This is yet another case of a group being intimidated by unions, and being misinformed about how opportunities for poor children, in particular, and minorities, are best served by the kinds of choices that charter schools offer.
This theme runs through most of the charter-flavored responses to the NAACP resolution. Take Jondre Pryor, a KIPP principal who once met an actual NAACP person thereby allowing him to see just how ignorant the NAACP is of What Is Really Going On.
I came to understand the NAACP’s position a little better when I attended a panel on education with several of my KIPP colleagues and when I talked one-on-one with several delegates. It became clear that misinformation was the basis for their opposition. They had heard stories about a few bad charter schools, and they were using that to judge all 6,800 schools in the movement.
As Jim Horn has pointed out, one of the stories they might have heard was the story of Pryor's own school, where angry parents withdrew students over allegations of mistreatment and the Atlanta newspaper running a photo of KIPP students sitting on the floor, working toward the magic day when they would be judged compliant enough to "earn" a desk.
The NAACP resolution is actually pretty restrained. The NAACP hasn't rejected charters (they specifically state they aren't doing this because of charter opposition), or called for a roll back. They've called for four issues to be settled before the charter train gets rolling again:
1) Charters should be subject to the same transparency and accountability as public schools
2) Public funds should not be diverted to charters at the expense of public schools
3) Charter schools should stop suspending and ejecting students that a public school is obligated to serve
4) Cease to perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest performing children from those whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious.
These are four odd things for charter fans to object to. For #1, calls to hold bad charters accountable are now a staple of charter fans (see for instance this call from charter supporters for cybers to get their act together). Keeping charters accountable and closing the bad ones is a basic part of the sale pitch. Numbers 2 and 3 are regularly denied. Just check out the #YesOn2 folks in Massachusetts claiming that more charters will mean more money for all schools. Every time a story breaks about charters pushing out students, the response is not justification, but denial. Faced with the Got To Go list, Eva Moskowitz mostly claimed that her charters do no such thing. As for Number 4, with the exception of that wacky Mike Petrilli, this is once again a thing that charter fans claim they don't do.
In short, it's not entirely clear why the charter PR muscle isn't behind a push to say, "We think the NAACP's concerns are legitimate, and that's why we already mostly don't do these things, except for a few bad actors that we want to see closed, too." Why, really, are they freaking out?
If I had to guess (and, of course, I do), I'd say the freak-outery is that this is a PR set-back. The charter movement depends a lot on the ability of the rich white guys pushing charters to be able to gesture at some Actual Black Persons who support charters and agree that charters are the best thing that white folks have ever done for them. This whole holleration is not about policy or politics, but instead centers on their bastard child, PR optics.
It may be simpler than that. Many of the charter backers are in it to make money. A moratorium on launching new charters would hurt their bottom line, and they are simply businessmen who have hit an obstacle to expanding their business revenue. It's PR perhaps with a side of money-grubbing.
But charter fans do have options here. They could, instead of arguing that the NAACP can be dismissed because they are now ignorant dupes, actually listen to what they're saying.
I say this as someone on the Support Public Ed side of the debate, where many of us really blew it in the early stages by suggesting that support for charters among parents of color was only happening because they had been misinformed and duped. But they weren't. They were responding to what looked like the best available solution to the problem of underfunded, under-resourced, just generally crappy poor schools.
The lesson for some of us? It's a mistake to dismiss someone's concerns just because you disagree with their method of addressing those concerns. If someone comes running out of a building wearing a tin hat and shouting, "I'm wearing this tine hat because the building is on fire," discussing the anti-fire efficacy of tin hats is useful, but denying the flames shooting out of windows is not.
So if charter fans were smart, they would look at things like the NAACP resolution and say, "Well, we clearly have some problems that need to be addressed, because these folks are certainly responding to something that they see going on." They could look at this as something more than a lost skirmish in a PR battle, but an opportunity to gather some actual information.
Or Allen and her posse can keep trying to write off the NAACP as a group of ignorant dupes, blame it all on the teachers' union, and keep wondering why, even though they've thrown away their tin hats, everything feels so very warm.
"As Jim Horn has pointed out, one of the stories they might have heard was the story of Pryor's own school, where angry parents withdrew students over allegations of mistreatment and the Atlanta newspaper running a photo of KIPP students sitting on the floor, working toward the magic day when they would be judged compliant enough to 'earn' a desk."
ReplyDelete- - - - - - - -
Mind you, this wasn't some "anomaly" --- to use Eva Moskowitz' word --- that was quickly discontinued a KIPP schools once it was exposed. It's sill in full use in at KIPP as well as in Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, and countless other charter chains. Those in charge admit this is still a regular practice, and defend this as necessary to achieve compliance from all their students.
Here's a video of a parent, Leslie-Ann Byfield who is part of a group of parents currently suing Achievement First for this and other abusive practices. In the video below, she details that there were multiple "floors" upon which her son had to sit --- metaphorical hoops to jump through, as it were --- before finally was allowed to sit in "a regular chair."
( 02:41 - )
https://vimeo.com/30227766
( 02:41 - )
LESLIE-ANN BYFIELD: "In the first week there, he (her son) was made to sit on the floor like this and told --- despite the fact that there were cafeteria tables present--- and they told them that he had to 'earn the right to' (move from the cafeteria floor and) go on the floor where his classroom was, and when he got on the (hallway) floor (where the classroom was located) and he was made to sit on the floor outside of the classroom, where he was told that he had to earn the right to go in the classroom, and this went on and on until he FINALLY go to sit in a regular chair. He (her son) never told me. It was three months before I found out that that had happened."
Charter operators get away with this because the charter school model of government "authorization", with the resulting "unregulated school" governance allows those running charter schools the "freedom to innovate" such practices, as they are not bound by "regulations" that "tie their hands" as their hands would be if they were directly accountable to an elected school board.
Hypothetical question:
If a teacher at a traditional public school did this ...
OR
If a principal at a traditional public schools had all the teachers on his staff do this ...
... what would happen?
I'm just guessing here but if students came home from the first day at a traditional public school and told their parents about this "sit on the floor(s) and beg for a desk" treatment, all holy Hell would break loose, with parents screaming bloody murder at the teachers/administrators involved.
Given that, it's important to ask:
Would Campbell Brown's kids, who attend the rich kids private school Heschel ($40,000 - 50,000 tuition), be subjected to this?
I don't think so.
It's interesting how reformers applaud and approve (and wealthy folks fund through donations) this abusive, prison-like treatment for "other people's children"--- primarily poor, black & brown --- but would go thermonuclear if someone imposed ever it on their own.