Up until now, the argument for charter schools has been that they will “save” poor black and Hispanic children from their terrible public schools.
We have often heard the claim that the proponents of charter schools are leading the civil rights movement of our era.
But now it seems the civil rights leaders want to move to the suburbs.
Not to save black and brown and poor children, but to offer more consumer choice to the children trapped in successful suburban public schools.
Mike Petrilli at the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute explains here why this is a good idea.
What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Corporate Reformer plans will continue to work against public education. Excellent suburban schools, such as where I teach, have been forced into major cuts in teachers, programs and electives because of budget cuts from state and federal sources. Testing, student data tracking and teacher evaluation systems are diverting significant amounts of money from our schools. I can see were a charter could promise small class sizes, arts and so on to suburban parents who want to best for their children.
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The issue of charters in the affluent (as opposed to mixed-SES) suburbs is pretty much a who-cares issue. Little interest, little gain, little harm.
Charters — suburban or inner-city — pose the danger that financially-pressed school systems will turn to charters to cut teacher salaries/teacher qualifications (by allowing charters to hire entry-level and/or uncredentialled teachers while allowing the neighborhood schools to layoff more senior/credentialed teachers). Similarly, if the neighborhood schools are unionized and if, as is the usual practice, the charters are not included in the bargaining unit, the charters will almost certainly be non-union with the ultimate result being a weakening of the teachers union — a politically-attractive result for Republican elected officials (and I note this as a labor lawyer who has represented management and govt, but never unions or employees).
The main suburban charter battle — as is developing in generally-affluent Fairfax County outside DC — is with regard to the economically-mixed areas where charters offer the same skim-the-cream advantage to parents that they do in the inner-city. In those areas, the charter arguments are largely the same as in the inner-city — that is, does society want to segregate students based on level of parental concern/functionality/commitment with the well-behaved/motivated students attending the charters and the poorly-behaved/unmotivated students attending the neighborhood schools?
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This is the perfect example of FUD — Bill Gates preferred marketing segmentation strategy which you posted about earlier.
It’s obvious aim is to divide and conquer parents in small affluent communities where the public schools are very good to great.
It does so by sowing seeds of fear and uncertainty — the neighbor’s child might just be getting a leg up on yours! — which they hope will pit parents against each other.
It describes how profiteers can segment their target markets in a focus-group way.
We are living in a propaganda war of words; we have been targeted and our children are the prey.
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I agree with what Chris noted about the effects of budget cuts. Even so, I don’t think charters would gain the traction in suburban areas that they have in charters. KIPP et al. hang their hat on test scores. Most suburban schools have that covered already without shifting to drill and kill and highly restrictive conduct policies.
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Could this possibly be a profit issue? Or are the “reformers” bored with the city schools and are they looking for a new challenge?
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Not bored…just greedy. They STILL don’t have enough of public school money–they want MORE.
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The “New Civil Rights Movement” was always about power, not freedom: the right of an elite group to govern over the majority. So I am not surprised they are not satisfied with controlling only urban education for minorities.
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I dislike this idea for the same reason I dislike the proliferation in cities – it divides society. Public schools are the only place where those of different backgrounds are (theoretically) forced to interact with each other and learn about each other. More segmentation of the population will lead to more divisiveness on issues that already separate our country.
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If you want to take successful integrated suburban schools and turn them into segregated schools by race and religion, this is your strategy. Choice and charters in NYC has resulted in schools that warehouse the most at risk kids and quickly become failed schools. But, it is coming…..Long Island will have a STEM charter on it SUNY Old Westbury campus. In ten years, parents will be horrified by the chaos, corruption and poor quality this has all produced. The achievement gap will be wider. Tensions among the races will be at an all time high as Black and Latino parents realize how their children have been shortchanged.
As someone who has studied equity reforms for years, I wonder how much of this is a reactionary fear to the changing demographics…..
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The tell is when Mr. Petrill zeroes in on the homogenous, well-to-do suburbs. This is a dog whistle call for boutique private schools feeding on the public tax dollar. The idea will be very appealing to a certain kind of suburban family, the one that doesn’t want their child mingling with any but the right kinds of children. Legalized segregation paid for by the public and free of those pesky regulations that conservatives hate so much. Think of how useful this will be in maintaining the rentier economy, preserving the financial apartheid in America, and building networks among the right people! Every single point is antithetical to a free public education in a democratic republic.
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The legalized segregation aspect of this is an important issue to bring up. There is a lot of underlying racial mistrust in the suburbs, where the problems of the inner city are seen to be lapping at the shores of suburbia.
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I live in a first tier suburb not a “leafy” suburb. In the last five years the school district has started an elementary charter focusing on STEM. It is still operating. It started a high school charter focused on the trades. It was discontinued this year because of lack of community interest. It started a Montesorri school (not a charter) which is still operating and growing. It started an elementary school program in which every elementary school student receives Spanish instruction every week. This will give all students the opportunity to become fluent in two foreign languages during their school career.
It would seem that it is not necessary for a suburban school district to resort to private charters to begin to provide choices for parents. I will admit that the school district would have to be a certain size to be able to provide those different choices and opportunities in today’s environment.
But I am confidant it can be done.
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I teach in New York City but live in a middle-class suburb on Long Island. While my school district is certainly no super zip code, I am very happy with my daughter’s education thus far. I cannot imagine that there would be much support for charter schools in my district; I certainly would oppose them. Most districts in my area are small with usually two or three elementary schools, a middle school and a high school. The immediate drain that a charter school would have on the existing schools would be too obvious for parents to support. Moreover, our schools are already good. They offer programs and courses that satisfy the educational needs of most families. The music and art programs exceed any that I have seen in the city, and there are a variety of A.P. courses offered for advanced students. Because we pay such a hefty school tax, many parents pay very close attention to how it is spent. Why would we approve of a venture that takes funds away from our already good schools?
One thing is for certain, hell would freeze over before I allowed one dollar of the money that I pay to ensure that my daughter receives a quality education to be spent on a school whose first objective is to make a profit.
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“The CIvil Rights Issue Of Our Time” = How we will take pubic education away from as many as possible, destroy jobs for educated middle class households, and turn the savings into profit and contracts for our buddies. Oh, and create generations of narrowly educated consumers and expendable service employees for our new and deregulated economic system.
We’re coming after YOU, middle class. But don’t worry, the elite will still go to Sidwell Friends to learn creativity and independent thought along with their core academic skills.
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Cosmopolitans, Tigers, and Koalas – Oh, my! After the low-hanging fruit from the cities has been picked, it would follow that charters would try to expand to more affluent areas. However, the charters would really have to up their game to meet the expectations of a whole different group of parents who are likely to demand that their children’s teachers have all the appropriate and required credentials and certifications, and then some. TFAers may be okay for OPC, but NIMBY! These parents are also in all the right professional, social, and political circles as well and are bound to exert their influence in no uncertain terms. What will be interesting to see is what happens when the results of APPR are made public for districts across the state. Each disaggregated subgroup is going to have its own little bell-curve and half of each group will be above or below its respective average for GPM or VAM, no matter what your zip code is. So, even those leafy suburbs will have about half their teachers and principals needing improvement plans, no matter how well their students perform on all those tests. That is, if the parents even go along with all that required testing in the first place – they might not be too happy about that either. We could be approaching the point of critical mass where the whole system collapses under its own weight due to overreaching and a lack of support necessary for sustainability, or so we can hope.
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Mr. Petrilli makes a mighty strange case for suburban charters.
He’s right, of course, that we need public schools – though not just in the leafier parts of town –that have broad curricula that impart substantive knowledge in history, literature, mathematics, science, foreign language, music, and the visual arts; that emphasize creativity and analysis, encourage children to formulate good questions, and help them learn to make and take apart arguments; that offer extracurricular activities such as band, drama, and debate; and that have concerned teachers who model and encourage emotional maturity and compassion. He’s right, too, that “where children come to Kindergarten with all manner of advantages, schools could teach yoga all day and their students would still probably ace the state tests.” Haven’t we long known that test scores reflect socioeconomic status above all?
So I’m with him (or should I say that he’s with those of us who note the educational carnage that standardized testing has brought about?) up to the conclusion. Why do we need charter schools to accomplish these valuable ends? Wouldn’t it be far simpler for the leafy public schools to have to courage to drop the test prep and to stop caring about their standardized test scores, and instead focus on the less tangible but more valuable things Mr. Petrilli lauds? (Of course, attaining 100% proficiency by 2014 and value-added teacher evaluations — things that reformers and the Secretary of Education favor –make that difficult in even the most affluent school districts.)
We need suburban charters, Mr. Petrilli seems to be saying, because existing suburban schools are so steeped in the data-driven, raise-the-test-scores mindset that changing their test-first culture would be hopeless. Wouldn’t it be better to attack the problem that plagues existing public schools– endless test prep and genuflection to standardized tests — rather than accept it as a given and develop second-best work-arounds?
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Here’s what I wrote on that website. I might as well re-post it here.
1. The curriculum is so standardized in all of our schools because of the emphasis on testing. I agree with the other reader who said that many of the attributes you mention were present in public schools before the passage of No Child Left Behind and the current Race to the Top grant.
2. If charter school supporters value school flexibility so much, then they would support providing all existing public schools with the opportunity to chart their own paths like many private and charter schools do. However, that’s not the goal. It is all about busting the union and hiring cheaper teachers.
3. When it comes to school vouchers and private schools, most Americans assume that the only religious schools receiving this money would be Catholic schools and established private schools associated with mainline Protestant denominations. As Louisiana is learning, other religious institutions that we don’t agree with who are opening their own schools (otherwise known as Muslims) will want that voucher money too. What will we do then?
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Suburban charter schools are yet another way to undermine (and try to destroy) public education in America. I live in Arizona, where charter schools operate completely independent from the districts. Districts do not approve the opening of a charter school and parents have no say. There is a terribly worrisome trend of charter schools opening within blocks of high performing, successful schools. The charter schools offer “rigorous” curriculum (a word I hate), they offer no assistance for lower income students, such as reduced lunch or bus transportation, they call most of their textbooks “consumables” and therefore require parents to pay for them, and stop just short of requiring parents to make yearly donations of upwards of $1000 a year per student. Yes – they cherry pick students, allowing families to separate themselves from the “riff raff” of public schools (there is an awful, ugly racial undertone to this whole phenomenon). And guess what? Their test scores are high. The kids they cherry pick sort of guarantee that. These charter schools are very critical of public schools in many of their public communications. They are the darlings of our state political leaders, and I have come to the sad conclusion is that their main purpose is to undermine an effective public school system as quickly as possible. If these schools (that serve such a tiny, homogenous student population) can do well (without any of the challenges public schools face and with a heck of a lot more money), who needs public schools? It is all part of the march toward privatization of everything.
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My favorite response on this website came from live4literacy. . . Garbage pure and simple. What all you choice and reform people disregard is the human elements beneficial to attending your neighborhood school. Things like growing up with the same friends for years, teachers knowing families and siblings well, parents having a support system for carpooling, afterschool play, and community work, being able to ride your bike to school, and having even activities with those in your community. That is hard to have happen when kids come from a radius of 25 miles.My son did that for a year and night time events were unheard of and parents generally didn’t do play dates because no one lived close enough. My daughter has had the same group of friends since kindergarten, and I ,their parents and it has been tremendously helpful in terms of stability and support. For my son who was thrown out because of zoning and choice, his sense of stability has been completely undermined. And public schools could have a plethora of offerings to please all parents if we stopped defunding them and pouring money into for profit charters which have not been more successful than their public counterparts in the majority of cases. Public school curriculum is stifled by all he high stakes testing and now Common Core which sounds a little nationalist to me.Infact, as a teacher PRIOR to high stakes testing, that’s exactly what school looked like…a range of teachers and offerings. But we can no longer afford that given the copious amounts of money flowing to Pearson and for profit charters. We in the burbs really love our neighborhood schools and want them adequately funded and focused on a well rounded curriculum versus test prep and minutiae.
Your timing on this, Dr. Ravitch, was perfect as I visited with community members where I live who don’t believe their kids are in test manufactured schools and that charters are o.k. because they offer choice and are not for profit. I was so confused. But I live in a very wealthy suburb. . . this all makes more sense now.
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Choice for parents who want specific themes to their schools. What a specious argument. While I grew up when AP classes weren’t available (those that had the units completed with a decent grade could attend the junior college and take up to two courses per semester while still attending their high school), many of the other special choices described in the article could be found in the community. Sure, affordability played a part, but there was funding available through the old idea of a “community chest” that supported special programs.
In these bugetary times ( I hate that phrase), many suburban schools have had to reduce their offerings. Will these charters bring back those choices that parents are claimed to want? I doubt it. This is just a furtherance of segregation in our society. A loss of the benefits where all shapes and sizes of income can come together and participate in a free public school education, and thereby bringing synergy to a shared learning experience with a diversity of students.
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As the mother of 4 children, I found the description of the 3 types of parents to be the height of stupidity. I just don’t know what else to say about such a simplistic description.
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Look no further than Bullis Charter School in Los Altos, CA for the damage a charter school wreaks on a suburban community. Their latest salvo? Demanding the the district shut down a high performing neighborhood school and hand the campus over to billionairem Intel-family led charter school.
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