Thanks to Los Angeles blogger Sara Roos for calling my attention to this very interesting article by journalist Rachel Cohen. We have had an extended exchange about the article.
Cohen says that the typical origin story of charter schools credits the idea to AFT President Al Shanker. She shows that the idea was percolating long before Shanker began promoting charters in 1988. The idea of public-private partnerships was in the air in the late 1980s and was the underpinning of what was called Third Way politics, as practiced by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
Cohen does an excellent job of describing the milieu in which the charter idea emerged. Shanker was not its originator but he was an important publicist for the idea. Without his support, charters might never have achieved national attention.
Right-wingers today, as Cohen notes, like to credit paternity of charters to Shanker, which is amusing since 90% of charters are non-union. Charter advocates who think of themselves as progressive also cling to Shanker as their forebear, but can’t explain why the charter sector is both non-union and highly segregated.
Cohen fails to mention that Shanker renounced charters in 1993, five years after embracing them, because he realized that his idea had been sabotaged and had turned into a tool with which to bust unions and to privatize public schools. In one of the paid advertisements that he published every Sunday in the New York Times, he wrote that charters were no different from vouchers. And he denounced them.
Strangely, neither the right-wingers nor the progressive charter fans ever acknowledge that Shanker denounced what was allegedly his big idea.
It is important to recall what Shanker had in mind when he supported charters.
1. He saw them as schools-within-schools, not as independent schools operating with their own school board, nor as corporate chains replacing public schools.
2. He saw them as teacher-run schools.
3. He saw them recruiting the weakest and most alienated students, the ones who had dropped out or were at risk of dropping out.
4. He said they should not be authorized without the support of the teachers in the school where they would operate.
5. He said they should not be authorized without the permission of the local school board.
6. He expected that the teachers in the charter school, operating as a school-within-a-school, would be members of the same union as the other teachers in the building.
7. He believed that the charter should run for five years, which would allow it to try out new ideas and share them with the rest of the school.
8. He did not envision the charter school as a permanent entity, but as a five-year or longer experiment designed to allow innovation and collaboration.
9. He did not envision charters run by non-educators, entrepreneurs, corporations, and grifters.
10. He did not envision corporate charter chains.
11. He did not envision a charter industry that is 90% non-union, more segregated than district public schools, and inclined to cherrypick the most motivated students.
When he saw businesses moving into the public school sector, he realized his own ideas had been destroyed by greed.
What he thought initially was a progressive idea was captured by the Waltons, the DeVos family and others on the right who wanted to destroy public schools and unions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For me, the way “progressive” ed reformers could show they aren’t anti-public school is for them to support some public schools. That would go further than 20,000 paid ed reform advocates insisting they aren’t anti-public school.
Except they never do. Nothing they propose or advocate for actually offers any benefit to any student in public schools.
Just look at the quotes from nationally recognized ed reformers in Cohen’s article. Show me something (anything) any of them have ever done for a public school. Any public school- strong, weak, poor or minority students, ANY school. Show me the work an ed reformer did that benefited any student in any public school.
The truth is there are two policy pillars of ed reform- “choice” (1st) and “accountability” (2nd). What this means as a practical matter for public school students and families is we get standardized tests, and that’s ALL we get. The “movement” is 100% negative for us.
It’s such an echo chamber they don’t even NOTICE that they offer nothing to families or students in public schools. They don’t even see us as a constituency or as people they might want to appeal to. 90% of the time public schools aren’t even mentioned in ed reform plans. It’s as if public school students and families don’t exist, which is astonishing, given that we’re talking about 85% to 90% of students.
Bernie Sanders offered the most ambitious and comprehensive public education plan I have seen in my lifetime. All ed reformers heard was “charter schools”. 50 million public school students would be impacted by Sander’s plan, but none of that mattered- what mattered to ed reform were charter schools, and ONLY charter schools.
It’s an echo chamber. They see schools and students exclusively thru the lens of the charter and private schools they prefer. That’s why we don’t see any advocacy or positive ideas for public school students out of ed reform. Public school students don’t exist in their world.
Vocational schools (CTE schools) are fashionable right now in ed reform. There are thousands of existing vocational high schools that have been operating for 75 years all across the midwest. I went to one, and so did my middle son.
Rather than support these schools, schools that have quietly operated with no advocacy or real support from anyone in government or elite circles for 75 years, schools that have turned out hundreds of thousands of qualified skilled trades, they are “inventing” CTE schools.
They would literally rather replicate an entire existing system than support an existing public system. The opinion in ed reform must be that the people who have done this work successfully for 75 years are all stupid and need to be replaced with people who just discovered skilled trades in the last election cycle . The arrogance is just amazing. It’s breathtaking. They have convinced themselves they invented vocational schools and not only that, that they can (naturally!) do a better job than the huge network of schools that already exist. It would be too simple to just start supporting vocational schools, right? That’s too mundane for the Best and Brightest. They have to invent a whole new system.
Vocational schools are extraordinarily valuable and important. If billionaires want to do something REALLY worthwhile, they can make bequests to provide state-of-the-art facilities to these schools. A great auto body and repair shop, barber shop and hair salon, anatomy lab, welding shop, etc., in a vocational school is an extraordinarily wise investment, one that will change thousands of lives for the better.
I concur with Cohen’s timeline of events. Shanker’s charter origin story is false in my opinion. I have a clear memory of this time at least in New York. It was earlier than the late ’80s that the concept of schools as “laboratories of innovation” free from bureaucracy was discussed. I also remember the union at that time felt this was a bad idea, and its plan was to hold them off. Of course, I had no idea who the “them” were at the time. This was some time between ’83 and ’85, and I was a building rep at the time. I also have a vivid ” where were you when JFK or MLK were shot” memory of our chief building rep announcing that we would be cooperating with the concept of charters at our back to school meeting in the late ’80s. I remember having a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach upon hearing this news. That was when Shanker capitulated to neoliberals, and it has been down hill ever since.
I met Al Shanker once and I hate seeing his legacy sullied by the eduformers. Thank you for sharing this summary of what he actually believed.
Let us look at Shanker’s role as Union Leader when we view his early support for the concept of what Sanders mistakenly called Public school Charters, probably thinking along the lines of Shanker in 88.
At the time Unions were taking a beating Nation wide. Public and Private sector Unions were being portrayed as an impediment to efficiency whose only concern was that of their members. And as Unions shrunk as a percentage of the workforce, those concerns were portrayed as to the exclusion of every one else.
Shanker was not alone in his attempts to change that image. Many Union leaders were suckered into the same strategy. The model is known as “Value on Display”. Our members are better trained and more productive than the less skilled work force we compete with. Shanker’s Charter proposal seen in that light can be seen as an effort to demonstrate that Teachers Unions were more than willing to be bold and innovative when it came to working with mostly endangered inner city youth. Whose problems had little to do with the School system and everything to do with economic inequality.
The real motives of the privateers and the Union busters was never to increase productivity of a well paid well trained workforce; but to eliminate the Unions that secured those benefits. Perhaps Shanker saw that early on. Other sectors of the Union Movement are still trying that playbook as their market share shrinks year after year. It is a lazy strategy that forces one to believe that the worker is the problem and if he changed his ways all would be well. But it is easier than a confrontational strategy that pits workers against employers on the picket line.
In NY we had a lot of labor strife among teachers from the mid ’70s into the mid ’80s. When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in ’81, I think a few superintendents felt emboldened, but others felt they could not take their school districts down that road. They could not replace a whole staff of teachers so they tended to negotiate in earnest. Teachers started to make some gains in salary and benefits, at least in NY.
The salary gains were in the suburbs of NYC as the NYC teachers were seeing large tier based declines. There is no amount that is too much when my real estate value is tied to the performance of my district. Of course the Real estate value determines the performance of my District. As home prices escalated on Long Island and in Westchester Co., starting in the mid 80s. Teachers salaries escalated with them. And what was the first question a home buyer asked.
“What district is this house in”
The last teacher strike in NYC that I remember was 1966 (or 67) the City Financial crisis which had little to do with the operating budget and everything to do with the City becoming the landlord of last resort for the burning Boroughs, put an end to unions asking for large increases in NYC. They may not have caused the crisis but they paid for it. But Diane would know the inside scoop on that story.
Why were these ideas positioned as “schools within schools” rather than special programs designed by teachers and with the formal approval of colleagues and school administrators?
A charter is a contract…and that should not be necessary to try out ideas, nor need it interfere with other contracts, such as those with unions—unless the unions made a stink.
Was this a matter of branding an idea that got out of hand?
Good point, Laura. Charters quickly morphed into private contractors that compete with public schools. As we have also seen through politics, they often get to unfairly compete.
Laura, yes.
I was always perplexed by the Shanker story. It makes more sense to me that charters were conceived in the 1970s as part of a Third Way effort to deregulate education. It makes sense that charters were, from their inception, intended by so-called centrists to destroy teachers unions. I agree with the article. I also just watched so-called centrists, really right-wing corporate libertarians, lose their grip on EU elections to right-wing nationalist and left-wing green parties.
Centrists are losing their grip on power in elections all around the world — Brexit, Trump, Bolsenero, Modi… The yellow jackets have centrists in France very nervous. All of that also makes sense, as the inequality of meritocratic Third Way politics makes life stink for most people on the planet. Charters are losing popularity as centrists are losing popularity. I hope most of the disenchanted will join us on the left before the world goes too far right. Thank heaven for teachers strikes.
Support your local public schools and teachers unions!
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
What AFT President Al Shanker thought initially was a progressive idea, but it was captured by the Waltons, the DeVos family and others on the extreme right that wanted to destroy public schools and teachers’ unions.
Cohen’s article is posted at Oped https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Untold-History-of-Char-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-School-Failure_Corporate_Democracy_Greed-190527-716.html#comment734927
Anyone who reads the original charter law and compares it to the charter practices in NY state can see how the pro-charter propaganda has allowed the law to be broken over and over again.
The law was supposed to have charters that targeted “students at risk of academic failure”.
But of course the same pro-charter propaganda that pushes the racist idea that lots of African-American Kindergarten children in charters act out violently due to their natural violent tendencies (and thus deserve their severe punishments) also push the belief that every African-American student is at high risk of failure.
The racist belief that every African-American and Latinx student is at high risk of failure is what allow charters to cherry pick a very tiny percentage of those students and crow that they have discovered the magic sauce to teach at-risk students in large class sizes with smaller budgets.
Imagine a charter that educated a small class of white and Asian students where the CEO insisted that those students would be total failures without their charter. Would that charter be given hundreds of millions of dollars because white billionaires believed all those white and Asian students would be complete failures without the charter? I doubt it.
But a charter that implies the same thing about African-American and Latinx students — that they would be total failures without their charter — is celebrated and rewarded.
Those charters defend their practices by saying that it is impossible to cherry pick African-American and Latinx students because high performing African-American and Latinx students simply do not exist in any number. They hope racist white politicians and SUNY Charter Institute trustees believe them and they do!
So we are supposed to believe the racist innuendoes of charter CEOs — that teaching ANY African-American students means that the charter is teaching students at high risk of failure.
It’s really deplorable racism that the SUNY Charter Institute and their favorite charter CEOs promote. They keep insisting that it is just impossible to find any high performing African-American students in all of NYC in public schools and therefore they are performing miracles with students who would — those charters CEOs keep implying — would otherwise be failures.
It makes sense that these charter CEOs fought so hard for Betsy DeVos whose values they share.
^^
“He saw them recruiting the weakest and most alienated students, the ones who had dropped out or were at risk of dropping out.”
These are exactly the students that charters REFUSE to teach.
It is interesting that LeBron James new “choice” school does target exactly those weakest students. But that is because it is NOT a charter. It is a school within the public school system.
When 100% of those students in LeBron’s new school aren’t turned into high performing scholars in a few years, you will hear dishonest people like Eva Moskowitz attacking them for their low standards and demanding the school be shut down and replaced with her charter that would have guaranteed 100% passing rates for those exact same kids, using less money and bigger classes (lies that the pro-charter propaganda would insist are true because they don’t have any concern for the students they leave behind and harm with their lies.)
The charter ideahas been kidnapped, sabotaged, turned into a scam.
Wow, what a fascinating and interesting exchange. There is a deep well of memory and understanding here. I really thank everyone.
In LA there’s a weird entity that is some sort of attempt, I think, to have actually given to the “public schools” directly (cf Chiara’s observation above) yet to also entirely assume control of them. There is something called “PLAS” as a subset of the regular district schools, funded by Ed Reformers, started by then-Mayor Villaraigosa https://partnershipla.org/who-we-are/#our-story . So I think privatizers have a zillion different strategies in a zillion different markets. I’m not suggesting overarching agency, just that many feints on many fronts make for lots of different incarnations. Even including giving to public schools, sort of, sometimes (but not really).
This is such an interesting subject, scrutinizing the origin story. Certainly there’s something of a peeling-back-the-onion to this exercise, but given the ready acceptance of Shanker as a good starting place that might actually miss the bigger-picture of neoliberalism, Reagan and his union-wars, the close of the post-WWII period; Shanker’s role within this of lending strength to the unions during a time of assault — this is all just very interesting and I hope you wise ones keep the comments going.
He is rolling in his grave. Thank you for this post explaining the original concept of a charter school….how far it has strayed.