This day on which we mark the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., is an appropriate time to think about our nation’s determination to revive a dual school system in urban districts: one for the “strivers” (the charters, as Mike Petrilli explained it in a post), and another for the kids unwilling or unable to enroll in a charter school (that is, those who are in public schools).
Yesterday, a teacher asked why parents would keep their children in public schools when charter schools are able to exclude the disruptive kids and provide homogeneous groups of well-behaved students.
Here, Jersey Jazzman adds his thoughts to the exchange on the blog:
An excellent discussion here. I wrote about this last week:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/01/segregation-by-behavior-chartery-secret.html
The sad fact is that we already do segregate the students in our public schools: we segregate them by the ability and willingness of their families to pay high prices for housing. If you can afford to pay in the high six-digits for a house in the leafy ‘burbs, then you can send your kid to a fabulous school that will not segregate her from high-achieving children, even if she’s struggling academically or behaviorally. That school will be well-resourced and have a broad and rich curriculum; you’ll also have much more influence on its administration through democratically elected school boards that will be far more responsive to your concerns than autocratic urban school leaders.
These are rights and privileges that come from wealth. They are not available to parents living in urban areas where school resources are being drained by both regressive tax structures and the proliferation of charters, and where citizens are increasingly disenfranchised from having a say in how their schools are run. We currently have a two-tiered system of eduction in this country, and it has nothing to do with how “gifted” the students are in each tier.
Again, I give Petrilli credit for finally addressing all of this. But let’s take it to its logical conclusion:
If we are really saying the issue in urban education is that the “disruptors” need to be separated out, then charters are a terrible way to do so. Folks like Petrilli who want to segregate the children this way have an obligation to propose a fair, transparent, and broad-based system of evaluation at the developmentally appropriate time to track children not just by ability, but by classroom behavior. That system needs to be free of racial, ethnic, gender, and socio-economic bias.
But, perhaps most importantly, it needs to be applied uniformly across our society. There should be no more recourse for wealthy parents to buy their way into a public school district that mainstreams their disruptive, underachieving child with the high-flyers, while poor children in cities are separated into castes.
Good luck trying to sell that one to the PTO, Mike.
Until Petrilli is ready to roll out his system, let’s at least all agree on his premise: the secret to “successful” charters is that they serve different students than neighboring public schools. That’s a big step forward in the debate, and one I’d be happy to see many others take.
In NH I know of two charters for “disruptive” students that public schools helped design. I put disruptive in quotes because in some cases the students were “militantly apathetic” and failing their classes or truant because the traditional model for schooling didn’t work for them. Public schools might want to design their own charter schools for disruptive and/or alienated students. In that way they might create the kind of environment that parents of “strivers” would find more hospitable.
They usually have alternative schools. Also, I’m not sure I’d say that charters don’t have disruptive and unmotivated students. They do- they will eventually expell them much quicker and dump them back into any school that will take them.
I think he was making a different point–that charters have every right to exclude disruptors…Petrilli is far more worried about the white upper middle class kids of Montgomery Co being “slowed down” by the presence of students of poverty and color than he is about disruptors in DC schools. He is willing to “share” a school but not a classroom. Listen to his interview with Josh Starr. This exclude “those kids” so the “good kids” can thrive is a dangerous new argument. We have an obligation to teach all of our children well. The exclude “those kids and group them together” will create an underclass of disenfranchised, uneducated adults.
I don’t mean to be flip or disrespectful, but are you suggesting that there isn’t presently an underclass of disenfranchised, uneducated adults? It seems that cat is already pretty much out of the bag.
I agree that Petrilli and other supporters of a charter/choice model need to better account for the ‘losers’ in their system, but doesn’t the traditional district system, inextricably linked to economic and racial segregation, have quite a lot to answer for as well?
I think you are supplying the rationale for segregation by class. A rationale for a dual school system.
I appreciate your comments here and elsewhere, carolcorbettburris, but let me add an unexpected note of approval for the Petrillinator…
Give him props for opening his mouth and saying out loud what so many of the charterites/privatizers think in private but have denied in public up to now. One of the greatest weapons that the edubullies have is the large number of misunderstandings about charters & vouchers that the vast majority of people have about these faulty eduproducts. From whence do those misunderstandings arise? In general, from what people understand about, or expect of, public schools. And just who is loath to properly and honestly correct those misunderstandings? Precisely those who are $tanding [us] up for $tudent $ucce$$.
Not everyone who makes an appearance on this blog is in total, or partial, or even minimal agreement, with the aims of a “better education for all.” But give credit where credit is due. The recent comments of Michael J Petrilli have provided powerful support to the owner of, and many posters on, this blog.
So no offense meant, but I hope Mr. Petrilli (“one of the nation’s foremost education experts” according to his employer) keeps talking. And talking. And talking.
“A site to discuss better education for all” can use all the support it can get.
🙂