On "Lessons from the Locke experiment"

"As for Charter schools, its not quite so simple. They collect the data, but often do not provide it reliably to the public school district." — Jason Felch (Los Angeles Times)

"The lowest-performing, based on test scores, is the large Green Dot chain." — Los Angeles Times

On Lessons from the Locke experiment


I applaud the Times for finally making a somewhat fair and sober assessment of the charter-voucher industry's long unchallenged claims. This statement in the editorial: "[T]he charter school movement [sic] in general, and Green Dot leaders in particular, criticized slow-to-improve scores at public schools for too long to now claim that it's unfair to emphasize those scores" is something I've said for years, and have even had Op-Eds I wrote to the same effect rejected by the Times on several occasions. 

Nevertheless, it's good to see the Times demonstrate a modicum of honesty in this piece, even though there is no mention of the millions and millions of taxpayer dollars Marco Petruzzi has used to create these 'modest' improvements at Locke. We have to ask if a publicly controlled entity wouldn't have used those same funds to better effect, not to mention in a democratic fashion.

Regardless, Steve Barr, Marco Petruzzi, and Ben Austin's prognostications of complete proficiency in a year have been proven entirely false! While social justice advocates like myself don't place much credence in standardized tests, APIs were the blunt object those well heeled Green Dot executives used to club everyone into handing the public school over to them. They were the chorus of 'no excuses,' now they're there singing an entirely different tune.

On "Lessons from the Locke experiment"