Corporate charter schools
are NOT the answer
Many people
confuse the term “charter” schools with “private” schools, ignorant of the fact
that charter schools are still public schools, some exist within established
public school districts to offer special programs but the recent push we hear
most about is to create charter schools run by corporations, (Charter
Management Organizations) that use local public school taxes and have become the ‘silver
bullet’ to solve the ills of failed schools. Still others confused charter
schools with private schools (seeing visions of students in uniforms achieving
at high levels) but there is a huge difference: they are businesses that are
privately financed, funded by tuitions (not funded by tax dollars), free of the
rules governing public institutions, and have very active parents because they
are paying large tuitions for their child to attend the private school. The
private schools offer an alternative to public schools for parents with lots of
money. Enrollment of children in private schools has stayed pretty much the
same for the last 50+ years—about 10% of all students. There is a niche served
by private schools.
The reason corporate charter schools have become so popular
are multi-fold:
1. Some
parents want their children around “similar” children,
2. The ‘grass
is greener over there,’
3. Elected
officials do not trust public school teachers with the freedom they allow
charter schools so sell them has the solution to failing schools,
4. Parents
have been hearing for so long that public schools are broken that they have
bought into the rhetoric and want an alternative,
5. Elected
officials want to be re-elected, so they offer populist “choices” to their
constituents in order to appease them,
6. The
misapplication of business principles evoke visions of profits. Venture
capitalists have invested billions in charter management organizations, and
charter management organizations have contributed millions to advertise when
referenda regarding charter schools appear on ballots and in support of re-election
campaigns of public officials,
7. Large,
philanthropic foundations offer funds to corporate charter school initiatives,
having also bought into the idea that the business models that made them
successful are appropriate for education without evidence to support the
contention.
The basic
premise with charter schools is that they can be run without the overwhelming
burden of legislation and mandates associated with regular public schools in
the state or district in which they were granted their “charters.” Granted, the
idea that a school can be freed from many often superfluous restraints is
appealing, and to some degree, we may only be able to differentiate between
which restraints are superfluous and which aren’t through the establishment of
charter schools. But the unanticipated negative impacts of charter schools as
they are presented today, if unchecked, may outweigh any benefits gained.
For
instance, the whole idea of charter schools today sends an underlying and
subversive message to teachers in regular public schools, which harkens back to
the idea that public schools are broken. “You’ve been doing it wrong. We don’t
trust you.” Many parents and the media have picked up on this message, which
further adds to the distrust, whether justified or not, that many seem today to
have for public education and teachers. Too many teachers hear this message and
their spirits are dampened. Add to this message all the “reforms” thrown at us
from the outside and the message only gets louder and more overwhelming. I have
felt the impact personally.
Despite the fact that most general charter
schools (defined as those schools not created for specific purposes, e.g., STEM
or performing arts) are prohibited from criterion-based student selection, and
lotteries are most often used to determine which students will be accepted,
charter schools have no control over who applies and who doesn’t. In one sense
that is as it should be, but though it may be largely unconscious—overtly aimed
at other issues of safety, comfort, and teacher-student ratios—a parent-driven
racial, ethnic, cultural, and certainly economic segregation is silently
occurring.
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Excerpt from “STOP BLAMING + START TALKING: Developing a
Dialogue for Getting Public Education Back on Track” pages 20 - 23.
Paperback and eBook available at: http://www.teachertimmullen.com/order_book.html
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