Proponents of the market-based approach to schooling often say that school choice is “the civil rights issue of our time.” We have heard this refrain from sources as diverse as Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, and Arne Duncan.
But scholar Julian Vasquez Heilig refutes this idea.
Read the entire article, which as always from Heilig, is brilliant.
We know what works, he writes, based on research and experience over many years. Here is what works:
- Curriculum that represent diverse populations (Vasquez Heilig, Brown & Brown, 2012).
- An accountability system that doesn’t stigmatize students who score poorly on only one measure of success— high-stakes tests (Vasquez Heilig, Young & Williams, 2012).
- An accountability system that doesn’t hide students who fall through the cracks while simultaneously claiming fantastic results (Vasquez Heilig, 2011a)
- An accountability system that recognizes the unique needs of English Language Learners relative to high-stakes testing (Vasquez Heilig, 2011b).
- Teachers that have more than five weeks of training (Vasquez Heilig & Jez 2010).
- Teachers that have more than 30 hours of “alternative certification” training (Vasquez Heilig, Cole & Springel, 2011).
- Schools that don’t have a 40% attrition rate for their African American students (Vasquez Heilig, Williams, McNeil & Lee, 2011).
- Schools that have vibrant public arts programs (Vasquez Heilig, Cole & Aguilar, 2010).
- Schools that have low student-teacher ratios (Vasquez Heilig, Williams & Jez, 2010).
- Schools that don’t have to cheat and game the system to make their numbers for NCLB (Vasquez Heilig & Darling-Hammond, 2008)
- Districts and schools that actively seek to desegregate schools (Richards, Stroub, Vasquez Heilig, & Volonnino, 2012).
- Schools that utilize innovative disciplinary approaches to stem the school-to-prison-pipeline (Cole & Vasquez Heilig, 2011).
- Schools that have teachers in every classroom who are teaching in field and have extensive training in classroom management, curriculum development and pedagogy (Darling-Hammond, Holtzman, Gatlin, & Vasquez Heilig, 2005).
Here is the conclusion:
This essay demonstrates that school choice is a civil rights issue, but not as currently framed. First, school choice, on average, does not produce the equity and social justice that proponents spin (Wells, Slayton, & Scott, 2002). Second, school choice has created a motely alliance between privatizers and traditional civil rights proponents that is not in the best interest of poor and minority students (Wells, Lopez, Scott & Holme, 1999). Scott (2013b) posited,
Can we imagine Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Ella Baker, or Rosa Parks marching on Washington to secure the right for parents to compete in lotteries for spaces in free-market schools? Rather than these figures, the managers of such reforms in fact seem to be emulating another iconic cultural figure: Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning libertarian economist whose 1962 best-selling book was entitled “Free to Choose.”
Moving our schools from the public sector to the private sector is a false choice. Instead, as the research concisely demonstrates, parents and students should be able to choose a neighborhood public school with the important characteristics that are already established in the research literature and consistently observed in wealthy high-performing public and private schools. Access to those choices in democratically-controlled neighborhood public schools is the civil rights issue of our time— large-scale privatization of education is not.
This article appears in the Texas Education Review, the new student run journal at the University of Texas at Austin. Retrieve the pdf of this article here. See the entire issue here.
Citation: Vasquez Heilig, J. (2013). Reframing the refrain: Choice as a Civil Rights issue. Texas Education Review.1(1), 83-94.
You forgot to mention Condoleeza Rice, sec of state under Bush who also called it the “civil rights movement of our time….She spoke of this in some speech when she talked about education.
“. . . as diverse as Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, and Arne Duncan.”
Not sure I would consider that a “diverse” group. All hardcore neoliberal freemarketeers.
Low student-teacher ratios: Nothing illustrates the disconnect between the public intellectuals that provide cover for the reformers and teachers than their insistence that class size does not matter. They have all the studies to prove it ! I am sure if you were to poll 100 teachers every one would say that a smaller class size would help them to be better teachers. The reformers would like you to believe that teachers respond only to market based incentives- i.e. higher pay.
I get the feeling school choice in the way of vouchers won’t work. If “conservatives” are bound and determined to try, and are succeeding in trying, the good news will be we can check that off the list because I really do not see parents chomping for such small amounts of money (those who don’t make much—and are they really going to try to get it anyway)? And if they do, how will they come up with the rest?
I am beginning to think (aside from the budget cuts to enable the “choice” opportunity) that this idea will wear itself out (like Reagan and school prayer).
I think it’s a bad idea, but I also think those of us still in the public school can be creative enough to off-set what they take from us and end up stronger and better for it, when the idea gets reversed down the road (because it will have to). . .I just don’t see it working.
“Civil Rights” in association with it is a desperate marketing attempt for a really bad idea.
I am going to keep my nose to the grindstone and work to make the public school where I work as good as can be no matter what is going on around outside. I’m realizing that all of this, more than anything, is simply showing me which politicians will say ANYTHING and even try to do it to be in their positions. It will fade. Like clouds, they will rain (reign and be no more (in power).
I feel like I’ve said these same things thousands of times already myself. The only difference is that I question the sincerity of those who claim to be civil rights advocates today, because too many have been bought by Gates et al. See the Black Agenda Report, “Corporate Funding of Urban League, NAACP & Civil Rights Orgs Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership” http://www.blackagendareport.com/corporate-funding-urban-league-naacp-civil-rights-orgs-has-turned-corporate-leadership
It’s not surprising that Republican Milton Friedman’s neo-liberalism became the model for “New Democrats,” too, because civil rights minded liberals have not been leading the Democratic parting since before Bill Clinton. And, yes, what awaits us is precisely what happened to Chile which, despite regaining its democracy decades ago, has never been able to recover its public school system.
The only thing that concerns me is this statement: “Schools that utilize innovative disciplinary approaches to stem the school-to-prison-pipeline.” The problem is that the behavioral-based charters like KIPP get away with claiming their military style approach is “innovative” and with describing that as teaching “like a champion,” when what they are doing is just a rehash of environmental engineering and massive drill and kill. One of the most effective disciplinary approaches is a truly engaging curriculum, but that has been thrown by the wayside for test prep.
I will never understand how anyone who calls themselves a civil rights advocate can look the other way when children of color are treated like they’re on a chain gang by mostly white drill sergeant teachers in these military style segregated charter schools.
See also, “End Game For Corporate School Reform: Privatized Holding Tanks, Remote Ed, Military Charter Schools” http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/end-game-corporate-school-reform-privatized-holding-tanks-remote-ed-military-charter-schools