Blogger Red Queen in L.A. has observed the rapid expansion of charter schools in Los Angeles. She knows that billionaire Eli Broad wants to put fully half the public school children in the city into privately managed charters.
In this post, she answers the question “What’s Wrong with Charter Schools?”
She begins:
“They foster segregation.
“Charter schools are in fact the new face of segregation, the enabling excuse for exclusivity and alienation. The Charter School movement glorifies the illusion of “choice” even while entitling homogeneity.
“This is borne out in the numbers and confessed every day via parent-to-parent euphemisms: “this school is a better ‘fit’”, “‘safety’ is my top priority”, “my child only responds to a ‘nurturing environment’”, “smaller class sizes are necessary for my child”, “I want my child immersed in a specialized program”.
“So much sorting and selecting sets up a double whammy for segregation. On one level families self-select according to like-mindedness and socioeconomic comfort level. At the same time the very process of school selection siphons highly involved families away from public district schools.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You think public school parents aren’t making choices about “fit” when they buy a house or rent an apartment? This happens all the time. If you criticize charter school parents for the exact same thing that public school parents do, there is no rationality here, just demonization.
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Well that’s a whopper. If most public school parents have a choice in where they could AFFORD to live, then perhaps your statement may be justified. No, charter school parents segregate according to race and socio-economics – fear of their children being influenced (contaminated) by those children. There is much evidence of this phenom, but you refuse to see or hear it to justify your selfishness.
Charter parents either do not have a choice where to send their kids because there are no real public schools anymore (see NOLA), or they get their kids into a tax payer funded private school to get away from those kids w/o having to fork out the bucks. They are all about themselves, not the common good. Look in the mirror – YOU are a problem.
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“The Chicago school district is suing former superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett and the owners at SUPES Academy and Synesi Associates for more than $65 million in damages in connection with the ex-superintendent’s role in steering about $23.5 million in contracts to companies owned by her former employers, the Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.”
Right under Rahm “tough guy” Emanuel’s nose, too. They were robbing the schools blind.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-pdf-lawsuit-against-barbara-byrd-bennett-20160310-htmlstory.html
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“Education reform” is in fact a euphemism for “looting.”
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I heard the same comments and much worse when the local board of education pushed neighborhood schools and an end to busing for desegregation purposes. Our schools are now more segregated in my community, and some of the wealthy, white families supporting desegregation enrolled their children in private schools. Those families exited the system, and now they are not involved. The community lost some important voices for desegregation.
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I wrote a little about RedQueeninLA’s blog and a forthcoming article about district-making that promotes socioeconomic segregation…
There ARE many of us middle class parents out here who are actively CHOOSING integrated schools, who want our kids to go to school with kids from different backgrounds, who believe in the promise of (and research supporting!) integration.
In my very mixed-income neighborhood, charter schools have certainly led to segregation. Middle class families find their way to middle class charters and don’t send their kids to school with their neighbors. Too much of this, unfortunately, is based on “buzz” and fear about “poor” schools (and, yes, poor kids). I think it’s high time we change the conversation about integration. We can’t wait for policy alone to work toward integration…
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The author’s lack of awareness of the sorting and hypersegregation that occur inevitably and organically in traditional public school zones/districts where eligibility is determined by residence is truly difficult to comprehend.
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Tim, I’m well aware of some of the underlying social structures that enforce the sorting and hypersegregation, both historical (e.g., redlining) and current (lemming “buzz”, as Courtney notes, e.g., and fear, etc.), property location. That misses the point (see below)…
Because WT, it is avowedly true that charterization is not the only source of segregation. That it is the exclusive sequelae of charter selection is not the claim. That it is the inevitable, sanctioned and deceitful sequelae of it, is.
Michael: lol.
Eric – that is the point; your story belies the fiction. Sanctifying segregation via covert isolationism, aggrandizing a faux-progressive, nominally public system that is neither, does the cause of SES-blindness no favor.
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