A Turning Point for the Charter School Movement
Tuesday, 30 August 2016 09:50 By Molly Knefel, Truthout | News Analysis
Republican Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts poses for a selfie with
supporters of his effort to lift the state's cap on charter schools.
Charters are facing formidable opposition this election season: Democrats
passed a resolution this month opposing the proposed charter school
expansion in Massachusetts, and residents will vote on the proposal in
November. (Photo: Charlie Baker / Flickr)
A political battle is being waged over charter schools in Massachusetts
right now, and it's a microcosm of the state of the charter debate across
the country. In the lead-up to a November ballot measure in which voters
will decide whether or not to lift the state's cap on charter schools, known
as Question 2, Democrats passed a resolution this month opposing charter
school expansion. The resolution states that the pro-charter campaign is
"funded and governed by hidden money provided by Wall Street executives and
hedge fund managers." In response, the pro-charter group Democrats for
Education Reform drafted a letter to the coalition behind the resolution,
called the "No on 2" campaign, claiming that they misrepresented Democrats'
attitude towards charters. "There is great Democratic support for public
charter schools," wrote Liam Kerr, Massachusetts State Director of Democrats
for Education Reform.
However, public sentiment has actually been turning steadily against charter
schools, and not only within the Democratic party. The NAACP recently called
for a moratorium on charters, as did the Movement for Black Lives. Over the
past year and a half, The New York Times published a series of scathing
reports on the high-profile New York City charter chain Success Academy,
including a teacher caught on tape screaming at a young student for a math
mistake, a principal with a list of difficult students titled "Got to Go,"
and students peeing their pants out of fear. John Oliver's recent "Last Week
Tonight" segment on corruption in charter schools in Florida, Ohio and
Pennsylvania prompted a defensive response from the National Alliance for
Public Charter Schools, acknowledging that the practices at the schools
featured were "unacceptable" but insisting they "are not representative of
charter schools nationwide."
On top of all that, the Democratic party platform this year contains
language unprecedentedly critical of charter schools, saying they "should
not replace or destabilize traditional public schools" and "must reflect
their communities, and thus must accept and retain proportionate numbers of
students of color, students with disabilities and English Language Learners
in relation to their neighborhood public schools." It was such a break from
the norm in the party that Shavar Jeffries, Democrats for Education Reform
president, called it an "unfortunate departure from President Obama's
historic education legacy" that "stands in stark contrast to the positions
of a broad coalition of civil rights groups."
While charters have always been a controversial subject within the
Democratic Party, there's been a longstanding bipartisan consensus behind
closing poorly performing public schools in low-income communities and
replacing them with charter schools. Both No Child Left Behind and Obama's
Race to the Top program encouraged the expansion of charter schools, and
both initially enjoyed bipartisan support. And while teachers unions have
been a consistent voice of criticism against those policies, pro-charter
groups were often successfully able to write them off as self-interested.
Even within the Democratic Party, reformers painted public school teachers
as selfishly fighting for job protections -- as if that's the worst thing a
worker could do -- and not actually interested in the well-being of their
students.
That narrative has always been misrepresentative and cynical. but for a long
time, it has been dominant. That's why the critical stances of the Movement
for Black Lives and the NAACP are so powerful. At least since President
Obama took office, and arguably since President Bush passed No Child Left
Behind, charter schools have been winning the rhetorical war, presenting
themselves as the compassionate solution for poor families of color
struggling in an under-resourced public education system. When New York City
Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to put up a fight against Success Academy CEO Eva
Moskowitz, arguing that the well-resourced network can afford to pay rent
for public school space (Moskowitz herself makes six figures a year),
Moskowitz went on national television and accused the mayor of wanting "to
deny poor kids in Harlem an opportunity, a shot at life." It was an
effective strategy for Moskowitz, who got her free rent, allowing Success
Academies across the city to continue to claim space from the same public
schools she demonizes. It wasn't until The New York Times series on Success
Academy's questionable practices toward its students, along with a federal
civil rights complaint over the network's treatment of students with
disabilities, that Moskowitz found herself losing ground in the court of
public opinion.
"We have a confluence of events," explained Preston Green, professor of
educational leadership at the University of Connecticut. "One is that we're
getting more and more evidence that charters are problematic, that there are
issues with charters"-- particularly, said Green, the issue of segregation.
(A study by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA found that "charter schools are
more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every
state and large metropolitan area in the nation.") But that's not the only
factor contributing to the changing educational climate. "In addition,
you're seeing more and more discussion about fraud and mismanagement, and
questions about whether the money actually makes it to the students and to
the schools." In the past, argues Green, charter schools called out for
corruption were written off as simply "bad apples."
But it's becoming harder and harder to write off the types of stories
featured in the John Oliver segment -- schools over-reporting attendance in
order to receive more public funds, CEOs convicted of embezzlement, or
nonprofit charters directing government funds directly into private
management companies -- as isolated incidents. "Slowly but surely, people
are starting to see this may be a systems problem, and that the fraud and
mismanagement issues that we're seeing in charters are not just because
they're bad apples, but because there is a lack of oversight," Green said.
He acknowledges that charters are still popular with many families and many
Black families in particular. The pro-charter movement has "made the
argument that choice is liberty," explains Green. "But what you're seeing
very slowly are counter-narratives developing, and that while choice may be
liberty, unfettered choice can cause all kinds of problems."
Plus, he says, despite the enthusiasm for charters, Black communities have
long emphasized the importance of oversight to ensure that charters are
doing right by their students. "This debate has always been present," Green
said. "It's just that there's more evidence that indicates that it's a
problem, such that Black Lives Matter and the NAACP can come together and
try to address this." The fact that some charter schools are beloved by
students and families, and that some are even structured around themes that
meet particular needs of the communities they serve, doesn't take away from
the fundamental need to regulate the allocation of public resources out of
public institutions (public schools) and into the private sector.
Interestingly, the pro-charter movement is largely built on the idea of
oversight, or "accountability," for public schools. The primary mechanism of
accountability for education reformers is the type of high-stakes testing
ushered in with No Child Left Behind and maintained under Race to the Top.
Those programs' "accountability" mechanisms were largely based around firing
teachers and shutting down schools based on student test scores. But at the
same time the Department of Education pushed for "accountability" for public
schools by way of replacing them with charters, there are few systems in
place to account for how charters spend the federal money they receive to
educate their students, leading to the kind of rampant corruption outlined
by Oliver.
The entire mission of the modern charter movement, allegedly, is to end
educational inequality. It premises itself fundamentally on the notion that
public schools are failing and that a marketplace of choices will give
students and families better options. A better education, as goes the
American way of thinking, is the way out of poverty. But that rhetoric just
doesn't hold up against the onslaught of stories of fraud, theft, civil
rights violations, student push-out and a call to action by the nation's
most important movement for racial justice in a generation -- a movement led
by Black youth with an immediate stake in the fight for equality.
Plus, the defense of charters sometimes loses all sight of their stated
purpose. In a truly baffling piece at USA Today earlier this month, Peter
Cunningham, executive director of the pro-reform (and pro-charter)
organization Education Post, argued that perhaps it's not worth it to fight
segregation, but to instead just focus on making schools better. Cunningham
seems to have forgotten that separate schools that are equally high-quality,
is an idea this nation decided was brutally racist and inherently unequal.
"I support every effort to address poverty and segregation, but not at the
expense of needed reforms," writes Cunningham. Here, he shows his hand:
"reform," a movement theoretically created to address educational inequality
caused by poverty, is more important than addressing poverty itself. Reform
is more important than integration is an order handed down from the Supreme
Court in 1954 that this country has, shamefully, yet to fully follow.
Cunningham's words are the logical conclusion of the goal of reform
superseding the goal of equality -- if you take reformers at their word that
equality was ever really the goal.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, those fighting to expand charters are relying
heavily on the language of equality. "I find it disappointing that the
Democratic Party, which I feel is full of a lot of people who believe in
equal opportunity and giving everybody a chance, would choose to be against
something that is so important -- especially to working-class families in
underperforming school districts," said Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker
after the Democrats passed their resolution against lifting the cap. But
critics of charters now have more leverage than ever to puncture that
narrative.
It's been almost 30 years since Albert Shanker, president of the American
Federation of Teachers, introduced the idea of charter schools as a way to
better serve the highest need students. He envisioned a unionized workforce,
empowered teachers and diverse student bodies. The best examples of charters
today may adhere to Shanker's vision, but most don't -- only around 12
percent are unionized, a quarter of teachers leave their schools each year
(twice the rate of public school teachers) and they're more likely to be
"intensely segregated" than public schools.
Because the problem of educational inequity remains so entrenched, some
families still seek out charters as the best option for their children. But
the structural solution to inequality will never be a
separate-but-sometimes-equal system.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
MOLLY KNEFEL
Molly Knefel is a writer, comic and co-host of Radio Dispatch, a
thrice-weekly internet radio show. She also teaches drama after school.
RELATED STORIES
"No Child" Law Whittled Down by White House
By Motoko Rich, The New York Times News Service | Report
Public Schools, Private Agendas: Parent Revolution
By Gary Cohn, Frying Pan News | Report
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By Marian Wang, ProPublica | Report
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A Turning Point for the Charter School Movement
Tuesday, 30 August 2016 09:50 By Molly Knefel, Truthout | News Analysis
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. Republican Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts poses for a selfie
with supporters of his effort to lift the state's cap on charter schools.
Charters are facing formidable opposition this election season: Democrats
passed a resolution this month opposing the proposed charter school
expansion in Massachusetts, and residents will vote on the proposal in
November. (Photo: Charlie Baker / Flickr)
. A political battle is being waged over charter schools in
Massachusetts right now, and it's a microcosm of the state of the charter
debate across the country. In the lead-up to a November ballot measure in
which voters will decide whether or not to lift the state's cap on charter
schools, known as Question 2, Democrats passed a resolution this month
opposing charter school expansion. The resolution states that the
pro-charter campaign is "funded and governed by hidden money provided by
Wall Street executives and hedge fund managers." In response, the
pro-charter group Democrats for Education Reform drafted a letter to the
coalition behind the resolution, called the "No on 2" campaign, claiming
that they misrepresented Democrats' attitude towards charters. "There is
great Democratic support for public charter schools," wrote Liam Kerr,
Massachusetts State Director of Democrats for Education Reform.
However, public sentiment has actually been turning steadily against charter
schools, and not only within the Democratic party. The NAACP recently called
for a moratorium on charters, as did the Movement for Black Lives. Over the
past year and a half, The New York Times published a series of scathing
reports on the high-profile New York City charter chain Success Academy,
including a teacher caught on tape screaming at a young student for a math
mistake, a principal with a list of difficult students titled "Got to Go,"
and students peeing their pants out of fear. John Oliver's recent "Last Week
Tonight" segment on corruption in charter schools in Florida, Ohio and
Pennsylvania prompted a defensive response from the National Alliance for
Public Charter Schools, acknowledging that the practices at the schools
featured were "unacceptable" but insisting they "are not representative of
charter schools nationwide."
On top of all that, the Democratic party platform this year contains
language unprecedentedly critical of charter schools, saying they "should
not replace or destabilize traditional public schools" and "must reflect
their communities, and thus must accept and retain proportionate numbers of
students of color, students with disabilities and English Language Learners
in relation to their neighborhood public schools." It was such a break from
the norm in the party that Shavar Jeffries, Democrats for Education Reform
president, called it an "unfortunate departure from President Obama's
historic education legacy" that "stands in stark contrast to the positions
of a broad coalition of civil rights groups."
While charters have always been a controversial subject within the
Democratic Party, there's been a longstanding bipartisan consensus behind
closing poorly performing public schools in low-income communities and
replacing them with charter schools. Both No Child Left Behind and Obama's
Race to the Top program encouraged the expansion of charter schools, and
both initially enjoyed bipartisan support. And while teachers unions have
been a consistent voice of criticism against those policies, pro-charter
groups were often successfully able to write them off as self-interested.
Even within the Democratic Party, reformers painted public school teachers
as selfishly fighting for job protections -- as if that's the worst thing a
worker could do -- and not actually interested in the well-being of their
students.
That narrative has always been misrepresentative and cynical. but for a long
time, it has been dominant. That's why the critical stances of the Movement
for Black Lives and the NAACP are so powerful. At least since President
Obama took office, and arguably since President Bush passed No Child Left
Behind, charter schools have been winning the rhetorical war, presenting
themselves as the compassionate solution for poor families of color
struggling in an under-resourced public education system. When New York City
Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to put up a fight against Success Academy CEO Eva
Moskowitz, arguing that the well-resourced network can afford to pay rent
for public school space (Moskowitz herself makes six figures a year),
Moskowitz went on national television and accused the mayor of wanting "to
deny poor kids in Harlem an opportunity, a shot at life." It was an
effective strategy for Moskowitz, who got her free rent, allowing Success
Academies across the city to continue to claim space from the same public
schools she demonizes. It wasn't until The New York Times series on Success
Academy's questionable practices toward its students, along with a federal
civil rights complaint over the network's treatment of students with
disabilities, that Moskowitz found herself losing ground in the court of
public opinion.
"We have a confluence of events," explained Preston Green, professor of
educational leadership at the University of Connecticut. "One is that we're
getting more and more evidence that charters are problematic, that there are
issues with charters"-- particularly, said Green, the issue of segregation.
(A study by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA found that "charter schools are
more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every
state and large metropolitan area in the nation.") But that's not the only
factor contributing to the changing educational climate. "In addition,
you're seeing more and more discussion about fraud and mismanagement, and
questions about whether the money actually makes it to the students and to
the schools." In the past, argues Green, charter schools called out for
corruption were written off as simply "bad apples."
But it's becoming harder and harder to write off the types of stories
featured in the John Oliver segment -- schools over-reporting attendance in
order to receive more public funds, CEOs convicted of embezzlement, or
nonprofit charters directing government funds directly into private
management companies -- as isolated incidents. "Slowly but surely, people
are starting to see this may be a systems problem, and that the fraud and
mismanagement issues that we're seeing in charters are not just because
they're bad apples, but because there is a lack of oversight," Green said.
He acknowledges that charters are still popular with many families and many
Black families in particular. The pro-charter movement has "made the
argument that choice is liberty," explains Green. "But what you're seeing
very slowly are counter-narratives developing, and that while choice may be
liberty, unfettered choice can cause all kinds of problems."
Plus, he says, despite the enthusiasm for charters, Black communities have
long emphasized the importance of oversight to ensure that charters are
doing right by their students. "This debate has always been present," Green
said. "It's just that there's more evidence that indicates that it's a
problem, such that Black Lives Matter and the NAACP can come together and
try to address this." The fact that some charter schools are beloved by
students and families, and that some are even structured around themes that
meet particular needs of the communities they serve, doesn't take away from
the fundamental need to regulate the allocation of public resources out of
public institutions (public schools) and into the private sector.
Interestingly, the pro-charter movement is largely built on the idea of
oversight, or "accountability," for public schools. The primary mechanism of
accountability for education reformers is the type of high-stakes testing
ushered in with No Child Left Behind and maintained under Race to the Top.
Those programs' "accountability" mechanisms were largely based around firing
teachers and shutting down schools based on student test scores. But at the
same time the Department of Education pushed for "accountability" for public
schools by way of replacing them with charters, there are few systems in
place to account for how charters spend the federal money they receive to
educate their students, leading to the kind of rampant corruption outlined
by Oliver.
The entire mission of the modern charter movement, allegedly, is to end
educational inequality. It premises itself fundamentally on the notion that
public schools are failing and that a marketplace of choices will give
students and families better options. A better education, as goes the
American way of thinking, is the way out of poverty. But that rhetoric just
doesn't hold up against the onslaught of stories of fraud, theft, civil
rights violations, student push-out and a call to action by the nation's
most important movement for racial justice in a generation -- a movement led
by Black youth with an immediate stake in the fight for equality.
Plus, the defense of charters sometimes loses all sight of their stated
purpose. In a truly baffling piece at USA Today earlier this month, Peter
Cunningham, executive director of the pro-reform (and pro-charter)
organization Education Post, argued that perhaps it's not worth it to fight
segregation, but to instead just focus on making schools better. Cunningham
seems to have forgotten that separate schools that are equally high-quality,
is an idea this nation decided was brutally racist and inherently unequal.
"I support every effort to address poverty and segregation, but not at the
expense of needed reforms," writes Cunningham. Here, he shows his hand:
"reform," a movement theoretically created to address educational inequality
caused by poverty, is more important than addressing poverty itself. Reform
is more important than integration is an order handed down from the Supreme
Court in 1954 that this country has, shamefully, yet to fully follow.
Cunningham's words are the logical conclusion of the goal of reform
superseding the goal of equality -- if you take reformers at their word that
equality was ever really the goal.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, those fighting to expand charters are relying
heavily on the language of equality. "I find it disappointing that the
Democratic Party, which I feel is full of a lot of people who believe in
equal opportunity and giving everybody a chance, would choose to be against
something that is so important -- especially to working-class families in
underperforming school districts," said Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker
after the Democrats passed their resolution against lifting the cap. But
critics of charters now have more leverage than ever to puncture that
narrative.
It's been almost 30 years since Albert Shanker, president of the American
Federation of Teachers, introduced the idea of charter schools as a way to
better serve the highest need students. He envisioned a unionized workforce,
empowered teachers and diverse student bodies. The best examples of charters
today may adhere to Shanker's vision, but most don't -- only around 12
percent are unionized, a quarter of teachers leave their schools each year
(twice the rate of public school teachers) and they're more likely to be
"intensely segregated" than public schools.
Because the problem of educational inequity remains so entrenched, some
families still seek out charters as the best option for their children. But
the structural solution to inequality will never be a
separate-but-sometimes-equal system.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Molly Knefel
Molly Knefel is a writer, comic and co-host of Radio Dispatch, a
thrice-weekly internet radio show. She also teaches drama after school.
Related Stories
"No Child" Law Whittled Down by White House
By Motoko Rich, The New York Times News Service | ReportPublic Schools,
Private Agendas: Parent Revolution
By Gary Cohn, Frying Pan News | Report Charter School Power Broker Turns
Public Education Into Private Profits
By Marian Wang, ProPublica | Report
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