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
3 comments:
The overriding argument against charter schools is they are bait covering a barbed grapnel hook. It allows production under the guise of market conditions, but actually under statist conditions. Murphy merely sees fit to not make the bait and the guise look TOO enticing. But, that doesn't matter. It's the same whether Murphy or Christy is governor.
When the state thinks it has enough of the production it's looking for, it'll yank the rod and set the hook and reel in the game. The state will do that when it thinks it has more than enough physical power to destroy all charter schools and make imposition of government schools stick, supposedly forever. A governor like Christy might never yank the rod, but the system of charter schools is just waiting for a statist like Murphy or the most uncorruptible statist to come along.
That's what the criminal communist regime running China is all about, on a MUCH larger scale. But, the scale NOR the composition matters. N.J. "schools" and the Chinese "economy" are the same. They're both under statist conditions of production. In both cases, the so-called markets are fakes, and Murphy and his goons are just as much criminals as the commies in China. The scale and composition doesn't count on that. The underlying fact is what counts: initiatory force, in this case by criminals who have control of the central physical power meant for law and government.
It is on THAT, that action is required, not merely preserving the guise of markets, like good faithful conservatives always aim and settle for, if they can get even that.
True, the ultimate goal is the complete separation of education and state.
But do we ignore all interim school choice steps -- tax credits, public school choice, public charters, education savings accounts (ESAs)—and just preach purism from the ivory tower? Charters work like ESAs—the education tax dollars follow the student based on parental choice. Statists are always trying to sabotage charters, as Sowell observes in his book “Charter Schools and their Enemies.” While we fight off the statists, we should highlight charters’ success and advocate to extend the charter model to all private schooling through ESAs (charters are run by private companies).
Of course, ESAs themselves are just a step toward a fully free, private market in education. You say “action is required,” but what action is possible if all incremental steps are closed off? Christie did what was possible, and it brought some market forces into play. The establishment knows it, and is fighting to preserve it’s monopoly. We can win incrementally without compromising our principles.
Compromises on fundamental principles are not really compromises. They are surrenders of one side to the other. I see that the increments you mention are surrenders of statism to rights.
Charter schools are, apparently, funded by taxes, and government can refuse to fund new charter schools which will then not be started. Government probably can defund already existing charter schools which would then go out of existence. Under strictly private, market arrangements, defunding can be replaced by new funds from elsewhere. Not so under charter school arrangements.
Another increment is to keep money used for education from getting into the hands of government in the first place, so no charter is needed. The money can be used for private schools. Tax credits and ESAs are increments to that increment.
Then there's the issue of charters themselves, and a clarification of language and terminology. Just like rights, which exist before government, private contracts can't be defunded nor otherwise voided by government. Government's only power to dictate the content of private contracts is to bar any provision for criminal action. Government can act against only contracts of which it is a party, but then it has no power to terminate them except those possessed by private parties in private contracts. Only criminal action by a party or parties, civil suits or freely chosen agreement by parties can do so. And government can't void the contract (constitution) which brought it into existence. There's more to say about that elsewhere. The issue of charters is another, big, increment.
My statement that "action is required" certainly does mean public notice of the end which will be established and kept, with all increments leading to it: unalienable individual rights, recognized and kept by law and government.
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