fits-all high states tests that defy every standard of reputable educational assessment.”
Bill Gates said, “Today, even when they work exactly as designed, our high schools cannot teach our kids what they need to know.”
"What are we educating our students for?” asked David G. Stratman, education consultant and former Director of Governmental Relations of the National PTA, in his 1997 Keynote Address to the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents Summer Institute. “The choices, I think, come down to two. We can prepare students for unrewarding jobs in an increasingly unequal society, or we can prepare our young people to understand their world and to change it. The first is education to meet the needs of the corporate economy. The second is education for democracy.” Stratman sees the corporate goal of education reforms as reducing, not increasing educational attainment and destroying, not improving, public education. Stratman was speaking years before Bill Gates, but his speech resurfaced in a couple blogs after the Bill Gates commentary was published and is a compelling read.
Bill Gates may have good intentions, but he seems not to have thought this through. Certainly the narrowing of curriculum and the dropout rate associated with standardized testing do not constitute educational attainment. Heavily funding the charter school lobby, a movement that exacerbate the unevenness and stratification of education and evades elected local control of education, is certainly not rooted in the goals of education for democracy, nor does it match up with his talk of closing the achievement gap between the haves and have-nots. Paradoxically, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has contributed to New York’s Campaign for Fiscal Equity which seeks full and equitable funding for public education. Maybe we wouldn’t have to fight so hard for education funding if we weren’t giving away so many corporate tax breaks. Maybe Bill Gates ought to stick to software, pay his taxes and let educators make education policy.
Or at least do his homework.
Copyright 2004 by Buffalo Report, Inc.