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What Is HANY and Who Funds Them?

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2016 //
19

HANY is High Achievement New York. It has mounted a very costly campaign to oppose the opt out movement and to support high-stakes testing and the Common Core.

 

Who is funding their expensive campaign to maintain the status quo?

 

Fortunately, blogger and former teacher Deb Escobar has done the research and provides the answers. This will come as no surprise to readers of this blog. HANY is funded by the Billionaire Boys Club.

 

Who is the Man Behind the Curtain? Why, it is Bill Gates!

 

But he is not alone.

 

The purpose of this post is to pull back the curtain and let you know who is funding this massive campaign that aims to fix our “broken” system. Because, you know, it’s all for the children. Let’s start with their coalition members, beginning with Arva Rice, President and CEO of the New York Urban League, who previously was affiliated with Paul Tudor Jones (yes the hedge fund guy) and his Robin Hood Foundation.

 

Then there is New York Campaign for Achievement Now (NYCAN), part of the larger 50-state education reform group. The funding stream for 50CAN includes Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bush Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, and the Walton Foundation, among others. A veritable who’s-who of big money in the education reform game. The NY chapter adds more money from Gates, along with Bloomberg Philanthrophies, Kenneth M. Hirsch and William E. Simon.

 

Include Association for a Better New York, founded by real estate tycoon Bill Rudin. Their self-stated goal is to “promote neighborhood revitalization.” AKA gentrification. AKA keeping their fingers on the real estate prize in NY.

 

Coalition member Parents for Excellence in Bethlehem has bought the Common Core Gates funded spin. Co-President Kim Namkoong is a parent, also a mathematician and computer programmer. She is a face for the “How is My Kid Doing?” campaign that is funded by – you guessed it – the Council for a Strong America folks and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Bethlehem Parents for Excellence has a lackluster website (a surprise considering Namkoong’s stated occupation) that does not list its donors. They advocate for common core and testing.

 

Membership includes reformy groups Educators4Excellence and StudentsFirstNY. Educators4Excellence, also funded by the Gates Foundation, is comprised of anti-union young teachers, many of whom are alumni of Teach For America. See ed blogger Jonathan Pelto’s research on the group here. StudentsFirstNY is that pro-charter, pro-voucher group that shares its physical address with New York Charter queen Eva Moskowitz’ organization. NYS Families for Excellent Schools also shares that same address and is a hedge-funded PAC for education reforms.

 

The corporate reformers are a cozy group. There are not many of them, but they have so much money that they pop up again and again, singing the same tired old song. Test your children (not mine); put your children in “no excuses” charters (not mine); testing will make everyone smarter; the harder the tests, the smarter everyone will be and the more the achievement gap will close.

 

Evidence has nothing to do with their campaign. They do what the Man (or Men) Behind the Curtain want them to do.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

New Era of Segregation Expands in Mississippi as Legislature Endorses More School Choice

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2016 //
16

The segregated states of the Deep South fought desegregation tooth-and-nail for years after the 1954 Brown decision. The white leadership did not want white children to go to school with black children, period. Their first response was to declare that they would never desegregate: never, never, never. As pressure from the federal government and the courts accelerated, southern officials found a new tactic to preserve segregation: school choice. School choice, they knew, would protect the status quo: White children would “choose” to stay in white schools, and black children would “choose” to stay in black schools. Eventually the federal courts struck down every school choice plan, recognizing that it was a blatant effort to avoid the letter and spirit of the Brown decision.

 

But here we are, eighty years later, with segregation on the rise and school choice in the ascendancy as its vehicle.

 

Southern states are adopting charters and vouchers because their long-frustrated effort to return to segregated schools is at last feasible. Not only is it feasible, in some circles, it is fashionable. Now the media celebrates all-black schools and ignores the fact that they are segregated. The subtext is: Look at this! An all-black school with high test scores! Isn’t that great?

 

Mississippi just passed legislation to establish vouchers for children with special needs and to permit more charters. The “vouchers for children with special needs” is a first step towards a broader voucher plan that grows to include low-income children; then to include children in schools that have low test scores; then to include more and more children, until everyone gets a voucher. The not-so-subtle joke is that the voucher is not large enough to pay the tuition at a first-rate private school, so most of the children will have a voucher to go to a religious school whose teachers are uncertified and whose resources are meager. Worse, the children with special needs abandon the legal protections that the public school guarantees when they leave the public system.

 

Other states, such as Ohio, Nevada, Indiana, Louisiana, Florida, and Maryland, have endorsed voucher plans (which are never called vouchers but some euphemism, like “opportunity scholarships.) The irony in these states is that their constitutions explicitly prohibits the diversion of public school funds to religious schools, yet legislators proclaim their fealty to constitutional principles even as they pass laws to send public money to religious schools. Vouchers for children with disabilities is the camel’s nose under the tent, to get the movement started.

 

The rise of vouchers is not a response to popular demand. Vouchers have been put to voters in several states, and every time they have been soundly defeated, even in red state Utah. The revival of the voucher movement is nothing more than ideology and politics taking charge of schooling. School choice is not the “civil rights issue of our time,” as its proponents claim; it is the predictable way to roll back civil rights in our time.

 

After 25 years of experimentation with charters and vouchers, we know that they do not get better results than public schools unless they choose their students and kick out the ones who don’t have high test scores and don’t adhere to strict requirements for obedience. Charters and vouchers drain money from public schools, which still educate the vast majority of children. Once school choice gets rooted in a state, the subject consumes all the energy of legislators. It is as if the 90% who attend real public schools became invisible.

 

Despite the absence of any advantages and the presence of scandals, frauds, and discrimination, more and more states are falling victim to the false promise of “school choice.” As one Florida superintendent explained it to me, charters enable parents to keep their children away from “those children.” Both charters and vouchers increase racial segregation, religious segregation, and economic segregation.

 

These trends are ominous for our democracy.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Mississippi, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Liberia Needs Free Public Schools, not Privatization and Outsourcing of Its Responsibility to Children

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2016 //
4

Liberia is seriously considering a proposal to outsource its elementary schools to foreign investors, notably Bridge International Academies, backed by wealthy Americans.

 

This Nigerian-born, American-educated journalist and historian thinks privatization is a terrible idea.

 

C. Patrick Burrowes writes that the plan to privatize what should be a government responsibility is a boondoggle.

 

He writes:

 

Poor Liberia! Few countries in the world have been as ill served by its government officials, as Liberia has been.

 

In the 1920s, Liberia earned the opprobrium of the world when some selfish officials opted to supply laborers by force to private foreign contractors. The cries and protests of ordinary Liberians went unheeded by them, until international pressure brought an end to their heartless scheme.

 

If this government is allowed to outsource the entire elementary school system, Liberia will enter the annals of infamy once again. At stake is not just the future of education in Liberia. If this proposal is allowed to pass, it will be the beginning of the end for universal public education, a concept with roots dating back to 1647. At stake is the future schooling of children around the world.

 

The proposal must be blocked, not just as a matter of principle. It must be opposed because it is based on faulty logic. Furthermore, its advocates provide no evidence to support their radical and disruptive experiment with the nation’s school system. Instead, they offer ideological buzzwords like “privatization” and “technology.”

 

But technologies cannot teach; people do. The top three factors for ensuring student success in early childhood education are: good teachers, good teachers, and good teachers. In other words, the quality of teaching and teacher-support are the strongest predictor of quality. If successful Liberians are humble and honest, we will readily acknowledge that we owe whatever careers we have today to the foundation laid by good elementary school teachers.

 

Throughout its history, Liberia produced thousands of such dedicated and self-sacrificing educators. The late Albert Porte and Dr. Mary Antoinette Brown-Sherman are just two well-known examples. Each of us could name several others who impacted our lives directly. Those teachers worked with few, if any, advanced technologies. Yet, their impact in the lives of students was immeasurable. So, why the urgent need now for the outsourcing of curriculum delivery and classroom management by cell phones?

 

The main reason is this: The Liberian educational system over the last decade has been driven by donors’ agendas, with little systematic planning based on local needs. Donors love giving chairs, buildings and other concrete objects that they can slap their logos on for all to see. It is fine to accept those inputs, but government should have its own master plan. The plan should determine allocation of resources, not the other way around….

 

Moments arise in history that tests the honor and moral fiber of a people. The forced-labor scandal of the 1920s was one. This educational outsourcing boondoggle is another. By our actions, let us prove ourselves worthy of the respect we want from the rest of the world and from our descendants.

 

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, International, Privatization

Would You Pay $250,000 to Play Ed Reform Poker?

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2016 //
11

If ever you needed a reminder that the corporate reform movement is led by the super-rich, not by public school parents or teachers, this is it. The rephormer group called “Education Reform Now” is throwing a poker party to support privatization by charter and testing for other people’s children. Doesn’t that sound like fun, and it is all for a cause that will damage public schools.

 

Jonathan Pelto writes about the poker party here.
“For $250,000 you can nab 10 seats at the poker tournament, 10 rebuys (a technique for expanding your winnings), 10 cocktail tickets for non-poker players and the honor of having not one, but two, “special guests” sit at your table. [Education Reform Now hires famous people, usually sports stars and actors, to attend the event and sit and play with the wealthy donors]

 

“For $100,000 you get the same benefits, but alas, the company of only one “special guest.”

 

“Other Sponsorship levels include a $50,000 package, a table of 10 poker seats for $20,000 or a single poker seat for $1,000.”

 

Pelto includes a short and valuable glossary of the leading players in corporate reform circles.

 

Peter Greene commented on the poker game here. He notes that one seat at the table is equivalent to five years of a typical teacher’s income. He has an interesting idea:

 

” Frankly, I like the idea of the Network for Public Education or BATs buying a table or two, then sitting there making rude comments about charter schools, common core, and testing all night. But I’m afraid that my exclusive tailor, Jean-Claude Pennee, could not whip up something appropriate in time. And I’m sure it takes a certain level of wealth to set up and participate in an event like this without feeling a twinge of shame or irony. On the website for the event we can find information like this:

 

 

*Mississippi’s average per pupil expenditure is $7,890 per year while New Jersey’s is $17,620, a disparity reflected across the nation. There is a ceiling, however, on what can be achieved through traditional approaches to resource re-allocation.*

 

 

“These are exactly the same people who declare that we have to get teacher pay under control and that you cannot improve public education by throwing money at it. Yes, throwing money at the education of children across America is a waste of money, money that could be spent on much more valuable and important things. But when the rich want to spend an evening throwing money at each other– well, that’s just good sense and great fun.”

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Dora Taylor: Charter Forces in Washington State Threaten to Block Funding for Public schools

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2016 //
29

A daily reader of this blog, Chiara, has often made the point that once charters enter the political discussion in a state, there is no more attention to public schools. It is all-charters, all-vouchers, all the time, even though 93% of the children in Ohio (her state) attend traditional public schools. The legislature loses sight of the education of the state’s children and concentrates only on the small percentage in choice schools.

 

In Washington State, the legislature has been consumed with charters, even though they enroll only 1,300 students. The state’s highest court ruled they are not public schools and are not entitled to public funding. So the discussion this past session was devoted to how to fund those schools.

 

At the same time, the state court ordered the legislature to fund the public schools (which enroll 1 million students) equitably and adequately. While wrestling with the charter issue, the legislature did nothing to fund the schools that educate the overwhelming majority of children. It was all-charters, all the time.

 

Seattle parent blogger Dora Taylor says that the charter claque in the legislature plans to hold general funding hostage until they get charter funding.

 

This is shameful. Bill Gates shows where his priorities lie. Winning means more to him than the education of 1 million children.

Categories Charter Schools, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Washington State

California Charter Game: Rejected by District, Rejected by County, Appeal to State and….

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2016 //
17

District officials in California have confided in me that it is virtually impossible to stop a charter proposal, no matter how bad it is or how little it is needed. If the district turns down the proposal, the charter advocates appeal to the Los Angeles County School Board, where they are often approved. In the off-chance that both the district and the county turn down their proposal, the advocates appeal to the state, where they are almost certain to win approval.

 

Here is an example.

 

Two parents proposed to open a dual-language immersion school that would teach Spanish, German, Italian, and French. The school would be called the International Studies Language Academy. The Glendale school board voted against the proposal, 5-0. The proponents appealed to the County office, which did an extensive review and turned them down, 5-1.

 

Staff at the Los Angeles County Office of Education weighed the petition as part of the Charter School Review Team, made up of county officials drawn from various departments, including the controller’s office, the curriculum department and the division of accountability.

 

County officials determined the plan “provides an unsound educational program” and that the petitioners “are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the proposed educational program,” according to the report.

 

“We’re disappointed, but know the political climate is tough for charters in the L.A. area right now,” Bonacci said in an email.

 

Similar to Glendale school board members, county officials found several faults with the school’s financial plan and deemed it “unrealistic,” in the report, highlighting how the school underestimated teacher salaries, benefits and the cost for books and materials.

 

In another instance, county officials noted that the school planned to mail bank statements directly to Academica, a Florida-based charter school operator.

 

The school’s lack of internal control in processing checks “can result in fiscal mismanagement,” the report stated.

 

Despite those findings, the petition has won support from the California Charter Schools Assn., whose manager for regional advocacy, Allison Hendrick, urged that the county board approve the appeal.

 

Ah, so the school will be managed by Academica, the political powerhouse in Florida that operates for profit. Due diligence would suggest that the California officials learn more about Academica, whose owners have assembled a vast real estate empire. In Florida, Academica had the help of a state senator who chairs the education appropriations committee. Who will help them in California?

 

Let’s see what happens to this petition, where local officials declared it to be pedagogically and financially unsound.

 

 

Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Pelto: Malloy Aide Hired by DFER

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2016 //
5

This is really annoying. I stayed up late last night to write this post. And it disappeared!

 

Jonathan Pelto reported that Adam Goldfarb, former chief of staff to Connecticut’s commissioner of education Stefan Pryor, is going to work for Democrats for Education Reform, the hedge fund managers group that promotes charters.

 

Pryor now works in Rhode Island doing economic development for Governor  Gina Raimondo. Her husband roomed with Cory Booker.

 

What is the link that connects Pryor, Goldfarb, Raimondo, Booker? YALE.

 

Not any experience teaching. YALE.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform, Privatization, Rhode Island

John Thompson Forecasts the End of the Corporate Reform Era

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2016 //
21

Dr. John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma City, anticipates the collapse of corporate reform in this outstanding post. He gives much of the credit to the opt out movement, which stood up to political and corporate power to protect their children. Who ever thought it was a great idea to subject 9-year-old children to 8 hours of testing? Who thought it would be a good idea to fire teachers if test scores didn’t go up every year? Who thought it was a good idea to drain resources from public schools and give them to privately managed charter schools?

 

Parents certainly didn’t. They refused to be bullied by school officials and politicians.

 

Thompson writes:

 

“Three cheers for the Opt Out movement! When the history of the collapse of data-driven, competition-driven school improvement is written, the parents and students of the grassroots Opt Out uprising will get much – or most – of the credit for driving a stake through the heart of the testing vampire.”

 

Thompson thanks Tom Loveless for pointing out that all of these alleged reforms have not produced the promised miracles. But he faults all those who continue to believe that testing, punishments, rewards, and competition improves education.

 

But he gives Loveless a demerit for continuing to accept the premises of corporate reform.

 

“One cheer for the Brookings Institute’s Tom Loveless, and his discussion of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and for noting the failure of CCSS to raise student performance. Okay, maybe he deserves 1-1/2 or 1-3/4ths cheers for his resisting changes to the reliable NAEP tests in order to please Common Core advocates, and for concluding, “Watch the Opt Out movement.”

 

Loveless notes that “states that adopted CCSS and have been implementing the standards have registered about the same gains and losses on NAEP as states that either adopted and rescinded CCSS or never adopted CCSS in the first place.” He then gets to the key point, “The big story is that NAEP scores have been flat for six years, an unprecedented stagnation in national achievement that states have experienced regardless of their stance on CCSS.“ Now, Loveless says, “CCSS is paying a political price for those disappointing NAEP scores.”

 

“The big story, however, is the failure of the entire standards-driven, test-driven, competition-driven model of school improvement. Loveless is free to adopt his own methodology for his latest research paper on education reform but he deserves a “boo” for continuing to reduce complex and inter-related processes to a bunch of single, simple, distinct, quantifiable categories….

 

“Loveless, Brookings, and other reformers deserve a loud round of boos for pretending that the failure of Common Core standards is unfair and/or regrettable. On the contrary, the political and educational battle over national standards is a part of the inter-connected debacle produced by a simplistic faith in standards and curriculum; bubble-in accountability; and the federal government’s funding of teacher-bashing, mass charterization, and the top-down reforms of the last 1-1/2 decades.

 

“While I appreciate Loveless’s candor in acknowledging that the stagnation of NAEP scores in the last six years is unprecedented, his focus on standards misses the other big points. These realities have not been lost on the grassroots Opt Out movement….

 

“Perhaps we’re seeing the last days of the education blame game. Maybe Loveless and other pro-reform analysts will give up on trying to pin the rejection of their policies on parents and teachers. As parents refuse to allow their children to take the tests, it will become even more impossible to set cut scores, meaning that it will become even more impossible to claim that systems can identify the children and adults who supposedly should be punished for their scores. Once the punitive parts of school reform are repudiated, little or nothing will be left of this unfortunate period of education history. And, the Opt Out movement will deserve the credit it is granted in closing that chapter.”

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Failure, Opt Out, Parents, Privatization, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

Sarah Garland: Is the Era of “No-Excuses” Coming to an End?

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2016 //
40

Sarah Garland writes in the Hechinger Report about a change of direction for the Mastery Charter chain in Philadelphia. The CEO of Mastery, Scott Gordon, has decided to ease up on the strict rules of “no-excuses.” Garland believes that what Mastery does and how it works out might affect no-excuses charters across the nation.

 

I am not convinced that what happens in the Simon Gratz High School, a charter school in Philadelphia, will change the direction of no-excuses charters nationally, but it is an interesting story anyway.

 

Garland acknowledges that critics blame charters for the near-collapse of the Philadelphia public school system, but she leaves unresolved whether Mastery is the solution or the problem.

 

Garland writes:

 

 

More than 40 percent of the high school’s 280 freshmen show up reading below a fifth-grade level. Several city special-education programs are located at the school, so about a third of students also have special needs, ranging from cognitive disabilities to emotional disorders. In 2011, the year before Mastery took over, the graduation rate was 58 percent.

 
Administrators started out by instituting the no-excuses playbook, as Mastery had done at several of its other institutions. Under this approach, students are held to high expectations no matter what circumstances they come from – or what happens at home at the end of the school day. The strategies typically include strict discipline, extra time in school, drilling in math and English, and accountability for teachers and principals, usually based on testing. Administrators adopt a rigid set of rules and punishments. A top-down lecturing style is followed in the classroom.

 
At Simon Gratz, students began raising their hands in class, tucking in their shirts, and racking up demerits and detentions for the smallest infractions.

 
The new administrators also dismantled the metal detectors guarding the entrance of the building. The idea was to make it seem more like a scholarly institution and less like a prison. But in this case students and parents balked. They didn’t feel safe without the detectors, security guards, and bag checks. The school, nevertheless, came off the state’s “persistently dangerous” list as the hallways calmed down and fewer fights broke out.

 
Teachers drilled students in note-taking strategies and the standards they had to master. Test scores rose at first. But then they stalled. Gratz still wasn’t the friendly, dynamic place Mastery administrators had imagined.

 
The high expectations and rigid rules weren’t enough to erase the trauma that has scarred many kids. In the years after Mastery took over Gratz, one student witnessed her father shoot and kill her mother. Another saw his uncle shot in the head and had to drag his best friend’s body to a police car after he was gunned down in the street. An honors student was hit by a stray bullet and died. Another student accidentally shot himself.
Related: How to educate traumatized students

Gordon worried that Mastery was in danger of confirming what many critics often charge about charter schools: That while many of them may do a good job of preparing kids to do well on standardized tests and get into college, their students founder once they arrive on campus. That the mostly white leaders of urban charter networks are, at best, out of touch with the mostly black and Hispanic communities they serve, or, at worst, guilty of a paternalistic racism that undermines their mission of uplift.

 
“A mistake that we made was the assumption that schools were not successful because they weren’t well run, or they weren’t well organized, or that teachers weren’t trained and supported.”

Gordon was ready to make a change. “We were frustrated that we couldn’t break through,” he says. “We got feedback from our graduates that the … support structure that we had created for students – ‘kids will not fail’ – was not serving them once they got into the real world. The real world was not as supportive. They had to really develop the independence to manage themselves.”

 
Gordon tinkered with parts of the model, but after struggling to get it right, he decided to start over.

 
Mastery administrators introduced a new curriculum, new teaching methods, and a new disciplinary system. They hired more social workers and brought in more assistance from community organizations that help kids deal with trauma. They made training in racism and “cultural context” mandatory for all of Mastery’s teachers and administrators, across every school in the city.

 
“Often you see people who are really bold as those who might not listen,” says Kathy Hamel, a partner at the Charter School Growth Fund, a nonprofit that supports Mastery. “But [Gordon] is a very good listener, and he’s learned to listen and adapt.”

 
Mastery administrators decided that to serve their students best, they should make sure all had the option to go to college, but not insist on it. They began developing programs to support students headed into the military or to technical programs and immediate jobs. Even the charter network’s motto – “Excellence. No Excuses.” – is under review.

 
“We still believe there are no excuses for this country not to be able to provide a great education for every kid,” Gordon says. “There is no excuse; every child can learn and be successful. But I’m not sure it speaks to the soul of Mastery right now. That’s part of our job: to prepare our kids for the real world, and to recognize that there’s great promise in the world. It’s also a broken world.”

 

What do you think?

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Philadelphia, Privatization

Southern Education Foundation: Charters and Vouchers Increase Segregation, Decrease Opportunity for Neediest

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2016 //
28

The Southern Education Foundation has released a new report that explodes the myth that charters and vouchers increase opportunity for students of color and low-income students. Far from it. Privatization via charters and vouchers has intensified racial segregation and is reversing the Brown Decision of 1954. The disreputable concept of “separate but equal” is returning under the guise of “school choice.”

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Autumn Blanchard
ablanchard@southerneducation.org
404.991.6766

 

PRIVATE SCHOOL SEGREGATION: OLD NEWS, NEW PITCH
State-funded “separate but unequal” education billed as opportunity for underrepresented

 

MARCH 29, 2016 – The Southern Education Foundation (SEF), an advocate for equity in education, releases Race & Ethnicity in a New Era of Public Funding of Private Schools: Private School Enrollment in the South and the Nation. This report explores the phenomenon of publicly funded private school segregation occurring more than 60 years after the Brown v. Board of Education verdict declared segregated public schools unconstitutional. It closely examines racial demographics in contemporary private schools and finds that they remain segregated, with white students significantly overrepresented as compared to public school populations.

 

Currently, 19 states have programs that provide public funding to support children’s attendance in private schools. Last year alone, approximately $1 billion was diverted to private schools from state treasuries across the country, spreading thinner already limited resources. Though such state initiatives exist in each region of the nation, they are especially concentrated in the South.

 

“The prevailing message is that these voucher and neo-voucher tax credit scholarship programs offer better or more opportunities to students of color and low-income students…the data does not reflect that story,” said Dr. Kent McGuire, president of SEF. In reality, it perpetuates a trend of financially supporting private schools that as a whole remain overwhelming white – no less than 75 percent of all white students in private schools attend schools where 90 percent or more of the student body is white. As segregation persists in private schools, the demographics of public schools shift toward an increasingly diverse student body – fertile ground for the reemergence of a “separate but unequal” education system.

 

Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics from 1998 and 2012, this brief and the accompanying Southern state profiles review several indicators of racial demographics and segregation in public and private schools including: overrepresentation of white students, disproportionate white enrollment rates, virtual segregation (90% or more white student population), and virtual exclusion of students of color. All of which suggest that segregation persists in private schools across the country and especially in the South.

 

The six Deep South states, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina, which resisted the constitutional mandate for school desegregation the longest are the worst offenders in the nation by far – demonstrating that state support of private schooling does not appear to have led to greater access for students of color. These six states had a considerably higher rate of overrepresentation among white students in private schools than any other section or region in 2012. Five of the six states were at the top of the state rankings in 2012 and the sixth, Alabama, was ranked tenth.

 

 

Despite laws against segregation and in contrast to public schools, private schools with and without public funding continue to select which students they will admit. As long as the private school adopts a non-discriminatory policy and publicly declares that they do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin they are eligible to receive public funds in states with programs that allow for the shifting of funds to private institutions. However, enrollment patterns show that this measure primarily gives only lip service to a commitment to diversity. Despite these trends, black students can still often be found on promotional materials produced by private schools and scholarship organizations. This leaves the false impression that primarily students of color are served by such voucher initiatives and supports the oft-championed messaging that greater access to private institutions is available for students of color, which is often not the case.

 

The study’s findings and analysis are reminiscent of the overall patterns and conditions of attendance in private schools in the South that the authors of The Schools That Fear Built found in 1976 in the aftermath of massive resistance to desegregation: “These are schools for whites. The common thread that runs through them all, Christian, secular, or otherwise, is that they provide white ground to which blacks are admitted only on the school’s terms if at all.” This study suggests that today’s “common thread” also encompasses the exclusion of Hispanic and Native American students, as well as African American students.

 

“Because we must preserve the fundamental democratic principle that each child in this nation should have an opportunity for a good education, schools funded by tax dollars – be they private or public – should not be allowed to pick and choose only the students they wish to admit and educate. We know from this report the consequences: most unregulated private schools, left on their own in the South and the nation, have failed to admit any significant number of students of color,” said Steve Suitts, adjunct lecturer of Emory University who developed and wrote the report while serving at the Southern Education Foundation in his last year as a senior fellow. The prospect for better academic opportunity for students sounds attractive but in reality it manifests into an age-old practice that perpetuates a racial divide between children before they ever even learn their ABCs. Currently, these initiatives show no sign of slowing and in many cases are on the upswing. Now more than ever, our scarce public resources should be used to invest in public schools that operate under an obligation to serve any and all students.

 

 

About Southern Education Foundation
The Southern Education Foundation (SEF), founded in 1867, is an Atlanta-based research institution and policy advocate whose mission is to advance equity and excellence in education for all students in the South, particularly low-income students and students of color. SEF uses collaboration, advocacy, and research to improve outcomes from early childhood to adulthood. Our core belief is that education is the vehicle by which all students get fair chances to develop their talents and contribute to the common good. SEF has published a host of impactful reports including “A New Majority” & “Performance Funding at MSIs” as featured in The Washington Post and Inside Higher Ed, respectively. For more information, visit http://www.SouthernEducation.org.

For the full report visit www.SouthernEducation.org/PubliclyFundedPrivateSchoolSegregation

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Privatization, Segregation, Vouchers
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