Rachel Cohen: The Untold History of Charter Schools
Thanks to Los Angeles blogger Sara Roos for calling my attention to this very interesting article by journalist Rachel Cohen. We have had an extended exchange about the article.
Cohen says that the typical origin story of charter schools credits the idea to AFT President Al Shanker. She shows that the idea was percolating long before Shanker began promoting charters in 1988. The idea of public-private partnerships was in the air in the late 1980s and was the underpinning of what was called Third Way politics, as practiced by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
Cohen does an excellent job of describing the milieu in which the charter idea emerged. Shanker was not its originator but he was an important publicist for the idea. Without his support, charters might never have achieved national attention.
Right-wingers today, as Cohen notes, likes to credit paternity of charters to Shanker, which is amusing since 90% of charters are non-union. Charter advocates who think of themselves as progressive also cling to Shanker as their forebear, but can’t explain why the charter sector isboth non-union and highly segregated.
Cohen fails to mention that Shanker renounced charters in 1993, five years after embracing them, because he realized that his idea had been sabotaged and had turned into a tool with which to bust unions and to privatize public schools. In one of the paid advertisements that he published every Sunday in the New York Times, he wrote that charters were no different from vouchers. And he denounced them.
Strangely, neither the right-wingers nor the progressive charter fans ever acknowledge that Shanker denounced what was allegedly his big idea.
It is important to recall what Shanker had in mind when he supported charters.
1. He saw them as schools-within-schools, not as independent schools operating with their own school board, nor as corporate chains replacing public schools.
2. He saw them as teacher-run schools.
3. He saw them recruiting the weakest and most CONTINUE READING: Rachel Cohen: The Untold History of Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog