In a study of ethnic and class stratification in fifty-five urban and fifty-seven rural charter schools in Arizona done for the Education Policy Analysis, a nonprofit think-tank some ten years ago, researchers noted that nearly half the charter schools studied exhibited evidence of substantial ethnic separation (Cobb and Glass 1999, 1). They concluded that subtle exclusionary practices among charter schools, including initial parent contacts and the provision of transportation, had an appreciable affect on ethnic and racial segregation in charter schools:
The ethnic separation on the part of Arizona ’s charter schools, though de facto, is an insidious by-product of unregulated school choice. If parents can choose where to send their children to school, they are likely to choose schools with students of similar orientations to their own. Moreover, it is well documented that choices (in this case, charter students and parents) differ from non-choices in several meaningful ways, which further contributes to the stratification of students along ethnic and socioeconomic lines. (Cobb and Glass 1999, 1)
In North Carolina, when the state legislators years ago were debating charter schools it was feared there would be a recurrence of the flight of white academies that had been a historical part of the South a generation earlier in the aftermath of the Brown decision. In approving the charter idea, the legislators put a clause in the legislation that required the schools to reasonably reflect the demographics of the school districts they serve. Yet two years after passage of the legislation, twenty-two of the state’s charter schools appeared to violate the diversity clause (Dent 1998). The irony lies in the fact that the law is being violated by charter schools that are 85 percent black and populated by children whose parents sought to flee the failing public schools.
The charter school movement is having the effect of re-segregating schools in North Carolina , and thus they pose a legal and social dilemma. Many policymakers are asking how, if the charter school movement is really going to be a public choice reform, can that be accomplished without re-segregating schools? Or can it? And where charter schools are located in predominantly black neighborhoods, how can they be centers for diversity if few white parents want to send their children to schools located in those neighborhoods? So aren’t the charter schools charlatans and their well-heeled supporters really targeting inner city kids, the ‘sub-prime’ kids? After all it is a volumes game, isn’t it and as all good marketers know cornering the market is what it is all about. So, much like Pay Day loans charters appear to be a part and parcel of what was once called a ‘fringe economy’ but is now the economy.
How Charters Increase Racial and Ethnic Stratification
Racial and ethnic segregation and stratification can happen subtly: in the way the schools are organized, how they state their mission, and the symbols and signifiers they use to attract students. For example, in a suburban charter school in California , the founders created a high-tech image and orientation for the school. This emphasis permitted marketing strategies to attract students whose parents worked in the technology industry, which, in turn, resulted in the procurement of more computers and software for the school through grants and donations. So you wouldn’t see their advertisements on buses in inner city urban areas, for they marketed to a different, more elite crowd. Creating an ideological mission for the school along with the symbols of technology and computer literacy meant that this charter school could subtly give the message of who belongs at the school—who will fit in and who will not (Wells et al. 1999, 22). And this is the point, it is a form of gentrification and social dislocation as the isnispidd individualism rampant in the caverns of the American mind looks for simplistic individual solutions to social problems and this causes social breakdown, dis-association.
In a recent report entitled ‘False Promises’, published by The Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota (ironically the state where the charter school movement was first launched), the study found through an exhaustive examination and thorough study that charters in the Twin Cities not only continue to perform worse than traditional public schools, but that they are more segregated than traditional public schools and are forcing those traditional public schools themselves to become more segregated. Why? A purview of the report, released in November of 2008, is enthusiastically unhesitant in its portrayal of the growing problem of increased segregation and the assumed accompanying issues of underachievement:
Charter school proponents promoted charter schools as a means to improve the performance of students who would otherwise have no choice but to attend failing traditional public schools. They claimed that families of means always had school choice—they had the financial resources to either send their children to private schools or to move to better neighborhoods with higher quality public schools. Advocates of charter schools promised that charter schools would extend the same school choice to low income parents and parents of color, who were stranded in low-performing traditional public schools. They further pledged that by severing the link between segregated neighborhoods and segregated schools, charter schools would liberate low-income parents of color from the racially segregated traditional public schools they attended. Overall, they claimed that charters would promote a race to the top for all parties that were involved.
This study finds that in Minnesota charter schools failed to deliver the promises made by charter school proponents. Despite nearly two decades of experience, charter schools in Minnesota still perform worse on average than comparable traditional public schools. Although a few charter schools perform well, most offer low income parents and parents of color an inferior choice—a choice between low-performing traditional public schools and charter schools that perform even worse. The study finds that other public school choice programs such as The Choice is Yours Program offer access to much better schools than the charter schools in Minnesota .
The analysis also shows that charter schools have intensified racial and economic segregation in Twin Cities schools. A geographical analysis shows that the racial makeups of charter schools mimic the racial composition of the neighborhoods where they are located. This contrasts sharply with the claim that charter schools would sever the link between segregated neighborhoods and schools. On the contrary, the data show that charter schools are segregating students of color in non-white segregated schools that are even more segregated than the already highly-segregated traditional public schools. In some predominantly white urban and suburban neighborhoods, charter schools also serve as outlets for white flight from traditional public schools that are racially more diverse than their feeder neighborhoods (False Promises: Assessing Charter Schools in Twin Cities Institute on Race and Policy website 2008).
November http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2008/11/26_charter_school/charterreport.pdf
The report also looked at Twin Cities school racial make-ups, and it includes a map that plots out all the metro area charter schools. It clearly shows demographically that segregated schools far outnumber integrated schools and in some cases, predominately white schools are surrounded by a moat of predominately non-white schools (ibid). You can go online and see the map at the website above.
The Evidence for Segregation by Charter more Norm than Aberration
Unfortunately this empirical evidence of segregation is more norm than aberration. In their comprehensive study, Charter Schools and Race: A Lost Opportunity for Integrated Education, Erica Frankenberg and Lee Chungmei, both of Harvard University , evidenced the same troubling patterns found by The Institute on Race and Poverty report:
Segregation is worse for African American than for Latino students, but is very high for both. In some states, white student isolation in charter schools is as high as that of African Americans. The problems reported here may not be due either to the intent or the desires and values of charter school leaders. They may reflect flaws in state policies, in enforcement, in methods of approving schools for charters, or the location where charter schools are set up (Frankenberg and Lee 2003).
Charter schools and race: A lost opportunity for integrated education. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 11(32).
In 2003, the Delaware State Board of Education and Delaware Department of Education hired an Evaluation Center from Arizona State University to assess the state’s charter schools and charter school reform efforts from 2003 to 2006. The report was presented to the Delaware State Board of Education by Dr. Gary Miron, the Evaluation Center ’s chief of staff and the study’s project director at Arizona State University . In addition to Miron, Anne Cullen and Patricia Farrell, also of the Evaluation Center, and Dr. Brooks Applegate, West Michigan University’s professor of educational leadership, collaborated on the project and jointly authored the 226-page report. The final report, issued after a three-year, $150,000 evaluation of Delaware ’s charter school movement, summarizes findings across the Delaware charter schools. The report concludes that the charter schools have resulted in re-segregation and disparities between mostly white and mostly minority charter schools. The study goes even further, stating it:
found “substantial differences in student demographics,” both among charter schools and also between charter schools and surrounding traditional public schools. On the whole, the study finds that traditional public schools have higher percentages of low-income students, students with special education needs and students who have limited English proficiency (WMN website 2007).
(http://www.wmich.edu/wmu/news/2007/04/014.html Some Delaware charter schools segregated, unequal April 4, 2007 WMU News
Office of University Relations
Western Michigan University.
Even more recently, in a report in the Educational Resource Information Center (ERIC) entitled Are Charter Schools More Racially Segregated Than Traditional Public Schools?, published in 2007, author Yongmei In made several key findings from her analysis of the Michigan charter school experiment. She summarizes her findings:
(1)Although charter school students were more racially diverse at the state level than those in Michigan’s traditional public schools, not all charter schools are more diverse; (2) Depending on where their students come from, charter schools had very different effects on racial segregation. Charter schools drawing students mainly from the districts in which they are located tended to be more racially segregated than their host districts, while charter schools drawing students from outside the host districts show some positive evidence toward racial integration; and (3) The effects of charter schools on racial segregation vary across districts depending upon their degree of racial segregation. While charter schools drawing students from segregated districts show no further racial segregation, charter schools drawing students from racially diverse districts are more segregated than these districts (In, ERIC website 2007).
(Are Charter Schools More Racially Segregated Than Traditional Public Schools? Policy Report 30. 2007-03-00 ERIC http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED430323&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&accno=ED498628&_nfls=false&objectId=0900019b80201c86
She concludes that if diversity in charter schools is an important goal for policymakers, the state legislature and charter school authorizers could encourage charter schools to adopt racial integration as a major goal of their recruitment process. But it seems it is not a goal of the enlightened politicians. Money is the goal, profiting off kids is the means.
In their 2007 granular examination of segregation and the impact of charter schools, Suzanne Eckes and Kelly Rapp, in a report entitled Dispelling the Myth of “White Flight”: An Examination of Minority Enrollment in Charter Schools, examined data of reported student body diversity in the 32 states that enroll more than 1,000 students in charter schools (as of 2002-2003). They came up with the following finding:
at the outset of the charter school movement, some opponents feared that charter schools would become havens for White students wishing to flee the traditional public school system, resulting in publicly funded segregation. However, studies suggest that this has not occurred. In fact, charter schools on average remain slightly racially segregated, enrolling more minority students than traditional public schools (Eckes and Rapp 2007).
Eckes, Suzanne E. Educational Policy, v21 n4 p615-661 2007 http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED430323&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&accno=EJ772715&_nfls=false&objectId=0900019b80189026).
The authors continue, arguing:
Segregation in charter schools is not unavoidable considering that they often can exercise more control of student body composition through recruitment measures. (ibid)
The article details a disappointing set of findings regarding its central question — namely, that charter schools are largely more segregated than public schools and segregation is much worse for African American than for Latino students. But this makes sense, first of all America is a segregated country and second of all, capital seeks customers and where can they find the most, large urban areas where disenfranchised youth sit idly in public schools that could be charterized. According to the study, in some states white student isolation in charter schools is as high as that of African Americans. Going on, the authors note:
The justification for segregated schools as places of opportunity is basically a “separate but equal” justification, an argument that there is something about the schools that can and does overcome the normal pattern of educational inequality that afflicts many of these schools. Charter school advocates continually assert such advantages and often point to the strong demand for the schools by minority parents in minority communities, including schools that are designed specifically to serve a minority population. It is certainly true that minority parents are actively seeking alternatives to segregated, concentrated poverty, and low-achieving public schools. White parents have also shown strong interest in educational alternatives as evidenced by the strong demand for magnet schools (ibid).
Voluntary Segregation from the Public Realm
Yet as Chungmei Lee and Erica Frankenberg argue, the high level of racial segregation in charter schools is really not a big surprise when viewed in light of the existing segregation in many aspects of American life. Nor is their argument regarding re-segregation something to be taken lightly. They go on to claim that those who think that charter schools are inherently likely to be free of racial inequality need to reflect on the racial consequences of other market based approaches to life operating in such areas as housing, employment, health care, the provision of public transportation, opportunity and availability of health care, climbing prison populations, percentage of foreclosures and home ownership and the list could go on. Here, it can be argued, as both Harvard professors do, that markets have worked more to perpetuate and spread racial inequality rather than to confront it and cure it. From the authors’ point of view:
One could accurately say that the normal outcome of markets when applied to a racially stratified society is a perpetuation of racial stratification. This is why early educational choice programs were often found to produce white flight from integrated schools and to contribute to segregation in many school desegregation trials. Those experiences were apparently unknown or overlooked by designers and supporters of many charter school policies (ibid).
Many parents and their political constituencies, from home-schoolers preferring to segregate from the public forum altogether, to religious and ethnic advocates for charter schools there is a increased mobilization to use charter schools and charter school legislation as a means to actually voluntarily segregate from others in the public realm, either by gender, race, religion, cultural or ethnic focus.
Take for example, the passage of a bill in January of 2008 changing Delaware ’s charter school law to allow single-gender schools. The bill was passed in the state House, with legislators reaching a compromise to assure it provides equal protection and would not be vulnerable to constitutional challenge. The bill sailed on through the legislature to eventually achieve passage in the senate, despite some opposition. Delaware Rep. Diana McWilliams, D-Fox Point, questioned:
“I am very concerned that this be a very slippery slope back to segregated schools.”
She wondered aloud why “segregation of a gender” is a good thing. The bill’s passage clears the path for a middle school targeting at-risk boys (Kenney and Miller 2008).
(http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080123/NEWS/801230363/1006/NEWS Charter gender bill OK’d in House Legislation would allow all-boys, all-girls options By EDWARD L. KENNEY and J.L. MILLER • The News Journal • January 23, 2008
The New ‘Identity Charters’: More Voluntary Segregation
Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy charter school is located in Minnesota and has mostly Muslim students. In fact, Minnesota has many ethnically focused or culturally focused charter schools, servicing not just Muslim students but also Christians and Hmong students. The rational for such segregated schools can be best summed up by the director of the Hmong charter school in Minnesota , who commented:
Yes, with our focus on culture, language and achievement, we create an environment with a sense of community, of trust, of respect, of valuing education. I’ve worked in the big traditional schools, and that same sense is not there for many of our families. Our kids and parents feel welcome because they see the displays of their culture and values of respect, responsibility. They see staff people who look like them. I’m Hmong; they can relate to me. It makes a huge difference. In this environment, give them time and kids achieve. Our school is making AYP [annual yearly progress, a reporting measure required by federal No Child Left Behind rules], and we had no discipline problems at all last year. How many schools can say that? Yes, with our focus on culture, language and achievement, we create an environment with a sense of community, of trust, of respect, of valuing education. I’ve worked in the big traditional schools, and that same sense is not there for many of our families. Our kids and parents feel welcome because they see the displays of their culture and values of respect, responsibility. They see staff people who look like them. I’m Hmong; they can relate to me. It makes a huge difference. In this environment, give them time and kids achieve. (False Promises website 2008) November 2008).
Re-segregation or voluntary segregation within and by charter schools continues to grow, as can be seen by an examination of the The Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, located in Chicago and Ben Gamla Charter in New York , as discussed in chapter four. Now, with the controversial opening of the Ben Gamla Charter School, by its parent company, Academica, Inc., the trend currently seems to be the exercise of legislative leniency on behalf of law makers, politicians and charter school authorizers to the idea of religiously oriented charter schools, gender oriented charter schools, ‘class’ oriented’ charter schools and ethnically or culturally focused charter schools.
Take for example the state of Rhode Island . Pressed by the Governor, education officials agreed in early 2009 to change the way they approve applications to open public charter schools, giving a higher priority to proposals that serve low-income and disadvantaged students in low-performing school districts. By ‘courting’ charter schools as an answer to low income student achievement rather than working to strengthen existing TPS isn’t the Governor of the state further stratifying the school system by social class? In other words, wouldn’t this be the same thing as having one side of a traditional public school classroom set up for one social class, divided by a large panel and another side set up for middle and upper social classes? Not according to officials from Rhode Island who agreed to change the way they approve applications to open public charter schools, giving a higher priority to proposals that serve low-income and disadvantaged students in low-performing school districts. To do this the Governor of the state proposed a budget that sets aside $1.5 million for new charter schools in the 2009-10 school year. Yet, argue opponents of the idea, isn’t this am example of the state subsidizing class stratification? (Jordan 2009). Sure it is, it is neo-liberal economics socially engineering the state of schools and thus the states of mind that will dialectically parallel them. The politicians pass the laws the market needs, the privateers do the rest. Then the ideological hustlers sell it to an information starved public satiated on Cheaters and American Most Wanted.
(http://www.projo.com/news/content/charter_school_criteria_change_04-30-09_LPE78_v20.36ab0dc.html State wants new charter schools to serve low income Thursday, April 30, 2009 By Jennifer D. Jordan
Journal Staff Writer PROVIDENCE
In fact, serving low-income students is now one of the growing missions and reflects the realities of many charter schools set up for specifically this purpose. Where once the practice of ‘creaming’ the best students concerned those opposed to the development of charter schools – ‘creaming’ meaning charters would take only the best academically qualified or prepared students – the continued development of the charter school concept has now extended to serving particularly ‘low income and low performing’ students. One can argue, and many proponents of the idea like the Governor of Rhode Island do, that this effort is a worthwhile attempt to reach students who are low income and low-performing academically in traditional public schools. The notion of a charter school actually saving struggling groups of low income students has become an all too familiar theme among politicians, as evidenced by Rhode Island’s recent decision and the explosion of hundreds of charter schools seeking to serve low income students; and this has become especially alluring to low income parents who argue their children are caught in a vicious cycle in TPS.
The Real Issue Is Capitalism and the ravages for the many
But opponents to such an idea would argue that politicians, business interests and Departments of Education throughout the states that have legislated charter schools are really playing a shell game with the American people and not broaching the real problem that plagues society and schools. They argue that not only will charter schools not solve the problem of failing schools, but that they serve to stratify citizens along racial, ethnic, and social class. The real answer, echo these opponents, is full funding for all public schools for the decades of proven methods of educational reform: smaller class size, smaller schools, comprehensive pre-school for three- and four-year-olds, after-school and in-school tutoring and enrichment programs and mentoring for those who need them, state-of-the-art school buildings equipped with updated books, materials, equipment, technology and caring, well-trained educators who have the needed experience for the job are also needed. Furthermore societal poverty, not to mention the fact that one out of every fifty children in the US is homeless, simply does not support the academic development of children and thus issues of economic equity and economic policies that encourage the eradication of social poverty must be faced when confronting public education reform (Kozol, 2006).
What does support academic development of children, argue opponents to the idea of class or race based segregated charter schools, are decent living wage jobs, available health care, senior care, day care and affordable housing along with full access to public transportation. These are all part of the kind of sustainable environment that would support a positive family life and the cognitive development of all children. Arguing that public schools need to transform into charter schools that target low income students (usually of color) to be innovative and creative, is a red herring. After all, doesn’t public education works in many suburbs throughout the nation without any problems? And if it does, then it begs the question as to why we need special segregated enclaves for less fortunate students, again usually students of color. Why can’t a decent, quality public education be the right of every citizen regardless of socio-economic class, race, gender or ethnicity and not simply the privilege of the wealthy? One cannot help but see the similarities behind calls to help ‘low income’ students through charter schools and the sub-prime housing loans directed at the ‘low-income’ wage earners. Eyeing the ‘low charter school income market’ or subprime loan market seems to have paid out handsomely for the many investors and business interests involved. But what about students and their parents?
Resegregation: Loss of Civil Life?
The notion of segregation by class, race, ethnicity, or gender is all very disturbing to many progressive educators who argue that religious, gender and racial segregation (not to mention virtual segregation by ‘virtual charters’) can only serve to damage pluralism and diversity in education. This, they say, not only flies in face of the Brown vs. Board of Education court decision but vitiates the hundred of millions, if not billions of dollars and hard work spent by the states historically to desegregate schools and depressingly harkens back to an ideology of ‘separate but equal’. Perhaps Erica Frankenberg and Chungmei Lee, both from Harvard University , put their finger on the problem when they write:
The justification for segregated schools as places of opportunity is basically a “separate but equal” justification, an argument that there is something about the schools that can and does overcome the normal pattern of educational inequality that afflicts many of these schools. Charter school advocates continually assert such advantages and often point to the strong demand for the schools by minority parents in minority communities, including schools that are designed specifically to serve a minority population. It is certainly true that minority parents are actively seeking alternatives to segregated, concentrated poverty, and low-achieving public schools. White parents have also shown strong interest in educational alternatives as evidenced by the strong demand for magnet schools (Frankenberg and Lee 2003 website).
(Volume 11 Number 32 September 5, 2003ISSN 1068-2341 Charter Schools and Race: A Lost Opportunity for Integrated Education Erica Frankenberg Harvard University Chungmei Lee Harvard University http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n32/).
Lee and Frankenberg make the point that one might think that charter schools would have a better chance to be integrated than public schools. They argue that like magnet schools a generation earlier, charter schools can offer distinctive curricula and the opportunity to create and manage schools with freedom from many normal constraints in large districts. Yet, as they state, unlike magnet schools, charter schools have the added advantages of even greater freedom to innovate, they are unleashed from any regulations and backed by huge philanthropists who can outmaneuver and out-lawyer the best of them and market their ‘services’ to kids in all geographical areas. Nor, for the most part, are charter schools tied to geographically fixed attendance boundaries in residentially segregated communities as are neighborhood public schools but they can draw from wherever interested students can be found (though it must be mentioned that in some places where school districts grant charters, they are limited to the school district boundaries) (ibid).
In light of this disturbing trend towards class based, gender based and racial based segregation we see one more reason why charter schools are now the unleashed Chimera that is in the process of replacing what many of us once new as public schools, in the future perhaps leaving what is left of the public sector to the most disenfranchised of students that even the charter schools charlatans don’t want.
Chungmei Lee and Frankenberg, “ Charter Schools and Race: A Lost Opportunity for Integrated Education” E .Volume 11 Number 32 September 5, 2003ISSN 1068-2341 Harvard University Harvard University . Website: http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n32/.
Cobb, C., and G. Glass. Ethnic Segregation in Arizona Charter
Schools. Tempe , AZ : Education Policy Analysis, January 1999.
Dent, D. “ Diversity Rules Threaten North Carolina Charter Schools that Aid Blacks.” New York Times, 23 December 1998.
False Promises: Assessing Charter Schools in Twin Cities Institute on Race and Policy website: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2008/11/26_charter_school/charterreport.pdf.
Eckes,S and K. Rapp. “Dispelling the Myth of “White Flight”: An Examination of Minority Enrollment in Charter Schools.” Educational Policy. v21 n4 (2007): 615 – 661
Frankenberg and Lee. “Charter schools and race: A lost opportunity for integrated education.” Education Policy Analysis Archives, 11(32). 2003
Jordan, J. “State Wants New Charter School To Serve Low Income” April 30, 2009 Website: http://www.projo.com/news/content/charter_school_criteria_change_04-30-09_LPE78_v20.36ab0dc.html
Kenney, E. and J.L. Miller. “Charter Gender Bill OK’D in House Legislation Would Allow All-Boys, All-Girls Options” The News Journal (January 23, 2008) Website:
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080123/NEWS/801230363/1006/NEWS
Kozol, J. The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Three Rivers Press, (August 1, 2006)
In, (ERIC) website: Are Charter Schools More Racially Segregated Than Traditional Public Schools? Policy Report 30. (March 2007) http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED430323&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&accno=ED498628&_nfls=false&objectId=0900019b80201c86.
Wells, A., A. Lopez, J. Scott, and J. Holme. “Charter Schools as Postmodern Paradox: Rethinking Social Stratification in an Age of Deregulated School Choice.” Harvard Educational Review 69, no. 2 (Summer 1999).
WMN website: Some Delaware Charter Schools Segregated Unequal. April 4, 2007. Website: http://www.wmich.edu/wmu/news/2007/04/014.html
Although it is incredible, in this age we can see the racism and the division of ethnic groups yet…we should learn to respect each one, respect the different ethnic customs and work hard for a racial integration….
We should, I agree, Cindy, the problem is that if we do not see our class interests and only focus on what makes a ‘differnt’ and unique then we cannot surmount the struggle needed to fight this brutal system of economic tyranny.
Focusing on the common struggle for human dignity and the logic of capitalist oppression will require we see our differences as complimentary to the struggle we must wage. For the charter school charlatans, diversity is something to be capitalized off of, like salsa or Won-Ton soup. And again, who is going to pick urban, distressed areas to send their kids to? No one. So this all creates division when what is needed is unity, not to mention destroying Brown v. Board of education and return us to the days of Plessy v. Ferguson.
Thank you for your insights
Danny
Exactly the same thing is starting to happen in Canada. The excuse for segregation is that we are “helping” the disadvantaged, so criticizing it makes one a heretic. In Ontario this angle is now being used by the Toronto Board of Ed. as leverage to promote the school “choice” agenda. Currently, there is an afrocentric school and it is clear they are setting up for “boys academies” as they have created some big publicity in the media around some visits by American boys school profiteers like Leonard Sax. The ministry in Ontario created a shopping basket website to view and compare schools not only on the basis of test scores, but on the basis of demographic information about parental class and first language, as well as number of special needs students. So here it’s kind of a feedback system between school choice and segregationism. That is, where you promote choice on the basis of demographics, demographic information motivates migration away from certain groups based on bigotry or test score neurosis. Test score neurosis and demographic information make us look for the cause and find race and poverty holding schools down, thereby promoting segregationism. Thus, it is very safe to say that charter schools, which are well established in Alberta, where the minister is openly pro-charter, are setting up for a big push in Ontario and BC where school choice and demographics are promoted by the ministries and then the corporate media fills in the blanks by publishing, as if it were “news”, the “rankings” of the pro-charter think tanks like the Fraser Institute, C.D. Howe, and Society for Quality Education.
Yes, it is spreading like wild fire, a national and international depravity. The deliquescence of difference within the brutal hierarchy of capital. I would like to share this thhat came across my desk:
Exterminating Public Education
“The merits of a marketplace model for public education have been among the most prominent themes in education policy discussions over the last two decades. The 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, popularly known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), has accelerated the trend toward private, for-profit activities in public education.”
(Alex Molnar, “For-Profit K-12 Education: Through the Glass Darkly”, Chapter 5 of Educational Entrepreneurship (Frederick M. Hess, Editor; Harvard Education Press, 2006).
The corporate campaign to privatize public education entered a new phase on December 14 when the “New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce” released its book-length report, “Tough Choices or Tough Times,” published by the National Center on Education and the Economy. (The Executive summary is available at http://www.skillscommission.org.) This is the definitive corporate statement on public education. It is a statement of intent.
“Tough Choices or Tough Times” calls for, among other things: making all public schools into something beyond charter schools, something called “Contract Schools”; ending high school for many students after the 10th grade; ending teacher pension plans and cutting back on teacher health benefits; introducing merit pay and other pay differentials for teachers; eliminating the powers of local school boards (with the “public” schools to be owned by private companies and all regulation done by the states).
These measures would cut the heart out of public education, would severely penalize students, and would deal a heavy blow to teacher unions. No one should take the report lightly:
• It was funded by some of the world’s richest and most powerful entities (most notably, Bill Gates and his Gates Foundation). It represents their interests and, indeed, puts forward the current consensus recommendations of U.S. corporations and politicians.
• It was issued by a group with a track record: the last report issued by the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce helped lay the groundwork for No Child Left Behind.
Gates
Bill Gates has apparently decided to take charge of public education in the U.S., whether we like it or not. NYU professor Diane Ravitch, writing in the July 30 Los Angeles Times, explains that:
“With the ability to hand out more than $1 billion or more every year to U.S. educators without any external review, the Gates Foundation looms larger in the eyes of school leaders than even the U.S. Department of Education, which, by comparison, has only about $20 million in truly discretionary funds. The department may have sticks, but the foundation has almost all the carrots.
“In light of the size of the foundation’s endowment, Bill Gates is now the nation’s superintendent of schools. He can support whatever he wants, based on any theory or philosophy that appeals to him. We must all watch for signs and portents to decipher what lies in store for American education.”
Ravitch goes on to call Gates “The Nation’s Superintendent of Schools”. But the nation didn’t elect Gates to run our schools, much less to convert public schools to contract schools, to kick millions of kids out of school after 10th grade, or to undermine teacher unions.
The Commission
In 1990 the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce issued the influential report titled “America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages!” This report argued that the U.S. could compete in the global capital and jobs markets only if American public education adopted a strongly standards-based approach that used standardized tests to enforce accountability of students and teachers. That report too was a statement of intent. In its wake followed No Child Left Behind with its emphasis on high stakes testing (with ridiculously unrealistic and statistically meaningless targets for student reading and math scores). NCLB is an unfunded mandate that strangles public schools and leads to school closures and privatizations.
The standards-based, high stakes testing approach espoused by the 1990 commission report and executed by NCLB has failed miserably—so miserably that it is finally losing much of its support (NEA and AFT have grown increasingly critical; Democratic and Republican politicians are expressing their doubts.) In fact, NCLB is up for renewal this year by the now Democratically-controlled Congress. But rather than fade quietly into the night, the folks who brought us the 1990 report are back with a new plan for public education.
The so-called Skills Commission is not a public body. The Report is not the result of testimony and analysis presented democratically in open meetings, nor is it the synthesis of a public analysis of our schools. It is a corporate vision of what corporations want. It is an attempt to seize the debate about public education and channel it in very specific directions.
The report is bi-partisan, representing a broad consensus of the U.S. corporate elite. It was funded by Bill Gates (the world’s richest man) and his Gates Foundation; the Hewlett (as in Hewlett-Packard) Foundation; the Casey Foundation; the Lumina Foundation. The Commission includes two former U.S. Secretaries of Education–Rod Paige (Bush Jr.’s) and Richard Riley (Clinton’s); a former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Ray Marshall (LBJ’s); the heads of the NYC and Washington D.C. public schools (respectively, Joel Klein and Clifford Janey); the commissioner of the Massachusetts Dept. of Education (David Driscoll); the former head of the Boston schools (Thomas Payzant); the head of the Massachusetts Dept. of Social Services (Harry Spence); the “President Emeritus” of the Communications Workers of America (Morton Bahr); the head of the Urban League (Marc Morial); the head of the National Association of Manufacturers (John Engler, formerly governor of Michigan); major corporate players (e.g., Henry Schatz, former CEO of Lucent); and a few other prominent politicians and academics.
What’s their rationale?
“We” (U.S. capital) need a highly skilled and highly creative work force to compete in the world market. The report admits that the 1990 report’s program of emphasis on standards-based learning discouraged creativity in favor of rote learning. And, the new report says the 1990 report’s emphasis on educating for high skills is inadequate for the current global economy, where the only way to thrive will be to always be the first to come up with new technological breakthroughs.
This vision of a dog-eat-dog world is, unfortunately, an accurate portrayal of the dynamics of global capital. And, as the new report admits (and even explains), automation and digitization have made it possible for U.S. companies to export almost all manufacturing and many service jobs, skilled and unskilled alike: anything that can be routinized will be digitized, automated and outsourced. But the folks behind the report—Gates, the world’s richest man; Engler, the head of the National Association of Manufacturers et al. are the very folks who shift capital around the globe, to wherever labor is cheapest and profits are highest. And that’s the real source of tough times.
Tough Choices Or Tough Times
Schools
The Commission writes:
“First, the role of school boards would change. Schools would no longer be owned by local school districts. Instead, schools would be operated by independent contractors, many of them limited-liability corporations owned and run by teachers. The primary role of school district central offices would be to write performance contracts with the operators of these schools, monitor their operations, cancel or decide not to renew the contracts of those providers that did not perform well, and find others that could do better. … The contract schools would be public schools, subject to all of the safety, curriculum, testing and other accountability of public schools”.
(“Executive Summary”, p 16, emphasis added)
This is exactly the same language of de-regulation and “letting the free market decide” that gave us ENRON, the rape of California by energy companies and the trillion dollar Savings & Loan scandals of the early 1990s. Re-stating that contract schools are public schools is an attempt to obfuscate the real intent. If simple “regulation and accountability” mean public power, then Exxon is a public corporation too!
Basically, the Commission wants to change state education codes to accommodate the kinds of exceptions and practices currently being piloted by charter schools. In effect, all public schools would be run like today’s charter schools–run by private companies, with “flexible” hours, longer school days, longer school years, no teacher seniority rights, no pensions, limited health benefits, etc. Or, to put it another way: ALL public schools would be charter schools–only the charters would no longer be needed, because the charter exceptions would be written right into the state education codes. The report calls their proposed schools “contract schools”, but it’s clear that these are basically charter schools writ large.
This is so clear that the two labor members of the commission, Morton Bahr (“President Emeritus” of the Communications Workers of America) and Dal Lawrence (past president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers) wrote a short statement registering “concern” that “The design for contract schools can become an open door for profiteers”, citing the example of Ohio, “where charter school legislation has resulted in almost universal poor student achievement, minimal accountability, and yet considerable profits for charter operators, many with peculiar political agendas.”
The Commission claims it will save $60 billion on K12 education. It does not mention that corporations today already feast on a trillion dollar a year market based on privatizing public schools and their services. This is the corporate plan to expand that market. It is a vision of schools as “profit centers”, run by “entrepreneurs”, where children are commodities. The role of the public is reduced from having the final power over schools to being consumers. Let the buyer beware.
Students
Students would face severe tracking that would end high school for millions of children by the 10th grade, by the ages of 15 or 16. This would be enforced by “benchmark” high school exit exams to be administered in the 10th grade, created at the state level. The report explicitly calls for these tests to assess high school grade level skills, not the middle school skills that are typically “measured” by routine high school exit exams. In other words, the Commission demands tests pitched well beyond the current level in many states.
(1) Students who do poorly get tossed out of school. The “Commissioners” argue that students can retake the tests any number of times, so if they’re really motivated they may eventually pass, albeit years later and, essentially, on their own.
(2) Students who do OK go to community college or technical school. The door is left ajar for the possibility of letting some students stick around high school for another couple of years to prepare for university. Is this an escape clause for mediocre but rich suburban students?
(3) Students who do well can go on to university.
The “Commissioners” predict that 95% of students will pass the exams because they will be motivated, and because they will be taught by better teachers. [Right. And No Child is Left Behind.] In fact, things will be so splendid that remediation won’t be needed–you see, students will be taught right in the lower grades and will get it right the first time. In practice corporations want to dump special education and intervention programs, just like they dumped bilingual education.
The report argues that students must become proficient in ALL areas: math, science, humanities, social sciences. And it says that education must emphasize concepts and creativity, not just rote learning. The Commission explicitly criticizes current standardized tests in that regard. (So high stakes testing may go down in flames. It was always just a means to an end–the end being the demolition of public education with the victimization of poor children). The new goal of all students being polymaths is absurd. As we all know, everyone has different strengths and abilities. When exactly did we abandon the decades-long vision of public education? This vision guaranteed everyone an equal, quality public education precisely so that they could be all that they could be!
Teachers
States supposedly will increase teacher pay at expense of pensions and health benefits. The report argues that teacher compensation is “backloaded” (heavy on benefits, light on salary) which favors veteran teachers over new teachers. They want to turn this on its head and propose “frontloading” (increase salary, eliminate pensions and cut health benefits).
This will victimize veteran teachers and generally eliminate traditional defined-benefit pensions. The result will be to accelerate the already unacceptably high teacher turnover rate, which is especially destabilizing to inner city schools and communities. The report’s rationale that this will improve instruction rings hollow for at least two reasons: a) studies show high correlation between teacher’s experience and student’s achievement, so chasing out veterans will hurt students and learning; (b) corporations are trying to eliminate pensions and health benefits everywhere–not just in education.
2006
The underlying assumptions in the report reveal the typical “bait and switch” public policies that have ruined public access to health care, created NAFTA, and have led to the War in Iraq. The report notes (page 5) that corporations everywhere now have access to a worldwide workforce. It states, “Today, Indian engineers make $7500 a year against $45,000 for an American engineer with the same qualifications… why would the world’s employers pay us more than they have to pay the Indians to do their work?” Unfortunately, they have no real answer for this question.
The significance of the Report is that the march towards the privatization of public schools came completely out of the closet in 2006. No longer is it a hidden agenda. Now the open campaigning will begin, the lobbying and bribery will ensue and laws will be debated to change public schools in the corporate direction.
There was plenty of evidence for this in 2006. The public schools of New Orleans were almost completely privatized, charter schools are appearing everywhere, the Mayor of Los Angeles is trying to take over the public schools to facilitate charter school corporations, and Joel Klein, Chancellor of New York City Public Schools (a public office and public trust) sits as a commissioner on the (private) “Skills Commission”.
Meanwhile, the Broad Foundation – with an openly corporate agenda – has its fingers in a hundred public school systems. Eli Broad joins with fellow billionaires like Gates and Donald Fisher of The Gap as “philanthropists” who have suddenly become civic-minded and want the best for the nation’s children. 2006 was the year where individual billionaires put billions of dollars into foundations to control social policy in our country.
Few people are aware that the great state university systems, including publicly funded institutions like the University of Illinois, the University of California, Michigan State etc, were essentially privatized by corporations in the ‘90s. Virtually all of them now receive the majority of their funding from “partnerships” with corporations. Now corporations are drawing a bead on the country’s school system for children, for people under 18 years old.
Engineering the Future
How we reckon with the report’s impact, how we learn the lessons will help bring to pass one kind of future or another. The implications for our country are obvious. Teachers, and everyone, must begin speaking in the name of all society. Corporations have no problem saying this is how things should go. Why should they have the predominant voice?
One thing is certain. The very richest Americans, all based in hugely powerful and influential corporations, are proposing that the United States, the first country to develop free, universal public education, now abandon it.
Isn’t this worthy of some public discussion and debate? Call it what you want, when corporations meet privately to determine what to do with a public institution, one that mainly serves the people who must work for said corporations, this smells a lot like class warfare. You can bet the campaign to implement contract schools will soon be pushed by the corporate media to turn this into public policy. We will be sold on it with minimal public discussion, without letting the people whose lives will be most altered by this public choice have much say over it. Then suddenly the laws will have changed.
Let’s accept the challenge. Let’s open up the discussion of what kind of society the majority of people need and put it on the table. Let’s make it as open and as public as possible. If we fail in this, we will pay a bitter price. If corporations can openly call for re-engineering society, then it is appropriate to discuss what kind of changes shall be made, whose interests they will be made in and who shall benefit.
Since the corporate attack is openly against the public nature of education, there is no way to protect our hard-won gains towards equal and public education without defending and expanding the very nature of what “the public” means. It’s not just corporations who have the right to put the reorganization of society on the table. Let’s look behind the hype and see who are the winners and the losers here. It’s not hard to do.
The privatization of public education already results in the transfer of tens of millions of dollars in public assets into corporate hands without a discussion of compensation or, still more fundamentally, whether society should allow public education to fall into private, corporate hands.
Public schools originally arose in opposition to the child labor of the 1830s, where the only children who attended school were those whose families could afford it. What will happen when schools are completely privatized and only the rich can afford to give their children an education?
As high technology inevitably replaces jobs, corporations that profit from human exploitation will simply no longer have a need for an educated workforce, or even much of a workforce at all. Public education must be guaranteed as a human right, just as are the rights to food, shelter, clothing, health care and culture.
Many people confuse the Apocalypse with Armageddon. Armageddon is the final battle between good and evil, but it is the end of the process. The Apocalypse arises first and plays a formative role the events that follow. The Apocalypse means, in Greek, “the raising of the veil”. This is when fog lifts, the moment when things finally become clear, indicating the path ahead.
As always in human affairs, it’s up to us and to what we do. There can be no question that the world is being rapidly transformed. That transformation is not the property of corporations. Let’s make our future into our property–public property.
Jack Gerson
Steven Miller
Oakland, California
January 2007