Hired Guns, Scholars and the California School Policy Task Force
By T. Ultican 6/15/2019
California Governor Gavin Newsom created a task force and assigned the State Superintendent of Public Instruction (SSPI), Tony Thurmond, to lead a review of California charter school laws and policies. The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) produced three policy briefs and CRPE founder Paul Hill testified to the task force as an expert witness “sympathetic to charter schools.” The author of “Breaking Point,” Gordon Lafer also provided expert testimony.
Rutgers Professor Bruce Baker reviewed Hill’s claims which were published in three CRPE policy briefs created for the taskforce. Spoiler alert: He found them deceptive.
Thurmond released “The Charter School Policy Task Force” report to the Governor on June 6.
The claims by these scholars and political actions coming from the Charter School Task Force have the potential to influence the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars in public monies by California and influence billions in spending by the federal government.
The Charter School Policy Task Force (CTF)
The task force was made up of eleven members. Since 90% of the California’s students attend public schools and because the charter industry spent more than $50 million to defeat SSPI Thurmond in 2018, many people expected supporters of public schools to dominate the task force. But that was not the case. Jan Resseger observed,
“It is one of those groups carefully balanced to provide a forum for both sides of what has become a contentious debate about whether or not there ought to be a charter school sector. Actually whoever recommended the appointments seem to have accepted the idea that the fight is between CONTINUE READING: Hired Guns, Scholars and the California School Policy Task Force | tultican
