Joshua Leibner writes here about a new HBO television show called “Togetherness,” selling the idea of charter schools as the latest trend for hip white families.
They don’t want their children to be in a minority. But they are uncomfortable with the idea of private school. The charter school offers them a chance to avoid “those” children and get a free education and at the same time, think they are on the cutting edge.
The show’s creators, Mark and Jay Duplass, are the very talented Hollywood powerhouse titans of smart, artsy films about the white middle class and its obsessions; their work dominates Sundance and they have a four-picture deal with Netflix. The brothers also live in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles School Board District 5, and that’s where they’ve set “Togetherness.” It also happens to be where I live and will send my son to school when he is old enough. Although the show is ostensibly about the marriage and lives of Hollywood sound man Brett and his wife, Michelle, the charter school plotline is enlightening and can be discussed in light of not only LAUSD’s relationship to these characters, but to the nation as a whole.
The charter school speech-maker, David Garcia, an aspiring politician, begins with the mantra that has been drummed around the country for the last 20 years: “Our public education system is broken.”
Is it broken in Palos Verdes? In Beverly Hills? In Malibu? Or any of the richer districts that surround L.A.? No, but definitely, apparently, in Eagle Rock.
Michelle goes up to David after his speech and says, “My daughter is going to start kindergarten and we’re talking about where is she going to go… what is she going to do… I’m wondering why is there not some community place — somewhere I can put her and feel good with a lot of different people. I don’t want to put her in a private school where she doesn’t get to experience what life is like where we live. I mean why is there not a great place?”
The Eagle Rock public schools are obviously not an option for Michelle. Our local elementary schools — Eagle Rock, Rockdale, Dahlia Heights — get conflated into the fictional “Townsend Elementary,” and are clearly not gonna cut it. It goes without saying.
Michelle has previously been shown speaking longingly to her husband, who has all but decided to put their kid in private school: “Don’t you want her to be in a different kind of community with kids of different colors and economic backgrounds?
That obviously — to these characters and to many real life members of their demographic — isn’t the public schools.
But why not? One LAUSD school board member has said pointedly that “maybe it’s time for the district to look in the mirror and figure out what can be done within district schools to make parents less eager to remove their children into charters.”
True enough. And maybe it’s time for charter school advocates to look into their own mirror.
Is it, could it actually be, the “bird shit” and “five-day-old sloppy joes”? No, because episode 6 demonstrates how hard Michelle is willing to work to find and clean out an old building for the new school. Surely, cleaning up some bird feces at an already functioning facility and agitating for better food — or packing a lunchbox — would have been much easier.
Is it because a bloated school bureaucracy is truly causing these parents to be “disenfranchised and lost”? Not really, because when David and Michelle finally make their impassioned plea for a charter to the public school commission in Sacramento, they are met with misty-eyed commissioners and an implied approval.
Could it be — gasp! — race, or class? Eagle Rock Elementary School is only 17 percent white, with 57 percent of the kids qualifying for subsidized school lunches.
No, no, no, no! the series replies. In the final episode, there is Michelle leading a post-racial bandwagon, driving up to Sacramento to argue their case. Along with David, the show’s sole Latino, there’s a gay Asian political consultant and a black principal who will fight for this charter. They all bond over a car karaoke hit.
Wealthy white people, as a rule, control the charter school industry across the country. White people run the billionaire philanthropic foundations that funnel money into charter schools. White people dominate the editorial boards of the major urban papers who sympathize with charter school interests.
No surprise that the film-makers have a deal with Netflix. Netflix is owned by Reed Hastings, who sits on the board of KIPP and Rocketship, and who predicted at a California Charters Schools Association that one day there would be no boards of education, only charter schools. Hastings, at last look, was a multimillionaire, but he might be a billionaire.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The “cool factor” of charter schools is also making its way into popular TV dramas. One show, “The Fosters”, depicts a story in which one of the cool, open-minded foster moms is a charter school principal at a an idyllic school on the beach. In “Parenthood”, another TV mom starts her own charter school for kids with special needs and provides an alternative to the big, bad and bullying public school. We’ve had two experiences that were less than ideal in charters, due to their lack of student services to help kids with LD and associated issues. Our child with LD now goes to private school.
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We have the problem in my district (Peekskill, NY) where people like the low cost of housing but many middle-class parents have abandoned the district because of, well, a lot of reasons. There’s the district history, which isn’t awesome. There are the low test scores. They aren’t horrible, but when you have large amounts of Spanish-speaking kids they won’t be great. There’s the “white flight”.
The sad thing is that the schools are pretty good. My three kids go to the district, and while there are issues, there are issues everywhere.
I’m not the kind of person who expects other people to fix things for me. That’s one of the things that bothers me about all the families abandoning the district. It would get even better if we all had our kids there and we all worked together to help solve the district’s problems. Unfortunately people don’t think that way. That said, I’m proud of where I live, very proud to live in a truly mixed community.
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It’s very interesting to think of different educational systems as “trendy.” I have never realized that the idea and control of charter schools is mostly dominated by white culture. In a few years if more states become open to school choice will that mean that schools will become more segregated because white parents will move their kids to charters? What is going to be the new trendy version of school in the next few years? How are real solutions going to be found in the educational system if people keep bouncing around from one school to the next? The way the media portrays the idea of school really does have a major impact in how the majority of the public views the schooling process.
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“I have never realized that the idea and control of charter schools is mostly dominated by white culture.”
Unlike the idea and control of most other things in America?
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W2015,
Read Jersey Jazzman blog. Google Jersey Jazzman Hoboken charter schools. Segregation is already in evidence there and he uses serious statIstics. It won’t take “a few years.”
You sound very thoughtful–so talk to all you know, which will have more impact than media portrayals.
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This show sounds vile. Really vile. However, could it simply be that this is satire, or at least an attempt at satire?
If not, it could be on its way to being the television equivalent of the horrific “Won’t Back Down” film released a couple of years back and went on to be the biggest “Crash and Burn” since the days of Charlie Chaplin.
This Reed guy who owns Netflix and who is so “smart” that he gave a speech advocating for the end of elected school boards and a phasing out of public schools in which he tells his audience that they can’t say these things openly and directly and so they’ll have to develop strategies and language to hide their real intentions.
I guess the “Boy Genius” had never heard of recording devices and something called You Tube.
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The author addresses the possibility of satire:
“If ‘Togetherness’ showed the slightest shred of self-awareness, we might interpret this subplot as a radical critique of the worst elements of the charter school movement: its hollow rhetoric and pedagogical vacuity, its appeal to narrow self-interest, the way it divides communities and the way the state has embraced all of it uncritically for political (financial) ends.
Instead, it’s clear that the Duplass brothers and their characters are speaking completely un-ironically and obliviously about all their (now cliché) white privilege and entitlement and, yes, racism and classism in defining what constitutes “good” for them. With HBO’s endorsement, they believe (hope) that they are speaking for and to an affluent white audience who are rooting for these characters.”
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The bizarre and hilarious thing about this is the fact that the wealthy and highly educated elites pushing the scam known as charter “schools” almost never enroll THEIR OWN precious progeny in one.
Only in a fictional TV setting would such a family ever choose to put their daughter or son in a charter.
And that’s one of the many reasons why even if this show isn’t supposed to be satire, it should be, given the vast distance between what it portrays and how that contrasts so dramatically with reality.
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It sounds like the tv family in this show is “middle-class,” not wealthy.
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I don’t know of any white, middle class families in charters. Honestly. Do you?
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I know of one. Boston area.
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Actually, Puget Sound Parent, this article hits on a different aspect of charter appeal that might not be familiar to some who see charters as an inner city “reform”. I live on the West Side, referred to in this article, and which has fallen to the same white flight to charters that he writes about here. Middle class and affluent families are choosing the smaller class sizes and the feeling of control that charters offer. It’s baffling to me that our school district does not seem to want to appeal to these families.
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I don;t think public schools can solve the “more control” issue, though, or they won;t be public schools.
It’s the nature of the thing that it has to try to serve everyone. We have more than a few parents who would love “no excuses” style discipline here, for example, but there’s probably an equal number who feel their kids are disciplined too harshly. I was on a public school “visioning” committee last and I was blown away by how varied the demands and needs and wants are- no sooner would we address the issues of the “gifted” group than there would be complaints that we were ignoring the rank and file majority. It went on like that for days- each group making their case. I ended up with a lot of sympathy for the superintendent. She has a very difficult job.
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Karen: The true public school CAN’T have the smaller class sizes. First of all, the charter schools are taking the money from true public schools that could be used to reduce classes. Second, the charter schools don’t backfill, so for three quarters of the year, the charter schools get the money for the student but also have the lower classes sizes because the student is gone. To where? The real public schools, that now have larger class sizes and even less money. I would give EVERYTHING to have the class loads that the charter schools around here have. But more and more kids get put in my classes with no additional resources, because they have been forced out of the charter schools. The deadline for the money in my state is October 1, which isn’t even midterm for first term. At any time after that if a kid leaves a charter school, we have to take the kid. No money follows the child.
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Yes, Threatened Out West, i see those dynamics, too. We usually get a few charter students right before spring testing. And, Chiara, I think you’re hitting on something and this article underscores it, too. Some parents just find public school too messy.
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Well, that’s not surprising. Often charters come into a neighborhood—or force their way on to public school property—and then, all of a sudden there is a “new school” for “the smarter kids”, setting up a completely new dynamic in what was formerly a neighborhood school community.
Charters turn communities that were “in this all together” into shopping malls, or casinos, or battlefields where, all of a sudden, parents are turned against each other in a mad dash to “get there first” and where “all the loser kids” can get left behind.
Meanwhile, you’ve made it worse for everyone. How can you possibly defend something so egregious, so inhumane, and so counterproductive to the education of our children?
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I tried to watch this show a few times. I did see the charter school episode which made me cringe. I have trouble finding the angst and obsessions of affluent, artsy forty somethings engaging or entertaining. My reaction to the show is that these people should count their blessings if they have their health, healthy children and a decent way to make a living. They need to accept life’s changes with gratitude and grace. There are far more important things in the world than receding hairlines, paunchiness, and loss of sexual prowess. It seems quite fitting that this group would be impressed by charter schools since they are preoccupied with their own self-absorption. If you want to see something interesting on HBO, try “Vice.”
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With hope that audiences can recognize a sham, “Togetherness” will fail as miserably as the Hollywood parent trigger movie.
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You really have to read the Hastings speech:
“And so the fundamental problem with school districts is not their fault, the fundamental problem is that they don’t get to control their boards and the importance of the charter school movement is to evolve America from a system where governance is constantly changing and you can’t do long term planning to a system of large non-profits…The most important thing is that they constantly get better every year they’re getting better because they have stable governance — they don’t have an elected school board. And that’s a real tough issue. Now if we go to the general public and we say, “Here’s an argument why you should get rid of school boards” of course no one’s going to go for that.”
He wants to “evolve America” to a “system of large nonprofits” but he can’t let Americans in on that because “no one’s going to go for that” so he plans to put in his governance plan gradually, perhaps hoping Americans won’t notice.
This was met with applause at the charter school conference.
The freaking arrogance and attitude of “they don’t know what’s good for them!” is just breath-taking. I hope I live to see the day they come in here and try to dissolve the school board. I look forward to seeing that fail.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/14/netflixs-reed-hastings-has-a-big-idea-kill-elected-school-boards/
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It sounds more like he’s advocating a Soviet Union style, “Command and Control” system. Funny, coming from a multimillion dollar “capitalist”.
Where is Reed Hastings sending his own children?
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Boycotting this show…along with Walmart.
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Why is it hip to abandon public education?
Potential answers:
“Candidates for public office in the United States frequently justify their positions on education policy priorities by stating the need to strengthen the nation’s economic competitiveness against new global challengers. In this article, the authors investigate the consequences of this form of policy motivation for attitudes toward and support of public schooling in the United States. Using a national survey experiment where a two-question prime on international competitiveness is randomized across respondents, the authors test for differential responses to attitude items that have been included regularly since the 1970s in the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll and the General Social Survey. The results suggest that framing educational policy with the goal of enhancing international competitiveness lowers subjective assessments of the quality of local schooling without increasing interest in additional spending to improve the nation’s education system.”
Click to access Morgan_and_Taylor_Poppe_2012.pdf
“Despite that stability of public opinion about charters, aggregate support increased by 11 percentage points when respondents were told that Obama backed them (see Figure 4). We again found evidence that Obama’s impact has a partisan tinge. Among his fellow Democrats, Obama’s support is an unmitigated asset for charter school advocates, lifting support from 35 to 47 percent. But among Republicans, the percentage favoring charters increased by only 5 points (from 47 to 52 percent) upon learning of Obama’s endorsement. That endorsement actually decreased the proportion of Republicans who “completely” supported charter schools, from 22 to 15 percent.
When it comes to charter schools, research findings appear every bit as influential as a popular president. Told that recent research showed “students learn more in charter schools than in public schools,” support for charter schools rose by 14 percentage points. Among African Americans, the percentage who “completely” supported charter schools climbed by fully 23 percentage points, from 14 to 37 percent. Hispanics, meanwhile, were least persuaded by the evidence; only 5 percent altered their opinions. As they did on the previous items, Democrats appear to be more impressed by research than Republicans. Among those given evidence that charter schools enhance student learning, Democratic support for charter schools shot upward by 18 percentage points to 53 percent (compared to 35 percent among those not so informed), while the percentage of Republicans favoring such schools shifted by just 12 percentage points.”
http://educationnext.org/persuadable-public/
“50% of Americans gave the schools in their communities either an A or B, with parents awarding local schools even higher marks. These grades have remained consistent over the last few years. At the same time, Americans give the nation’s schools significantly lower grades with more than 80% assigning the nation’s schools a C or lower grade; no public school parents gave the nation’s schools an A.(http://pdkintl.org/noindex/PDK_Poll46_2014.pdf)
Citizens holding schools to different standards may likewise help to explain the gap in
evaluations of school quality. For example, parents may evaluate local schools in light of
how well the needs of their children are met. It seems likely that personal contact will play an even more important role in shaping perceptions of local schools than Congressmen, as public schools are ubiquitous and people have frequent contact with them (Chingos et al. 2012, 7). More than 50 percent of Americans report having visited a public school within the past 12 months (Bushaw and Lopez 2012, 12). Further, when asked why Americans tend to grade the public schools in their community higher than the public schools in the nation as a whole, 43 percent of respondents attribute the difference to greater knowledge of local schools (Bushaw and Lopez 2011, 19).”
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/13065019/Barrows_gsas.harvard.inactive_0084L_11766.pdf?sequence=1
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This information is quite disheartening because public opinion is clearly disconnected from the actual performance history of our community schools:
“In this paper, we examine the Cumulative General Social Survey (GSS) survey data and find that American confidence in schools declined markedly between 1973 and 2010. Those whose confidence declined the most were white, elderly men.
In order to determine if this lost confidence was due to poor student performance, we examined NAEP math and reading scores (1978-2008). We found evidence of strong improvements across students of all ages and racial groups.
Finally, we re-estimated the NAEP gains by using two different statistical methods that control for changes in the demographic composition of the American student body. We find that failure to control for these factors causes researchers to underestimate NAEP gains by more than 40%.”
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2454134
Beyond all of that, it’s interesting to read educational research that provides some support for William Davies’ concept of a “cult of competitiveness”:
“My new book, The Limits of Neoliberalism: Sovereignty, Authority & The Logic of Competition, is an attempt to understand the ways in which political authority has been reconfigured in terms of the promotion of competitiveness. Competitiveness is an interesting concept, and an interesting principle on which to base social and economic institutions. When we view situations as ‘competitions’, we are assuming that participants have some vaguely equal opportunity at the outset. But we are also assuming that they are striving for maximum inequality at the conclusion. To demand ‘competitiveness’ is to demand that people prove themselves relative to one other…
Why would it be remotely surprising, to discover that a society in which competitiveness was a supreme moral and cultural virtue, should also be one which generates increasing levels of inequality?
…One way of understanding neoliberalism, as Foucault has best highlighted, is as the extension of competitive principles into all walks of life, with the force of the state behind them. Sovereign power does not recede, and nor is it replaced by ‘governance’; it is reconfigured in such a way that society becomes a form of ‘game’, which produces winners and losers. My aim in The Limits of Neoliberalism is to understand some of the ways in which this comes about.”
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-cult-of-competitiveness/
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LOL! Matt, if people were “told that recent research showed ‘students learn more in charter schools than in public schools,’ support for charter schools rose by 14 percentage points.”
I used to work for the Gallup Poll organization; people will believe almost anything if they perceive the source to be “someone who looks like they know what they’re talking about.”
Does being “told” something, make it true? If anything, the evidence shows just the opposite when you control for all demographic, ethnic, education, family, income, and other factors. Public schools clearly come out ahead.
Where’s the source for this very flimsy and dubious claim?
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The old real estate phrase location, location, location holds true with some charters .
In Hoboken NJ where there are some really well to dos, they have a choice of Public, Private or Charter. The Publics contain all levels of students, but mostly average to low income. There are no local Private schools, so for young children this would be a difficult commute and child care would be difficult. The answer is a small local
Charter. The child can either walk to school or the nanny can drop off and pick up the child easily. The biggest benny is that you can have your “power” control of the school by being a donor. Instead of paying tuition (non-deductible) to a Private, you can give a donation (tax deductible) to Charter and have that “power” control (we all know how they love that). So now you can have your own Private Charter that will kowtow to your donor status
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There’s a phrase for that, though, and it’s “free rider”. The one and only reason they can have the “exclusive” charter is there’s a public system to back it up. All they’re doing is creating a “zip code” without admitting it, planning for it, or compensating the “safety net” schools. That’s the definition of “free rider”.
Pretending that the underlying public system remains the same- unchanging- amidst all this is delusional. If one system has to take all comers and the other system does not, the public system is absorbing all the downside risk and costs generated by the choice system. At the very least the public schools there should be compensated with additional funding for filling that role.
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Cont.
“The success of some advocacy organizations in advancing their preferred policies despite questionable evidence of the effectiveness of these policies raises questions about what contributes to successful policy promotion. We hypothesize that some education-focused organizations are advancing their agendas by engaging media, with individuals who may not possess traditionally defined educational expertise. Using two distinct expert lists, we examined relationships between measures of expertise and educational impact. We found non-significant positive relationships between these measures with a list of experts complied by a conservative think tank, while a second list from a university-based center showed a significant positive relationship. We conclude that media impact is at best loosely coupled to expertise. This issue should be explored in greater depth because deleterious outcomes are more likely if individuals are more successful in shaping policy discussion based on criteria outside of expertise.”
http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1086/492
“Our study demonstrates strong relationships between political ideology, union favorability, and opinions on charter schools. We show that the charter school issue is polarized along ideological lines even without partisan sorting among top elected leaders. This suggests that issue evolution based on the changing views of party elites and the accompanying movement of public partisans may not be the only route to polarization in new issue areas (Carmines and Stimson 1989). Citizens may also divide into opposing camps based on their attitudes toward policy beneficiaries and on their general ideological perspectives.
Among the cues we tested for their impact on charter school opinions, unions stand out as the most polarizing frame. This is consistent with the strong effect of union favorability in the baseline model. We also found more pronounced effects among those respondents least likely to have previously encountered the relevant information. In light of recent teacher strikes and growing tension between union leaders and school officials in many states and school districts, this polarizing frame for charter school policy is likely to remain in the spotlight. In Michigan, which adopted “right-to-work” legislation in December 2012, unions are increasingly on the defensive across a variety of issues but retain a strong membership base and political clout.
In contrast, we found few effects for informing respondents that charter schools are mostly run by for-profit corporations. Despite the emphasis placed on privatization by charter school opponents, this information does not seem to reduce support for charter schools or increase polarization between liberals and conservatives or between those who generally favor or oppose corporations. This may help explain how charter schools have become more popular even as they also become polarizing. As citizens learn about the considerations that activists on each side use to justify their opinions, the majority may not accept a consideration used by one side as particularly important. In our case, those opposed to charter schools did not seem to need information about for-profit providers to reach their opinion whereas information about non-union teachers and university authorizers increased support.”
http://education.msu.edu/epc/library/papers/AttitudesTowardCharterSchools.asp
“In this instance, however, the frames identified [Public Accountability and Freedom, Choice, and Innovation] in the study do not appear to actually be in competition with each other, but rather, reflect accommodation and possibly reconciliation. Rather than resisting charter schools, the Public Accountability frame emphasizes the necessity of having them run with appropriate controls. In addition, there is an emphasis on making sure that charters and public schools have appropriate resources.
Overall, these depictions reflect a general acceptance of charter schools of a viable
alternative to traditional public schools for students in urban settings. Neither of the frames identified for this study provide a radical critique of charters. The absence of such critique in the mainstream media is not surprising given the current support for federal and state policies that are aimed at expanding the number of charters. Such support is consistent with neoliberal values that favor competition, choice, and deregulation. At the same time, Wells et. al (2002) cautions that charter schools are not strictly a neoliberal reform because, “charter advocates and founders of charter schools represent very different political and philosophical perspectives—from neoconservative members of the religious right to more leftist and progress educators who seek autonomy form a state-run system to provide viable educational alternatives to students who have not succeeded in the traditional educational system” (p. 345). Thus, this lack of critique may also reflect a deep disaffection with traditional public schools because of their seeming inability to address the needs of poor and minority students (Lipman, 2011).”
http://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/184572/184458
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Netflix brings us the culture enriching Bridezillas Kourtney and Khloe take Miami,Keeping up with the Kardashians, Laguna Beach and Jersey Shore.
Won’t be watching this HBO show either, but the plotline sounds like charter operators I’ve seen; they arrive with privileges, suck up any privileges meant for the less-privileged, and then leave with their accumulation of privileges.
pipp. Privilege is Power.
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So-called hipsters, like so-called education reformers, are very, very rarely long term members if the communities they take over, so it’s not surprising at all that there would be overlap among them.
Most often, they are not members of the community, but rather are settlers, gentrifying and pushing out long term residents.
Never forget that charter schools, gentrification and real estate development are joined at the hip, and are inseparable.
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I think an even better term for these people would be colonizers, or imperialists. I’m often reminded of the old Native American schools with these charter schools. Take away the culture, forbid and punish anything from that culture, and “civilize” the children, so that they will be (almost) like “us.” Note that they can never be quite like “us.” “Our” culture is still superior.
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Yes, zombie colonizers/settlers, who display smug pride in their faux progressivism, while unmindfully carrying water for real estate developers and bankers.
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Another Lame Stream media company piling onto reformer fairytales? Time for another smackdown and boycott, let them join the ranks of Waiting for Superfraud and that parent trigger sob story, both used to wipe the rancid leftovers out the bottom of the dustbin of history.
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Is there a study about where teachers send their own children to school?
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I can tell you that this teacher right here will either be sending her kids to a very specific charter school or, if it is full, will be homeschooling/unschooling. I’ve been in every single public school in our very large district – as a sub, a student teacher, and a full time salaried teacher – and what I’ve seen has turned my stomach. It turned my stomach so much that despite having relatively good pay, I had to get out. I couldn’t be a part of that. There was nothing I could do in reality to change it for the better. I can’t speak for all districts, but I can say that in this district, the teachers’ hands are tied, the parent/guardians’ hands are tied, and the students are worse off for it all.
Before moving here, I taught for a year in the specific charter school I referenced above, and it was such a positive experience. My abstract education and practical experience have both shown me how our kids in general learn best, and how they learn the types of things that I want my kids to learn. I’m sorry, but I’m not willing to sacrifice my children up to an educational system that I vehemently disagree with in the hopes that maybe, after a handful of generations, the school systems will magically change. Just as I wouldn’t allow “the community” to pump junk food into my kids, I will not allow “the community” to waste half of their waking hours throughout their key developmental periods. I wouldn’t be doing my job as a parent. It’s my job to ensure that they are properly nourished in both body & mind.
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I am also a former public and Catholic school teacher and I homeschool my children, for the same reasons listed above.
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You tell an interesting anecdote. However, I’m very dubious. Where exactly is “your district”? How do we know you’re really a teacher and not a paid shill, directly or indirectly making “good coin” by trolling with mendacious tales online?
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Puget Sound Parent, do you seriously believe these problems are not occurring in schools?
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There was a great deal of social bullying occurring at our top rated public school. We are at a charter school which is much smaller and where the teachers are able to monitor the social interactions of children better. There is very little bullying at our charter. The children appear happier and more inclusive. It worked for us. And I’ve concluded that public schools have grown too big. We need to break them up into smaller schools. That will require a great deal more tax revenue. I would pay the higher taxes but sadly most would refuse to do so. Shrink class size and pay for teacher aides. This is the best we can do in the meantime.
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I think unless you have a child currently in the public schools it is very hard to imagine the kind of bullying that goes on between the children these days. Children are so starved for attention due to the fact that both parents are working often out of necessity that they are hyper cliquish. Boys even are hyper protective of maintaining their best friends and social groups. It is very different from the social climate I recall as a child where most children freely interacted across social group lines. Many of the teachers seem oblivious to the social alienation of the students. There are so many kids to keep track of on some level they probably psychologically need to shut down. Addressing social needs is the last thing they have time for or want to do. This is why many of us 40 something parents are leaving the public school . We recognize that socializing children is supremely important. In fact it is far more important in my book than academic achievement. The public schools have grown so big that teachers and principles have neglected their responsibility to be guides in this arena. They are also overburdened by the ridiculous focus on the test which is completely synthetic and which was unfairly thwarted upon them. I also suspect the hyper competitive test culture has made children more clannish than ever which leads to the bullying. The missing art programs and physical education programs eliminates the opportunities for children of different economic and race backgrounds to interact and find common ground. I would love it Diane if you could talk more about the declining social culture in the public schools. I suggest you research the bullying epidemic which has grown deep roots in our public schools. Believe me Diane it is very different from just twenty years ago. Inquire why our children are starving for attention and why they cling to groups and identity in groups. It is very disturbing.
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Roxanne perfectly exemplifies why some families choose charters: for a greater sense of control. But it’s a false sense, maybe NONsense. Just wait til you’re counting on an inexperienced teacher or principal to deal with a really complex social problem. What you need in that situation is a seasoned pro. I jumped ship on the charter elementary my kids attended for just that reason. I went down the street to the dynamic, bustling public middle school that had always looked so chaotic through my “elementary school mom lens”. The adults in that building are experts in adolescence.
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Oh, give me a break “Roxanne”. As if bullying didn’t exist—and I would argue it was considerably worse—in the decades prior to this one.
You should have been at my “small, elite private school” in the 60’s; it was a hellhole, as was the public one I came from, and the public one I was then enrolled at after my bad experience with bullying in the private academy where all the kids came from “the right families”.
Please. Stop with this nonsense. We’re not that naive here.
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For this reason, alternatives such as charters have been a Godsend for us parents who have had children who experienced bullying. Alternatives are saving and have saved the lives of hundreds of children who did not fit into the public school system.
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I mentioned above that children are starved for attention due to the fact that their parents are both working. Well I was being nice. The fact is parents are ignoring their children’s basic emotional needs these days. In my opinion many are very self obsessed and halfway committed to being parents. I know this is a harsh critique but it is the state of affairs. Somethings gotta give to make parents wake up and stop leaning over their i-pads, computers and phone devices and start paying closer attention to their children. It is really really sick.
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Do you get paid per post??
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Yep. My neighbors thought their kid was being bullied at the local public school and sent their son to a charter. That lasted two years. The charter had 100% turnover of its staff in that two years.
And sorry, but bullying happens everywhere. The primary form that we deal with at the high school is cyberbullying. If your kid is young then they haven’t encountered it yet. And your precious little charter will have little ability to do much about it.
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The payback will come when the kids pick the nursing home for the elders….Many people fail to realize they may be older and feeble one day. Beauty fades but relationships last.
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It’s a sad day when cleaning ” “bird shit” and “five-day-old sloppy joes”? …………to start a school with students who must first be approved……….becomes the latest hit on Netflix! Also: “episode 6 demonstrates how hard Michelle is willing to work to find and clean out an old building for the new school. Surely, cleaning up some bird feces at an already functioning facility and agitating for better food — or packing a lunchbox — would have been much easier”.
Sigh.
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Well, at the risk of being attacked myself, I have to weigh in.
First of all, lay off roxanne. The comment, “Do you get paid per post??” is an example of part of the problem. Parents have legitimate concerns when a public education system utterly fails to address the many disruptive and even dangerous students there. Head in the sand is not effective policy. (That’s one of the reasons the reform movement is bipartisan and winning the war on public education, in my opinion; too many teachers who support the status quo.) Insulting a parent who expresses legitimate concerns? Yeah, that’s helpful and mature. Just as people should be listening to teachers about public schools, teachers should also be listening to parents who want charters.
If you, as a teacher, have not worked in a low-income school where behavior problems and disruptions are rampant, then you have little more credibility commenting on those schools than do politicians. I know that schools have to abide by laws that say that every kid has a right to an education, without any kid or parent having any responsibility, but it is not politically winning to point out the lack of responsibility. Yet that is why many parents are seeking alternate placements, because their kids are in schools with kids who are really badly behaved, and – let’s be clear on this – eat up disproportionate staff time and energy as well as teaching time day after day, and who may even be dangerous, but who are still there next to their kids day after day, because they have a right to an education even if they don’t care to learn and even if they disrupt the learning of others and even if it looks as if they may be or become dangerous. It is a crisis in the school in which I work, as far as I’m concerned. I see no hope, because these issues are not being addressed. The narrative that no low-income person is responsible for anything, because he/she is a victim of society, is not working. It is also not helping low-income students who learn that they are victims who should always be indulged and can do whatever they feel without consequences.
We all have different experiences in our own educations and in our own teaching experiences. It is easy to take our experience and apply it to all schools, when, in fact, some public schools are fabulous, while others are a mess. The double whammy of underfunding combined with a population of students who spend a lot of time acting out without consequences does not make for a good school. How can you blame some parents for wanting out?
Instead of vilifying such parents, just as so many vilify teachers these days, maybe you ought to listen, just as politicians ought to listen to teachers.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/first-grader-assaulted-dangerous-queens-school-mom-article-1.2162492
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Wow. I wonder if this will become bigger news. I wonder how often such things happen without our ever hearing of them.
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Roxanne state she was at a top rated public school. Why do you assume the bullying and social issues were a result of low income students? It is interesting that you assume Roxanne’s children attended a low income school.
Did you ever teach in a high income school? I have a friend who taught in many schools across many income levels and her worst experience as far as student behaviors and attitudes was in one of the wealthier schools.
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I did not make any assumption about Roxanne’s school. I have worked only in a lower-income school, so can only comment on that. Within that, I have also worked with relatively higher-income kids who were, let’s say “bratty”. So, yeah, you’re right to point out that it’s not just low-income schools that experience this. It’s a general American movement toward lack of responsibility and lack of consequences. The point is, nobody should be vilified for wanting better for their kids, and giving a charter a try if they think it provides a more positive, safer, more effective learning environment.
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Although, having said all that, I’d bet that statistics show substantially higher incidents of violence in low-income schools than not. We know that lower-income schools are often lower-funded, so you can bet there are relatively large class sizes, fewer support staff, and other characteristics that would make lower-income schools more dangerous. Obnoxious behaviors and attitudes are not in the same category as physical violence, in my opinion.
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Obnoxious behaviors can make things very hard for students who are the targets. This type of unchecked behavior will result in someone who is not a good citizen. A “top rate public school” can have many issues without violence, but certain parents tend to accept certain behaviors that their own children exhibit (usually explained away their children aren’t being “challenged”) while vilifying other unacceptable behaviors that their children don’t exhibit.
Wealthy children may not be physically violent but that doesn’t not mean they don’t cause harm in our society. Physical violence is unacceptable and results in immediate harm. Other types of unacceptable behaviors and entitlement attitudes result in long-term policies that affect many.
In my opinion, both types of behavior are equally harmful and should be addressed with the same urgency for the better of our society.
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(I couldn’t leave a reply below)
“Sticks and stones may break my bones…”
Physical violence can do lifelong damage that limits your body’s ability to function properly, which has all kinds of repercussions that words do not have. How nice it would be if humans fought wars by hurling insults at one another instead of bombs.
Having been the victim of physical violence that has caused suffering for years now, I can assure you that the results of mean names, insults, and social humiliation are nothing like permanent physical damage. At least not for me. If you believe they are equivalent, that’s your prerogative.
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I guess Tom Frank is smirking at those hipsters in cahoots with billion dollar ‘Chartarred’ coal mine business.
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