Ever notice how many times Reformers push for a state takeover of majority black and brown districts? Ever notice that the state takeover is the prelude to privatizing the public schools, on the presumption that people of color can’t be trusted to run the schools in their district? Better bring in the smart white entrepreneurs who run charter chains and think they know what kind of discipline children of color need.
Domingo Morel, a political scientist at Rutgers University, has written a book about Takeovers and examined the racial dynamics behind them.
The article and interview are by Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum.
“In a new book, “Takeover,” Rutgers political scientist Domingo Morel concludes that the prevailing logic for takeovers is indeed tainted with racism. That’s based on an examination of data from every school district taken over by a state over a 30-plus year period, and case studies of the takeovers of Newark, New Jersey and Central Falls, Rhode Island.
“Predominantly black school districts are more likely to be taken over, Morel documents, and those takeovers are more likely to fully remove the elected school board. He also finds that cities with a greater share of black city council members are more likely to face takeovers, with state leaders arguing they must wrest control of chaotic local politics.”
A chart from Morel’s work shows that in the rare event that a majority white district is taken over by the state, 70% keep their elected school board.
In a majority Latin district, 46% keep their elected board.
But when a majority black district is taken over, only 24% retain their elected school board.
I think people don’t pay enough attention to how political education is — that education in the country is a political project. I think that’s the most important thing that I think we need to understand. And so if education is a political project, when we think about reforms, we need to think about them as political objectives as well. And so if we’re going to take over a school district, it just doesn’t seem consistent with what the literature says about improving schools that you just remove a community from the entire decision-making process. Because what the literature tells us in education is — and it’s just very intuitive — if you look at school districts across the country who are doing well, everybody has a stake in the school district.
Source: Takeover, by Domingo Morel. Graphic: Sam Park
But then we get still the expansion of takeovers. It suggests that there’s something else there. And this is where I come in and say that we need to understand historically role that education has played in communities and what type of power it gives a community.
If we look at education as a political problem and we see how important the schools are to communities’ political empowerment, then we can start to see how how takeovers make sense for two major reasons: Conservatives had consolidated within the Republican Party by the 1970s and blacks became an important part of the Democratic coalition by the 1970s. Moreover, the schools served as the political foundation for black political empowerment. This provided the context for increasing political tension between increasingly conservative state governments and cities. The schools were a major part of this political struggle.
Second, cities began to win court cases to secure more school funding from state governments, which led to further tensions.
[Barnum asks]: Reed Hastings, the Netflix founder, charter school advocate, and education reform funder, has said that “the school board model works reasonably well in suburban districts” but that the politically ambitious “use the school board as a stepping stone to run for higher office” in cities. And I take your argument to be, yes it’s true that the school board can be a stepping stone, but that has proven crucial for the political empowerment of communities of color. Can you speak to that?
“Let’s think about that comment and put it in perspective. So what he’s saying is democracy works for certain communities but it can’t work for others. Yes, you have ambitious people, but you also have people who are just interested being school board members. But even if you have ambitious people who want to be city council people, mayors, and so forth, why is that a justification for saying that school boards are not important?
“And so the message that sends is that democracy is worth fighting for and worth having in certain places and not in others because it may seem like it’s more messy in big cities and urban areas. And I say it “may seem” like that because I don’t think there’s any evidence that you find more corruption or people are not as prepared to be school board members in urban localities compared to suburban or rural — there’s just no research to support that…”
[Barnum asks:] Let’s talk about the research on academic gains from state takeovers. I know that’s not the focus of your book, but advocates for state takeovers could point to studies of New Orleans and in Newark, after three years, to say look, it has been successful in boosting test scores in some contexts.
“My response to this is multi-level. The first is that it’s contested to what degree these academic scores actually improved. But I spend very little time on this because as a political scientist, I’m interested in the politics of this mostly. What I will say is, OK, so let’s just agree that test scores have improved. What has been the cost of test scores’ improvement in New Orleans for example?
“In New Orleans, 25 percent of the black teachers lose their jobs. Seven thousand people lose their jobs. The school board was removed from the political process. The school governance was based on a two-tier level: one is the state-created board made up of people that are not from New Orleans and the second is actual charter school governing bodies, 60 percent of which have white members although 67 percent of the community is African-American. And so all of that is the price that the city of New Orleans — that black New Orleans — has to pay for contested improved test scores.”
This is an important article and book.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I want to read this book. Thanks for the connection to the review. Of course it has to get in line. I recently learned the Sir Isaac Newton questioned the Trinity. Can’t wait to read more about that.
The point is that I appreciate the degree to which this web site and the hard work to maintain it keeps me up on political discussion while I try to keep expanding what I know about history.
All that said, I wonder if the racism that is perceived today is complicated with a classism that is evidence of a deepening divide over social class. We do not perceive the social class aspect as much because we still accept the assumption of a classless society in our America. But enclaves of wealthy suburban dwellers are beginning to hold impoverished areas in contempt in complex political ways. It used to be regional and sectional. I cannot tell you how many times I have been held in contempt for my rather southern accent only to be accepted after a few high sounding phrases laced liberally with big words. Now pseudophilanthropy is invading society with a new kindness that masks classism in phrases like “educational failure is the new civil rights issue of our time.”
I am not suggesting that racism is not a part of the classism, indeed it is a huge part of it, but the willing practitioners of the new federalist approach to education denies poor people the right of being served by people who come from their social ranks, from being taught, policed, and otherwise served by people like them. True, poverty breeds ideas that are detrimental to impoverished areas, but people need to see identifiable members of their own community behaving as good role models for that community. Increasingly, the impoverished areas are served by people who are not a part of the community.
It is all about community.
The socio-political rationale for state takeovers is an important consideration that needs to be examined. While there is little evidence that supports the merits of state takeovers, many states are taking over districts with high minority populations. Often this loss of local control occurs in communities of color. It is a continuation of the separate and unequal treatment of minorities in this country. Successful school districts are generally those with high levels of community engagement. In state takeovers and privatization, the local communities are bypassed, and the state makes educational decisions often resulting in widespread privatization. Testing is used to rank and sort school districts often along economic and color lines.
Morel sees the federal government as a potential guardian of urban public education. If the federal government were to function to support civil rights and social justice, we would need to completely overhaul the DOE which is currently in the hands of radical right wing conservatives. We are nowhere near these lofty goals; nor were we ever near these lofty goals under the Obama administration.
The Netflix guru and Stanford dropout says: “School districts are monopolies.” I am not certain where that logic goes, other than making every public good a profit center and demolishing every level of governance except that of grabbed by corporations, entrepeneurs, and anarchists.
Good GAWD…ANOTHER SPIN. Makes me ill.
“I think people don’t pay enough attention to how political education is — that education in the country is a political project. I think that’s the most important thing that I think we need to understand.” YES. And add to this the fact that few citizens understand how much Big Money has been pouring into school board races across the country…
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider featured Domingo Morel in the Have You Heard podcast #40. Worth a listen!
https://t.co/eBR8rNxZUr
It is only anecdotal, but before the takeover, Detroit’s Board of Education Chair was a man who could not read and eventually resigned for sexually harassing the Superintendent. This did a lot to convince people that the state should step in.
Thanks to NCLB and its progeny RTTT and ESSA, the soft bigotry of low expectations is being replaced by the hard bigotry of racism.
This has been going on for decades.. Why are there charters and Betsy because if yoru not educated what type of life do you have. I have written about this and continually asked why these take overs weren’t happening in the rich zip codes. Where are the union leaders speaking out, they let this happen and frankly not till the parents stop believing in the adult racism that is being fed down their throats will it ever change. White people and blogs like this never take a stand when it was needed but supported politicians who wanted to provide phony mayors control that destroys the lives of minorities and children.
We live in a very sick world. all about money, greed.