Peter Greene gives his sales pitch to parents about the advantages of public schools over charter schools. This is one of his best posts ever. He does a great job of explaining why parents should enroll their children in public schools, not charter schools.
Did he forget anything? If you were making this argument, what would you say?
This is what Peter Greene wrote:
“Here’s why you should send your child to your public school.
Stability.
I will promise you that at the end of this year, at the end of next year, at the end of your child’s educational career, even if that’s thirteen years from now, this school system will still be here. You will never arrive at our doors and find them suddenly locked. You will never spend a single part of your year scrambling to find a new school to take your child in. As long as your child is school age, we will be here for her. You will never have to discover that we have decided to stop teaching your child because we can’t make enough money doing it.
Shared expertise.
Our teaching staff has over a thousand years of collective teaching experience. You may think that those thousand years don’t matter if your child is in a classroom with a second-year teacher, but they do, because that second-year teacher will be able to share in the other 998 years’ worth of experience any time she needs to.
Our staff will also share the experience of teaching your child. Your child’s classroom teacher will be able to consult with every other teacher who works with, or has ever worked with, your child. We do not routinely turn over large portions of our staff, nor do we depend on a stable of green young teachers.
Commitment.
We are committed to educating your child. Only in the most extraordinary circumstances will we expel him, and we will never “counsel him out.” We will never require a minimum performance from him just to stay in our school.
Ownership.
Our public school is owned and operated by the voters and taxpayers of this community, your friends, neighbors, and co-workers. The charter school is not. This public school is overseen by an elected board of individuals who live here and who must answer to voters. The charter school is not. When you have a complaint, a concern, an issue that you want to direct attention to, the people who run this school must have regular public meetings at which you must be able to air your concerns. The charter is a business, run by people who don’t ever have to let you into their board room.
Will you allow me to see your financial statements any time I wish?
Will you commit to holding all meetings of your leaders and operators in public, with ample opportunity for members of the public to speak out?
Will you promise me that no matter what, you will never turn my child away from this school?
My suggestion to you? Find a place that will say yes to all of those, because without a foundation of stability, transparency, and commitment to your child, any other promises mean nothing. They are like getting a marriage proposal from a man who says, “I will be the greatest husband ever, but I do reserve the right to skip town any time that I feel like it.” The charter school promise is not really a promise at all. Our promises are smaller and less grand because we know that whatever we promise, we’ll have to stick around to deliver.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For a parent of a child with special needs, sending my kid to a public school was a no-brainer. Truthfully, there is an okay charter and a couple of private schools in my metropolitan area that serve children with my son’s disability but then he would segregated and have no opportunities to interact with his typically-developing peers. And that IS the real world, and the world I must prepare for.
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When funded correctly, public education offers a rich and varied curriculum including the arts and science. Parents have the assurance that a trained professional teacher, with an understanding of child development, methods of teaching various subjects as well as a firm foundation in the subject being taught, is working with their children. Public education is a cornerstone of democracy, managed by democratic principles, and dedicated to the premise that all citizens have a right to a free, public education.
I refuse to call charter schools by that name anymore. It is a euphemism for something that is new and original. There are very few, true charter schools anymore. To me a more appropriate name is corporate education whose main goal is to bring a solid return to investors, not look out for the best interests of students. Parents need to think about this when considering a corporate school. Do they believe that a corporation will have their child’s best interest as a main priority?
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Peter Greene is a scholar and a humanitarian. His list of reasons why public schools are superior is, IMO, his best work yet.
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I respect what Peter has to say….but I am less optimistic about survival of public education as anything close to what it is now. I believe the next year or two will be crucial…..and I am fearful that the democrat party is pretending that is not the case.
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This is a crucial point. It is very serious that the current political initiatives, under the guise of greater accountability and equity – threaten the structure and democratic governance of public education.
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I’m encouraged by the geographical distribution of the lousy ed reform states.
They can ignore how ed reform is going in OH, MI, PA and FL all they want and point to Boston or DC or Tennessee, but that’s a big chunk of the country 🙂
At some point they just get buried in the garbage they foisted off on these states.
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I would also like to submit that not all public schools are rigidly divided by income. I get that there are “wealthy suburban schools” but that is not true of all places and all states and all areas.
Our public school includes a really broad span of income groups. I think it was beneficial for my children to attend school with such an economically diverse group and my grown children agree.
I think ed reformers who seek equity should be careful and really LOOK at what they’re dismantling and (in my mind) recklessly discarding and not put public schools in a box where there are rich schools and poor schools and nothing in between. That simply isn’t true in a lot of areas. That may be their personal experience and it may be true where they live but it is NOT true everywhere.
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Good point. How we fund public schools needs to change. Our current system results in the “haves and “have nots” of funding. I think we should look for innovative ways to get public students of a range of socioeconomic levels in the same schools. I taught in a diverse, suburban school district that had about 25-30% free lunch students. I was the ESL teacher, and almost all my students were poor. My ELLs benefited from attending a safe, clean schools with lots of resources and support available, and the middle class students got to appreciate people that didn’t look or sound like them. It was a win, win for all.
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I think it’s weirdly narrow the way public schools are described, as 100% categorical according to “zip code”.
I’m truly sorry that so many places (apparently) have these rigid income divides but one of the things I like about where I live is WE DON’T.
We have a modified form of open enrollment in Ohio. You know who takes advantage of it? Better-off parents. They’re the only people who have the time and resources to provide transportation.
If the goal was “equity” they’re going in the wrong direction. They’re concentrating the most needy students in their “home district”. This ridiculous idea that “choice” would just sort people out into these broad inclusive groups is magical thinking. There was ALWAYS downside risk. There was just no consideration of the risk. At all.
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Chiara they simply do not care.
They know what they’re discarding, and it’s easier to think of it as a Bain style corporate hostile takeover where they want to dismantle the company for the value. They don’t care who they hurt or what value the company had before.
It has more $$ in pieces no matter what happens to the people in the system as a consistent cash cow with forced government payouts from people who are cheap to coerce controlling that money and a hostage customer base.
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The “hostage customer base” is what we are seeing among poor, urban areas where corporate schools replace public schools, and protests are ignored. These parents should sue for their right to a free, public education. Calling these “charters” public schools should be challenged in court for all the reasons that were mentioned above. They don’t have the same rules, and in many cases they don’t serve the same population.
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I also think that my kids benefited from the general idea that they don’t get everything they want-that the school doesn’t exist solely to serve their individual needs or wants. That sometimes what they want has to give way to what is best for a larger group of people, and they have to think about the whole group and whether what they want makes things worse for someone else.
I think the “choice” approach cuts into that. In fact, one of my main complaints about ed reform is (in Ohio) there is absolutely no consideration given to the effect of “choice” on existing public schools. I genuinely do not understand why the effect on kids in existing public schools is not even mentioned, let alone planned for or addressed.
When you change a piece in the system you change the whole. Always. The changes to the existing schools could be positive but they could also be negative. One can’t introduce risk and eliminate downside risk.
How on earth did public schools get excluded from consideration when they changed the system within which public schools exist? How reckless is that? It’s as if the existing schools have no value at all, and they are the schools 90% of children attend.
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One of the reasons I think that little consideration is being given to the impact of “charter” schools on public schools is that hedge fund managers are calling the shots along with complicit politicians. Their goal is to strip the public schools of resources and make them fail. The students are no more than product that needs to be reallocated to a new company for them to get access to the public money. Sadly, it is almost like human trafficking. Hedge fund managers have moved against numerous companies in this despicable way, just ask Mitt Romney.
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I think it’s why I fundamentally question whether they want a “public” system. To me, one of the defining characteristics of any “public” system is that concern for the WHOLE. It is both the constraint under which public systems operate AND one of the strengths.
The downside of a public system is everyone doesn’t get everything they want. The upside of a public system is everyone doesn’t get everything they want 🙂
I get upset that the public schools don’t “fit” my kids in every way, but when I’m standing on the other side of that argument, where my kid would be harmed, that same sword is a shield.
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I think all organizations, public or private, involve compromise. In a small, corporate school, a student might benefit from a small school setting. Sometimes being larger is better, especially in secondary schools where more varied curricular options will be available. In privatized education the management is top down, and parents will often lose their voice. How many parents in Newark and Philly protested privatization, only to be shut down? In a public school system there is a grievance procedure for parents to follow, and they will be heard, even if they don’t like the outcome.
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As a parent, I’m okay with everybody not always getting what they “want” for their child, but I have a problem when schools aren’t providing the educational “needs” for every child. And I really have a problem when one child’s need is given special priority over another child’s within the same school system. We know enough about educating children and their learning differences to be able to provide for all children, if only there was the political will and public support. If there was more choice within the public school system, there would be fewer families looking for choice outside the public schools.
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I agree we should address the inequities in public education. Instead, teachers are being scapegoated as though they created the problems. Blowing up the system is not the solution. What you get are sharks and snake oil salesmen that want to profit off of poor children. The only “charter” schools that can make a dent are those that toss out the most difficult or expensive students. A few students are rescued while the rest are kicked to the curb. This flies in the face of democratic principles of opportunity for all.
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This pitch would fall flat with many New York City families who might be considering a charter school for their child. Most conspicuously absent is something along the lines of, “The safety of your child is of paramount importance, and we will do everything we can to ensure an orderly and appropriate learning environment.” Greene acknowledges at the end of his post (not excerpted by Diane) that his pitch doesn’t discuss academic quality, but shouldn’t it? Even if the argument is true that a charter’s performance is better only because of the screening effect of lotteries, to prospective charter parents, that’s a feature, not a bug. And it isn’t a moral failing for them to feel this way—they live in areas that are segregated *precisely* because other families have used the housing market, with all of its racist baggage, to exclude problem kids and leave them behind. As commenter Chiara is fond of saying, it’s a system. One type of neighborhood doesn’t exist without the other.
Greene also notes that the details of his pitch might not apply to every jurisdiction, and that is certainly the case in New York City, where traditional public schools are under undemocratic mayoral control, with its sham school board and sham school governance teams; where state charter school laws are strong; and where there are large numbers of district schools where 90% or more of the kids aren’t headed for a four-year college. New York charter schools are required to have monthly board meetings that are fully open to the public (as well as any committee meetings), most charters prepare and distribute monthly financial statements for review; and every charter must undergo an annual independent financial audit.
Apart from the missing piece on academic quality, I will say that this is a compelling pitch for parents living in an area where local control has been preserved and where there are virtual or for-profit charters.
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I’m not sure the public schools my kids attend would give me an affirmative response to the three questions that Greene lists (“Will you allow me to see your financial statements any time I wish? Will you commit to holding all meetings of your leaders and operators in public, with ample opportunity for members of the public to speak out? Will you promise me that no matter what, you will never turn my child away from this school?”).
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I wouldn’t say public schools are perfect in everything. That’s probably the same no matter what country you were born and raised. But they teach kids social responsibility and civic virtue throughout curriculum, unlike some self-proclaimed “private/public” schools(both real and virtual). Regarding quality of teaching and subject, many of those labeled “private schools” are not up to par with schools with private status in foreign countries because they don’t have the same definition.
In other countries like South Korea and Japan, many of those private schools are funded by private organizations. They screen students based on exams–not lottery. They can set a high standard based on their own curriculum to get students to top college and university as their 1st priority. They don’t waste their time competing with public schools to win silly standardized test score games to receive public funding.
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I would include that as public schools we take everyone. All children are welcome and deserve an education. In public school we cannot deny a child an education just because he doesn’t meet a certain test score. Even if a child fails, we welcome him back to try again. We are a community; their community. That’s why parents should choose public school.
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