A reader explains the appeal of charters to communities fearful for their children in a world fraught with danger:
“Perhaps this site can be a venue for discussing the manner in which racial segregation and military discipline are packaged so as to market charter schools to families legitimately concerned with the dangers their children face growing up in communities that lack good jobs, good health care, and adequate housing, and other resources available to more privileged sectors of society. One should not underestimate the short-term appeal that such “discipline” has for people who are besieged, worried about the temptations their kids may succumb to and have, in the present moment, relatively little power. Many of the charters have lifted a page, not from the civil rights or radical Black power movements, but rather from the cultural conservatism of Booker T. Washington and Elijah Muhammad. This time, however, the executioners of the “plan” are largely, though not exclusively, upper middle class whites.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The carpetbaggers and snake oil salesmen have come to town bragging of being able to solve the ills of bad schools. They will provide a place that looks like the promised land and then they will disappear taking the money of taxpayers and leaving the poor people who trusted them in the dust.
You are so right. Investing in charter schools is a very lucrative business. They hire PR to make it sound like it is all about the poor students. But the real story goes more like this….
Thanks to the “New Markets Tax Credit” law passed in 2000, at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, banks and equity funds that invest in charter schools and other projects in underserved areas can take advantage of a 39% tax credit. That credit amounts to doubling the amount of money they have invested within just seven years. They are allowed to combine that tax credit with job creation credits as well as collect interest payments on the loans. Big money is being made because investment is nearly a sure thing. They just have to keep the charter open for seven years whether it is failing the students or not. Then they can pay off bond holders and move onto something else.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/15/1187346/-So-why-do-hedge-funds-so-favor-charter-schools#
I experienced the flip side of this with the charter school I pulled my children out of in Los Angeles. Many of us parents were attempting to shelter our middle class children from the big, harsh local public schools. We enrolled them in a charter with soft lighting, pink walls and teachers who were expected to treat the children with respect rather than do crowd control. The problem was that we were also keeping out any families who didn’t look like ours. A diversity committee recommended starting a free lunch program and a low cost after-school program but the board didn’t go for it. I agree that stripping the culture away from students is destructive, whether that culture belongs to the students enrolled or the students being excluded.
That is exactly the case for several charters in my town.
It IS packaging. I think it’s a mistake to believe that requiring children of color to be compliant 100% of the day to strict military style demands (often from upper-middle income whites) either keeps kids safe from the dangers in the streets of low income communities or adequately prepares students to be critical thinkers in college. It might, however, result in producing some very compliant Walmart employees who are just fine with earning peanuts for pay.
Isn’t this true of some public schools? Recently I was looking at public schools in a large urban area that we might move to, and was surprised to find a strict uniform policy in a public school with a large minority student population. It seemed very militaristic to me.
Uniforms are very common in public schools today and were initially instituted in urban areas in order to help low income kids, after other dress codes failed to prevent children from being singled out for derision and attacks by classmates because they could not afford to wear designer clothes or because they may happen to have been wearing colors associated with certain gangs.
Many of the militaristic practices implemented in charters are considered too harsh to be permitted in traditional public schools.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
I applaud Diane for posting this comment as a separate thread.
This is a complex issue. One of the easiest ways to understand it is that “racial segregation and military discipline” are repackaged into whatever slogans and catchwords are most appealing to the [literally] target audience. The specifics will vary but this looks just like a type of marketing campaign.
But reality is not as simple as Rheeality.
Let me refer to personal experience in reference to the reader’s comment about “Elijah Muhammad.” This is a reference to the individual who was known in Detroit and elsewhere as the founder and [for a long time] leader of the Nation of Islam [popularly called the Black Muslims]. Hence several times in answer to a knock on the door when I lived in the Jeffries Projects, there was a salesperson selling a newspaper called “Muhammad Speaks.” Naturally, he was surprised in a building predominantly black to find a young white person, much less one who was familiar [as I was] with the newspaper that also occasionally read it. I always politely declined a subscription and they always politely accepted it.
The influence of the Nation of Islam went far beyond its sometimes impressive numbers: of members, of subscriptions to Muhammad Speaks, of attendees at rallies and group events. It was simply a commonplace that many black Detroiters might disagree with the local presence of the Nation of Islam [I include on matters of religion, politics and lack of participation in the civil rights movement] but it was frequent to hear people admire their efforts to get their members to speak and live clean [especially re drugs & sex], be dignified but refuse to cower in the face of unjust authority, get a good education, and their efforts to build black businesses.
Whatever anyone might think about the ‘big picture’ there were some saving graces to the organization.
I want to be careful here to not lump in the Nation of Islam [as I knew it back in the late 1950s and 1960s] with the current crop of leading charterites/privatizers. IMHO, whatever it’s faults small or large were, with the former what you saw was largely what you got. It actually represented a movement [again, make up your own minds whether on balance you think it did more good or more harm]. On the other hand, when the latter go into a community like Adelanto, CA they give the impression that they want to give local people a “choice.” Sure they do: their choice. It’s a surrender of choice to charterites/privatizers, not local empowerment in any way, shape or form. And its a choice that steals choice from generations of parents and students for generations to come.
So in communities where the margin between living and dying, between success and failure, can be paper thin, the edufrauds will put forward (as a commenter here put it albeit for apparently a somewhat different situation) “soft lighting, pink walls and teachers who were expected to treat the children with respect rather than do crowd control.” Good sales tactics. For one example of same, think KIPP—read Sarah Carr’s HOPE AGAINST HOPE (2013).
Consider. Compared to what they would have to do to establish themselves in affluent neighborhoods, the $$$$ the edupreneurs spend to market their eduproducts in desperate low-income communities is pretty low, the possible returns high. Especially when educrats essentially sell off the public schools in their charge to charterites/privatizers.
Just because they’re greedy doesn’t mean they’re stupid. It’s part of their playbook.
“Never give a sucker an even break.” [W. C. Fields]
And remember, when it comes to $tudent $ucce$$, we’re the suckers.
The only problem? We’re waking up to that fact.
Why? This blog, among other reasons.
Thank you, Diane.
🙂
KTA,
As always, thanks for your thoughtful comments.
Ditto KTA.
Thank you.
So many do not see past the sales tactic.
Or they are not aware of their inner racist potential. It is easy to think you are not racist until you realize you have bought a bill of goods and you look around and see no other race or culture but your own (like a couple patents shared on this blog).
In the school where I teach I sometimes see racial social groups, but I see mixed race friendships just as much. And even though as a kid I did not socialize much with minorities outside of school, social media has enabled me to interact with minorities with whom I went to school in a fun and congenial way. We respect one another because we grew up together.
We are changed and molded by our friendships with peers just as much as any teacher molds and shapes us. If the teacher is modeling respect for community, and not just how to change trajectories, peers will share that respect mutually as adults (hopefully). In my opinion the beauty of America is its melting pot. Public schools help enable that.
Charter schools might also appeal to families that think their children would gain from a Montessori education, a progressive education, a Waldorf education, perhaps a language immersion program.
I know that bat signal, but am unsure of the Robert Shepherd signal. Please plead the case that each student needs to be treated as an individual for us. Explain that even though Peter and Paul are neighbors, Peter will gain from going to a Waldorf school and Paul will gain from going to a progressive school. Explain how the top down standardization of the curiculum in a school district is wrong, and how students should be allowed many options within the district.
No one here is stupid enough to believe that the end-game of the charterbaggers and voucher vampires will result in greater choices and higher quality choices for people who don’t already have them. I don’t think even you are stupid enough to believe that, any more than the average conman believes his own spiel.
There are no Montessori schools that are charter schools? No progressive schools? Or do you believe that Montessori school, progressive schools, Waldorf schools are simply a fraud and offer no different education than the standard neighborhood school?
Teaching economist: magnets operate in a cooperative system whereby a district lets students choose from among its choices, sometimes by lottery, and then provides transportation to them and maintains the same standards as public schools (because they are public and they cannot turn anyone away once they are in). Transportation tends to be the kicker. In a small district like Asheville City Schools it works beautifully. In a large district like Kansas City Missouri it was disastrous.
I notice you mention Waldorf, Montessori and more typically European model schools a lot in your posts. Educators do receive exposure to these approaches and when less was controlled by NCLB and RttT, I am sure many applied those methods, along with others, into their teaching. I do think language immersion schools are good and I know about a very good one in KCMO. If the approach is legit, it might make a strong charter school. If you are defending charters that work and are not looking to sink the entire ship for profits, I don’t think you really need to worry. Try it. See if it works.
Charter schools have been heavily criticised for 1) Skimming of students because the active parents will seek out these options for their children and 2) for reducing the budgets of traditional neighborhood schools. Magnet schools do the same things, but apparently are immune from these criticisms for reasons that are very unclear. Even more interesting, the magnet schools that have explicit admission standards are exempt from criticism as well, even criticism over creaming.
I talk about these european schools because they exist in my town. I believe my local school district is the ideal one for most posters. The public schools all use geographically determined catchment areas and there are no magnet schools (actually there is an alternative high school run by the district that is rather small and depends heavily on on line classes provided by K12). There are some private schools: a Montessori school, a Waldorf school, a progressive school, a Catholic school, and a small high school nominally associated with the Episcopal Church.
The more specialized approaches to education are only available to those able to pay the tuition to the schools. It seems to me that the students of poor households might benefit from a Waldorf education, but it is highly unlikely that they will all live in the same elementary school catchment area. The same is true for language immersion schools. That sort of specialization is not consistent with assigning students to schools based on imaginary lines drawn down the streets of a community. In order to maintain traditional zoned schools, the school board must do exactly the opposite: ensure that each school looks alike so they can legitimately tell a parent that it does not matter that they are assigned to school A, because all the other schools are basically the same.
I try to defend schools and ideas that work, but on here “some” is not a popular word. All online classes are terrible ( you might want to look at Art of Problem Solving (http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/School/index.php) to see what looks like a very good set of classes for math students. I am especially impressed by their course offerings and staff). All charters are terrible. I was once scolded for saying some teachers are excellent, some are terrible, and most are in between. It seems i made an unfounded generalization. There is little middle ground to stand on.
And I should not post when tired, sorry about the principle principal mix up. No doubt I have undiagnosed language disabilities, spell checker is nearly the only thing that keeps my written work readable.
Also, TE: it’s princiPAL.
Remember, you want them to be your pal.
FYi
I have never understood the difference between magnet schools and charter schools. They both pull students and funding from local schools. They both serve specialized student populations. Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to explain it to me.
I seem to recall that you object to the application process for charter schools as a screen for uninvolved parents. Do you object to the very explicit screen used by magnet schools like TJ High in Fairfax County?
All the most patient participants here have explained to you time and again exactly where the problems arise, and what they object to, but you are simply not listening and continue to point in every direction but the bare facts of the emperor’s butt.
I always find patience a virtue when teaching.
Perhaps I should start. I will concentrate first on the impact on local traditional school. A principle at a traditional public school finds out that ten students will not be attending the school next year. The principle is concerned because these students were important to the school both because they were good influences on other students in the school and their parent(s) were involved in the life of the school. Moreover the principle learns that these students will be attending another school, and in order to pay for the other school the principle’s budget will be cut proportionally.
Is this a story about a magnet school or a charter school? What is the feature that would allow us to distinguish between the two from the local school’s perspective?
After this we could move on to the new school.
Ops, left a possibility out: the 10 may have gone to a private school.
How do we tell the difference from the local school’s perspective?
I’m not a huge fan of magnet schools either. However, at least every magnet school in my city offers transportation and free/reduced lunch while there are several high flying charters that do not. Charter schools that are not an option for many because of of transportation/lunch are not a choice for all and therefore unfair. I also find it unfair that the charters in my town can reduce their class size while the pols have a bill that will lift the 24 student cap on K-3 classes.
The choice to enter a charter lottery is limited to those with means. And what about those who lose the lottery? What choice do they have?
All magnets in my town also offer ESL.
You are like the little boy who cried SQUIRREL !!! as the wolves in sheep’s clothing cleaned out the henhouse. No one is interested in discussing your fantasyland. Some, indeed our inestimable host, may have bought that fantasy 20 years ago, but today all the truly concerned citizens are concerned about the realities of the day. That reality puts the lie to all your myths.
I had hoped that you would be able to explain these differences, but I certainly understand if you can not. It would take a very sharp pencil indeed to draw these distinctions.
Only because you’ve stuck pencils in your ears so you can’t hear what anyone says.
teachingeconomist: From the perspective of a parent with one child in public school, and one child in a private Waldorf school, I see what you are saying. I wish that our public schools were able to provide alternatives outside the standard mold, but if they can’t, or won’t, a parent wants to find what is best for her child now, not years from now when the child is out of school and the harm has been done.
Hi,
As Jon points out, we have had this same discussion with TE on this blog MANY times. Including the point that mant district public schools have offered Montessori , single gender, and all manner of other options demanded by the public. However, due to budget cuts, increased class sizes, nonstop state mandated testing ( and all the punishments that come to a school with dropping scores), my district like many others now offer fewer options within each school.
We’re those schools traditional,y zoned public schools or magnet schools or magnet schools within buildings?
My point here is that many of the criticisms of charter schools apply equally to public magnet schools (and for that matter private schools, but for some reason they always seem to get a free pass).
The point of my original post was to tempt Robert Shepard into commenting here. He is very very popular when he posts that students should not be forced into identical schools across the nation and I hoped he would be equally popular if he argued students should not be forced into identical schools across the district.
I think public school systems could provide more choice, and some do, but many stick to geographically defined admission areas. In order to keep parents from complaining about not having a choice of schools, the school district has to work hard to make sure the schools are identical enough that they can claim that school choice does not matter.
Joanna,
TE should know all this, at least he’s been given all the appropriate “informational texts” on countless occasions. But when he’s not doling out red herrings he like to vary his mix of logical fallacies with his other favorites, the slippery slop and the false equivalence.
To wit, or not, he knows perfectly well, or at least he’s been told enough times, that progressive educators have always been a tolerant lot, indeed promoters of diverse methods and monitored experimentation in education, all of which innovations they have introduced into our schools over the years with no need of charters, vouchers, or other market mania.
In his quest for permanent ignorance, he continues to ignore the critical difference between the original models of charter, magnet, and special focus schools, with which few educators of any leaning ever had a problem, and the clear and present reality of weapon used charter schools and voucher schemes that face us today.
He ignores these distinctions on purpose, and then complains of pencil envy, so I know these words are wasted on him, but they may serve others to remind them of the rhetorical nonsense he uses to ambush productive discussion.
Typos …
slippery slop → slippery slope
weapon used → weaponized