Weekend greetings, CharterFolk.
A little over six years ago, when I was considering whether to make CharterFolk, I asked several friends and trusted advisors about whether it was needed, and if so, why.
I remember former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu being among the most adamant that it was needed, and her reason was clear: because very few at the time were making the moral case for charter schools. And if CharterFolk weren’t willing to make the argument ourselves, how could we expect policymakers and others to do it for us?
It wasn’t the same language that I was using at the time, nor is it what I tend to use today. But its general sentiment aligned with what I had seen in my travels in CharterLand. In my first months as a civilian after leaving CCSA, Kevin Hall at the Charter School Growth Fund, offered me a travel grant. Go and visit as many states as you can in order to understand the advocacy conditions our movement confronts, and report back.
Over the course of the next year I made it to nearly 35.
That was when it first really registered for me.
In conversation after conversation, I had the sense that many CharterFolk had lost a sense of confidence that our movement was on the right side of history, or that there was even value in presenting our movement as such in the public realm.
And so, with many people’s support – Mary’s and Kevin’s certainly, but hundreds more as well – we have built something that seems like it’s going to be around now for many years to come. And if there is anything that I think, perhaps immodestly, that CharterFolk has offered, it is what Mary put her finger on:
The Moral Voice of the Charter School Movement.
Occasionally, perhaps, coming from myself. But most often and most compellingly coming from our contributors.
Today, we are announcing the ten finalists for the Brian’s Voice Awards for 2025-26. I encourage you all to get in another vote for your favorites. We’ll announce our three winners in a week and a half.
The topics our contributors covered last year, as always, were wide-ranging, but aggregate them and what do you find?
What we most want here at CharterFolk:
Not a tenor, but a chorus.
Through which is expressed our collective voice.
Whether it’s Mike Huguelet writing about how the loss of his mother motivates all he does to support Iowa’s charter schools.
Whether it’s Peter Anderson talking about childhood experiences grounding the work he does today at DC Latin.
Or Fatih Bogrek in Little Rock reminding us all why it’s so important that our schools continue to innovate.
Or Starlee and fellow Texans talking about how a shared advocacy push resulted in charter school students finally getting the school facilities they deserve.
Or any of the other incredible columns we had last year …
… what comes through is what Mary encouraged us to un-muzzle.
Our collective moral voice.
This week, we were fortunate to publish what is one of my very favorite columns in the history of CharterFolk, Patricia Brantley’s The Geography of Good Intentions.
If you haven’t had the chance to read it yet, I ask you to take a few minutes to do so.
Just as I encourage you to view the WonkyFolk recording that Andy and I did with Pat right before Memorial Day.
Whether it’s Pat talking about the importance of our world knowing our own history, or her responding to Andy’s question about what we should say to charter school opponents, Pat strikes the perfect balance:
Providing the moral case for charter schools without falling into moralizing.
We are fortunate that we live in a time when many other CharterFolk across the country are doing the same.
As I highlighted in my mid-week whip-around this week, whether it’s Ariel in DC, or Cass in Philadelphia, or Colleston in Milwaukee, or Daiana in San Antonio …
… the CharterFolk chorus has never been stronger.
It happens at a moment when the world of public education needs moral clarity as much as it ever has.
Of late, we have seen various articles …
… about supposed education wars …
… coming to a supposed end.
I find them all evidence of the moral confusion we operate within.
From east to west and everywhere in between. From red to blue to purple.
The confusion is nearly ubiquitous.
First, in labeling the ongoing effort to improve education as some kind of “war.”
And second, in announcing that anything is coming to an “end.”
In fact, we are just seeing next chapters play out as protectors of the status quo continue evolving their efforts to delay change as long as they can.
As Fordham published this week, teacher union strength is somewhat on the wane nationally, but in many blue contexts it remains more than formidable enough to put off the day of reckoning until a date so far away that some might believe it will never come.
Since the earliest days of CharterFolk, I have been writing that the great challenge before us all is ensuring that our barely public public education system finally becomes greatly more public.
It was my way of describing the challenge that Pat’s column described this week with as much clarity as we have ever seen.
In her introduction, she makes clear that she is, of course, writing about her hometown of DC. But she is also drawing a map that describes nearly every major city in America – a map where public education is neither excellent nor equitable.
And excellence and equity, of course, are the very things that would make public schools, in fact, public.
In 2021, I wrote a series of articles about my hometown of Sacramento. In taking it on, I laid out the same rationale that Pat put forward this week.
Yes, I said, these are posts about my hometown, but because the geography of public education is similar across locations, they are posts about your hometown as well.
I started with the premise there is very little equity to lose in Sacramento.
Better educational opportunity is allocated to those with means, and worse is allocated to those without. Since that time, many developments have arisen providing confirmation of that fact.
Having laid out the underlying conditions, I took on a thought exercise premised on the idea that Sacramento Unified was so hopelessly broken that students would be better served if literally none of them were served by the district.
What made the district so hopelessly broken was a combination of attendance boundaries that reserved its few decent schools for the wealthy, and years of fiscal mismanagement that left the district burdened by unfunded liabilities.
The result was a system forced to steal from the students of today and tomorrow in order to pay for the obligations of the past.
Meanwhile, surrounding school districts and charter schools had not been mismanaged in the same way. And because the students most trapped in Sacramento Unified’s broken schools were primarily historically underserved students, the proper theoretical end point seemed clear:
A shared effort to ensure that Sacramento Unified ultimately served literally no students.
Over the years, we have seen that thought exercise turn into sad reality.
Sacramento Unified has seen a massive loss in enrollment.
Black students have been leaving the district at particularly high rates.
Carl Pinkston, a local activist and member of the Parallel Black School Board, is portrayed in the Abridged article as saying that …
… he knows of many Black families today still choosing to go outside the district for their kids’ education. They turn either to charter schools, he said, or, if they live in a South Sacramento neighborhood, transfer to Elk Grove Unified.
Meanwhile, the school district immediately to the south has become the second quickest growing school district in California.
It is planning for massive growth …
… as is the district to the east …
… as they anticipate the exodus from brokenness to continue.
For many years, education reformers attempted to win school board races in Sacramento Unified in order to prevent the district from further sabotaging itself. Sometimes reformers won a few races. But now, funders seem resigned to let the district run its course.
The teacher union unquestionably controls the district now.
It’s representatives on the school board have pushed out the superintendent that rankled them for many years …
… as well as his replacement who they had previously lauded …
… all while making sure that the district’s offices of financial management are vacant as well.
The union has approved large additional pay raises for itself even as the district careens toward a cliff.
Most now predict that insolvency will occur sometime during the 2025-26 school year.
When that happens, the County of Sacramento Office of Education will become responsible for appointing an overseer who will have total control of the district, essentially rendering the district school board powerless.
With that being the case, and having nothing to worry about in terms of a challenge to seats on the school district board, the teacher union has now pivoted its political strategy to take control of the county office board, so it can dictate who will be appointed overseer.
As is almost always the case, when the teacher union decides to get involved in races, it provides resources at a level that none can match.
Meanwhile, having come to realize that the brokenness of Sacramento Unified is leading to an exodus, CTA is ensuring that at least some of the other surrounding school districts approve new collective bargaining agreements that, over time, would make them as broken as Sacramento Unified, thereby eliminating what’s motivating the exodus:
The belief that something better can be attained, which Andrew Broy in his recent straight up no chaser discussion with me identified to be our biggest enemy.
Not the teacher union itself, but the belief that nothing better can be provided to students and families so clearly wanting more.
As Pat does in her column, it is wise to highlight what I am not saying here.
I am not saying that every school district is as broken as Sacramento Unified is. Indeed, as challenging as circumstances are in DC right now, Pat’s column also shows something important: because charter schools have grown to serve nearly 50% of students in the nation’s capital, an argument can be made that DC has made far more progress toward excellence and equity than Sacramento has. Our communications should reflect that fact.
Nor am I saying – as Pat also made clear in her column – that the people working within district systems are in some way less inclined toward the good than reformers are. All of us have close friends working within district systems and know this to be the case.
And I am sure as hell not saying that this is a war.
This is simply public education as we know it: a geography in which those most needing better public education are most subject to its brokenness.
A circumstance in which there is little equity to lose.
Or excellence.
And things will ebb and flow on the political side of things. But on the education side, there is neither ebb nor flow, but continued wallowing, if not outright descent.
Our task is to continue building as quickly as we can the new solutions that will be needed amid the exodus.
And to build our advocacy strength so that ourselves and others with capacity and aligned values can partner to make things better.
Because thought exercises are now turning into features on the landscape.
As Pat describes it, this is the very geography of public education.
The path forward remains the same as it has ever been.
It starts with being willing to say the forbidden thing.
Which is that, sadly, our public education system just isn’t that public.
And that it doesn’t have to be this way.
We have it within ourselves to make things better.
That is the moral voice of the national charter school movement.
And it is speaking with greater clarity today than ever before.