The Charter Lie

Having worked in urban private, public, and charter schools, when I saw the news early Monday morning, I shook my head.  California now allows parents to take over failing schools and turn them into charter schools.  OK then.  If the parents are savvy enough to assess staff, policy, and curriculum, and if these parents have the good of all children at heart, not just their own, go right ahead.  If on the other hand, parents are poorly educated, misinformed products of a sick village, like Compton where this controversy is brewing, then they will be pawns of Michelle Rhee and a charter movement where millions of dollars are reallocated by powerful agents looking to advance private agendas.  I’ve seen parents acquiesce to authorities who didn’t care about, and worst, secretly despised their children.  These parents aided bad principals in return for as little as a t-shirt, a turkey, or a piece of pizza and the perception of power.

Schools reflect neighborhoods.  High quality education in wealthy and well to do communities is not just the result of greater resources but also a consequence of the educated people who populate them.  Yes, resources are important, but a child’s achievements are primarily determined at birth.  Can a poor child from a poor family achieve academic and economic success? Absolutely.  Parents who put the child’s welfare first, parents who are nurturing and supportive can have children who  thrive, even in oppressive neighborhoods.  On the other hand, if a child is born to a parent who is very young and lacks sufficient help; a parent who is in jail, on drugs or otherwise defeated by a hard-knock life, then that child brings a world of hurt into a classroom, and if a school has many such children, then that school has a monumental task.  The charter promise to deliver services through people who purport they can do more for these children with less resources is a lie.

Now, there are a few successful public, private, and charter schools in depressed urban areas, and the one thing all these schools have in common is leadership.  These schools have the kind of leader Cornel West describes: one who loves those she leads and serves to save.  This is an answer: smart, confident, loving, courageous leaders who will sacrifice their own comfort for the good of those they lead.  Such leaders may be afforded a chance to serve through a charter, but more than likely an arrogant, insecure manager will direct the course of a charter school and yield the same if not worst results as the existing community school.