Charter School Advocate Now Leads School Board

By
Valerie Strauss
The shifting landscape
Given disappointing academic results, endemic corruption, and growing segregation, why does anyone interested in equal and excellent education for all still support vouchers and charter schools? One reason is money. Entrepreneurs recognized early on that market-based ed-reforms could be a source of substantial profits. Private operators quickly found ways to tap into the vast public resources — now more than $600 billion a year — spent on K-12 education.
Equally important, ideology trumps evidence for free-market boosters, and ed reformers have developed a culture of true-believers. In January, 2018, a government-solicited audit revealed that school officials in Washington, D.C.. had knowingly allowed 34 percent of high school seniors to graduate in 2017 without fulfilling all requirements. The news triggered an uproar because reformers, private funders, and the media had been touting Washington D.C. — with its voucher program and high penetration rate of charters — as education reform’s great success story.
Reflecting on the gulf between triumphalism and facts, Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and one of the few reformers who confront problems publicly, wrote:
[S]o many in the world of school reform tend to clamber aboard the bandwagon of the moment while parking their skepticism.…”[R]eformers” have tended to circle their wagons, fueling a “with-us-or-against-us” dynamic. That leaves little ground for friends to offer tough-minded public appraisal without being labeled an enemy of the movement…. [I]t’s time for the reformers, funders, and pundits to ask ourselves how we’ve contributed to a culture that’s heavy on cheerleading and light on skepticism—and how to find a better balance going forward.
In another case of ideology über alles, pro-reform members of Congress went so far as to ban rigorous evaluation of Washington D.C.’s voucher program. In spring 2017, the Institute of Education Sciences, which is the independent research arm of the U.S. Education Department, released a study showing that on math standardized tests, D.C. students who used vouchers to attend private schools fell behind their peers who remained in public schools. The research was a randomized controlled trial considered the “gold standard” experimental design. A week later, the Republican-led Congress approved a budget that included “a prohibition on the use of the experimental design evaluation method in any future federally funded studies of the D.C. voucher program.”
Given the overall record of charter schools, support in the general public and among minorities has been slipping. According to the most recent survey conducted by the pro-reform journal Education Next, support among all respondents dropped from 51 percent to 39 percent from 2016 to 2017. Among African Americans, support  for charter schools dropped from 46 percent to 37 percent; among Hispanics, from 44 percent to 39 percent.
Education reformers also suffered a major defeat when they tried to increase the number of charter schools in Massachusetts using a ballot initiative. The state has the strongest oversight system in the country and a relatively small number of charters. The ballot initiative drew national attention because of the outsized campaign spending — $25 million on the “yes” side, $17 million on the “no” side. On November 8, 2016, voters rejected the charter increase by an overwhelming margin, 62 percent to 38 percent.
Many African-American advocacy organizations have taken a stand against market-based reforms. In a 2014 resolution, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) pledged to “continue to advocate against any state or Federal legislation which commits or diverts public funding, allows tax breaks, or establishes preferential advantages to for-profit, private and/or charter schools.”
The 2016 NAACP national convention passed a resolution supporting “a moratorium on the proliferation of privately managed charter schools.” Shortly after the NAACP vote, the Movement for Black Lives — a network of more than 50 organizations representing African Americans— released a platform that included a moratorium on new charter schools. In 2017, the largest and best known African American ed-reform organization — the Black Alliance for Educational Options — closed down after it had “struggled to remain financially viable and relevant over the last several years.”
Unfortunately, not all Americans know enough about market-based ed-reform to evaluate it. Despite two decades of heated public debate, many do not understand how charter schools and vouchers are funded. According to a 2017 poll by the independent research company SSRS, a little more than half of Americans supported charter schools until they learned that the funding is taken from district public schools. Then support plummeted to 30 percent.
For participants in the 2017 Education Next survey, support for vouchers hinged on whether the survey questions contained the phrase “wider choice” or “use government funds.” A proposal to “give all families with children in public schools a wider choice, by allowing them to enroll their children in private schools instead, with government helping to pay the tuition” received 45 percent support. But a proposal to “use government funds to pay the tuition of all students who choose to attend private schools” received only 27 percent support. Neither question contained the word “voucher.”
It turns out that when Americans know that market-based reforms drain funds from public schools, most oppose the policies. The success of the ed-reform movement so far has depended on their not knowing.
The survival of public education in the United States is a political choice. Opposition to market-based reform is growing stronger, but it needs to be transformed quickly into electoral activism. Privatizers now control the Trump administration, Congress, and most state governments.
Running for president, Donald Trump promised sweeping privatization policies for K-12 education, but so far his program has stalled in Congress. Some Republicans object to expanding federal influence and squelched the administration’s proposals in the 2018 budget.
Secretary of Education Betsy Devos has not been a strong asset. She quickly made herself the most publicly reviled member of Trump’s controversial cabinet with her combined ignorance of and scorn for public education. But effective power over public education still belongs to the state governments. As of April 2018, Republicans held a near-record 34 governorships and 32 state legislatures; they continue to approve new voucher programs and more charters.
Draining resources from public schools has already undermined districts around the country, especially those serving low-income and minority students. Time is short for rescuing and improving public education. Destroying it will not require privatizing the entire system or anything near that. We are watching death by a thousand cuts.