Charter School Forces Can’t Believe WE Don’t Believe Their Bullshit
The polls say their cause took a heavy hit in the wake of the LA teacher strike, but don’t count them out. The charter school movement never takes “no” for an answer.
We saw the parents of charter school kids, some of the charter school teachers, and a larger complement of ideological allies descend on the LAUSD board meeting yesterday, expecting to intimidate an already charter-friendly board to renege on its agreement with UTLA to petition the state legislature for a moratorium (or “pause”) on authorizing more charters.
Likewise, the LA Times lost no time in giving prominent Sunday space to David Osborne, an ideological ally of the charter movement, who whined in his ill-tempered Op-Ed that the national teachers’ unions unfairly scapegoat charters for the problems facing conventional unionized schools.
On cost and on relative performance, less than half of charter school kids actually do better academically than children served by regular schools.
On cost and on relative performance, less than half of charter school kids actually do better academically than children served by regular schools.
Osborne trotted out the familiar arguments developed over the years by the billionaire supporters of charter schools and the related privatization movement (people with names like Koch, Walton, Broad, DeVos, Bloomberg, etc.) To wit, that charter schools provide needed choice for the “victims” of underperforming conventional schools, that they represent liberation for low-income kids of color, and that they cost less to operate and produce better results (i.e., test scores) than conventional schools.
All of this is bullshit.
On “choice,” it’s always the most motivated and involved parents who tend to choose specialized charters for their kids. Relatively uninvolved parents, and the parents of special needs children, are often unable, in practical terms, to “choose” the charter path. There’s no question that the charter operators don’t want the kids of such parents; they choose the kids they want and leave the others behind. There is also no question that the next step, in the billionaires’ playbook, is giving parents nationwide the option of choosing fully private and religious schools while having taxpayers pick up CONTINUE READING: Charter School Forces Can't Believe WE Don't Believe Their Bullshit - LA Progressive
