The latest School Colors podcast, “Mo’ Charters, Mo’ Problems” illustrates the problem of framing issues as binaries. In the charter school debate, the binary is that charter schools are either seen as the solution to problems of educational inequity or a problem that’s destroying the public school system. As Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman demonstrate, it’s not always that simple. Large charter school networks perpetuate a host of problems that I find problematic, including: 1) a lack of accountability to the communities they serve, 2) co-locating and taking resources away from public schools (the co-location problem is particularly true in NYC), 3) hiring a non-unionized, mostly White staff of teachers that do not represent the student body, and 4) creating a no-excuses culture that, as Mark points out, “seems to champion the view that Black bodies need to be controlled, policed and micromanaged.”
However, many of these problems are true in public schools as well. Most public schools are not accountable to the communities they serve, particularly parents. Resources in public schools are inequitably distributed by zip code. The majority of public school teachers are White women. Although they are unionized, many teachers (myself included) are frustrated by the top-heavy UFT in NYC and do not feel like the union represents them. COVID-19 has illustrated that the UFT is not responsive to local teacher organizing, and definitely still not responsive to the needs and desires of the communities of color that the school system serves. On top of all of this, the school-to-prison pipeline is alive and well in public schools.
Then there are charter schools like Ember, which incorporate many of the elements parents and community members were fighting for in Ocean Hill-Brownsville. Aren’t these the schools we want, even if they are charter schools? I found myself wrestling with this question, yet again, at the end of the episode. When Ember’s extension for a high school wasn’t approved by the state, I was disappointed and upset (although not surprised). And yet, I’m still uncomfortable with the idea of charter schools. Why?
I’d love to hear other’s thoughts because I’m still working through my discomfort with charter schools, but I believe my discomfort stems from 2 larger, ideological reasons: 1) Like I said in my post last week, injecting the idea of capitalist competition into education feels uncomfortable to me. If competition means there will be losers, then those “losers” will be students and families who have a constrained set of choices and are stuck in “failing” schools. I believe schools should be community hubs, and the idea of calling any community we’re building “failing” sits uneasy with me. 2) As charters are currently set up in NYC, they are accountable to the state and possibly to their donors. Their structure is not set up to be accountable to the communities they serve. As some of the interviews in the School Colors episode illustrate, many charter schools do not treat parents like they’re community members who the school is accountable to, but rather like they are part of the problem and need to be changed. Ultimately, my issue is not with individual charter schools like Ember. The public school system is not going to change overnight, and we probably need schools like Ember now given the imperfections of our public schools. However, my problem IS when charter schools are framed in the neoliberal agenda as the solution to all of our problems with education. Not only is this inaccurate, it is damaging to the future of public schools that I want to fight for.
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You’ve articulated my discomfort so clearly. I felt the same tension when I read the Babette Edwards article on activism in the Harlem community, from community control to school vouchers to becoming a part of the charter school movement, all in an effort to “ensure high-quality education for their children, and thereby usher in system-wide educational improvements in Harlem” (p. 2). As a Harlem resident for most of my life, I witnessed firsthand how brilliant minds entered into failing schools and opportunities faded away.
All parents want the best for their children; and the desire for better often leads Black and Brown families down various pathways as they hope to spearhead efforts to create sustainable change. Yet in many instances, despite their efforts, as the Edwards chapter notes, “Questions of how best to make schools responsive to parents and how to bring about meaningful school improvements guided Babette Edwards’s half century of educational activism, and they remain vital but unresolved questions for education reformers today.”
Why are these questions still unresolved? Are we even making progress toward the goal?
I believe we (you and I) ultimately want our children to have access to schools with what you articulated above: 1) accountability (and connection) to the communities they serve; 2) adequate resources; 3) representation where students see themselves in their administrators, teacher and learning; and 4) high expectations all around. I would also add a community where students are leaders and can exercise agency over their learning, and, a place where students engage in tasks that build their financial and academic literacy so they can participate fully in this capitalistic society.
The challenge is, everyone does not want Black and Brown children to have access to the same opportunities afforded to their white counterparts. People say the system is broken…I have experienced the opposite, the system is doing exactly what it intends to do…continue to create a culture of have and have-nots in a world with a plethora of resources where an equity and achievement gap continues to grow.
I would also add, as Tood-Breland stated when she visited our class, perhaps it is naive to think that we can focus solely on education to ameliorate the conditions of Black and Brown children holistically. I continue to raise this question in my mind: How can we leverage community and economic development ideals in urban planning to support and attain our educational goals? Maybe in exploring the answer to this question we will start to create longer-term and interconnected goals to solve economic, environmental, and social issues that all come together to perpetuate intentionally and unintentionally more of the same.
I appreciate the conversation you guys have started here, Jenna and Mieasia. I agree with both your sentiments of discomfort related to charter schools. In last week’s class (during our breakouts), Nisa, Matt, and I had begun discussing the impact of charters and the mixed feelings towards them after the Todd-Breland reading. As someone who underwent teacher training at a public university in upstate-New York, working in various public schools throughout the Hudson Valley, I feel as though we were taught or conditioned to have negative dispositions towards charters since they appear to undermine the surrounding public schools greatly. However, hearing Rafiq Kalam Id-Din and Nikki Bowen talk about the cultures at Ember and Excellence Girls really calls into question the radical potential of charters.
Thinking about our discomfort and the neoliberal approach of some charters, it stood out to me when Rahesha Amon made a comment about marketing and branding during the podcast, and how these terms “are not natural” to an educator. That comment, while simple, really connected the dots in terms of what I was trained and prepared for in becoming a teacher, and what some of the expectations laid out by charter schools are. Given the severe inaccessibility to charter schools, despite occupying these community spaces, their lack of transparency only magnifies this unnatural feeling, and by extension, our discomfort.
To your points about resources, I find the tensions between charters and public school funding to be a great source of discomfort as well. Philanthropists are very willing to privately donate money to charter schools with the idea that they’re supporting Black and Brown students, but on the flip side, Odolph Wright made a statement regarding how PS.5 had to procure grant funding to obtain their beautiful labs and technological access for students. However, thanks to these spaces being grant-funded, they still don’t have a qualified teacher to run those spaces because where is their salary going to come from? This parallel is very apparent and comes down to Mieasia’s point of who we want to have access to these things.
I guess I’m just wondering if there is a timeline where we could see greater integration of these separate schooling styles to help eliminate some of these racial discrepancies. Rafiq Kalam Id-Din’s work is an example of this possibility and in combination with things like the Admissions Impact Score (see my recent post for more details on that), can we more evenly distribute students and funding throughout each community?
The charter school debate has animated many of my community college classrooms where my students have children who go to public and charter schools. When I first started learning about the history of charter schools I was teaching in one in New Orleans. I learned about the private takeover of schools after Hurricane Katrina, which resulted in a 100% charter school system. I found that these profit-seeking enterprises, led mostly by white transplants who recruited young white teachers, represented the ongoing and unwelcome post-Katrina takeover of New Orleans, which pushed veteran Black teachers out of schools and never sought out parents’, community members’ or students’ input while “building back” the city. To be pro-public education was to be unequivocally anti-charter.
The readings and podcast for this week help to, as Jenna said, add nuance to this Black-and-White debate. Read in tandem with the articles on Community Control, it seems clear that parents, and particularly Black and Brown parents, would be searching for something very different from UFT- and Board of Education-led public schools which, especially because they are largely funded by property taxes – have inequity built into them, as Mieasia points out.
I think Rooks’ book adds interesting layers to this debate because she so clearly lays out how big-business charter schools depend on, and profit off of, severe segregation that persists since governments have never committed fully to integration. At the same time, her chapter on virtual charter school classrooms, although clearly demonizing them, exposes the potential for these schools to potentially integrate student populations in unprecedented ways.
I was inspired and encouraged by Rafiq Kalam Id-Din’s descriptions of Ember charter school because this school seems to represent a model that wholeheartedly and unapologetically exists outside both the profit-driven white savior models that Rooks explores, and traditional public schools, which as Jenna points out, propel many of the same problems the charter schools do. Is it possible to revisit the successful community-controlled model of Ocean Hill Brownsville through the charter system? Would that community control-inspired model depend on segregation to succeed?
Jenna, you bring up important points that I find myself resonating with. I find that what makes me most uncomfortable about charter schools is that people are making a lot of money off them, ultimately taking from other schools and families that need it. As stated by Rooks (I am placing her direct quote below because I found it to be a great explanation), we all know what will make education equitable for ALL children but those who have the power, have made choices to profit from the marginalization of segregated Black and Brown communities. She uses the term “segrenomics” to describe how people profit from segregation. If there is so much money to go around off the privatization and charter school increase in specific communities, why even bother integrating schools? Money talks! Capitalism is here to stay. So what can we do about that?
I feel that if we succumb to charter schools, we are giving up the fight towards transforming public education. These schools are making a lot of people richer, while others are suffering. Yes, there are charter schools doing great things, such as Ember. But as you stated, it’s not fully supported, which also angers me. The charter schools that have taken over and wealthy people invest in, are ones that aim to discipline Black and Brown children. They do not aim for a liberatory pedagogy. If anything, these charter schools are sustaining the status quo and upholding white supremacist ideologies. I don’t mean to generalize, as I am no expert, but this is what I have observed in my surroundings.
In Long Island, charter schools are also on the rise, but only in predominantly Black and Brown communities like Hempstead and Roosevelt. Just down the block from Hempstead, is one of the most affluent towns, Garden City, with TONS of resources. The difference between these two towns is staggering. While Garden City encourages their students to think freely, be critical, engage in innovative activities, charter school students in Hempstead are taught to walk straight lines, be silent and memorize material to pass standardized exams. I do think that this also happens in our public schools, but charter schools really promote this type of education. They train their teacher to follow traditional models and sell this idea to desperate families.
At least in public schools, I want to think that students will experience something different. Even if its a few periods with educators who encourage free thinking. That also bothers me. It is inequitable and I think it will lead to more marginalizing. I am also thinking about how this scenario relates to Anyon’s study on social class and relationships. How are charter schools impacting social mobilization?
The educator in me dreams of a moment when all of young people will experience a liberatory pedagogy, one that will lead them to question and resist inequities in their education. Also, teacher programs that encourage critical consciousness development so that educators can also encourage racially and linguistically minorotized students to think about their positioning in society and question why. Even if we don’t see the changes we want to see in our lifetime, we will add our piece to this very complex “quilt” of schooling in the U.S.
Page 2 from Rook’s Introduction:
“Racial and economic integration is the one systemic solution that we know ensures the tide will lift all educational boats equally. However, instead of committing to educating poor children in the same way as we do the wealthy, or actually with the wealthy, we have offered separate educational content (such as a reoccurring focus on vocational education for the poor) and idiosyncratic forms of educational funding and delivery (such as virtual charter schools and cyber education) as substitutes for what we know consistently works. While not ensuring educational equality, such separate, segregated, and unequal forms of education have provided the opportunity for businesses to make a profit selling schooling. I am calling this specific form of economic profit segrenomics. Segrenomics, or the business of profiting specifically from high levels of racial and economic segregation, is on the rise. Educational practices based on segrenomic practices trickle down- ward from the wealthy and well connected to poor communities and those of color.”
The allusion to Biggie’s “Mo Money, Mo Problems,” made me want to bop my head a bit. The title brings attention to the point that charter schools often represent an influx of money and something new in the hood, the shiny thing. But just because you acquire the shiny thing doesn’t mean it’s going to get better. Remember in the very expensive video Puffy and Biggie created, they were being chanced the entire time. Although all charters aren’t created equal, many of them are motivated to give poor students of color education that would hold Eurocentric values higher than those represented in the communities the schools serve. They look to install a system of education that pushes students to assimilate. This often disempowers communities of color and contributes to the negative perception of charter schools
Ember, Excellence, and Common Schools are charters that have made attempts to build on what students already have. Private funds in schools would be less threatening if the community had a say in their construction. But you can make an argument about community voice in public schools as well. The biggest winners in education should be the community and there isn’t a structure in place yet consistently pushes for winners in communities of color.