Living in Philadelphia, I have been able to see first-hand how the Mayoral Democratic Primaries have been running. For those who are not from the area, the two most-likely to win next week are the heavily pro-union Jim Kenney, or the pro-charter schools Anthony Hardy Williams.
Watching this battle unfold, it really grates on me that so many so-called Democrats around the country can still be considered viable representatives of the Democratic Party while also shilling for Charter Schools.
It should have been thoroughly demonstrated by now that supporting Charter schools has done nothing but drag our education system down, and likely set our students back for decades.
Especially here in Philadelphia. The public school system here has been languishing for years, mostly due to a lack of support from the oftentimes Republican-led state legislature and ex-Gov Tom Corbett. Yet so-called school reformers have been steadily pushing charter schools down the city's throat, siphoning resources away from the already crippled school system.
Of course, charter school supporters love to lean on their idealistic rhetoric about how charter schools are only meant to improve the choices that students have, yadda yadda yadda. What this rhetoric never seems to reconcile with, though, is the reality.
The reality is that by turning to charter schools, Philadelphia has only suffered as a result.
It’s what scholars have bluntly called an apartheid system: wealthy districts spend more on wealthy students, and poor districts struggle to spend less on the poor students who need the most. According to state data from 2012–13, Philadelphia spent $13,077 per pupil, while Abington spent $15,148—on students in much less need of intensive services and support. Wealthy Lower Merion spent $22,962 per pupil.
Pro-charter school lobbyists insist that charter schools do not hurt public schools at all, since the cost of supporting that students goes to the charter school rather than public. But as the article also notes, when students opt for a charter school, it still costs the public school system money.
One of the so-called benefits of charter schools is that it would provide a better choice for students from low-income households, as a way to improve their support. But this is not always the case.
The trend is evident across Miami-Dade County, where overall, the number of poor children enrolled in charter schools is disproportionately low compared to traditional public schools — an advantage for the charter schools, given that poverty correlates with poor academic performance. Charter schools in Miami-Dade also enroll a smaller share of black students than traditional public schools, according to federal data. In traditional public schools, one-third of children are black, compared to one-fifth of children in charter schools.
Furthermore, there are
notable studies showing that charter schools
don't outperform the traditional public school system.
Research on charter schools paints a mixed picture. A number of recent national studies have reached the same conclusion: charter schools do not, on average, show greater levels of student achievement, typically measured by standardized test scores, than public schools, and may even perform worse.
The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found in a 2009 report that 17% of charter schools outperformed their public school equivalents, while 37% of charter schools performed worse than regular local schools, and the rest were about the same. A 2010 study by Mathematica Policy Research found that, on average, charter middle schools that held lotteries were neither more nor less successful than regular middle schools in improving student achievement, behavior, or school progress. Among the charter schools considered in the study, more had statistically significant negative effects on student achievement than statistically significant positive effects. These findings are echoed in a number of other studies.
This, in spite of the fact that charter schools can notoriously artificially improve their statistics by simply
dumping their worst students back to the public schools.
Meanwhile, let's not forget the ulterior purpose of charter schools in the first place: to break the power of teachers unions.
The majority of charter schools are non-union. Not only does this leave young educators at the mercy of handsomely paid principals that prefer to be called "CEOs", but they lack the fundamental right of due process in termination. Without due process, teachers have no voice, and without a voice they cannot be advocates for their students and profession.
This is why teachers at my school were forced to teach out of content area. This is why teachers at my school gave up prep time to attend meetings that dealt with marketing, not student learning. This is why teachers were forced to go on home visits putting themselves and students at risk. Teaching is a high risk profession. False accusations, speculation, and rumor can at best ruin a teacher’s career. Teachers should never be in contact with students outside of a learning environment.
As far as pro-charters go, how utterly un-Democratic Party can a group get?
These are hardly all of the criticisms that can be found against charter schools.
Despite this, it is not surprising that many groups ostensibly lobbying for education reform - especially those backed by corporations and the private sector - still to this day continue to trumpet the champion that is charter schools. But, what should be surprising, and unacceptable, is that so many Democrats are still fooled by such rhetoric, or still allowed to benefit from pushing charter schools, contrary to all the evidence.
We are seeing public education being undercut and dismantled before our eyes. We are losing something we fought hard to obtain - the idea that ALL children are entitled to a free and adequate public education, to level the playing field so that the conditions of one's birth do not serve as a permanent disadvantage in the rest of one's life. Absent such a commitment, it is hard to see how we can continue to maintain the notion of a democratic republic committed to equal opportunity.
-teacherken
Charter schools have long been exposed for the charade they are: opportunism by private companies to suck up taxpayer money, attacks on teacher unions, while providing almost no improvement on what students would get in properly-supported public schools.
The fact that there are still so many Democrats and Democratic candidates who can still campaign on charter schools as a move toward progress, let alone something that represents any of our shared Liberal values, is appalling.
I know that in the upcoming 2016 cycles, a lot of class issues have become major battlefronts. Income inequality, raising the minimum wage, and pushing for more Warren-esque economic populism, for example. And, there is some valid debate on just how far our candidates can or should stray from the most hardcore of advocacy. However, I think that if there is one thing that should truly be denounced, it is the notion that one can advocate for charter schools while still maintaining a Progressive mantel. Moderate and Liberal alike, if one considers himself or herself a member of the Democratic Party, there should most likely be a most straightforward point to return to valuing public education, an egalitarian school system, and our collective teachers.
We cannot allow another election cycle to go by where it is implied that one can expect Liberal support while at the same time attacking one of our most valuable investments: our public school system, which should also be translated as an attack on the students and families who rely on its strength.