Arthur Camins retired recently as Director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology. He has taught and been an administrator in New York City, Massachusetts, and Louisville, Kentucky. Unlike Betsy Dezvos and other ersatz “reformers,” he knows quite a lot about teaching and innovation.
In this post, he explains the fraud of school choice.
He writes:
“Segregation and the evil twins–racism and inequity– are the divide and conquer gifts that keep on giving to the rich and taking from everyone else. Over the decades, the wealthy and empowered have found ways to dress up their barely concealed essential messages: We deserve what we have. Inequality is the natural order of the world. Caring about others is for losers. Winners care about themselves. If you are unhappy with your station in life, blame yourself. Some of you would be better off if was it not for Them.
“The latest incarnation of message obfuscation is the vaguely democratic-sounding term, school choice. The push for expansion of charter schools- publicly funded, but privately controlled– and for vouchers to offset a portion of the tuition for private schools is the old wolf in new sheep’s clothing.
“Equity and universal high quality have never been the goals of school choice, the roots of which are resistance to desegregation. Its latest advocates do not suggest vouchers so that the poor can attend elite, expensive private schools. They do not demand adequate funding for all schools. They do not want to give students experience interacting with one another across class or race. They certainly do not want to end the defining characteristic of the status quo, rationing of quality by socioeconomic status.
“Their rhetoric notwithstanding, they have other goals: Undermine public sector unions to reduce their political power, as well as members’ pay and health and retirement benefits; Pander to subgroups to undermine political unity; Undercut the power of unified organizing by offering an escape hatch for the so-called “deserving poor.” Advance the advantages of privilege.
“Segregation is the simple enabling strategy. Contrary to popular mythology, post-Brown v. Board of education segregation was not so much the product of individual choices, but rather intentionally segregative transportation, zoning, housing and employment policies. Policy and preexisting bias were mutually reinforcing. Increased isolation was the inevitable result. People naturally trust folks they know and interact with regularly. Economic and racial isolation turns the distant “them” into an abstraction, easily stereotyped in the absence of countervailing evidence informed by direct contact and shared struggle. It is the empowered’s Tower of Babel tactic. Sow distrust and hatred, so that even when diverse citizens speak the same language, building for the common good becomes too challenging and threatening….
“Rather than addressing the structural causes of growing inequity, appeals to market-based education play on parents’ anxieties about their children losing out in the intense competition for well-paying jobs. Similarly, school choice rhetoric reinforces some parents’ bias that going to school with certain others will hurt their children. It encourages parents to take a belligerent, you can’t-make-me, stance…
“Coupled with the exaltation of selfishness, segregation is a time-tested way for the privileged to remain in control. School choice is the latest euphemism for leaving everyone to fend for themselves in a dystopian world of ruthless competition.
“When centrists Democrats adopt choice rhetoric, they abet conservative ideology. They enable labeling of legislative solutions to help people as being about Them, not us. If the last presidential election is any indication, Democratic politicians are reluctant to take on the rhetoric of choice and the segregation and inequity it supports. That will only change when voters demand that candidates adopt a different, explicitly pro-integration, stance.
“It is time to bring back the old labor slogan: An injury to one is an injury to all.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Love Arthur Camins … thank you, Diane.
I’ll simply post some of the tweets from the Oakland conference as they succinctly summarize the hidden agenda of “choice.”
Ed is a human right! But the privatizers Mindset: Why fix social problems if you can monetize them?
“if we’re not successful, Friedman’s goal of the abolition of the public good will be realized”
Board Member @ProfessorJVH explains deceptive use of Charter School research to skew reality of their performance & structure.
“You can’t build schools on inequality, tests, and segregation.”
“History: Children of color only have resource equality if sitting next to Whites in the classroom.”
A must read!
Q “History: Children of color only have resource equality if sitting next to Whites in the classroom.” END Q
This statement is incredulous. How can any intelligent person make such a statement?
Where are you even getting that quote? It’s not in the linked article. You wouldn’t be trying to misrepresent someone, would you?
Appears to be referencing something from retired teacher’s comment above.
Ah. Usually that’s what the reply button is for. Thanks, though.
Charles is reiterating some of the tweets from the Oakland NPE conference that I referenced in the above post as the session was about race and inequity. https://cloakinginequity.com/2017/10/22/betsy-devos-and-trump-are-wrong-what-we-know-about-school-privatization/
By the way NPE has been advertising on Facebook. I know many people reject Facebook and Zukerberg. I use Facebook as a tool because of its far reach. I have been posting on education sites to drive traffic to this blog. It would be a tremendous help if others on Facebook would comment on the NPE’s post and then share it. That is how to build a network using a social media platform. People that care about the future of public education should do this because we cannot fairly compete with all the dark money of the privatizers.
I believe you mean to say the statement is incredible.
Yes, it’s Charles who’s incredulous.
My mistake, incredible. I cannot believe this statement.
It is a pattern in this country. When we fund schools through real estate,urban schools, containing mostly poor minority students get shortchanged. There is actually no reason for NYC students to be at a loss for funds since the real estate is some of the highest priced in the world. Yet, the schools scramble for funds. Charles, don’t you understand that separate is never equal? You should read “Cloaking Inequity,” written by a professor and researcher. Racism continues to be a massive issue in this country. https://cloakinginequity.com/
I am 100% in agreement, that the funding of publicly-operated schools, through property taxes, results in “educational apartheid”. I liked the book “Savage Inequalities” which points up the obscene disparities in the funding of publicly-operated schools in the USA.
Is that why you support “choice”, which will defund public schools?
Q Is that why you support “choice”, which will defund public schools? END Q
School Choice (no need for quotation marks) will remove funding from publicly-operated schools. Choice will also remove students. The per-pupil spending will remain the same. In Arizona, the ESA is only equivalent to 90% of PPE. At least in Arizona, school choice results in INCREASED spending in the public system.
Charles,
Where do you get your alternative facts?
Arizona is one of the lowest spending states in the nation.
48th out of 50.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-states-that-spend-the-most-and-the-least-on-education-in-one-map/?utm_term=.30d0a47d6b99
The only states that spend less are Utah and Idaho.
Legislators don’t want to pay to educate children in public schools.
In states which do not permit families to opt-out of the public schools, the funding must be equitable all of the students in the public system. This only fair and just.
You are missing my point. In Arizona, if a family opts-out of the public school system, and accepts an ESA, the ESA is equivalent to 90% of the PPE. This means that 10% of the PPE remains in the public school system. The result is, that the school system gets 10% of the PPE, and the student is absent. The final result is that the school system gets this money, and does not provide any educational services (to the absent student).
And why do you say Q Legislators don’t want to pay to educate children in public schools. END Q
I disagree. In every state in this union, legislators are using public funds to pay for educational costs, in public schools. This is their job. How could anyone think that legislators do not want to spend money on educational costs?
Charles,
Arizona is one of the worst funded school systems in the country
Please don’t use it as an example of choice sending more money to public schools.
Choice is simply a way to send public money to people who already use religious schools.
I agree that Arizona spends a smaller amount on education (per capita), than most other states. No dispute. But, Is it really fair to compare spending in New York or California, which has much higher costs and overhead? I would like to see how state by state spending stacks up, when cost differentials are applied.
Obviously, the people of Arizona must be satisfied with the level of spending, else they would demand that the state legislature increase spending (and taxes) accordingly.
CROSS POSTED AT https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/School-Choice-The-Old-Wol-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Bias_Message_Resistance_Rhetoric-171025-939.html#comment677377
WITH THIS COMMENT WHICH HAS EMBEDDED LINKS AT THE ABOVE ADDRESS.
Howard Ryan, writing in Monthly Review, analyzes the sources of support for corporate reform and privatization.
Over the past three decades, public schools have been the target of a systematic assault and takeover by corporations and private foundations. The endeavor is called “school reform” by its advocates, while critics call it corporate school reform.”
The Founding Fathers Wanted Public Schools: We Should Protect Their Vision Just like the corporations and hedge funds profiteers see dollar signs if the wealth of our nation could be turned into a marketplace, so the same motivation is turning our public schools over to people who do not to know about HOW LEARNING IS ENABLED, and do not care about our children or the future of our democracy, because as E.D. Hirsch makes clear”democracy depends on sacred knowledge”
Many of those young adult racists who marched in Charlottesville are products of that portion of America’s school system that has been re-segregated by the charter schools movement that became widespread at the beginning of the 1990’s…and there are tens of thousands more of them in the segregated charter school pipeline that keeps churning them out.
Racist re-segregation being fostered charter schools is clearly an issue that isn’t even on the radar of Senators Sanders and Warren, and none are at all aware of the racist roots of charter schools or how they are re-segregating the education of America’s children. But the NAACP is, and it has called for a total moratorium on charter schools. For your ready reference, here’s a thumbnail background on the racist roots of charter schools, “choice”, and vouchers:
The racist roots of charter schools traces back to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision that required the racial integration of public schools. That triggered “white flight” from public schools and into private schools. But white parents found the cost of private schools was expensive, so the call went out for vouchers to enable white parents to have a “free choice” of schools. In 1959, just before the Court’s deadline for racial integration of public schools, a prominent newspaper in Prince Edward County, Virginia, published the outline for the charter school scheme to resegregate education: “We are working [on] a scheme [with members of Congress] in which we will abandon public schools, sell the buildings to corporations, reopen them as privately operated schools with tuition grants [vouchers] from [the State of Virginia] and from Prince Edward County. Those wishing to go to integrated schools can take their tuition grants and operate their own schools. To hell with [the Supreme Court and non-whites].”
At the same time, a prominent Virginia attorney who was an advisor to Virginia politicians announced a corollary scheme for resegregating public schools by means of standardized testing: “Negroes can be let in [to white schools] and then chased out by setting high academic standards they can’t maintain. This should leave few Negroes in the white schools. The federal courts can easily force Negroes into our white schools, but they can’t possibly administer them and listen to the merits of thousands of bellyaches [from white parents].” That was the conceptual beginning and foundation of all the standardized testing we see today, many of which tests are are designed with built-in racial and cultural biases to manufacture failure. The test results were and still are used to “prove” that traditional public schools are “failing” — a claim abetted by drastic underfunding of public schools so that they lacked the resources to teach effectively. The “failing” test scores were and are also used to “prove” that unionized public school teachers are “ineffective”.
That’s the beginning of charter schools, vouchers, and testing. That conceptual foundation remains the same today, which is why the NAACP has called for a moratorium on charter schools, which are openly practicing racism. For more details, read the UCLA-based Civil Rights Project report “Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards.”
But charter schools are even more insidious: They are also a financial scam. The thoughtful person must ask why hedge funds are so interested in expanding the number of charter schools. It certainly isn’t an altruistic concern for children. Here’s a hint: The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools are a risk to the Department of Education’s 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 and the skimming of tax money into private pockets, which is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
For example: One of the profitable charter school scams is to have the puppet private school boards lease buildings that are owned by real estate investment trusts (REITs) held by the hedge funds. The charter school board members, in exchange for kickbacks, pay lease rates far above the market rate, and the profit goes to the hedge funds. Another incredible scam is that in many states when a charter school buys things like computers for the students, the computers — even though purchased with taxpayer money — become the private property of the charter school. At the end of each school year, they sell the computers, pocket the money, and receive more taxpayer money to purchase new computers…and repeat the process year-after-year.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Court, 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. There is simply no such thing as a “public charter school” because no charter school fulfills the basic public accountability requirement of being responsible to and directed by a school board that is elected by We the People. Charter schools are private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money.
Charter schools should (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 operator 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. These aren’t “burdensome” requirements for charter schools — they are simply common sense safeguards that public tax money is actually being used to maximum effect to teach our nation’s children.
Hey, any ideas about how to pressure centrist Democrats to talk about and move away from support for charter schools and toward more systemic education solutions? How to shift them from imagined solutions for a few to real solutions for all?
Here is a thought. Get Obama to renounce his support for the entire DeVos agenda.
While a recent study (1) on a Louisiana choice initiative cites a positive impact of vouchers on reducing racial stratification in some schools, most research on charter school initiatives suggests that parents choose to “self-segregate” (2) their children into racially homogeneous schools, which resonates with Arthur Camins’ statement that “people naturally trust folks they know and interact with regularly.” The demographics of a school is a significant factor in parents’ choices. The research linked above suggests that parents from all backgrounds tend to choose schools with a higher percentage of students of their “own” ethnicity. Although provided with school choice, genuine choices are also limited when parents must consider factors such as transportation and proximity to the home. Based on these findings, school choice provides some children with additional opportunities, but these initiatives do not guarantee quality choices for all.
References:
Egalite, A. J., Mills, J. N., & Wolf, P. J. (2017). The impact of targeted school vouchers on racial stratification in Louisiana schools. Education and Urban Society, 49(3), 271- 296. Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0013124516643760
Frankenberg, E., Kotok, S., Schafft, K., & Mann, B. (2017). Exploring school choice and the consequences for student racial segregation within Pennsylvania’s charter school transfers. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 25(22). Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.25.2601