New York Times: Readers Respond to Charter Debate | Diane Ravitch's blog

New York Times: Readers Respond to Charter Debate | Diane Ravitch's blog

New York Times: Readers Respond to Charter Debate 

You may recall that sociologist and author Eve Ewing wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times that said it was time to end the debate about charter schools and celebrate all good schools, whatever they are called. This is one of the talking points of the charter industry, which prefers the public not to notice how many charter schools close every year, how many are low-performing, and how many are run by non-educators who turn a handsome profit.

My response was here.

The New York Times published letters to the editor about the Ewing article. Only one was favorable, written by Jeanne Allen, who runs a charter advocacy organization called the “Center for Education Reform,” funded by rightwing billionaires and Wall Street financiers. CER promotes all kinds of school choice and is hostile to public schools.

The first letter was written by Denis Smith of Ohio, who has appeared on this blog:

To the Editor:

Re “End the Fight Over Charter Schools,” by Eve L. Ewing (Op-Ed, Feb. 23):

Why do we allow two separate but seemingly parallel systems of education, using scarce public funds that are taken from traditional public schools to fund charters, a seeming experiment gone awry? Why do we allow one entity that is accountable and has governance conveyed from the voters in each community and allow the other to CONTINE READING: New York Times: Readers Respond to Charter Debate | Diane Ravitch's blog

In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion

I am a great fan of Eve Ewing’s book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard.  I have read the book twice, visited in Chicago some of the sites she describes, given the book to friends as a gift and blogged about it.  In that book, Ewing documents the community grief across Chicago’s South Side, where the now three decades old Renaissance 2010 “portfolio school plan” pits neighborhood public schools and charter schools in competition and closes the so-called “failing” neighborhood public schools when too many families opt for a charter school.

In a column published in Monday’s NY Times, Eve Ewing wants to make peace with charter schools.  She writes that we should allow families to choose and ensure that neighborhood schools and charter schools can all be well resourced and thriving. Ewing grasps for a third way—some sort of amicable compromise in a very polarized situation.

Ewing is a University of Chicago sociologist, and, in her column she examines many of the factors by which neighborhood public schools and charter schools have been compared and rated. She points out that academic quality is a mixed bag with neighborhood and charter schools sometimes besting each other in terms of student achievement. Then she wonders, “What would it look like if we built an education policy agenda dedicated to ensuring… resources for all students?

The problem in Ewing’s column this week is that she never identifies or addresses the matter of public funding for education. I assume she wants to equalize school funding across both sectors. But when charter schools compete for students with public schools, there are now two separate education sectors to split what has proven to be a fixed pot of money.  In every single place I know about where charter schools have been allowed to open up, this is a zero sum game.  A sufficient and growing body of research demonstrates that there is no way to split CONTINUE READING: In “NY Times” Piece, Eve Ewing Ignores Economic Catastrophe for Public Schools of Charter School Expansion | janresseger

Eve Ewing Is Wrong About Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Eve Ewing Is Wrong About Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Eve Ewing Is Wrong About Charter Schools

Eve Ewing is a writer and scholar whose work I very much admire. When her book Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side was published in 2018, I called it the best book of the year. Today, however, she published an article in the New York Times about charter schools that completely misses the point about the damage that charter schools do to public schools.

Basically, she says we should be happy whenever any school–whether public or charter–provides a good education. That is what I believed when I was an advocate for charter schools from the late 1980s until about 2007. It was then that I realized that charter schools were not producing better outcomes than public schools and were diverting money and the students they wanted from public schools. The more I learned about charter operators, their billionaire benefactors, their drive for money and power, and the corruption associated with their lack of accountability, the more I realized that this nation needs a strongly resourced, equitable, and excellent public school system. After thirty years of directing funding to charter schools, we have seen no CONTINUE READING: Eve Ewing Is Wrong About Charter Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog