Osamudia R. James is a law professor at the University of Miami School of Law. She is a scholar of race and equity. She has written a scholarly article that was published in the Iowa Law Review titled “Opt-Out Education: School Choice as Racial Subordination.” I hope that readers of this blog will take the time to read it. It is an important legal analysis of the social inequities caused by school choice.
As more children are induced to leave the public school system, the public schools are less able to provide a decent education for those who remain behind. Many of those who leave will attend charter schools and voucher schools that are no better and possibly worse than the public school they abandoned. The harm done to children by this strategy is powerful, and the harm done to society is incalculable.
James advocates for limitations on school choice “to prevent the disastrous social consequences–the abandonment of the public school system, to particularly deleterious consequence for poor and minority schoolchildren and their families–that occur as the collective result of individual, albeit rational, decisions. I also advocate for limitations on school choice in an attempt to encourage individuals to consider their obligations to children not their own, but part of their community all the same….The actual impact of school choice cannot be ignored. Given the radicalized realities of the current education system, choice is not ultimately used to broaden options or agency for minority parents. Rather, school choice is used to sanitize inequality in the school system; given sufficient choices, the state and its residents are exempted from addressing the sources of unequal educational opportunities for poor and minority students. States promote agency even as the subjects supposedly exercising that agency are disabled. Experience makes clear that school choice simply should not form an integral or foundational aspect of education reform policy. Rather, the focus should be on improving public schooling for all students such that all members of society can exercise genuine agency, initially facilitated by quality primary and secondary education. Ultimately, improving public education begins with preventing its abandonment.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Off-topic (although related to everything we talk about) – this is a good article about how neo-liberalism has hit Sesame Street: http://www.salon.com/2015/08/17/the_gentrification_of_sesame_street_cashing_out_once_and_for_all_from_the_radical_notion_that_the_urban_working_class_are_people_too/
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Thanks, I liked the subway song and the Sesame character ‘Ronald Grump’.
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“School choice” is a false choice…parents should no more be forced to “choose” a good school for their children than they should need to “choose” a source of safe drinking water or clean air to breathe.
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Don’t be surprised the day water becomes a “choice”. After all, the water department is one of them gubmint monopolies.
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This discussion, I think, points to the value of thinking like an economist.
Clean air fits the economist’s definition of a public good: you can not be prevented from breathing the clean air (it is not excludable) and your breathing clean air does not prevent me from breathing clean air (it is not rival). Clearly this belongs in the realm of the government.
Piped water service to your home is excludable (if you do not pay your water bill, your service can be terminated) but not very rival because of large economies of scale. These are what economists call natural monopolies. One way to deal with natural monopolies is for the government to do it themselves, another is to allow a private company to produce the service and heavily regulated it. Both are effective so we tend to see both being done around the country and around the world. In the United States, about 18% of the population gets piped water services from a private company (Dienne you might want to check and see if your water company is in fact, a “gubmint monopoly”). In France, not well known for it’s libertarian leanings, 75% of the population gets piped water from regulated private companies. (figures are from 2003 for US, 2000 for France).
Education in a school is unlike clean air or clean piped water in that it is excludable and becomes rival as you add more students to the classroom. It does not have the scale economies that we see in piped water services.
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The problem is we have economists who think they know all about our public schools.
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School choice is often not a choice at all. It is a manipulative practice in poor areas that erases democratic public schools and replaces them with for profit entities that do not improve outcomes for students. States should be compelled to adequately fund public education in urban areas rather than selling off their responsibilities to the highest bidder. States should be required to meet their Constitutional responsibilities, especially when these shifts result in increased segregation.
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The implication here is alarming…if you aren’t wealthy enough for private school tuition, you must keep your child in bad schools in the hopes that a broken system will magically get better? I agree that charters as they stand aren’t solving the problems prover try creates but neither is the public system. There is no school that will reach students who are hungry, tired, scared, and lacking basic necessities. These issues are societal and severe for certain. But the implication that schools will solve poverty and do so by keeping all but the rich from leaving is awful. Railing against the unfairness of educational differences between rich and poor and then claiming its only fair to keep all kids (both those elite who pay) in poor schools just isn’t right. I expect my children to get a fantastic education…but the public schools in our area already failed us. Why would I leave my kids in a terrible school? For the public good? Schools will only get better when every parent cares enough to demand excellence from their own children. Great teachers can only do so much.
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Thank you for this Professor Ravitch. As a second year law student (just got the news yesterday that I passed the State Bar of California’s First Year Law Student Exam), I enjoy reading these papers from legal scholars, and hope to contribute to that same body of work in the near future. I’m looking forward to reading this and the recent paper by Professor Kevin Welner, who, as many of you know, earned his J.D. at UCLA prior to his Ph.D.
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Congratulations!
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Ok, Diane, I would argue that I am following her suggestions to not abandon public schools. I am not advocating “charters all the way” but trying to improve the quality of public schools for all.
I claim that there is at least 5% of the teachers that are ineffective and we need to find out who they are and improve their results. I also say we need to identify the best and copy their results. I am open with regards to methods but VAMs/SGPs look pretty accurate.
Others like you say that no more than 1% of teachers are ineffective and observations are just fine to determine effectiveness. You claim that our schools are doing splendid and folks like me should just pipe down and appreciate the great teaching that is the public school system.
Yet, everybody has experienced more than 1 out of 100 teachers that are just horrible. Nobody believes your premise that just 1% are ineffective. Nobody on your side of the debate will propose any system to identify the 5-15% (I would argue 15% but am ok if just 5% are identified) that need remediation or removal from core classes. Even the PAR systems have removed no more than 1% of the teachers. We all understand you are really just against any accountability whatsoever when the issue is forced.
So what are we do do when the sides fundamentally disagree. I have no choice in my public schools without charters. Yet, you tell me to pound sand when I say our schools are not good enough. Either come up with a system to evaluate teachers honestly, allow us to use VAMs/SGPs to do so, or you will turn all of us into charter school advocates.
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Virginia, no one–least of all me–says that our schools are doing just fine. Under the regime of NCLB and Race to the Top, our schools have become far too embroiled in testing, and they are very far from where they ought to be.
No, I don’t trust algorithms to identify “bad” teachers. I trust peers, people who work in the school.
Did you know that about 40% of teachers leave voluntarily before they ever get tenure?
Some are good teachers who hate the working conditions; some are ineffective teachers who have been fired.
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Diane, where do you get the numbers showing 40% leave prior to tenure? I assume you mean the 2-3 years it takes to get tenure, right? Did you mean this data showing that only 17% leave prior to their 5-yr point?
Surely, you are not suggesting that only 1 out of 100 teachers with 3+ years of experience are ineffective. Are you implying that everything was great prior to Race to the Top and NCLB? If there is a credible alternative to VAMs that will actually provide effective instruction to every kid, we are all ears. Educators have simply been unwilling to honestly evaluate their peers for decades. This must stop or VAMs will be needed.
One way to assist is to support portable pensions. Basically, attach a teacher’s name to an account that holds the contributions paid by his/her school district. Rather than forcing a teacher to work 30+ years in the same state, this allows teachers to leave for a variety of reasons. They can follow their spouse across state lines with no penalty. They can decide they no longer have the passion and switch careers without penalty. Or as in Rafe’s case, they can retire slightly early without taking a financial hit. I’m not saying Rafe should retire, but one of the criticisms is that LA is somehow trying to push him out so he loses his retirement. This wouldn’t be a possibility if portable pensions were in place.
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Virginia, I don’t trust that data. If it were true, why do so many states have a teacher shortage?
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“The degrading of public education has involved impugning its effectiveness, cutting its budget, and busting its unions. Educational measurement has been the perfect tool for accomplishing all three: cheap and scientific looking.” — Professor Gene V. Glass (http://socialjusticequotations.tumblr.com/post/127019451408/the-degrading-of-public-education-has-involved)
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“Portable pensions” – a euphemism for denying defined benefit retirement plans for teachers, dumping them instead into the grubby mits of 401k financial instruments. More going after “market share” in public education. Because who wants teachers to have a secure retirement after devoting their careers to kids, being unqualified for Social Security in many states, and earning far less than similarly educated peers?
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