My friend Ted Chambers, a Boston public school teacher, blogs often on the serious challenges to a truly equitable public education system from the often disingenuous arguments of the advocates for the charter school “movement.” There are good charter schools and bad ones (in fact, my daughter attends one we are really happy with), just like there are good traditional public schools and bad ones. The teaching staff at charter schools are teachers just like in the traditional public schools, and they care about their students. However, the corporate-sponsored advocates of charter schools have, in fact, waged a 20 year campaign to accomplish, not better educational outcomes, but two political objectives: (1) ending teacher unions and (2) privatizing public education.
Ted has posted a really thoughtful piece on the hypocrisy of charter school advocates claiming the civil rights mantle when in fact they are supporting schools that drum out the most difficult-to-teach students. (Ted uses his Facebook page as a blogging platform. You can read his Ted.) I won’t regurgitate his argument; you can read his words for yourself. But, I am troubled about the policy direction taken in response to the very weak claims made by the corporate-sponsored charter school advocates like Michelle Rhee and Mike Petrilli (they are essentially the charter school movement’s version of climate change deniers.) Here’s Pitrelli’s articulation of what civil rights means in the education context: “Misguided notions of 'equity' have turned many public school systems into leveling leviathans. We shouldn’t let the same happen to charters, the last salvation of the strivers.” So, the real civil rights issue here apparently is that only some deserve a good education and the rest should be allowed to fail… preferably in a traditional public school so he can blame that system, their teachers, and their unions. In other words, the problem in the traditional public schools is the teachers and their unions; the problem in charter schools is the students.
It is not unrelated that Petrilli is affiliated with the Hoover Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, two organizations devoted to privatizating public services, including education. Both organizations craft PR campaigns dressed in the clothing of "policy research" in an ideological effort to create support for privatizing public services and funding them with taxpayer money. Education reform efforts deserve better than to be associated with plainly ideological efforts to undermine the public sector.
Check out Ted’s page and EduShyster if you are interested in reading more about this.
Originally published by this author at The Big Idea.