Anthony Cody posted a stunning two-minute video from a discussion at Howard University about school choice. The host Roland Martin is a strong supporter of school choice. But Dr. John H. Jackson, president of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, speaks for two minutes (or less) about the “false narrative” of failing public schools. He is eloquent as he blows away the question, to the cheers of the audience.
Please watch.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wonderful, brief, and wiith audience offering support. Excellent rhetorical and substantive question: Why is choice only pushed for low income communities and chiidren of color?
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Laura, a lot of it is racism, pure and simple. I understand (I don’t condone it in any way, but I understand) why many white politicians and wealthy businessmen are pushing for school choice, vouchers, and charters, but it’s difficult for me to wrap my mind around why there are black people like Roland Martin who are such strong proponents of school choice.
Dr. Jackson hit the nail on the head when he spoke about economic disparity, about what happens outside the school being as important (actually, probably more important) as what happens inside the schools (which are woefully under-resourced).
Let’s face it, nobody wants to spend the money to do something meaningful about poverty in this country. They also don’t want to spend the money to fix the crumbling schools, make sure that there are school counselors, social workers, nurses, and enough books and desks for the children.
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That is why the whole “choice” movement is leading to a willingness to disinvest in public education. This has been the whole top down policy to promote charters over public schools. Policymakers want cheap, easy solutions. Charters take the policymakers off the hook while they can make money for favored friends.
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Retired teacher,
Even more important, charters take billionaires off the hook. How much better for them (and cheaper) to spend a few million promoting charters and buying legislatures than to pay a higher tax on their incomes and estate. That might cost billions, not chump change.
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Yes, exactly, r.t.
And I do have to agree with Rudy (and I can’t believe I’m typing this). There are rural, poverty-stricken communities that are predominantly white, which suffer the same types of under-resourcing that inner-city, predominantly black or Hispanic schools do.
The charter (and voucher) movements suck money away from public schools in order to, as you noted, funnel that money to charter schools while making money for already-wealthy people.
Instead of spending money to, not only support all these way under-resourced schools, but begin to address the profound problems of poverty, in both urban and rural areas. It’s not just education, it’s about health care, nutrition, a healthy, safe environment to live in, and on and on and on.
But that doesn’t make the billionaires any money, it just costs money.
And what nobody in the pro-charter movement addresses is, what happens to the children who are expelled or, basically, forced out, of the charter schools (or are never admitted in the first place) because they have behavioral problems, they are special education students, they are English Language Learners? They are bounced back to the public schools, which have less and less money to deal with them.
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Tom Brokaw’s book, “The Greatest Generation” should be mandatory reading. One of the things that is clear in his writing that yes, there was poverty, throughout the nation, but personal pride and sense of responsibility allowed many (colored, non-colored whatever segment of ethnicity you want to pick) found their way out of poverty by hard work.
The sense of pride and personal responsibility has seemingly left the house. It seems everybody is holding somebody accountable for what nobody is doing. The discussion about the relation between addiction and drug companies is an example of that line of thought. :Let’s sue them for stupid decisions I make, made, am going to make, might make. Let;’s sue the gun manufacturer, the car manufacturer, the knife manufacturer, the Louisville Slugger maker for the things OTHERS decide to do with their products.
I grew up poor, with 7 siblings. SEVEN out of the 8 have made something positive of their lives. ONE decided that doing drugs was a good solution. My parents fault? Of course not – either that, or they youngest one was totally ignored in the growing up stage. Many of the people I grew up with were poor, and had larger than current families. I was a victim of child abuse (have the physical scars to show). But I made the choice not to be like my abusive parent.
I could be like that parent, and abuse my children. But I choose not to! I have a long list of excuses why I could have failed, and blame the parent. Many abused children do. In a younger generation, that seems to be common.
The majority of us grew up and made choices for ur lives. Some good, some not so good – but we ALL assumed the responsibilities of those choices.
Let’s stop blaming others for wrong choices WE make, please!
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Rudy, maybe I’m wrong, but I think that you are white, not a person of color.
I grew up myself in a poor family, five children, and yes, all of us went to college, and four out of five of us also have graduate degrees.
But we are white.
I’m old enough to remember segregated schools, segregated lunch counters, segregated restrooms, even. Yes, there were black families who managed to scrabble their way out of poverty and educate their children, but it was by no means easy. It was much, much more difficult for them than it was for poor whites.
Your family, as well as mine, may have been born on, let us say, first or maybe second base, and had to work hard to get to home plate. But it’s not like we were forced to sit in the back of the bus, forced to attend sub-par segregated schools, not hired because of our skin color, arrested because we were “not white” in certain neighborhoods. And on and on.
Take the veils off of your eyes and look at what has happened and is still happening in this country because of racism.
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“. . . a lot of it is racism, pure and simple.”
Can’t agree with you on that statement, Zorba.
The reason is that determining if someone’s actions are “racist” one would have to get inside the head of that individual. And that is an impossibility unless the person under consideration explicitly states such. Yes, I understand if it walks like a duck, etc. . . but to impugn racism or the other favorite disparaging remark these days of “white male privilege” distracts from the very fundamental arguments and discussions concerning the teaching and learning process that we so desperately need to not devolve into name calling.
“Let’s face it, nobody wants to spend the money to do something meaningful about poverty in this country. They also don’t want to spend the money . . . for the children.”
Again, unusually, I can’t concur with that hyperbolic statement. It’s not “nobody” but many in economic and political authority and power who do not wish to do those things. There are also many who are not in that authority and power who do want those things. Unfortunately, we pee-ons can only fight, yes literally fight, to prevent those in power and authority from continuing their nefarious schemes.
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Yes, Duane, I would agree that “nobody” wanting to spend the money to do something about poverty is a bit hyperbolic on my part, and it is mostly those who have the power and authority who don’t want to spend that money. But it’s not entirely hyperbolic. I live in a very rural area (we have a 60+ acre farm) and many, actually most, of my neighbors are voting for Trump, and are against spending any money on poverty relief. They have been voting against their own economic self-interests for years, and continue to do so.
As far as racism is concerned? I disagree with you on that. You don’t have to hear someone explicitly say that they are racist to make the connection. There are dog-whistles, there are Confederate flags flying in people’s yards, or Confederate flag stickers on their pick-up trucks, there are a couple of the “black jockey” statues in a few front yards, there are many up here who talk about “those people” without naming a race. Come up here and speak with a few of my neighbors, and you might change your mind about this.
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“I would agree that “nobody” wanting to spend the money to do something about poverty is a bit hyperbolic on my part, and it is mostly those who have the power and authority who don’t want to spend that money.”
In my experience most people are willing to spend money as long as it isn’t their money.
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Must be a democrat. They are known to want to spend other people’s money. 😉
Many rich people do spend money on helping others, the poor. If it wasn’t for rich people, poor people would be in a much worse situation the world over. Whatever you might think of the Gates foundAtion, they spend millions on health care in places where there would be no healthcare. Clinton foundation likewise.
Where I live, they make tons of stuff available for public schools like trips to educational places.
To say that rich people don’t care enough to spend money on poor people is plain wrong.
Here, too, common sense seems to have left the building.
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Yes, FLERP, there is that, as well. Many of the farmers out where I live have no problem with farm subsidies, and the feeling seems to be worse in the Midwest and West, where the farms are even bigger.
OTOH, we have more than a few dairy farms in this area. Dairy farm subsidies have totaled $5.6 billion from 1995 to 2014. Maybe those billions don’t sound like much over nine years, but it ain’t peanuts, either.
I’m sure that the $5.6 billion could have at least bought some books, desks, and maybe a few counselors and such for poor urban and rural schools.
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How many farmers had to share that 5.6 billion over the NINETEEN (not nine, but I guess that must be the new math) years? Apart from that, these subsidies are handed out to make sure farmers do not end up in the poor house (But then, a lot of the recipients are rich farmers, too).
It is interesting that people complain about the “subsidies” given to the oil companies (something that was started by Bill Clinton, btw), which totals to about 3.6 billion a year, and consists of funding given to most businesses, not just oil companies.
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No need to come visit ya, Zorba, I see those same things here in rural Missouri. And yes, it is amazing to see people so swayed by the charlatans (think Fux News or any of the main stream media) and politicians that they vote the way they do. But at the same time there are also just as many, if not more, rural residents who are not so easily swayed and do not have that redneck hillbilly ignorant white trash thinking.
Part of the problem as I see it, and it is built into our concept of a pluralistic society, is that everyone is supposed to be tolerant of all, is that everyone’s thoughts/statements are given the same level of credence, even after the flaws in their logic are pointed out. And that irrational illogical thought is not limited to any one sector, in this case rural folks, and because of that I “blame” public schools for not teaching critical thinking.
But then again we, the public schools are up against many different forces of ignorance, especially in the rural areas that many times takes the form of organized christian religious sects/churches but is not limited to those. Ignorance abounds, no doubt, when folks rely on faith, and that type of faith can include such non-religious nonsense as belief in “free markets” to be an actual thing that “does” something, to guide them.
Metaphysical thought is ignorant thought.
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Indeed, Duane, the schools need to concentrate much more on teaching critical thinking skills. Although, with the Common Core and testing mandates, even the public schools must spend so much time preparing the students to pass these tests (so the school won’t close and the teachers won’t be fired) that there is simply no time to teach critical thinking skills. Not to mention not much time to spend on art, music, physical education.
I actually really like most of my neighbors- they would give you the shirts off their backs if you needed a shirt, bring you food if you are ill, etc. But yet, they still cling to beliefs such as creationism, climate change denial, free markets being the “best thing ever,” and so forth.
No, creationism and other such religious beliefs do not deserve “equal time” and “equal credence” with the rational and the scientific.
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Like, a lot!
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Wow! Excellent commentary by Dr. Jackson.
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I’m with you.
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This clip shows the hypocrisy of so called “choice.” The choice argument has often been used to establish separate an unequal schools for minority students. Dr. Jackson explains that urban public schools have been shortchanged through our system of funding inequity. Instead of dealing with improving existing schools, charters are being presented as a great solution. However, they are not providing at better opportunity for poor, minority students. They are, in fact, more exploitative in that they funnel minority students into schools to provide a revenue stream for corporations. Charters are operated by business people, not educators, and the practice is often in opposition to what is in the best interest of students.
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Yes, exactly this ^^^^^^^^^.
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I credit Roland Martin with promoting cyber-charters. What a disaster for everyone concerned.
They’re not good for the kids in them but at least they had a choice. The kids in public schools get the constant churn of the kids in and out of cybercharters. They have NO choice.
Our superintendent says it’s one of her top three problems. In/out, in/out, in/out. The juvenile judge here gets red in the face when they’re so much as mentioned.
You won’t hear that on CNN, I’ll tell ya.
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Their motto should be, “Send us your public money yearning to go into private pockets.” Indeed, it is a dismal “choice” pretending to be education.
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“In white schools they have everything…”
Really??
75% of my family works in education. 50% works in Special Education, 25 % works in technology in education.
25% works in a metropolitan district (382,000 students)
25% works in an urban district (16,000 students)
25% works in a semi rural district (8,000 students)
All work in a district where the FR percentages no longer matter, all have free breakfast and lunch
We have some more things in common:
Many of the schools have to share certain staff, like Counselors, Nurses, Music, Art and PE teachers.
And the “color” of the schools does not matter. So what is “missing” in black schools, according to the speakers, is NOT just missing in black schools. It is missing in many schools, no matter the color.
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YEP!
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Dr. Jackson may be comparing urban schools to the suburban schools that ring most major cities. In many communities there is a stark contrast. The suburban schools still have access to more resources in comparison to urban schools. In many parts of the country the rural schools have been drained of resources, and they were lower in resources from the start. Privatization drains money that could have been spent on arts, music, libraries etc. Also, about half the states are at on below their 2008 level of funding. Some states are trying to starve public schools to make them fail.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/12/13/report-most-states-providing-less-k-12-funding-than-before-great-recession/
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And in my state, it was the DEMOCRAT governor who started the process. Current REPUBLICAN lawmakers are trying to find a way to balance some of these finances…
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Yes, I got the impression he was referring to the disparity in resources at urban compared to suburban schools, too. The distinctions between schools for white suburban haves and those for minority urban have-nots in my area are very evident.
However, even within my urban school district, the schools where the majority of kids attending are white have more resources than the schools where the majority attending are children of color. For example, functioning air conditioners have been severely lacking in classrooms at schools in low income neighborhoods here, where mostly minorities live. And those are at-risk populations, who are most likely to be required to attend summer school if they want to be promoted to the next grade!
In a school system under mayoral control, with only 7% white students, when the white mayor tells the black president of the teacher’s union that 25% of our city’s youths will not amount to anything, I think it’s hard to NOT recognize racism.
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Dr. John Jackson understands the national failure, we can expect, when a charter system replaces public education. He describes, imposed choice, that was created for the benefit of Wall Street, the tech industry and wealthy libertarians. He makes the point about false narratives promoted by the self-serving. And, all in two minutes!
If the discussion was directed more broadly, by politicians like Sen. Sherrod Brown, so that it reached the rest of America, the public would begin to understand, what the cost of privatized competition among schools is, to the nation.
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The NAACP Board of Directors has ratified a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion because the so-called “education reform” movement, of which charter schools are the biggest profit-making part, has always had resegregation of America’s schools as a key agenda item. The fact that billionaires and hedge funds could pocket tens of millions of public tax dollars from this new kind of segregation was just a bonus. In fact, the first calls for “reform” in the guise of vouchers arose immediately after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court declared that separate but equal was inherently unequal and ordered racial integration of the public schools. That ruling triggered “white flight” from public schools to private schools — but parents quickly realized that the tuition cost of private schools was more than they wanted to pay out-of-pocket. That realization led political and private resegregationists to the concoct the “reform” of vouchers, and to sell it to eager parents by deceptively marketing it then —and still today — as merely giving parents free “choice.”
But the 1950’s voucher reform faded away when it became clear that because of school attendance boundaries no more than a few token blacks would be attending formerly all-white public schools. In 1972 when the Supreme Court finally ordered busing to end the ongoing de facto segregation, the reform movement rose from its grave and has been alive ever since then trying new tactics to restore racial segregation because it’s unlikely that the Court’s racial integration order can ever be reversed. When it became clear in the 1980’s that vouchers would never become widespread, the segregationists tried many other routes to restore racial segregation, and the most successful has been charter schools because charter schools can be sold to blithely unaware do-gooder billionaires as well as to unscrupulous profiteers who recognized charter schools as a way to divert vast amounts of tax money into their own pockets and into the pockets of supportive politicians at every level of government.
Reports from the NAACP and ACLU reveal the facts about just how charter schools are resegregating our nation’s schools, as well as discriminating racially and socioeconomically against American children, and now the NAACP Board of Directors has ratified a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice. Moreover, a very detailed nationwide research by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA shows in clear terms that private charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students and students with disabilities.
An essential part of the strategy to mask their underlying motives has been for segregationists to sell the public on the necessity for charter schools because public schools are allegedly “failing.” With all manner of “research” that essentially compares apples to oranges against foreign nations’ students, and with the self-fulfilling prophecy of dismal public school performance generated by drastic underfunding of public schools, and with condemnation of public school teachers based on statistically invalid student test scores, the segregationists are succeeding in resegregating education in America via what are basically private charter schools that are funded with public money.
And now the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State and New York State supreme courts and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions.
Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities and must (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO FEDERAL MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC. Hillary Clinton could, if elected President, on day one in office issue an Executive Order to the Department of Education to do just that. Tell her today to do that! Send her the above information to make certain she knows about the Inspector General’s findings and about the abuses being committed by charter schools.
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The evidence that the U.S. Dept. of Ed. is wholly captured is its description of charter schools as “public”, a point that the Dept. re-made, recently, when it released another $245 mil. for the Walton/Gates agenda. If the Dept. of Defense called Boeing “public”,
I presume some member of Congress would question the deceit. If not, it would be evidence that the Defense Department is totally captured, by oligarchs.
Where is Sen. Sherrod Brown?
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Why is Senator Sherrod Brown called a “progressive”?
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Two hundred Ohio state school superintendents and, other education leaders, are going to rally at the Ohio statehouse on Nov. 15. They argue, correctly, that “current state education policy does not match the desires of residents”. We’ll see if Brown shows up. If he does, citizens can ask him why he requested federal tax money to achieve the Walton’s agenda ($71 mil. to add to the Walton’s, $1 bil.). And, they can ask him why he’s never bothered to tell Ohioans that their schools are being privatized… never told them, the dire consequences of the Aspen Institute’s policies on kids, communities and the state’s economy.
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Allowing families to pick their own schools — and particularly to select charter schools — is about as American as it gets, Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Meria Carstarphen said Friday.
“People like choice,” she said. “They want to pick their president. They want to pick their Happy Meal.”
“The concept of choice is appropriate in a country focused on democracy,” she said.
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America cannot afford to adequately fund a set of parallel schools in addition to public schools. If billionaires believe “choice” is so important they should fund scholarships at private schools for inner city youth. No other leading western nation has ever been successful with choice systems which have been proven promote segregation and inequality.
By the way if America values “choice” so much, why do so many states try to deter women from exercising their choice over the fate of their own bodies?
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Many Times I wonder what else can happen to surprise me. you have succeeded! Comparing school choice with killing unborn children is a new low.
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Yes, exactly.
The billionaires could also spread some of their money around to improve schools in poverty-stricken areas, and to do something about addressing the fundamental problems of poverty.
Forget about “choice.” Choice seems to only apply if your “choice” is what the oligarchs and the politicians think that your “choice” should be. In other words, their choices, not our choices.
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You are right on target, retired teacher and Zorba, and ESPECIALLY regarding the lack of choice many of the very same education “reformers” want to inflict on women so that THEY can determine what females are allowed to do with their own bodies.
So now we have some communities with no local schools that will take every child in the neighborhood, because of “reformers” whose behaviors amount to declaring, ‘God forbid anyone should have the choice of a neighborhood school anymore.’
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H.E., in those communities which no longer have nearby local schools, what do they do with the children who are kicked out of the charter schools? Or who are never admitted in the first place.
The children with behavior problems, the special needs children who require many specialized services, the children who are just starting to learn English? Do they “get” to go to schools much farther away from where they live? How long must they spend on a bus each day to get them to those farther away schools?
And don’t even get me started on the so-called “reformers” who want to tell women what they can do with their own bodies.
It’s all of a piece, in a way. Control the women, control the children.
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I’ve noticed a great many privatizers conflating “democracy” and “school choice” these days. Perpetual child-endangerer Michelle Rhee recently said on Twitter that the absence of school choice was “not democracy.” Democracy is a form of representative government, not the ability to exercise choice.
The rebranding continues: the second school choice starts bearing negative connotations, privatizers have to alter the message. “Democracy” apparently now equals choice in all things, including whether or not to remove ACTUAL democracy in the form of local school boards.
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Ah, I now see why people get high on the word choice. I didn’t realize the reason for this so clearly until I read your explanation. Thanks.
I think the privatizer side has a great experience with drugging people with choice: choice of doctors, airlines, drugs(!), banks, internet companies.
Unlike you, though, I don’t think this drug has been worn out.
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To put this bluntly, I think there are some blacks who are finally catching on to how profitable school choice can be for them personally. To ensure that they can get a share of the pie, they have to continue to push this in black communities. I read about this discussion in The Texas Metro News (a regional newspaper that caters to a black audience) and posted a comment on this site last week:
“…Journalist Roland Martin, a board member of 50Can, and his wife Rev. Dr. Jacquie Hood Martin have launched this campaign through her non-profit, J. Hood and Associates. They hosted a discussion on TV ONE’s NewsOne Now that featured both advocates and opponents of education reform. I haven’t watched it yet, but any program on reform that includes comments like “I do not want a market-based system that is pimping our kids,” has got to be good.”
The article I read concluded with ” the School Choice is The Black Choice initiative will… work with black fraternities and sororities to create their own charter schools, especially his (Martin’s) own fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, which he hopes to persuade to open 50 Alpha Charter schools.”
Now, I’m not saying that he doesn’t truly want what’s best for black children, but I believe Mr. Martin sees the road to school choice is paved with money.
I’ve read COUNTLESS pro-charter, school choice, education reform articles in newspapers targeted to communities of color. There are ALWAYS billboards along the highways in our neighborhoods about the latest, greatest charter school opening.
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This made me think about the fact that the charter school movement is strongest in cities like Memphis and New Orleans, where the vast majority of the population is African American. This is why these cities are targeted.
It’s another matter why in these cities people still get high on the word choice. So high, in fact, that the local NAACP chapter in Memphis (one of the largest in the country) opposes NAACP’s moratorium on charters.
http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/tn/2016/11/01/tennessee-naacp-backs-away-from-national-call-for-charter-pause/
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Public school privatization is the last hurrah for racist, sexist, old guys, who want their unwarranted entitlement to be continued.
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