Charter Schools and Their Enemies

Guest Post by Walter E. Williams

Charter Schools and Their Enemies

Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published “Charter Schools and Their Enemies.” He presents actual test scores of students in traditional public schools and charter schools on New York State Education Department’s annual English Language Arts test and its Mathematics test. Sowell gives the results of student tests in charter schools such as KIPP, Success Academy, Explore Schools, Uncommon Schools, Achievement First as well as the traditional New York City public schools.

On the English Language Arts test, a majority of charter school students, most of whom were black or Hispanic, tested proficient or above. Their achievement ratio was nearly 5 to 1. On the Mathematics test 68 percent of charter schools’ 161 grade levels had a majority of students testing proficient. In the traditional public schools, 177 grade levels, just 10 percent had a majority of their student testing proficient.

In April 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that 57 percent of black and 54 percent of Hispanic charter school students passed the statewide ELA compared to 52 percent of white students statewide. On the state math test, 59 percent of black students and 57 percent of Hispanics at city charter schools passed as opposed to 54 percent of white students statewide.

Sowell says: “In a realm where educational failure has long been the norm — schools in low-income minority neighborhoods — this is success, a remarkable success. What is equally remarkable is how unwelcome this success has been in many places. What has been especially remarkable is that it has been the most educationally successful charter schools that seem to have drawn the most hostility, both in words and in deeds.” The most common form of that hostility are simple legal limits set on the number of charter schools permitted without regard to whether charter schools are producing good or bad educational outcomes.

The education establishment, having the nation’s most powerful labor union, has the ears of political leaders. They see a huge loss potential if more parents are able to opt-out of poorly achieving public schools. For example, in New York City there are more than 50,000 students on waiting lists for admission to charter schools. The per-pupil expenditure tops $20,000 a year. If all the students on the waiting list were able to be admitted to charter schools, that would translate into a billion-dollar loss by the traditional public schools.

A substantial decline in traditional public school attendance would mean fewer teachers employed. That would mean declining union dues since most charter school teachers are not union members. Charter schools’ rate of growth since the 1990s has been significant. From 2001 to 2016, enrollment at traditional public schools rose 1percent while enrollment in public charter schools rose 571 percent.

Sowell points out that not all charter schools are successful. Failing charter schools can have their charters revoked, cutting off access to public funds. That is in stark contrast to failing and corrupt traditional public schools that continue to dine at the public trough. Successful charter schools are the real threat to traditional unionized public schools. No charter school in Sowell’s study has been more successful than Success Academy charter schools in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant and the South Bronx — and none has been more viciously attacked in words and in deeds. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio explicitly campaigned against charter schools saying: “I am angry about the privatizers. I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize a precious thing we need — public education.

In another venue, Sowell said: “We keep hearing that “black lives matter,” but they seem to matter only when that helps politicians to get votes, or when that slogan helps demagogues demonize the police. The other 99 percent of black lives destroyed by people who are not police do not seem to attract nearly as much attention in the media.”

At a 2016 meeting, the NAACP’s board of directors ratified a resolution that called for a moratorium on charter schools. Among the NAACP’s reasons for this were that it wanted charter schools to refrain from “expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate” and “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.” That is a vision suggesting that no black children receive decent educations until all black children receive decent educations. Black people cannot afford to entertain such a vision and other attacks on educational success.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

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Anonymous
Anonymous

charter chools are still not the right way to go. the government should never have been in the education business, and still forcing money out of people by way of taxes and funnelling it to ‘approved’ schools according to any kind of scheme, is in the best case a middleman who has no reason to exist, and in reality still exerts far too much influence on the schools while taking far too much from the people. education is rooted in the family and we as a society must return to that model. the charter schools merely open the door to both public sector _and_ private sector corruption because there is still no closing of the loop. the people being educated, and their families, still have no real influence over the system, especially over the most important mechanism of all: the ability to say no. the schools still get paid for asses filling up seats regardless of results. if those schools were truly private and the families paid the tuition of their own kids, then they’d have a much tighter feedback loop back to the schools and pretty much all this insanity would disappear overnight. of course thats why we have charter schools instead of shutting down the ‘public education’ scam altogether.
dont settle for the candy-coated version of the scam, insist on totally getting government out of the education business.

Dutchman
Dutchman

We home schooled. It’s the best option. Three – four hours a day is the max you need. Our child was accepted at all the universities she applied to.

You need to look up the books by John Taylor Gatto – he was NY State teacher of the year – then he exposed it all. One of his books was “Dumbing Us Down”.

Mygirl....Maybe

Ol’ Remus wrote a brilliant essay several years ago about the ‘jogger’ problem. He included the academic endeavors to teach black students and how that was problematic. An excellent read. Remus himself has disappeared, hopefully a hiatus and not a complete disappearance.

Ol’ Remus

With all the recent troubles we’re again being invited to an honest and open conversation about race, or said differently, the browbeatings will be resumed. Try this for honest and open: many of us, probably most of us, are tired of your whining, your so-called grievances, your violence and crime, your insults and threats, your witless blather and pornographic demeanor—all of it. You’re not quite 13% of the population yet everything has to be about you, all day, every day. With you, facts aren’t facts, everything’s a kozmik krisis, and abusive confrontations are your go-to.

Here’s the thing: some of us despise you, although fewer than you believe, but most of us plain don’t care about you or your doings. There was a time when we did care, but you betrayed our good will and played us for fools. We laugh about it now, but we actually believed you wanted equal opportunity and mutual respect and to live in harmony—all that stuff. Ain’t it a hoot? Imagine our embarrassment.

We talk among ourselves just like you do. It’s true, we have “frank and open discussions” when you’re not around. Why? Partly because it’s exhausting to tippy-toe around you. Partly because you think it’s your celestial right to tell us what we can say. And partly because you’re alarmingly aggressive or painfully dim-witted by turns. We never know which “you” will pop out of the box, or when. But mainly because you’ve revealed yourself as grasping opportunists without honor or principle. There’s your deal-breaker. There’s more.

During the recent riots you expected us to believe heisting snack food then torching the place was “standing up for justice”. When we didn’t buy it, you told us the looting and arson wasn’t done by the rioters after all, no, all the bad stuff was done by rioters from out of town. Apparently you think it makes a difference to us. And if we don’t fall for that one, you tell us you’re the real victims, you’re the ones “hit hardest” because the neighborhoods you looted and burned are, um, looted and burned.

We’ve never stood in your way but we don’t really care if you have good neighborhoods or not. The evidence says you don’t care either, unless we build and maintain them for you, what your enablers call “investments in urban communities.” They don’t mention the return on our past “investments”. Our former neighborhoods weren’t improved by your arrival. Your contempt for ordinary civility tells us no level of “investment” would make a difference. Listen up. It’s simple. Just like our neighborhoods are our responsibility, so are your neighborhoods your responsibility, not ours. Your clownish leaders will tell you otherwise but they’ve always been your responsibility and they always will be your responsibility. Accept it or don’t, you’re the ones who live in them. There’s more.

Your air conditioned, smart phone equipped, EBT-financed “poverty” doesn’t wash to begin with, yet you’d have us believe poverty causes crime. There’s no payday for assault and rape and random killing. Police say 20% of your criminal violence is related to dope-dealing, okay, business disputes of a sort, but it says the rest of it is largely pro bono. We also notice you have a working knowledge of jury nullification and take pride in not “snitching”, typical gang behavior.

We say “what you think, you do. What you do, you are.” We know what you think—we hear it every waking minute. We know what you do. How could we not know what you are? Just so it gets said, crime causes poverty. It drives away productive people, their businesses and the opportunities you said you wanted. More bad news: you’re free to accuse them of anything you wish but they’re not coming back.

Schools haven’t been educating our kids for a long time. They’re too busy conjuring up new ways to teach yours, in fact, we’re beginning to think yours are the only ones who matter. There’s always some new scheme claiming dazzling success which, in the end, amounts to handing out the answers with the tests, or taking the annoying hard stuff out of the coursework, or entering unearned grades by hand. Whatever they’re doing they’re doing it wrong. Your kids are telling us, in every way they know how, they have neither the interest nor the inclination for academics. Perhaps we should listen. If what they want is “out” it’s worth considering and probably worth encouraging.

You tell us the schools have “failed to meet their needs.” And what are their needs, pray tell? Higher standards and tougher tests? Stricter rules and a dress code? Or some alternate universe where credit is earned for putting teachers in the ER, or for a string of abortions before the tenth grade? If you’d tell us what their needs are we’d at least know what needs we’re failing to meet. Until then we’ll mark it down for what it is, another lame excuse. They’re supposed to be schools, not day care or orphanages or theme parks.

You pester us with the “civil rights movement” of fifty years ago as though it happened last week, with tedious 1960s footage and cloying voice-overs, in an endless loop, like Groundhog Day, decade after decade. It’s understandable, you haven’t met any real resistance since those days. Breaking news: none of it matters any more, it all devolved into just another swindle, an extortion racket, “pay up or we’ll make a stink—and the bad optics are on you”.

Schools now teach something called White Privilege, which claims no overt act is necessary for us to be racist, in fact, absence of such acts is said to be direct evidence. It’s the “original sin” concept in a different wrapper, meaning our putative racism is bone deep and can’t be discharged by good works. Even so, they say we must atone in perpetuity for being white. They suggest we devote our lives in selfless service to you. No. Sorry. Whatever white privilege there may be, it isn’t enough. In fact, being subjected to White Privilege prattle is worth a couple of privileges.

Speaking of privilege, 60% of your college grads—and 20% of all of you—are employed by government. The intent is to create an artificial middle class of course, hence the trivial positions with imaginative titles and weighty salaries. In the lower reaches it’s the quota hires, typically unqualified. It’s a great offer. You pretend you’re doing something useful and we pretend to believe you. The rest of your grads are largely diversity directors, window dressing, teachers of dubious “studies” and improbable “histories”, and similar warehousing schemes for the otherwise unemployable. It’s as good as it’s ever going to get, except for those on the skinny end of the bell curve—for whom we have genuine, i.e., earned respect. You’d be a fool to leave it on the table, for as long as it lasts.

So here’s the deal. If you want to know what we really think of you, the answer is we don’t, unless you’re making yourself unavoidable or we’re cleaning up your latest mess. We can safely rely on you to make astonishingly irresponsible choices and blame us for the consequences. And you’ll demand we make good on them for you. We won’t take a chance on your sincerity ever again. Take it somewhere else, you have no credibility left with us. You’re a net liability, predictable to the point of surety. So we attend to our own lives and our own problems. It’s as it should be. We recommend it. As for you, frankly my dear, we don’t give a damn.

Bob P
Bob P

Here’s a radical idea; why doesn’t Trump dump Pence and get someone on the ticket who can help win votes? Williams or Sowell are brilliant black men who could deliver middle-class black votes. Sidney Powell, one of the nation’s finest lawyers, would help with the female vote. Tucker Carlson would deliver anyone with common sense (which unfortunately isn’t all that common).

MrLiberty
MrLiberty

Every penny taken from the stolen goods pile (taxes), comes with a string. When enough strings are put together, they make a rope large enough to hang anyone or any institution. From the first penny a school takes, the end is inevitable. The only issue is how long it will take to arrive. Vouchers as well are just another way to destroy the private sector schools with inevitable controls that will accompany the money. Government must be rejected 100%. Charity schools, business-sponsored schools, private voluntary scholarships, etc. are the way to address the needs of those without funding resources (although cutting back on the $200 shoes, cell phones, and weaves would also help) without government involvement. While the success of charters does indeed help make the case for the failure of the government monopoly system, they are just one step away from that plague, and truly lack the real independence they need….and that only comes with self-funding.

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