The Néw York Times published a mini-debate about charter schools. Mike Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, as you would expect, supported charters. Unlike many charter advocates, Mike doesn’t claim that charters enroll exactly the same students as public schools. He unabashedly believes that charters are for strivers, not for everyone.
Bblogger-and-lawyer Sarah Blaine is appalled by Mike’s take on charters.
My own view is that we are developing an explicit dual public-funded school system, which defeats the communitarian, democratic nature of public schools. One gets to choose its students, the other does not.
What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think kids deserve options. To be against charters because they appeal to “strivers” is simply another way of keeping the system mediocre. Reminds of the old Soviet Union: we’re the best, but you can’t leave!
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The problem with options in OH is that there is no meaningful regulation, public money being spent on TV ads for dubious charters and many parents who do not have the information they need to know the charters do badly. If those are your options, large numbers of kids are in jeopardy.
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It’s classic “moving the goalposts”.
They’ve gone from “improving public education” to “creating an alternate system that is as accessible as the public system but higher quality” to “these are special schools for unique groups”.
They’re changing the definition of success until it’s narrow enough to encompass what they’ve achieved 🙂
This is another example of the same thing::
“By choosing a smaller learning community, students can focus on developing their interests in areas such as technology, fitness, and the arts, which can prepare them well for college, a career, and life.”
Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/Opinion/2014/12/07/Charter-schools-give-Ohio-s-urban-families-choice-opportunity.html#Rzbk3CIMeu20jT52.99
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You can’t win a debate with a reformer because they’re always changing the narrative. First, they said poverty doesn’t matter. When it became clear to everyone it does, they embraced the concept of “grit” so they wouldn’t have to deal with that pesky thing called poverty. Then they insisted charters don’t skim the most motivated students and force out the most challenging. Now they acknowledge it and have the audacity to defend that practice.
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I think Sarah makes a lot of sense. Only rich people should be able to remove their children from bad learning environments.
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I wouldn’t be against schools that just admitted “strivers” IF THEY WERE HONEST ABOUT IT, at least as a pilot project. The thing is that Petrilli has now broken with most of the charter movement in not lying about it. Meanwhile, creating a separate set of schools that only admits “strivers” — while outrageously lying about whom they’re admitting and not admitting — and having those school be charter schools promotes a total myth of superiority. If there’s any magic (for most there is no visible magic in the results), it’s because of whom they keep out, not because they’re — ooh — CHARTERS.
Now, if it were openly proposed: What if there were a test to see if more high-risk, low-income kids would be more successful in schools that self-selected for motivated and compliant kids from motivated, compliant and supportive families? I wouldn’t totally be against at least trying that to see if a greater number of high-risk, low-income kids would succeed.
But it’s a big issue to me that many charters de facto do exactly that, while blatantly lying about it, claiming to admit “the poorest of the poor” as KIPP schools have done for years, and implementing more and more hurdles to ensure that low-functioning kids from dysfunctional families never get near their precious schools. And. Lying. About. It. Aggressively. And. Constantly.
So do people like PBMeyer think the lying is OK or thing the charter sector should be under intense pressure to stop lying and be honest about what it’s doing?
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There are students with B and C averages (or test scores showing in those ranges) who are capable of higher achievement as they grow older. There are hyperactive kids who fall in the same category. Some/many just need that extra time and patience.
Charter schools funnel money away from existing public schools. Many of those public schools are financially strapped and overcrowded to begin with. Then they have to take in the students from closed schools as well as those who didn’t make it in charter schools. Some of those kids have discipline problems, but the public school isn’t even allowed to put them into separate classes, for fear of stigmatizing them. This makes it very difficult for the public schools to address the needs of those students who needed that extra time.
It’s a domino effect and it’s real. Fast track for the few…tough luck for the many. We’ve seen a lot of it, here in NYC. I see this as being a very narrow definition of “choice”.
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I think we owe Petrilli a thank you for honestly displaying how immoral this idea of “reform” really is. And how unimaginative it is too. There are a vast array of ideas that could go into improving the learning environments in our most struggling schools, but he is limited to “conform” or transfer and the on Twitter he said fully public schools should do the same.
More than half of Moskowitz’s first class of scholars did not make it to 8th grade graduation — is he seriously suggesting THAT many kids from a pool of people who sought out SA are so disruptive as to be not worth the school’s efforts?
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Why not? Geoffrey Canada decided his *entire* first class was not worth the effort. And he’s routinely applauded for the “humanitarian” things he does.
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Have you seen Petrilli’s rejoinder today? http://edexcellence.net/articles/school-discipline-too-important-to-leave-to-liberals
I am continually flabbergasted anew by the stuff he comes up with…. 😦
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“How do you sleep at night?”
“On a giant bed made of money”
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From the article you link to:
“But declaring, as some districts have, that they are going to eliminate suspensions and expulsions entirely is a totally different matter.”
Okay folks, how many of your districts have “no suspension” or “no expulsion” policies in place?
But you know who really has a right to be mad? The parents of the vast majority of kids whose learning is interrupted.
Mr. Petrilli, Do you have any “data” for just how much that “vast majority of kids” is???
“So to my friends (and, perhaps, former friends) on the left, I say: If you want traditional public schools to thrive, allow them to employ reasonable discipline policies that will create environments conducive to learning—including the responsible use of suspension, expulsion, and alternative schools. Otherwise, expect more and more low-income parents to do what all good parents do: Find safe, supportive places for their children to flourish.
I know my district has “the responsible use of suspension, expulsion and alternative schools”. Do any of your all’s districts not have such??
Petrilli lumps all public schools together assuming they all have the characteristics of the underfunded, under-resourced urban poverty districts. That’s a glaring mistake.
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Many of us continue to criticize market-based education reform as inherently inequitable, as it pits people against one another for scare resources. Maybe, rhetoric notwithstanding, equity is not their goal. Surely, many education reformers know that low paying jobs will not soon disappear. After all, they are not simultaneously supporting a living wage or job creating public works legislation. Maybe their goal is just to improve the quality and/or diversity of the talent pool from which employers can competitively draw, rather than providing the elements of a decent rewarding life for all. So, the fact that charter-schools increase segregation and are not uniformly successful is not a fundamental problem for advocates.
http://www.arthurcamins.com
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Daniel Katz is right on the money. I taught for 40 years, and loved my profession. Nevertheless, I, and many of my dedicated colleagues, frequently imagined a class where all the difficult pupils were removed, no matter what the problems they presented. Heaven! A classroom populated with happy, eager learners…However, we faced reality: that American universal public education meant offering its services to all, not just the designated “strivers.”
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“Striving for Dollars”
Charters are for strivers
And public schools for slackers
Strivers are the drivers
And slackers are the backers
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Strivers drive over the slackers.
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The voice of Sarah Blaine is clear and needed. She has made public the position of a major “thought leader” in education who does not give a …..about kids, unless they enter school with the right stuff, meaning trouble free and ready to sit down, shut up, and do as they are told.
Petrelli’s “reasoning” really does forward the idea of warehousing children with “defects” and those unable, or unwilling, to comply with Petrelli’s notion of an excellent school. I entered teaching in an era where children with Down’s syndrome were literally warehoused in a state school, and the principle of “separate but equal” was the big lie of segregationists. Time to put more pressure on Petrelli, not less, along with other “thought leaders” who share his views but are not always caught being candid.
Go for more, Sarah.
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The impact of many charters is just a resorting of the “haves” and “have nots.” One problem with this is that government money is being spent to enable a process that is undemocratic by definition. The improvement of a few comes at the expense of many. The process is subtractive for the public schools leaving them with the neediest, most expensive students to educate on less money! The selective process often promotes segregation, again using taxpayer money to fund it! A comprehensive school with a variety of ethnic and socioeconomic groups becomes less viable under the selective drain of charter schools. The diverse school district in which I taught was able to “model upward” by educating poor and middle class students together. It worked!
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I thought all the disruptive students would be enthralled with the common core and that would cure the motivation gap.
Petrilli’s philosophy is the opposite of No Child Left Behind, it is behave or be left behind. If Petrilli actually called BS on the concept of No Child Left Behind, or the mythical notion that the common core.would motivate students who don’t even want to be in school, he’d have a more cohesive position IMHO.
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Yes, and as a lifelong liberal*, I find it disturbing that the inclusive NCLB was passed by a Republican president and Congress, while the exclusive, competition based RttT was passed by a Democratic president and Congress. [Note, I have never supported either policy, but RttT is far worse and utterly inexcusable.]
*Actually, I don’t really consider myself “liberal” anymore – I fell off the left edge of that spectrum when I realized what was happening under Obama. “Liberal” has come to mean “neoliberal”, which really isn’t liberal at all.
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Sarah Blaine and others have discussed some of the verbal slight-of-hand of Michael J Petrilli.
Let me add my modest dos centavitos to a thought-provoking blog post and thread…
Note the implication that he is for the “vast majority of children” as against those that want that “vast majority” aka strivers to be subjected to what he strongly suggests is the “cancer” of the non-strivers/disruptors/bad kids.
¿?
Reread his piece and notice that he uses the phrase “classroom cancer” to describe the kind of “disruption” that the “disruptive students” engage in. So, it almost goes without saying, where do those purveyors of “classroom cancer” belong? In public schools of course, not in charters! Because if you allow/permit/mandate that the charters serve the same student population as the public schools, then you are “for” cancer. And for a charter member of the self-styled “education reform” establishment who is for apple pie, motherhood and a chicken in every pot—he would never, ever, in a million years, want to subject the “vast majority of children” to cancer. No, he’s anti-cancer and the rest of us are pro-cancer!
😱
Although, strangely, I am not feeling very evil at the moment…
😏
Oddly, he seems to forget that if there are some silver bullets, magic elixirs, pixie dust, in what the charter schools do—as a practical man he likes the word “tools”—then, er, why deny public schools the same, uh, “tools”? Aren’t the charters supposed to be laboratories of experimentation and innovation that will teach and lead public schools, the rising tide that lifts all boats?
Apparently not, since where would the “disruptive students” that are the “classroom cancer” he denounces and derides, go?
Perhaps, according to his way of thinking, in addition to a two-tiered education system, we should just throw out the ‘non-strivers’ with yesterday’s trash. They’re just a waste of precious time, resources and money. Excess humanity, washed up before they even grew up…
I conclude with one small observation. He is so focused on that in-school “cancer” that causes “constant disruption and anxiety due to chronic violence” that he seems—I think not by accident—
To completely ignore, elide and deflect conversation away from all the out-of-school factors that could cause people to bring negative and self-defeating behaviors into schools. For instance: Parents out of work? Malnutrition? Gang violence? Relatives in long-term incarceration?
But what do I know compared to one of the greatest followers of Marxism of our time:
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”
And Mr. Petrilli has never turned his back on Groucho.
😎
But don’t think that the “education reform” status quo doesn’t stand firm on bedrock principles. As every edupreneur and edubully and edufraud likes to say:
“The two most beautiful words in the English language are ‘check enclosed.’” [Dorothy Parker]
Ya gotta love ‘em…
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
¿😳? Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
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I love this. ALL of this. Every last word, even the emoticons.
❤
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Dear Ms. crunchydeb: I regret to inform you that your application for the EduExcellence Charter School of $tudent $ucce$$ has been revoked for lack of a ‘right corps member mindset.’*
😱
See Gary R blog: http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2014/02/22/guest-post-series-part-one-how-interning-for-tfa-convinced-me-of-its-injustice/
See you down at Pink Slip Bar & Grille.
Seems someone has a special spot in his heart for us supposed ‘non-strivers’ that think out of the box:
“To find yourself, think for yourself.” [Socrates]
He promises to keep his purse open with enough drachmas to keep the ouzo and thoughtful conversation going.
😎
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A reader left a comment on the Petrilli NYT piece that just perfectly—albeit unwittingly—sums up the state of things:
“When my kids approached school age, I moved to the best public school district I could afford. If I’d stayed in my neighborhood in upper Manhattan, I would have applied to charters. But I would have done so with no illusions that charter schools had “better teachers” or “better discipline.” All they have is two selection processes: 1) parents who don’t have their act together won’t apply, and 2) disruptive kids can be kicked out. This means that the kind of kids who eat up 30% of teacher’s time with unmet emotional needs probably won’t be there.”
Using real estate, with all the ugly segregationist baggage it carries, to sort and shed and make sure your kids aren’t being educated with their kids—now that’s the all-American way to do it! Figure out which community you can afford where the high entry cost and ongoing property tax costs of $10-20K or more will weed out nearly all disruptive and irreparably low-achieving kids, and you are good to go. You’ll even have enough spare time to bash charters in other people’s communities!
It would be really great to see such folks issue a good-faith proposal for how *their* district could help educate its fair share of at-risk kids. You don’t get any credit for not “throwing kids away” when you don’t ever accept them in the first place.
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Petrilli plays that game too: http://edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2013/proud-to-be-a-private-public-school-parent.html
(Funny, his kid’s elementary school isn’t 10 miles from my kids’ schools, but I can tell you, the real estate in my neighborhood is a LOT more affordable than in his, and those kids from the housing projects that go to my kids’ schools probably wouldn’t be long in Petrilli’s ideal charters. 😦 )
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I love how he just blithely skips over the consequences of this:
“This is a good compromise to a difficult problem: Not all parents (or educators) agree on how strict is too strict. Traditional public schools that serve all comers have to find a middle ground, as best they can, which often pleases no one. Schools of choice, including charters, need not make such compromises. That’s a feature, not a bug.”
Every public school parent in that neighborhood just said “so we get all the difficult kids in our schools?”
There’s this stubborn resistance to admitting that public education is A SYSTEM. The pieces interact. Where does he think the disruptive kids go? How does that affect the kids in the public schools?
If they set up a charter school across the street from a public school, BOTH schools are affected. That has to be considered. It’s wildly irresponsible and really unfair NOT to consider it.
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Unfortunate that the Times did not decide to include others within the charter community who work daily with youngsters with whom traditional schools have not succeeded. There are many examples, and many people working with charters who disagree with Petrilli.
You can expect to see more about this in the coming year.
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Joe,
“There are many examples. . .”.
I think the qualifying “many” should be more like “some” as those types of charters are few and far between. Do you have any stats on the percentage of charters that “work daily with youngsters with whom traditional schools have not succeeded versus those that don’t.”
Duane
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What I find interesting about this debate is that while it’s often framed in starker terms, I think that in fact it suggests that for most people, there is a certain acceptable threshold of selectivity in the public school system — i.e., that a certain amount of selectivity and tracking is good, but too much is bad; it’s good to have some G&T programs, or some selective admissions high schools for the best students, but not too many. I don’t know what the latent principle is that justifies that view or determines what the acceptable threshold is. It may just be a form of conservatism and comfort level with the status quo, a reticence to change things too radically, lest we destabilize a system that’s worked more or less well enough.
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FLERP!: as you are wont to do, you bring up an interesting point.
Thank you for raising this issue.
😎
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There have always been “boutique” sectors of the public education system — small reach specialty schools that are not scalable but which serve either real or perceived needs. The “acceptable” threshold is indeed unexamined — these boutiques have never really expanded in a way that has prompted that question except maybe during the magnet school experiment.
What is unprecedented is what is happening in New Orleans, Newark, and to a smaller (for now) degree in NYC where what ought to be a boutique sector has been set up as a full on competitor with the still fully public schools — competing for funding, physical resources, and the students they wish to accommodate, resulting in many zoned schools having to work with even higher concentrations of students who need more services in school with fewer resources.
I cannot tell if the people who want this to be the way the entire school system works think that the same market choices that give potential car buyers everything from an 86 Yugo to a Rolls Royce Phantom think the same forces can really give every child a quality education or if they are just blatant scam artists.
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I go with the “blatant scam artists” myself!!
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So if what he says is true, the LEAST he could do would be to give the public schools that “take all comers” credit for that. He has to admit those schools are necessary in his vision. His system couldn’t operate without them. They make his ideal system possible.
I think there IS a recognition of that in a public system that has magnet schools and selective schools. No one pretended every school could be a magnet school. The “take all comers” public schools are what makes magnet schools and selective public schools possible.
He should admit that this is also true of his aspirational system.
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I dunno. I don’t think he would admit it publicly (although probably among friends), but in his heart of hearts, I don’t really think he does see a need for public schools to take all comers. I think he’s perfectly fine throwing out the “disrupters” and the “slackers” and those who “don’t want an education” and not doing anything further with them. It goes along with the “choice” narrative – we can’t force people to make good choices, so, at some point, they just have to lie in the bed they’ve made.
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I think there’s a difference between the “theorists” in ed reform and the ed reformers who are actually running systems.
The ed reformers who are running systems have to acknowledge it’s a system. They attempt to correct for the downside. Cami Anderson is regulating around the tendency of the portfolio system to result in concentrations of needier kids in public schools. She had to admit that was happening because she’s running a system and her system would harm the kids who remained in the “safety net” public schools. Those schools would not just stay the same. They get hurt.
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Chiara, Do the public schools in your district take “all comers” – or only those who live in the district? What’s the racial and economic diversity in your district?
Some of us have worked hard to create public schools and public school systems that do take students from outside districts, and do not use admissions tests.
Yes, Petrellil speaks for some – but certainly not all – in public schools, district or charter. He certainly does speak for many parents who have sought out mostly white, mostly suburban districts (as he has).
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As a middle school teacher I share the frustrations of dealing with disruptive kids that Petrilli mentions, with one difference. I know, deep in my heart, that you can’t abandon children. No matter how difficult that child is, you cannot just throw him or her to the wolves. You must provide for every child, no matter what. That’s what public schools are about.
That is the thing Mr. Petrilli ignores. He seems to have no concern for the troubled child. A good system — a well-financed public school system — would have the right place for every kid. Why not provide that instead of ditching our neediest in the gutter?
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Petrilli’s clear concise position should end any pretense as to the superiority of charters, they are more closely aligned with gentrification and I would posit, a form of educational eugenics. The conservative bunch subscribes to the vapid philosophy of Ayn Rand and does not recognize any social obligation to anyone but themselves. They are a selfish bunch that would, like Scrooge, do away with the surplus population. The new poor houses have names like WalMart, but their purpose is the same. The gates of education are for the few, the strivers. They have no answers as to how to improve things, that was just an excuse to enter the discussion. Honesty at last, now we can drop the VAM claims, they even admit by their policies they do no better, and can not. The reformers do not educate better, they have no better ideas about teaching, and finally, they may quit pretending they do.
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Old Teacher: simple truths, succinctly written in a straightforward and clear fashion.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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A ready to copy and paste Tweet that leads back to this post:
NY Times debate
Sarah Blaine vs Mike Petrilli
Who thinks Charters should only be for easy-to-teach kids
#EdBlogNet
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We were founded as a nation on the notion that all people were to be educated to become productive citizens. It was a basic tenant of our democracy. Where did all of that thinking go?
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Dona, part of which happened was that after World War II, some people came up with the idea of suburbs. This allowed people who could afford it to move out of the city (like Columbus) and into suburbs (like Dublin, Ohio). Apparently Dublin has about 80% white and a substantial population of Japanese Americans (making it a somewhat unusual suburb, with the Japanese American population due in part to a Honda factory)
So now we have suburbs like Dublin that are 80-95% while inner cities that are heavily people of color and low income people (plus affluent people who in many cases don’t have kids).
The challenge gets compounded by financial arrangements in a number of states where up to 50% of the funding for public schools comes from local property taxes. So low income areas have a higher percentage of students who bring challenges to school and often a lower per pupil amount to spend.
Despite the rhetoric, it’s been quite a while since many states have been providing equal resources for all of God’s children.
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So, instead of working to equalize funding disparities, you take money from people seeking to extract resources from the public system, while falsely claiming that the taxpayer-funded but privately managed, segregated boot camps known as charters are public schools?
Please spare us your disingenuousness.
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Actually, Michael, I’ve been a part of efforts in Minnesota that provide overall more funds to public schools, and higher per pupil expenditures for districts & schools serving high percentages of low income students.
Yes, I do believe in public school options. Those of us who created options within districts heard similar arguments when we created new schools in the 1970’s – “You’re taking away from existing schools.” Fortunately many people have seen the value of empowering educators to create new public school options.
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Petrilli’s cynically clever rear guard action in defense of charters is par for the course in a nation divided against itself by the false promise of “I’m better than you so I get more stuff.”
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Petrilli has no business being anywhere near living breathing students. Just because he and his ilk are too lazy, too elitist, or just not creative enough to work with the kids with issues, does not mean that they cannot or need not be reached. His dystopian vision of education needs to be aborted pronto.
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And the Emperor proudly declares, “Why of course I’m buck naked! What made you unfit, hopelessly stupid, and incompetent people think otherwise?”
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Great. Just great.
Now I have a mental image of Petrilli and Gates frolicking in the nude.
Thanks a lot.
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Isn’t “frolicking” in their birthday suits what you would expect when they’re in a bed made of money?
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I’m just glad I have 16 hours to get that out of my head before I try to fall asleep.
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Here’s what I think:
Same thing as I thought when Bloomberg first took office:
They want us to fail so that we can be replaced by non union, low pay teachers, working in for profit charter schools. The wealthy will be able to afford the more experienced (but still low paid) teachers in the private schools that aren’t required to follow the CCSS.
Education Inc.
The general ed public schools in NYC were told to stop referring the severely disruptive kids to special education (emotionally disturbed/learning disabled). When those schools put them into their own classes, away from those who wanted to learn, they were told to stop this practice, as it produces a “stigma”. So those kids are being forced on the classes, whether the teachers want it or not.
They want us to fail.
This conversation with Petrilli is classic. Start out with an embellished lie in order to gain a secure foothold. Once the desired outcome has become established, start talking about the true intent as though it was evident from the start and has, after all, been the best course of action from the start.
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