Theresa Minitullo, a passionate advocate for Hoboken public schools, is dismayed that the city has separate and unequal school systems, all publicly funded.
The overwhelming majority of poor kids go to the public schools.
The white kids and non-poor kids go to the charter schools.
There is a reason: the charters help gentrify Hoboken, assuring young professional tat their kids can get a free public education without saving to go to school with ” those kids.”
But what happened to the Brown decision? Remember? 1954?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Of course, neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor Ted Olsen’s law firm will not take this blatent form of re-segregation on.
The US DOE came down hard on a public school district for “school to prison pipeline” expulsions.
We’ll see if they go after Chicago charters for the expulsion rate, which is apparently 10X the rate in Chicago public schools.
I doubt it.
I don’t even know if they have the legal authority to go after charters, honestly. I don’t know what due process rights students have in those schools. There’s a charter case out of California that says they have no due process rights as far as expulsion. They can be kicked out in exactly the same way that a private school can boot students.
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-announces-voluntary-resolution-kentucky%E2%80%99s-christian-coun
One could attribute the results of ed reform to unintended consequences; they didn’t intend to weaken public schools, weaker public schools were a consequence of the “movement”.
That’s my take because I see this “movement” as reckless rather than malicious.
But even there one has to wonder: why didn’t they consider the effect of introducing charters to an existing public system?
I think it’s because they don’t value public schools. Public schools simply weren’t valued enough to even be part of the discussion.
I see it in my own state. 90% of the discussion about public education revolves around vouchers and charters. The only time public schools are mentioned in this state is when ed reform politicians and lobbyists are bashing our schools. Which is pretty funny, because 90% of the kids are in public schools. If this were truly “about the children” one would think they would go to where “the children” are 🙂
What are the US Department of Justice or Ted Olsen’s law firm going to do about re-segregation at PS 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY? It is about 70% white, 10% FRPL eligible, and 2% ELLs in a district that is 23% white, 66% FRPL eligible, and 18% ELLs.
While the demographics of the Hoboken charters are unsettling, the wonderful thing is that every child in Hoboken is eligible to apply for admissions. That sure isn’t the case with traditional district schools. And this is what ultimately makes the argument about charters and segregation a little ridiculous. Segregation at open-enrollment charter schools is a major problem, but it’s perfectly all-American and normal that there are entire towns within a stone’s throw of Hoboken that have virtually no black or Latino residents?
But you’re not admitting the downside. The downside of the “wonderful” choice system in Hoboken is the public schools will be weaker, because they have a larger population of the most needy students.
Were you looking for a net gain in “public schools” (which supposedly includes charters) or was this planned with winners and losers?
This system they’ve set up improves one set of schools to the detriment of the other set of schools. Was that not anticipated, and if not, how could they be so reckless?
How did they think this was going to go? How were the public schools supposed to benefit?
What happens when the public schools disappear in Hoboken? Where do the kids go? To a “back up” charter school?
We were told ed reform would “improve public schools”. If that means “improve 10% of public charter schools, to the detriment of 90% of public schools” then we weren’t told the downside.
I think it was incredibly naive and reckless to bust up this system and not consider what would happen. It’s a system. When you pull on one string, the whole fabric changes. There was no guarantee the changes would be favorable system-wide. If they’re not, what do ed reformers plan to do to increase equity in the “back-up” public schools that are taking the kids the charters don’t want?
What a consolation to know that “every child in Hoboken is eligible to apply for admissions (to charter schools).”
And what a shame that not every child can get in, can remain once enrolled, and can be forced back into public schools that are purposefully being turned into dumping grounds so that charters may flourish.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is this really a change? When I lived in the Slope, we were zoned into 39, which was representative (very mixed); 1 block away was 321, heart of Slope & mostly white.
Forgot to say– my experience was in late ’80’s-early ’90’s, more than 2 decades ago.
So-called education reform, charter schools and gentrifying real estate development are an interlocking system.
Look at the demographics of the (TFA scab) teachers in charter schools. Not only do they not come from the communities in which they teach – unlike many of the the long time African American and Latino teachers who are being purged from the public school system – they rarely if ever come from the same city. They’re de facto foreign colonizers, with projects like Teacher’s Village subsidizing their dilettantism and union busting.
Right, because the dynamic you describe in your second paragraph is seldom in place in traditional public school systems serving children of color. /eyeroll
New York City, Yonkers, Buffalo, Rochester, Mount Vernon, Brentwood, Peekskill, Port Chester–the demographic makeup of the teachers is wildly different than that of the students, and comparatively few teachers live in the communities and send their own children to the schools in which they work.
Try reading next time; it really helps.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx what is your point? that teachers are paid too little to live in the communities in which they teach? or what?
This is a really interesting analysis of urban charters in Ohio. I haven’t seen this raised before:
“None of the charter schools located in urban districts enrolled only students who live in those districts, and many top-rated districts enrolled students from other districts as well. Comparisons of these schools with urban districts as a whole do not take this difference into account. While most top-rated district schools enrolled mostly resident students, examples abound of charters, in particular, with very low urban district enrollments even though they are located in Ohio’s largest urban districts. For example, only 15 percent of students enrolled at Menlo Park Academy in Cleveland were residents of the Cleveland school district.”
So when you see a comparison of Cleveland Public Schools to “Cleveland” charter schools, recognize that charters in Cleveland enroll students who don’t live in Cleveland.
It’s REALLY deceptive to call these schools “urban schools”. They’re located in urban areas, but they are serving an entirely different population. I live in Ohio and I didn’t know this. No wonder Cleveland Public Schools say it’s a ridiculous comparison. It is.
http://www.policymattersohio.org/topschools-jan2014
The Brown decision has little real suppoet among the general population, certainly not the middle-class white or Asian-American population. People are good in the long run at finding ways of evading official policies despite the coercive power of the state.
Disgusting that you believe this. It seems to be all about race for you. Why?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Brown v BOE stated that separate schools for black & white children were inherently unequal– i.e. segregation by law (not de facto). Do you really think the middle-class white or Asian-American population does not support this? Those who support it recognize that theoretically, depending on who’s in charge, their middle-class white, or Asian-American children could be segregated by law in order to separate them from supposedly higher-achieving children.
The NJ Hudson river front has seen an explosion in population, Traveling to Hoboken in the 1980’s was a passages through cat tailed filled swamps to a town of blue collar workers and immigrants looking for the American dream while living in railroad flats and run down properties.
With the massive condominium and rental development many immigrants were able to sell there homes at a huge profit and simply took those profits and returned to their homeland. Today, Condos in this area are $500,000+ and rentals are $4000+. Even though there are pocket areas that are rent controlled where the blue collar workers can still survive.
What is happening in Hoboken is that the affluent parents will send their young children to the local Charters so that they do not have to travel on buses to private schools . Once their children reach High School age, they will be bused to private schools instead of the local HS. The Hoboken school district has to pay for this busing, which in turn can be an expensive drain on their budget!
The town of Hoboken has to spend time and money on the promotion of their Public schools. They have to bring their affluent residents into the Public schools in hopes of improving their school system and keeping the schools as part of their community.
Meanwhile, the revolving door between the foundations, the corporations and government continues to swing:
“After more than a decade of directly overseeing $1 billion in education reform grants from his non-profit foundation, philanthropist Eli Broad is grooming a replacement.
He’s hired Bruce Reed, a high profile Washington political operative who spent decades in the halls of power. Reed was a speechwriter for then-U.S. Senator Al Gore, advised President Bill Clinton’s domestic policy agenda, and was CEO of the influential Democratic Leadership Council.
“It would look like a national system,” said Broad, describing what he would see as a perfect education infrastructure. “Rather than having 14,000 school boards across America, it would get governors involved, big city mayors involved, and it would have a longer school day and a longer school year.”
They’re really amazingly anti-democratic. I think it’s good Broad is finally admitting the goal is to get rid of elected school boards and local control. Now we can have an honest debate. Eli Broad’s vision for your public schools or your state constitution? Pick one.
ww.scpr.org/blogs/education/2014/03/03/15966/eli-broad-appoints-head-of-philanthropic-education/
“It would look like a national system,” said Broad, describing what he would see as a perfect education infrastructure. “Rather than having 14,000 school boards across America, it would get governors involved, big city mayors involved, and it would have a longer school day and a longer school year.”
Broad and the rest of the reformers on the Democratic side of the aisle are, to me, almost a caricature of what people hate about liberals and Democrats.
It’s incredibly arrogant, and incredibly controlling. Eli Broad thinks people are too stupid to elect a school board, and he’s hired a DC lobbyist who is politically connected to force his “vision” on every public school in the country.
The cluelessness and tone-deafness is stunning. How do they think this is going to play outside DC and Davos? I cannot imagine telling people here the governor will be running the local public schools.
I am a liberal Democrat and I’m embarrassed of these people. It’s the “smartest guys in the room” syndrome. It’s hubris. If Democrats go along with this, they are going to get, smacked, hard, by their voters. And they will deserve it. They’ll lose everywhere outside the coasts and they’ll deserve to lose.
They’ll only get “smacked” if progressive voters have somewhere else to go… otherwise they’ll be ignored… and as a result less than 50% of the electorate will turn out to choose between the two privatization parties.
I don’t agree. I think if their actual public ed agenda becomes “we can’t have elected school boards” that will be considered massive overreach in most places in the country.
I don’t agree that people want this single unelected billionaire and his lobbyist running public schools. I don’t think that’s limited to “progressives”.
This isn’t a progressive area and if Hillary Clinton were to campaign here on “the governor should run your schools at the direction of Eli Broad” that would be WILDLY unpopular, among not just “progressives” but also rank and file Democrats.
Did Obama run on a platform to eliminate school boards? To privatize schools? Do you think candidates from either party will explicitly run on a platform to eliminate elected school boards or to privatize public services? Both parties seem to think that “choice” and “charters” as civil rights issues and providing more funds to public education is “throwing money at the problem”. Call me jaded or cynical but I don’t see either party standing up for public education at this point and those Democrats who might do so (e.g. Sanders or Warren) have been deemed “unelectable” by the mainstream media. The conventional wisdom seems to be that we’ll be left with a choice between Clinton and, say, Jeb Bush… and if those of us who value public education are given the choice of Clinton or Jeb Bush where do we go?
Chiara Duggan – The left is all about using the coercive power of the state to force people to do what they do not want to do. Racial integration s an example,
Oh, baloney. Eli Broad isn’t ‘the Left” and neither are the DC lobbyists he hires.
Bobby Jindal in Louisiana is pushing a whole slew of bills to remove local control from school districts because his “choice” agenda is unconstitutional under the state constitution. Is he “the Left”?
My advice would be to stop worrying about The Left, who have absolutely no power in this country, and look at what Democrats and Republicans are doing to damage local public schools.
@ Jim. You seem to have a difficult time leaving out the words “the coercive power of the state”. We get your ideological bent. Do you think that you were not heard the first few times you posted a comment with your signature statement? The people who frequent this blog are not inclined to start agreeing with someone merely because they hear the meme over and over and over.
Those people who want to make sure that their children do not have to associate with ‘those other children’ wholeheartedly support the re-segregation of public schools. They see absolutely nothing wrong with their position. It is all about personal freedom after all.
Right, Jim, since the “coercive power of the state” had no involvement whatsoever with slavery, Jim Crow and segregation.
“The conventional wisdom seems to be that we’ll be left with a choice between Clinton and, say, Jeb Bush… and if those of us who value public education are given the choice of Clinton or Jeb Bush where do we go?”
I agree with you on that part. I think whoever wrote on this blog that public schools are “political orphans” got it exactly right.
It’s different than 2008. Hillary Clinton is going to have address her views on public schools. Obviously, she’s been hooked up to Broad for 20 years, so that will be the question.
I think it’s the start of a real debate, a debate ed reformers have to this point avoided.
Let he who is without sin among us be the first to condemn parents who don’t send their children to school with “those kids.”
The argument is not about the right parents to do what they deem best for their children – a non-debatable point well understood and manipulated by so-called reformers – but the creation of publicly funded institutions and incentives that favor certain classes of parents over others.
That’s certainly one argument, and it’s by far the best of the bunch in this genre. But I think that argument is a lot more compelling, not to mention a lot less susceptible to misunderstanding and manipulation, when it’s not buttressed with snide insinuations that it is other people, and of course not us, who don’t want their children to go to school with too many of “those kids.”
One of the main purposes of education reform and charters has been the reversal of Brown vs the Board of education. The old statement was that Sundays were the day of the most segregation. I beg to differ for years it has been the schools that children go to. You wont find a charter on the upper East side of NY and you wont hear parents saying its ok to do just do prep test. If so the parents of Long Island would just go along with this insanity of Common Core no they are protesting, organizing and they are going to kill Common Core in NYC.. However when you set the board game up to give other parents no options and you support the school to prison factory core and they don’t have arts, sciences ,advanced math because they are not smart enough you create a system of failure which at the end of the day you need to have a inferior group to make the wheels go round and round. look at Newark New Jersey, prime example of keeping other students down. However she received a 50k bonus and they want to cut peoples pensions. We should tell her to pay her bonus back since she did not improve education test scores did not go up.
The opponents of charter schools never want to answer the question why do parents, including minorities want their kids to attend them.
Rather than be ‘protectorate’ of failing public schools, why not expend the effort to fix the problems.
I resent the implication that people aren’t trying to fix the problems. Setting up a separate system doesn’t fix the problems, and it diverts money from the schools that are working to fix the problems. At least with the charter school in my area, it isn’t the “problem public school.” It’s to get “their” kids away from those “other” kids. I have had parents admit that to me.
It’s quite possible to have reasonable differences of opinion over what constitutes “fixing the problems.”
In New York City, for example, there is an entire cottage industry devoted to protecting the rights of disruptive students and intentional non-learners, regardless of the impact on the vast majority of students who behave appropriately and go to school to learn, and on the adults who are trying to educate them.
Schools in low SES settings tend to have higher numbers of disruptive students. It is less of a problem in higher SES settings, and of course private, parochial, religious, and charter schools take a much different approach: students who can’t follow the rules don’t get to go to school anymore.
Disruptive and intentional non-learning students are of course entitled to a free and appropriate public education, and every measure should be taken to work with such children and keep them out of the so-called schools to prisons pipeline. But if we want to make traditional public schools more attractive to families, especially in the upper grades, something different has to happen in this area. I can’t blame any parent for wanting to avoid schools where instruction is clearly being compromised by a chaotic school environment.