Good morning, CharterFolk.
It’s great to be back. I hope your 4th’s were good ones. Thanks to many of you for signing up for new paid subscriptions while I was away. I’m excited by the progress.
Congrats to Andy for his recent appointment.
Let’s get straight to the update.
The Feds Release Their Final Regs
The big news this week, of course, is word that the Biden Administration has finalized its new regulations for the federal Charter Schools Program.
… are in celebration mode …
… while attempting to control the message about what the regs actually do.
It’s understandable that they would do so considering how badly they botched the initial rollout of their attack on charter schools and had to try to explain things after the fact, having goaded the Administration out into an unforeseen firestorm.
Any time these very same people claim some big win like they’re doing this week …
…it’s natural to assume that what they’re celebrating we should lament.
And surely, to a significant degree, that general rule applies to this situation as well.
Without doubt, CharterFolk, these regs are bad. Very bad.
We have a public education Establishment that is on the verge of imploding.
Parents are desperate to find better alternatives for their kids amid the brokenness.
And right in the middle of it, of all things, the Administration decides to follow through on a campaign promise …
… that will make it even more difficult for millions of students and families desperately seeking improved educational opportunity in communities across our entire country.
Talk about community impact.
Choose your adjective:
Appalling? Disgusting? Pathetic?
Something along those lines.
But is this really what the Educational NIMBYists had in mind when they decided to take their attack on charter schools national?
135 pages of bureaucratic babble making an already cumbersome federal grant process for applicants incrementally more so?
Don’t be fooled, CharterFolk.
This is not what they wanted.
It’s them putting lipstick on a pig of their own making.
Because they know that in launching their unbuttoned-up assault they provoked a response from policy makers demonstrating that support for charter schools is even stronger …
… and even broader …
… than was previously understood. And they galvanized editorial boards …
… across the country …
… to come out of the woodwork in support of charter schools.
But most important of all is the unmistakable message that the Education NIMBYists unleashed from the most credible voices of all.
Voices that policy makers across this entire country now know at whole new levels they just don’t want to get crosswise from.
Parents Prove Those Protecting the Establishment Are Touchable
Having used my jet lag to stay up late reviewing the now finalized regs and comparing them to what was originally proposed, I would say that, more than anything else, the specific language in the regs proves the following:
That the Administration, and indeed all policy makers beholden to the Establishment, are touchable.
When parents and other charter school supporters turned out in massive numbers in May …
… to tell the Biden Administration to back off …
… within a few hours, the Administration began sending out panicked tweets underscoring their support for charter schools …
… and signaling a readiness to back down from the most threatening provisions within their own proposed regulations.
Later that afternoon, articles appeared saying that the Administration wanted to “clarify” its intentions.
And now, a few months later, we see the Administration following through, softening the rules …
… along the lines of their panicked tweets that day.
Below I provide a side by-side for those of you wanting to wonk out on this.
Several of the most important changes between the original and final versions of the regulations are found in the section about the “community impact analysis” requirement. Indeed, the Administration was so eager to distance itself from its own language, it abandoned the “community impact” terminology altogether …
… choosing instead to call for a “needs analysis.”
In the process, it deleted requirements that developers analyze impact on all students within a community regardless what school they attend (a standard no public school has ever been held accountable to), and it focused instead, rightfully, on the impact that schools will have on the students and families they serve. The Administration further clarified that the needs analysis may in fact consist entirely of other information already included within a charter application.
Quite a start.
But the Administration had only begun its backtracking.
Immediately thereafter, the Administration also retreated from its incendiary language suggesting that over enrollment of existing public schools is the default evidence needed to demonstrate unmet demand …
… and it provided assurance that many other forms of evidence about parent demand would be acceptable. It was almost verbatim what they included in their tweet storm on May 11.
Next, new language was included providing greater flexibility to charter schools serving racially isolated communities …
… again, just as the Administration had tweeted.
Finally, two of the proposed regs’ most offensive provisions – one requiring applicants to include a cited analysis of school district performance and attendance, and another requiring developers to demonstrate that the total number of public schools in the area would not surpass the number needed to serve all student residing there –
… were eliminated altogether,
It provides incontrovertible evidence that our parents …
… had in fact …
… been heard …
,,, and that out of touch policy makers beholden to the Establishment are, in fact, touchable.
Are, indeed, very touchable …
… if we counter the other side’s efforts to do nameless, faceless damage to our movement by having amazing CharterFolk whose lives are affected by their nonsense …
… step boldly into the light.
Now We Just Gotta Go Out and Touch Some More
CharterFolk, in a world where so many traditional public schools continue to profoundly fail students and families …
… while squabbling …
… and squandering …
… and where charter schools thrive and grow …
… in those places where they are allowed to grow …
… and are stifled …
… where policy makers have fallen out of touch …
… the responsibility entrusted upon us is a profound one.
It is to prove that out of touch policy makers can be made, in fact, touchable.
Not in defense of ourselves such that we convert existentially bad policy proposals, like the Biden Administration’s proposed changes to the CSP, into just plain bad ones.
But by going on offense in order to generate momentum for our movement at levels never seen before.
We start as they are starting in New Jersey this week.
Striving once again to achieve the breakthroughs needed to serve additional students and families who desperately await better options.
Breakthroughs that, in some contexts anyway, have eluded us for many years now.
We embark upon this new chapter of our work remembering the lesson that our parents taught us in DC this year, which is that we are only defeatable when the issues are made nameless and faceless.
But when the students and families who await better educational opportunity become real …
… when we ourselves striving for this change become real …
… when we become, indeed, folk …
… that is when the untouchable become in fact touchable, and when we become unstoppable.
They can be touched, CharterFolk.
Now we just gotta go out and touch some more.