I reviewed three books in the New York Review of Books, which seemed to me to be complementary.
Together they offer a fresh interpretation of the history of public education and of school choice.
The choice zealots would have you believe that they want to “save poor kids from failing public schools,” but the history of school choice tells a very different story. School choice began as the rallying cry of Southern segregationists, determined to prevent desegregation and integration of their schools.
School choice was their response to the Brown Decision of 1954.
The states of the South passed law after law shifting public funds to private schools, so that white students could avoid going to school with black children.
Libertarian economist Milton Friedman published an essay in 1955 on “The Role of Government in Education” in which he argued for vouchers and school choice. He said that under his approach, whites could go to school with whites, blacks could go to school with blacks, and anyone who wanted a mixed-race school could make that choice. Given the state of racism in the South, his formula would have been translated by white Senators, Governors, and legislatures as a formula to maintain racial segregation forever. They loved his ideas, and they adopted his rhetoric.
The best way to remove the cobwebs in your mind, the ones planted by libertarian propaganda, is to read the three books reviewed here:
Katharine Stewart: The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
Steve Suitts: Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement
Derek W. Black: Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
School choice is another attempt to implement Jim Crow under the guise of choice. Choice does not “empower” black students as it is the schools that do the choosing. Private schools are given the liberty to accept or reject students based on color, and no matter in what country so-called choice is implemented, the racist outcome is the same, enhanced segregation. School choice first appeared directly after the Brown decision. It is a tool to divide and separate students. It does not matter whether so-called choice is charter school or a ‘savings plan,’ aka, voucher, the result is to separate students. As MLK has said, separate is never equal.https://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/school-choice-rooted-white-supremacy-taylor-200331/
“Governments could require a minimum level of
education which they could finance by giving parents vouchers redeemable for a
specified maximum sum per child per year if spent on “approved” educational
services. Parents would then be free to spend this sum and any additional sum
on purchasing educational services from an “approved” institution of their own
choice”
That’s from the Milton Friedman essay and it is also the system ed reformers are lobbying for- universal vouchers.
It’s a massive cut in public education funding and it isn’t progressive at all. It would be wildly regressive.
Ed reformers rely on political slogans a lot and no one ever asks them any real questions. Force them to be specific. When we reach this privatized ideological nirvana they’re all lobbying for, where public schools are eradicated and everyone just takes their low value voucher and purchases educational services from contractors, what, specifically will that look like? Do they know this will be better? Why do they know this will be better? If it isn’t better can we get public education back or is it lost forever?
Before we pitch the public education system in the trash and go radical free market Right I suggest we force some of the marketing team in ed reform to answer some hard questions on how their ideological goals will play out for families and students.
The truth is they have no idea how privatized systems will work, nor do they know privatized systems will be superior or more equitable. This is 100% ideological belief.
The public could lose a lot in this. There’s huge risk. The fact that ed reformers consistently ignore or deny the risk in their schemes doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Sen. Murray: “What will happen is the kids who are further behind will get further behind,” she said. “We can’t give up on having the knowledge we need to make sure we are targeting our resources.”
Here we go again. The perennial ed reform bait and switch. They’re all pushing testing our kids and dangling the promise of assistance based on our compliance with testing.
They’ll renege on the assistance. They always do. Our kids will get that tests, but none of these people will lift a finger to assist schools once the tests are completed.
Every single year since NCLB. Comply with our mandates and assistance will be forthcoming. The assistance never arrives and all our kids ever get is the tests.
Public schools and public school students will jump thru all the hoops again and the support will never materialize. Like NCLB and RttT and the first stimulus, public schools will end up with 50k, or 75k, or 130k and they’ll have spent more than that just complying with the mandates.
Public schools actually ended up LOSING with RttT. The “grants” they got didn’t even cover the mandates they agreed to in order to get the grants.
How many times are they going to play this game with public schools?
The assistance they get is a public school that is closed due to low test scores. Test scores are used to justify privatization, but they rarely do anything about the fact that privatization does not address the problem of poverty.
What a shame that Senator Murray, who will now be chair of the Senate HELP Committee, thinks that testing helps children catch up.
That’s like thinking that a thermometer can cure the flu. The thermometer is more useful than a standardized test because it gives instant results; the test results are returned in 4-6 months and provide no useful information of value.
Not only is a thermometer timely, it’s accurate, if used to tell a physician a patient’s temperature. One must, however, use the thermometer properly. You have to stick it in the right place. Using high stakes standardized tests are like going to the beach and putting a thermometer in the waves to measure sea level change. Too many variables are not being taken into account for the measurement to be worth anything.
Edit after revising, LeftCoastTeacher, remember to edit, you fool! (‘Is’ not ‘are’, that was supposed to be.)
Since the whole ed reform echo chamber are united in insisting the public schools they didn’t attend and don’t support test this year, can we at LEAST get a guarantee they’ll come thru the real financial assistance? Not an unenforceable “promise”- a guarantee.
If we agree to test our kids can we get the funding locked down first? I don’t want public school students flim flammed again.
Get the money first. Don’t agree to force 50 million kids to sit for two weeks of standardized testing without SOME benefit flowing to the students who have to take the tests. NCLB, RttT, the first stimulus. Don’t fall for this again.
I admit I’m baffled why ed reformers care if public school students are mandated to take standardized tests this year.
The “movement” has spent the entire pandemic period pushing private school vouchers. They’ve done nothing for public school students. They’re now showing up to demand all our kids test? They don’t do any real work at all on behalf of students in public schools. Why the sudden interest in our students and why ONLY regarding testing?
Are they offering anything else to public school students? Why should students go along with this demand? What’s in it for them?
There is a very good reason why Ed “reformers” insist on testing.
It produces evidence that some children are below average on standardized tests designed to produce differentiation.
They use test results to demand privatization.
No matter to them that charter schools don’t get different results and voucher schools get worse results.
It’s amusing that the two “ideas” that have come out of the ed reform movement for recovery from the pandemic are also the ONLY two “ideas” in ed reform- 1. choice and 2. testing of public school students.
Their response to the pandemic is identical to their agenda prior to the pandemic. They offer absolutely nothing to students and families in public schools other than testing.
Here’s where you’re at if you’re a public school student or family. Your schools are directed by ed reformers- people who don’t support the existence of public schools and work every day to replace them with contractors and/or vouchers.
These are the people we take direction from- people who are on an ideological mission to replace public schools with their preferred, privatized systems.
This hasn’t benefited public school students, because of course it hasn’t. It was never intended to benefit them. It was intended to get rid of their schools.
The one thing that can be problematic is that the words “school choice” and “school privatization” are often used interchangeably when they should not be.
There is a huge problem with PRIVATIZATION and the people who support the PRIVATIZATION movement do NOT support “choice”. They support “PRIVATIZATION.”
Many cities and even non-urban communities have school CHOICE — but it is PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE. Students may be able to choose a county-wide PUBLIC vocational school. Or an arts school. Or a magnet program for science. New York City has public school CHOICE for middle and high school.
I have noticed that those who claim they support “choice” remain absolutely silent when it comes to public school choice — the so called ed reform movement — which is really an industry of paid shills — is not promoting public school choice and more magnets. That is because the pro-charter ed reform movement has never been about choice and has instead promoting ONLY privatization.
The right wing billionaires aren’t giving money to support more public school choice. Do you know who did? LeBron James. James gave his money for a public school choice.
People in the ed reform business are no different than those who served the Trump Administration. They were always complicit and while they claimed they were doing it for some higher goal (like helping students), it was always about ONLY helping the students that made them look good and ignoring all the harm they were doing to those who didn’t.
There is a completely separate discussion to have about whether REAL public school choice is good or bad. But some of the most disingenuous folks who promote charters pretend that there is no difference between a charter that drums out the students who they decided were too much bother to teach so that someone else is responsible for them, and public school choice where EVERY student is given an education.
The incentives with REAL public school choice and the “privatization” choice promoted by charters is entirely different. Charters are financially incentivized to dump students who aren’t profitable for them to teach because once they dump them, their responsibility to them is over. With public school choice, there is no such incentive since the system is responsible for the student whether they are in one “choice” public school or a different “choice” public school.
Those who claim that privatized “choice” are no different than public school choice sound as honest as those who claim that there is no difference between the Republican supporters storming to “stop the steal” and peaceful BLM protesters.
The ed reform “choice” movement has a lot more in common with private schools and vouchers than it does with public school choice.
Tax-funded school choice enables religious schools to change the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America, incorporating religious sect dogma into the pledge and forcing students to recite their allegiance to church doctrine.
Certainly this is not a concern for folks in New York. If they find the public school district in the city unsatisfactory, the next county over and choose from 125 different school districts. Choice for some is not a bug, but a feature.
You have no idea of the physical distances from NYC to suburbs unless you live on the outskirts. NYC is not Kansas.
Dr. Ravitch,
Suffolk County is 912 square miles, about three times the land area of NYC. Cherry county in Nebraska is 5,961 square miles. People who live in the middle of the country understand physical distances.
Using http://www.newyorkschools.com/counties/suffolk.html I looked up the sizes of the school districts there.
Sixteen school districts have only a single school in the district (to be fair, some of these are island school districts)
Six school districts have two schools in the district
Seven school districts have three schools in the district
Seven school districts have ten or more schools, and the largest has eighteen schools
You and I both know why public education in the county is structured this way: Suffolk County was developed as a place where white people would live and black people would not live.
You have no concept of NYC traffic. Nor do you know anything about Suffolk County. Don’t lecture me about where I live, and I promise not to lecture you about Kansas.
Dr. Ravitch,
NYC makes do with a single school district. Traffic in Suffolk County must be ever so much worse than in the city to require 125 separate systems.
Alternatively, it may be structural racism that has formed the institutions in the United State, including public school districts. Which do you think is true?
This is true: you don’t know what you are talking about.