XQ's Full Media Blitz

Brace yourselves. It's time for a star-studded ed erformstravaganza.

Another wave of PR dropped yesterday, touting a four-network, celebrity-packed, media event, proudly trumpeted everywhere from Variety to  USA Today. On September 8, a huge line-up (including Tom Hanks, Yo-Yo Ma, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Hudson and (sorry) Common) will present "an hour-long live television special about reinventing American high schools."

EIF Presents: XQ Super School Live will be highlighting the efforts of the XQ Institute, simulcast on all four major broadcast networks. So who are these people, and how do they have this kind of firepower.

The XQ Institute is an offspring of the Emerson Collective, a Palo Alto-based do-gooding group founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. The organization is dedicated to removing barriers to opportunity so people can live to their full potential in order to develop and execute innovative solutions that will spur change and promote equality. They were one of the first groups to hire Arne Duncan after his Ed Secretary stint (do not miss his hardcore street pic here). Oh, and they just bought controlling interest in the Atlantic which, for reasons we'll get to, is kind of a bummer.

Jobs was always a philanthropic power player, and she's logged time in the ed reform biz with NewSchools Venture Fund (We raise contributions from donors and use it to find, fund and support teams of educators and education entrepreneurs who are reimagining public education), but as the widow of Apple Empresario Steve Jobs, she has a huge mountain of money to work with. She is, in fact, the fourth richest woman in the world. And she has decided she would like to fix education.

Jobs has said, “We want to make high schools back into the great equalizers they were meant to be."

To do that, she launched XQ Institute, which launched a big competition--  XQ: The Super School Project. 

The Super School Project is an open call to reimagine and design the next American high school. In towns and cities far and wide, teams will unite and take on this important work of our time: rethinking and building schools that deeply prepare our students for the rigorous challenges of college, jobs, and life.

When I wrote about the XQ competition two years ago, I noted that it combined the language of business (manage human capital) and the language of gee-whiz education amateurs who haven't ever consulted someone who actually works in the field (What if we knocked down the walls?). That fits, because there aren't many educators in sight. I was going to pore through leadership list for the XQ project, but there isn't even a job title that involves education. Jobs' co-chief, the other person to occasionally appear in the press materials, is Russlyn Ali, a lawyer who worked for the Education Trust and then became Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the US Departmet of Education under President Obama. Jobs will occasionally cite her "two decades in the education field" but that's just counting back to her 1997 launching of her first non-profit education project, College Track. Oh, and Amplify is a partner in this, too.

Jobs doesn't use many of the dog whistles or talking points of reformsters, except for one that she really loves:

Jobs told the NYT, "The system was created for the work force we needed 100 years ago. Things are not working the way we want it to be working."

In USA Today: The XQ Institute aims to "rethink" American public high schools, which, it maintains, have remained virtually unchanged for a century while the world has transformed dramatically.

"Schools haven't changed in 100 years"  is the dead horse Jobs rides in on, a criticism that only makes sense if you don't know what schools were actually like in 1917, and if you haven't actually visited one in the last century.

Last year at this time, XQ announced the ten winners of a Boatload of Money (roughly $10 million per school). It included some public schools, but here the reforminess becomes more apparent. One winner is the Vista Challenge High School in San Diego. They are supported by Personalized Learning company Digital Promise, and VCHS will use the money to spread rigorous personalized learning and “authentic examination.” Betsy DeVos's beloved Grand Rapids public schools will turn a museum into a high school. A RISE charter (Revolutionary Individualized Student Experience) will launch in Los Angeles. In Louisiana, New Harmony High School is going to launch its "school on a barge" concept. Arne "Katrina Was the Best Thing Ever" Duncan got announce that one and said, "I've never been to school on a barge." And another $10 mill went Summit, the Oakland CA charter system that may be lousy at education, but is great at fund raising-- they've also attracted money from Gates and Zuckerberg with their brand of "all you need is a computer" schooling.

EIF stands for  Entertainment Industry Foundation, a charity organization that gets an A- from Charity Watch and does lots of good works and has been around since 1942. They've gotten involved in education before, with an initiative in 2015 called "Think It Up"  that basically crossed education with DonorsChoose.

I also note that in all the publicity for the event that I've now read, there is no mention of other sponsors, so while I don't have proof, I'm pushed to conclude that Laurene Powell Jobs just busted out her checkbook and bought  a full hour of Friday night primetime television on four networks.

What can we expect. Well, music and comedy and documentaries are billed. And we're talking about a SuperSchool live, so presumably we won't bother with any coverage of those dopey Clark Kent schlubby schools where the rest of us slog away. This special will just focus on Jobs' own created reality.

XQ is actually a perfect name for the whole business, because it turns out that this is just some shit at the Jobs people made up. From their site:

Sure, IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is important. It measures how we process information. But it isn’t everything.

In fact, the latest science shows that intelligence is not fixed and that there’s a lot more to a person’s capability than what can be measured in an IQ test.

What also matters is a person’s EQ (Emotional Quotient)—the ability to relate to others, understand emotional cues and collaborate.

But today, neither IQ nor EQ is enough. There’s a certain something, something we call XQ, that’s essential for success in the new era we’re entering.

What does XQ stand for? It stands for "I'm a rich person in Palo Alto, and I don't need to learn from experienced experts in a field when I can just make stuff up myself." On Friday evening, September 8th, I'll probably be playing with babies. But I'll take a moment to be glad that we don't actually have cable, so I can't watch this thing. Because I can't imagine how long it takes to get over having Common and Tom Hanks tell us that we just aren't good enough.

A Public School's Shame

I am, as any reader of this blog knows, a huge supporter of public schools and public education. And that's why it's important that I make note of when a public school fails, and fails hard. Because as much as I love public education, if we let love blind us, we end up trying to defend the indefensible just because it came from our tribe.

I take no pleasure in noting this story. It's not far away. and it's appalling. The AP reports that five guardians of black students have filed a lawsuit against Woodland Hills High School over systemic and intentional discrimination against black students. In particular, the lawsuit cites five incidents:

In April, the Allegheny County district attorney said he was reviewing allegations that Steve Shaulis, a resource officer at the school, punched and knocked out the tooth of a 14-year-old freshman accused of stealing another’s student cellphone. Pictures of the freshman’s bruised face appeared online.

In May, video surfaced of Shaulis body-slamming a 15-year-old student in 2015 and shocking him with a stun gun.

A video from 2009 shows Shaulis shoving a student into a locker without apparent physical provocation, then shocking the student with a stun gun and arresting him.

One in 2010 shows a behavioral specialist lifting a student up against a locker and slamming him into the ground, breaking the student’s wrist. The student was charged with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct, the lawsuit said, but charges were withdrawn after a district attorney reviewed the video.

The fifth incident involved school principal Kevin Murray, who was caught on a recording last year threatening to punch a 14-year-old special education student in the face and “knock your ... teeth down your throat.” Murray resigned last week.

The school has suffered a long string of problems and unfortunate revelations. Their lawyer has suggested that this is just an ambulance-chasing lawyer who has tied together several widely separate instances, and while it may be true that the lawyer for the plaintiffs is not acting out of altruism and a burning desire for social justice, it doesn't really matter-- any one of these instances should have resulted in two reactions:

1) The rolling of a head or two

2) Some soul-searching by the school

In a school setting of any type, you don't get to say, "Well, maybe there is an issue here with racially-biased excessive violence. Let's see if  any more black kids get roughed up for no good reason." You don't even get to say, "He was mouthy and disrespectful, so I beat the crap out of him" because this is a school and we are the grownups and they, regardless of how big they are, are the kids.

Charters did not rise up in urban areas for no reason at all, and public schools don't get to say, "Who, us? We never do any bad stuff like that."

The argument about whether public or charter schools have a greater history or tendency of racism was kind of ridiculous-- bot have plenty of systemic racism in their backgrounds, and both are fully capable of harboring and nurturing racism right now, today. It's not okay. What happened at Woodland Hills is not okay. And at a public school, where we are charged to care for every single student, without exception, it is an even greater shame.

OH: Grifters Keep on Grfiting

Haters gotta hate. Players gotta play. And ECOT gotta keep finding ways to latch itself onto public tax dollars for fun and profit.

You may recall that ECOT has been working hard to win the Worst Cyber School In The World medal, which is no small achievement in a very crowded field. The Columbus Dispatch has been following these guys for over a decade (you can find the bulk of their coverage collected here). If we go back to 2006, we find folks questioning the then-fledgling school's reporting of its enrollment and the quality of its program. The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow was, according the Newark superintendent, “failing to meet even minimum standards of operation.”

Caption courtesy of Plunderbund. I see no reason to disgaree

The continued lodging of those complaints was not a small story-- ECOT became the tenth largest school district in the state. And ECOT's owner, William Lager was ready to deliver a master class on how to use charter schools to line your own pockets. ECOT, owned by William Lager, bought its curriculum from IQ Innovations, a company owned by William Lager. The day-to-day management of ECOT was farmed out to Altair Learning Management, a company owned by William Lager.

Not that Lager was keeping all that money for himself. In the years 2011-2015 (the only ones made available to researchers), Lager wrote 121 checks totaling $984,302 to various friendly Ohio politicians. Plunderbund tracked Lager's giving back to 2000 (ECOT's origin) and discovered a staggering total over $2 million! Lager is also a member of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Digital Learning Now, another reformy advocacy group that quietly folded its tents in 2015

That may help explain the continued survival of a school the New York Times called out for having the highest dropout rate in the nation. ECOT has been nothing if not feisty in its responses; in 2016, when the state demanded the chance to audit actual attendance at the cyber school, ECOT counter-sued, arguing that its 2003 deal with the state only required them to offer 920 hours of education-- not make sure that anyone was actually attending the 920 hours.

Its protests were in vain. The state determined that in 2015-2016, the school billed the state for 15,000 students, pocketing $106 million. The state of Ohio determined that only 6,300 students were active participants in the on line "school." ECOT owed the state $60 million.

Lager fought back hard. He has appealed the rulings all the way to Ohio's Supreme Court; they were not helpful. . He made sad noises about how he'd have to lay people off, and that paying back the money he stole from the state would threaten the viability of his fake business (I'm paraphrasing). Critics pointed out that Lager's huge profit margins could take it, and the Plain Dealer found the school had $17 million in cash reserves against the $21 million annual payment to Lager's companies. In perhaps the ballsiest move of all, ECOT bought tv time for an ad to raise public support for non-repayment. That's right-- Lager spent taxpayer money to try to avoid giving back taxpayer money.The Oho State Auditor told him to knock it off.

With no friends in the legal system, it might seem that Lager and ECOT were finally doomed.

But no.

According to yesterday's Dispatch, Lager has a new plan:

ECOT, the online charter giant one study found produced more dropouts than any other school in the nation, is moving into a new line of business — “dropout recovery.”

 Dropout recovery schools face looser reporting standards. Changing status might get ECOT some space from the heavy hand of state inquiry, and not for nothing, it will also open up a whole new market for the embattled cyber school. Certainly it puts the school in the company of other schools with an execrable graduation rate. In 2014, the Akron Beacon Journal reported that Ohio's dropout recovery schools were doing such a bad job that they gave Ohio the only worsening dropout rate in the country. If that is still the case, ECOT may have finally found a field in which it will not stand out as being the absolute worst.

Last year, State Auditor Dave Yost found attendance rates at the state’s dropout-recovery charters were horrible: only a third of students showed up, according to a surprise headcount. Auditors also found between 0 to 50 percent of students had showed up for class at the 14 dropout-recovery schools visited, for an average of 34 percent. 

ECOT has been running about 36%. So, winning?

Most importantly, of course, this will allow Lager to keep the gravy train running by scamming the taxpayers of Ohio. Tell me that one again about how the invisible hand of the free market will clear away the bad charter schools?

A Good Bad Writing Resource

I have a fun-- and free-- recommendation for everyone interested in the teaching of writing.

Published by the Digital Publishing Institute at WVU Libraries and in part by Inside Higher Ed, and absolutely free for the download, Bad Ideas About Writing is a compendium of essays by a wide assortment of teachers and scholars about the many terrible myths of writing instruction. Growing out of a project about the sciences (These Ideas Must Die), this book is aimed at a broad audience, as explained by editors Cheryl Ball and Drew Loewe:

This project is necessary because while scholars in writing studies (just as in any academic field) argue to and against one another in scholarly journals, books, and conference talks, those forms
of knowledge-making don’t consistently find their way into the public’s understanding of writing. Yet “the public” in all its manifestations—teachers, students, parents, administrators, lawmakers, news media—are important to how writing is conceptualized and taught. These publics deserve clearly articulated and well-researched arguments about what is not working, what must die, and what is blocking progress in current understandings of writing.

The book is organized around several broad topic headings:

Bad Ideas about What Good Writing Is
Bad Ideas about Who Good Writers Are
Bad Ideas about Style, Usage and Grammar
Bad Ideas about Writing Techniques
Bad Ideas about Genres
Bad Ideas about Assessing Writing
Bad Ideas about Writing and Digital Technology
Bad Ideas about Writing Teachers

Packed under those headings are sixty-two separate articles, each under the heading of a beloved Bad Idea. Here are just some of the Bad Ideas addressed:

America is facing a literacy crisis
Writing knowledge transfers easily
Writers are mythical, magical, and damaged
Some people are just born good writers
Writers block just happens to people
Good writers always follow my rules
Teaching grammar improves writing
Excellent academic writing must be serious
Creative writing is a unique category
The five-paragraph essay is rhetorically sound
The five-paragraph theme teaches "beyond the test"
Research starts with a thesis statement
Grading has always made writing better
When responding to student writing, more is better
SAT scores are useful for placing students in writing courses
Gamification makes writing fun
Digital natives and digital immigrants
You're going to need this for college
Anyone can teach writing

The pieces cover a wide spectrum from "I don't believe anyone still thinks this" to "Hey! That's how I teach writing." Each is a discussion of positive steps-- of fixes and ideas-- rather than  just taking pot shots at a particular Bad Idea. There are lots of "instead of that, try this--" elements here. And yes, some chapters kind of contradict each other-- that's okay, too.

Each essay is grounded in research and comes with "for further reading" suggestions at the end. The writing is accessible enough that I am already considering a couple of these for handouts to my own students. The essays are short and to the point, and while you may not agree with all of them, they still provide a starting point for some reflection on practice.

I have not finished poring through this book, but I'm kind of excited about it, and I recommend it to all my writing teacher friends. Thanks to my own former student Dr. John Raucci (Associate Professor of English at Frostburg State in Maryland) for bringing the book to my attention.

Bribing for PARCC

Since the days that No Child Left Untested Behind first mandated the Big Standardized Test, teachers and administrators who work in actual schools have recognized the problems inherent in trying to get useful data out of a test that students don't care about.

When they're still in elementary school, students can still be nudged along by school pride and a desire to make their teacher proud. A few pep rallies, maybe a super-cool video on youtube, and they'll plunge bravely ahead just because their school wants them to.

But by middle school, aka the years in which tweens discover that everything in life sucks, students have figured it out. The BS Test is boring and stupid and doesn't actually matter and  neither does stupid old Mrs. Ipswitch who is so absolutely not the boss of me. In other words, I think there's a reason that many schools report a dip in eighth grade BS Test scores, and I don't think it has anything to do with the actual quality of education.

Schools, however, depending on the state, need students to produce those scores. This is one of the huge problems of test-centered "accountability"-- it flips a school upside down, and instead of the school existing to provide students with an education, the students now exist to provide the school with good scores.

And what better way to formalize this new relationship then to really double down on treating the students like employees-- and pay them for their work.

Here's Mesa Alta Junior High School in New Mexico doing just that-- students who scored high on the PARCC for MAJ were paid $100 for their efforts on behalf of the school.

The local paper reported on this as if it was a heartwarming tale of general swellness, and not, say, a fairly blatant admission that the tests do not actually have any intrinsic value for students. And if you want to tell me that obviously these students are not being treated like school employees, well, then, there's only one other thing to call the $100 payment.

A bribe.

I don't offer you $100 to kiss your loved ones or feed your children or wash your hair in the morning or eat food. I don't do it because these things have intrinsic value; they matter on their own, and come with their own rewards packed inside. Bribes are for when we need to nudge someone to perform a task that has otherwise has no value to them.

Worse, if you bribe me to kiss my spouse, I may wonder why I'm not being paid to kiss my kids. If my focus is on external rewards, I may never even see the intrinsic rewards that crop up in my path daily.

This is where we are with the BS Tests. We've thrown up our hands and admitted there's no reason to try to do well on them unless someone offers you cold, hard cash. We've tried (and continue trying) to game the system with all sorts of test prep, so why not fall back on the oldest system gaming technique of all-- bribery. Other than, of course, having to face the Kafkaesque slow death of the soul that comes with realizing that we are perpetuating and feeding a system that serves nobody. Well, except for some middle school kids who get some extra spending money.

AZ: Choice's Lie

Arizona has always been on the forefront of school privatization. Right now, things are heating up as they follow the path of promoting vouchers through any means necessary. In their case this has involved starting small with who-could-object students (special needs, native Americans) used to pilot a program that legislators now want to expand. At the moment, voucher opponents may have won a chance to stop vouchers via ballot initiative, but it won't be easy. Arizona is an ALEC-friendly state, and the Goldwater Institute has stage-managed the growth of charters and the rise of vouchers from right within the state.

Arizona is worth paying attention to because it has served as a little policy laboratory for conservative politicians and corporate interests. Harper's Magazine just ran a profile of the state's assault on public education, and you can recognize some of the techniques in play. Here's Sydney Hay, from Betsy DeVos's American Federation for Children:

When Hay started working on school choice reform, “It was a free-market argument, which of course pits Republicans versus Democrats,” she told me. She and her cohort have since found success by approaching vouchers as a social justice concern, she said. “In the beginning, it was, ‘Oh no, these are going to be the death of public school education.’ That opposition is pretty much over.

Sound familiar? Arizona has been a booming state for charters and wants to blossom its charter crop as well. And pay extra attention, because they did it without one of the favorite reformster talking points.

Arizona has public school open enrollment.

That means that no child in Arizona is "trapped" in failing schools just because of her zip code. And yet they have still sold choice as a rescue operation. True, schools are allowed to cap their open enrollment at capacity, but still, in the midst of everything else out there, it's an impressive feat to sell charters as an escape to folks who aren't even trapped in the first place.

Tweaking Charter Marketing

The recent poll showing a jump-off-a-cliff drop in public support for charter schools, which comes on top of wrestling with the splits in the community, has prompted a bit of soul-searching in the charter/choice community. Unfortunately, some of that soul-searching has focused on the question of how to better market their product.

Nobody reframes a sales pitch like Peter Cunningham. Cunningham has a BA in Philosophy from Duke and Masters of Journalism from Columbia. He worked in and around Chicago, including a stint as Mayor Richard M. Daley's head speechwriter. His Chicago connections took him to Arne Duncan's Department of Education, where as Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach, he was "responsible for communications strategy and message development for the U.S. Department of Education." He's a PR guy, and he's good at what he does, so when Eli Broad and some other Very Wealthy Friends (including, behind that curtain over there, Laurene Jobs) were looking for someone to run a war-room style messaging operation for education reform, they tapped Cunningham to run Education Post (and perhaps another side project or two).

I've had many online conversations with Cunningham and met him face to face when he attended the Network for Public Education conference last year. Like most reformsters, he has neither horns nor a pointy red tail. Seems like a nice enough guy. But he's well-paid to do a particular job, and he works hard to do it well. And that's what he seems to be doing in his latest spin-heavy piece at Education Post (I don't often link to EdPost, but if I'm going to write about the piece, it's only fair that there be a link to check my work. [Correction: Cunningham's piece is at the74, the Campbell Brown pro-reform website. Absolutely my error there]

The news that support for public charter schools has dropped from 51 percent to 39 percent is a wake-up call for the school choice movement. We can continue to play defense and lose, or we can reframe the conversation around the issues that matter most: the rights of parents and the best interests of children.

There are choices beyond the two that Cunningham offers, like, for instance "ask ourselves what aspects of charters are unappealing to the public" or even "question whether or not we're backing the right horse." But Cunningham sticks with A) play defense and lose or B) improve our marketing focus.

School choice is a response to a bureaucratic and ineffective education system that is not evolving to meet the needs of America’s racially and economically diverse student population.

Even some of Cunningham's fellow reformsters don't agree with him. For DeVosian choicers, school choice is a response to a government monopoly of the education marketplace. Meeting the needs of racially and economically diverse populations is not really their intent, and the fact that they're becoming more open about it is precisely the split that is stressing the reformster world. 

Cunningham's framing here is also very adept because it sidesteps everyone else's responsibility for public school failures. He does not, for instance, talk about responding to government's unwillingness to properly fund education. He knows that's an issue, but the solution to that issue is not school choice-- the solution is to properly fund those schools.

Next it's time for the traditional Litany of Kids These Days Failures:

Troublingly, 1 in 6 students don’t graduate from high school. Only about 1 in 3 who do graduate are ready for college. Few of the remaining students have marketable work skills upon graduation, while employers are hungry for workers who can think, communicate, analyze, and show up on time.

The 1 in 6 figure comes from I'm-not-sure-where, but is in line with what many authorities say--though that figure usually is based on students entering ninth grade and graduating four years later, and if we're basing graduation rates on what percentage of a ninth grade cohort graduates from the school four years later, then charters look terrible by comparison to public schools.

The 1 in 3 figure is oft-repeated baloney. It means that 1 in 3 students hit a cut score on a single Big Standardized Test. Is there anything to suggest that the cut score and the test correspond to college readiness? Of course not, because "college readiness" is an undefined (and probably undefinable) term. The worker "shortage" is a discussion too large for this space, but if there really is a concern about people willing and able to do certain jobs, there are two clear responses. You can respond as some states have to teachers shortages by lowering standards, or you could follow the wisdom of the free market and offer better work conditions and pay. If nobody will sell you a Porsche for $1.98, that does not mean there's an automobile shortage. I won't argue that employers don't want workers with all those qualities, but I will question how school choice would create more people who have them.

And it's worse for poor kids:

Less than 1 in 10 low-income kids earn a four-year college degree. About 30 percent don’t even finish high school, and those who do have few career choices. It’s no wonder low-income parents are desperate for better options. 

A bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves. What do the problems of poverty have to do with school choice? Why would we not instead conclude that schools in these communities need more money, support, and attention, instead of the opposite-- to drain money and resources away from these schools in the hopes that a charter might have the ability to save just a few of them.

The choice movement has grown steadily over the past 25 years by offering new and innovative approaches to teaching and learning.

Really? Name two. What the few "successful" charters have offered is a carefully selected student body, strong financial support, and plenty of resources. None of these are new or innovative.

Cunningham follows this with unsupported praise of charters, with more college students, increased teacher diversity, eliminating achievement gaps, and "using technology in new and better ways to personalize learning and empower teachers to meet students where they are and enable them to learn at their own pace." Yes, let's pitch "personalized" computer-based in there, too. Let's just say that there's a lot of room for debate about all of these claims and move on to the problems of the embattled choicers. Oh, and the choice system "is significantly better than the system it is replacing." So I guess we're done talking about blending the systems together-- close up public education and replace it with the privatized version.

Not surprisingly, the system has struck back by shifting the conversation away from student outcomes and parent rights. Instead, officials focus on money, governance, selectivity, testing, segregation, discipline, management, jobs, and any other topic they can use to change the subject.

 Has it? Because there's been plenty of discussion of student achievement among choice critics with voucher studies showing definite weakness. And the rest of the list-- is Cunningham suggesting these topics are irrelevant and immaterial, that choice as a tool of segregation, for instance, is unimportant? Or is he simply arguing that these points are marketing losers, and folks trying to sell choice should move on to better marketing tactics? Because I don't see anything on his list that doesn't have a strong and influential impact on students and their learning.

The poll results suggest that more and more people are starting to question the motives and merits of school choice. And, in truth, the choice movement has allowed enough bad actors into the space to validate their concerns.

Well, yes. I appreciate his willingness to admit it. Over the past decade, nobody has made choice look worse than charter operators themselves. And the bad news for choicers is that Empress DeVos (her brother wants to be a Viceroy of War, so why can't she be the Empress of Education) has made it clear that she sees no need for any oversight beyond parental choice, so the Bad Actors problem is not going to get better any time soon. Cunningham says cleaning house is a regular, daily chore, but DeVos has already sold her dustpan and broom because, hey, the parents that pass through will probably keep everything clean on their own. In other words, this hasn't been working so far, but let's do it more.

Cunningham says voucher opposition is softening. Urban parents are jealous of those cool Catholic schools. And there's more:

Black and Hispanic parents see high teacher turnover in their public schools and wonder why so few teachers are people of color.

Well, yes. But what does that have to do with charter schools, which also skew white in their staffing and often have considerable staff churn and burn, by design. Not to mention the many charters that just close completely, sometimes in the middle of the year. So, yes-- real problem. But what reason is there to think that charters and choice are a solution?

They see increasingly militant teachers unions threatening strikes and anti-tax politicians unwilling to fund schools adequately, and they want to remove these uncertainties from their lives.  

Increasingly militant? I'd like to see a basis for that assessment. Over the past few decades, states have taken many steps to make teacher strikes untenable. It's true that in Chicago, the teachers union kicks ass and takes names-- but more than in the past? And compared to unions across the country? And yes-- buried in here is the admission that underfunding schools is a political problem, but how will choice help that? Will anti-tax politicians suddenly be willing to raise taxes if the money is going to charters? 

But here comes his Big Point.

No one can dispute the right of parents to choose their child’s school. Every day, privileged parents are making that choice by moving into a community with good schools, by choosing private schools, or by jockeying within the existing system to find the best fit for their kid. Poor parents deserve the same opportunity to choose.

Okay. First, choice is not as important as quality. I've made this argument before-- poor parents don't want choices. What they want is their child in a good school. And we could do that. But it would cost money, and while nobody in this country would dispute a parents' right to have a good education for their child, what folks are disputing-- as with health care and food and decent housing-- is having taxpayers pay for it. There is only one thing standing between building a school in a poor neighborhood that is every bit as good as the school in a wealthy neighborhood, and that is money. People want great educations for their own kids. Those Other People? Don't care so much. And if I have to listen to one more "Why should I pay school taxes when I don't have kids" argument, I raise my blood pressure so high that I'll blow the remaining hair off the top of my head. 

So we want good education, but we don't want to pay for it. We particularly don't want to pay for it for Other Peoples' Children. This is a real problem-- one of the root problems of the entire education system. AND CHARTERS AND CHOICE DO NOT SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. What do you think the "but I don't have kids" taxpayer crowd will have to say about paying taxes because families are now "entitled" to send their kids to private school at public expense. PLUS charters and choice, by virtue of duplicate services and excess capacity, must be an even more expensive system.

Now the marketing advice:

Parents should be the face of the school choice movement. We spend a lot of time glorifying the innovative educators creating charter schools, but we should spend more time honoring the parents with the courage to buck the system.

Fundamentally, school choice is about freedom — one of America’s core values. No one should be trapped in a system that isn’t working for their kids.

Fundamentally, school choice is about opening markets to vendors so they can get their hands on that sweet, sweet tax money. As with any other market, the customers will have the "freedom" to choose whatever options the corporations offer to them. And with government pushed aside, those parents will have nobody to advocate for them and their rights. And taxpayers will have no voice at all.

With a new school year upon us, and a political climate that rewards bluster and blame over truth and common understanding, we need to bring the education conversation back to core principles. It begins with parent rights and it ends with student outcomes, and most of the other topics are secondary or irrelevant. 

 Education does not begin with parent rights, nor are they a core principle of education. It serves the narrative of privatizers to talk about education as if it were a commodity sold to parents, like diapers or Aeropestale hoodies, but it is not, and it never has been. Education is a public trust, a system that serves, yes, parents but also future employers, neighbors, fellow voters, and most of all, the students themselves. A school system serves many interests and a broad web of stakeholders, which makes it really hard to get into the market. But if we could cut all of those other stakeholders out of the equation, and let ed-flavored businesses pitch just to parents (just like we pitch Diet Coke and new cars), the market would be so much more permeable.

Making the parents central to the whole edu-business makes it easier for companies to sell tehir product. It's a useful step in privatization, not so useful for getting underserved populations the kind of education they deserve. "Parent choice" is a red herring, a distraction. Unrestricted, companies will offer poor parents lousy choices-- but hey, you got a choice, so it's awesome, right?

As is the case with many reformsters, I actually agree with Cunningham when it comes to many of the problems facing education. I just don't see choice, vouchers, or charters providing real solutions to any of them.