Good day, CharterFolk.
We find ourselves in a moment when it’s hard for any of us to focus on anything but the election.
I won’t swim upstream.
Except to point out something related to elections …
… and CharterFolk.
In so doing I’ll identify a couple bookends for our movement.
I call them our original and our final naïvetés.
Our Own Form of Elections Denial
Not so long ago, CharterFolk weren’t paying that much attention to elections.
Or, at least, we weren’t paying that much attention to the impact that elections were having on our movement.
It was a form of elections denial.
Not the form of election denial that many are talking about these days.
Not a denial of any specific election result.
But rather, a denial that elections are as important to our movement as they really are.
Or that that there is even much we can do about about them.
Or that, perhaps worst of all, it’s even wise to try.
It’s why I think it’s possible to look at the entire history of the national charter school movement as one long experience in overcoming elections denial.
Our Original Naïveté
It’s a denial that has evolved over the years.
It began with our original naïveté – a belief that advocacy wasn’t going to be that important for our movement. We were just going to open great schools and everyone would see how much we’re helping kids and would want us to serve even more.
Just the opposite occurred, of course.
The more progress we made, the more threatening we became. It led to status quo interests resisting us even more forcefully. So that, rather than it getting easier the more we succeeded, it got harder.
It’s what ultimately disabused us of our original naïveté and convinced us that advocacy was actually going to matter a lot.
Other Denial Ensued Thereafter
But that was just the first denial we had to overcome.
There have been many others since.
Like us denying that we would need to take on the advocacy work ourselves rather than just depend on others to do it for us.
Or us denying that we would have to pay for it ourselves rather than just have it all paid for by funders.
Or us denying that we would have to have C3/C4 structures allowing us to get directly involved in elections, rather than just hope our C3 structures alone would be strong enough to contend with opponents that are deeply involved in both nonpartisan and partisan activity.
Trailblazers Begin Showing the Way
Eventually, many of our naive notions gave way as various advocacy trailblazers across the country taking on both policy and political work in support of charter schools made plain the truths that we had been denying. That led to many other advocates beginning to emulate them, such that, this election cycle we see that the charter school movement is more involved in elections than ever before.
The fact that we are so involved, or more precisely, the fact that we have developed the capacity to be so involved, is the biggest improvement in advocacy the charter school movement has seen over the last decade.
And the fact that so many more CharterFolk in so many other areas get it now and want to grow their ability to be involved in elections too will be one of the biggest stories in charter school advocacy over the next decade as well.
It is hard to overstate how important that change – that overcoming of elections denial – will ultimately prove for the charter school movement.
Our Final Chapter of Denial
But there is a last chapter of elections denial we are contending with, one that, should we overcome it, will ultimately take our advocacy efforts, and by extension, the cumulative impact of the entire charter school movement, to whole new levels.
It’s the denial many of us feel that there’s anything fundamentally different we have to do to win at the ballot box except just continuing to grow and to build our C3/C4 structures.
But the evidence to the contrary is abundant if we have the courage to look.
Perhaps most illustrative is the number of candidates we see who are supportive of charter schools but who don’t even want our endorsement during elections because our narrative is so toxic in between elections.
It happens more frequently that we want to admit.
We elect candidates, but we don’t have any agenda for them to take on once they’re in office. They sit around waiting for some renewals to vote on, but because we don’t have a compelling on-offense policy agenda showing how charter schools have a strategy and a commitment to make all schools more excellent and equitable, we essentially go silent.
It’s that silence – that void – that our opponents take advantage of, hammering charter schools in between elections such that we’re in a fundamentally weaker position the next time elections come around. And no C3/C4 structure or socialized base of CharterFolk ready to work on get-out-the-vote activities during elections is going to be strong enough to compensate for the weakness we let emerge in between elections.
It’s a challenge that will require that we overcome what is our most deeply rooted form of denial.
It’s CharterFolk denying that it’s incumbent upon us to advance the policy solutions that will be needed to evolve all of public education to become more excellent and equitable.
We may not want to be the ones who have to say it.
We may not want to be the ones who have to deal with all the acrimony and blowback that will result from saying it.
But the sad fact is that no one else is saying it.
No one else is surfacing the ideas that are needed in public education today.
People lament that education is hardly being mentioned in this election cycle.
Many attribute it to the public just not caring about education.
That may be true to some extent, but I attribute it also to there being no good ideas for voters to even pay attention to.
And that is what makes us different.
We in fact do have ideas. We have results.
We have a theory …
… a vision for how all of public education can become more excellent and more equitable.
But we have to say the thing.
To say that these are the results we have seen in city after city across America and our intent now is to make sure they happen everywhere.
And here is our policy agenda we intend to bring forward to make it happen such that the charter school movement can grow to reach its full potential.
Which is one where every school gets better and fairer and where every family ends up better served.
Bookend – Letting Go Of Our Last Naïveté
It is not an agenda meant to win the next election. As I have said, it may actually make things worse if we’re only looking one election cycle down the road.
But that’s why it’s so transformational to be part of a movement that is now decades old. We’re the only reform of public education that has endured now through nine presidential election cycles.
It gives us a built-in lens for looking at our work in the longer term.
And if what you are looking for is a narrative that will prove galvanizing for the long term …
If what you are looking for is a narrative we can run between elections for decades to come that will make us immeasurably stronger during elections as well, then it is time for us to relinquish our final naïveté.
Which is that we’ve ever been about something other than a full scale reinvention of public education as we know it.
Coda – When All Our Work Comes Together as One
CharterFolk.
This is what we’re headed into.
The last chapter of the charter school movement overcoming its long history of elections denial is that moment when the great work that we are doing with kids …
… and the policy agenda we seek to advance …
… and the political priorities we strive for …
… all finally become …
… one and the same.