Jason Stanford lives in Austin, Texas, where he writes frequently about school issues. Here he gives us the latest in the school choice saga in Texas.
Texas is crazy for school choice. The state legislature is about to take up the question of vouchers, and the state board of education has approved many charters. The new state commissioner of education Michael Williams previously ran the State Railroad Commission, which regulates the energy industry (lightly), and he is a fan of school choice.
Now the state board has approved a charter called Great Hearts Academies for an affluent white neighborhood in San Antonio. Now there will be a charter for white kids, and other charters for black and brown kids. That is the new world of school choice.
There is a charter school for rich white kids in Los Altos (the Bullis Charter School), the Metro Nashville school board has been trying to stop the Great Hearts Academy of Arizona from opening a charter in an affluent white neighborhood, Eva Moskowitz has opened charters in affluent NYC communities on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn (maybe that’s why she changed the name of her chain from “Harlem Success Academy” to “Success Academy”). New Jersey parents in middle-class towns have thus far repelled them.
The wave of the future, it seems, is that charters will expand into mostly affluent white districts. The kids are less challenging. Instead of “saving poor children from their failing public schools,” they will go where the pickings are easy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hasn’t anyone heard of Brown v Board of Education?
nittany89, you took the words right out of my mouth.
Diane…the name of the charter school company in San
Antonio is Great Hearts not Great Hills. Since it is such a big
company…I am sure you want folks to be able to see their
background to make an accurate assessment of them. SBOE certainly
did an easy approval of them. Also the contrasting viewpoint had
lots of sensational and inflammatory remarks. I know you cannot
address everything but it was appalling. Keep writing. An Austin
area school trustee Sent from my iPad
here in gentrifying North Brooklyn Eva Moskowitz’ husband
is promoting a school designed for our new white residents while
touting Diversity as its theme – and laying claim to the legacy of
the Civil Rights Movement:
http://www.schoolbook.org/2012/12/20/new-charter-for-northern-brooklyn-fuels-debate-over-gentrification/
Are these schools going to be staffed with TFA.
“Now there will be a charter for white kids, and other charters for black and brown kids. That is the new world of school choice.”
Actually, this sounds depressingly like the old world of traditional public schools. If your point is that charters aren’t always a vast improvement on the highly segregated public schools, you may be correct.
Don’t think that schools serving affluent white students don’t have their share of disengaged parents and “problem” students… The charters will skim off the best and brightest by offering spiffy new buildings and newly minted teachers and make the taxpayers happy by saving megabucks since they can hire inexperienced at will staff who won’t require robust health benefits and pensions… the kids left behind in the public schools will be those requiring special education services, those whose parents are not all that interested in monitoring their child’s academic performance.
Wg
So most impoverished schoold districts, loaded with unionized well paid teachers, already have wayy too many students flunking. We might as well just pay less for failure.
Terry, do you think more or less students would be “flunking” if we fired the veteran teachers and hired rookies to save money? Is it actually the flunking kids you are worried about or the fact that college-educated professionals have a middle class wage (which in many cases we barely make wages that could be deemed respectable)?
Public schools are often segregated because of segregated housing patterns, a challenge that all school desegregation plans struggle to overcome.
The segregationist brand of charters, on the other hand, are not neighborhood schools and are segregated due to their own enrollment policies. Pacific Collegiate, a charter high school in Santa Cruz, Calif., is a classic example — one that regularly tops lists of the nation’s supposed best high schools, while flamboyantly failing to enroll the diverse population of its surrounding city and county. However, the residents of Santa Cruz protested successfully against another recent attempt to launch a segregationist charter school at the K-8 level.
When the NEA joins teacher preparation programs in undermining Horace Mann’s rationale for common schools, should we be surprised when parents seek alternatives to today’s public schools?
As Dr. Ravitch wrote in 2002:
“Can we sustain a healthy civic culture when so few students (or adults) understand the evolution of our political democracy? Can we preserve a common culture when many high-school and even college graduates know little or nothing about our nation’s history and its literary heritage? Can we, even as we recognize increasing numbers of women and people of color among the ranks of great authors, simply abandon those earlier writers whose works inspired them?
“Some would surely answer all of these questions in the affirmative. Some will disagree with me on every point.
“But they will have to consider that the vacuum created by our failure is being filled not by cutting-edge critical theorists, but by the commercial entertain ment industry. If we do not teach our children history, Walt Disney and Oliver Stone will do it for us. If we do not teach literature, the rising generation will be denied access to one of the smartest and most effective methods of forming critical and independent minds.”
It’s not a hard choice to choose between Great Hearts and Ken Kay.
In the Williamsburg/Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, we’ve been fighting JUST this type of school for the past year. “Citizens of the World Charter School,” an LA chain snuck it’s way into our district by promoted themselves to affluent, white families in our neighborhood and evading every elected official and community group. They held information meetings to garner support in the luxury condos and stores that catered to affluent families.
The ultimate irony is that they are describing themselves as a “diverse and progressive” charter school, capitalizing on the lack of information parents of very young children have about what “progressive education” means. “Citizens of the World” literally acted as if they invented differentiated instruction and balanced literacy.
Worse still, “Citizens of the World” has spread a misinformation campaign about our neighborhood public schools, claiming that our public schools are not diverse, etc.,
We formed a (now fairly large and still growing) group of public school parents and supporters in response to this school and others (we have THREE Success Academies in our district) – WAGPOPS! Williamsburg and Greenpoint Parents: Our Public Schools.
We’re suing the SUNY Charter School Institute and the NYC DOE for the poor city planning involved in approving and housing this school in our district.
Here’s a local article about how WAGPOPS! formed. At the bottom of the article is a link to the 45 page letter we sent to SUNY.
http://thewgnews.com/2012/09/the-demise-of-public-education-mr-mrs-moskowitz-push-more-charters-on-williamburg/
wagpops! check out the NYC page for CitWC, new docs posted. Also at silverlake under news. Lots of unrest in LA, unkept promises. Board Mtgs are a revelation of disatisfied “customers” of this business model.
How is it ‘only’ for white students? Or are we conflating high-scoring students with ‘white’? How are the other schools only for ‘brown’ students? This seems like a big leap without some justification.
I’m also guessing that by affluent, you are leaving off urban and within large urban district. I don’t see much charter traction in suburbs where the community members control the school board instead of some behemoth inner city district that has underperformed for the the last 4 decades.
When the charters break into the market of well-performing, well-managed districts, then you’ll know that the takeover is complete. That is a far way off.
Other than that, I agree with what Eric wrote above.
White neighborhoods have white children.
Certain charter chains prefer those neighborhoods.
It is not true that only the local school board can okay a charter.
ALEC has model legislation enabling the governor to appoint a charter commission with the power to override local control.
Georgia just added the ALEC language to its state constitution and Tennessee is about to pass the ALEC model so that Great Hearts can open in a white neighborhood despite being rejected four times by the Nashville school board.
Please bear in mind that in Arizona, where Great Hearts started and grew, there is NO local control. There is not even a suggestion that charter schools and public districts cooperate. A state board approves charter requests. The desegregation of schools is alarming, dismaying and real. Do not forget to consider too the effect of these schools on the surrounding neighborhood schools. Great Hearts schools (and others too, to be fair) are Trojan Horses with the mission of damaging and eventually eliminating public education as we know it.
Wake up George, we have several charters in our county, and we are anything other than urban.
Smart education consumers (parents) in these districts should know a bad thing when they see it. Each district must do it’s utmost to let their staffs shine and show off what can good has been done from within.
Correction: Bullis CHARTER School. (This correction is important as there is a local public school here called, “Gardner Bullis School”–the charter chose this name intentionally).
A quick backgrounder: our district is the top-ranked public K-8 school district in California this year, and is usually in the top 5 at least. The charter school here was started because a small group of parents became angry over a broken-down campus with very low attendance being temporarily closed for re-building (it is now re-opened as a public school). Instead of folding up their school after the contested school was re-opened, they have instead fought to CLOSE the re-opened school so they could move their charter into the campus. The charter school’s test scores are virtually the same as the surrounding schools, even though they arguably have a more pristine demographic and very few special needs students.
Beyond the educational downsides that Ms. Ravitch often speaks of, it’s worth underscoring the social downsides of charter schools as well: this charter school has divided a once-harmonious town. This charter school emphasizes “competition” among schools and gleefully pits parent against parent. I can’t help but think that charter schools are going to accomplish the same thing across the USA in some of our most fortunate communities.
Anyone who didn’t see this coming is living in a closet. People in New Jersey tried having “boutique” charters in places like Princeton where Mandarin was the language. Public schools were good, but the affluent wanted their own. Like the labels for special needs,the affluent wants boutique labels so their kids get extra time on college tests and accommadations in college.
People are just plain sick and tired of the teacher unions always demanding higher pay with vague promises “this time we really really promise to teach the children.”
Public education run by teacher unions do NOT work in poorer areas. Its a model that is broken and unions don’t seem to want to fix it.
What else are taxpayers supposed to do??? Keep paying and paying and paying for steadily declining schools?
FOAD. Vete al diablo.
“Public education run by teachers unions.”
Duane, we need you to deal with posters who actually live on planet Earth.
Ojalá que me dejes hablar de tú: cuando los mentecatos se ponen a hablar, mejor quedarte con los oídos tapados.
Just my two centavitos worth.
🙂
Why have so many non-union charters failed in inner city schools? Don’t you know about those or are you just pretending that there haven’t been a ton of failures that ripped people off? The CEO got rich though.
“Nevertheless, if you’re looking for formality, say in an academic setting or when addressing lawyers or journalists, your credibility won’t be marred if you choose “pleaded,” whereas “pled” creates a slight “clunk” in the ears of those in the know.”
Yes, what planet does Terry F live on? Teachers unions do not run the schools. I cannot believe that people still tout the BS that unions have such powers.
Step away from the Fox “News” Channel. Thank you.
Teachers unions now are running public school districts?
I wonder if that “F” stands for “fascist?”
Public education ran by unions? Where. Every public school I know is run by Bill Gates.
If anything unions have wimped out to the demands of the billionaires. Our unions need a more radical approach.
As for Harlem Success Academy (HSA) changing its name, it appears that their name is not all that has changed.
Guidestar lists HSA’s official mission on their Guidestar profile as:
“HARLEM SUCCESS ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOL IS DEDICATED TO PROVIDING A HIGH QUALITY EDUCATION TO PRIMARILY DISADVANTAGED STUDENTS AND TO PREVENT THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP FROM ARISING.”
HSA’s 2008 IRS 990 Form indicates the official mission of HSA as:
“PROVIDING A HIGH QUALITY EDUCATION PRIMARILY TO DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN”.
However, a review of HSA’s 2010 IRS Form 990 indicates a change to their official mission (which is not reported in their Guidestar online profile):
“THE MISSION OF HARLEM SUCCESS ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOL IS TO PROVIDE CHILDREN IN NEW YORK CITY WITH AN EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH -QUALITY EDUCATION THAT GIVES THEM THE KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, CHARACTER AND DISPOSITION TO MEET AND EXCEED NEW YORK STATE STANDARDS, AND THE RESOURCES TO SUCCEED AND LEAD IN SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND A COMPETITIVE GLOBAL ECONOMY”.
Have we forgotten the disadvantaged minority children?
Affiliated Success Academy Charter Schools, under which the newer, more “affluent” charters are managed, has undergone similar changes to it official mission.
Success Academy’s current posted official mission:
“TO IMPROVE PUBLIC EDUCATION FOR ECONOMICALLY-DISADVANTAGED AND MINORITY STUDENTS BY DEVELOPING A MODEL PUBLIC SCHOOL PROGRAM THAT CAN BE REPLICATED.”
Compare this to Success Academy’s 2011 IRS Form 990 official mission:
“THE MISSION OF SUCCESS ACADEMY CHARTER NETWORK, INC. IS TO PROVIDE CHILDREN IN NEW YORK CITY WITH AN EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH -QUALITY EDUCATION THAT GIVES THEM THE KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, CHARACTER AND DISPOSITION TO MEET AND EXCEED NEW YORK STATE STANDARDS, AND THE RESOURCES TO SUCCEED AND LEAD IN SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND A COMPETITIVE GLOBAL ECONOMY”.
Have the benefactors been informed of this change to the charitiable mission, I wonder?
It’s funny how we are in a slow economic period with not a lot of money to go around. But, there’s plenty to throw around if you want to help your cronies open a school to make money off of chilrdren. Why on earth would anyone approve the opening of more schools when the current schools are broke. When will the public finally say no more!
OK. Public schools are failing the inner cities and so are charter schools. So what is the common factor? Why are they failing? Is it the structure of the school day, the curriculum, the delivery of the curriculum, the teachers, the students, the parents, the environment. Why can’t we put a finger on the cause? Are we ignoring something? Are we missing something?
We aren’t missing anything. The problem is poverty. We just refuse to acknowledge it because it is not an easy fix, with no one group/person we can blame.