Scholar Christopher Lubienski at Indiana University reviewed a report from the Hoover Institution offering strategies for making choice equitable. His review was published by the National Education Policy Center.
The Hoover Institution (where I was a Fellow until 2009) is very pro-school choice. (It’s also a wonderful repository for materials about war and peace, the Russian Revolution, and international politics). Many educators, regardless of their views, have given their papers to the Hoover archives, including me.
The report reviewed by Lubienski was written by Paul Peterson, who is an enthusiastic proponent of school choice.
The official overview says:
A report from the Hoover Institution seeks to offer evidence-based guidance for policymakers in shaping more equitable outcomes from school choice programs. This review examines the report’s claims, its representation of the research, and its use of research in forming those recommendations. The review finds that although the report is useful as a snapshot of the current status of choice programs in the United States, its use of research is often problematic. Some of the research is misrepresented, many claims are made without citations to evidence, and some of the recommendations bear no connection to the evidence provided in the report. As such, the report is, as intended, a political guidebook for conservative policymakers that fails to offer evidence-based guidance on making choice more equitable.
Another way to describe the interaction between choice and equity: Choice, almost by definition, exacerbates inequities.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Duh.
It is not the purpose of a market to provide equal goods to everyone.
It is the intent of con artists to deceive everyone about their true intent.
You do the math …
KEY LINE: “It is not the purpose of a market to provide equal goods to everyone.” THIS is exactly why the neoliberal push for both parties to help the market take over public services is rotten at its very core.
Does the absence of choice reduce inequities?
I think the answer to your question is, It depends. If poor students get to attend a middle class school, then a more equitable outcome is possible. Total equity is impossible in a capitalist society. The rich will always get the best education money can buy. Poor students will be more likely to lag in academics because the children may not have adequate nutrition, healthcare and experiences. A school in a poor neighborhood with low value tax ratables will not be able to fund the level of services poor students may need. Funding public education through property taxes allows for inequitable funding and support.
Public schools aspire to provide equity by serving all students in a community. The sad irony of privatization is that it is often the poorest students whose schools shoulder charter drain making a bad situation worse particularly when the cheapest and easiest students leave for a charter school while the public schools take the neediest and most expensive to serve with less funding than before.
The absence of choice reduces inequalities. Sweden, Chile, England, and the United States have all demonstrated that.
Privatization may be better for a few that may wind up in a better situation, but it comes at the expense of the many whose public schools that get looted. Overall, charter schools are not worth the disruption as they are no better unless they cherry pick students while they enhance segregation.
Some people don’t understand basic math.
Reducing inequities for 30% of the students while greatly increasing inequities for 70% of the students does not “reduce inequities”.
It “reduces inequities” for some students AT THE COST of far more inequities for the other students.
What is very shocking is that privatizers have managed to delude the so-called liberal media and some journalists who should know better that the other 70% of students who are suffering DO NOT EXIST. That’s why their parents are never heard from and a “random” charter parent like Malachi Armstrong, who happens to give all the charter talking points, is quoted in both the NYT and Washington Post. He represents all parents to journalists, whether or not it’s true.
It doesn’t have to be this way. It never had to be this way, which is why the first charters were started.
But the lies of the privatizers and the pure greed and complete lack of any moral compass of the folks who benefit financially from their largess has led to that outcome.
One of the most reprehensible charter CEOs (but beloved of billionaires) pushed the narrative that is embraced by seemingly brainwashed education journalists:
That a charter school that drums out all the students who don’t do well proves that the public schools that teach the other students don’t need better funding. One charter CEO lobbied to have LARGER class sizes for the most vulnerable kids in public schools, citing her own charters’ results as evidence that the kids she doesn’t want to teach do not need small class sizes. This charter CEO spews racist innuendo about how an extraordinarily high percentage of 5 year olds who win the charter lottery act out so violently in their kindergarten classes — due entirely to their own violent natures and not because of their inexperienced, poorly trained teachers — that the charter had no choice but to give them out of school suspensions!
(Remember, this is the same CEO who made it her personal mission to demand the Senate confirm Betsy DeVos for the good of all students! Right, she wasn’t lying at all.)
Sure, the smaller percentage of students whose performance helps those charter enrich themselves are arguably better off, while the vast majority of poor kids are worse off because people believed the lies. And frankly, we are all worse off when charter CEOs give credibility to those who believe aggressive policing is justified because the suspect seems “violent” and most of those suspects happen to be unarmed African Americans. These folks hear a charter CEO reinforcing their racism by invoking a lie about how violent so many 5 year old students are when everyone knows these are not white students.
Choice includes all sorts of choice.
Public school choice can be a good idea. It still leaves many students behind. But the difference is that with public school choice, there is an acknowledgement that the students left behind need MORE. There is an acknowledgement that their schools need MORE.
There is not an attempt to demonize those students and their parents in order to cover up the big lie — and the big lie is that the charters know they can’t profit if they have to teach ALL kids.
The ones that teach all kids are often the ones that go out of business quickly and leave all those kids behind anyway. While their operators have a few years of lucrative compensation to last the next decade or two.
In short, if 30% of poor children suffering from the inequities in public schools benefit from having a choice of a privately operated charter school that won’t teach the others, and the other 70% are greatly harmed by the lies that the operators of those school push with the profits they make, then choice can never be “equitable.”
But a public school choice that doesn’t demonize the students left behind, but operates schools that gives them MORE, can arguably be seen as an equitable choice.
Just look at the real public school started by LeBron James in Akron. It is a “choice”, but for the students left behind. It is a choice for low-performing students. ALL students left behind should have that choice. Those kind of choice schools won’t miraculously turn 99% into high performing scholars. But that is the kind of choice that is NOT a zero-sum choice, where some kids benefit at the expense of even more other students suffering.
It is possible. But not with lies. Unfortunately, we live in a time when one side gets to use lies and journalists believe it is their duty to present both sides equally instead of informing their readers about what is actually true.
And what is actually true is that there are no simple answers. Half of the student population will be below average and half will be above average. That isn’t going to change. But there can be good solutions to address this. The privatizers just want to scapegoat public schools for not making 100% of the students above average. They want to profit from teaching the profitable kids, and they are always willing to undermine the schools that teach the other kids because it benefits them to mislead and amplify falsehoods that hurt them.
^^Intended this to be a new comment, not under this thread.
This example might be totally apocryphal, but it is the way I remember it. A few years back I was introduced to quinoa, which I found quite tasty. However soon after, I read that the country from which we were importing this product was exporting what had been a major source of nutrition for its own people. By buying the product, would I be encouraging malnutrition and starvation? All of our choices from the most basic to the most complex have consequences that we may or may not be aware of. If we want to go there, we can probably identify both negative and positive consequences for most choices we make, not all of which have a direct impact on us. So, as retired teacher says, “It depends.” Bottom line? Between black and white, there is a whole lot of gray.
Pseudo-Choice
Choices at one level of freedom depend on enabling or prerequisite choices being available at more basic levels of freedom.
A situation of Pseudo-Choice is created when you offer people a choice at a high level of freedom without ensuring them equal access to the enabling choices.
It needs to be added that being put in situations of Pseudo-Choice tends to make human beings extremely angry. Intensely angry. And they always, eventually figure it out, no matter how long it takes.
So Watch Out For That …
Well observed, Jon!
Just trying to apply this to my own life.
When I was a little boy, my parents moved to a school district that they felt was a good school district. They made that choice. Was that bad? Did that exacerbate inequities?
I sent my children to public school in NYC. They attended neighborhood schools for part of their K-12 schooling. Was that choice good? Did it reduce inequities?
I sent one of my children to a specialized high school, which has selective admissions based on a standardized test. Was that a bad choice? Did it exacerbate inequities?
I sent my other child to a selective admissions middle school. Was that bad? Exacerbated inequities?
That child now attends a private high school. Was that a bad choice that exacerbated inequities? What should I have done?
Both my son and I attended selective public schools. However, the selective schools had an agreement with the sending schools. The selective school could not over select from one sending middle or junior high school. These magnet schools were required to show representation from all areas in the city or county. It was a way to ensure that there was a representative balance in the selection process, and both the selective schools were integrated.
FLERP!,
I wrote a long reply that is being held up.
Public school choice doesn’t exacerbate inequities the way that choice that includes privately operated charter schools or vouchers does.
There has been public school choice in NYC for a long time. None of the public schools tried to undermine the other public schools and demand financial rewards for the high performance of their students while trying to undermine the public schools that had more struggling students and demanding that the DOE cut their budgets.
On the contrary, everyone agrees that the schools that teach the more difficult students need MORE, not less.
Public school choice benefits some kids while not specifically hurting others, even if the choice doesn’t necessarily help them.
Choice that includes schools outside the system exacerbate inequities.
It didn’t have to be that way. But the movement INCENTIVIZES those who undermine public schools. It financially rewards charter CEOs who lie and undermine public schools. It is rife with charter operators who lobby to cut budgets or lobby AGAINST small class sizes in public schools. It is rife with charter operators who would gratuitously evict a public school with severely disabled kids for their own convenience — having absolutely no concern about what happens to those students they would never teach – and then invoke as their reason that they are superior to that public school and therefore the public school should suffer so that an already rich charter can benefit.
Do you see many charters in affluent suburban areas? Chris Christie tried to put them in there but he got pushback from folks far more politically connected than poor families.
Families in suburbs know that privatizing their public school system by including a new choice that is incentivized to undermine their own public school is not good.
But they don’t have the same response to public magnet schools or vocational schools that are PART OF the public school system and not financially incentivized to lie.
“When I was a little boy, my parents moved to a school district that they felt was a good school district.”
And those “good” school districts are the ones that have rejected the privatized school “choice” that always undermines them.
Can you imagine the outcry in suburbs if a group of progressive teachers got millions of dollars to open a “choice” charter that took any student but was empowered to get rid of any student who cost more? Can you imagine the outcry in the suburbs when parents learned that their own public school system would be taking money out of their budget to pay for this new charter school that essentially could cherry pick the cheapest to teach kids while demanding to be paid the “average” per student rate?
Can you imagine the outcry if those suburban parents also learned that their own public school budget would also be paying for all transportation costs, all sports and activities costs for the kids in the charter? Their kids would get less, but the kids in the charter would get more!
It would be soundly rejected, just like it has been rejected.
Choosing a PRIVATE school is different. Parents with means have always been able to do so. Other parents knew that the choice did not mean that their own school’s budget would have to pay for it.
I agree that choosing a private school is different from choosing a public school or a charter school. But it is still choice. Does choosing a private school exacerbate inequity?
“Does choosing a private school exacerbate inequity?”
It exacerbates inequity if the public school system for the families left behind has money taken from their public school budget to pay for your choice of a private school. It exacerbates inequity if you are choosing a private school whose operator lobbies for policies that take funding from the public school system.
If your choice of attending a private school is not subsidized by the funding available for public school, then the choice doesn’t exacerbate inequity as most people understand it.
I assume that is now clear and you can stop asking the question over and over again.
Do you want to have a discussion, or just keep asking questions?
I am interested in why you believe that school policies involving different kinds of school “choice” do or do not increase equity and what arguments you use to support your opinion.
If you don’t want to say, no problem.
By the way, lots of things “exacerbate inequity”. Zoning regulations. Tax policy. Health care policy. College funding.
But public schools have always been a good means to promote equity. And then the privatizers saw a profit margin and decided that exacerbating inequity was a perfectly fine price to pay to enrich themselves.
It’s one of the reasons that – unlike LeBron James – they used their money to undermine public schools instead to help public schools and promote equity.
Perhaps there is a small change in inequity, but no major impact, in a public school from the existence of a magnet school. In each case I know of the local high school lost perhaps a half dozen students, but the home schools were left with plenty of excellent students. Also, baked into a magnet school plan is not ever increasing enrollment which seems to be a feature of charter schools. Unlike magnet schools, charters keep coming back for more students to implement their public money heist.
retired teacher– Good post! “Also, baked into a magnet school plan is not ever increasing enrollment which seems to be a feature of charter schools. Unlike magnet schools, charters keep coming back for more students to implement their public money heist.”
This is the key difference between charters and magnets. Magnets are part of the school district, so they are included in overall planning by the district. Charters are “public” schools in name only, and only because they subsist on tax dollars. But they are definitely NOT part of school district planning. They are businesses and need to expand as businesses do, in order to please their investors. They are capped or allowed to expand according to a different calculation made not at the district level but at the city or state level, which is influenced by their investors or other political considerations.
bethree5,
Thank you for these excellent observations. Until I read your post, I hadn’t thought of all these additional reasons why there is a vast difference between how charters “exacerbate inequalities” and how magnets do. Not even in the same league. The ever-increasing enrollment point you made is spot on. Thanks.
^^^Oops, I forgot to also credit retired teacher, who first made that superb “ever increasing enrollment” point. Thank you.
FLERP– OK, I’ll bite. Any individual choice has negligeable impact on the system, so there’s that. But we can try to make a determination by saying, what if a sizeable number of people made the same choice?
–choosing to settle in a community with a highly-rated pubschdistr does not IMHO make any difference, equity-wise. Highly-rated pubschdistrs are located in high-SES areas, & so on down the line. People value good education and will settle in the highest-SES area they can afford. The inequity lies in residential segregation by SES; the school effect is collateral damage. If (counterintuitively) a bunch of rich folks settled in a poor area, they will pay lower taxes for their lower-ratable housing, which changes nothing about school revenues.
–choosing a private school would decrease inequities, theoretically [provided the choosers continued to pay their full boat of taxes which are for the good of the whole]– the pubsch seats vacated by private schoolers leave more tax $ available for those remaining in the public schools. But this choice is limited to those who can afford it [apparently 9%-10%]. That # is stable historically, so does not figure into the equation either way.
–you’ve got me stumped on the selective test-entry admissions hischs, & the selective midschs admitting via grades, attendance and test scores. Let’s look at stats: 7.8% of NYC high school students attend the selectives. I can’t get a count on those attending selective midschs, but it appears to be a much bigger % [it’s 40% of the total # of midschools, but the schools could vary widely in enrollment]. Although on the surface the system looks kind of like charters, it really isn’t. All the students across the system have the same revenue/ per-pupil funding, admin, reqts [of the students, and of reqd district services]. Essentially it’s like tracking.
We could look at how SES is represented: Stuyvesant students are 37% free lunch vs 72% all NYC pubsch students, so about half. But even if that were true across all selective hischs, we’re only talking about under 8% of NYC pubsch hisch students, so—inequitable? Or just a tracking system, which also favors higher SES students?
Got me.
bethree5,
This is an excellent and comprehensive answer. Unfortunately, I think the question wasn’t genuine, but just an attempt to minimize the harm charters do and change the subject.
You hit it on the nose when you said that selective public schools are like tracking. That is what they are. Cue FLERP! now adding tracking as something that also “exacerbates inequities”.
One can go down this route forever. It’s an attempt to end all criticism of charters by using a false equivalency. You can’t be critical of charters without also being critical of private schools (or tracking) even though charters undermine public schools a huge amount and private schools undermine public schools a tiny little bit. It’s all part of a game folks play who actually have no interest in in discussing this issue but do want to cast doubt on critics of charters and imply they are hypocrites because they aren’t equally angry at minor imperfections and truly despicable actions.
And honestly, it is part of what has debased this country’s conversation. You won’t get a thoughtful response from FLERP! (although I hope this shames him into making one).
It’s the reason why Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand rushed to immediately denounce and excommunicate Al Franken. She was terrified of the right wing making these kinds of false equivalencies. Taking a offensive photo pretending to grope a sleeping woman’s armor plated flak jacket is like sexually assaulting someone. Saying that you want a full investigation into what Al Franken did is hypocritical because it is! Because you were critical of a Republican, you must demand the immediate resignation of a Democrat for a lesser crime.
I hate that it works because people don’t call out these folks making false equivalencies. You can’t criticize charters without criticizing private schools, FLERP! says, because both cause inequities. FLERP! has offered no evidence whatsoever that the huge inequalities caused by charter schools, which take funding directly from public schools, is anything like the supposed inequalities (which are all speculative) caused by private schools.
Dems always play along, trying to argue with these folks who have no interest in doing anything but muddying up and discrediting the criticism of anything the right wing likes.
It’s just pure “Whataboutism”.
Private schools don’t take money away from public schools. Parents pay the full cost. FLERP said the public schools “lose money” if kids go to private school because they lose head count. But the public school does not have to provide teachers or services for students who are not enrolled. With charters, public school funding is taken away to pay for charters. In many instances, the charters exclude the neediest children, leaving the public schools with less money to educate high-needs students. The charters are a direct cost to public schools. Private schools are not. That is why I am not at all bothered when parents choose private or religious schools do long as they pay for it themselves.
Thanks for engaging the idea and not attacking me personally, Diane, unlike someone else in this thread.
Correctly describing that Tucker Carlson’s words are designed to provoke anger and hate and normalize white supremacy is not a “personal attack” on Tucker Carlson.
Correctly describing when FLERP! is posting questions that make false equivalencies is not a “personal attack” on them. Correctly describing that FLERP! is pushing the false narrative that there is hypocrisy in charter critics who cite how charters “exacerbate inequities” because private schools “exacerbate inequities, too” is not a “personal attack.”
FLERP! said: I’m interested in the implications of the assertion that choice always exacerbated inequities.”
Correctly pointing out that nowhere did FLERP! himself discuss what he says he wants to discuss is not a “personal attack”. Presumably because a discussion would mean defending his position. Diane Ravitch and bethree5 rand speduktr and others responded and instead of engaging with the good points they made, FLERP! pivots to claiming I made a personal attack by pointing out he is not engaging!
FLERP! said: “why do people who condemn charter schools tolerate it when it comes to private schools? It can’t simply be that private school choice is ok because it doesn’t involve public funding….Why do we pretend that anything people pay for on their own is ok?”
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. However, if that opinion is based on an entire false premise AND that opinion is offered to discredit charter critics as hypocrites, it is important for people to point out what is being done.
Playing victim because you don’t want to defend the content of your comment is right out of the right wing playbook.
FLERP! did not engage when bethree5, speduktr, Diane, and others made EXCELLENT replies to his question:
“why do people who condemn charter schools tolerate it when it comes to private schools?”
I thought we had a good discussion this weekend where we all agreed we need to stop enabling and empowering these people who present themselves as honest actors who are just asking “questions” whose premise is to discredit our side (in this case, that charter school critics are hypocrites).
They post provocative false equivalencies designed to discredit or demonize our side. And when their views are challenged, they don’t defend them, they just say that they are being victimized by those who point out they aren’t defending their view. The bad guys aren’t the ones who amplify lies or smears or make these false equivalencies. The bad guys are the ones who ask them to defend their positions when they are challenged and point out that they refuse to do so. They are “personally attacking them”.
I hoped that by calling out what FLERP! was doing that he would engage with the good replies that bethree5 and speduktr and Diane Ravitch made. It would have proved me wrong AND we all would have been enlightened to hear how he defends his position.
Our democracy is dying because the media (and some of us) has been brainwashed to accept that those who correctly challenge false narratives pushed by people who don’t want to defend their false narratives are making “personal attacks” if they correctly point out that those people have no interest whatsoever in defending the false equivalencies they are making. They just want to amplify those false equivalencies.
Diane, if we do not call out these people, we are complicit. And I will readily acknowledge I am wrong if FLERP! actually engages with the thoughtful replies posted by bethree5 or speduktr or you.
The Democrat lost in 2016 because too many people thought it was no big deal that these false narratives – and the people amplifying them – were just ignored and not discredited. They discredit our side all the time and we just treat them politely and allow them to mischaracterize anyone pointing out what they are doing as personally attacking them. And then we wonder why our message doesn’t get through. They discredit our side, which tells the truth, and we normalize their misinformation believing that if we just politely respond it will be fine.
It’s “both siderism”. One side never has to defend their views, and that makes them just as credible as the other side. When the exact opposite should be true — if someone can’t or won’t defend their views, they should be called out for it, because pointing out that they won’t defend their views is an important part of discrediting them. It’s a shame our media doesn’t do this — I guess the media just wants to be polite and make sure no one can accuse them of making any “personal attacks”. And slowly our democracy is being destroyed.
I appreciate everyone who posted thoughtful comments in reply to mine. That includes every single person you list in your post. I assume they didn’t get upset that I didn’t respond to each of their comments.
And you really shouldn’t get so upset that I don’t respond to all of yours. Your comments include so many assertions in different directions that it would take all day to engage with you on all of them (especially since each reply would generate another comment with at least a half dozen more assertions). You are also very insulting, which makes engagement unpleasant. If you truly want me to engage with you more, try making your comments shorter, limit the number of points you make, and don’t be so hostile all the time.
FLERP!
Let me repeat. I’m not hostile and the fact that you are mischaracterizing my comment as “hostile” instead of responding to the content is exactly what I mean.
I just pointed out the truth – that you didn’t reply to any of the comments. I don’t expect you to respond to mine, but you also wrote this long reply mischaracterizing me as “hostile” instead of responding to any of the points that bethree5 and Diane Ravitch and speduktr wrote which addressed your innuendo discrediting charter critics because they weren’t just as critical of private schools! Why not discuss that with them instead of writing this reply to me?
Elise Stefanik has been posting some of the nastiest innuendoes without ever being asked to defend it. Now that 10 people have been gunned down, she is finally being asked to defend her comments and her staff is simply going on the attack. Never once defending the nasty innuendoes her words intend and instead attacking those who dare to ask her to explain — they are too hostile, too. How dare they expect her to defend her words.
The media – and I think some folks here – buy into that narrative instead of challenging it. Asking someone who posts a comment that smears the people who they don’t like to defend their comment is NOT being hostile. I get that Elise Stefanik’s people want to push that narrative, and I get that the cowardly mainstream media believes it. But it isn’t true.
Credibility. It is impossible to judge people’s credibility if they are presented as people whose credibility should never be challenged! They are just one credible person presenting one side and someone on the other side who is hostile should stop being hostile and just present “the other equally valid side”. See, it’s easy! And it is why our democracy is in danger.
Someone who doesn’t want to defend their innuendoes, like Elise Stefanik, also does not like when anyone points out that they can’t defend their innuendoes because it makes them lose credibility. The problem is that these folks should have lost credibility a long time ago.
People should listen to the truly lame audio when someone from the Lincoln Project called Stefanik’s office last week – before the white supremacist went on his murderous rampage – and asked Stefanik’s staff to defend the remarks she said about Democrats and the usual pedo grifters.
The poor folks who answered the phone didn’t know that they weren’t supposed to defend what Stefanik said! They didn’t know that their job is to always attack anyone who challenges the ugly innuendo Stefanik uses. They didn’t know their job was to accuse all who challenge Stefanik’s dishonest and misleading rhetoric of being too hostile for challenging Stefanik’s ugly innuendo and then attack them as being even more hostile for pointing out that her office still hadn’t defended Stefanik’s remarks.
The poor folks who answered the phone tried to explain and defend Stefanik’s remarks, and the more they did, the more credibility they lost.
I totally understand why FLERP! would rather remain silent or attack those who disagree with him instead of engaging in a dialogue with them. Just like anyone who listens to the Lincoln Project audio would understand why today Stefanik’s office is going on the attack instead of defending what she said.
I hope bethree5’s and Diane’s and other folks thoughtful posts get a thoughtful reply back from FLERP!, since he certainly has time to call me “hostile”.
But Stefanik got away with running some nasty campaign ads because she never had to DIRECTLY defend them. Instead it was presented as a “both sides equal”. When people have to defend what they say, and they can’t, they lost credibility. The media has stopped making Republicans defend their reprehensible words.
We don’t have to do it on this blog. It isn’t “hostile” to ask someone to defend their view. It isn’t “hostile” to point out they are going on the attack whenever someone points out they aren’t defending their position.
“why do people who condemn charter schools tolerate it when it comes to private schools?”
Why do people post that question in the first place if they don’t want to engage with folks who wrote thoughtful replies?
I may have been mistaken. You certainly seem angry and upset. Maybe you’re completely calm when you write these long posts, but your tone seems hostile and insulting to me. Obviously if you want to spend your time on this kind of thing, you’re free to do that. But I think the blog might benefit from having less space devoted to your opinions of why FLERP! is wrong, or dishonest, or whatever else you think about me.
Flerp, I know how hard it can be not to respond, but the two of you do not mix. Both of you have important things to say, but I think they would best not be said to each other. I find the little “He/she who shall not be named comments” unnecessary as well. Please ignore each other. I learn from both of you but find myself skipping posts to avoid the sniping.
speduktr,
I am so glad FLERP! finally responded to your thoughtful reply to his comment “why do people who condemn charter schools tolerate it when it comes to private schools?”
I couldn’t understand why yours and the other excellent comments did not satisfy FLERP!’s desire to know “why do people who condemn charter schools tolerate it when it comes to private schools?”
So it pleases me to see that yours and Diane Ravitch’s and bethree5’s comprehensive responses have finally satisfied his curiosity.
I, for one, would be thrilled if we never have to have another discussion on this blog about why charter critics should also be out there fighting just as hard against private schools. Yours and the other excellent comments here should be more than enough to satisfy someone’s curiosity about that.
Thank you to all for your excellent comments.
STOP! No more snide asides. As I said to Flerp, the two of you are like oil and water. I want to read both of your comments. You both have important things to say, but I find myself skipping them to avoid the bickering.
Thank you.
The exchanges between NYCPSP and FLERP are tiresome. They should take it to their emails.
I would be very glad to agree never to respond to her comments if she would agree never it respond to mine. I usually avoid it but I lack discipline. I will try to do better!
FLERP, I get critiqued and goaded by antagonists on other social media sites. I ignore them.
nycpsp– I hope I do not come across as patronizing, but I think this needs to be said. Everyone has their own style of contributing to a conversation. FLERP generally thinks on a post, finds a spot in the argument that does not parse for him, and queries it. This does not imply some ulterior motive, i.e. “a provocative false equivalency” or “false narrative.” He simply wants to hear more on that one point that doesn’t work for him—he withholds agreement, waiting to hear more. For the purposes of the forum, he does not actually need to add his conclusion. Perhaps he in fact disagrees with the replies. Or not. Either way, it furthers the discussion and perhaps focuses it.
As with most of my replies to people on the forum (including you), I learn more about the issue raised by thinking about it, researching, deciding & stating my position. Then others will chime in with other slants causing me to reconsider. FLERP need not be one of them.
Well said.
bethree5,
I think you are wrong, but I know from your posts that you are an incredibly kind and thoughtful person and I respect that you see only good motives and genuine curiosity in questions that discredit charter critics.
I feel like Cassandra, and I completely understand that very few people here see the same danger to democracy that I do when our discourse is infected with false narratives and the side that is amplifying false narratives is presented as just as credible as the side that is trying to correct false narratives.
I continue to believe it is wrong not to call it out when I see it. I put up with the personal attacks directed at me for calling it out because I think that once this kind of supposed “discourse” is normalized, it is too late. So maybe it’s already too late. I’m sorry if that is the case.
bethree5 says:
“Everyone has their own style of contributing to a conversation. …This does not imply some ulterior motive…”
Bill Ayer
I have so much respect for you, bethree5, but….. Bill Ayer.
Ah, Cassandra—now I get it. This post helps me understand your viewpoint better, nycpsp, thanks for sharing it. I get a pit in my stomach these days over Rep party’s methods in general, ever since I started reading “The Revenge of Power” by Moíses Naím. It’s basically a primer on the modern methods of autocrats & would-be autocrats since the fall of the USSR—operating within ‘democracies’ and hollowing them out from within. Chilling. The shoe fits. The media no doubt is part in the overall scheme (will have to read on to learn more).
RE: “Bill Ayer.” Had to look that one up. Is this about Ayers’ controversial apologias for Weatherman UG activity? Or the way Palin & McCain attempted to weaponize the nothingburger contacts between Ayers & Obama a month before the election?
bethree5, thank you so much for this incredibly kind post. I am so grateful to feel a little more understood, especially by someone as thoughtful and fair-minded as you are.
Regarding “Bill Ayer”
That was my response to your comment that “FLERP generally thinks on a post, finds a spot in the argument that does not parse for him, and queries it.”
I agree with you about “the way Palin & McCain attempted to weaponize the nothingburger contacts between Ayers & Obama a month before the election?”
Which is why I can see when folks are trying to “weaponize” Bill Ayer to discredit those who are pro-public school.
Or perhaps a more “fair-minded” description is that some folks may “weaponize” Bill Ayer to change the subject, when the subject is the insightful remarks of someone who strongly supports public schools talking about how America’s shameful reality is the inequality of educational opportunity.
Because I am more cynical than you, I don’t think Bill Ayers is a “spot in the argument that does not parse for some people”.
That’s why I mentioned Bill Ayers even though I know I just continue to be an annoying Cassandra.
^^^
bethree5,
My apologies for being unnecessarily vague in my above comment.
My “Bill Ayer reference” is about today’s (May 17) post with Jan Resseger’s enlightening essay. The comments speak for themselves.
Ah, got it. Hadn’t gotten to the Resseger article yet.
This may be true outside the schooling context. Housing choice may exacerbate inequities.
If so, should people be limited in their ability to choose where they live?
If people shouldn’t be limited in their ability to choose where they live, why not? Is it because there is some inherent value to freedom of choice? Or is it because it would create other negative effects that outweigh the positive effect of equity? If the latter, what is worse than inequity?
Perhaps Jack Rawls could be of some help here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/#TwoGuiIdeJusFai
After first reading Rawls a few decades ago, I tried to write a script that would randomly select a geographical place and station for me to be “born into,” as a way of estimating what kind of rules about fairness I would want to be in place if I had to have my station in life randomly assigned. I can’t remember what conclusions I reached if any; I just remember I burned many hours one day on the project.
Teachingeconomist,
Unlike you and FLERP!, I never read Jack Rawls, but I did read John Rawls in college.
Or was he like President Kennedy, and his friends called him “Jack”?
NYCPSP,
Yes, John Rawls we by jack. My international graduate students have been vexed by this naming convention.
Teachingeconomist,
Cool that you were on a first name basis with John Rawls.
Housing is not a service provided by the government. It’s a market. If we turn everything into a market, some will get clean water, some not. Some will get a polling station nearby, some not. Some places will not get postal service. Universal free market capitalism cannot be applied to essential government services.
That may be, but it doesn’t answer any of the questions I posed.
Okay, people should be limited in their ability to choose where they live. As examples, Mark Zuckerberg should not be allowed to buy too much of Hawaii, and Bill Gates should not be allowed to buy too much of the continental United States. Elon Musk should not be allowed to buy too much of Nevada or Texas. Now, here is another question. Should Jeff Bezos be allowed to live in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House?
Did you know that Thomas Jefferson wanted every citizen to be given an equal portion of land? I don’t know where to go with that; it’s just interesting.
That would have been a good start. I doubt he meant to include black people.
He wanted to send all Black people out of the United States to make their own separate country in the Ohio Territory because he had no intention of allowing them to become citizens. The equal portion of land was also not to be for any woman. Jefferson had some brilliant ideas and some deep flaws.
Not in the Ohio Territory, LCT. But back to Africa. He did not believe that black and white people could co-exist.
Read what Monticello (the museum at Jefferson’s home in Virginia) said about his racial views: https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/jefferson-s-attitudes-toward-slavery/
Thank you. I will do some more reading. During the Constitutional Convention, he wanted to send them west. After ratification and once the U.S. started expanding westward, he wanted them off the continent altogether. His views about Black people were horrible. His views about the rights of citizens were, however, powerful and righteous.
I doubt women would have been included in such a plan. They didn’t get the vote until the 20th century.
FLERP!,
People are already limited in their ability to choose where they live! Do you mean freedom of the rich to prevent their choice from losing value in case too many other people choose it? The freedom to make sure the zoning in your suburb remains favorable to people who are already affluent and prevents other people from moving there?
Freedom of choice would mean that someone could buy a house next to yours, tear it down, and build an 8 story building with working class or poor families that could all “choose” the suburban school that you “chose” to move to. (Flerp, I am using “You” in the general sense since I know you live in the city).
Forget busing. There is no need for busing at all if those rich billionaires just spent their money buying property and putting up big apartment buildings with low-cost apartments where parents could “choose” a good suburban school. And running free commuter buses from those suburbs with good zoned schools for parents to go to work in the city.
The “free market” has never been free. That’s always been a lie. It is designed to protect the value of those who already have things of value.
I am not arguing against all zoning or building regulations. I just find it outrageous when people invoke this “freedom” as their argument to support the school privatizers, who have sprung up to find profit by privatizing the schools of the most vulnerable families, because they know that the families with more means and political clout won’t let them profit from undermining their own suburban school system.
The ultra religious Jewish community in one suburb was able to undermine Ramapo High School. It was intentional. Most people understand how that can happen if a group of folks wants to benefit some and doesn’t care how many they hurt. They condemn it. But that Orthodox Jewish community hurting the public schools of Ramapo are just exhibiting the same ethics as charter promoters. The benefit of some at the expense of others.
I grew up in a midwest suburb where there were lots of parochial schools, including 2 large high schools. And there were lots of suburban and city high schools.
But the parochial high schools did not spend their time trying to take funding dollars from the public schools. They never tried to benefit at the expense of public schools.
The charter movement also began that way, but it was taken over by greedy, unethical folks who believed in the philosophy that benefiting the few was justification for lying, deception, and hurting the many. I thought Success Academy was great, until I realized that the CEO was making blatantly false claims and using deception to get what she wanted. I was stunned — I suppose I was naive – because until I saw it up close, I believed what I read in the media promoting what seemed good. I had no idea the founder believed in power over honesty. It was basically the same as how the Republican party functions. And the entire ed reform movement has become like the Republican party. Even the ones who are more ethical refuse to speak out — they value their position far more than honesty. They are like Susan Collins, always willing to look the other way when those in power say and do the very harmful things that harm so many children. And they justify it by telling themselves that helping a few kids makes what they condone doing to all the others justifies their actions. It doesn’t and never has.
“ People are already limited in their ability to choose where they live!”
Is that a good thing?
It’s capitalism. People with lots of money can afford to live in big houses with lots of land, or in penthouses on Fifth Avenue in NYC. Poor people live where they can afford to live, which will be an impoverished neighborhood.
FLERP!,
Is that a good thing?
Why are you trying to change the subject? Did I hit a nerve when I mentioned your BFF Eva Moskowitz and her thoroughly dishonest promotion of her own charter schools which benefit the students who benefit Eva at the expense of all the students who don’t benefit Eva – who just happen to be in public schools?
The question I wish you would address is whether it is possible to have “choice” schools that are not run by unethical self-serving operators like Eva Moskowitz who see this as a zero-sum game where their charter benefits more if they can hurt public schools more.
In fact, Eva Moskowitz is right — she does benefit more when she undermines public schools. She gets huge donations from right wing billionaires and (shock!) decided that Betsy DeVos was not only a great choice for Secy of Education, but that her own time would be best spent by giving interviews and writing op eds demanding that Betsy DeVos get confirmed!
Eva Moskowitz made it her personal mission to go spend her time aiding the Betsy DeVos public relations tour because she believed DeVos needed her attention far more than the students in her charter schools. And anyway, by spending her time helping DeVos she was helping students everywhere!
And I got a bridge to sell ya, FLERP!
But keep trying to change the subject by asking other people random questions that you very strangely never have an opinion on yourself.
You are far more transparent than you imagine.
I have no idea why you keep bringing up private schools that have been around for more than 100 years. Are you now suddenly concerned that these private schools are undermining public education? Or do you just want to change the subject from the kinds of schools that do undermine public schools because their operators have no integrity or moral compass. I never understand why that didn’t bother you, but hey, you must have your reasons for believing that Eva Moskowitz should be above criticism.
“People are already limited in their ability to choose where they live!”
Is that a good thing?”
It’s odd when someone keeps posting the same question without answering it himself.
The person who presented a question they aren’t answering themselves uses this false framing which means that whatever answer someone gives will always be portrayed negatively.
Yes, it’s a good thing that people are already limited in their ability to choose where they live!
No, it’s a bad thing that people are already limited in their ability to choose where to live.
What’s your answer, FLERP!? I will point out the flaws in whichever you choose and then you can defend it.
Unless your intention was not a conversation at all.
No, I actually did not notice that part of your comment.
I’ll ignore the “BFF” comment as part of my ongoing initiative to not get involved in petty sniping.
As for why I’m asking the questions I’m asking, I’m interested in the implications of the assertion that choice always exacerbated inequities.
Some (Erwin Chemerinsky, for one) have argued that the existence of private education is a bad thing and should be eliminated. That’s not realistic, of course, but is it true? Does choice invariably lead to segregation and inequity? If so, why do people who condemn charter schools tolerate it when it comes to private schools? It can’t simply be that private school choice is ok because it doesn’t involve public funding. Public schools whose funding depends on student headcount are harmed when parents choose private schools. And parents who pay for private school are less likely to support higher taxation for public schools that they don’t use. Parents of private school students also don’t have a direct stake in the quality of public schools. Why do we pretend that anything people pay for on their own is ok?
Is there really a simple answer to any of these questions? I live in a wealthy town with excellent public schools. Yet, there are still people who send their children to private schools. Has it affected the quality of the public schools? I seriously doubt it. For one thing, property values are affected by the quality of the schools. If for no other reason, those rich people do not want their property to suffer because the quality of the schools is questionable. I am oversimplifying, I know, but I suspect that the same sort of anaysis can be applied in a multitude of situations.
The fact that your district is wealthy means that the property tax produces good resources for the schools. The children are well fed, have access to good health care, live in good housing and do not lack basic necessities. Of course you have excellent schools.
The point I meant to make, and apparently didn’t, is that the wealthy residents support the public schools even though their children don’t necessarily attend them (although most probably do). They don’t constantly complain about high taxes or vote against school referendums. Flerp had said that well off people who send their kids to private school are less likely to support high taxes for schools they don’t use. I have a feeling that the people who are less sympathetic to high taxes may be those who are really stretching their budgets to send a child to a private school. That might have been me if we had been able to afford private school for any of my kids, which we were not. Chances are that private education would have been because of some dissatisfaction with the public schools, which would have made us even less likely to want our taxes to support what we saw as their dysfunction.
People without children in public schools have a significant interest in paying for public schools. Many of them just don’t understand that they do. Business interests have done a terrific job of convincing many that education is an entirely individualistic endeavor, a recent development in the big scheme of things. Many have been convinced that the sole purpose of sending children to school is to get them financially ahead of their neighbors.
Similarly, many think the goal in owning or renting property is to avoid groups of others who are different. It’s like Reagan and Thatcher ghosts haunt them, and trying to convince many people nowadays to care about their country and support democracy is like inviting pit bulls to bite your legs. They don’t let go.
“People without children in public schools have a significant interest in paying for public schools. Many of them just don’t understand that they do.”
That’s an argument, and also a restatement of the problem. Not saying I disagree.
Happy to be in agreement.
FLERP!,
I made an argument for why charters – and NOT private schools and NOT magnet schools or selective schools – exacerbated inequities and you ignored it. You didn’t refute it, you ignored it and changed the subject. You then pivoted to real estate!
FLERP! says:
“I’m interested in the implications of the assertion that choice always exacerbated inequities.”
Then why aren’t you engaging with the conversation instead of asking questions you don’t want to answer yourself?
This is what you posted:
“Does choice invariably lead to segregation and inequity? If so, why do people who condemn charter schools tolerate it when it comes to private schools? It can’t simply be that private school choice is ok because it doesn’t involve public funding.”
I replied and yet you don’t want to discuss.
Putting a charter in a community that is predominantly one race doesn’t INVARIABLY lead to segregation by race. If you think it does, then that reveals some flawed logic on your part.
The question is about inequity and I wrote a long response that explain exactly why I believe that charter schools and their lies increase inequities — because charters are now incentivized to push (or at least condone) lies that magnet schools and private schools don’t.
And I explained why the lies of charters hurt public schools. I contrasted that with other choices — magnet public schools, selective public schools, private schools that are also choices but not choices that are incentivized to hurt public schools. You seem to want to make false equivalencies in which the harm done by charters is minimized because it is the same as the harm done by private schools. And when challenged on that, you change the subject instead of defending your innuendo that charters and private schools and magnet schools all equally exacerbate inequalities equally.
Their effect on inequity is not the same. I explain my rationale for that statement. You just keep throwing charters, magnets and privates into the same bucket instead of making a convincing argument that they have the same effect. Why?
Choice doesn’t have to exacerbate inequalities. I want to talk about the kind of choice that doesn’t exacerbate inequalities. You don’t.
You just seem to want to push a false narrative that all choice has the same effect on inequities when that is simply not true.
Why don’t you want to talk about the kind of choice that does NOT exacerbate inequities the way charters do?
speduktr, I agree that there isn’t a simple answer to these questions.
Of course, Neuhaus was not Catholic.
I urge you to use your investigative skills to examine the political influence of Christian evangelicals, or for that matter, Orthodox Jews, who quite openly want public money for their yeshivas.
Rhetorically, are there parallels between the arguments against the 1619 project and the arguments against info. about the politicized, right wing Catholic Church?
Thank you.