S03.E22: Charter Schools

[Athena]

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Main segment: Charter schools in the United States
Segments: Ryan Lochte Olympic scandal, Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016

 

[Eegah]

I took a special interest in this one, as I was a member of the inaugural eighth grade class of the Sussex County Charter School for Technology in 1997-98. And suddenly I'm quite conscious of how lucky I was that it turned out as good as it did. Plus, it let me meet Christine Todd Whitman shortly before she collapsed like a dying star, so I'll always be thankful for that conversation piece.

[DrScottie]

Wow, the advice for Drumpf actually makes perfect sense. We already know that he doesn't really want the job of being President anyway. He wants to be called the President. It's that he's trying to figure out a way to get out of it He's using teleprompters and actually took back the comments about Hillary and President Obama being the founders of ISIS. This is a man who always doubles down in the face of criticism.  My guess is he suspects that showing some humility might be the best way to sabotage his campaign. His off-the-cuff remarks and never backing down are essential reasons for his support. 

Trump's campaign did prove that propaganda still works quite well. Directing blame at others for their unfortunate lot in life, promising to be the hero to save them, and denouncing those who stand in your path as cowards, liars, losers, low energy, small hands, etc. It works because it appeals to base emotions. If Trump stops dong that, his base might abandon him and I think that's his goal at the moment. If he's going to leave anyway, why not take the high road as John Oliver suggested?

It raises an important question if Trump decides to quit, when should Trump step down? Obviously, if he gets elected and then resigns, Mike Pence is the President. But what if he quits before then?  Who becomes the nominee? 

Edited August 22, 2016 by DrScottie

[candall]

The Ryan Lochte segment was Gold.

[TVcritic]

I want to have a job with Oliver's team. Busloads of vacations. I must be doing something wrong here working so many days a year ... 

Concerning this episode:

I wonder about the percentage of money well-spend by US government. Must be in homeopathic doses. I can see why so many people want taxes to be as low as possible if you throw taxpayer money away so carelessly.

Why should Trumpolini drop out? Let him finish off the GOP. I'll be laughing my a** off!

[OneWhoLurks]

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With charter schools educating as many as half the students in some American cities, they have been championed as a lifeline for poor black children stuck in failing traditional public schools.

But now the nation’s oldest and newest black civil rights organizations are calling for a moratorium on charter schools.

Their demands, and the outcry that has ensued, expose a divide among blacks that goes well beyond the now-familiar complaints about charters’ diverting money and attention from traditional public schools.

 

Condemnation of Charter Schools Exposes a Rift Over Black Students

[attica]

I think there may be a charter school or two that works well and educates kids. But the headlines I keep seeing are of grift after grift after grift. An easy way to funnel public money into private hands, while providing no benefit to the people. I was raised by a public school teacher, who grumbled about charter schools way back in the 70s. She viewed them as end runs around teachers unions, which always seem to be bete noirs of local municipalities. That, and charters tend to be squishy on teacher certification; there is no oversight on whether or not teachers are qualified to teach, no licensing, no continuing education mandates. And where I grew up (a rural-ish area with average per-capita income and a significant poor/minority population), public schools were very good; private schools (including religious ones) were famous for their lack of rigor. 

So I'm in the choir in John's church. Preach it, my brother!

An aside: I was half expecting John to admit he'd wrangled an actual charter for "John Oliver's School for Nervous Boys". I'm a little disappointed.

[EyewatchTV211]

I'm a school psychologist in public schools, and I've been learning about charter schools since my first year of undergrad. All I'll say is...yep yep yep. I've been saying all along (glad John Oliver agrees) that education is the ONE area politicians on both sides agree on, and they agree on AWFUL policies. It kills me.  Why can't the area they agree on be the reality of climate change existing? The area with actual scientific support...

Will stop there, as I would prefer not to get myself as riled up as I so easily can with this stuff. 

Edited August 22, 2016 by VMepicgrl

[cattykit]

8 hours ago, DrScottie said:

Wow, the advice for Drumpf actually makes perfect sense. We already know that he doesn't really want the job of being President anyway. He wants to be called the President. It's that he's trying to figure out a way to get out of it He's using teleprompters and actually took back the comments about Hillary and President Obama being the founders of ISIS. This is a man who always doubles down in the face of criticism.  My guess is he suspects that showing some humility might be the best way to sabotage his campaign. His off-the-cuff remarks and never backing down are essential reasons for his support. 

Trump's campaign did prove that propaganda still works quite well. Directing blame at others for their unfortunate lot in life, promising to be the hero to save them, and denouncing those who stand in your path as cowards, liars, losers, low energy, small hands, etc. It works because it appeals to base emotions. If Trump stops dong that, his base might abandon him and I think that's his goal at the moment. If he's going to leave anyway, why not take the high road as John Oliver suggested?

It raises an important question if Trump decides to quit, when should Trump step down? Obviously, if he gets elected and then resigns, Mike Pence is the President. But what if he quits before then?  Who becomes the nominee? 

What would happen if a presidential nominee quit?

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The Republican Party would start a process to search for a successor, after getting a formal notice from the candidate. According to a party official, this notice would likely take the form of a letter from the candidate to party heads stating his intention to drop out — in this case, to chairman Reince Priebus, permanent chairman of the Republican convention Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, and temporary chairman Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader.

The party’s Rule 9 states that the party has the power “to fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise.”

What staffer found that book about the kid running for president?  Give that staffer a gold star (not a Gold Star)!  That was amazing.

I've never been a fan of the public schools, and I even homeschooled for a while, but siphoning taxpayer money from the public schools to a for-profit structure doesn't seem like a way to make public schools any better.  Many years ago I put my daughter back in public school because she was chosen in a lottery for a new magnet school.  It was a public school but they gave control to a for-profit organization.  Within a couple of years the company had run things pretty much into the ground and the school district kicked them out and took back control of the school.

[peeayebee]

5 hours ago, candall said:

The Ryan Lochte segment was Gold.

I keep forgetting -- How do you pronounce his last name? Anyway, he's the definition of douchebag, so it's funny that he doesn't know the meaning of it.

8 hours ago, DrScottie said:

Wow, the advice for Drumpf actually makes perfect sense. We already know that he doesn't really want the job of being President anyway. He wants to be called the President. It's that he's trying to figure out a way to get out of it He's using teleprompters and actually took back the comments about Hillary and President Obama being the founders of ISIS. This is a man who always doubles down in the face of criticism.  My guess is he suspects that showing some humility might be the best way to sabotage his campaign. His off-the-cuff remarks and never backing down are essential reasons for his support. 

I agree that Oliver's advice does sound good, but I want Trump to lose big. I really don't think Trump would ever do anything like say, "Psych!" because he's already set up the answer for his failure: the system is rigged. The only thing I'm afraid of if he loses is that his supporters will go on a rampage.

I wonder if sales of that children's book will go up.

It's so disheartening to hear about people who scam charter schools. After all, like John says, it's really about the children. They're scamming our children. Do they even think about it that way? I guess they just don't care.

[attica]

49 minutes ago, peeayebee said:

How do you pronounce his last name?

LOCK-tee.

[Traveller519]

They can say Charter Schools act like a business all they want. But they aren't. They're not paid by their customers (the students), they're a government subsidized program, which people will take advantage of, because government auditors are so overwhelmed the risk is worth the reward. It's like Cash for Clunkers or Cash for Keys. Someone can step in to be a middle man and collect checks from the government.

[b2H]

3 hours ago, peeayebee said:

I keep forgetting -- How do you pronounce his last name? Anyway, he's the definition of douchebag, so it's funny that he doesn't know the meaning of it.

I agree that Oliver's advice does sound good, but I want Trump to lose big. I really don't think Trump would ever do anything like say, "Psych!" because he's already set up the answer for his failure: the system is rigged. The only thing I'm afraid of if he loses is that his supporters will go on a rampage.

I wonder if sales of that children's book will go up.

It's so disheartening to hear about people who scam charter schools. After all, like John says, it's really about the children. They're scamming our children. Do they even think about it that way? I guess they just don't care.

Here is a link for the book:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/134314.The_Kid_Who_Ran_For_President

[OneWhoLurks]

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In addition to his Trump advice, Oliver spoke about charter schools and included a subtle tribute to his fellow Daily Show alum Larry Wilmore. Watch the opening credits to see the shout-out to Wilmore, whose Nightly Show was canceled by Comedy Central last week.

On Monday, Wilmore thanked Oliver for the shout-out.

 

John Oliver Urges Donald Trump to Drop Out, Claims Doing So Would Make Him a "Legend"

[Irlandesa]

I'm the daughter of public school teachers, the product of public schools and I even taught in one for a bit.  I was very glad to see John cover charter schools, although I wish he had the time to explore more than just the process of charter schools.  Good education is so complex and involves so many factors both in the classroom and at home. 

The Lochte stuff was easy pickings but it was still hilarious.

John's focus on "The Kid Who Ran For President" has increased its sales substantially.  Here's an interview with the author.

[OneWhoLurks]

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Here’s what I mean, starting with some simple math: There are now more than 6,600 public charter schools nationally, educating about 3 million kids. All Oliver’s stories strung together account for a small percentage of that total, while the vast majority of charter teachers and administrators go to work each morning prepared and determined to do right by their students. Those kids left stranded when a school shut down weeks after opening? Awful—should never happen! But among the 642 new public charter schools that opened in 2014, just 3.4 percent closed before year’s end.

To be clear, we shouldn’t—and don’t—apologize for closing schools when they fail their kids. It’s part of the model and it’s called defending the public interest. Researcher Paul Hill contrasts charter accountability with what happens in traditional school systems: “We bury our dead.”

Speaking of research, shall we say it was used with some…selectivity in the show. Oliver’s primary source was CREDO, the Stanford University shop known for comprehensive analyses of charter performance. One of the cherries he failed to pick was CREDO’s finding that the charter sector made strong gains between 2009 and 2013—due mostly to closures of low-performing schools.

 

Smith: A Few Thoughts About John Oliver’s Bleak, Unrepresentative Sample of Public Charter Schools

[peeayebee]

12 hours ago, Irlandesa said:

John's focus on "The Kid Who Ran For President" has increased its sales substantially.  Here's an interview with the author.

I'm so glad sales are up. Good for him. BTW, I don't know how it's addressed in the book, but how is a 12-yr old allowed to run for President?

[wknt3]

I personally would have like to have seen more exploration of the way the charters that aren't total frauds and do succeed do so largely on the basis of having better students and not better teachers or better methods. Most of them require some parental involvement to apply, enter the lottery, etc. And virtually all don't take English language learners, special education students, and other challenges. It's important that we expose the central flaw in the arguments that charters are automatically more responsive, will be closed if they fail, etc. and John did that. But I do wish he would have pointed out explicitly that virtually all solid educational research shows that success is determined by poverty (especially concentrated poverty)  and parental involvement and everything else is secondary. And that the idea that college for all is an achievable and desirable goal is a convenient lie as I think that this is something that underlies virtually all of his pieces on education. Still a funny, informative and thought provoking piece though.

Edited August 23, 2016 by wknt3

[Xantar]

I actually think John was right to only focus on a small sample of stories about charter schools. First of all, he acknowledged that it wasn't a representative sample and that he was telling these stories because there isn't really a good way to measure their success against regular public schools. In order to figure out the answer to that question, you would have to decide whether you are measuring test scores, graduation rates, future success in life, some mix of all of the above, how to weight everything properly etc. And then you'd have to figure out how to account for the background of the students and the involvement of their parents. Even the most well-intentioned, politically unbiased experts can't agree how to figure this out.

So John simply said, "This is what IS happening." And that sidesteps the question of whether or not we should be supporting charter schools. If we are going to have charter schools, how can we oversee them in such a way that they don't shut the doors a few weeks into the school year? How can we make sure nobody's using the school as an illegal nightclub? 

We don't really have an educational system in this country. We have several thousand local educational systems which have some amount of general oversight at the state and federal level. Trying to convey how the whole thing works is way beyond the grasp of any TV show, let alone a theoretically comedic one.

[Hanahope]

The thing with charter schools is that they do get to cherry pick their students, despite the so-called 'lottery.'  If students fail to perform sufficiently (like parents aren't adequately involved), the kid gets kicked out.  Thus, its not a matter of the charter school doing such a great job educating the kids, its mostly the kids doing such a great job despite the school.   Of course charter schools are going to do well when they don't have to teach non-English speakers, 'educationally challenged' students, or students who don't have great support of their parents.  

[OneWhoLurks]

Unintentionally funny response to the piece:
 

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Jeanne Allen, CEO of the Center for Education Reform, did not like the routine and wrote an open letter to charter schools today. The center describes itself as “a longtime charter school advocacy organization.”

She wrote:

This weekend the late night British comedian John Oliver parodied charter schools, poking fun at politicians and celebrities who support them, serving up misstatements and lies about their success & drawing from anti-charter sentiment that is all too prevalent today. Highly credible researchers and organizations have dismissed his poor taste as just the rantings of a comedian, as satire, which is “his job.” But tens of thousands that find their employment in the organizations you challenge gloated, tweeted and sent their combined millions of members to view and further promote.

The problem is, it’s no joke what you do every day, and it’s no laughing matter that people who have never experienced bad education think it’s funny to mock those who need it and want it. The response from the teachers union and others who are currently engaged in a WAR on charter schools is nothing short of coronation for John Oliver. In Massachusetts, hundreds of anti-charter forces working to prevent the more than 32,000 students on waiting lists to achieve their dreams cackled over social media all night and day about the parody, trying to intimidate voters who might otherwise want to vote to life their charter cap.

 

Comic John Oliver pokes holes in charter school oversight. Proponents poke back.

[Victor the Crab]

I'm looking at these Charter Schools from another country. It's quite infuriating that some people think it's okay to turn any bit of public trust over to the private sector and think they can do a better job, be it education or health care. Listening to people like John Kasich and that cowboy wannabe talk about running kids education like it was a business is a joke given how both have fail on their hands. Can people start to wake up and understand that the private sector is not the be all and end all to everything ASAP?

Ollie's suggestion to Drumph that he step down was awesome, especially how he offered him a kids novel as a blueprint for how to do it. It's quite possible Drumph might actually walk away from his presidential run, but it would probably be something quite dumb and outrageous as only Drumph can provide.

[cattykit]

John Oliver drives book sales like Oprah

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Move over, Oprah. The John Oliver Effect is here.

“The Kid Who Ran for President,” a two-decade-old children’s book, is seeing a big bounce in sales after the “Last Week Tonight” host touted it as the perfect Donald Trump “instruction manual” on Sunday night.

Although a Scholastic spokeswoman called it “too early” for the publisher to have concrete sales data, the book is already on an Oprah-like trajectory. It rose on Monday to No. 108 on Amazon’s best-selling books after hovering around No. 25,000 over the last 10 years.

[Irlandesa]

18 hours ago, OneWhoLurks said:

To be clear, we shouldn’t—and don’t—apologize for closing schools when they fail their kids. It’s part of the model and it’s called defending the public interest. Researcher Paul Hill contrasts charter accountability with what happens in traditional school systems: “We bury our dead.”

In the middle of the school year?  No.  3% might not seem like a lot but no.  

Public education is not a business.  Businesses have some authority over who they serve. Charter schools have some control over who they serve.  Public schools do not.  But because going to school is a requirement, it's seen as a lucrative market and I've seen so many entrepreneurs claim they have the fix. Sure there are some good charter schools.  A lot of good charter schools.  But it's not the solution to anything that's bad about public education. And in many ways, it increases the have/have not gaps.  I know John didn't think he had time for this side of things but how I wish he did.

[dusang]

Okay, the Lochte piece was pretty funny (although there seems a distinct possibility that Ryan suffers from some form of developmental delay that perhaps we shouldn't mock?) but I have to call out John on his assumption about the initial state of the gas station bathroom.  I was in Brazil a few years ago and, among the many things to appreciate and admire about the country (the people, the food, the architecture, the art, the beaches, the music) one of the best things is that every single public washroom --- from restaurants to bus stations to national parks -- was in beautifully pristine, perfectly functional condition.  It was like some form of washroom nirvana.  Seriously.

[cattykit]

19 hours ago, Irlandesa said:

But because going to school is a requirement, it's seen as a lucrative market and I've seen so many entrepreneurs Donald Trump University claim they have the fix.

[OneWhoLurks]

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So your city has been clowned by the harshest/most-fact-checked serial burner in America! Owie. Well, here in Philadelphia, we know how that feels. Why, if it wasn’t for the charter school schemes and DNC and civil forfeiture here in Philly, you meddling kids never would have been the wiser! We kid: In all actuality, Philly is a food truck festival’s worth of corruption with ne’er-do-wells lurking in every hammock on every rooftop bar that used to be a school. And it was only a matter of time before someone noticed. That it was Mr. Oliver who noticed your sorry town is both an honor and a real testament to the fact that so often, nobody else is even looking. With that in mind, some handy advice to get you through when one day, it happens to you — if only because sooner or later, John Oliver is bound to run out of Philadelphia. (Probably later.)

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3.    Listen to what is actually being said. Week in and week out, Last Week Tonight is perhaps the biggest fact-bomb on television. Only Rachel Maddow tops Oliver for sheer geekery. If your home city’s bullshit has made it to the 11pm Sunday night slot on HBO, you best believe there’s a reason for it. What you hear may shock you in its news-to-you-ness, but here’s another fact-bomb: If it does shock you in this way, that’s probably because your local newspaper either went under or laid off whoever used to report on the boring local government shit.

4.    Grieve a little. The place you love is fucked, son. And it just got clowned, hard and true. That’s sad. Just let yourself feel that, though; it’s okay to be sad sometimes.

5.    Accept the home truths that are on offer, and, if you can bear it, see their purpose as possible tools for change. Because, hey, Oliver does get results, kinda. But also look within: Did you see what Philly did with that towing scam just yesterday? We social-media howled it straight to Action News and the Attorney General’s office (if we still have one of those, check Last Week Tonight to make positively sure.) Imagine if we put the energy we put into parking into some shit that actually matters. IT COULD BE LIKE CANADA HERE!

 

What To Do When John Oliver Uses Your City As An Example Of Everything That's Dumb About America

[tenativelyyours]

There is also an underlying aspect to PA's charter school mess.  PA has a strong and active teachers union that state Republicans have long tried to break or bend to their liking.  And it has not happened.  They were very active in Casey's election to the Senate for instance and they were strong for Obama both elections.  They have money too since many of the rural but firmly middle class counties there have well paid (for the local economies) well paid teachers.  Part of the effort with charter schools there according to the teachers was to create a means to undermine teaching regulations in hopes they could divert educational funds to a private sector that was more conservatively inclined since many of the initial charter legislation (most of it failed but Rendall apparently let signed some because the teachers I know through family seem to hold him as a traitor for reasons I'm not fully clear on) was designed to let small conservative christian schools in the charter door.

However I should point out that as someone who adores eating in Philadelphia, that a true Philly cheesesteak and not the tourist grift that the media gets tricked into lazily accepting as the "real deal" does not come with cheez whiz and when done right by natives standards either as the more traditional with grilled peppers and onions (I skip the onions) and provolone, or with the garden of shredded lettuce in season tomatos and hoagie spread (Italian pickled peppers), melted swiss) a bit of mayo on the bun to keep it from getting soggy and a dash of oil and vinegar dressing is something I can shove my face into and not come up for air until it is done.  Get a real Philly cheesesteak if you have the chance when you visit the city and don't let that Pat's fool you into thinking a glowing radioactive tourist trap is the definition of such.  It would be like taking a tour of an orange grove in Florida and at the end being served Sunny Delight.  And I'm being grossly unfair to Sunny Delight in that analogy.  And I loathe Sunny Delight.

[stillshimpy]

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They can say Charter Schools act like a business all they want. But they aren't.

The clip of that smug bastard saying that schools are a business, plain and simple, was driving me directly up a wall and onto the chandelier where I comforted myself with images of a cartoon safe materializing and dropping on his head.  

You complete shit, education shouldn't be a business.  The point of education is not to turn a profit it is to educate and expand children and people in general.  ARGH.  Drove me nearly insane (okay, more so) because it is also an actual right in this country, on top of all that.  It's absolutely obscene that charter schools funnel public money into private hands interested solely in profit.  Just recently the Justice Department announced that private prisons would no longer be used because in the wake of investigative journalism (two other recent subjects of the show) it was revealed that trying to profit off of people led to some truly dehumanizing (putting it mildly) behaviors on the part of the entity seeking to profit.  

So selling our prisoners to a profit structure has been recognized for what it is: a form of human trafficking.  

Same gig when funds for Charter Schools are abused and profit is the goal.  As soon as you pervert the purpose of a social structure like rehabilitation facilities (aka jail) or publicly funded education, it begins to destroy that structure and will do so if left unchecked.  

I sort of want to body check that bastard talking about education being a business.  I admit, both of my parents spent their lives in academics and my dad, in particular, specialized in a truly obscure area of history that was never going to be a lucrative pursuit, so I may have actual DNA skewed towards valuing the concept of knowing things as a perfectly lovely end goal.  That said?  It's also the fucking point of -- if absolutely nothing else --primary education.  

I did a little dance of near rage at the end of the program.  I'm so glad John Oliver addressed it and I really liked how he approached it also.  He's not commenting on the worth of Charter schools as a concept, but rather on the management and abuses of the current ones.  

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I personally would have like to have seen more exploration of the way the charters that aren't total frauds and do succeed do so largely on the basis of having better students and not better teachers or better methods.

I didn't need an exploration of that, but would have appreciated an acknowledgment.  However, I suppose that would have been commenting on the overall worth of Charter schools and I can understand why he desperately wanted to avoid that.  That was a grenade he didn't want to lob, lest people lose their actual minds in that debate, so the only way to draw attention to the misuse of public funds (which should outrage the hair right off of people's heads) was to step over that one entirely. 

Edited August 26, 2016 by stillshimpy

[Irlandesa]

10 hours ago, stillshimpy said:

I didn't need an exploration of that, but would have appreciated an acknowledgment.  However, I suppose that would have been commenting on the overall worth of Charter schools and I can understand why he desperately wanted to avoid that.  That was a grenade he didn't want to lob, lest people lose their actual minds in that debate, so the only way to draw attention to the misuse of public funds (which should outrage the hair right off of people's heads) was to step over that one entirely. 

I think he did sort of acknowledge it but maybe that was just my interpretation. When he said that he was just going to focus on the process or financials, I took it to mean that there's a whole other argument about the truth behind "successful" charter schools but that the financial scams he was going to talk about had enough to be a piece on their own.

[OneWhoLurks]

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On Thursday, longtime educator and activist Diane Ravitch encouraged her readers to start a campaign of thanks to comedian John Oliver, who devoted a segment of his HBO show Last Week Tonight on Sunday to charter schools and fraud—and is now being targeted by privatizers and other corporate propagandists on Twitter.

Charter supporters are "saying that he 'hurt' children, he savaged children," she wrote, noting that this is "a familiar tactic" of intimidation that she faced after writing about dubious test-scoring methods in New York City school a decade ago.

Ravitch called on her readers to combat the hate by tweeting and emailing Oliver messages of support. "Don't let the charter industry intimidate him," she wrote.

 

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"Fraud is a feature of deregulation, not a bug," Ravitch added.

"When no one is looking, some people steal. Not everyone steals, but many do. That is why Ohio, Florida, Michigan, and California are scamming taxpayers. No one is demanding accountability. Politicians get paid off by charter friends, then cripple any effort to oversee them Ohio and Michigan spend $1 billion a year to subsidize charter schools, which are lower-performing than public schools."

 

Diane Ravitch to Readers: Don't Let Charter Industry Silence John Oliver
 

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The Pennsylvania Department of Education will create a new branch specifically geared toward overseeing the state’s charter schools, Governor Tom Wolf announced yesterday.

The Division of Charter Schools will work with teachers and administration at charter schools in an effort to boost quality and accountability, with a specific focus on improving parent and community involvement and student success.

It’s a push to better regulate the state’s charter schools through fiscal and education program reviews.

 

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Charter schools, as well as the state’s charter school law, have long received flak for their lack of state regulation. John Oliver recently blasted the state’s charter school system on Last Week Tonight, when he said that at least 10 executives or top administrators at charter schools have pleaded guilty in the last decade to charges like fraud, obstruction of justice and misusing funds.

A reform bill for the state’s nearly 20-year-old charter school law, which the state auditor once called the worst in the country, is slated for the Fall legislative session.

 

Pa. Department of Education Ramping Up Charter School Oversight
 

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It's a solid segment. But it also took a couple of unneeded digs at the city of Philadelphia, its cuisine, and its sports fans.

That irked the Mayor of Philadelphia and he fought back today on Twitter.

"Agree on charter oversight but English soccer fan who eats fish from newsprint can't judge Eagles fans, cheesesteaks," Jim Kenney tweeted.

 

Philly Mayor goes to bat for Eagles fans, cheesesteaks against John Oliver

ETA:
 

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Apparently, as HBO's John Oliver was poking fun at Pennsylvania's charter school system, Pa. Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams wasn't laughing.

On Wednesday, Williams (D., Phila.) sent the Last Week Tonight host a "Dear John" letter, questioning an assertion on his Sunday show that Pennsylvania's "charter schools are terrible."

"I really do enjoy your wit and informative style," Williams wrote, "but you went too far with your segment on Pennsylvania's charter schools."

 

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Williams, after taking umbrage with Oliver's attacks on the state, said Pennsylvania delivers quality education "to children who can't afford to move to a better district!"

"By the way, you also forgot to mention in your 'charter schools are terrible' commentary that this is also the state where traditional public schools have some major challenges," Williams wrote.

News stories about the school district in the past few years, Williams wrote, have ranged from "teachers and principals caught cheating on standardized testing to embezzlement — unfortunate commentary on any institution which receives public funding, charter or traditional."

 

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Williams, who lost to Jim Kenney in the 2015 mayoral race,  calls himself "an original architect of Pennsylvania's landmark charter school legislation," and founded his own in Southwest Philadelphia that nearly closed in 2003 because of academic and management problems, according to a 2011 Inquirer story. 

In the letter's conclusion, Williams called Oliver "my mann (that's a Philly reference)," and added that because it was a "Dear John" letter he could no longer watch Oliver's program.

"Though I'm probably lying to myself," Williams said.

 

Pa. senator says HBO's John Oliver 'went too far' with charter school rant
 

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RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian police charged American swimmer Ryan Lochte on Thursday with filing a false robbery report over an incident during the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

A police statement said Lochte would be informed in the United States so he could decide whether to introduce a defence in Brazil.

The indictment will also be sent to the International Olympic Committee’s ethics commission, the statement said.

 

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Under Brazilian law, the penalty for falsely filing a crime report carries a maximum penalty of 18 months in prison. Lochte could be tried in absentia if he didn’t return to face the charge.

The United States and Brazil have an extradition treaty dating back to the 1960s, but Brazil has a long history of not extraditing its own citizens to other nations and U.S. authorities could take the same stance if Lochte is found guilty.

That is currently the case of the head of Brazil’s football confederation, Marco Polo del Nero, who faces charges in the wide-ranging scandal entangling international soccer’s ruling body, FIFA. He has not travelled outside Brazil for more than a year to avoid being arrested by U.S. authorities somewhere else.

 

Ryan Lochte charged by police in Rio de Janeiro with making false crime report

ETA2:
 

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In fact, in a single day Detroit Public Schools outdid Oliver’s example of Philadelphia charter school improprieties spread over a 10 year period.

On March 29, 2016, the U.S. Attorney filed criminal charges against 13 individuals affiliated with Detroit Public Schools, including a dozen principals and an assistant superintendent.

A few months later, Detroit Public School’s former grant-development director Carolyn Starkey Darden pled guilty to charges that her companies billed the school district for $1.275 million over seven years for tutoring services that never occurred. 

 

Detroit Had More Corruption in One Day Than John Oliver Found in Charter Schools Over 10 Years

Edited August 26, 2016 by OneWhoLurks

[atomationage]

"The political equivalent of a bigoted clown's blazing funeral pyre" was the highlight for me. 

Ryan Lochte may be slow or special.  I had no idea before.

I'm curious about the charter schools now.   There is one just down the street from where my grandparent's house still stands.   It seems to be a great school, unless everything I'm reading is fake.  Schools have become very strange, or very strange things have become schools.  In one suburb, there is a school in an office complex, where all the children come and go via taxi cabs and limos. 

[peeayebee]

12 hours ago, atomationage said:

Ryan Lochte may be slow or special.  I had no idea before.

I don't think so, but HE probably thinks he's special.

[OneWhoLurks]

Quote

 

Charters first appeared 25 years ago, with basically two schools of thought regarding authorization.

First is the “hand them out like candy” approach, whereby states give charters to almost any group that applies, believing that if they don’t do a good job, parents will vote with their feet and the school will close.

Second is the “serious, slow and steady” approach, whereby states give charters only to organizations with proven track records or new groups with well-designed plans and buy-in from the community they’ll serve. Mounting evidence indicates that states that employ the second approach, including New York and New Jersey, see better results.

 

A charter-school education for John Oliver: On his HBO show, the comedian drew a grossly unfair caricature of the sector
 

Quote

 

This week, the charter world had a wake-up call with the biting John Oliver critique of charters.  Nested in the humor was good research on the deep and abiding problems with charter corruption and charter closure.  Stories like those recounted by Oliver rarely move beyond the local press, so the extent of the problem is masked.

Just this week alone, over 500 charter school students in Livermore California fled to a local public school.  The Los Angeles Board of Education began taking steps to revoke the charter of the high-scoring El Camino Real Charter High School amid financial scandals.

The CEO of a Pennsylvania charter school resigned after an inappropriate advertisement to motivate students to enroll in her charter school appeared. Students in Detroit are worried they will not have a school to go to because their charter school issued a last-minute closure announcement.  And the founder of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter school just pleaded guilty to siphoning off more than $8 million of school money to buy homes (one which cost nearly a million dollars), a plane and groceries.  All of the above occurred in the few days since John Oliver’s report.

 

Will the thing that charter schools love so much be their undoing?

Edited August 27, 2016 by OneWhoLurks

[Hanahope]

Its a viscious circle.  Philadelphia has some good charter schools, but also has had a lot of fraud and embezzelement in some charter schools.  There's news articles about such fraud going back nearly 10 years (and one administrator committed suicide before he got indicted). That money, lining the pockets of the charter schools' administrators, is taken away from the public schools, which then lack sufficient funds to properly educate the students in those facilities.  The public school students then try to get into charter schools and/or more charter schools are created, that take even more money from the public schools, and even more money gets used to line the pockets of more charter school administrators.  Plus, charter schools are not required to pay teachers as much or even require the teachers to have the same credentials as public school teachers, so those kids aren't really being educated that much better.

[mojoween]

John said right at the beginning it wasn't all-encompassing so all those people in the links up there can remove their panties from their cracks any time now.

As soon as I saw he was doing a Lochte segment all I wanted was a well-placed "jeah." Everything else was just gravy.

[OneWhoLurks]

Quote

 

In case you missed it, John Oliver recently did a segment on his HBO “Last Week Tonight” show blasting troubled charter schools in several states around the country. It was very very funny — but charter supporters were not in the slightest bit amused.

How annoyed were they? Well, the Washington-based Center for Education Reform, a nonprofit pro-charter organization, is offering $100,000 to the school that creates the best rebuttal video to Oliver’s rant. Really.

It’s called the “Hey John Oliver! Back Off My Charter School!” Video Contest, and all applicants have to do is come up with a retort explaining why charters are fabulous — in no longer than three minutes — and properly submit their video. You can read about it here. Who can compete? The official rules say the $100,000 winner will be a charter school (so nobody else need apply). Submissions are being accepted from Tuesday through Sept. 26, 2016.

 

John Oliver, they’re after you! Charter school backers sponsor $100,000 anti-Oliver video contest.

[morgankobi]

I guess they don't teach much in the way of reading comprehension in these particular charter schools if they didn't even pay attention to the introduction where John says this was only a few examples and never said anything that encompassed "all" charter schools.

Either that, or they doth protest too much, methinks...

[EyewatchTV211]

This article was just posted by my teacher colleague on facebook. It pinpoints several of the issues I have with the teacher hate in this country and touches on the charter problem a little: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/stop-humiliating-teachers