Rittenhouse Benefitted from a Well-Funded Defense Team

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2021 //
177

We have had some animated discussion on this blog about whether the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse was “fair,” since he walks away a free man despite murdering two men and maiming a third.

Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University and a contributing columnist to the Washington Post, wrote on this subject today:

Kyle Rittenhouse beat his case because he put on the best defense money can buy.

Don’t believe the hype that Rittenhouse, who was prosecuted for homicide after shooting three people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020 was acquitted because self-defense cases are tough for prosecutors to win. More than 90 percent of people who are prosecuted for any crime, including homicide, plead guilty. The few who dare to go to trial usually lose — including in murder cases.

Rittenhouse’s $2 million legal defense funds enabled his lawyers, before his trial, to stage separate “practice” jury trials — one in which 18-year-old Rittenhouse took the stand and one in which he did not. The more favorable reaction from the pretend jurors when Rittenhouse testified informed the decision to let the teenager tell his story to the real jurors. His apparently well-rehearsed testimony was probably the most important factor in the jury ultimately letting Rittenhouse walk.

All that money also allowed Rittenhouse’s lawyers to retain O.J. Simpson’s jury consultant — and arguably her skills helped the defense win the same “not guilty” verdict. Now, in the eyes of the law, Kyle Rittenhouse is just as innocent of homicide as O.J. Simpson.

Most criminal defendants cannot afford those kinds of resources. Rittenhouse, raised in a working-class family, could not have either but for influential people such as former president Donald Trump and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) acting as his cheerleaders.

On Monday night, Rittenhouse — in the tradition of dancing with the one who brung you — will be interviewed by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Regardless of whether Rittenhouse wants or deserves to be, he is now the poster child for reactionary White men who seek to take the law in their own hands, who want to patrol Black Lives Matter protests with assault weapons and who think that violence is a legitimate form of political discourse.


Some people have questioned how this case, in which a White man killed two White men and severely wounded another, implicates race. But it is impossible to imagine the right embracing the cause of a young Black man who brought a semiautomatic rifle to, say, a “Stop the Steal” rally and ended up killing two people and blowing the arm off another. For Rittenhouse’s supporters, his Whiteness is an integral part of his appeal.

Here’s where I am supposed to say that the issue is not that Rittenhouse had the funds to bankroll his defense but, rather, that other accused persons should enjoy that same benefit. To be sure, I do wish that each of the 10 million-plus people arrested in the United States every year — most of whom are poor people of color — actually were extended their constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel. Too many are forced to rely on underfunded public defenders or overburdened appointed lawyers — no match for the prosecutor’s budget.

Still, I’m okay that not every armed White man who kills people while playing the role of a wannabe cop gets millions of dollars to turbocharge his privilege. I am glad that the defense is not as well-financed for the three men on trial for murder in Georgia after they killed Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through their neighborhood.

When defendant Travis McMichael took the stand, his testimony was not nearly as smooth as Rittenhouse’s — perhaps because McMichael did not have as many chances to practice. Indeed, McMichael, testifying about how he, his father and a neighbor hunted down a Black man and demanded that he stop and justify his presence on public streets, sounded like a slave catcher. This was fitting because empowering White civilians to apprehend runaway slaves was the origin of the Georgia citizens’ arrest law — since revised — that is the linchpin of the defense.

That defense appears to be floundering. Maybe that is why, with closing statements scheduled for Monday, the lawyer for defendant William “Roddie” Bryan reportedly asked prosecutors if his client could cop a plea.

All criminal defendants have a right to spend as much money as they want on their case, but it’s a fanciful right for most defendants of color. Let them eat cake, and let them hire jury consultants. There is nothing wrong with begrudging all the resources Rittenhouse was provided to fight his case when those resources are a product of his Whiteness. Maybe that’s not the high road, but the high road is not leading to equal justice.

In the Georgia trial, in a sign of its confidence, the prosecution reportedly turned down Bryan’s late request for a plea. Perhaps if those defendants had Kyle Rittenhouse’s kind of money, things would be going differently. I am glad they don’t.

Categories Accountability, Equity, Racism

Arthur Camins: Tell It to Your School Board: We Demand Science and Care

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2021 //
3

Arthur Camins is a retired science educator.

In this post, he emphasizes the importance of teaching students to ask the right questions, rather than memorize the “right answers.”

Camins begins his article:

It is inescapable: Truths, lies, and inaction about climate change, Covid-19, and racism. Everywhere we see pitched battles over whether and how to respond. Our children live in this adult-made mess. They pay attention. Some age-appropriate shielding of young children may be wise, but they don’t live under rocks. The very least we can do is ensure that they grow up to be smarter about evidence and more caring than so many adults. It is imperative and possible through K-12 curriculum that prioritizes scientific thinking and a caring school culture.

Adults and young people alike are bombarded with a range of information which, depending on personal perspective, appears to range from obviously true to patently false with a whole lot of ambiguity in between.  We want to figure out what’s true and what’s not, but too many of us are flummoxed. Even more challenging and frustrating, we often hit a wall in dealing with repeaters of clear disinformation or folks who simply refuse to care about others.  For the sake of our children, we need to do better now and prepare them to face similar conflicts in their future.

Some mix of scientific illiteracy, mistrust of social institutions, and lack of care for fellow humans created a perfect anti-truth storm. As a result, we failed as a nation to stave off the dire climate-altering effects of uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels or to take timely action to limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Several generations of decision-makers in government and industries have abetted the use of scientific inquiry to make things worse rather than better for most of their fellow humans. In addition, we live with the lie that inequity and racism are normal and unavoidable, making the impact far worse for some than others.

Alarmingly, a small cadre of parents, with Republican support, are now making a loud fuss at school board meetings demanding purposeful ignorance of history and disease prevention measures.  The rest of us, the majority, need to fight just as vigorously–but without the anger and threats–for curricula and instruction that help prepare students to deal with complex contentious problems.

Let’s start with evidence rather than conjecture about what goes on in classrooms every day. Children are not always the most reliable or detailed reporters of, “What did you do in school today?” Parents cannot nor should they be constant classroom observers. Students and their teachers need some space. So, we need inferential evidence.  It’s what comes home: A backpack filled with papers or what is in notebooks.  Along with all the other normal and pandemic-enhanced demands on parents, it’s a lot to pick through. But take a moment to look for some specific indicators. It is a matter of life and death– not for tomorrow but for the world our children will inherit and be able to influence.

Look for evidence that they are engaged in answering scientific questions through investigations: Across the day, what causes the length of shadows changes from long to short and back to long? What explains that rain puddles remain on some materials, but not others; What causes some species to become extinct or the polar icecaps to shrink; Where does all the material in a giant redwood tree come from?    

These questions lend themselves to learning vital science concepts but there is something more important: You should see that students offer their tentative ideas about natural phenomena and then gather evidence to confirm or revise their thinking.   For example, you might see some variation on:  I used to think……., but then we found this new evidence ……… Now, I think ………

That is quite different from what many of us remember about school science: Memorizing–and soon-forgetting the chemical equation for photosynthesis; What went where on the periodic table; or the order of the planets in our solar system.  And, it is not just getting to do hands-on science, although engaging in investigation with materials is important...  

Categories Education Reform

Gratitude for a Celebration of Educators

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2021 //
5

We are accustomed to reading depressing stories about demoralized teachers who are leaving their profession. They were demonized before the pandemic and during the pandemic, accused of not working hard enough and expecting more pay, blamed for flat test scores, and denounced for worrying about being exposed to the coronavirus. And many of those teachers said they could no longer tolerate the nonstop criticism.

You can only imagine how exciting it was to attend a gala where educators were celebrated and appreciated.

Last Friday, I attended the annual awards dinner hosted by St. Joseph’s College, which has two campuses, one in Brooklyn and the other in Patchogue on Long Island in New York. The College was founded by the Sisters of St.Joseph in 1916; the Sisters urge the teachers they prepare to work in public schools, where they are needed.

I attend the event every year with my spouse Mary, who is a 1969 graduate of the College and a member of its Board of Trustees for the past fifteen years. Mary had a long and successful career (35 years) in the New York City public schools as a teacher, department chair, principal, and executive director of a citywide program to help hundreds of other principals. She loves the College, and the nuns who educated her, many of whom had doctorates from prestigious universities. She has often told me that her favorite teacher, Sister John Raymond, said that it was far better to be looked over than overlooked. Tell every child that you notice what they did right. Tell them you like their new haircut, their last paper, and their improved behavior in class. Catch them being good.

The College has a strong tradition of preparing teachers and others who work in the public sector. It infuses its graduates with a sense of service and a desire to “give back” and “pay it forward.” Most of its graduates enter the fields of education and nursing. The first person in New York City to get a COVID vaccination shot was a nurse who graduated from St. Joseph’s.

The President of St. Joseph’s since 2017 is Dr. Donald Boomgaarden, a scholar of music, concert pianist, and country fiddler. He is a charismatic yet humble leader, the right leader at the right time.

But the reason I’m sharing this story is because the event was a celebration of educators, and in a time of cultural gloom, it was a joyful and inspiring tribute to those who give their lives to teaching.

The motto of the College is “Esse Non Videre,” which means “To Be, Not to Seem.” All of those who won awards are literally in the trenches, working in public schools, many of them working with children with disabilities. The woman who was selected as “administrator of the year” is principal of a school in Maryland where all the students are profoundly disabled. In the video that preceded each award, she spoke of her gratitude to do the work she wanted to do. The Educator of the Year is a district superintendent whose parents were immigrants; she has worked in the New York City public schools for almost 40 years. The “Legacy in Education” award went posthumously to Joseph Lewinger, who died of COVID at the very beginning of the pandemic; he was a beloved educator and coach at The Mary Louis Academy in Queens, New York City. His wife accepted the award for him. He was the only awardee working in a Catholic school.

In all the videos that accompanied the Elementary Teacher of the Year award, the Secondary Teacher of the Year award, the COVID-19 Educators, the Rising Stars, and the Educator of the Year award, certain words and phrases recurred: “I was born to be a teacher.” “I’m exactly where I am supposed to be.” “I can’t imagine a better job than the one I have now.” “St. Joseph’s made me the person I am now.” “Service.” “Dedication.” “I always keep learning and growing.” And as Joe Lewinger said to his students, “Rise.”

It was a beautiful, inspiring evening. No complaining. No whining. A celebration of the people who give their lives to educating the next generation.

It was comforting and inspirational to spend an evening applauding these heroes.

What a lovely way to enter the Thanksgiving break, giving thanks to those who serve our society, educate our children, and create a better future.

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Thom Hartmann: The Day Our Democracy Was on the Brink

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2021 //
79

Thom Hartmann is a journalist who writes a regular commentary, the Hartmann report. He wrote this on November 20.

— The singlemost ransacked office in the Capitol on January 6th was the office of the Parliamentarian, where the Electoral College ballots were supposed to be stored. This shocking bit of information, courtesy of Johnathan Karl’s new book Betrayal, is proof positive that this wasn’t just a “protest” or a “riot”: it was an actual, naked attempt to blow up the counting of the Electoral College votes. An attempted coup. Treason. The ballots were stored, according to Karl, in “three dark and shiny mahogany boxes brought in by the parliamentarian’s office to be carried along as the senators walked over to the House. The boxes looked like relics from a time long past—each one held shut by wide leather straps with brass clasps and locked with a skeleton key.” And if those ballots, which had literally been transported there from the states under seal and over official signatures, had been destroyed there was no provision in the Constitution for what to do next. Trump would continue as president, the traitors believed, and that would be the end of the Joe Biden presidency that Steve Bannon had proclaimed he and his fellow conspirators would “kill in the crib.” Fortunately for America and the world, the ballots had been spirited away by a quick-thinking young woman who worked for the Parliamentarian and doesn’t want her name known for fear of drawing death threats from Trump’s goons. She may well have saved American democracy.

Categories Elections

Peter Greene: Ranking States by Their Hostility to Public Education

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2021 //
32

Peter Greene realized that supporters of public education have been lacking the very thing that catches the attention of the public and the media: reports backed by data. Especially reports that rank states as “the worst” and “the best.”

Greene’s Curmudgation Institute constructed rubrics to rate the states and developed the Public Education Hostility Index. He has created a website where he defines his methodogy and goes into detail about the rankings.

The #1 ranking, as the state most hostile to public education, is Florida.

The state least hostile to public education is Massachusetts.

Where does your state rank? Open the link and find out.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Disruption, Education Reform, Florida, Funding, Massachusetts, Privatization, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

Michelle Goldberg: Democrats Must Fix Public Schools Or…

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2021 //
11

Michelle Goldberg is a regular columnist for the New York Times. In this post, she says that Republicans are cynically exploiting parents’ exhaustion with pandemic measures and fears of Criticsl Race Theory to undermine public schools and replace them with school choice: charters and vouchers. Democrats have traditionally been the party of public schools. Now it’s time for them to remember that.

She writes:

Last Wednesday morning, Christopher Rufo, the architect of the right-wing crusade against critical race theory, sent me a message asking if I wanted to talk, I suppose because I was one of the first people to write about his project back in February. He was feeling triumphant.

A year ago, few conservatives outside of academia had heard of critical race theory, a graduate school approach to the study of race and power. Now it’s become a central issue in Republican politics, helping to fuel Glenn Youngkin’s victorious gubernatorial campaign in Virginia.

“I’ve unlocked a new terrain in the culture war, and demonstrated a successful strategy,” said Rufo, a documentary filmmaker-turned-conservative activist. With that done, he was getting ready for a new phase of his offensive.

“We are right now preparing a strategy of laying siege to the institutions,” he said. In practice, this means promoting the traditional Republican school choice agenda: private school vouchers, charter schools and home-schooling. “The public schools are waging war against American children and American families,” he said. Families, in turn, should have “a fundamental right to exit.”

Democrats need to take this coming onslaught seriously. The school choice movement is old — it’s often dated back to a 1955 essay by Milton Friedman. But Covid has created fertile ground for a renewed push.

As many have pointed out, the reason education was such an incendiary issue in the Virginia governor’s race likely had less to do with critical race theory than with parent furyover the drawn-out nightmare of online school. Because America’s response to Covid was so politically polarized, school shutdowns were longest in blue states, and Virginia’s was especially severe; only six states had fewer in-person days last year.

“The failure of our leadership to prioritize public education in Virginia is what’s created this firestorm,” said Christy Hudson, one of the founders of the Fairfax County Parents Association, which grew out of a pro-reopening group that formed in the summer of 2020. Critical race theory, she said, “has certainly added flames to that fire,” but “this is 19 months in the making.”

Across the country, the shutdowns have contributed to an exodus from public schools. In Fairfax County, for example, public school enrollment is down by more than 10,000students since before the pandemic, a 5.5 percent decrease. Enrollment in New York City public schools declined by 4.5 percent, about 50,000 students. In California, public school enrollment decreased by 3 percent, or 160,000 students, the largest drop in 20 years. Because school budgets are partly dependent on head counts, these missing students could lead to severe cuts, making public schools even less attractive.

In an environment like this, Republican proposals to subsidize private school tuition are likely to be received gratefully by many parents. It’s a perilous situation for Democrats, the party of public schools. If they want to stanch the bleeding, they should treat the rollout of the children’s Covid vaccine as an opportunity to make public schools feel lively and joyful again.

Public schools may finally be open across the country, but in many districts, things are far from normal. In Fairfax County, an unvaccinated student identified as a “close contact” of someone who tests positive for Covid must quarantine for 14 days, no matter the results of the student’s own Covid tests. At some schools, students have been forbidden to talk during lunch. At my own kids’ school, students must be masked even during outdoor recess.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wants to see outdoor masking ended as a first step toward unwinding other Covid restrictions. “The C.D.C. has been clear that everyone can unmask outside unless they’re in close contact with each other,” she said. “And I believe that schools should be doing this for recess. And I believe we need to give parents and teachers a road map to what it takes to start undoing the mitigations. It was clear that vaccines for teachers helped us reopen schools. Maybe it’s vaccines for kids helping us get to unmasking of teachers and kids in schools.”

Other post-Covid problems are harder to solve than masks. In Michigan, schools have been forced to close because of staff shortages. “Workers in short-staffed departments are shouldering more work, students have been denied bus rides to get to school, special education students are going without one-to-one aides, classrooms are doubled up and principals are acting as substitutes as pools of candidates dwindle,” reported The Detroit Free Press. This is a complicated problem, but it’s up to the state’s Democratic governor, as well as the Biden administration, to solve it, for their own sake as well as that of their constituents.

Rufo readily admits that school closures prepared the ground for the drive against critical race theory. “You have a multiracial group of parents that felt like the public school bureaucracies were putting their children through a policy regime of chaos, with Covid and shutdowns, and then pumping them full of left-wing racialist ideologies,” he said. He’s right about the first part, even if the second is a fantasy.

Now Democrats have a choice. They can repair the public schools, or watch people like Rufo destroy them.

Categories Charter Schools, Democrats, Republicans, School Choice, Vouchers

Dana Milbank: Who Is Worse? Paul Gosar or Kevin McCarthy?

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2021 //
80

Dana Milbank writes about politics for the Washington Post. Whenever I read his column, I find myself vigorously agreeing. This one is right on. Milbank says that Gosar made a murderous video, showing him killing AOC. McCarthy, he says, is murdering democracy. The Democratic members of the House, aided by two Republican colleagues (Cheney and Kinzinger), voted to censure Gosar. McCarthy shrugged. He saw no reason to punish a member of Congress for threatening to murder another member of Congress. McCarthy is a man with no principles. Threatening violence against one’s political adversaries is dangerous, not only for Congress, but for society at large, where far too many people have guns and are ready to use them. They don’t need incitement from Gosar, McCarthy, and Trump.

Rep. Paul Gosar, the Arizona Republican who used congressional resources to produce and release a cartoon video of him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), deservedly became the 24th person in history to be censured by his House peers.

But Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) is the one who truly has earned the censure of posterity. In his craven attempt to maintain himself as the House Republican leader, McCarthy showed once again that there is no level of violent, hateful or authoritarian speech that goes too far. By condoning threats and intimidation in the people’s House, he is inviting actual violence — and signing democracy’s death warrant.

Ten days ago, as the world now knows, Gosar, a dentist/insurrectionist, tweeted from his official congressional Twitter account a manipulated anime in which the Gosar figure flies through the air and slashes the Ocasio-Cortez figure across the back of the neck. Blood sprays profusely from the neck wound. Ocasio-Cortez’s lifeless head snaps back. Gosar moves on in the video, swords drawn, to confront President Biden.
Gosar didn’t apologize for the video. He mocked the “faux outrage” and labeled as “laughable” the “shrill accusations that this cartoon is dangerous.”

On the House floor Wednesday afternoon, a defiant Gosar, noting that he took down the video (after about two days and 3 million views), portrayed himself as the victim. “No matter how much the left tries to quiet me, I will continue to speak out,” he vowed.

Only two of 213 House Republicans voted with Democrats to censure Gosar.

McCarthy was outraged — not by the unrepentant Gosar’s homicidal cinematography but by Democrats’ move to reprimand him. Instead of condemning the video, McCarthy said Democrats would “break another precedent” of the House.

So Gosar depicts himself murdering a Democratic colleague, but Democrats are the ones breaking precedent for reprimanding him?
McCarthy, on the House floor, mentioned the matter only in passing (“I do not condone violence, and Rep. Gosar had echoed that sentiment”), instead reciting a meandering list of grievances: Proxy voting! The Steele dossier! Afghanistan! He threatened that when speaker he would retaliate by stripping committee assignments from five Democrats over various perceived offenses.

The victim of Gosar’s anime sword, speaking immediately after McCarthy, noted McCarthy’s strained search for equivalent wrongs. “When the Republican leader rose to talk about how there are all of these double standards … not once did he list an example of a member of Congress threatening the life of another,” Ocasio-Cortez pointed out.
“It is a sad day,” she said, “in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong.”

Sad, but to be expected from McCarthy.

Gosar claimed that Ashli Babbitt, the insurrectionist shot dead by Capitol Police on Jan. 6 as she breached the final barrier protecting lawmakers, was “executed in cold blood” by a police officer “lying in wait” for her. Gosar attended a conference run by a White nationalist banned from YouTube because of hate speech and was listed as the beneficiary of a fundraiser by the same White nationalist. Gosar alleged that the FBI planned and carried out the Jan. 6 insurrection, and he was named by an organizer of Jan. 6 as one of the lawmakers who “schemed up” the atrocity. Gosar joined 20 Republican colleagues in voting against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6.

And McCarthy pretty much let it all slide.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) earlier this year posted an image of herself with an AR-15 next to photos of Democratic Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.) with the caption “Squad’s Worst Nightmare.”

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) warned that “if our election systems continue to be rigged and continued to be stolen then it’s going to lead to one place and that’s bloodshed.”

Former president Donald Trump said Babbitt “was murdered at the hands of someone who should never have pulled the trigger …. The Radical Left haters cannot be allowed to get away with this.”
Several House Republican lawmakers have been tied (or tied themselves to) violent or anti-government groups such as the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.

And McCarthy pretty much let it all slide.

Instead, he threatened to strip Republican lawmakers of their committee assignments — if they joined the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. McCarthy also had a laugh when noting that, if he wins the speakership, “it will be hard not to hit” Pelosi with an oversized gavel.
There was once a case to be made that McCarthy was simply a weak leader. But now it’s clear he is blessing the provocations to violence.
Gosar made a murderous video. McCarthy is murdering democracy.

Categories Democracy, Politics, Republicans

Bruce Baker Reviews a Deceptive Voucher Proposal for New York

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2021 //
8

Bruce Baker, an expert on school finance at Rutgers University, dissects a proposal for vouchers (“education savings accounts”) offered by the Manhattan Institute, a rightwing think tank. Writing for the National Education Policy Center, he concludes that the proposal was poorly thought out and loaded with negative consequences.

He wrote:

The Manhattan Institute’s report promotes Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) by demonstrating that taxpayer expense would fall if the program motivated families to move children from public schools funded by the state to private schools funded primarily by families. However, the report conveniently fails to note a large body of recent, rigorous research demonstrating that similar private school choice, or “voucher,” programs have had significant negative effects on student outcomes. In addition, the report overstates short-term reductions that local districts can achieve, and it sidesteps potential long-term harm to adequate funding for them. Thus, the report provides little or no useful guidance on the broader question of whether an ESA policy is desirable or would be good policy for New York State’s children or taxpayers.

Categories Education Industry, New York, School Choice, Vouchers

Arnold Hillman: Something’s Screwy with These Salaries

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2021 //
30

Arnold Hillman and his wife Carol are educators who retired from their workin Pennsylvania and moved to South Carolina, where they continued to work with impoverished high school children in underfunded rural schools, but as volunteers. Arnold writes a blog, which I urge you to follow. He was astonished, for example, when the Governor and Legislature forbade the public schools to impose mask mandates. He thought it was crazy. what sane person would fight measures to protect public health.

In this post, Arnold looks at the salaries of sports announcers. Not the players, but the people who talk about the players. Then he looks at the salaries of cable news talking heads. Then the coaches of professional sports teams and a few successful actors.

All of these salaries are in the millions of dollars.

Then he notes the average salaries of teachers, nationally and in South Carolina.

We pay for what we value.

Something is screwy here.

Categories Education Reform

St. Louis: Business Leaders Press for Charter School Expansion, While Public Schools Lose Students and Resources

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2021 //
21

An organization of business leaders in St. Louis issued a demand for more “high quality schools” (by which they mean privately managed charter schools). But it’s not clear that charters are synonymous with “high quality schools.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the University of Missouri-St. Louis, which manages seven charter schools in the city, is likely to close one of them. The Arch Community Charter School opened in 2017 and has an enrollment of 95 students.

In fact, charter schools and competition has weakened the city’s struggling public schools.

Here is some useful information from the story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The potential closure comes as city leaders focus on the fluctuating public school landscape, including a sharp population decline among school-aged children, which dropped to 45,000 from 60,000 over the last decade.

On Thursday, the Education and Youth Matters Committee of the Board of Aldermen will discuss a resolution to support a moratorium on opening new schools and the development of a citywide plan for public education. The resolution would amount to a symbolic ban on charter schools, which are governed by state law.

But after looking at the Arch’s academic records, the school does not have the numbers and planning to meet students’ needs, Marino said.

In 2019, the most recent state data available, 3% of students at the Arch tested proficient or advanced in English and none in math.

UMSL’s decision about Arch follows the closure several months ago of Clay Elementary School, one-half mile away in the Hyde Park neighborhood. That was part of a St. Louis Public Schools downsizing. Enrollment below 200 students was among the criteria considered for closure, and Clay had dropped to 128 students last year.

The aldermanic resolution says: “The local, state, and federal support for school choice programs continues to create a system of schools and programs that fight over a declining population of children and a shrinking pool of resources, leading to duplicated services and system-wide inefficiencies.”

Charter schools enroll close to 12,000 students in the city, while St. Louis Public Schools enrollment dropped below 20,000 last year. The district has lost more than 50% of its enrollment since the first charters opened in 2000.

Open the article to see the graph, which demonstrates the folly of expanding the charter sector, which drains resources and students from a weakened public sector.

The average annual performance score for local charter schools, which includes factors such as attendance, academic achievement, and high school or college preparedness, was 80% in 2018, the most recent figures available. St. Louis Public Schools scored 79%, according to state data.

Of the 30-plus charter schools that have opened in St. Louis since 2000, about half have been shut down for academic or financial failure. Carondelet Leadership Academy was the latest to shutter in June 2020, displacing 400 students and 50 staff members.

One new charter school will open in 2022, sponsored by—wait for it—the Opportunity Trust.

The St. Louis Board of Aldermen endorsed the moratorium on new schools and agreed on the need for a master plan for schools. However, the state legislature decides what happens in St. Louis to St. Louis schools. The Republican legislature does not believe in local control..

The board voted 24-1 for a nonbinding resolution that notes that charter schools and the city public school system have been fighting “over a declining population of children and a shrinking pool of resources.”

Supporters included Alderman Marlene Davis, a former city school board president, who said charter schools were forced upon the city by the Missouri Legislature.

Any new restrictions on the opening of additional charter facilities also would have to be imposed by state lawmakers.

“It’s a sin,” said Davis, of the 19th Ward. “We have gone through trauma after trauma” when some charter schools have suddenly closed.

She also complained about the performance of many of them, while acknowledging that there have been a few with adequate or superior records.

“Nobody can tell me that there’s appropriate oversight of these schools,” Davis said.

The resolution also won support from a critic of the city public schools, Alderman Carol Howard, 14th Ward.

“We need a master plan” for all types of schools, said Howard, a retired school principal in the city school system. “We need to all agree — Black, white, whatever — that our children are important.”

Categories Charter Schools, Competition, Education Industry, Missouri, St. Louis
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