Richard Cohen
Richard Cohen doesn’t understand why people are so down on the rich. The Washington Post columnist (3/18/14) writes:
The rich are incessantly accused of being slyly manipulative and self-serving. For instance, they support charter schools. Apparently, there is nothing worse.
I am mystified. Charter schools are not private schools. They are free public schools open to any student, usually by lottery. Some rich people support them, provide funds for special programs and, in return, get vilified for their efforts.
“They’re helping poor children,” Cohen insists, while opponents of charter schools, he suspects, “would rather hurt the rich than help the poor.”
But are charter schools really helping poor students—or any students? “Say what you will about New York or Washington charters, but by the usual measurements—test scores, etc.—they are succeeding, some of them stunningly so,” the columnist writes—contrasting them with “the old system,” in which “failure was a certainty.”
Who can argue with success? (cc photo: Multitude)
The link on “test scores” goes to a Washington Post article (7/30/13) headlined “D.C. Students Reach New Heights in Annual Standardized Tests.” Note that the subject of the headline is “D.C. students,” because the story reports gains by students in both charter schools and the “old system” alike.
But not quite alike: If you look at test scores over the past seven years, you see that D.C. charter schools have raised test scores by an average of 15.0 percent—while the old system, where “failure was a certainty,” has raised them by 17.2 percent. In other words, the “usual measurement” offered by Cohen as proof of the value of charter schools offers no evidence that charter school students are any better off at all.
But what about the “some” charter schools that are “succeeding…stunningly”? Cohen mentions Harlem Village Academies, which “has been raising test scores—in other words, giving student after student a better chance of succeeding.” There’s a special reason, though, that Harlem Village is able to raise scores: Its classes have attrition rates of up to 75 percent. That’s not so much “student after student” as it is “student but not student or student or student”: It’s not hard to have test scores go up and up if you get rid of any students who look they might bring the average down.
But what about the good intentions of the rich people who are funding charter schools—people like Carl Icahn, who went to Cohen’s high school? Don’t they count for anything? Cohen again:
When the rich insist that lower taxes would do wonders for the poor, the orphaned and the grievously widowed, I detect the faint aroma of self-interest. But when they plump for charter schools, the only ulterior motive you can find is that down the road, years from now, society will benefit and so, as night follows day, will they. I can live with that.
Maybe I’m not as familiar with rich people spending money just so “society will benefit,” since I don’t know Carl Icahn even “just casually.” But it’s not hard to find an alternative explanation (AlterNet, 2/15/13):
Thanks to a little discussed law passed in 2000, at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, banks and equity funds that invest in charter schools and other projects in underserved areas can take advantage of a very generous tax credit — as much as 39 percent — to help offset their expenditure in such projects. In essence, that credit amounts to doubling the amount of money they have invested within just seven years. Moreover, they are allowed to combine that tax credit with job creation credits and other types of credit, as well collect interest payments on the money they are lending out —all of which can add up to far more than double in returns. This is, no doubt, why many big banks and equity funds are so invested in the expansion of charter schools. There is big money being made here — because investment is nearly a sure thing.
As a parent with children in a charter school, I tire of both the media attempts to paint them as a panacea for all that ails education in this country, and critics attempts to paint them all as a corporate take-over of education. Several things should be kept in mind,but the most important is that Charter schools vary widely from state to state. In Minnesota, the laws require many different things that are not required in other states. You can’t simply be somebody with some money to establish a charter school. You need licensed teachers running it. You don’t get select and exclude students any more than any other school district can. You have to provide bussing in your city, if even 1 person asks for it. You have to take special ed children, even if you don’t have facilities. You can only turn away kids with a lottery system.
As for the “mediocre results”, about 1/2 of charter schools were started by parents & educators trying to set up alternative learning environments for children who were failing in public schools. Proponents correctly think that these schools are successful because they are looking at individual student performance. Student A was failing in standard school, but is doing better in the charter school. Opponents are looking at aggregate data and saying, charters aren’t doing as well as the standard school in the area. Both statements are true, however, the context that these were failing kids, and the kids WERE in public schools, one would expect that in a head-to-head comparison, the public school SHOULD be doing better by the numbers than the charter: the public school literally lost a bunch of students that weren’t performing, so their numbers should go up. The charter took those students which we would expect to under-perform. Pretending you can “just look at the numbers” is lame when you understand this scenario.
Now, that doesn’t mean that charters are always a success: they are literally and experiment in education. As such, some are going to fail. In MN many have tried and closed doors in 3 years or less. However, we have had failing standard schools that have had to close and send kids other places.
Another thing on this is that the diversity of education has been a good thing on the whole of it. What critics of charter schools fail to understand is that without them, a small minority of parents with kids that are having difficulties simply have no options with their kids’ education. School districts are great for designing and implementing education at 90% of their population, but pretending that the other 10% don’t count because they don’t fit the mold is simplistic or rude, depending on your demeanor. What can you do if your school district won’t help you as a parent to meet your kids needs? Shrug your shoulders? Right now in MN, standard districts have an incentive to work with parents simply because of the proliferation of charters. If the charters go away, so does the incentive to work with parents.
Oh, and this is about working class & middle class families: rich parents have always been able to exercise their wallets and take their kids to private schools.
Convert the education system into nothing more than a conveyor belt for cogs to fit the austerity machine
And make a tidy profit into the bargain.
I imagine Cohen can live with that.
If there has to be a lottery for admission, it’s NOT a public school.
Doug: not sure how adding choices to the markeplace = making kids into cogs in the machine. My kids in St.Paul, MN have a much more diverse educational background because of charter schools. I believe they are better able to judge their own school because they are exposed to friends in our neighborhood who go to different schools. That de-cogs them: critical thinking and objective & subjective about how things are done is key to the next generation challenging the assumptions that are presently slowly destroying our culture & planet.
PSzy: interesting definition. Funny, in MN we have open enrollment which means that kids in Minneapolis or White Bear, can attend St.Paul public schools, but only if there is enough room. So, based on your definition, because there is a lottery involved, now St.Paul school district isn’t a Public school. Also, our school has openings in Kindergarten for 112 students. If we only get applications for 110, then there is no lottery. Based on your definition, sometimes my kids school is a public school, and other times its not? Bizarre.
I do not trust this charter school system, because there are ultimately winners and losers as students compete for placement in the charter schools. It is certainly better than the voucher system for private schools, but they are both on the same slippery slope. If our public drinking water became contaminated, (which it has in many places), and the government set up “charter” water facilities for limited numbers of people and showcased the results, that would get praises from the media, as would giving people “vouchers” for bottled water, if they meet certain conditions and qualifications.
I hope one day someone will challenge the constitutionality of charter schools and school choice schemes. They are unconstitutional according to section one of the fourteenth amendment.
Joshua
You might ask Bill Gates about “challenging the assumptions that are presently slowly destroying our culture & planet”
As he is primary force behind both “school reform” – charter schools being a salient tactic of same – and the push to make genetically modified foodstuffs a staple of our diet.
It may be that some charters aren’t part of this plot to remold education into nothing more than a factory spitting out bricks to fit the edifice of austerity
But if your situation is the exception
I’d urge you to educate yourself on the rule.
Anon: if you can pinpoint how a charter school is unconstitutional, I would love to hear it. But keep in mind, you need to develop the argument. I am a debate teacher: you don’t “tell me”, you prove it. FYI- slippery slope is a logic fallacy because it forces me to defend not charter schools, but anything you choose to define as a derivative from charter schools. Weak argument. Try again. If you don’t trust a charter school, don’t send your kids there. On the other hand, why should you have a right to prevent me from sending my kids to one?
Doug: As I have said in my posts, it isn’t fair to paint all charters (and most particularly, all states) with the same brush. The rules for charter schools vary widely from state to state. MN has a lot of charter schools, per capita, but they are supported by both Dems & Repubs, because the rules we established force both accountability and enhanced teacher control (teachers have to be on the school board). I think the MN version is working: we have some truly very successful charters; and some crappy, second-rate charters have vanished due to failure. That is what should happen. In addition, the traditional public schools have found out what parents want: in particular, language immersion. 10 years ago, there were 3 language immersion k-6 schools in Minneapolis-St.Paul metro area. I think there are now 12, mostly due to pressure from charter schools. How is that for improving educational choice?
Linda: I’m not sure what state you are in, but as I pointed out before, we don’t get to hand select our kids. The ONLY way to get preferential placement in MN charter schools is to work in the school or have a sibling already in the school. Other than that, you have to go through the lottery if there are not enough seats. And, no, we don’t get to exclude special ed or special needs kids. Keep in mind, unlike other public school districts, we cannot request tax levies to improve our facilities to handle special needs kids, but we still have to make allowances for them. Not really fair, but most families of special needs kids go to larger schools because they know they kids need more resources.
As much as I like our laws in MN, they still hurt charter schools in some ways. Consider this: our school, Yinghua Academy, is a full-immersion Chinese school. State law prohibits us from testing children for ANY level of language proficiency. Effectively, this means our school can ONLY admit in K & 1st grade, because if we allow enrollment, for any reason, in 2-8th grade, we cannot predicate that enrollment on Chinese language proficiency. On the other side of town, a St.Paul Public school can require language proficiency, which means they can add students throughout K-8. How is this fair? It isn’t. It puts our school with a permanently dwindling population after 1st grade.
Of salient relevance to the issue
New York Schools: The Roar of the Charters
by Diane Ravitch
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/28-5
Pedestals are inherently unstable platforms
And DeBlasio’s is tilting dangerously to starboard.