Jennifer Berkshire writes in The Nation about the quandary of Democratic candidates. For years, charter schools had bipartisan support. Clinton and Obama both supported charter schools, and joined with Republicans to expand the federal Charter Schools Program, which is now the single biggest source of funding for charter schools at $440 million annually (the second biggest source is the Walton Family Foundation).
Then came the Trump administration and Betsy DeVos, with their full-throated advocacy for school choice, including vouchers. In red states like Ohio, voucher programs are exploding, and Democrats are pushing back against school choice. They are also pushing back against charter schools, as we saw in Kentucky and Virginia, where pro-public education governors were elected.
Meanwhile, the current crop of Democratic candidates are weaving and bobbing. Sanders and Warren have come out against charter schools and privatization. Other candidates are trying to thread the needle, not fully rejecting charter schools, but opposing “for-profit” charter schools (which are legal only in Arizona, but are found in almost every state with charters that are managed by for-profit EMO managers).
Berkshire begins:
When seven of the Democratic presidential candidates descended on Pittsburgh recently for a day-long forum on public education, one of Pennsylvania’s unlikeliest new political stars was on hand to greet them. Working Families Party candidate Kendra Brooks, a black single mom from North Philly, won an at-large seat on the Philadelphia City Council this fall, stunning the political establishment. At the heart of Brooks’s insurgent campaign was her resistance to Philadelphia’s two-decade-long experiment with school privatization, including the explosion of charter schools and the mass closure of neighborhood schools. “If we as community members don’t commit to this public institution that we fought so hard for generations ago, we’re going to lose control of it,” says Brooks.
Her message resonated with Philly’s voters, and thrilled the audience of teachers and activists who were on hand in Pittsburgh to hear a long list of presidential hopefuls weigh in on the future of the country’s schools. But just outside of the convention center, on a rain-slicked plaza, the resistance to the Democrats’ leftward swing on education was on vivid display. Over 100 charter school parents, part of the same school choice network that disrupted an Elizabeth Warren campaign event last month, came armed with a message of their own: Black Democrats support charter schools.
Welcome to the Democrats’ school choice wars. For the last three decades, charter schools have attracted bipartisan love, amassing an unlikely—and unwieldy—amalgam of supporters along the way: GOP free marketeers, civil rights advocates, ‘third way’ Democrats, and hedge fund billionaires. But in an era of fierce political partisanship, that coalition is now unraveling.
Progressive Democrats recognize that charters are a step towards vouchers and are fully a part of the DeVos crusade to eliminate public schools. We will watch to see what happens to the other candidates.
And we will also watch as DeVos hands out yet another $440 million to corporate charter chains, charter advocacy organizations, and even to states that don’t want the money (see New Hampshire and Michigan, both of which said they did not want more money for charter schools).
We now know that the core constituency for charters and vouchers are Wall Street financiers, hedge fund managers, billionaires, libertarians, right-wingers, ALEC, and the far-right. Where do Democrats fit into this coalition?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ugh … DFERS: https://dfer.org
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/joe-biden-and-pete-buttigieg-are-not-to-be-trusted/
Meanwhile, yesterday on NPR’s One A or 1A, homeschooling was the discussion. There was a lot of back and forth between advocate and critic, all from within the homeschool experience. There were no representatives of the public school experience with homeschooling, of which there is plenty.
Like charter schools, private schools, and other public schools, homeschool students pass in and out of the public school sort of as a second choice on a constant basis. Parents who have the means and availability often try their kid at one or another of the local private schools around here. Every year I get some students who have tried one or the other of them and found the experience not to their taste.
I think that it is remarkable that there still exists a consensus that ignores the opinions of public school teachers when it comes to discussions about education. For two decades, the only thing republicans and Democrats agreed on was that public school teachers were the problem in education. Over those two decades, all the voices, including recent converts, Sanders and Warren, were either silent or active in their opposition to teachers.
Forgive my cynicism.
“Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary
exactly true: the shock of knowing that this consensus to ignore public school teachers never weakens
I think I was listening to that same show? The thrust was suggesting that homeschooling is insufficiently monitored, so can hide serious family-abuse issues: emphasis on homeschooling as isolationism, failure to socialize. Recommendations for regulations allowing monitoring by soc welfare agencies.
Pro-homeschooler callers-in pointed out that today’s model is often worked as a coop, which provides ample sharing of parent & community resources, so provides group experience. [This in fact is the model I’ve observed in my own central-NJ town]. Other supporters detailed community resources used by homeschoolers like scout groups & intramural sports. One caller was from a district that allowed PT attendance for a couple of courses at the local public, & felt that was helpful; another who was homeschooled until hisch felt she’d never been able to develop the sort of lifelong friends one can count on in later life.
The caller that sticks w/me wondered just how far govt should be allowed to intrude on the family in some effort to head off abuse issues [or whatever], challenging the idea that govt can ‘make everything OK.’ He pointed out that abuse happens in public schools, on govt-supported athletic teams, etc.
My only issue w/homeschooling is that it should not be supported by taxes, ‘backpack full of cash’ style. School taxes are public support for public ed, period. Here in NJ if you want to homeschool you can, & distr provides you w/curriculum & texts, & you have to comply w/state testing. Homeschoolers’ schtaxes like those of any family are about educating the natl public, not about how an individual chooses to educate his own kids.
B5: sounds like the same program. We listened on our way to Nashville. I too listen to the suggestion that the government should not have the power to intervene in family decisions. That said, the homeschool advocate was willing to make claims of massive numbers of abuse cases on the part of teachers to justify ignoring abuse cases that were cited by the persons who wanted regulation.
It also seemed that he was suggesting that widespread testing of homeschool kids was not necessary, due to their high scores. He had no answer for the suggestion that the group that took the tests were self -selected.
School choice has failed to deliver on its promises. The type of free market education available to choice students is highly variable. A few students may get a better option, and some may wind up in a worse school than the public school the students left. Voucher students generally lose academic ground. All of these disruptive options are designed to undermine authentic public education, which is the most efficient and effective way to educate students.
Privatization is a distraction that fails to provide equity. Bernie and Warren understand that undermining our public schools is wrong for our country. Some of the other Democratic candidates suffer from free market delusion. The free market results in winners and losers, and we cannot afford to subject our young people to any more ideological experimentation that has already failed. Our best hope is investment in well funded public schools that aspire to equity for all.
By the way Florida has just proposed a bill that would make charter schools more accountable. Bill 632 would make private and charter schools meet the same set of standards as public schools. If this bill becomes a law, it could be a game changer for the charter industry in the state.https://weartv.com/news/local/senate-bill-could-bring-historic-changes-to-private-and-charter-schools
The media hates this issue…..It is too complicated for them to discuss. I look forward to Sanders and Warren forcing them to deal with it….it is just too important to pretend it does not exist.Especially when your mantra is Biden is the only candidate who can win the three states that matter. God forbid they talk about anything else.
Flyover Show Me Staters don’t count.
“We now know that the core constituency for charters and vouchers are Wall Street financiers, hedge fund managers, billionaires, libertarians, right-wingers, ALEC, and the far-right. Where do Democrats fit into this coalition?”
How many K-12 students in charters and their families are billionaires? There’s your constituency. They should stand up for their schools just as satisfied traditional public school parents should.
Who pays for the charter movement: rightwing billionaires and Wall Street. They are using the students as pawns in their evil scheme to destroy public education. Read SLAYING GOLIATH and learn the facts. Read the ALEC agenda. Listen to DeVos. Rightwingers and billionaires.
Charters and vouchers are one big part of the billionaires’ terrible push to privatize and deregulate the entire globe. It isn’t Democrats versus Republicans; it’s Wall Street versus Main Street. Wall Street financiers have put many Republicans and Democrats in their pockets. Republicans thought Trump would fight the Wall Street establishment. He did not. Now it’s up to Democrats to elect someone who actually will stand up to the moneyed oligarchy. It’s about saving public education and a great deal more. Runaway free-market capitalism will destroy democracy itself if it continues unchecked. We can no longer afford to let the world be run from a wine cave.
LCT:
So true. Wall St and billionaires like the Wsltons are destroying Main Street
The Nation article alluded to this a bit, but the reporting – especially at the NY Times – has been full-on pro-charter propaganda with Eliza Shapiro writing articles in which she always leaves out the voices of African-American parents who are NOT pro-charter. Shapiro does not seem to have even read the NAACP’s report on charters.
Shapiro herself cites her old article in which charter leaders admit they have made some mistakes in the past but are now working to perfect charters as showing that she is always willing to show “both sides” of the issue. To Shapiro, the “other side” of an article in which she implies the vast majority of African-American parents are rabidly pro-charter is an article in which charter leaders are presented as making their charters even more perfect in response to minor criticism. But “both sides” does not include Kendra Brooks or ANY African-American parents except those who charters present to them.
Instead, Shapiro and the NY Times tells story after story that implies that all African-American students in NYC are abject failures in public schools and it is charters that turn these abject failures into high performing scholars. I truly do not believe Eliza Shapiro understands how racist that is. The notion that it is impossible for charters to cherry pick enough students depends on a racist notion that there simply are not enough students to choose from. You certainly would not see the NY Times presenting an all-white high performing charter school as having students who would be abject failures in public schools.
I hope Democrats make charters a huge issue in the next debate. It is a winning issue, even among African-American voters. Those voters are NOT clamoring for their public schools to be privatized, but only for good public schools. And the ed reformers with help from their propaganda organ, the NY Times, are desperately pushing the narrative that the only way they will ever have good schools is to let a private charter pick and choose which of their kids they will teach. Most parents reject this falsehood when someone points out how outrageous it is, which is why the Massachusetts vote to expand charters got the most support only in communities with the most white voters. And it is why Eliza Shapiro will continue to ignore parents like Kendra Brooks and her constituents (and all the African-American voters in NYC who have continued to support de Blasio despite his supposedly “ruining” their charters). Talking to those parents hurts Eliza Shapiro’s narrative that African-American parents are demanding that a private charter come in and cherry pick the kids they want and abandon the rest who do not deserve good schools. Eliza Shapiro wants to push the narrative that almost all African-American parents agree with white charter operators that only some of their kids deserve good schools and the rest don’t and only white charter CEOs are the ones smart enough to identify which of their kids are worthy. Shameful that is the undertone of every article Eliza Shapiro writes. Because parents like Kendra Brooks or the ones who testified at NAACP hearings are invisible to her.
It is not a winning issue among Black and Hispanic voters. See https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/05/21/democrats-views-on-charters-diverge-by-race-as-2020-elections-loom/. IMO, white support for charters has declined because they are an abstract for most of them and the unions have done a good job of portraying them as evil. I’d dare say most of them are suburban and don’t even know anyone in a charter. More Black and Hispanic voters have actual experience with charters and support them.
John,
Charter propaganda relies on lying to black families. Tomorrow I will post the graduation rates for schools in Indiana. In public schools, the graduation rate is 87%. For black students, it is 78%. For charter schools, it is 40%. Stop the lying. Or at least stop the lying here. On this blog.
Why don’t you reach out to Dr. Anika Whitfield in Little Rock, Arkansas, the leader of Grassroots Arkansas, who is fighting to block the characterization of Little Rock public schools?
Why don’t you speak to Jitu Brown in Chicago, who has successfully blocked charter expansion in Chicago?
Why don’t you speak to the black and brown parents of Houston, who are outraged that the state education department has taken control of the district and intends to plant more unwanted charters?
Stop spewing charter propaganda here, John.
Across the country, we have done a terrific job of underfunding public schools, especially those of black and Latino students. Charter schools take away more funding. Better to fight the problem than run away from it, but fighting racist policy is something the weak among us cannot fathom. John, we have had this same conversation over and over. You accept de facto segregation and budget cuts as a given. You flippantly blame teachers for austerity and for inequality. You refuse to stand with us and fight for a better world. Weak.
John is in moderation because his comments are programmed to defend charter schools no matter what. That means he won’t be commenting here until he responds as a human, not a bot owned by Eva Moskowitz
When are we going to be rid of the argument that since some people eat hot cheese puffs, hot cheese puffs are good for people?
Sanders and Warren have come out against charter schools and privatization. Other candidates are trying to thread the needle, not fully rejecting charter schools, but opposing “for-profit” charter schools”
Buttigieg and Biden are trying to thread the needle with hundred dollar bills from billionaires.
As Carol Burris has pointed out, “for-profit” charters are legal in only one state–Arizona. But they are found in almost every state. They are “illegal” in Michigan, but 80% of the state’s charters are run by for-profit EMOs.
Evidently, Jennifer is in the echo chamber that refuses to acknowledge the most well-organized school privatizers from the religious sphere – the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and a multitude of state Catholic Conferences e.g. Tennessee’s.
The USCCB, who self-describe as strong advocates of parental school choice since the beginning, submitted an amicus brief in the Espinosa case as did the less influential Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. But, Jennifer isolated her comments to Christian schools which the general public associates exclusively with evangelicals. I assume its more PC?