Jessica Winter, a staff writer at the New Yorker, wrote an article in the latest issue of the magazine describing how the hit-TV program “Abbott Elementary” is sharply critiquing the charter school movement. The show and its creator and star Quinta Brunson have won multiple awards.
It’s a terrific article.
Most of the public doesn’t know what charter schools are. Abbott Elementary tells them. Abbott artfully weighs in against the privatization of public schools.
I wish I could repost the article in full. Here are snippets:
The local and national growth of charter schools has been propped up by lavish support from a center-to-right spectrum of billionaires with various, sometimes overlapping desires, which include lower taxes, fewer and weakened teachers’ unions, state funding for religious schools, and a more entrepreneurial approach to public education. Prominent advocates include Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, the Walton family, Betsy DeVos, the late Eli Broad, and Jeff Yass, reportedly the richest man in Pennsylvania. When the “weird cash” episode of “Abbott Elementary” aired, viewers immediately speculated that Barbara was referring to Yass. Jeanne Allen, the director of Yass’s education foundation, was unamused, telling the Philadelphia Inquirer that the line was a “gratuitous slap against people with wealth” and tweeting, “This has TEACHERS UNION written all over it.”
Brunson is the daughter of a veteran public-school teacher in West Philadelphia, and “Abbott” doesn’t flinch from the decrepitude of the city’s education system. (For one thing, an out-of-date calendar hanging in Abbott’s main office covers up a hole in the wall that appears to be choked with asbestos.) But the show also dismantles the benevolent narrative of “escape” promulgated by the Yasses and other charter-school advocates—the notion that a public-school system cannot be raround and improved, only bled out and abandoned. “Abbott” grabs this idea around the neck in a conversation between Jacob (Chris Perfetti), who teaches history at Abbott, and Summer (Carolyn Gilroy), an Addington teacher who tries and fails to recruit Jacob to her school, where he’d be, she says, “with the brightest kids from the neighborhood,” “the cream of the crop from all over the city.” “We’re all about focussing on the kids who have the best chance of making it out,” Summer says. (“Out of what?” Jacob asks. He receives no answer.)
In this exchange, as when Addington offers a chance of “escape” to Josh and just as quickly rescinds it, “Abbott” is building a cogent, legally grounded argument against charter-school practices. According to Pennsylvania law, a charter school cannot discriminate “based on intellectual ability or athletic ability, measures of achievement or aptitude, status as a person with a disability, English language proficiency, or any other basis that would be illegal if used by a school district.” But, as Summer openly admits, these prohibitions are not reflected in charter schools’ student populations. In 2019, the Education Law Center found that Philadelphia’s district schools enrolled about five times as many students with intellectual disabilities as charters. They also enrolled twice as many autistic children and three times as many English-language learners and students experiencing homelessness. A 2016 reportby the Center for Civil Rights Remedies hypothesized that “some charter schools are artificially boosting their test scores or graduation rates by using harsh discipline to discourage lower-achieving youth from continuing to attend.”
It’s rare to get this kind of cogent, clear-eyed reporting about charter grift in a major publication.
The article made me wonder about the billionaires’ end game.
Charters for “the cream of the crop.”
Vouchers for the religious who want public money to pay tuition at a church school.
Vouchers for wealthy families to underwrite their pricey tuition.
Homeschooling for those who prefer to avoid organized schooling altogether.
What will be the role of public schools? They will serve the students whom no else wants.
What a mean, undemocratic view!
The reality is that our society needs public schools, open to all, more than ever. As our society becomes more diverse, we need more institutions where people from different backgrounds interact as equals. We need more places where diversity, equity and inclusion are functioning realities, not a goal or a scapegoat.
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