This article unintentionally explains where charter schools went wrong. When Shanker proposed the idea of charter schools in 1988, he thought of them as “schools within schools,” created by teachers and subject to both union rules and the school district. But it all changed when Minnesota passed the first charter law in 1992.
The article was written by Paul Peterson, the Harvard professor who supports charters, vouchers, and all kinds of choice. He is editor of Education Next. I have known Paul for many years (though I have not seen him for nearly a decade). I got to know him during my time as a member of the Koretz Task Force at the Hoover Institution from 1998-2008. He is a very genial man. I recall one night after a meeting at Hoover when David Packard (of Hewlett Packard) invited Paul and me to see the old-time movie theater that he purchased in Palo Alto. It was closed that evening, and he had the projectionist run a classic film for us. Then, as a treat, he had the old-fashioned organ rise from beneath the stage. Paul went onstage and played the organ, a talent he had developed many years earlier in church in Minnesota.
Paul writes in this article about the origins of the charter school. The article is titled, “No, Albert Shanker Did Not Invent the Charter School.” I was frankly happy to read it because I get tired of right-wingers pretending to be progressives and insisting that they are doing exactly what that esteemed labor leader recommended, and that charters are run by progressives and teachers.
Paul makes clear that Shanker’s vision of what a charter school should be was replaced by a very different vision in 1992.
Paul adds an interesting twist to the origins of the contemporary charter school idea. Shanker wanted charters to be authorized by schools and/or districts and subject to collective bargaining. But the first charter law was passed in Minnesota and its proponents were Joe Nathan (who often comments here) and Ted Kolderie. They wanted charter schools to be authorized by state entities, not limited to teachers or subject to collective bargaining, and to compete with public schools. Nathan and Kolderie won, and their model is the one that is dominant today. So now, instead of charter schools that are subject to school district’s needs and collective bargaining, we have corporate charter chains and charters opened by entrepreneurs.
Shanker wanted charters to serve as R&D for the public schools; he did not want them to undermine public schools. Nathan and Kolderie wanted them to compete with the public schools, according to Petersen. And now we have the most rightwing figures in American society–the DeVos family, the Koch brothers, and ALEC–fully embracing charter schools. They would never have tolerated or supported Shanker’s model. They want to use charters to smash public education as a public good.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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Wherever / However charter schools first got started, this is how they’ve ended up today:
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YEA John Oliver. I always learn so much for this guy.
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I recall it was the late eighties when the AFT capitulated to accepting charters. It didn’t take them too long to make them a stream of capital for corporations. Shanker’s collaborative idea was caste aside for America’s obsession with the “market.” Instead of R&D for public schools or “islands of opportunity,” too many charters have become cesspools of profiteering, waste and fraud with de facto segregation.
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The results of the MN charter schools have been dismal unless one finds that record levels of segregation are positive for the state’s “public” schools. I can remember the initial push for “EdVisions” project-based learning schools out of MN. The Gates foundation was on that bandwagon for a few years. They were Dewey Lab School in nature, similar to the “free schools” of years ago, and history shows how that went. No one ever seems to recognize the socio-economic make-up of Dewey’s students when referencing his work.
While not a perfect comparison, I believe Shanker was looking more towards a Deborah Meirer small schools approach with strong teacher leadership. What history taught us about those schools is that sustainability is a difficult task. We are getting very close to a Chubb and Moe version of education in this country, and it amazes me that the masses are rather accepting.
While we’re crediting people for the start of the charter movement, we should probably pay tribute to Bill Clinton, who has stated he supported charters because the teachers in Arkansas didn’t want to show up for his professional development initiative and he thought the concept (choice) would really resonate with parents. Another prominent figure, Howard Fuller, now realizes a $15 minimum wage is more important than the charter movement after his charter school (while trying to serve a deserving population) has struggled for years.
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The whole idea of “choice” does resonate with many people. However, most people did not realize that public schools would be harmed from their choice. Also, the whole idea of “choice” has been perverted into schools doing the choosing, excluding and manipulating. Frankly, most large public systems offer far more choices than one size fits all charters. Many public systems offer vocational and compensatory ed., alternative and magnet schools to accommodate different needs
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People also didn’t foresee that “choice” would be turned against them, and that it would be the charter or voucher school administrators who choose which students to accept or keep.
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This is from eight years ago but it gives you a taste of the free-for-all that Minnesota unleashed: https://thecuckingstool.blogspot.com/2010/05/charter-schools-crash-and-burn-in.html
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I fight the battle every day in St. Louis…not even sure why. The Post Dispatch has barred me from making comments after stories, but I am allowed on their all purpose current affairs forum. Today, they ran a story about the success of state representative Bryan Spencer, who used to be a teacher in St. Charles County, to make virtual schools more convenient state wide. The Post Dispatch has a site with the salaries of every teacher in the county and city, down to the dollar. I printed out the ones whose last name began with A, who still teach where Spencer taught. For contrast, I ran what I could find about the political contributions to Spencer and Senator Brown related to education. I could find nothing about that subject, or any other…..just vague listings of groups.
It is important for people in st. louis to know exactly how much their children’s teacher is making, but not important to know what is being spent by “entities” to elect people who decide how to provide dollars to make profits possible for poorly performing virtual schools. Good marketing by the PD, I must admit.
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I have a book recommendation. Read “Bad Blood” by John Carreyrou. It’s about a Silicon Valley start-up that was fraudulent from top to bottom, but no one did the slightest due diligence before it was promoted as miraculous.
It’s really disturbing how much it reminds me of ed reform. See what you think.
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No one seems to have noticed, but ed reformers have moved well beyond charters.
They all lock-step support vouchers now, and not only that, they all promote changing all education funding to a voucher system.
“Mainstream” ed reformers now propose a voucher system for ALL schools. They don’t call it that, but that’s what they mean when they say “the money should follow the child”
They’re planning on handing out some low- dollar voucher for each school age child- you watch. It’s always been a far Right movement, ed reform. It’s about cheap education for the masses.
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All of ed reform are eagerly awaiting the new supreme court decision gutting labor unions.
Ed reform will be popping champagne corks in DC when their Supreme Court kills labor unions.
The worst part is how so many of them tricked rank and file labor union members into voting for them with their phony and patronizing claims of being “progressive”
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The entire notion of “competition” when it comes to schools is ridiculous. It is impossible to have a free market when one entity can pick and choose their customers and one entity must serve every customer that comes in the door but both entities are given equal money for each customer.
We know this when it comes to Medicare. We know that if you give every American senior a voucher to purchase healthcare, and give some doctors free reign to refuse certain patients (the ones who aren’t healthy) and require other doctors to treat every single patient no matter what, that you don’t have “competition” between the two types of doctors.
You simply have a system where the politically connected favored doctors get to choose the profitable (i.e. healthy) patients and dump them if they get too sick, while other doctors would be required to treat every patient. We would have a system that allowed favored doctors to dump patients when they needed specialists while other doctors are forced to pay out of their own pocket to send the patient to a very expensive specialist.
We absolutely know this when it comes to EVERY “market” in which the cost of the service is entirely dependent on who the customer is.
Education is not a product like a laptop computer that you can sell for the same price to kids with severe disabilities and to kids who are high performing academically.
Health care is not like a restaurant where the cost of making a meal is the same whether your customers are young and healthy or need round the clock 24 hour medical care.
Choice advocates believe you can compare the results of Cancer Treatment Centers of America with the results of Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and using the same data that education researchers use, deem Sloan-Kettering a “failing” hospital; and give CTC of America billions of federal funds to expand while cutting money to Sloan-Kettering. After all, if all you look at is the “results” of the patents who are allowed to remain at the hospitals — just like paid academic “education researchers” do — it is clear that Sloan-Kettering is a failure and CTC of America is the Success Hospital Network.
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As then Executive Director of the Columbus Education Assn. in the ’70’s, I spent a little time with Shanker at the NEA convention. We talked about the “experimental” schools idea I had for Columbus and his ideas for innovative schools. We didn’t disagree much. In Columbus, we took the occasion of the closing of the University School at OSU to propose experimental–student centered, idea-open–schools to the bargaining table. The school board agreed with the concept and we set up several innovative schools across the city, to be accessed by lottery. We had a “traditional” school, a Spanish immersion school, a French emersion, and “open classrooms” school, etc. We were a somewhat segregated system at the time, and these schools were also to be “magnets” staffed and peopled by a racially balanced and diverse population. We certainly didn’t image privatization of our schools there. I’m sure Shanker did not favor privatization in NY or elsewhere. We were trying to improve public schools, not replace or destroy them.
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“DeVos money, influence stain key gubernatorial races throughout the nation”
“You can tell a lot about a person by the company he or she keeps. The same holds true for elected officials who align themselves with Betsy DeVos, who ranks as the most unqualified education secretary in the nation’s history.
“DeVos, who is extremely wealthy, has used her millions to cultivate followers at every level of government. Today, Education Votes takes a look at elected officials running for governor in key battleground states who have pledged allegiance to DeVos and her destructive anti-public schools agenda, which includes voucher schemes. Vouchers use your tax dollars to subsidize private school tuition for a small select few. More importantly, they drain hundreds of millions of dollars in critical funding away from public schools and the vast majority of students and families who depend on them. Vouchers are DeVos’ weapon of choice for dismantling public education and represent one of the biggest threats to public education.”
http://educationvotes.nea.org/2018/01/28/devos-money-influence-stain-key-gubernatorial-races-throughout-nation/
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It’s even worse than that for Joe Nathan. He supports segregation, too. Shameful. I wrote this history of charters in Minnesota last year – riffing on the awful book by Ember Reichgott Junge, one of the authors of that awful 1992 law. http://www.edhivemn.com/story.php?storyID=3
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Rather than repeating familiar points I’ll share a recent newspaper column about a 60 year veteran of public schools – district and charter. Some of you might find his new book useful.
In 1971, when Wayne Jennings served as founding principal of the St. Paul, Mn district St. Paul Open School, a K-12 district option, many of the same arguments were made – including the criticism that this school “took money away from neighborhood schools.” It did.
It also did (as hase Open World, the district grade 6-12 school that evolved from St Paul Open School) dramatically improved the lives of some youngsters with whom traditional schools had not succeeded.
http://centerforschoolchange.org/2018/05/great-summer-read-that-offers-hope/
Educator, author Wayne Jennings offers hope
Joe Nathan
May 23, 2018
Wayne Jennings is a godsend for families seeking a truly personalized, individualized education for their youngsters. As I think back over years of writing for ECM newspapers, I remember parents, students and grandparents who’ve contacted me from Anoka to Farmington, Little Falls to Caledonia, each was looking for something different. Each would find in Jennings’ new book, “School Transformation,” descriptions of real public schools that are delivering on the promise of public education.
For more than 60 years, Jennings has been an educator, winning local, state and national awards for his work. He’s been, among many roles, a public school teacher, founding principal of a K-12 district public school option that the U.S. Department of Education recognized as a “carefully evaluated, proven innovation worthy of national replication,” a Mounds View School Board member, school board president and charter public school founder. He’s also served in the Army and run a construction and a fiberglass canoe company. So he is a practical, experienced man.
Unlike some authors, Jennings is hugely “pro teacher.” When we talked, I asked him what he sees as the central messages of the book. He listed as among the most important themes: “Don’t blame teachers and principals for school shortcomings. They did not invent the system and would likely change it if given the opportunity. We handcuff teachers with rigid established content, textbook coverage and standardized testing.”
Over his 60-year career, Jennings did not just talk about the need to change what he calls “an outmoded system of schooling.” He worked with educators to create new public schools – district and charter – that:
—Began each school year in August with individual student conferences for families. This allowed educators, students and their families to start off in a positive way and to learn more about their hopes and dreams.
—Asked each student at these August conferences, “What are your interests?” Jennings believes helping students answer these questions will “unleash their motivation and potential; … students want to learn about themselves and the world around them.”
—Used the North American continent as a place to learn – not just via movies, books or the internet, but via field trips. His experience convinced him that “students will learn far, far more when we pay attention to how they learn and transform the school environment to ‘world as classroom.’”
—Arranged shadow studies, internships and apprenticeships, that, as he explained, “call upon the extraordinary resources and diverse people in every community to advance student learning.”
Jennings and I met in 1971 when I was one of the first teachers hired at the St. Paul School District’s K-12 Open School, where he was founding principal. The school used each of the ideas listed above. It won various awards, had thousands of visitors and was featured on the “Today Show.”
Unlike many innovative schools that “flame out” after a few years, that school continues as Open World, using many of the same principles that Jennings established more than 40 years ago. That’s in part because those principles make so much sense that families have insisted, despite school board and superintendent changes, that the school stay “open.”
“School Transformation” shows how we can help many more students identify and develop their gifts and talents. It’s available on Amazon. More about Jennings at https://waynejennings.net/
While “School Transformation” is bold, Jennings is one of the most humble, understated people I’ve ever met. I can’t think of a better summer book for families or educators who are seeking hope, support and ideas about what should be done next.
Joe Nathan directs the Center for School Change. Reactions welcome, joe@centerforschoolchange.org or @JoeNathan9249.
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I was working as an elementary school science specialist in Brooklyn when Albert Shankar introduced the idea of charter schools in 1988. Mine was a tough school with many problems in the middle of the crack epidemic, inadequate funding, ineffective leadership, and a demoralized staff. As teachers, we had little voice. Every year, by the time June rolled around I was angry. Nonetheless, I thought of his effort as an inadequate work-around, avoiding a broader struggle to address systemic problems. I also was skeptical of a teachers-always-know-best stance. Some do. Some don’t. At least where I taught, many of my colleagues were prisoners of their own limited experience and for too many, their own biases. It seemed to avoid dealing with big questions of values and equity and in its place settling for an argument of who would be in control, rather than what they stood for.
I’m certain that Shankar did not anticipate the current privatized, anti-union iteration of charter schools. But maybe he opened a door. I was always skeptical of Shankar’s politics. I know it happen several years later, but this was the same union that sat out the David Dinkins – Rudi Giuliani election, which Giuliani won by a small margin.
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Lets privatize Public schools to suck all that extra $$$ cash into some corporate blackhole. Afterall – privatization has done so well with our healthcare system……
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Arthur Camins, thoughts for sharing some of your experience in Brooklyn and your thoughts about what Shankar proposed. Having worked as an urban public school aide, teacher and administrator in Minneapolis and St. Paul, having attended many conventions with other alternative and innovative public school educators since 1970, and having spoken to Shankar a number of times, I agree that Shankar’s suggestions re charter public schools involved who would be in control, rather than other large, important issues.
You and I agree that teachers don’t always know best. Some of very insightful, passionate and talented. The same probably is true of every profession.
But the charter proposal, as we developed it in Minnesota, recognized that some teachers (and administrators) have great insights, talents and skills that all too often are ignored or dismissed by people in control of what happens in schools. As Shankar wrote in the late 1980’s, people who proposed, for example “schools within schools” often “are treated like traitors or outlaws for daring to move outside the lockstep.” If their proposals are accepted, they can “look forward to insecurity, obscurity and outright hostility.”
Sadly, in my work since 1970, I’ve seen this all over the country. So chartering was and still is, one way to help empower educators with great ideas.
You suggest that chartering does not deal with inadequate funding, the crack epidemic and other critical issues. I agree.
Many of the educators who work in charters, like many of the educators who work in alternative schools, agree with you. Alternatives and options are, for us, part of a broader struggle.
Clearly some people who promote chartering avoid the issues that you mention, and other big issues.
But a new national group of progressive educators who work in charters is just starting up to work on a variety of issues. John Merrow, who is frequently cited on this list serve, has been helping. This new group may interest you and others. More info is here: https://www.indiecharters.org/
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Joe,
On this blog, we do not promote charters. More often than not, they are parasites on the public schools, sucking away resources from the neediest kids, while under the protection of plutocrats who want to destroy public schools.
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Diane, I understand your view re chartering. I also understand you promote discussion about what will and won’t help move the nation ahead in many ways, including public education. Given Dr. Cumins comments, and feedback I’ve received from people who read your, I thought some readers of your blog would find the information useful.
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Joe,
Nothing you can say can persuade me that the country will benefit by defunding our public schools while opening large numbers of segregated charter schools, free to choose their students and free to kick out those students they don’t want. Nothing can persuade that it is a step forward to allow big corporate chains like KIPP to take control of neighborhood community schools. Nothing can persuade me that poor black children need to be trained like seals in no-excuses schools. Nothing will persuade me that public schools get stronger if they share their finishing resources and their best students with charters. Nothing will persuade that union-busting is good for teachers and schools. Nothing will persuade me that Betsy DeVos, the Koch brothers, and ALEC are in it “for the kids.”
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Joe,
I am not remotely interested in participating in a group seeking to promote charter schools. No matter what, they suck energy, money and kids away from the central common good institution of democracy, while promoting individual solutions to social problems. Their segregative tendency, if not intention at least for some, is the nail in the coffin. I do not condemn the parents who send their kids or the teachers who work in them but rather the politicians who enable them instead of finding systemic, equitable, democratic solutions.
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Arthur, I did not think you would be interested. The group is composed primarily of parents and students participating in independent charters, along with people who work in and with them. But I was responding to your comments about large issues that confront America.
Could you please share your efforts to eliminate the option of white, wealthy families to chose a district public school that is 90% white?
Are you opposed to magnet district schools that pick and choose among students based on their scores on standardized tests? If you think that’s wrong, as I do, what are you doing?
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Joe,
What’s your view about segregated schools?
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Diane, thanks for your question. I think that public schools should be open to all – no admissions tests, all races, all income levels, all ability levels. Do you agree?
I worked closely with the late Senator Paul Wellstone to provide incentives in the federal magnet program for schools that did not use any form of admissions tests.
I oppose allowing schools to restrict attendance to students who live within a certain neighborhood. That means I oppose allowing “public schools” in affluent, mostly white suburbs to restrict attendance to students whose families can afford to live in them. I’ve worked with legislators to create cross district public school programs that allow inner city youngsters to attend suburban public district & charter schools.
Do you agree?
I’ve also worked with legislators to create programs that provide more state $ to public schools, district & charter, that enroll high percentages of low income students and students who don’t speak English as a first language. Do you agree?
Our children attended racially integrated urban public schools.
Diane, do you support allowing public schools to use admissions tests based on standardized tests (which you’ve often criticized) to determine which students will attend? I do not support permitting public schools to use admissions tests.
Do you support allowing suburban public schools to hire detectives to keep out students from other communities? I think this is terrible. What do you think?
Do you agree that we should permit low income students to attend public schools in affluent suburbs? Do you support providing transportation to help make this possible?
Are you and the Network you helped start working to eliminate the option of affluent mostly white families selecting public schools in suburbs where there are virtually no low income families? Is this form of parent family choice not acceptable to you?
Do you agree that it is highly unlikely that state legislatures will eliminate the option for white and affluent families to select public schools that serve only students whose families can afford to live in those communities?
Given this, I support and have actively worked with public school educators, families and community groups to create new, non-sectarian options – both district & charter that are non-sectarian and open to all.
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I recall that JOHN HECHINGER wrote an article for Bloomberg News about the charter schools in Minneapolis. He said it was as if there never was a Brown decision. So many intensely segregated schools! By choice!
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Diane, you mentioned an article about pre-Brown and Minneapolis/St Paul
Having attended Wichita Kansas public schools in the 1950’s and 60’s, and having done some traveling in other parts of the South, here are a few key differences between the situation in Mpls/St. Paul and the situation “before Brown” in the South.
TODAY Every family and student of color has some public school options – no one is required to go to a particular school based on her/his race. BEFORE BROWN: Students in many communities were assigned to particular school based on their race.
TODAY: Public schools – district and charter – receive extra funds from the state if they enroll high percentages of low income or limited English speaking students. Public schools in Minneapolis St Paul that enroll high percentages of such students are in many cases receiving more state funds that suburban or rural schools that enroll low percentages of low income or limited/non English Speaking students: BEFORE BROWN: In many cases, students enrolling high percentages of low income students received less per pupil.
TODAY: Outstanding educators, sometimes working with parents and sometimes community groups , have been able to create district and charter public school options open to all students, such as Montessori, project based, or “Open” or French, German, Spanish or Chinese language immersion or performing arts, or “girl oriented” or “culturally specific.” use of the “community school/shared facilities” idea is expanding. BEFORE BROWN: Such options were rarely available to low/moderate income families.
TODAY: Some district and some chartered public schools bring together a wide variety of students from various racial and economic backgrounds. BEFORE BROWN: In many states, students from different races were not allowed to attend school together.
Do these differences seem significant? They do many people who live here.
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“Do these differences seem significant? They do many people who live here.”
How do you know that “many” people think these “differences seem significant” and what is the ratio of your alleged many to the total adult population?
I’ve heard Donald Trump claim that “many people” agree with him on everything he’s doing and he thinks but he never submits any reliable evidence that he is right. I submit that to Trump the word “many” refers to any number of people that he thinks agrees with him even if that number is him and one other person somewhere out there in the United States. He just doesn’t know who and where they are.
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Thx for the question, Lloyd
* Since the Mn charter law passed in 1991, it has steadily expanded – under both Republican and Democratic Governors, until Republican and Democratic leadership in the leadership
* A number of Democratic legislators, including former district public school teachers such as Rep David Bly and Rep Linda Slocum, have been strong advocates of public school choice, including chartering, and strong opponents of vouchers.
* Vouchers have repeatedly been proposed in Minnesota, and repeatedly defeated at the legislature. Legislators here see a big difference between offering choices among public, non-sectarian schools open to all (as district & charters are) and vouchers, which allow private and parochial schools to pick and choose among students and to promote a particular religion.
* Various civil rights and advocates for students with special needs have supported chartering and opposed vouchers. Some of Mn’s highest regard charters have been started by families with students having special needs.
* The two statewide teacher unions, MEA and MFT combined some years ago to form Education Minnesota. Ed Mn is very strong, frequently one of the 2-3 groups contributing the most money to state legislative campaigns as well as a lot of people power. So Mn is not a southern state with a weak teacher’s union.
* After battling chartering in the first few years, the state’s union has instead organized some chartered schools where leaders were treating teacher badly. From the very beginning of the law, charter teachers were allowed to form a union. Charter advocates including the Democrats who were the original authors of the legislation supported this and made it a part of the original bill.
Bottom line – liberal/progressive state policymakers here see a big difference between district & charter public schools, open to all, no admissions tests, and vouchers.
Part of this may be because Mn charters enroll a higher % of low income, limited English speaking and students of color than do district schools – and charters have been formed throughout the state, in rural, urban and suburban communities.
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Anyone that drinks the poison Kool-Aid that is wrapped in a package called school choice in public K-12 education is advertising their ignorance and bias and any Democrats that support choice are fakes like the one in my county who calls himself a Democratic but is anti-union and was supported by the Oil Industry when he ran a campaign based on lies and misinformation. While he was taking money from big oil, his flood of flayers landing in mailboxes was claiming his opponent, a former public school teacher, was being funded by the same sources. The fake outspent her. For every flyer she sent out, he and his oligarch supporters sent out twenty. He won that election.
The billionaire oligarchs that JN allegedly worships spent a lot of money and time to take over the GOP and they have also been funding fake Democrats, like the one I mentioned in the first paragraph of this comment, in an attempt to infiltrate that Party too at the local, state, and federal levels.
The use of the concept CHOICE is a masquerade designed to mislead the weak minded and easy to manipulate who want to be manipulated because the fake facts they are fed support their confirmation bias.
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Sorry, forgot to mention one thing. Since the early 1990’s alternative district & charter educators have worked together closely on a number of projects as part of a state association that brings them together: Mn Association of Alternative Programs. These include programs to honor outstanding work by alternative schools students (“aka MAAP Stars) and to work on state legislation. More info about this group here:
http://www.maapmn.org
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Sorry, should have added that I strongly oppose assigning students (especially students from low income families and students of color) to a single public school, and giving them no options.
As you know, that was the practice before Brown – assigning low income students of color to a school, often a school with fewer financial resources – to a school.
Sadly, that remains the situation in some communities.
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Yes, Joe Nathan. And the way to move the country ahead is to do away with the failed experiment of charter schools, which are undemocratic, radically segregated and meant to destroy teachers’ unions. But I guess your ideology trumps all that. We get it that you are fundamentally unable to say these things. I find your history of supporting segregation antithetical to good education, but maybe that’s just me.
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Former Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights Bill Wilson who also was the first African American to be elected to the St. Paul City Council, and I discussed some of these concerns in this column, published by the Minneapolis based Star Tribune (Mn’s largest daily newspaper:
http://www.startribune.com/in-praise-of-strong-charter-schools/260479981/
We wrote, in part,
Having worked to advance civil rights for a combined 90 years, we were disappointed by a recent column criticizing award-winning charter public schools like Higher Ground Academy (“Back to the ’50s with school segregation,” May 16).
Some critics don’t seem to understand the huge difference between forcing people, because of their race, to attend a school, and giving new options to people, especially those from low-income families and families of color.
Our decades in public education — and for one of us, being the first African-American elected to the St. Paul City Council and serving as Minnesota’s human rights commissioner — lead us to praise either district or charter public schools that are serving students well.
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That’s the same story you’ve been telling for years. One guy who says segregation isn’t segregation if it’s done by choice. What you neglect to say is that the state is paying for this segregation.
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Rob, what efforts have you made to eliminate the option of white, wealthy families to choose a district public school that is 90% or more white?
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What does that have to do with your support for segregation?
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It’s worth noting that the school Wilson runs – Higher Ground Academy (100% Black) – is the highest achieving segregated Black majority charter school in the state. But it STILL doesn’t even approach the state averages for test score proficiency. So apparently the best they can hope for is marginally better test scores but still not even close to state averages.
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Rob, many people who post here recognize that the value of multiple measures for judging the quality of schools, beyond test scores.
Here are a few examples beyond test scores of areas in which HGA students do better than state averages
* Graduation rates
* Percentage of seniors who earn free college credits
HGA also has a much higher percentage of teachers of color than the state average.
Fortunately the interest in increasing the diversity of faculty, increasing graduation rates and increasing percentage of students who earn free college credits is growing throughout the state. HGA like some other charters and district schools, is showing how this can be done.
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Is this your defense of school segregation? Some black leaders I know areOK with it, and that goveswbotes cover to praise segregation.
I went to school before the Brown decision. Defenders of segregation also found a black supporter of the status quo to justify it
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That’s the same defense – with that one guy – that Nathan has been giving for years. It’s just a cut and paste job.
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Thanks to Diane and others for the conversation, and for your deep passion and commitment to youngsters and families.
There are millions of low income, American Indian and people of color whose children attend district public schools, and millions (though fewer) who have selected chartered public schools.
Empowering low income families which is what public school choice has done (via district & charters) is quite different, imho, that attacking, even killing people who try to vote or exercise other Constitutionally protected rights.
Now I’m off to provide an invited graduation speech at a public chartered school where predominantly more than 80% of the students come from low income families. They are predominantly but not East African parents who can’t afford exclusive private schools, and can’t afford to live in exclusive suburbs, and in some cases, tried but were not satisfied with local district schools. Fortunately, they have options.
Hope each of you have a good day and help more students succeed.
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