Andrea Gabor is the author of the new book, “After the Education Wars,” a penetrating account of the mistakes of the reform movement.
She writes here about the wrong turns taken by charter enthusiasts. How did a movement intended to unleash grassroots energy turn into an industry dominated by national corporate chains?
“When Albert Shanker, the legendary teachers’ union leader, promoted the idea of charter schools 30 years ago, he was hoping to create flexibility from the constraints of education bureaucracies and union contracts so teachers and communities could experiment and innovate.
“In the years since the first charter-school law was passed in Minnesota, in 1991, the charter movement has strayed far from Shanker’s original vision. Instead of community-based, educator-driven innovation, charters have grown into an industry dominated by like-minded management organizations that sometimes control hundreds of schools — some nationwide.
“These charter organizations have proliferated with the help of deep-pocketed philanthropists and businesspeople who have sought to transform the public-education system so that both charters and traditional public schools operate like companies competing in an economic market. Schools survive by producing the greatest gains, usually measured by test scores. The rest lose students as families choose the highest-performing schools or have their charters revoked by state-designated organizations that authorize charters.
“Now the charter industry is reaching an inflection point. Business backers are pushing to expand charter schools at an unprecedented rate, doubling down on the idea that free markets are the best approach to improving K-12 education. At the same time, critics — some from within the charter movement — are shining a spotlight on the industry’s failures and distortions…
“That faith in markets isn’t supported by the evidence, however. Studies show that, on average, charter schools and traditional public schools produce similar results. But freedom from regulation is associated not with success but with especially high failure rates; charter-school performance tends to be weakest in states with the laxest rules for ensuring education quality.
“Paradoxically, deregulation has also tended to narrow choices rather than expand them. New Orleans, for example, which has turned most of its public schools over to charter organizations, is dominated by charter-school oligopolies that enforce uniform curriculum and disciplinary standards. Instead of fostering creative pedagogy, the charter industry has focused on producing high test scores, the key measure by which philanthropists determine which charter organizations to finance. Teachers are typically required to teach canned curricula and rarely last more than a few years, and students are often subjected to one-size-fits-all discipline policies…
“Education policies should protect children and their schools from the brutal realities of the market while leaving room for the kind of teacher- and community-led experimentation that the charter movement was originally meant to foster.”
Gabor is the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York. This article appeared at Bloomberg.com. Michael Bloomberg is a major supporter of charter schools nationally.
KIPP did not like Gabor’s article. But KIPP Is wrong, and Gabor is right. The original idea of charters was that each would be unique, and they would be teacher-led to try out new ideas. Neither Shanker nor the other charter originator Ray Budde ever imagined corporate charter chains with cookie-cutter “no excuses” policies. KIPP is the Walmart of charter schools, which may explain why the rightwing, anti-union Walton Family Foundation showers millions on them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What an extraordinarily concise overview this article is! I can build talking points for sound arguments around every sentence. For example, the opening says in a much more succinct way a point I try to wedge into every one of the discussions I have about charters—which, admittedly and sadly, are few and far between. I always try to get back to a “this is what Al Shanker’s original idea was and this is where we are” kind of argument. I think, just like we look to the words and discussions of the framers from which to base our constitutional views, we who care about education should always ground our arguments about charters in Shanker’s vision…just like a modern Democrat should be able trace back his or her thinking to Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms.
Apropos, I apologize for the sudden stream of consciousness, this brings to mind a wonderful addendum to the Four Freedoms that Duke Ellington enunciated in, of all places, a dinner event in his honor in Richard Nixon’s White House. It seems to me to connect everything described in Gabor’s article. As author John Edward Hasse documents:
Ellington took the microphone and said, “I am reminded of the four freedoms Billy Strayhorn created for our sacred concerts—the four major moral freedoms by which he lived, and I use those four major moral freedoms by which Strayhorn lived as a measure of what we ourselves should live up to.” Ellington described those freedoms as: “freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from all self-pity (even throughout all the pain and bad news); freedom from fear of possibly doing something that might help another more than it might help himself; and freedom from the kind of pride that could make a man feel he was better than his brother or neighbor.”
I think Shanker would have liked that if he did know about it already. Thanks again for the article. Just excellent!
“Paradoxically, deregulation has also tended to narrow choices rather than expand them.”
That’s not really a paradox at all – it’s the intended outcome. The reason for regulations is to prevent mega-powerful companies (think oil companies before anti-trust laws) from running smaller mom-and-pop companies and start-up companies into the ground through unfair advantages. Get rid of the regulations and, voila!, monopolies can flourish again. By definition, there is no choice with monopolies.
The irony is that the supporters of “choice” have often called public schools a “monopoly.” Rather public schools are the common schools for all students. They are democratically operated and designed to serve all groups of students. In my opinion they are uniquely able to bring disparate groups together to promote greater understanding among different segments of our people. Just look at the narrow mindset of so many of the prep school grads that inhabit Trump’s deplorable cabinet. I accept that many prep school graduates are open minded. However, private prep schools are greenhouses that allow elitism to flourish. It is the elites that want to dismantle our public schools.
What you’re saying, but just to sharpen pencil: history shows unregulated capitalism leads inevitably to elitism: corporate monopoly [as you note, by definition eliminating consumer choice], & concentration of natl resources/ assets into the hands of a few, who are then able to shape govtl policy so as to maintain their hegemony, subjugating the masses to long hrs @ bare-sustenance wages.
In the late-19th/20thC, there was an end-game in play, because mfrs were dependent on natl laborforce, so were vulnerable to workforce organization, which could be leveraged for higher pay, which enforced sharing profits to sustain wkg & middle classes & their public goods.
Today, lightly-regulated multinationals are allowed to merely touch base here: tho benefiting from natl banking/ finance/ insurance industries, regulations tie them only nominally to the nation; they can find both workers and consumers elsewhere. The rest of us are either among banking/ finance/ insurance elite & their hangers-on [lawyers & govt workers]– or work the few non-automated jobs tied to landed population [ag & a few other industries; RE, health]– or service the landed elite w/ education, food & entertainment.
Deregulated ed is just a piece of the picture – which is no public goods for poor, wkg or middle classes, & the uppers can buy what they need [cheaply].
BINGO. And nothing paradoxical about massive education money ending up just where privatizer strategists push it — into personal profit accounts.
It was always incoherent, the ed reform insistence that it was about “choice” while also being about “scaling up” and taking over everything in their path.
“Today, having just entered our fourth year working with schools nationwide, the Summit Learning Program now partners with more than 380 schools, nearly 3,800 educators, and more than 72,000 students. These schools are in urban, suburban, and rural areas, and are district, charter, and private.
We have done what so few school networks have ever accomplished — we have codified our educational approach and the resources and tools needed to implement and tailor it, and shared that approach with educators and communities in 38 states and the District of Columbia.
As we look to the future, we are excited to continue expanding our impact within the broader public school system by sharing the Summit Learning Program with more schools and refining the Program to best meet the needs of all students. To do this, and with our support, a new nonprofit organization will independently lead and operate the Summit Learning Program beginning in the 2019-2020 school year.”
They want every school to look exactly like a Summit Charter School, while also insisting that it’s about “innovation” and “personalization”
The CEO of Summit says she has “codified” their educational approach. They WANT it to look identical everywhere, because they think the people who run public schools are dummies and a “codified” approach is dummy-proof.
They didn’t invent this. It came DIRECTLY our of “quality” management in engineering and manufacturing. It’s 50 years old. They simply took that 1980’s and 1990’s management philosophy and pasted it over “education”.
“The CEO of Summit says she has “codified” their educational approach. They WANT it to look identical everywhere, because they think the people who run public schools are dummies and a “codified” approach is dummy-proof.”
I think it has nothing to do w/judgments about public-school people [or ed, at all] – but yes it reflects mfg Q/A- it’s just about scaling up a product: monitoring it for same specs that garnered “x” ROI to investors when it was a smaller op.
Just to offer a bit of caution…
Q/A generally equates to inspection.
On the other hand, Deming: “Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.”
An example of “inspection on a mass basis?” Standardized testing.
“… by building quality into the product?” Instead, Deming: “Our schools must preserve and nurture the yearning for learning that everyone is born with.”
So, eliminate dependence on standardized testing to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for standardized testing on a mass basis by improving our public education systems to preserve and nature the yearning for learning that everyone is born with.
The point? Children come with quality “built in.” We just have to stop destroying it.
Yes, of course, it is not an exact simile (& specious to the core). Mfg builds quality into specs, quality circles improve on specs thro worker-level feedback; Q/A is periodic spot-checking– sampling. Ed-reform outfits like Summit sell credibility/ measurability via phony reference to mfg procedures– in fact there is no results-feedback loop, & “Q/A” is transformed into testing every kid on everything constantly [a far cry from sampling; this approach would slow every assembly line to the point where it could get little product to market]. The whole thing is ludicrous in any event: a marketing invention to persuade investors that this privatized ed enterprise somehow resembles widget-production & thus has measurable results [measured in fact by methods that do not reflect quality of ed provided/ achieved] & thus predictable ROI.
I laugh when Betsy DeVos says public schools are run like “factories”.
Ed reformers are the people who set everything up like a business. What does she think “codifying” approaches and “scaling up” means? Where does she think it came from?
Eva Moskowitz is running a franchise. That’s what she’s doing. She plugs the exact same scheme into every school so it will be uniform and she can plug any employee in anywhere – that’s how she’s able to run with so much turnover. She standardized the training. Those teachers are interchangeable and she’s in a big enough urban market that she has an endless supply of young teachers to burn out and throw away.
Moskowitz didn’t invent that management philosophy. It’s 100 years old.
Standardization is the backbone of industry, but students are not widgets or the same raw material to be molded into shape. Any professional teacher will tell you that “one size fits all” can only go so far. Effective teachers know how to adapt to meet student needs. Any school that throws out or counsels out a large percentage of its students should not be considered a “success.” We should count the selective nature of charters as an unscalable failure.
Let’s be clear. The original idea of having public schools outside the control of local districts was presented in 1968, 20 years before Shanker spoke about charters. It was presented and advocated in the Harvard Ed Review by Dr. Kenneth Clark.
Clark was co-author of the famous “doll test” that the Supreme Court used to help justify its Brown V. Board decision. By 1968, he was so frustrated with local boards that he advocated public schools created by various groups, operating outside the control of local boards.
Shanker knew about District 4 in NYC (where he had been a union leader). There teachers were given opportunities to create new schools and schools within schools.
The same opportunity was available in Boston, Chicago, St.Paul, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Los Angeles and a number of other cities.
The facts are that the majority of chartered public schools in the US are NOT run by for-profit groups. The majority of charters were started by groups of educators, parent and community groups.
The for profit groups vary – and some have been greedy and corrupt.
(Same is true of some individuals who started an individual charter). Sadly, greed and corruption are found in district schools too (as any historian of the NYC schools knows, though such greed and corruption has been displayed in districts throughout the US)
This is not to excuse greed, incompetence and corruption in chartering, any more than it’s an excuse for greed, incompetence or corruption in district schools.
“The for profit groups vary – and some have been greedy and corrupt.”
Joe, have you lost the ability to hear yourself? So some for-profit groups are not greedy and corrupt??? How can profiting off of education every not be greedy and corrupt?
Anyway, “non-profit” and “for-profit” is pretty much a distinction without a difference. As Diane and others have shown many times, there are ample ways to profit off a non-profit.
The bottom line is that profits are a way to funnel public money into private hands under private control by intentionally conflating “publicly funded” with “publicly run”. Charters are no more “public” than Northrup Grumman.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
When it comes to what passes for “Choice” these days, parents, teachers, and communities absolutely do not have a seat at the table where what is going to be made available to choose from is decided upon. “Choice” today is no different than Henry Fords snarky idea of choice when he was asked about it: “They can have their Model T’s painted any color they like just so long as it’s black.”
….”faith in markets isn’t supported by the evidence, however. Studies show that, on average, charter schools and traditional public schools produce similar results.”
On the matter of evidence and a related issue, public versus private schools. See this
Does Attendance in Private Schools Predict Student Outcomes at Age 15? Evidence From a Longitudinal Study, Robert C. Pianta, Arya Ansari,
July 9, 2018 Educational Researcher https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X18785632
Abstract
By tracking longitudinally a sample of American children (n = 1,097), this study examined the extent to which enrollment in private schools between kindergarten and ninth grade was related to students’ academic, social, psychological, and attainment outcomes at age 15. Results from this investigation revealed that in unadjusted models, children with a history of enrollment in private schools performed better on nearly all outcomes assessed in adolescence.
However, by simply controlling for the sociodemographic characteristics that selected children and families into these schools, all of the advantages of private school education were eliminated. There was also no evidence to suggest that low-income children or children enrolled in urban schools benefited more from private school enrollment.
Another study shows there is no inherent advantage of private over public schools if you pay attention to how students are selected for private schools and the importance of family wealth in those selections. This study had data well beyond test scores in math and ELA .
While there may not be an inherent value in private education currently, we may see that change in the future as public schools decline due to lack of support and finances. The private options for the working class and poor will offer less and less. Most of the elites could care less as they send their children to private schools. Privatization will hurt the poor and working class.
If private schools are so terrible, and all public schools are fantastic, then why do so many families scrimp and save, and place their children in private schools, and eschew the wonderful “free” public schools?
And why do wealthy families just avoid “free” public schools, and enroll their children in fancy private schools?
Are these people just stupid? And why do over one million families in the USA, home-school their children? One spouse has to forfeit an income, and stay home teaching the child(ren). Are home-schoolers ignorant and stupid as well?
How will giving more choices to poor/working class families hurt them? How will assisting families who are sacrificing to send their children to non-public schools, hurt them?
Charles,
I have answered these questions hundreds of times. Rich people pay up to $50,000 a year to send their children to schools where class sizes are 10-12 students. Vouchers are about $5,000 and will enable students to attend substandard schools where teachers may not be certified, may not be college graduates, where racism is taught, and where the Bible is the textbook. Those are very bad choices, for the children and our society.
Where did you come up with the amount of $5000 for a school voucher. The amounts provided by the several states (which currently have school choice programs), varies from state to state. See
http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/voucher-law-comparison.aspx
And why do you assert that parents will choose to apply their vouchers at “substandard” schools. What standard are you using? Do you automatically assume, that all parents who choose to accept a voucher, will pull their children out of good public schools, and place them into poor-quality non-public schools? I find this assumption to be strange.
Do you automatically claim, that parents will place their children into schools where the teachers have not graduated college? Why would they do that?
And why would parents place their children into schools, where racism is taught, and the Holy Bible is the textbook (I assume you mean the only textbook)?
Public schools originally taught from the Holy Bible. During the waves of immigration from predominately Roman Catholic countries, the public schools were used to “Protestantize” the immigrant children. see
https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/twelve-year-sentence-historical-origins-compulsory-schooling
Your assertions make claims, with which I find somewhat disturbing, and are not borne out by the current choices which are being made by parents, in states which offer school choice.
Do you think that the current public school establishments, and the teacher’s unions are more qualified to make the educational choices for this nation’s children, than parents?
“Liberals do not care what you do, as long as it is mandatory”- Author unknown.
Put it another way, Charles. Name a voucher program that provides a scholarship large enough for a student to attend an excellent private school. Read the Huffington Post survey of thousands of voucher programs that found the largest number of them to be fundamentalist Christian schools that hire uncertified teachers and that teach racism, homophobia, sexism, and hatred.
Here is one: The parents of Endrew F. in Douglas County COLO, receive a voucher that is adequate to meet the costs at the private school, that provides the necessary academic instruction to their special-needs child.
The amounts proffered by the various voucher/choice programs in the several states, vary, of course. The amounts currently provided by most states, do not meet the costs of a toney, high-priced prep school.
Nevertheless, the amounts offered by many of the programs are adequate to meet ( at least partially) the costs of the schools chosen by the families who choose to participate in the programs.
No one is advocating that school vouchers be proffered in the exorbitant amounts charged by the exclusive prep schools. BUT- Our nation still provides BEOGs to students, even though these amounts are not adequate to meet the costs of schools like Middlebury (VT), or the Ivy League.
Your analogy is like saying that poor people should not get food stamps (SNAP), because the amounts are not adequate to purchase filet mignon and caviar, and champagne.
Charles, that is nonsense, and you know it. The parents in the DougCo case asked the media not to make their case about vouchers for all.
Find a state where vouchers are enough to enroll a child in an elite private school.
Why don’t you cite the states where vouchers are less than $5,000?
Voucher proponents regularly say that vouchers will ensure that poor kids have same choices as the rich. You just admitted they lie.
The state of Ohio, offers school vouchers in the following amounts:
Q Cleveland and EdChoice Programs:
Grades K-8: $4,250
Grades 9-12: $5,000
Autism and Special Needs Programs: $20,000 END Q
(Source:NCSL)
The voucher amounts vary from state to state. And in the case of Ohio (and Colo, and other states), the voucher amount increases substantially for special-needs children, like autistic children.
The parents of Endrew F. stated that they did not want their specific case to be used to promote vouchers. I stipulate this.
And there is no current state voucher program, that offers an amount anywhere close to meeting the costs of an exclusive prep school like Philips Exeter or Choate. So what? This is a straw man argument. I stipulate this as well.
Some voucher proponents state (accurately) that giving parents more control over the expenditures of their education dollars, will give parents similar choices to the choices that wealthy people have. This is a semantic difference. No serious person believes that a school voucher program is going to meet the costs of an exclusive prep school. No serious person believes that a BEOG will meet the costs of an Ivy League college.
Charles,
Voucher promoters have said for years that vouchers will give poor children “the same choices” as rich children. A voucher of $5,000 does not give poor children the same choices as rich children or even middle-class children. It gives them the chance to attend a religious school with mostly uncertified teachers and a racist curriculum where they will learn that the Bible is the source of science.
I am in agreement. Anyone who claims that a voucher worth $5k will enable a family to pay tuition and costs at a school that charges more than $5k, is wrong. Someone needs to loan them a calculator.
No serious person is asserting that school choice/vouchers will extend to lower-income families, the same measure of choice that wealthy families enjoy. No one. Can we just drop this?
Nevertheless, I maintain that ending the public-school monopoly, and offering families more discretion and choices in the educational spending for their children, will extend a measure of choice to lower income families.
Choice is a hoax. Schools choose, not families.
And I have heard the claim many, many times that vouchers will give poor families the same choice as rich families. It is a lie.
Vouchers will allow kids with disabilities to enroll in schools where they have no rights.
Vouchers allow kids to enroll in religious schools that use the Bible as a science textbook.
From the efficiency minded business perspective, the charters ARE succeeding by the only metric that counts in the corporate world: they are making money AND they are operating efficiently in the sense that they are delivering the the same results for a lower cost. Given that reality, why would a taxpayer protest against privatization? After all, if their taxes remain stable and the results stay the same why would they complain? . Haven’t they been paying more for the same results for decades?
Moreover, why would any free marketeer be concerned if the parents of children raised in impoverished neighborhoods don’t have the same choice of schools as the parents of children raised in affluence? The answer is they aren’t concerned at all! The privatizers realize that too many parents in affluent communities believe that parents in impoverished communities have the same opportunities as they do. But that is clearly NOT the case. Do the parents of children raised in impoverished neighborhoods have the same choice of supermarkets as the parents of children raised in affluence? Do they have the same choice of gas stations? Of department stores? Of stores that sell clothing? And… is the unregulated “market” responding to this inequality?
The market IS working in the privatization of public schools… and the ultimate result will be the creation— or more accurately— the reinforcement of “schooling deserts” that mirror the “food deserts” that currently exist in impoverished neighborhoods. In the meantime, the privateers will not have to worry about an uprising from the upper middle class parents who are safely ensconced in their well-heeled public schools governed by elected school boards… nor will they have to worry about an uprising from politicians as long as they get the same results without increasing taxes.
As long as the argument is about getting the most possible from as little taxation as possible, the privatizers will prevail. Instead of supporting candidates who want to reinvent government to resemble business we should look to candidates who want to restore the equal opportunities for all, even if it means spending more money and having more government regulation.
However, the free market always seeks more, more, more! In other words if we have a political system imposed by the 1%, how long will it take for them to push more privatization in middle class schools? We have already seen how Gates marched in and got the feds and states to adopt his Common Core and VAM. He is quietly buying the right people to get districts to adopt some version of “personalized learning.” Money buys access, and markets always seek to expand.
After posing the above comment, I read this in Evonomics:
http://evonomics.com/how-to-destroy-neoliberalism-kill-homo-economicus/?utm_source=newsletter_campaign=organic
I believe that I had commented on an earlier post that, while in New Orleans, I saw a local news segment whereby N.O. parents (& a rather large group of them) were protesting this very situation in N.O., loudly declaring, “We have NO school ‘choice,'” one parent explaining to the reporter just what had been done to their school system.
(Thanks, Paul Vallas!)