charter schools

Lamar Alexander’s Old/New Ideas for Education Reform

Deborah Duncan Owens charter schools, corporate education reform, free market education reforms

Senator Lamar Alexander will soon assume leadership within the U.S. Senate on the committee that oversees public education.  It seems like a natural fit. After all, he served as the Secretary of the Department of Education under President George H.W. Bush.  He is also a former governor of Tennessee and former president of the University of Tennessee.  Kimberly Hefling explains his plans for updating No Child Left Behind.  With the Republicans now in a position to lead efforts in the education arena, Alexander has plans to address “excessive regulation of local schools by Washington. …”   He plans to address questions … “about whether all the federally mandated annual tests are appropriate and whether states should decide how to assess their students.”

Sounds good so far, right?  He seems to be offering a glimmer of hope to those who seek to ease the testing burden on America’s school children.  That’s a good thing.  But, beyond simply promoting the conservative cause of moving education policy decisions to the states and out of the firm grip of the federal government — and addressing questions about federal mandates and standardized testing — what can we really expect of Lamar Alexander?

To answer that question, all that is required is a look back at the education policies proposed by his former boss — President H.W. Bush.  And the answer is loud and clear:  choice, choice, choice — vouchers and charter schools.  In January, 2014, Alexander spoke at an American Enterprise Institute gathering and laid out his plan for education reform quite clearly.  If you want to know what his agenda for education actually is, watch the video.  You’ll think it’s 1992 all over again.  Here are some themes that emerge from his discussion at the conservative think tank gathering:

Lamar Alexander thinks:

  1. public schools are awful;
  2. local school boards operate a monopoly over education;
  3. the federal government should offer a GI Bill for K-12 school children (H.W. Bush’s failed legislative attempt to privatize education);
  4. K-12 schools should be a “marketplace” of choice;
  5. the legislature should provide an amount comparable to 41% of the federal money for K-12 education in the U.S. to pay for a voucher plan to send children to private or public schools of their choice.;
  6. it’s perfectly acceptable to invoke the plight of low-income children as a rationale to further efforts to privatize the public school system in the U.S.;
  7. it’s a good idea for schools, under choice and voucher plans, to simply kick kids out if parents question school policy.  Public schools can’t do that; they have to work with kids and parents to resolve problems (and Alexander apparently thinks that’s a bad thing);
  8. there is a price on the head of every child in America and, therefore,  he is surprised that there isn’t more competition to get the money children bring with them to the privatization arena in education.  Don’t they see the additional money children have, as Alexander explains, “attached to their blouse or their shirt?” – and –
  9. we should all believe that teachers in charter schools have more freedom to be innovative because the children they teach “choose” to be there.

So, let there be no mistake.  Lamar Alexander is not a champion of public schools in America.  He is a champion of free market policies.  He is a champion of corporate reformers who want to capitalize on federal dollars to use in their quest to make a lot of money in the education arena.  To be sure, Milton Friedman’s ideas are alive and well!  And, let me once again reiterate the last short paragraph in my book:

“For American citizens, if there is only one thing to remember about their public schools it is this: Public schools are not government schools nor are they corporate free market schools.  Public schools belong to the public.  Public schools are citizen schools, and it is now up to citizens to reclaim what is theirs!”

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Walton Family: Don’t Worry about Walmart Employees — Just Focus on Free-Marketizing our Public School System!

Deborah Duncan Owens charter schools, corporate education reform, free market education reforms

Chris Lubienski shared an article in Forbes Magazine via Twitter about one of Sam Walton’s grandchildren who has made charter schools and the free market privatization of public schools her mission in life.  And she certainly has the financial resources to have a strong impact.  Carrie Walton Penner is the daughter of Wal-Mart company chairman, Rob Walton, and is an heir to the largest family fortune in the entire world ($165 billion — and I’m sure growing).

Of course, the Walton family would like for the world to ignore all the problems and lawsuits associated with their chain of retail stores.  Workplacefairness.org documents Wal-Mart’s dubious employee practices.  But that’s okay.  The Waltons are going to save our public schools through free market strategies and competition between charter schools and traditional public schools.  Maybe Carrie Walton Penner can invite all the governors and and big CEOs to Arkansas to set an agenda for our next phase of systemic education reform — like IBM CEO Lou Gerstner did at his headquarters in Palisades in 1996!  That meeting brought us Achieve — future creators of the CCSS.


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No-Excuse Charter Schools and Racism

Deborah Duncan Owens charter discipline policies, charter schools, charter schools and racism, KIPP, no excuse charter schools ,

I read two interesting articles this weekend that seem to speak volumes about the inherently flawed notion that charter schools are the panacea for students, overwhelmingly of color, living in urban areas.  The first is Sarah Carr’s article in The Atlantic entitled “How Strict is too Strict? The backlash against no-excuses discipline in high school.”  The second is Antonia Darder’s op-ed published on the Truthout website entitled “Racism and the Charter School Movement: Unveiling the Myths.”

Carr’s article sheds light on the discipline policies associated with the no-excuses charter schools that are increasingly becoming the norm within inner cities across the U.S.  Her examination of some of the charter schools in New Orleans, a city that has served as the vanguard for other urban cities, raises some interesting points.

When the KIPP franchise opened their Renaissance High School in 2010, many parents were eager to enroll their children.  Far from being concerned about the myriad of rules outlined for the no-excuses charter school, parents cheered.  Carr reported that after one administrator “noted that the Renaissance staff hadn’t been vigilant enough about preventing the students from rolling up the sleeves of their uniforms, a mother shouted, ‘Get even stricter, Mr. Dassler! Do it!’ Another chimed in, “You have to be hard and strict. You can’t be soft, because you know how these kids are.”

In no-excuse charter schools like KIPP, the rules are numerous.   Rules dictate how students walk, how they talk, how they sit in their desks, how they respond to teachers in the classroom, how they dress (down to the color of the undershirt they were), where they look in the classroom (tracking the teacher or other speaker), and the list goes on and on.  The school environment is so rigid that students often jokingly refer to the KIPP school as the Kids in Prison Program.

While parents may have applauded the strict discipline policies at first, as Carr points out, there is a racialized aspect to the discipline policies within many charter schools:

“…  the zealous disciplinary tactics at the paternalistic charters that are overrepresented in poor urban districts contribute to persistent racial gaps in students’ experience. Starting in preschool, black children are suspended and expelled at far higher rates than white students are, despite little objective evidence that they behave any worse. The discrepancy persists as children get older and the number of overall suspensions rises. In high school, black students are more than three times as likely as white students to get suspended at least once. Untangling causation and correlation is obviously no easy matter, but one statewide study in Texas reported that students suspended or expelled for a “discretionary violation”—having a bad attitude, for example—were nearly three times as likely to come into contact with the juvenile-justice system the following year.”

At the Carver Collegiate charter school in New Orleans, 69% of the students were reported to have been suspended and at the Carver Prep charter school, 61% had been suspended.  Although school administrators explained that 80% of the suspensions were for a single day, several students claimed that they were sent home from school “off the books” so that their disciplinary dismissal  was undocumented.  According to Carr, some charter school operators are attempting to temper their stance on discipline and be more responsive to their students.  However, this may very well simply be a response to the negative press about suspension rates that can impact the public relations campaign engineered to promote charter schools.  And, in fact, the American Psychological Association reported in 2008 that there is no evidence that suspensions and expulsions have any positive impact on student behavior or school safety.

Why, then, do so many parents in inner cities readily embrace the no-excuse behavior policies of charter schools? Carr quotes one New Orleans parent as saying, “The margin for error is much smaller in black communities, especially for black boys.”  The statistics seem to support his assertion.  For example, as one study found, marijuana use is slightly higher among whites than blacks.  However, blacks are four times more likely to be arrested.  Carr cites another reason for parents’ acceptance of strict discipline policies:

“For generations, the New Orleans public schools have graduated countless students straight into low-paying work in the tourism business. With only a few exceptions, the industry’s dishwashing, housekeeping, and other positions are nonunionized and come with little job security. Employees who make even a small misstep can be speedily replaced with new hires who don’t show up late, forget their uniform, or talk back to customers—as anxious parents are well aware. ‘If you mess up once at Harrah’s [a New Orleans casino], you are going to be fired!” a parent called out during the KIPP Renaissance meeting.’”

Antonia Darder explains that charter schools, as well as public schools that implement no-excuse strict disciplinary policies, reflect the ideology of the dominant elite.  She asserts that “attitudes toward poor and working class students of color and the structural conditions that result within many public and charter schools more correctly reflect deeply authoritarian disciplinary and surveillance tactics which closely mimic the culture of incarceration.” Thus, students who nickname KIPP schools as the Kids in Prison Program may not be too far off the mark.

And just what is the value of a charter school education for poor children?  Are strict codes of conduct designed to enable them to enter a non-unionized and low-paying job market prepared to follow the rules, accept the status quo, and never question authority?  Is that what is meant by being college and career ready?  Is that what we really want from our education system in the U.S. — one system of education for poor children that will enable them to fulfill their predestined roles in society by being compliant followers and a different system for the middle and upper middle class children who are prepared to enter society as innovators, creative thinkers, and leaders?

Darder explores the myths that are associated with the charter school movement.  One of these myths is the innovative practices supposedly employed by charter schools.  The pedagogical reality, however, is far from innovative.  Like traditional public schools, charter schools live and die according to standardized test scores and, therefore, employ all available strategies to raise student achievement — even when that means “disappearing” students through suspensions and expulsions who do reflect the mission of the charter school to demonstrate the movement’s assertion that they produce a superior product in the form of higher student achievement.

The roots of the current obsession with school choice and privatization, as Darder explains, can be traced back to conservative efforts to avoid the Brown decision in the 1950s when “freedom of choice” campaigns were employed to maintain segregated schools.  Choice, whether under the guise of school voucher programs or charter schools, cannot be delinked from the conservative assault on public education or from its endorsement by racist societies as a way to use public tax dollars to maintain segregated schools.  Therefore, it is not possible to discuss the charter school movement without broaching the often uncomfortable and unpopular topic of race and class.  To do otherwise is to ignore the history of school choice and to run the risk of repeating a history in which segregated schools were an accepted, and too often preferred, norm in the United States.  This is why I thank the NAACP for their position on charter schools.  As always, they speak for the rights of all children.

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Additional Thoughts about “That Kid” and Charter Schools

Deborah Duncan Owens charter schools, that kid

Amy Murray’s poignant article about “that kid” is timeless and will undoubtedly resonate with parents and teachers for a long time.  I know I will share it with my teacher education majors and, thus, will reread it many, many times.  And each time I know it will bring a tear to my eyes because, as I said in an earlier posting, I am a mother of one of “those kids.”

A thought occurred to me as I think about current education reform and the notion that charter schools are the panacea for all the perceived problems associated with our education system.  Much has been written about the practice of charter school operators who counsel out or overtly exclude special needs students.  We must acknowledge, however, that these are not the only students that meet the brick wall of exclusion by charter schools.  I think it’s safe to say that “those kids” would be problematic for charter school operators.  However, unlike traditional public schools, charter schools typically have a built-in mechanism to remove these students from their school.  Many teachers in charter schools will  never have to explain anything about “that kid” to other parents — except, perhaps, to say, “we’re taking care of the situation” before “that kid” is dismissed from the charter school.

A key feature of charter schools is the contract that parents, students and teachers are required to sign prior to enrollment.  Students are required to sign a contract agreeing to adhere to strict discipline policies.  The contract explains that failure to live up to that contractual agreement will result in sanctions and punishments and, ultimately, to dismissal from the charter school.  So, for charter school administrators and teachers, the contract  signed by students contains a “termination of contract clause” for “those kids” who have difficulty adhering to the discipline policies that are at the heart of the charter school experience.  They can be “disappeared” from charter schools and sent back to their traditional public school — where I hope they will find kind teachers who will welcome them back with open arms.

What about parents who see charter schools as a way to protect their children from “those kids?”  A word of caution is in order.  You may be surprised at how little it takes to have your child labeled as problematic by charter schools.  If their test scores are too low, that can be seen as problematic to the mission of the charter school whose survival relies on increases in test scores.  I read a charter school application recently that required parents to agree to have their children re-assigned to a different grade at the beginning of the year.  In other words, you may enroll your 3rd grade child in the charter school, only to learn at the beginning of the school year that your child has been re-assigned to 2nd grade! Well, that’s one way to game the standardized tests — make students repeat grades until they get it right.  And, while parents may know that their children can be a little “independant” — or not perfect — they may not realize that little misdeeds (like chewing gum, not looking straight ahead in the hallway, not responding with razor precision to a teacher’s prompt, etc., etc. — the list can be extensive) can quickly add up when a charter school doesn’t think your child is useful capital for their mission.  Your child may indeed become one of “those kids” quite quickly in a charter school environment.  And when or if that happens, I hope your child’s return to the traditional public school is made easier by a teacher like the one described by Amy Murray.

Coalition of Pastors Call for Halt to Privatization of Education

Deborah Duncan Owens charter schools , ,

“There are two competing visions for public education: one weakens the public portion, and one strengthens it. On one side, there is a drive to defund public education, de-professionalize teaching, misuse test scores to declare schools as failing, and institute paths to privatize schools in the name of school reform. These privatization schemes take the form of private school vouchers, for-profit virtual schools, and corporate chain charter schools that do not serve all students equally.”

We appreciate the insightful words.  Thank you.  We appreciate your support.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/20141019-coalition-of-pastors-urges-support-for-public-schools.ece

 

 

What Happened to Ruby Bridges’ Dream for The Ruby Bridges School of Community Service & Social Justice?

Deborah Duncan Owens charter schools, new orleans, ruby bridges , ,

A few years ago Ruby Bridges had a dream for the William Frantz Elementary School, the school she made famous for breaking the color barrier in New Orleans.  Of course, Hurricane Katrina was hailed by free market champion, Milton Friedman, as an opportunity to completely remake the New Orleans Public School system and privateers rushed in to fire all the teachers and turn all the schools into charter schools.  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan repeated Friedman’s assertion in 2010, stating that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”

The Ruby Bridges Foundation had an excellent idea:  honor the history of her efforts and create a school that would “feature a social justice curriculum” and focus “on history, civil rights, civic engagement, leadership development, and service learning.”  And they also envisioned a Civil Rights Museum as part of the site.  The foundation applied for a charter from the state of Louisiana.  I’m not sure what happened to her application, but I can speculate that the cost of renovating the William Frantz Elementary School was cost prohibitive.  Coming to the rescue was Crescent City Schools, a charter school operator funded by venture capitalists through the Newschools Venture Fund, public tax dollars and through donations they solicit on the website.  Acknowledging that the school site’s history is significant, Kacie Fusilier of Crescent City Schools stated, “We recognize the symbolism of us returning children to that school.”  And she explained that they are “working to cultivate a stronger relationship with Bridges herself.”

Of course, the fact that William Frantz Elementary School has been renovated since Hurricane Katrina is a good thing.  And a few days ago, the school unveiled a a statue of Ruby Bridges to commemorate her historical act of social justice when she was just a child.  It’s a beautiful statue.  However, I can’t help but cringe at the fact that the school has been renamed and now bears the name Aliki Academy.   Why not maintain its original name to honor its place in history?  Or, better yet, if the charter school operators truly wanted to honor the symbolism the school represents, why not rename it the Ruby Bridges School?

You will not find the concept of social justice in Aliki Academy’s mission statement.  Rather, they promote things like grit and excellence.  Their philosophy reflects the no-excuses attitude so prevalent in charter schools:

The educational philosophy of the Akili Academy of New Orleans is driven by our college preparatory mission. Our philosophy is based on four core values:

  1. All students can learn, regardless of background.
  2. Great teachers and great teaching are essential to student academic success.
  3. A highly structured, focused, and accountable school culture drives student achievement.
  4. Data analysis drives effective instruction.

Ruby Bridges’ place in history should be honored.  She did attend the ceremony unveiling her statue at Aliki Academy along with her mother and her former teacher.  It would have been so much more meaningful, however, if the school actually bore her name.  I wonder if a hundred years from now, or even twenty years from now, people will lose the historical memory of what occurred at the William Frantz Elementary School?  Will people ask why the there is a statue of a little girl on the site and why the school has two names on its building?  Where is the social justice in erasing Ruby Bridges’ name from the school?

Ruby Bridges: Grit, A Dream Deferred, and the Destruction of New Orleans Public Schools

Deborah Duncan Owens charter schools, corporate education reform, education reform, free market education policies, free market education reforms, kristen buras, martin luther king, new orleans, privatization of education, ruby bridges , ,

On the 54th anniversary of Ruby Bridge’s courageous and lonely walk that led the charge in desegregating New Orleans’ public schools, I want to pause and say a heartfelt thank you to one of America’s heros.  In 1960, little Ruby’s parents heeded the call of the NAACP for families who wished to exercise their right to send their children to the school of their choice and break the color barrier in New Orleans’ public schools.  Day after day, Ruby walked the gauntlet to William Franz Elementary School amidst white racist protesters shouting racial epithets at her, one woman even placing a black doll in a miniature coffin for the brave little girl to see.  As a result, President Eisenhower sent U.S. Marshals to accompany Ruby to school and keep her safe.  This action helped Ruby to persevere.  She never gave up and today speaks of the success of her efforts.

Cain Burdeau spoke with Ruby Bridges and provides an excellent commentary (http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_26936821/ruby-bridges-us-divided-by-race-again?source=rss). According to Bridges, “… white students returned to William Frantz and the school became integrated … she went to integrated middle and high schools in New Orleans. Fast forward to today: The school now occupying the William Frantz building is 97 percent black, according to school data.”

Education policy makers are enamored with the idea of “grit” as the factor that will help low income and/or low achieving students to overcome the structural factors that inhibit academic achievement.  They laud perseverance, self-control, and the ability to embrace challenges.  Grit has become a research agenda in education and scales have been developed to measure “grittiness.”  I suggest that if you want a model of grittiness in a young child, look to Ruby Bridges.  Of course, the power of her grit was not used to document a standardized test score.  Rather, her grit sparked a social movement and resulted in the fruition of a dream that Dr. Martin Luther King would eloquently speak about almost three years later in August, 1963, when he said “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”  For a short period of time and in some schools, and although not seamlessly, that dream was realized in New Orleans.

The dream did not last very long in New Orleans, however.  In the decades following Ruby Bridges’ lonely walk, the dream was sadly deferred.  Education policy discussions no longer focused on the impact of poverty, racism, and equity.  We will never know what the educational achievement of our public schools would have been if we’d kept the dream of integrated schools alive in the U.S.   Efforts to ameliorate the impact of poverty on educational attainment begun during the Johnson administration were never fully realized.  I am reminded of the Langston Hughes’ poem “A Dream Deferred.”

A Dream Deferred

by Langston Hughes

 

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore–

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over–

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

As the War on Poverty initiatives were steadily defunded, the dream dried up in cities like New Orleans.  Segregated schools slowly but surely once more became the norm.  And the problems festered.  Poverty’s grip on the city placed a stranglehold on its schools and, not surprisingly, students’ educational achievement suffered.  It’s a story that repeated itself across the country in large urban areas.  Jonathan Kozol wrote extensively about the problems of schools like those in New Orleans and urged America to right the wrongs associated with schools trying to survive in desolate, crime ridden neighborhoods with shrinking tax bases and funds in which students, predominantly of color, were increasingly isolated.

In the headlong rush to demonstrate that America’s public schools were a failure and to systemically reform our public school system through free market principles and efforts to privatize education, New Orleans and other urban areas in the U.S. would become ensnared in the corporatization of public schools.  The syrupy sweet public relations campaign surrounding the charter school movement would provide the propaganda needed to further efforts to dismantle the public schools in these cities and divert efforts to reform the schools by addressing poverty, racism, and other structural factors at the heart of educational disparities.

And then the dream exploded in Ruby Bridges’ own home town, New Orleans.  Hurricane Katrina hit the city square on, bringing death and destruction and leaving families displaced.  Friedmanomic free market coporate reformers grasped at the opportunity to totally remake New Orleans’ public school system and privatize education.  Teachers were fired en masse and public schools were closed and re-opened as charter schools.  As Kristen Buras explains in Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance, “Time and again in New Orleans, charters would be given funding and facilities in what amounts to an educational land grab premised on historical erasure and the racial-spatial redistribution of resources.”

There are no traditional public schools in New Orleans any more.  They are all gone.  The school Ruby Bridges’ attended, William Franz Elementary — a historical landmark — does not even bear its own name.  It was taken over by the charter school management group Crescent City Schools and renamed Aliki Academy.  I am left to wonder why the legacy of Ruby Bridges’ efforts was not important enough to preserve the name of the school that has such an important part in history?  It seems that the name of Ruby Bridges’ school is being erased from history in New Orleans.  Is this part of the erasure that Buras talks about?