They foster segregation.
Charter schools are in fact the new face of segregation, the enabling excuse for exclusivity and alienation. The Charter School movement glorifies the illusion of “choice” even while entitling homogeneity.
This is borne out in the numbers and confessed every day via parent-to-parent euphemisms: “this school is a better ‘fit'”, “‘safety’ is my top priority”, “my child only responds to a ‘nurturing environment'”, “smaller class sizes are necessary for my child”, “I want my child immersed in a specialized program”.
So much sorting and selecting sets up a double whammy for segregation. On one level families self-select according to like-mindedness and socioeconomic comfort level. At the same time the very process of school selection siphons highly involved families away from public district schools.
This in itself is a big deal, to sequester families as a function of Education engagement, thereby isolating their children from cross-fertilizing influence and nourishing a wake of alienation that inhibits social mobility.
But the important point is that the act of “choice” itself drives this segregating process, and it does so with ruthless efficiency. What results is a fractionated landscape with those favoring certain school types or societies isolated in enclaves by proclivity or status, and the remainder being those disinclined to sorting (i.e., “not-engaged” parents) or otherwise actively excluded from the assortment (e.g., special education students).
The problem arises from the conceit that these particular highly touted choices can be mutually exclusive without penalty. And it is by virtue of this pretense that they are, that exclusivity is excused and empowered.
For example, when you say “my child does better in small classes“, an implication is asserted tacitly that another’s child does not (that, say, my child does not). This sets up a false dichotomy of mutual exclusion where separate circumstances could be considered equal by virtue of “choice”. That is, where smaller class sizes might be considered essential for one set of children and inessential for another.
Except segregation in terms of this “choice” does not result in reasonably equivalent conditions since it is not true that the benefit of class size is conditional; pedagogy improves with smaller class sizes for everyone. So while class size is a prime motivator for parents in selecting a Charter school, the presence of this very choice itself confers selectivity and exclusivity necessarily. By definition. “Choice” confers winners and “choice” also confers losers. “Choice” enables, enforces and excuses, elitism.
In fact all these “choices” are actually restrictions, because all the euphemisms are also truisms: who would not choose “safety”, who would reject a nurturing environment, who denies that the “fit” of a school is optimized by excluding those who do not fit?
The institution of school “choice” affirms a virtue of exclusion. To lean toward Charters is to revere a future we already rejected in the past, when segregation was named as something wicked and ruled unconstitutional.
Hence the utility of euphemisms today.
Like a stinking rose, segregation by any other name would conquer as it divides.
And let’s be very clear about this: Charter schools do divide the body politic. They alienate whole classes of families and children from one another, holding public education hostage to the conquering ideology of vouchers and neoliberal racketeering.
sending...
10 Comments
March 11, 2016 at 11:10 am
Thank you for this excellent piece. I’ve just posted extensive documentation of the harms of the Rocketship expansions in San Jose. Yesterday, they were given a free pass by the State Board to open yet another school in Concord (Contra Costa County) despite unanimous denials at the district and county levels and strong community opposition against the appeal. It baffles me that they haven’t yet attempted to invade LA, but perhaps its’ just a matter of time. Protect your public schools and thanks for speaking up. http://wp.me/p3XIVy-d8
March 11, 2016 at 7:56 pm
Thank you! I think there are only so many days in the year, plus the LA market is awfully saturated, and with some of the largest bullies on the playground (think, anagram for “liE”).
So … let’s see what comes tomorrow, eh? Thank you for holding a garlic chain up to Rocketship. We may need it yet; Gulen’s our big bugaboo at the moment.
And thank you for the very enlightening link to your blog (above).
March 11, 2016 at 1:24 pm
This is an excellent analysis of the function of choice as an instrument of segregation by social class, race, ethnicity, talent, and whatever. The enclaves proliferate.
March 11, 2016 at 7:57 pm
Thank you. sigh.
March 12, 2016 at 12:41 pm
I like how you see this: the enclaves proliferate. Exactly.
March 12, 2016 at 12:40 pm
It was interesting to read this article just after posting a note on my facebook page concerning the growing “apartheid” engendered by the charter school game. The segregating aspect of test-score reforms is, as you say, becoming ever more ruthlessly efficient. As I was in the process of writing a book about school reform and the racial divide, I woke up to the direct connection between the choice/charter/voucher movement and the school-to-prison pipeline where so many of our now “unwanted” students are simply segregated out of society — and into our endlessly waiting jail cells.
March 12, 2016 at 2:59 pm
Yes, I feel tempted to agree. At first I felt the “school-to-prison” language was pretty hyperbolic and shrill. Perhaps it’s only a function of spending too much time in the echo chamber, but these days it feels very much part of a directed setup. And yet it behooves us all to recall that Sh– Happens, what paving stones to hell are composed of and that agency is not required for bad things to unfold. Beware the lure of blame. We can observe but in ascribing causality, well, that way lies madness and to what end?
September 17, 2016 at 3:40 pm
Thank you for taking the time to write this excellent article. Your final paragraph summed up the whole Charter School conundrum so well:
“And let’s be very clear about this: Charter schools do divide the body politic. They alienate whole classes of families and children from one another, holding public education hostage to the conquering ideology of vouchers and neoliberal racketeering.”