Somehow, even though it makes no freaking sense whatsoever, we are continually asked by innumerable mobs of kool-aid-drunken pro-charter ideologues to believe that somehow their damnable publicly funded private schools are more efficient1 than publicly run public schools. Thus, the argument goes, we are lucky to be able to funnel public money and other valuable assets to them for their supernaturally efficient use in the pursuit of what they’re pleased to present as public goods.
But just logically, theoretically, even without reference to facts, how could this possibly be true? Like how does it make sense to pay the supreme commander of some random charter school out in Northwest Zillionaireville a significant fraction of a zillion dollars in exchange for her skilled elite commandery when we’re already paying Austin Freaking Beutner an equally significant fraction of a zillion dollars for his equally elite equally skilled commanderistic talents? How many damn commanders do we even need?
In any case, that’s the theoretical no-facts-needed version of the anti-charter-efficiency argument. But, as you no doubt know, the very point of this blog, the one thing that sets it apart from your average raving Internet lunacy,2 is facts! Facts as reflected in public records! All this blather, like the blather you’re reading now, exists for no real purpose beyond filling out the blank space around the links to the records.
Like for instance, this link to a contract between Sakshi Jain, supreme commander and founding heroine of the lately placed-on-hiatus GANAS Academy, and some guy named Ed, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as an educational consultant. The purpose of the contract is to engage Ed’s services to recruit students to attend Jain’s star-crossed but nevertheless self-proclaimedly world-class private school. And what is most amazing to me is that Ed is to be paid per piece. Not a joke. Eight Hundred And Fifty Freaking Dollars per student signed up.
And not only that but every student that signs up after the contract is signed is to be attributed to Ed. Is this normal? Does anyone out there know if this is how charter schools actually get students? Like they actually pay some guy named Ed $850 per student that signs up? This, obviously, is completely incompatible with any argument whatsoever that giving public money to private charter schools is more efficient than…well, than anything.
What this says to me is that it would be more efficient to ban charter schools and every time a kid signed up for a public school we would flush $849 down the toilet, thus saving $1 per kid for the public treasury.3 This is actually insane. We have teachers in public schools begging people to help them pay for pencils while charter schools are paying Ed $850 per recruit. It is actually crazy. Literally.
Also she hired Ed to do PR for her infernal school and to find them some other location so they wouldn’t have to co-locate on the campus of Catskill Elementary which is why everyone hated her in the first place and why she was rapidly lapsing into outright lunacy. Which he evidently was not able to do. He was also supposed to change the anti-charter narrative and find supporters in the community, which he really failed at. I don’t know yet whether Jain paid the guy any money, but we are certainly well-rid of these fools. Ed’s tasks:
• Student Recruitment of 75 students
• Identifying a different site (taking over an existing site elsewhere)
• PR support to change the anti-charter narrative and find supporters in the community
• Build partnerships in and around the city of Carson
Image of GANAS Academy founder and supreme commander Sakshi Jain is ©2019 MichaelKohlhaas.org and you know, there is, after all, this.
- A word which these indefatigable propagandists will never define, because any sensible definition will, obviously, undermine their arguments to the point of risibility.
- Comments are open if you can’t resist sharing the obvious wisecracks. I already thought of them, no doubt they’re all true, but still… comments are open.
- Obviously this has to be adjusted for the fact that not every kid attends a charter school. It’s not a hard calculation and I’m just skipping it in the service of rhetorical effectiveness. Which you already know, of course.
Open comments let’s go. Remember the wait lists? On this primest of Amazon days you too can watch “Waiting For Superman” for free (with prime) and get inextricably anxious and sad for kids relegated to a wait-list for their education … until you pull up short and wonder wait, what? Why do they need to be at that charter school?
Not to mention wait, what, why can’t I even just watch this super-old movie on youtube like everything else? You can’t because the creators of this flick are all about mendacity, it’s the deep theme of the movie, in common with charter ideology, reflected in its post-availability as well.
But now you too can watch it on prime if you’ve already been fleeced for that ante. And if not, be happy with this FREE antidote: https://tinyurl.com/InconvenientTruthBhindWFS , the inconvenient truth behind all those wait lists.
As it happens those wait lists if they ever existed, were ever only for a very few schools at best, and vaporized as quickly as any though there was never follow-up on them. These same chimeric waitlists are needed for the estimates of space-needs for the school. They don’t care if the student disappears or was never there at all. They need that supercharged estimate to secure as much “prop 39” real estate as possible from the district. That’s how they grab land, and deflate their teacher-pupil ratios to attract more families.
Even while charter schools have been losing students at an even faster rate than district schools. Look at the third-to-last figure here: http://redqueeninla.com/2019/04/02/charter-chains-pay-out-salaries-like-corporations-even-while-enrollment-erodes/ On average in 2017-18 the charter-chain (only, not the mom/pop) schools chartered by LAUSD lost 16.5% of their enrollment. Of 38 charter-chains (representing far more individual schools), only 7 chains had any overall increase in enrollment at all. One lost 89% of its enrollment overall (LA Leadership). Even very “popular” schools, supposedly, lost enormously: 55% at Citizens of the World, 62% at City Charter (which may reflect the outright closing of one of its school sites).
So … these “wait lists” and enrollment figures are obviously crucial. You can’t open a school and start the change rolling into your pockets without demonstrating some reasonable “need”, through those enrollment lists. Fine if no one shows up, but that initial signature is obviously worth the whole shebang.
Counting is hard, still and always, and it can therefore hide a boatload of malfeasance.
Some charter schools are notorious for pushing kids out, or taking actions that will just happen to make the family pull the kid out of the school. It’s kind of intriguing when they tout their “long waiting lists” constantly and yet the numbers of any given grade cohort shrink dramatically year by year. What happened to the eager applicants allegedly clamoring for those seats?
Of course it’s hard to know if the vanishing students were pushed out or fled, but either way…
I’m so confused. How would she have known if a student came on their own free will (crazy I know, but for the sake of discussion) or if they were ED-recruited? Do they come through the gate saying, “Hi Dark Lord, ED sent me”? Or do you rummage through their backpack to find a small, white sticker that says, “Inspected by ED”?
You’d have thought her business guy Wallace would have told her to just pay ED $830 per kid and then spend $20 on candy to make a trail to her lair. Crazy charter schools…
Keep up the good work, Michael!
The only way to expose these schmucks is to rake them out of the muck and effluent that the live in…