I once worked at a charter school. Before I accepted the job, I did my research and I had found my charter was considered one of the best in the Bronx. It was founded by a non-profit with over 20 years of experience working with public schools. I knew the criticism of charters, but if any charter could prove the critics wrong, it was this one.
I was dead wrong. What I discovered was that charter schools are failing their students, community, and American public education. Parents, teachers, and the nation as a whole must become aware of:
The 7 Deadly Sins of Charter Schools
7. Destroying a Profession
6. Putting Teachers at Risk
5. Putting Students at Risk
4. Creating Bad Education
3. Privatizing a Public Right
2. Segregation of Schools
1. Failing to Educate Students
7. Destroying a Profession
Thanks to austere state budgets following the Great Recession, charter schools have become the only option for new teachers entering the profession. Charters take in prospective teachers who have no experience, and in the case of my charter, sometimes no certification. Like workers new to any profession, these young teachers are malleable and eager to please. The results of this are not only reflected in the classroom (which I will get to later), but in the everyday rights professionals should have as workers.
The young, naive faculty at my school accepted lunches being taken away, no prep periods, meetings scheduled long after the contractual day ended (aka wage theft), and teaching classes out of their content area. Not only are hard earned labor rights being eroded, but without a union or any prior experience, the next generation of teachers is coming to accept that these practices are standard operating procedures in the workplace.
6. Putting Teachers at Risk
The majority of charter schools are non-union. Not only does this leave young educators at the mercy of handsomely paid principals that prefer to be called "CEOs", but they lack the fundamental right of due process in termination. Without due process, teachers have no voice, and without a voice they cannot be advocates for their students and profession.
This is why teachers at my school were forced to teach out of content area. This is why teachers at my school gave up prep time to attend meetings that dealt with marketing, not student learning. This is why teachers were forced to go on home visits putting themselves and students at risk. Teaching is a high risk profession. False accusations, speculation, and rumor can at best ruin a teacher’s career. Teachers should never be in contact with students outside of a learning environment.
5. Putting Students at Risk
Restricting contact between teachers and students to an academic setting is important for students as well. Sending a teacher you just hired last Friday, to sit down in the living room of one your students on Monday, is incredibly irresponsible. Students have rights as well that need protection.
At the center of those rights is a quality education. We made a promise to uphold this right to every parent who enrolled their child at our school, but we broke it over and over again. When a student is learning from a teacher who is either uncertified or teaching out of content, that is not a quality education. When curriculum is being guided by unproven pedagogy, that is not a quality education. When a principal admits to her staff that our school does not have the services needed for many of our special education children, but we took them in anyways, that is not a quality education. Our students deserve better than empty promises, they deserve an education.
4. Creating Bad Education
Essential to the growth of a new teacher mentorship from an experienced peer, and the guidance from qualified administration. Our charter failed on both fronts. No teacher at my charter had more than 3 years teaching experience, making us a faculty of mentees not mentors. This young staff was led by administrators who were not qualified to run a school.
Our 3 assistant principals were proudly 29, 30, and 34. Charters will hire people without an administrative degree, and sometimes people without any prior education experience. With a "business staff" being almost as big as the faculty, these jobs are not only easy to obtain, but abundant. While this may bode well for those wishing to fast-track their careers, the damages done on students is monumental.
Inexperience and unqualified leadership leads to curriculum and policy that go against best educational practices. My social studies department was mandated not to spend any class time teaching students how to analyze the source of a document. Understanding point of view, bias, and background information was deemed unnecessary and a waste of time by our "content specialist" administrator. She argued it wouldn't help them pass the regents, so don’t spend class time teaching it. Her orders flew in the face of both educational research and reality. Identifying point of view and bias are crucial skills students must master not only to have success on the NYS Regents, but in life as well.
3. Privatizing a Public Right
Charters take tax payer money and put it into a school that is set up by private institutions and Wall Street firms. These same privateers also make massive investments into these schools that pay for principal/CEO salaries that can reach $500,000, and large "business staffs". There is no school board elected by the public, there is no public oversight.
The private interests who back charters have profits in mind not people. Their goal is to undermined traditional public schools; labeling them as failures to further privatization. Education made private can turn schools into a billion dollar industry. Companies can make millions selling test-prep programs, Common Core aligned curriculum, training that promises to “turn around” failing schools, and through harvesting valuable personal data from students. The power these financial backers wield were felt immediately upon being hired at my charter.
All the new hires at my charter were required to attend a week long orientation. I assumed this would mean at our school in the South Bronx, getting to know the building, the policies, and community. However, nothing with charters is what is seems.
Our orientation was at a conference center, located right next to Wall Street. We had an escalator that brought us up to our own private floor. All week, we were treated to breakfast and lunch that consisted of salmon, steak, pulled pork, and whatever else you would expect at a building that caters to the power players of the financial world (we shared the building with AIG and Goldman Sachs). I knew then I had made a mistake. The amount of money my charter spent that one week on us could have funded an entire school in the South Bronx for a year.
Public education is the life blood of democracy. In a democracy power derives from the people, and those people need to be educated for democracy to be successful. Education is a fundamental right everyone is entitled too, and like all of our fundamental rights, it should be protected and carried out by a government we elect. Education should not be in the hands of private interest, Wall Street, or anyone else that doesn't answer to the people.
2. Segregation of Schools
Many charters are able to make grandiose educational success claims with little oversight. Many others are too young to even evaluate if they have succeed, even though they theselves have claimed have performed miracles. Studies show that overall; charters are no better or worse in educating students than traditional public schools. However, charters should be doing better, much better. That’s because charters create a cycle that segregates schools. Charters have a student body that is much more likely to succeed than a neighborhood public school.
Even though charters have an open lotto, the process of enrollment purposely segregates students. At my school there was a series of requirements parents had to meet in enrolling their student. First, they had to bring a potluck dinner for our business staff on registration night. For families who struggle putting food on their own table, this is a huge determent. Second, a parent must commit to volunteer at several events throughout the school year, as well as volunteer some hours doing clerical work for the school. Single parents, parents who work long hours, multiple jobs will not be able to fulfill these requirements. Through this process, my charter discreetly rigged an open lotto system to bring in families who have the most time, resources, and dedication. They brought in families whose children are most likely to succeed.
These families are attracted by small class sizes and other unsubstantiated promises that will later be broken. In the meantime, the neighborhood public school is stripped of students who are most likely to succeed. This kicks off the segregation cycle. The neighborhood school preformes worse on state test, encouraging more flight from its most well off families, until we finally reach a point where the public school is left with only the neediest of students. The school then fails and closes. A couple charters move in promising to do better.
1. Failing Students
This cycle wouldn’t be that bad if charters actually succeed in the promises they make.
The charter I worked at is located in a building that used to belong to a traditional public school. It fell to the segregation cycle, was labeled a failing school, and we (along with several other charters) kicked them out. The charters made bold statements and grand promises that through “no excuses” and "grit" they would succeed where the traditional public school failed.
I was hired this past summer, as the charter was heading into its fourth year. This June will be their first graduating class, but there is a huge problem. Not only will the graduation rate be under the goal set when the charter was written, but it will be less than the public school that the charter kicked out. Last summer these facts were known, and shit was about to hit the fan. Many administrators and business staff quit. The administration that stayed was under a lot of pressure from our privateer backers to reach our target graduation rate.
The failure and pressure to keep the mirage going led to an order from administration that myself, and many others could not follow. In order to raise our graduation rate students would have to begin to pass regents test. The majority of our students failed the Global and U.S. Regents in June, and retook them in August. I joined my social studies department to grade the August test, and after a long afternoon, the results were similar to June. We were ready to go home, handed the graded test to one of our assistant principals, and began to pack up. However, we were told to wait. Us new teachers were puzzled and asked some of the older ones why? We were told they did this in June as well. The administration wants to “review” our scores. In June, teachers had to go back and “look for more clarity” on all test that got 1s and 2s on their essays. Basically, our administration was cheating to try and push up our graduation rate. Our social studies department disobeyed the order to stay. We walked out, refusing to wait for the test to be "reviewed". Some quit that day, others later on, but our mini-protest was the catalyst.
Charters are failing our students, destroying public schools, and making private interest the protectors of our fundamental right to be educated. If there is a glimmer of hope in all of these sins, it is that many teachers quit their job that day. I accepted that job after careful research of the school. Everything from the outside looked great, but my charters like other are rotten at the core. Our students deserve a quality education. Our democracy depends on it. Parents, politicians, and fellow educators must become aware of the impact charter schools actually have. If we want to usher in a Golden Age of education in America charter schools are not the answer. If we want to usher in a Gilded Age, they are.
Note:
Some may understandly question the anonymity of this post. I'm sure many of us would love to name and expose our charter directly, but we don't have the power to go up against those who rub elbows with Goldman Sachs and AIG. While the truth is the best defense against libel, the resources to prove the truth are costly.