Opposing Charter Schools Without Really Opposing Them (Part 2)
by Shawgi Tell / June 14th, 2019
In November 2018 I wrote a short piece titled *Opposing Charter Schools
Without Really Opposing Them*
<https://dissidentvoice.org/2018/11/opposing-charter-schools-without-really-opposing-them/>
.
In that article I highlighted some of the forms of confusion promoted by
neoliberals, privatizers, and corporate school reformers to block people
from concluding that nonprofit and for-profit charter schools are harmful
and must be opposed.
The essence of these different forms of confusion typically takes the form
of listing many damning and indicting problems with charter schools, while
still managing to find a convoluted way to support
<https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/06/opposing-charter-schools-without-really-opposing-them-2/#>
them.
Here is the general formula:
1. I know charter schools have 50 profound problems.
2. I just spent hours researching and showing that charter schools have
many problems.
3. I know more people are rejecting charter schools and seeing them for
what they really are.
4. But I will stubbornly continue to support charter schools anyway and
be comfortable with such a contradictory and incoherent position.
Refer to the 2018 article for more details and analysis.
In this article I address yet another form of confusion distorting
consciousness and undermining public schools and the public interest. This
form of disinformation is a slight, but significant, variation of an
existing
<https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/06/opposing-charter-schools-without-really-opposing-them-2/#>
confusion.
It goes something like this:
There are tons of serious problems with thousands of charter schools across
the country, but *some* charter schools are “good” or “work,” and as long
as it is “all about the kids” and “increasing test scores,” then I don’t
care if the school is a charter school, public school, or catholic school.
I support *any* type of school as long as it is “a good fit for the kids.”
This is really nothing more than open support for privately-operated
charter schools. It is dangerous and reveals a lack of analysis of charter
schools. It is not deep or serious. It is another way of saying that
funneling billions of*public* dollars a year to wealthy *private* interests
is acceptable as long as the charter schools the wealthy elite benefit from
are “a good fit for the children.” Such a view condones the parasitism,
destruction, and decay of neoliberalism.
<https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/06/opposing-charter-schools-without-really-opposing-them-2/charters/>
Obviously, it does matter who runs, governs, and decides education affairs
<https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/06/opposing-charter-schools-without-really-opposing-them-2/#>
in
a society based on mass industrial production. It matters a lot.
Public and private mean the opposite of each other. Public and private are
antonyms. Conceptual confusion flourishes and results in antisocial
policies when these different categories are mixed up and used carelessly.
This happens frequently.
Public refers to everyone, the whole society, the common good. Private
means exclusive, not for everyone, not inclusive, not shared. The former
focuses on we, while the latter focuses on me. For this and other reasons,
the aims, preoccupations, outlook
<https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/06/opposing-charter-schools-without-really-opposing-them-2/#>,
drive, and agenda of public forces and private forces are not the same.
Private wealthy interests and the common good are not identical; they
actually contradict each other.
Charter schools are not public schools. They never have been. There is no
such thing as a public charter school. Charter schools differ profoundly
from public schools—legally, philosophically, organizationally, and
operationally. Many courts have even ruled that charter schools are not
public schools.
The key issue with privately-operated charter schools is not whether they
are “a good fit for a student” or not. Nor is it about whether
privately-operated charter schools raise test scores or not. High-stakes
standardized tests come from the rich, not teachers, and are useless and
harmful in many ways. The issue is that *all* charter schools—nonprofit and
for-profit, virtual and brick-and-mortar—are privatized marketized
education arrangements that have no legitimate and valid claim to public
funds, assets, facilities, resources, or authority. Public wealth and
property belong only to the public, not someone else.
In a society drowning in an overabundance of *socially-produced* wealth, no
parent should have to roll the dice, shop for a school, cross their
fingers, hope and pray *the school chooses them*, and then be violated and
betrayed when the school performs poorly, over-punishes students, engages
in fraud, and ends up closing, as so often happens in the unaccountable
charter school sector.
Treating a fundamental social responsibility like education as a commodity,
as a consumer good, as a free market exchange relation, is the opposite of
what society and the economy need. Modern education cannot be run on the
basis of consumerism, competition, social Darwinism, and Skinnerian
ideology.
A fully-funded, world class, integrated, locally-controlled public school
system available for free to every person in every neighborhood is a basic
human right that government must provide with a guarantee in practice.
<https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/06/opposing-charter-schools-without-really-opposing-them-2/#_ftnref1>
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Shawgi Tell is author of the book Charter School Report Card. He can be
reached at stell5@xxxxxxx.. Read other articles by Shawgi
<https://dissidentvoice.org/author/shawgitell/>.
