This post contains one of the comments on the Minnesota charter story that I missed while my Internet service was down.
It contributes more to the discussion earlier about whether segregation is okay if it is voluntary.
Let me add that I have never supported the creation of public schools (are charters still public schools?) that welcome one race, one cultural group, one point of view, one group to the exclusion of others. I got death threats twenty years ago when I criticized Afrocentrism, and since then I have criticized Hebrew-language charter schools and an Arabic-language public school. My view is that if there is a demand for a foreign language, it should be taught in public school, but should not be the focus of the curriculum; that way tends towards ethnocentricity. I think the way a multicultural, multiethnic society works best is if we all work together and to the extent possible, learn together. That breaks down fear and misunderstanding.
I know that racial and ethnic segregation exists and that many schools are overwhelmingly one-race or nonwhite. That’s a fact. I just don’t like the idea of accepting it and saying it is inevitable. I grew up in the segregated South. I didn’t like segregation. I thought it was humiliating. I’m always happy now to visit the south and see people and children of different races working together. I wish it had always been like that. I don’t want us to accept segregation as a new normal. It should not be. It’s wrong.
| Back in January, I re-posted a tweet from Parents Across America founder Leonie Haimson that pointed to a post on a KKK-affiliated web site that cited this Bloomberg News article approvingly. The post’s author argued that the desire for separation was “natural” and praised the charter school movement for making this possible.Days later, still on vacation, I started getting calls from reporters at Michigan media outlets asking for my response to a vitriolic press release from the Michigan Association of Public School Academies (the main charter school trade/lobbying group in Michigan). MAPSA president Dan Quisenberry called my reposting “sickening,” “beyond insulting,” and “beyond outrageous.” Apparently, I had struck a nerve.I have not, and do not, accuse any charter school of breaking the law, though I am suspicious of the motivation of those who start charter schools designed to appeal to one ethnic or religious group. But as to MAPSA’s argument that “the claim itself has absolutely no merit,” they are on thin ice. A number of academic studies have shown that students in charter schools are likely to be in more segregated environments than their counterparts in local public schools in the same area.A recent policy brief on this subject: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/chartering-equityHere in Michigan, we have charters that describe themselves as “Afrocentric,” that dedicate themselves to the study and celebration of the cultures of the Middle East, that have a clear focus on Latino students, and that advertise a “moral focus” (code for a Christian education, which they only abandoned under threat of lawsuit). How likely is a white family to enroll their child in an “Afrocentric” school; how likely is a Latino family to enroll their child in a school that focuses on Arab and Middle Eastern language and culture? How often will an African American family living in a small city choose to enroll their child in a charter focused on something like “aviation” which is located in a distant, mostly white, suburb and offers no transportation?I have no issue with celebrating different cultural identities and experiences, but I am very concerned that the headlong rush towards charters will only increase the segregation of our nation. We are playing into the hands of those, of whatever ethnicity or religion, who want to turn their backs on community-governed public education and provide segregated enclaves where children need only mix with those most like themselves. In doing so, we put at risk everything we have done to ensure justice, equal opportunity and equal protection for every American.
For those morbidly interested, the MAPSA press release, and our response, can be found here: |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t think PUBLIC schools should be catering to one ethnic or religious group either and I don’t think that schools that do so should receive public money. I grew up under segregation. My high school integrated when I was in the 11th grade. The chemistry teacher asked if I minded being lab partners with “the colored girl”. I was never a racist, even having grown up in Birmingham, so of course I didn’t mind and Portia Montgomery and I screwed up our lab experiments all year.
I can see why certain religious or ethnic groups with non-mainstream practices might want to have their own schools. I don’t have a problem with that as long as we don’t pay for it. There was a Hebrew School in Atlanta where many Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish children attended. Many lived in the neighborhood around their school and synagogue They wore their special clothing and curled sideburns and hats. They did not have school on Fridays because of the Sabbath. I understood that as well as the Kroger grocery with its separation of foods, separate kosher meat department, rabbi butcher, and huge, about 1/3 of the store, Jewish section. The store was also decorated for Hannukah instead of Christmas and their school choir sang Hannukah carols at the store. My tax money did not go to any of it. It was fine.
What I cannot see is public schools bowing down to the needs of the religious right or even recognizing particular races or religious groups exclusively or nearly so. Sometimes it was difficult in my early years in Atlanta Public Schools which, at the time were 90% black for students and 75% for faculty. There was discrimination against everyone else. A principal at one middle school made several stereotyped remarks against me as a white person and eventually got rid of me for teaching while white. She also ran off ALL her white students who were not special ed. She had her eye on one of mine but did not realize he was biracial. The schools were extremely Afro-centric, at least the ones where I was. But because I was only at two where there was a problem with racism towards me and because I was liberal, flexible, older, special ed., and married to a black guy, it did not really bother me. And I learned a whole lot of black history.
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On a semi-related topic, if you’re running short on ideas in about 10 years or so, what about schools that seperate students by gender? On one hand, there’s reinforcement of gender stereotypes and probably additional opportunities to stigmatize students that don’t fall in the center of the bell curve for gender characteristics, not to mention the poor kids that are struggling with gender identity. On the other, particularly once puberty hits, but even before, many kids act differently (and not in a good way) when around members of the opposite gender.
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Hebrew Charter Schools do not teach any religious ideas, practicces, doctrines, or philosophies whatsoever; which is one of the reasons why the “Hebrew Day School” movement (the folks who run the Jewish religious private academies) are even MORE vociferously upset than y’all are. Hebrew is not the property of the black-hats/side-curl gang, or any other flavor of Jews. Just as Christmas is not the property who think that worshipping Jesus correctly requires the handling of snakes. Hebrew is an important language of world commerce . There are no important world decisions being made in Spanish nowadays. Hebrew is up there with Mandarin and Japanese. If “immersion” is what it takes to effectively teach actual working knowledge of a language in a homogenized-milk society like USA – so be it. By the way, the Hebrew Charter public school in Brookly doesn’t collect statistics about its students “religion”, but they claim that by visual count, they have a 40% enrollment of African-American (whatever that means – are Africaaner folks counted?) kids.
We know that union-member teachers see Charters as a threat to their catbird seat. This is not news.
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If Hebrew is a language of world commerce, it should be taught in public schools to all who wish to learn it. Shalom.
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Calling a school a Hebrew Language Charter is a not so subtle call to attract Jewish students and dissuade others from applying. I am not sure why a charter would need to do a “visual count”. The demographics of all schools, including charters, are reportable and on the state website. I would equally object to the Japanese Charter, or Italian language charter. Private schools, fine. Not with public dollars.
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Carol,
What if the language schools are part of the public school system. In Seattle, we have several language-immersion elementary schools. They were started (I think) when students could go to any school in the district. Post Supreme-Court decision, students go to their neighborhood schools, which these now are, but if there’s room at another school, students may go there.
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I just read the MAPSA letter. Are none of the charters in Michigan sponsored by conservative religious groups as they are in Louisiana? Because if they are, those could fit right into the KKK’s agenda if they use curricula like Accelerated Christian Education or ABEKA Book or materials from Bob Jones University Publishing. Those curricula have definite racist features. Then when you consider the efforts of the Texas School Board to conservatize their textbooks, it would not be hard to re-spread racism into the public schools.
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