Analysis: Is Scapegoating Charter
Schools on Segregation Actually a Stealth Attack on Educational Excellence for
African-American Students?
January 9, 2018
DERRELL BRADFORD
You don’t have to look far to find
cogent rebuttals to a recent Associated Press story on charter schools and
segregation. That analysis — which blames charter schools for intensifying
segregation in public schools — is reminiscent of a political campaign where,
running from a suspect track record, an incumbent blames the challenger for
something he himself has done.
In this case, in a country that is
deeply segregated, and whose public schools are deeply segregated both because
of changing demographics and the precondition of residential assignment that
pervades the public system, charter schools are being scapegoated for creating
the racially divided and isolated world that the public schools themselves have
given us. It’s the sort of pablum only a politico could offer.
The arguments many have made to counter
this are spot-on, in particular about the difference between being assigned to
racial isolation versus minorities making affirmative choices to be with people
who share their skin color and, perhaps, their values. But there’s a piece
that’s missing, and so much turns on understanding it that we gloss over it at
our own peril.
The truth is, the attack on charters
and their perceived role in segregation reveals a deep and troubling double
standard. It’s powered by a desire to destroy black academic excellence — along
with those who seek it out and those who seek to provide it — in the name of
some other set of democratic fundamentals that, at this point, don’t exist even
on paper, let alone in reality. This line of attack illuminates the
preferential treatment non-black minorities and, of course, white Americans
receive in the realm of public education as a framework for schooling. A
framework that doesn’t work for millions of black and brown children but is
valorized over those we see having life-changing effects, particularly in our
large urban centers.
You can see this bias clearly when you
examine how traditional district loyalists and anti-charter activists defend
underperforming and overwhelmingly black neighborhood schools. These folks have
held these schools blameless during their destructive reign even as black
futures have been squandered within them.
They’ve been messaging test cases for
the limits of what schools can do (overcome poverty and now segregation) even
while they’ve remained central to arguments for more dollars and more people in
the system. While in the ’burbs, testing is an evil visited upon stressed-out
swizzle-stick-loving toddlers, in the ’hood — where learning is incidental —
they’ve been used as a crucible no teacher should have to bear. These schools
are the Jeanne d’Arc of “community” even as they rip communities apart, their
existence crucial to the overall notion of democratic rule even when that rule
is ruinous.
A shining and ironic example of this
can perhaps be seen in New York, where the Bloomberg-era school closure and
restart strategy — which has ultimately been proven beneficial — was attacked
by the United Federation of Teachers and its then-handmaiden the NAACP (a
relationship that has only metastasized). Consider Paul Robeson High School.
The school, named for the civil rights activist who was ultimately blacklisted
for his advocacy, undermined the very promise of his life of service even as it
failed to pass on his brilliance to its students. On his opposition to closing
the school, UFT President Michael Mulgrew offered, “We cannot continue with
policies that allow inequality not only to exist, but to flourish.”
One must wonder to which policies he
referred. The residential assignment policies that ensure schools like Robeson
are racially isolated? The adult deployment policies that result in the
students within them getting the least-experienced teachers who also have the
least support (an inequity now fully present as those in New York City’s Absent
Teacher Reserve pool are reassigned to low-income, high-minority schools)?
These are the sorts of policies we expect black families to support in the name
of democracy and community?
The policy menu of black academic
oppression is too long to list. But its record of ravaging the black community
is one that must not be lengthened in the name of an oppressive view that holds
student achievement among its lowest priorities.
Conversely (and courtesy of the charter
segregation lobby) we also see what these folks would have us attack: schools
working for black families that exist because those same families have made the
affirmative decision to attend them.
Depending on what cocktail parties you
attended this holiday season, you likely heard any number of derisive
characterizations of today’s modern-day Freedom Schools. Some outright
condescending (those families don’t know how to choose a school) to
counterintuitive (those schools cream the best families). The latter is
particularly destructive because it penalizes black families — some
foreign-born, some the home-grown descendants of slaves, but all of whom want a
better future for their children — for that quality we value most in every other
race and creed in the American patchwork: ambition.
Consider how this same ambition is
handled in some of America’s other numerous racial tranches. White urbane
families who like cities but still want accelerated education have an entire
network of segregated academies within the public schools, most commonly known
as gifted and talented, fostered for them. It’s widely known that these
programs pass over black kids, but no one seems to care, even as cries for the
expansion of these programs continue to grow.
Or look at the selective high school
admissions process in New York, where Stuyvesant High School — arguably the
crown jewel of the network — is overwhelmingly Asian (annually, the combined
black and Hispanic student cohort numbers in the single digits). Conservatives
defend the hard-work ethic of Asian families. Liberals cite Stuyvesant as a
bastion of excellence to which many other races should have access, even if it
means lowering the bar for entry.
This excellence is prized and sought
after even as Success Academy Charter Schools — among the state’s best schools
of any type — which brim over with black and brown kids, battles building by
building to get necessary space for its families. It is indeed easier for a
store that caters to “adult” interests to open in New York than it is to expand
opportunity for minority kids in charter schools. What’s the message being sent
here?
Black folks are unique in America
because we are often asked to sacrifice some notion of personal agency or
sovereignty “for the greater good” in manners that other groups are not asked
to and would never be expected to. Don’t protest police shootings because law
and order matter more than living and breathing. Give up school choice because
democratic school boards are more fundamental than if your kid is educated.
Don’t seek a school that may mirror your values and affirm your racial and
ethnic identity because integration and assimilation are more important, even
if the former is a problem of white preference and the latter potentially
undermines your child’s sense of self.
In this round of “segregationist”
attacks on charters (a line of reasoning now also core to union opposition
against charters as well), we see the latest in a long line of American school
policies that all amount to the same thing: a raucous and callous shout of “get
to the back of the line” to the country’s black families.
It’s a command to which no family,
charter or otherwise, should assent. Now or ever.
2 comments:
Would it be OK if I cross-posted this article to Writer Beat? There is no fee; I’m simply trying to add more content diversity for our community and I liked what you wrote. I’ll be sure to give you complete credit as the audthor. If "OK" please let me know via email.
Autumn
AutumnCote (at) WriterBeat (dot) com
I loved as much as you will receive carried out right here. The sketch is attractive, your authored subject matter stylish. nonetheless, you command get got an nervousness over that you wish be delivering the following. unwell unquestionably come more formerly again as exactly the same nearly a lot often inside case you shield this increase. disintegrating critical infrastructure
Post a Comment