If you had asked me my opinion on charter schools a few years ago, I would have said I didn’t like them. What bothered me most was their separateness. As a lifelong progressive democrat, I believed the greatest thing about the common school system was that it united people from different backgrounds on shared values and purpose. And the constant media reports of charter school scandals and scurrilous motives– for-profit schools, schools promoting religion, anti-government privatization . . . surely didn’t align with my values.
Last weekend, my daughter graduated from a charter school.
What changed my previous negative opinion and made me an advocate for charter schools?
In The Diverse Schools Dilemma, Mike Petrilli describes how parents are torn between their value system that supports public education and watching out for their child’s best interests.
But, is this really what a Democratic Education System looks like?
If you are one of the 40,000 students attending one of Columbus City’s high-poverty, D-rated schools, you are surrounded by lower-poverty districts with mostly A or B ratings.
But, unlike 80% of districts in the state, these neighboring districts don’t allow open enrollment, so you can’t choose a school outside the district where you live.
You don’t have equal opportunity to access a high quality education.
This same, deliberate economic separateness – where low-poverty, high-performing schools lock their doors against the poor – occurs across Ohio in Cleveland, Dayton, Cincinnati, and Toledo (to see an interactive visualization of Ohio’s high and low poverty districts and open enrollment, click here), and in most states.
We first escaped the long underperforming urban district by moving to the “golden ghetto” of a good district. But when my youngest was viciously cyber-bullied by schoolmates, the district’s disinterest in dealing with the problem led us to search for another option – this time seeking not only high-quality academics, but also a school that cared about climate.
Arts & College Preparatory Academy (ACPA) is a public charter school established in 2001 by a former Columbus City Schools teacher/administrator who was frustrated by how her daughter was being treated by peers at her local district school and the administration’s non-response. The school was created to “sustain a progressive teaching and learning culture that thrives on safety, acceptance, and inclusion, rigorous academics, a commitment to the arts, and college preparedness.”
Over the years, ACPA became a haven for kids who are different, marginalized, bullied or just drawn to the creative, quirky culture and arts-infused learning approach at the school. The social justice aspects of the school captured the attention of the State’s NPR affiliate (here) and MSNBC’s Alex Wagner (here). ACPA shares its innovative best practices with other schools and school boards through ACPA Voice, an online portal funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
ACPA is one of the most socioeconomically diverse and progressive schools in Ohio: it enrolls 58 percent low-income students, which is ten percentage points higher than the state average of 48 percent. Half of its students come from Columbus City schools and the other half come from 26 other districts, including rural districts and high-wealth suburban districts. (To see other purposefully socioeconomically diverse charter schools click here, and see Halley Potter and Richard Kahlenberg’s work here and here). Yet, when I tell our story to people I volunteered alongside with during the Kerry and Obama campaigns, I often don’t get very far. One of the most disheartening things over the years has been the closed minds of fellow liberals.
I’m working to help convince other Democrats that:
- We need to get real about how separate and unequal our public education system is. Residential segregation and school district boundaries cordon off good schools in good neighborhoods and restrict access to outsiders. We’re not being true to Horace Mann’s vision of education being the great equalizer.
- There are a few good options within urban districts (selective admission and lottery schools), but knowing how to navigate to them is difficult, and many parents aren’t “in the know.”
- Even good schools don’t serve every student well. Just as our family needed an option, some students who are struggling with certain barriers need dropout prevention and recovery schools. Some kids with special needs benefit from specialized environments. Some kids just prefer a different learning style or environment.
- The motivation behind (most) charter schools is that children’s lives are too precious to not keep trying to find something that works for every one of them.
- Most charter schools are no more “privatized” than other educational and social development programs for children and youth that liberals love, such as Head Start or Boys and Girls Clubs. They’re only “privatized” to the extent that they operate independently of a school district (although many are sponsored by school districts). They still have complete state oversight and must submit to state and federal accountability measures and financial audits.
- Many of the media reports of charter “scandals” are often unsubstantiated smear campaigns. Those that are credible are no more generalizable to the charter sector as a whole than are those that occur in traditional public schools and districts.
I couldn’t be more grateful for the courageous woman who started a school because of the simple need for a kind environment. My hope is that more progressives keep an open mind, listen to the experiences of children and their parents, and champion all American schoolchildren – in addition to their own – above all else.