Jeff Bryant writes here about a well-known phenomenon: School choice promotes self-segregation.
Donald Trump and the entire Republican party supports school choice.
The irony is that Secretary of Education John King, like Arne Duncan before him, also promotes school choice and believes that it will open opportunities to children of color. As Bryant shows, school choice has the opposite effect. The most advantaged families get the best choices. The least advantaged do not.
Mercedes Schneider recently wrote a book titled School Choice: The End of Public Education?, which documents that school choice was the central strategy of those who wanted to preserve racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s.
In addition, there is international evidence that choice programs will exacerbate segregation, unless there is an effort to “control” choice by giving larger subsidies to disadvantaged children or limiting the enrollment of certain groups in the most desirable schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The main reason why the NAACP and Black Lives Matter are calling for a moratorium on charter expansion is that they see the negative impact choice has on black and brown students. Often it is the school that gets to do the choosing, not the parent or the child. Choice has resulted in increased segregation, and it has left underserved groups such as ELLs and poorest, troubled students in depleted, impoverished public schools. The whole system of choice works against those it purports to help; and it perpetuates a system of segregation by denying access to the neediest. Parents should not need to hire a “choice broker” to find a school for their children. Choice is creating a system of reordering of “haves and have nots,” and it is not offering any long term solutions. The best promise for all students is well funded, integrated public education, based on democratic principles that will not ration access to quality education. We must work together to create opportunity for all, not just as few.
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Retired teacher,
It is no accident that we now hear reformers saying that segregation is okay, inevitable, not so bad. A recent discussion on this blog concerned the value of the Brown decision. One commenter cited Dr Martin Luther King Jr as a critic of the Brown decision, but the quote he used as evidence was third hand. Frankly it is implausible thatDr King was indifferent or opposed to desegregation. He had many opportunities to speak out if he choose to. He never did.
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Diane, I don’t know if you are familiar with the work of investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. She has focused on civil rights, segregation, and discrimination in housing and education.
She was on “This American Life” on NPR today (I think the podcast will be available tomorrow).
Her research showed:
“As hundreds of school districts across the nation have been released from court-enforced integration over the past 15 [now 17] years, the number of what researchers call “apartheid schools” — in which the white population is 1 percent or less — has shot up. The achievement gap, narrowed during the height of school integration, has widened.”
The achievement gap between black and white students substantially narrowed during the 17 years of court-ordered integration. That gap has been climbing again.
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I have seen outstanding results for minority students from working in a diverse school system. We all do better and have a healthier outlook if we work and learn together. Then, we have no second class schools. I know integration has been fought at every turn, and charters are another round in the fight that only makes segregation worse. We should work to fund our schools differently so we don’t have de facto segregation and figure out some creative ways to integrate schools.
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Regarding the anti-charter-school John Oliver video:
It’s interesting that Rick Hess re-tweeted — presumably approvingly — an ad hominum, xenophobic, name-calling tweet that reduced John Oliver to being just a “snooty Brit”, and thus not worth listening to. The tweeter, Max Eden, then added that “American parents care about their children’s education”… EXACTLY WHERE in the video did John Oliver say that the American parents did not care about their children’s education?
Seriously, Rich & Max? Childish name-calling? Xenophobia? This is what qualifies as reasoned and civil discourse among corporate ed. reformers? Sheesh!
Again here’s the John Oliver video:
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The violent, knee-jerk reaction of education “reformers” to John Oliver’s piece on corrupted charter schools shows how sensitive these education “reformers” are to truth in the media. They are very worried this information could spread. They do not want people talking about the major flaws in the “choice” ideology.
The key to beating the education “reform” movement is to occupy and permeate the media with the truth about the harms of “school choice,” and also offering better alternatives. This blog is good, of course, but not enough on its own. The teacher blogs will have their own small audiences, but what is needed is a major credible hub of independent media run by real educators.
The education “reform” movement is not an isolated movement. It is part of the broader movement to profit off the vulnerable public and consolidate power in the elite class. When the public makes this connection to their own daily struggles, and can no longer bear a rigged economy and political system, they will become more engaged on the side of teachers.
Teachers must be ready and willing to embrace change, and able to point to alternate paths forward, to show the public that the education system can and should evolve — but it will not happen at the helm of economists, venture capitalists, CEOs, and billionaires.
Become a detective of ed, fight the bad people and ideas while shining a light on better ways.
Occupy the media.
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Thanks Diane!
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I work in a big city where school choice has been a total disaster.. trashing kids’ lives with hours on city buses, having selected charter schools that have marketed programs that are inferior to conventional school options. Only people who have a broad view of how this has played out on the ground should have any input on the continuation of “school choice.”
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