SCHOOLED? CHARTER SCHOOLS ATTACK ON PUBLIC EDUCATION
Ryan “BUGS” Williams-Virden
August 10th 2010

Ask almost anybody and they will acknowledge education is crucial to the development of the youth, of a healthy community, and indeed of a healthy democracy. In Minneapolis and across the country they will also be quick to agree that something needs to be done to improve our public education, specifically in urban areas. The debate comes in when we start to talk about how, and flesh out what that might look like. Increasingly charter schools are being touted as the solution; both the left and the right seem to be able to agree that charter schools will and should play a major role in the future of public education. As a matter of fact the Minneapolis school board just approved the sponsorship of a charter school with two campuses (one on the north side and another on the south) set to open in the fall of 2011, taking over the space now known as North High School. This charter, Minneapolis College Preparatory (MCP) is being billed as the premier option for students with college ambition, and as presumably the answer to the achievement gap and myriad of other problems facing Minneapolis public schools. However, a slightly deeper look reveals a totally different, and completely opposite scenario playing out.

CHARTER SCHOOLS AND PUBLIC EDUCATION

Everybody has a right to a quality free and public education--this is a backbone of democracy. Regardless of race, class, gender, religion, or any other aspect of our humanity that servers to divide us, our education is suppose to be of the same quality, easily accessible, and free. This idea has come under a very severe and effective attack by proponents of the charter school movement. It is important to note not all supporters of charter schools are on a mission to dismantle public schools, but that does not change the reality of the consequences charter schools have on public education. The worldview behind charter schools is this-- competition is necessary in order to have quality. It adheres to a business mentality and model while dealing with education. The problem lies here, when creating competition you are also creating winners and losers, by definition if you are competing somebody will lose. This should be totally unacceptable when talking about the education of our youth and future leaders. Put simply charter schools are a thinly veiled attempt to privatize education. It is a part of the larger neo-liberal agenda to privatize the public sector under the guise of providing “choice”while the entire time asking the public to trust in the “free” market to provide equity. By exploiting the legitimate concerns and frustrations of many with public education those heading this movement have seized an opportunity to create enormous profit. This profit does not however come without a cost; it comes at the expense of students, teachers, and in the end all of us as members of the larger communities. The UCLA Civil Rights Project came to this conclusion after researching charter schools:
“The ability to choose assumes ready exposure to available school options. Research suggests that families’ access to the educational marketplace is unequally constrained by a number of factors, including contact with advantaged social networks, … language barriers, socioeconomic status and the ability of parents to arrange transportation for their schoolchildren. Education studies both in the U.S. context and abroad… all highlight a basic point. Unrestricted choice results in stratification….. On the other side of the process… significant private investment augments public support for charter schools. Targeted recruitment of students could help charter schools accomplish achievement promises made to these private funders. It follows that school choice… will almost always exacerbate inequality.”
When considering for-profit involvement it becomes even bleaker:
“For the quarter of charters that are run for profit, a focus on the bottom line compromises educational quality. When states hand money to private companies, their profit margin is the difference between the state funds and what they spend to provide the education. It stands to reason that if they can cut costs, a policy that tends to lower the quality of education, they can make more money. In Ohio, where more than half of the state’s charter money goes to for-profit companies, charters drastically lag behind traditional public schools. Only 8 percent of charters received a rating of excellent or effective, compared to 63 percent of public schools.”
The situation becomes no better when taking race into account:
“Another serious concern is the increase in racial segregation associated with charter schools. UCLA’s Civil Rights Project study found higher levels of segregation for Black students in charter schools than in public schools, even though public school segregation has been growing steadily for two decades. Other studies have documented increased racial segregation due to “school choice” programs in North Carolina and New Jersey.
Unlike magnet schools that were established to further school integration by bringing students from different parts of a city together, charter schools tend to further segregation because they make enrollment decisions without regard to the impact on the school system as a whole. Thus the “market-oriented model of choice” tends to further segregate students (in what is already a segregated school system) based on resources, abilities, language, and race.”
The reality of the situation is made quite clear charter schools are not the answer to the very real challenges facing our public education system. Charter schools result in: a large number of severely underserved students, overworked and unqualified teachers and staff juxtaposed to the few that benefited from those handful of charters that provide quality. Again if we look at the data we see that charters are in no way outperforming their public schools counterparts:
“A 2003 national study by the Department of Education under George W. Bush found that charter schools performed, on average, no better than traditional public schools. The study was initially suppressed because it hadn’t reached the desired conclusions. Another study by two Stanford economists involved an enormous sample, 70 percent of all charter students. It found that an astonishing 83 percent of charter schools were either no better or actually worse than traditional public schools serving similar populations. Indeed, the authors found that bad charter schools outnumber good ones by a ratio of roughly 2 to 1”
Again the picture is very, very, clear.

MCP AND MINNEAPOLIS

Lets talk about MCP and how it will affect public ed. in Minneapolis; here is an excerpt from the proposal presented to the school board:
“The MCP mission and vision is focused on college success:
Mission - The Minneapolis College Preparatory South and North Campus
mission is to instill in students the scholarship, discipline and
honor necessary to succeed in college and beyond.
Vision - The Minneapolis College Preparatory vision is to establish
the highest performing open-enrollment high school in Minneapolis with
an emphasis on serving low-income students and preparing them to
graduate from college. MCP seeks to create constructive change in
Minneapolis by serving up to 10% of MPS high school students and
sharing best practices in closing the achievement gap nationwide.”
At first glance this seems to be a great thing, who would argue against it? They are addressing many of the very valid concerns regarding public schools. This is all true, but nobody is asking the question why can’t public schools do this? And what about the 90% of students who don’t get the chance to attend MCP? What happens to them? What about the trained quality teachers? It is not a leap to say this is an attack on Minneapolis Public Schools and the public schools system as a whole. It is also not far fetched to envision a situation where the public schools left become a sort of second tier holding site and the students relegated to attending have one of three options 1) military 2) low wage, low skilled labor or 3) prison. Is this the future we want for education? Yes, we have very real problems, but the answer is not to turn our backs on 90% of the students the answer is to come together to create an innovative, more democratic system that meets the needs of our communities. As one of my comrades said, “the answer is reform not replacement”, and make no mistake about it charter schools are aiming to replace public education in this city, state, and country. New Orleans post Katrina is vacant of public schools, Milton Friedman’s final victory, and Detroit’s public schools have been gutted in favor of charters. We have an opportunity here and now to say no, we value public education and we will not allow it to be eliminated. The “choice” is ours.

* Ryan "BUGS" Williams-Virden is a spoken word artist, playwright, author, organizer, and teacher from NE Minneapolis. He is the co-founder of Sai Werd Ink a literary organization dedicated to empowering marginalized peoples. He is also one half of Poetic Assassins a local spoken word duo. He can be reached atpoeticassassins@saiwerdink.com

NOTES
This article provided the data in this essay, or at least the links to find the data originally by following its notes.
http://www.isreview.org/issues/71/feat-charterschools.shtml