Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic presidential candidates are rejecting the Obama administration’s embrace of charter schools, and media observers aren’t taking kindly to it. “Minority Voters Chafe as Democratic Candidates Abandon Charter Schools,” blared a recent New York Times headline (11/26/19). “The front-runners for the presidential nomination are moving away from the charter school movement, and black and Latino families ask why their concerns are lost,” read the subhead.
The “minority voters” who the New York Times (11/26/19) claims “chafe” at Democratic candidates’ criticism of charter schools do not include the NAACP or Black Lives Matter, both of which call for a moratorium on new charters.
The article itself was slightly more nuanced, reporting that the shift away from charters has left “some black and Latino families feeling betrayed”; buried deep within, the reporters note that “there is no consensus on charter schools among families of color.” (Black and Latino voters support charter schools at higher rates than do whites, but less than 50% view them positively; the NAACP and Black Lives Matter have called for a moratorium on new charter schools.) But the article also relied heavily on uncontested quotes from charter school founders and leaders, who accuse Democrats who would stop funding new charters of having “a lack of respect for black voters in the party” and “writing off years, if not generations, of kids.”
The pro-charter side was also given the floor a week earlier when the Times published an op-ed by Cory Booker (11/18/19) headlined, “Stop Being Dogmatic About Public Charter Schools.” (We could find no recent evidence of any pro-public school op-ed published in the paper in support of this “dogma.”)
Warren’s plan in particular has come under media fire, as the most recent education plan to be released (Sanders released a similar plan in May), and coming shortly after her brief surge to the top of the polls. In addition to a quadrupling of funding for Title I schools that serve primarily low-income families, tackling segregation, and increasing funding for schools serving students with disabilities, Warren is proposing an end to federal funding for new charters, a ban on for-profit charters, and holding charters to the same transparency and accountability standards as public schools. It’s this smaller charter-focused piece of her plan that has gotten the most attention.
US News & World Report (10/29/19) helpfully framed the plan for readers: “Warren Embraces Teachers Unions Over Charter Schools.” The natural counterpart to “charter schools” here, of course, would be “public schools,” but the right likes to cast teachers’ unions as a “special interest” scapegoat for the failures of the country’s underfunded education system, and journalists have long been happy (or lazy) enough to adopt the rhetoric (Extra!, 9/10). The opening paragraph likewise took on pro-charter catch phrases, pitting “school choice supporters” against “teachers unions”—as if teachers are against educational opportunity.
In the Washington Post, which published three opinion pieces attacking Warren’s plan, the editorial board (10/28/19) vilified teachers’ unions repeatedly: Warren “took a page from the union playbook”; she put forth a “union-pleasing plan”; the plan “seems aimed more at winning the support of the powerful teachers unions than in advancing policies that would help improve student learning”; Warren did this because “the teachers unions wield outsize influence in the Democratic Party, and they revile the mostly non-unionized charter sector.”
The Washington Post (10/28/19) says “children are the losers” in Elizabeth Warren’s plan that would greatly increase funding to schools serving disadvantaged students.
Claiming to simply be defending poor parents and children is a hallmark of such pieces; “Children Are the Losers in Elizabeth Warren’s Plan for Charter Schools” was the headline of that Post editorial. When Sanders released his plan back in May, the Post was similarly on high alert (5/27/19), accusing him of “the most enduring—and unforgivable—civil rights offense in our country today”: “the consigning of so many poor, often minority children to failing schools.”
Washington Post education columnist (and longtime charter booster) Jay Mathews (11/2/19) used a single mother of four and school voucher supporter, Nikia, to frame his objection to Warren’s education plan. (“Vouchers?” you ask, scratching your head? Bizarrely, Mathews couldn’t seem to find a more recent or relevant example—he interviewed Nikia in 2005, before charters had become the school privatization vehicle of choice.) He patronizingly counseled Warren to “ask parents like Nikia” about her charter proposal. “I lack the space to discuss the many issues in Warren’s new education plan, but I think its charter school provisions overlook the needs of low-income parents,” he opined.
Likewise, according to a Wall Street Journal op-ed (11/15/19), Warren’s “plan would trap low-income minority students in unsafe, poor-performing schools, denying them the opportunity to learn.”
But it’s precisely the rest of the plan that gives the lie to the idea that Warren is the one overlooking low-income families’ educational needs. Mathews—unlike the Post editorial board or the Journal—does acknowledge Warren’s bigger investment plan, but he dismisses it as impractical:
Unfortunately, it is likely to take many years, if ever, for Congress to provide such record sums. Children of parents such as Nikia need good schools now. The best charter organizations appear to be supplying some of those schools. Why should their growth be curtailed?
The Times piece struck a similar note, quoting a self-described “single mom with two jobs and five hustles” who says of her children: “They’re brilliant; they’re curious. It’s not fair. Why shouldn’t I have a choice?”
It’s a classic charter (and voucher) argument that manages to paint the policy as having only the best interests of the poor at heart, even as it promotes inequality by offering access to a few lifeboats rather than repairing the ship.
US News (10/29/19) pits “charter schools” against “teachers unions”—rather than “public schools,” the obvious juxtaposition.
Problematic charter-funded data peppers these articles; the Times piece claimed the waitlists for charter schools are “swelling into the hundreds of thousands,” linking without comment to a charter-funded study from 2014 that critics have pointed out suffers from an abundance of methodological problems. The Post and Journal both point to a “Stanford University study” (by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes) that finds urban charters outperform public schools in math and reading, which likewise uses flawed and biased methods. (Neither note that CREDO is housed in the right-wing Hoover Institute, and funded by pro-charter organizations like the Walton Foundation.)
In fact, overall, charters have proved to offer no better education than public schools; some charters do quite well, and many do quite poorly, just like public schools. Nor do they provide any special benefit for students of color; a 2003 study from the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics found that “for students from the same racial/ethnic backgrounds, reading and mathematics performance in charter schools did not differ from that in other public schools.”
But charters, which are exempted from most oversight and regulations governing public schools, have proved to be excellent vehicles for fraud, waste and abuse. A 2014 report by the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education found charter operators using public funds for personal gain, mismanaging public funds and schools, illegally inflating enrollment to boost revenue, and putting children in danger, among other things.
The Network for Public Education found in 2019 that “hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funds have been awarded to charter schools that never opened or opened and then shut down.” As Washington Post education reporter Valerie Strauss (6/24/19)—who provides a rare space for criticism of charters in the paper—noted a few months after her initial coverage of the report, that may have been an underestimation of the waste, which could exceed $1 billion.
And Juan Gonzalez in the New York Daily News (5/6/10) documented how charter schools have become a favorite investment vehicle for hedge funds—thanks to a federal tax break that allows them to double their money in seven years.
In the Journal op-ed, the writers argue that despite an “avalanche of cash” poured into Madison, Wisconsin, public schools, racial disparities are the worst in the state, while the villainous “teachers union is thriving” and working to “limit school choice.” The piece neglected to note that white Madison students do quite well—it’s just the 6.5% of the population that’s black that suffers—and not just in the schools, but in the criminal justice system, housing, employment and healthcare. So the problem isn’t the funding, the unions, or the limits on school choice: It’s the systemic racism, which the education plans released by both Warren and Sanders explicitly attempt to remedy.
They really have no respect for their reader’s intelligence. It is not a secret that charter schools are, on average, terrible and close to worthless. So, somehow, we’re supposed to conclude that opposing terrible schools in favor of decent or good schools is somehow contrary to the interests of children or parents? Um… nice try?
What is going on with public discourse is sickening. The sick part seems to mostly come from and be escalated by the establishment, which is more and more right-wing and pro-corporate. I hate that this is happening in my time on Earth and that I have to live through this toxic manipulation.
Charter school are driven to make profit. They use fear and hyperbole to sell the charter idea to parents. They divide parents of school children, weaken public schools and foster inequality and segregation. They will defend their profits with all their power and the assistance of conservative elites. I am being generous in my assessment.
I use to believe Charter Schools are the wrong choice. However this is a decision left up to the Black Communities most affected by poor public schools. We know that property tax pays for the more affluent neighborhoods, so lets allow the communities to decide if there is a school that is deficit. Until funding is equal, this is their decision.
The problem is that its a non-solution, and its a dog’s dinner that they have for choices: terrible public schools, or terrible charter schools.
I’m not sure that allowing them to “choose” between a terrible public school and a terrible charter school is the best answer: how about we, you know, make the public schools BETTER instead of offering a choice between bad and worse? Would seem to be the obvious solution.
Hi, Julie – Quite the stretch that the media is biased FOR charter schools. That sounds a little too much like something President Trump would accuse someone who has a differing position than him of having. And, some of the other comments are unbelievable in their vague and erroneous statements.
For Progressives and the Left to be against charters is a hypocritical platform on several levels. To support choice for reproductive rights, but not for public schools, is just the starter. Women who choose to bear their children shouldn’t be able to choose what kind of school is best for them, but they can choose not to have them in the first place? What do those who hold this view have against children?
Those without the means of wealthier members of our society shouldn’t be able to choose another school than a lousy performing district school? The objections to that are based on whether the schools are unionized or not: its telling that unions are OK with charters as long as they are unionized. Oh, but we are concerned about inequality in other areas, just not public education! What a farce!
But, as you demonstrate, each is entitled to their own bias, even if its hypocritical.
I should add: its not the “media” that is making the case that being anti-charter is anti-children of color. Its parents of color that are making it.
I should add: its not the “media” that is making the case that being anti-charter is anti-children of color. Its parents of color that are making it.
Many charter schools are excellent alternatives to the available public school – but many are not and the gold-rush mentality to have a charter on every corner (here in Phoenix) is crazy. One little-mentioned side-effect of charter madness – when you put an elementary school on a property not originally designed to be a school, the kids often have no field space to play games, no performance spaces, no gymnasiums to use when its cold or wet (or hot, like in Phoenix). So kids and teachers get used to inadequate facilities and take for granted that such things are not possible.
I am trying to be patient with FAIR on this, but the bias in FAIR against charter schools is EXACTLY what Booker was talking about.
There are good charter schools, and their are bad charter schools, and I hate to break it to FAIR, but Charter schools ARE public schools, so the framing of this article is an example of the absurd.
Also, and pointedly, the problem with charter schools has quite a bit to do with how different states have implemented their policies. In MN, where all 3 of my kids attend charter schools, we have the same accountability/transparency requirements of traditional public school districts, but our charter isn’t allowed to own its own buildings, nor are we allowed to raise a tax levy for any reason. Our charters aren’t allowed to exclude students based on disabilities or abilities (like a traditional ISD can with magnet or GT schools) Very different rules apply in Michigan, where Betsy DeVos is from. I don’t think the sponsoring organizations in MN are allowed to be for-profit institutions either.
By the way, my eldest’s charter is literally one of the top high schools in the state and the nation: Nova Classical academy in St. Paul. My younger kids went to a Mandarin Chinese full immersion school, Yinghua Academy. None of the traditional ISDs in MN thought that you could successfully teach kids Mandarin without fundamentally compromising their English. Yinghua has proven them wrong.
This is the reason why Charters should be allowed to exist: they allow us to learn what is possible with education. Sometimes they fail. This is how science works: you have to test things in the real world.
Charter schools are public schools, they are not a school system… you are doing the same gymnastics with semantics that you expressed with such ease in your “article”.