Back in the early days of school choice advocacy, it was often claimed that school choice would “force” the public schools to compete and they would get better because of the magic of the market.
Now we know that was a selling point, and it was not true.
Deborah Gordon Klehr, executive director of the civil rights group Education Law Center-PA, writes about the negative effects of “school choice” on the public schools of Philadelphia.
The publics schools in that city have long been severely underfunded, and school choice has stripped them of both students and funding, leaving them even worse off.
Klehr writes:
A study of charter schools in Philadelphia published by the Education Law Center earlier this year is a stark reminder that many parents don’t get to choose and that ultimately it may be the school and not the parent doing the choosing. More charters and more slots haven’t cured an ailing school system.
This is not to discount the successes we know exist for students in many city charters. But Philadelphia’s 22-year history of rapid charter expansion coupled with inadequate oversight is entrenching new inequities in an already unequal landscape.
Sometimes the problem is blatant discrimination: For instance, a recurring pattern we see among families who contact us is charters telling students with disabilities, after they have been accepted, “We cannot serve you.” As public schools, charters are prohibited from discriminating against students with disabilities. And yet, we see this pattern persist.
Sometimes the obstacles to enrollment are more subtle; for example, enrollment documents may only be available in English. The results, however, are clear. The population of economically disadvantaged students is 14 percentage points lower in the traditional charter sector (56%) vs. the district sector (70%). And, the percentage of English learners in district schools (11%) is nearly three times higher than in traditional charters (4%), with nearly a third of traditional charters serving no English learners.
Few of the special education students in traditional charters are from the disability categories that typically are most expensive to serve. And, the vast majority of traditional charter schools serve student populations that are two-thirds or more of one racial group – a significantly higher degree of segregation than in district schools.
In short, the city’s traditional charter schools (excluding “Renaissance” charters charged with serving all students from a catchment area) disproportionately enroll a student population that is more advantaged than the students in district-run schools; as a sector, charters are shirking their responsibility of educating all students.
No independent observer could look at the Philadelphia schools—public, charters, and vouchers—and say that any problems have been solved by privatization.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The “competition will lift all boats” ideology was based on the idea that teachers were lazy and had low expectations for students. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. Nothing could have been more insulting. Some teachers were not lazy but overburdened, and putting more pressure on them increased the burden. Not helpful! So today, we don’t have enough teachers.
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thank you for this: I remember when the NCLB idea of paying bonuses so that teachers would work harder first hit our inner city schools, as a veteran teacher I was deeply insulted. I remember talking about it with my father who, as a small farming community member, had served on our local school’s school board for years. I said, “Dad, if they had paid you money to do that job would you have worked harder?” and he looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language.
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Meritocracy is based on falsehood.
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Pennsylvania doesn’t get enough attention as an ed reform disaster.
It’s as bad as Ohio and Michigan. It should be in that group.
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“Charter expansion, when combined with many charters serving a relatively more advantaged student population, undermines equity and exacerbates resource challenges for district schools.”
Competition does not work in education. The result of privatization is a tiered system of a few winners with many losers. The neediest, most vulnerable students remain in public schools with depleted resources from charter drain in large classes without resources to best serve them. Those remaining in public schools are more likely to be very poor, minority, classified and ELLs. Every nation that has followed the dystopian distraction of privatization has suffered the same harmful consequences.
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Love your comment, retired teacher. Thank you, again. And yes, “Every nation that has followed the dystopian distraction of privatization has suffered the same harmful consequences.”
The HUNGER GAMES is well and alive.
Charters are big SNAFU in this country along with vouchers, the Common GORE, and high stakes testing.
Boulder Schools are considering yet another charter school. Our public schools are excellent, but the rhetoric coming from outsiders, politicians and business folks say otherwise …. and we know the reasons why … $$$$$$ and power … the Colonial Model.
Our founding fathers didn’t want kings and queens to run America, but here we are with king and queen politicians who work for the OLIGARCHY, who do think they are BETTER than the rest of us. It’s all just so sick.
OUR Constitution which begins “WE the PEOPLE … ”
Now it seems that to those politicians and the elite think Our Constitution reads:
“WE the RICH and POWERFUL, who are the ELITE ….”
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The dire consequences of competition were revealed in the disastrous Race to the Top. Who wins the “race”? Who loses?
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