Good day, CharterFolk.
I lead with this sobering article that came out over the weekend.
It reveals the underlying truth explaining why the Democratic Party’s current hostile positioning on charter schools, as I wrote again last week …
… is not built to last.
No policy makers concerned about their own political futures, even those completely beholden to teacher unions and other status quo interests, can long stand against change in our public schools because things are happening within those schools that are simply unacceptable.
The Courant article highlights the latest rash of unacceptable happening in Connecticut’s public schools.
I often counsel our world not to paint with too broad a brush. Wholesale pronouncements praising or condemning entire categories of schools rarely hold water. But in this case – one where a state’s most respected newspaper deems the entire state’s public education system to be infected by racism – I do not at all think the brush too broad.
But it’s not because of what is depicted in the article, as unacceptable as it is.
Rather, it’s because structures of unfairness undergirding the entire system are even more abhorrent than the incidents of racism revealed by the Courant.
It’s been happening, as even the most progressive publications in the country have been reporting …
… for decades.
And now, The Courant issued its latest assessment in the same week that the United States marked the 50th anniversary of the most dreadful and determinative U.S. Supreme Court case ever to be issued in the history of the United States regarding public education.
Milliken vs Bradley ruled that suburban school districts could not be required to participate in school integration efforts, which thereby fractured public education in our country …
… into a patchwork of redlined educational opportunity. The fractured landscape of public education is found everywhere in our country.
But nowhere is the fractured-ness more easy to behold than it is in Connecticut, a state serving about the same number of students as LA Unified, that has broken itself up into 200 different units …
… allocating better educational opportunity to students and families with advantage, and worse to those without.
For the past few years, the state has been trying to encourage school districts to make more permeable the walls that deny kids and families access to better opportunity …
… but parents in more affluent school districts show up at board meetings to rail against the admission of outsiders …
… resulting in districts fortifying, not dismantling, their walls.
In the end, kids who are denied access to new charter schools …
… are also denied access to schools in other districts …
… leaving them nowhere else to go.
Just like the students and families seeking to attend a charter school supported by the local NAACP chapter …
… are denied access to an option they want …
… leaving them nowhere else to go.
Except to go back to the very schools whose abhorrent behavior is now being profiled in The Courant!
In May, a track coach stepped down from her position at Colchester’s William J. Johnston Middle School after she was accused of calling a sixth-grader on an opposing team from Middletown a “gorilla.”
Parents in communities across Connecticut with nowhere else to go are concluding that their only choice may be, literally, to move to another state.
“(If) you have an outbreak … and you’ve got one in Colchester, and you’ve got one in Middletown, and you’ve got one in East Haddam, and you’ve got one in Cromwell and you’ve got one in Glastonbury — wouldn’t you say ‘Hey, we got a problem here,’ and do something about it?” Saunders said.
Saunders emphasized that the issue is bigger than any one school or town — “It’s Connecticut.”
“The governor needs to pay attention to what’s happening in his state,” Saunders said. “I know of two families who are leaving this state — leaving his state — because of racism. He needs to pay attention (and) the Department of Education needs to look at the state and start finding solutions to this epidemic.”
It puts in repose the conundrum faced by Connecticut policy makers who are beholden to the NEA and other protectors of the existing system.
It’s not just that they have to defend the status quo.
It’s that, in the defending of the status quo, they are also defending the perpetuation of redlined educational opportunity.
And defending the fortification of walls that stand between kids and better opportunity.
And defending the denial of access to new alternatives like charter schools that don’t redline.
And, yes, defending the forcing of students and families to attend schools exhibiting abhorrently racist behavior.
It’s how policy makers end up being forced to defend the utterly indefensible.
Which is a positioning that is simply not built to last.
St. Louis and Milwaukee Are Carbon Copies of Dysfunction, Hinged to Milliken vs. Bradley
But Connecticut is by no means the only place calling upon policy makers to defend the indefensible.
A few weeks back, I highlighted the meltdown that is happening in Milwaukee Public Schools.
It is a story of academic failure …
… and financial irresponsibility …
… leading to a superintendent leaving …
… and to a school board becoming mired in dysfunction …
… such that policy makers don’t know what else to do but throw up arms and call for an audit …
… with all of it being hinged historically to the legacy of Milliken vs Bradley …
… which finds one of its fullest expressions …
… in Milwaukee.
The saddest part of the story is how unexceptional it is.
Last week in St. Louis we saw a virtual carbon copy.
A school district in turmoil.
Academic failure …
… and financial irresponsibility …
… leading to a superintendent leaving …
… and a school board becoming mired in dysfunction …
… such that policy makers don’t know what to do but throw up arms …
… with all of it being hinged historically to Milliken vs Bradley …
… which finds one of its fullest expressions …
… in St. Louis.
Carbon copy enough for you, CharterFolk?
Getting Crisper on What Exactly Is Being Discredited
It prods us, then, to get crisper.
Not ending our analysis at the assertion that the NEA and other status quo protectors are asking policy makers to “defend the indefensible,” but deconstructing what exactly the NEA is calling for so that we can show what specifically is being discredited and must be dismantled.
Of late, I have been reminding CharterFolk …
… of the role that the NEA’s charter school policy of 2017 plays in the status quo’s strategy to defeat charter schools. Fealty to its tenets is the line in the sand requirement that is being drawn in front of all Democratic policy makers today.
Got that, CharterFolk?
The NEA’s charter school policy of 2017 is the single most powerful lever by which status quo interests pressure policy makers to defend the indefensible.
And many red state policy makers end up toeing the NEA line without even knowing that they’re doing so.
So it behooves us to know the detail of that policy so that we can demonstrate what about it is being discredited right now and must be dismantled.
Because, indeed, these situations in Connecticut and Milwaukee and St. Louis make plain what should be dismantled.
Section 1A of the NEA’s policy document states:
Public charter schools should be authorized by a public school district only if the charter is both necessary to meet the needs of students in the district and will meet those needs in a manner that improves the local public school system.
It is followed by Section 1B:
Public charter schools should only be authorized by the same local, democratically accountable entity that oversees all district schools such as a locally elected school board or, if there is no school board, a community-based charter authorizer accountable to the local community.
In other words, a charter school should only exist if 1A) the local school district thinks it is needed, and if 1B) the local school district itself decides to authorize the school.
So by NEA reasoning in St. Louis right now, we’re supposed to trust the local school district to evaluate whether some new educational opportunity is needed in the landscape, and we’re supposed to trust that the district is going to make a wise authorizing decision about whether to grant a charter to an operator proposing to create that educational opportunity?
When virtually no one in the local landscape trusts the school district to do much of anything right now?!
And a charter school wanting to open in St Louis in order to compensate for the failings of the district is supposed to go to that very same district to get its charter approved?
When board members of that district are literally calling on one another to resign?
The degree to which NEA thinking is being discredited in the current landscape represents a moment of extraordinary opportunity for us.
Developments in Tennessee only further reinforce the point.
Last week in Memphis, the local school board actually approved two new charter schools.
So, yes, sometimes a local authorizer can make a decent call, and yes, why not have the local school district be among the options that a charter school developer can turn to if they so choose?
But the school district being the only option?
Or being the one that all charter schools must go to first before being able to appeal to the state?
It’s like the Republican-controlled legislature and governor in Tennessee ceded charter school policy-making to the NEA.
Because look what’s happening in Metro Nashville Public Schools right now.
Last week, the district summarily rejected five new charter school petitions.
Several of them came from providers with proven track records of success.
Only one of the applications received even one vote in favor.
All the others received none.
That is wise consideration?
One of the applicants, Nurses Middle College …
… has active partnerships coming from some of the biggest and most respected medical institutions in the region.
Leaders from several of those institutions came to the board meeting and spoke in favor of the charter. These are the kinds of leaders who are treated like royalty everywhere they go in Nashville.
And they couldn’t get even a single vote?
Not one?
Before the board meeting descended into such chaos that the board chair ordered police to escort audience members out of the room?
What would you say if you were the mayor of Nashville seeing this reflection on your local community?
It’s embarrassing!
So now Nurses Middle College and other applicants will appeal to the state level, and as CharterFolk Contributor William Hill shared here earlier this year …
… the applicants will likely get fair treatment at the state level, which will somewhat mitigate the damaging impact of an authorizer gone bad.
But think of the trauma the state’s flawed authorizing structure is imposing on charter school organizations and their partners.
Think of the disincentive it is imposing on all in CharterLand to grow.
It’s essentially ceding the point to the NEA on Sections 1A and 1B.
And it’s one of the main reasons why, despite many years of political support for charter schools in Tennessee, we have seen essentially no growth in the state’s charter school sector since 2019.
Which, after all, is exactly why the NEA made its new policy in the first place.
The Charter School Policy 1A and 1B We Need in Every State in the Country Right Now
The reason we know with such certainty that the NEA’s 1A and 1B are so damaging is because we can see what happens in a context that embraces a completely different 1A and 1B.
I’m talking about Texas, of course, which is the national counterpoint on many things charter these days.
Earlier this summer four new charters were approved at the state level.
None of the applicants had to go first to their local school district to try to get their charters approved.
None had go through the embarrassment of 0-9 votes, or of their community partners being vilified in public.
None had to go through year-long processes where they were forced to crank out thousands of pages of written responses to nonsense questions coming from an entity the applicants know will vote against them no matter how they respond.
None had to manage the ups and downs of hundreds of parents and community members hanging their hopes on a process where the deck is stacked against them.
That’s because, unlike what we find in many states across the country, charter school applicants in Texas are allowed to go straight to the state for authorizing.
And successful schools authorized at the state level can grow by right wherever they want as long as their performance remains strong.
It explains why the three charter school organizations we profiled in San Antonio earlier this year …
… are thriving and growing so robustly.
It puts their entire local community, and indeed, their entire state …
… on a roll.
And headed for even higher heights.
And it makes plain the charter school policy 1A and 1B that we need in every state in the country right now.
1A: That all charter schools should be able to go directly to their states to seek their charters.
AND
1B: That every charter school that is successfully serving students should have “grow by right” authority to expand wherever they want.
It’s a policy orientation that is the very antithesis of “defending the indefensible.”
It’s one showing, in fact, that we are ready to go on offense against the indefensible.
Ready to go on offense against the age-old problems we see playing out in Connecticut and Milwaukee and St. Louis and Tennessee and all the other communities in our country that are so historically hinged to the tragic consequences of Milliken vs Bradley.
It is, in fact, what one could call “the 1A and the 1B of the entire charter school movement:”
Being on offense against the most vexing problems confronting public education today.