This story about Minnesota shows the good and the bad effects of school choice.
Betsy DeVos will read it with pleasure. She can now point to Minnesota as an exemplar of school choice, one that fulfills her goals.
Those who care about democratically controlled public schools that have civic obligations, such as diversity, will see it as a nightmare.
The charter schools of Minneapolis are highly segregated and proud of it. The most popular charter school is almost completely Asian. Other charters are almost completely black or overwhelmingly white.
Remember the Brown decision of 1954? Minnesota doesn’t.
The proliferation of charters has forced public schools to cut their budgets, their programs, their staff.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
As much as we move forward, we seem to go backward.
LikeLike
Before I retired I worked in Houston for a Chinese owned company which employed many Chinese people many of them born and raised in mainland China. I heard them discussing the quality of local schools and it was always a big concern to them how much of the student body in those schools were Chinese or East Asian. Clearly they felt the more Asian the better. They regarded whites and especially blacks and Hispanics as a bad influence on their children. People don’t want racial integration despite the lip service paid to it. In the long run people are good at evading state control.
LikeLike
If we believe that a major aspect of education is to learn to get along with different types of people, we are short changing students with choices that enhance segregation and destabilize the neighborhood public schools. Having a well funded diverse public school community is an asset.
Our nation has retreated into unhealthy sub-groups promoted by our so-called leaders. Part of the responsibility of public education is citizenship, and part of being a good citizen is learning how to negotiate a diverse society. Isolation often breeds contempt for and distrust of others that are different. Public education has the potential to bring different groups together contributing to greater tolerance and understanding, which is much needed today.
LikeLike
Since when is a “major aspect” of education to learn to get along with different types of people? I thought that school was about reading, writing, and arithmetic. Guess I missed that part.
When kids go to neighborhood schools, they will be attending classes with kids from their own neighborhood. If they live in a white neighborhood. If they live in a black neighborhood, and attend the school in that neighborhood, they will attend classes with kids from that neighborhood.
Publicly-operated school proponents miss that part.
LikeLike
Ed reform has no interest in the “safety net” public school systems in these cities.
They literally refer to public schools as “default” schools. They’re for the kids who don’t fit into a “niche” market charter, transient families, etc.
The whole narrative is one of loss- how the public schools can be managed cheaply and efficiently to fit into the “choice” template and serve a kind of back-up role to the focus, which is charters. It’s not really a system. It’s two tiers. Public schools have been quietly designated the less-desirable “necessary” schools because you can’t have a universal system without a public back-up. These public schools aren’t organically dying because of “market forces”- the charter proliferation is carefully planned- they’ve simply been given a different role than “choice” schools- a less desirable role.
DeVos completely ignores this. When she went to visit a “choice” school that had something like 300 students there was an entire public school system around it that served everyone else. Those schools weren’t mentioned at all, although obviously the “choice” school couldn’t exist without the public system. It’s deliberate.
LikeLike
It’s really an amazing kind of blindness. We have vouchers in Ohio. Our public school REGULARLY takes the children who are kicked out of the religious school for behavior problems. Yet the public system is invisible to ed reformers- it isn’t even mentioned.
Must be nice to “transform” a system while quietly relying on the public part without ever crediting their role in making “choice” possible. They couldn’t have vouchers in this town without the much-maligned public system backing up private schools, but no one ever mentions that. Instead our politicians parachute in yelling “choice!” and bashing the public system that makes vouchers possible. This isn’t a “partnership”- it’s one set of schools sacrificed to serve the other.
LikeLike
I remember a comment about a Hmong charter in St. Paul that was formed in response to the prejudice and abuse the Hmong faced in their public schools. Unfortunately, the article avoids all discussion of racial and/or ethnic tensions. We may look at this as a failure of the public school to deal with the problem, but it really is a societal issue that we have never dealt with particularly well. Charters exacerbate the problem, but who wants their children to be punching bags while we sit around twiddling our thumbs and tsking? We are like chickens with our pecking orders. It is unfair to expect the schools to solve societal problems all on their own, but we eliminate even the possibility of understanding between racial and ethnic groups when we provide opportunities for schools to segregate themselves. I know I am not even touching on the financial tensions; public schools are the obvious losers. Anyone who tries to debate that is not being honest with themselves much less anyone else.
LikeLike
A diverse, well funded public school can work wonders. I know because I was an ESL teacher at one. Some students come with prejudice, and this includes some language minority students as well. We openly discussed prejudice in my class, and students shared their own experiences with prejudice.
In a comprehensive public school with supports in place, the school can deal with any problems that may arise from prejudice. Many of my students were outstanding athletes, and they gained a lot of social capital from that or from other qualities like being kind, funny, smart or even good singer.
Different types of students can learn a lot from each other, and teachers can learn as well. I learned that cultural and language differences can be an issue at first, but most people are pretty much the same. They all want to find their way and want to get a fair chance at a decent life.
LikeLike
I totally agree.
LikeLike
Here’s yet another ed reform article cheerleading charter schools. This is one is from the “liberal” Center for American Progress bit it could be Jeb Bush or Duncan or DeVos, they’re all identical- it could have come from any of them.
The entire thing is about charters. Apparently there’s not yet ENOUGH prmotion of charter schools, and we all must do more of it!
At the end they realize they’re supposed to be “agnostics” so they insert a boilerplate sentence recognizing the existence of public schools. Grudgingly. Those “other” schools that 90% of kids attend- the unfashionable default system that the Best and Brightest can’t be bothered with.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-10-05/expanding-the-best-charter-schools-brings-more-education-success
LikeLike
Thank you for this info. It’s not easy to click the like button after reading news like this. That’s why I keep thinking of Thomas Jefferson’s advice.
LikeLike