Latino students, parents should beware school choice ‘panacea’ #SCW
The wealthy have poured millions of dollars into “school choice” causes over the last decade. Under the mantra of civil rights, billionaires such as Eli Broad, Bill Gates, the Koch Brothers and the powerful corporate-funded lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are using venture philanthropy and the political process to press for top-down neoliberal school reforms focused on private control and privatization in the United States. Recently, the Koch brothers and others have targeted their millions on the Latino community via Libre.
Libre was founded in 2011 and claims to be a “non-partisan, non-profit grassroots organization that advances the principles and values of economic freedom to empower the U.S. Hispanic community.” Media Matters reported that Libre’s senior staff are almost all Republican Party campaign veterans and has been backed over $10 Million in Koch funding— suggesting that Libre is neither non-partisan nor grassroots.
In their op-eds placed in newspapers in states where the Latino population is substantial, Libre representatives make simplistic— yet convincing— claims about the benefits of school “choice” for underserved communities of color. The predominance of the peer-reviewed literature does not support the grandiose claims that Libre makes and instead demonstrates that school choice, on average, does not produce the equity, social justice or student success that proponents spin.
No one is claiming that there are not examples of high quality charter schools or traditional neighborhood schools. However, several decades ofpeer-reviewed charter school and voucher research have demonstrated that choice is not a panacea. In fact, school choice has in many ways Latino students, parents should beware school choice ‘panacea’ #SCW – Cloaking Inequity:
