The Enemies of Charters Versus the Parents and Their Kids

My last post focussed on New Jersey Governor Murphy’s war against charter schools, the devastation it’s doing to families, and the push back from charters’ defenders, led by New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial page editor Tom Moran. Today, I’ll focus on some of the arguments against charters.

 

I’ll start with Moran. An unabashed defender of the charters, Moran addresses some of the objections. 

 

But there are legitimate and substantive concerns as well. The charters in Newark have smaller numbers of special education students, and English language learners, key factors cited by Newark Superintendent Roger Leòn.

[I]n his recommended rejection of North Star’s expansion. He and other charter opponents also say that diverting money to the charter schools deprives the district schools of needed funds.

Being publicly funded schools, charters’ academic diversity are naturally going to come under scrutiny. But since charter seats are filled by lottery, and applications are submitted voluntarily by parents, the academic mix is dependent on the voluntary choices of parents and the “luck of the draw.” If parents of special ed and English language learners (kids with limited English-speaking skills) are less likely to apply their kids to charters, or given that lotteries are games of chance, so be it. What’s the problem? *

The second “problem,” that charters divert money from district schools, is a red herring. If a parent pulls her kid from the district school, every dime of that child’s allotted education tax dollars should go to the charter school that is educating the child. The public school monopoly is arrogant and unjust in effectively asserting first claim on those dollars. The traditional public school monopoly has no more claim on the charter child’s education tax dollars than Stop-&-Shop has on my grocery dollars if I choose ShopRite. Let the traditional system do what every other business does when it loses business to a competitor—learn to deal with it. **

Now, let’s move to two New Jersey Star-Ledger letters, Charter schools remove the best from public schools by Carl Della Peruti and Make charter schools prove they’re better by Stan Gurski. Both provide samplings of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the anti-charter school forces. 

Della Peruti asserts:

[W]hat makes a good school? Good students. Charter schools take the best students and the best peers out of the public schools.

Likewise, “Charter schools,” Gurski asserts, do 

a better job [by] skimming the students who already achieve in the public schools and have supportive parents. [They] just take successful students from public schools and give them the chance to perform just as well in a new location.

[emphasis added]

First, charters don’t “take” anyone. The schools are chosen by the parents. And why do parents choose charters? Because they believe their children cannot do well, or aren’t doing well, in their district schools (and I believe the parents, who actually know their children).

The second point is the most telling. Good students don’t make good schools. Good schools are necessary to allow students to become good and to succeed. The parents know that charters provide that better learning environment. That’s why they flock to them. Charter schools aren’t good because they “take” or “skim” the best students. Students do good, or better than before, because the charters are good, or at least better, schools. 

But note the implicit assumption both make. Note that both Gurski and Peruti acknowledge that the charters are not only good, but better than the traditional district schools. Well, isn’t that the point of charters (and school choice more broadly)—to open up more and/or better opportunities and options for kids who want to learn and parents who are “supportive”—who care? If kids are performing better in charters than in the traditional public schools, isn’t that a reason to laud, not condemn, charters? Isn’t that a reason to accelerate the expansion of existing charters, and the openings of new ones, to meet parental demand? Why would anyone want to restrict charter schools because they’re good? And even assuming the argument that charters “skim off the best students,” so what? By the charters’ enemies own admission, these schools are getting good results. On what basis can anyone justify the premise that the traditional public schools have an automatic first claim on these kids and the related tax dollars? That’s the raving of a monopolist.  

Yet, they oppose, rather than support, charter schools! 

Why? 

The only answer is ugly. What we are seeing is a moral inversion of the worst kind. The enemies of charters oppose good performing charters, for being good; they want to penalize the good students, for being good; they want to deny supportive parents, because they care. This is the depth to which charter opponents will sink to protect the traditional public school monopoly. They sink to hatred of the good, for being the good.

Peruti concludes

For decades now, charter schools have been bleeding the American public school system, once the envy of the world.

Note the hatred directed at the parents who choose charters. Do they get credit for seeking the best education they can find and afford for their children? No. They are blood-sucking destroyers of America’s great public schools. Note the utter, cold disdain for the parents, who have to deal first hand, through their children, with the failures of the public schools. 

Charters are the reason the public school system is failing, they claim! It couldn’t be the failing Progressive Education philosophy. It couldn’t be the mediocrity that lack of competition inevitably fosters. It couldn’t be that charters’ success is a direct result of public school failures, rather than the other way around. No. Charters are destroyers—for offering better educational opportunities to desperate parents.

Consider Jasmine Morrison, one of a coalition of parents fighting for their right to direct the course of their own childrens’ education. *** Morrison authored an op-ed published in the Star-Ledger titled If parents want charter schools, they should be able to have charter schools. In a passionate plea, Morrison condemns the

outsiders [who] are attempting to deny Newark parents our right of self-determination — a case in the New Jersey Supreme Court that would block the expansion of seven desperately-needed, high performing public charter schools. This case — brought by the Education Law Center (ELC) — may have a much lower profile than the election but the impact on Newark’s children could be profound. That’s why a group of parents (myself included) have launched a coalition we call Unapologetic Parents to tell the law center that we’re not going to apologize for choosing the schools that are best for our children.

Peruti and Gurski are from the upscale NJ communities of Morristown and Clark, respectively. Peruti disingenuously blusters, “If charter schools have some magical formula for success, why not just duplicate it for all public schools?” But this is exactly why parents choose charters—because public schools don’t, and haven’t for decades. How many generations of kids have to be ruined waiting for traditional public schools to discover the “magic formula”? These two blowhards are precisely the outsiders that want to condemn city children like Morrison’s to perpetually failing schools. Does Peruti really believe that these parents, and the many many others across New Jersey and across the nation, are pulling their kids out of good public schools for the sole purpose of “bleeding” the envy of the world?

And NJ Governor Phil Murphy is one of the reactionary deniers. How is it fair to tell parents like Jasmine Morrison, and many others, that they have no right in “choosing the schools that are best for our children?” As Morrison passionately argued recently in her latest Star-Ledger guest column,

[T]he cynicism directed at charters that outperform public schools in their own districts is morally senseless for charters parents whose kids might not have had the chance to academically shine with the right support systems. 

[Murphy’s] present moratorium on charter growth in New Jersey is frightening for families that need charter flexibility to implement standards that work and who are desperate to get their child out of a failing school.

The American public school system is failing; at differing rates, in different places, albeit with exceptions here and there. That’s why it is "bleeding" customers—and that’s as it should be. That’s why school choice is gaining. That’s how free markets, even hampered free markets, work. It’s called justice. It’s time to defund the public school monopoly—not in the unthinking way police departments were defunded, without plan, alternatives, or consideration for consequences—but defunded systematically through school choice, parent by parent, as and when alternative options become available, by funding the student rather than the school district.

The arguments against charter schools disintegrate in the face of the facts and in the face of moral certitude. Their collectivist, egalitarian, disingenuous, reactionary nonsense is hogwash across the board. Charters’ enemies, and school choice opponents generally, offer nothing more than reactionary rationalizations in defense of the public school monopoly and its criminal monopoly offshoot, the teachers union. In the end, all the enemies of charter schools can muster is hatred of the good for being the good.

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* [Of course, in a fully free market that features the complete separation of education and state, all schools would be private and free to accept students according to their own criteria. Some may focus on special ed. Some may focus on the gifted. Some may offer a broad array of services, accepting all.]

** [Contrary to the idiotic claims of the public school hacks, education is a business. Like all monopolists, the public school establishment seeks to protect their illegitimate power from competition. So they proclaim that education is not a business. Sure it is, and it should have to face the challenges and earn its customers and their cash like any business does. If you want maximum educational quality, recognize and treat education for the business it is.

*** [Morrison’s activist campaign is called Unapologetic Parents. Here is their Facebook page.]

Related Reading:

Gov. Murphy needs to support school choice for the sake of families and children By Jasmine Morrison, guest columnist for the NJ Star-Ledger

‘Investing’ of ‘Resources’ In Education Is Up to the Taxpayer

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

As NJ State Closes 3 ‘Failing’ Charters, What About the Parents and the Children?

NJ Mom Should Demand More Educational Freedom for Herself, Not Cut Down Others’ Freedom

Newark's Successful Charter Schools Under Attack—for Being Successful

Charter Schools and their Reactionary Enemies--Part 1

Charter Schools and their Reactionary Enemies--Part 2

Charter Schools and their Reactionary Enemies--Part 3

While NJ Gov Attacks Charter Schools, Legislators Focus on ‘Segregation’

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is a well-known bedmate of the New Jersey teachers unions, misnamed the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA). By extension, he is an enemy of charter schools. Murphy’s predecessor, Chris Christie, initiated a major charter school program that brought new opportunities to NJ parents, especially in big cities like Newark and Camden. 

And parents responded in droves. In Newark, the charter school sector went from near zero of school age children to almost 40%. There was still plenty of unmet demand for charter school seats. Murphy has spent his 4 years in office undermining that progress.

And then Murphy stepped in, spending his 4 years in office undermining that progress. That was the subject of Tom Moran’s 2/6/22 New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial Murphy’s political games threaten charter success in Newark He wrote:

Charter schools educate more than 1 in 3 students in Newark today, and still there aren’t nearly enough seats to meet the demand.

That demand is robust for good reason: The charters are producing much better results, giving their kids a clean shot at college.

And yet, Gov. Phil Murphy has blocked several requests to expand charters recently, not just in Newark, but in Trenton, New Brunswick and other districts. Over his first four years, Murphy denied nearly two-thirds of the requested expansions and granted just one new license.

Now, charter supporters fear a slow strangulation. Two of the recent rejections banned charters from expanding into high school, which can force charter families to return to district schools when their kids reach 9th grade.

Just three days later, New Jersey blocks expansion of three Newark charter schools, continuing slowdown of charter growth

As Moran explains, charter expansion is vital to the continued educational process. As children advance through the grades, charters need to expand to open up the next levels. For example, “Two of the recent rejections,” Moran writes, “banned charters from expanding into high school, which can force charter families to return to district schools when their kids reach 9th grade.” But Murphy’s Department of Education (DOE) callously throws up a wall, disrupting the childrens’ educational progress, slapping their parents across the face, and devastating the hopes of the families still aspiring to get their kids into charter schools.

And there are plenty of families aspiring to get their children out of the traditional public schools, and into charters. On Feb. 14, Moran fired back with As he sabotages charter schools, phony Murphy asks: “What, me?”.

Every morning, Rakeemah Jordan’s two 8th-grade boys put on their uniforms and head out to a nearby charter school they love, Phillips Academy, where they get plenty of attention in classes that average about 15 students, and eat vegetables at lunch grown in a school garden.

“It’s a great school and my boys are doing really well,” Jordan says. “So, this is just heartbreaking to us. We’re really in a bind now.”

In Trenton, another mom, Danielle Burgess, told NJ Spotlight News she was in the same bind, mystified by the decision to block a planned expansion at Achievers Early College Prep into 10th grade, leaving her 9th grader stranded.

Murphy doesn’t give a damn—about them, or the parents still waiting:

In Murphy’s four years [as governor], charters schools have sought permission to add 16,000 seats. Murphy has granted just 6,000, according to the Department of Education. So, Jordan and Burgess have plenty of company. 

Charter schools operate on a strictly voluntary basis. Charter school growth is wholly driven by parental demand. If those rejected 10,000 seats were approved, they would not be filled unless parents chose to fill them. So as these 10,000 and untold thousands more parents seek a better education for their children, there is Murphy, standing in the charter schoolhouse door, blocking them.

In the middle of this putrid scene, this article, Amid court battle, N.J. lawmakers consider a different way to pursue school integration, was published on February 8th.

What’s more important, education or the skin complexion of the kid sitting next to the student? To the parents, “It’s the education, stupid.” So why is the legislature focussed on non-essentials like skin color percentages in the schools. Oh, well, that’s “diversity”.

To be fair, there is some pushback against Murphy in the legislature, by some in his own Democratic Party. As Moran writes:

The best hope for charters may be a rescue from the Legislature, where Sen. Vin Gopal, D-Monmouth, just took over as chairman of the education committee. He plans to hold hearings this year to draft legislation protecting schools like North Star.

But, come on, why are legislators so focussed on a non-problem? If they’re so concerned with children of darker complexion, shouldn’t education take precedence over the color-based distribution of kids in the schools? After all, America’s failing schools disproportionately affect dark- complexioned kids.

Related Reading:

Chris Christie’s School Choice Achievement.

‘Investing’ of ‘Resources’ In Education Is Up to the Taxpayer

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

Newark's Successful Charter Schools Under Attack—for Being Successful

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Dividing Parents Over Charters and Traditional Government Schools

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Despite the hysterical demonization of the charter school movement by the reactionary defenders of the public school establishment, charter schools’ success is really about market demand: i.e., the desires of individual parents to attaining the best education available for their children. Charter schools are in demand, especially in the bigger cities, because they satisfy parents by giving their kids a better education than the public schools can.

These motivated parents are the ignored faction of the anti-school choice side. But it only takes one parental voice to demolish the whole anti-choice edifice. One such parent is Newark, New Jersey’s Shayvonne Anderson, who argued from personal experience in a NJ Star-Ledger guest column that Newark's charter schools get an A-plus for education. Newark is a central battleground in the charter wars.

Anderson shares her happy story of how she got her kids a better education by taking advantage of the choice accorded to her:

I applied to just about every charter school in Newark and was successful. My children were accepted into Newark Collegiate Academy, Paulo Freire Charter School, Great Oaks Charter School and Marion P. Thomas Charter School. After One Newark was introduced in 2014 I prioritized specific schools for my children that I knew, based on my research, would be best for them. Now, my children attend Newark Collegiate Academy, Team Academy, Spark Academy and The Paulo Freire Charter School. My children are learning life skills and receiving the benefit of a great education that every child deserves.

My children are learning so much more than I ever did [w]hen I attended Newark Public Schools. . . .

Anderson recounts the dramatic improvement charter schools engendered for six of her childrens’ performance. Here is one example:

-- My 13-year-old son has been a challenge in school behaviorally and academically, but since coming to charter school he, too, has become a star student in his own right. Although he still has his challenges, his teachers work with him and me. The teachers take time to understand his learning process and they work very closely with me to develop plans that support and help him.

As Anderson learned, acceptance into a charter school is done by lottery, and is not guaranteed. (typically, demand far exceeds charter school openings.) She was lucky to get six of her children (she has 10) into these superior schools. But Anderson is not content to rest on her own personal laurels. She ends her column with a resounding call for something bigger:

In each school, the teachers care about the students and they are invested in helping them succeed. I love that my children are held accountable for their actions, taught to take responsibility, and taught that hard work hard [sic] is the process to get good grades. My children are held to a higher standard in charter schools, where they are taught to push past the thought of being average and work to be excellent. I am grateful that my children have been afforded this opportunity, but I feel strongly that this opportunity should not be something that is afforded, but rather something that is required for and owed to, every student no matter where they live. A ZIP code should not impact whether my child - or any child - has a great educational opportunity. That's just a fact.

“A ZIP code should not impact whether my child - or any child - has a great educational opportunity.” Amen to that. Stories like Anderson's make public school establishment-defending anti-choicers look trivial and mean (which they are).  They would sacrifice children to save their unearned, undeserved monopolistic status.

I left these comments:

I have been advocating for parental school choice for years. I even got an article published advocating a tax credit-based plan for universal school choice. But there is no better advocacy than real-life stories. Ms. Anderson’s inspiring saga says it all about school choice: It’s about real parents and real students, as opposed to the establishment’s utopian ideals and standardized assessment schemes.

Charter schools are definitely a step in the right direction. But the important point here is that motivated parents, in direct cooperation with educators, are perfectly capable—and by far the best equipped—to direct the course of their own children’s education.

Related Reading:

Newark's Successful Charter Schools Under Attack—for Being Successful

Backlash Against NJ's Charter School Expansion

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

As NJ State Closes 3 ‘Failing’ Charters, What About the Parents and the Children?

Under Governor Chris Christie, New Jersey greatly expanded charter schools, especially in urban districts where traditional public schools are the worst. This has given thousands of parents an opportunity to get their children into better schools—and parents have seized the opportunity in droves. Charter schools have been an educational lifeline for tens of thousands of kids.

But as I have argued, charters are not the long-term answer for people seeking better education. For one thing, charters are still government schools—albeit schools that are better because they enjoy more freedom to innovate and cater to needs of actual children. Parents who are lucky enough to get their children into charters (the demand for charters still way outstrips the openings) are still at the mercy of politicians.

We can see why in the NJ Department of Education’s decision last March to close three Newark Charter schools for “low performance”. Both the charters’ administrations and the parents are devastated. As Karen Yi reported at the time for NJ.Com (As charters face closure, 750 students need schools),

"Our parents are just devastated, we have a lot of students here, this is all they know," said Merit Prep Principal Ron Harvey [Merit Prep is one of the three charters]. He said he heard about the closure after a reporter called the school for comment on Wednesday.

"It definitely caught us out of the blue, it was very disturbing for us to hear it that way," Harvey said.

Merit Prep enrolls 483 students in grades 5-10 and opened in 2012. The school has 93 employees and was renewed last year on probation. 

"We've created a school over the last couple of years for (the students) that they've seen grow and change and improve over time," Harvey said. "They're upset; it just feels unfair to the kids, what are they supposed to do?

Another of the charters, Paulo Freire Charter School, sent a letter to parents and staff saying “the state's decision was ‘not reflective’ of the school's accomplishments.”

Families of students were devastated.

Hundreds of parents and students were left scrambling last week after news spread that the state was ordering three Newark charter schools to close at the end of the academic year.

"I am terrified for these children. I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do at this point," said Frances Huggins, whose grandson attends Merit Prep. "Merit Prep was my light at the end of the tunnel two years ago when I was lucky enough to learn of an availability for my grandson."

The school administrators and staff, as well as the parents, were taken by surprise. This means that government bean-counters never consulted with parents and educators. Remember that charters are chosen voluntarily by the parents. But their opinions apparently have no reality to the state’s education bureaucrats. The students were to be “placed” in “new schools” determined by the state. 750 of them.

This is a reminder of how little control parents have over their own children’s education under government-controlled schools. Even with charters, which parents freely choose, students are vulnerable to arbitrary dictates, at any time, of government officials. That is, at the mercy of politics. And this, from an administration philosophically friendly to charter schools and parental school choice. What will happen under the new Governor Phil Murphy administration? Murphy has been openly hostile to charters, being a hack for the teachers union.

Charters are a form of parental school choice, and an improvement for parents lucky enough to get their child into one. But they are only a small step. As this episode demonstrates, justice demands that government get out of running the schools. The state was to reassign the 750 students beginning last April (2017). As far as I can tell, the plight of these families dropped out of the news: They are the forgotten victims of government-run schools.

The only solution, long term, is to move toward a fully free market, with schools run and funded privately. Only a free market recognizes and legally protects individual rights in education. Short of that, universal school choice through tax credits or education savings accounts (which give to parents the per-pupil cost of public school to spend as they judge best) would leave parents much less vulnerable to bureaucratic tyranny of the kind experienced by these three charter schools and families.
Related Reading:

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

Real School Choice Depends on Free Exercise of Individual Rights

Newark's Successful Charter Schools Under Attack—for Being Successful

Charter Schools and their Reactionary Enemies--Part 1

Charter Schools and their Reactionary Enemies--Part 2

Charter Schools and their Reactionary Enemies--Part 3

Parents’ School Choice Rights Shouldn't Depend on Winning Elections

The Newark, New Jersey traditional public schools suck—and parents have been “voting with their feet” in response, moving their children to charter schools whenever possible. But they’ve been politically weak against an establishment backlash against the charters, led by the teachers union.

Now, apparently, the charter parents—faced with the threat of the anti-charter reactionaries, are beginning vote with their ballots, as well. In a NJ Star-Ledger op-ed, In Newark, booming charter schools flex new political muscle, Tom Moran observes:

The politics around charter schools in Newark will never be the same after Tuesday's [school board] election, which saw a new army of charter parents turn out for the first time.

The number of votes cast on Tuesday was roughly double the total only two years ago, an encouraging sign as Newark prepares to resume local control within a few years.

That came after a new political organization in town, the PC2E Action Fund, joined with the schools to register a whopping 3,000 charter parents, enough to swing an election in Newark. The top winner on Tuesday was Kim Gaddy, their candidate.

This is big. Charter schools educate roughly 1 in 3 children in Newark, with many more families banging on the doors to get in. The largest chains - TEAM and North Star -- solidly outperform the traditional schools, giving even the most disadvantaged kids a clear shot at college.

I left these comments:

This is good news because it is another indication of the strength of the parental school choice movement. The market has spoken: Parents want alternatives to the traditional establishment.

But parents’ school choice rights shouldn't have to depend on winning elections. In a completely free market in education, which means no government interference in voluntary parent-educator contract and collaboration aside from child neglect and anti-fraud laws and the like, parents could direct the course they judge most conducive to their own child’s good education by choosing between the multitude of offerings from private education entrepreneurs. There would be no coercive government school monopoly being held together by taxes and compulsory attendance laws.

Short of that, parents can have school choice for their own children through universal school choice policies crafted within the current legal and popular environment, which guarantees every child the means to a K-12 education. One way to achieve this is through universal tax credits that would allow any taxpayer to finance any child’s education up to the limit of the per-pupil public school cost of that child’s home school district—This would mean taxpayers could finance not only their own child but children not their own, such as a grandchild or children from poor households, gifted children, special needs children, etc. Another way would be to simply deposit the per-pupil cost of each child’s public school district into Education Savings Accounts for parents to spend on their own child as they judge best. Financing and administration are separate issues. We can retain the financing guarantee without having education and schools being run by a competition-protected government establishment.

Parents of the worst public school districts need choice the most, so I’m glad to see charter parents “flexing their electoral muscles” in Newark. Ultimately, all parents—not just wealthy parents who can afford both private education and school taxes, and not just parents from failing school districts—should have not just the legal but the practical choice to escape government schools. This is the moral imperative. Education is, after all, fundamentally the moral right and responsibility of parents. Who has any right to override parents? There is no such right, no matter what stupid collectivist slogans the establishment reactionaries trot out.

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In a prior article from September 2016, Moran observed:

At last count, 26 percent of Newark students attended charter schools, a number that has spiked in the past five years and is expected to grow to as much as 40 percent.

According to the most respected national study on charter school performance, from Stanford University, Newark's are among the best urban charters in the country. At TEAM Academy's high school, 95 percent of the kids attend college after graduation. TEAM's elementary and high school students beat the state average on reading and math tests.

And TEAM isn't cheating by recruiting the wealthier and whiter kids in Newark: 92 percent of their students are African-American and 88 percent get free or reduced-price lunches.

Newark parents have been on to this for years. More than 10,000 are on waiting lists for charters, equal to nearly a third of those in the traditional system.

That 26% is now almost a third, and growing as demand still far exceeds supply. The lesson here is not that charter schools are the definitive solution to America’s education problems. Charters still need permission from the state to open and continue operating. A fully free education market is the solution. Charters, because they offer more freedom to educators, have proven to be an improvement in terms of education quality, and a step in the right direction in that they give parents a little more freedom and are privately run.

The biggest lesson with charters in Newark and elsewhere is to prove the power of the school choice movement. The appeal of school choice cuts across all income lines. We may not be close to a free market in education when it comes to funding. Most people still support some form of universal tax funding for education. But getting government out of the business of administering the schools is a much more viable political goal. Now more than ever is the time to push for universal school choice through tax credits, as I have proposed in The Objective Standard, or even education savings accounts into which the per-pupil tax cost of each child’s school district is deposited for parents to control. Both would lead to more and more schools being administered by private education entrepreneurs and a very competitive education market open to all parents. Then we could do away with school boards and other forms of central planning—or at least greatly scale back the power of these central planners.

Related Reading:

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?

• How can a tax-credit program keep government from regulating private schools, and is such a program politically viable?
• Would the Federal Government Permit States to Implement a Tax Credits Program?

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Real School Choice Depends on Free Exercise of Individual Rights

On Neo-George Wallaces Standing in the Schoolhouse Door, Keeping Children IN, rather than OUT

Addressing Newark's charter issue, a NJ Star-Ledger letter writer, Marie Corfield, said:

Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson has dug herself into a hole and now she’s looking for a creative way out. The explosion of charter schools, and the socioeconomic and developmental segregation they bring at the expense of traditional public schools, has finally caught up with her ("Newark’s big play on charter schools," Tom Moran column, Dec. 1).

As Moran explains, Newark, New Jersey's popular and burgeoning charter school sector has created a "problem"—allegedly unequal educational opportunities. Newark's schools superintendent is apparently under pressure to "do something" about it. This has brought the egalitarian nihilists out in force. 

In support of Corfield, a correspondent calling himself Busrider commented:

Marie Corfield is exactly right when she points out that charter schools bring socioeconomic and developmental segregation to Newark and any other place where they exist. But public school systems and public tax dollars should serve all of our children equally. While many people do support charter schools what has to be seen is that to do so is to reject equal opportunity for all children to get the education they need. What is happening in Newark is an educational tragedy for the great majority of Newark's children who attend public schools. It is beyond appalling that the coercive force of the law is being used to deny so many of Newark's children equal education.

Charter school openings in Newark (and elsewhere) have typically been met with demand from parents seeking to extract their children from the traditional public schools that massively outstrips the available student openings. You would think people would demand more charter over traditionals. Yet, here are the Marie Corfields and the Busriders standing, like a latter-day George Wallaces, in the schoolhouse door. Only instead of keeping children out, they seek to keep children trapped in failing schools. Shame on them!

I replied:

The whole government school system is based on coercion. If it's so good, why does it need taxation and compulsory education laws to maintain? Don't you think parents would voluntarily send their kids there, and voluntarily pay for it?

Parents choose charters because they're looking for a better education for their kids. Kudos to these parents. They're taxpayers, too. Instead of condemning charters, how about giving all parents the chance to opt out of traditional government schools. Forget government-coerced "equality of opportunity." How about recognizing the equal rights of parents to the legal opportunity to direct the course of their own children's education?

Here I left a link to my TOS article Toward a Free Market in Education:School Vouchers or Tax Credits?

Related Reading:

Modern-Day George Wallaces in Reverse

Charter Schools – Good, but Not the Long-Term Answer

Backlash Against NJ's Charter School Expansion