Dr. John H. Jackson of the Schott Foundation (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Josie Greene, a director of another foundation (writing for herself, not her foundation), penned a powerful opinion piece about “a better education for all.”
As it happens, the purpose of this blog is to advocate on behalf of “a better education for all.” Not a better education for a few, or for some, but for all. That means better public schools for all children. That is why I oppose charter schools, school choice, and competition. As Jackson and Green post out, competition means winners and losers, and equality of educational opportunity will never be produced by competition but by a commitment great public schools in every district.
This is the letter that was posted by the Schott Foundation (I made two insertions of “bold” format):
A Question of Better Education for All
Dear Education Advocates,
Question 2, which will appear on Massachusetts voters’ ballots on Nov. 8, claims that it will increase educational choice and improve educational standards across the state. In fact, it would do the opposite.
For the past decade, Massachusetts has led the nation in academic achievement. Our students have even been top ranked internationally in a time when the country’s educational outcomes have slid year by year. Massachusetts accomplished this by taking bold steps that impact all students, most importantly changing the state’s school funding system to invest more in schools in high need, low-income areas so that all students have a better opportunity to achieve. There is still critical work to be done to close persistent opportunity gaps in the system, but we won’t get there if we go in completely the wrong direction. This would be to allow state officials to give up on investing in improving a system that serves all students in need.
Saying “yes” to Question 2 would move the Commonwealth off the path towards great public schools for all students. Question 2 proposes to use taxpayer resources to increase, by 12 per year, the number of charter schools that can only be attended by a few in the state.
When charter schools, which now serve only 4% of the state’s public school students, were added to the Massachusetts model, they were never intended to be a comprehensive “education plan” for a state or locality, but rather an experiment that might provide sparks of innovation whose best practices would be integrated into the main system. It is in that system that the great majority—a full 96%—of Massachusetts students are educated. While it’s true that, like any educational system, we have a mixed record on innovation as well as achievement—there are exemplary as well as troubled charter schools—the bigger issues we need to examine go to the heart of our commitment to high quality public education for all children in the Commonwealth.
Public schools and an equal commitment to all children are pillars of our democratic system. Accountability has been rooted in local control ever since Massachusetts pioneered the first statewide system focused on all children when it instituted compulsory K-12 education in 1852.
Charters run directly counter to this democratic value. The state can approve a charter school in a community over the strong objection of the school committee and all the other locally elected officials who are accountable to the voters in that town. Only the state, not any local officials, can examine the finances or exercise oversight over charter schools. As for their private boards, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s study of Massachusetts charter schools revealed that many board members do not even live in the district where the charter is located; 31% are financial or corporate executives, while only 14% are parents; 60% of charters in our state have no parent representation at all.
When the corporate concept of “competition” is used to justify the argument for increasing the number of charter schools (and student enrollment in them), we need only remind ourselves that competition means winners and losers.
When the corporate concept of “competition” is used to justify the argument for increasing the number of charter schools (and student enrollment in them), we need only remind ourselves that competition means winners and losers. Why would voters ever want to substitute that value for a commitment to ensuring a high quality education for every child? We should focus our attention and resources on what has been the most successful in proven outcomes in our state: Constantly improving our public education system. Charter schools draw funding away from public schools that educate the great majority of state students, ranging from accelerated learners to special education, and including English language learners, children with learning disabilities, and homeless children who register mid-year.
Expanding the number of charter schools reinforces a caste system of private, charter and public schools. This is not visionary leadership or the bold leap needed to keep all Massachusetts students advancing as leaders in the nation. There are social justice reasons for ensuring any changes to our current system are designed to improve the opportunity to learn for all students.
And there are compelling economic reasons as well. Equal education for all breaks the cycle of intergenerational poverty; it is the path to economic opportunity. Investing in a great education for all children in the Commonwealth is the only way to create a broad-based, diverse, well-educated workforce that is a magnet for employers and can fuel economic growth across the state. It also ensures full participation in our democratic society.
Voting “NO” on Question 2 will keep policymakers, educators, parents and students focused on the right question: What steps should we be taking to advance as the best public education system in the country for all Commonwealth students?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From Jersey Jazzman: “A quick note: there are two kinds of charters in Massachusetts. “Commonwealth” charters are independent of their host districts, while “Horace Mann” charters are managed within the district. The debate over Question 2 is really focused on Commonwealth charters. Kennedy Academy in the chart above is a Horace Mann charter; the others, in red, are Commonwealth charters. In Boston, Commonwealth charter high schools have far greater cohort attrition than the public district schools or the Horace Mann charters.” http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com
I did not know that “Horace Mann” charters were managed within the district. Wasn’t that the original intent of charters? That is no true in NJ in which all the charters are independent of the duly elected school boards.
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One reason that the pro-charter privatization movement has been able to get away with many of its reprehensible practices is because of “good” charters. And in this case, I defend “good” as: “Really wants to educate ALL students” instead of using the pro-charter definition of “good” to mean: “Achieves high passing rates on state tests because so many low-performing at-risk kids disappear for the cohort.”
The “good” (my definition) charters are trotted out ONLY when it suits their purposes — to hide the high attrition rates for at-risk children in almost every single high performing charter school in the country. Those charters lose fewer students, so when ALL charters are averaged together, their attrition rate seems relatively normal, especially since they don’t have any transient children and are compared to public schools that do.
On the other hand, the “good” (my definition) charters always disappear when it comes to judging passing rates on test scores. At that point, the charters with high attrition rates always separate themselves from those low-performing, low-attrition charters and act as if those schools are just as invisible as the many at-risk kids who they put on got to go lists. In fact, those supposedly high-performing charters could be bashing those many low-performing charters who can’t achieve excellence despite having absolutely no excuse (i.e. bad union teachers) for not matching those results. But their dirty little bargain is that the high performing charters promise only to compare themselves to public schools and pretend those low performing charters don’t exist. In return, the low performing charters promise to shut up and never mention that the high performing charters are mysteriously losing at-risk children at a rate twice as high as the lower performing ones — a phenomena that can only be explained by the pro-charter movement’s racist insistence that at-risk minority parents actually hate high performing charter schools and that’s the only reason so many parents supposedly “choose” to pull their children from them after winning one of those coveted seats over the many thousands of parents on the wait list.
I see that on here with some charter advocates who post here claiming their mediocre charters don’t push out kids. Perhaps they don’t, but those same charter advocates are always unwilling to say a word about the charter schools that do. Because they know exactly where their bread is buttered, and that means they must only offer unconditional praise to every high-achieving charter school.
The reaction to the NAACP’s call for transparency speaks volumes. Not a single charter school operator stood up and said “transparency is good”. Because they are all terrified by the powerful folks who call the shots who demand obedience and worship of high attrition charter schools because if we had transparency, their entire existence is at risk.
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