Op-Ed: This November, vote no on racism, classism and charter schools

Recently, the Tufts Daily published an article entitled, “Petition 15-31: Why you should support charter school expansion in November.” I intend to counter that point; simply put, this article will explain why I believe you should vote not to support charter school expansion in Massachusetts this November.

Charter schools have been increasingly touted as the solution to the "achievement gap," which some know to be the markedly lower performance on educational measures by students of color or lower socioeconomic status.

I would argue that the “achievement gap” is a misleading term, as it immediately problematizes the students who are being outperformed. In this vein, charter schools serve as a quick fix for the so-called “achievement gap;” instead of examining our educational system and how it could consistently fail students of color or students from low-income backgrounds, we can simply build charter schools.

Charter schools are no more than a distraction from the real issue in our education system: our schools have historically oppressed students of color and economically disadvantaged students, and we have made little progress in addressing or changing it.

The original Daily article provides weak evidence to persuade its readers to vote to add 12 new charter schools this year. In the first paragraph, the author asserts that, “If enacted, the referendum would provide thousands of underprivileged students with access to greater education and more opportunity.”

Before I attempt to deconstruct the racist and classist claim that “underprivileged students” will have access to “greater education,” and how this rhetoric plays into the fundamental issue with charter schools, I would like to counter the other reasons the author offers for voting yes on this referendum.

The author tackles the common criticism that charter schools teach to the test by citing an unknown study from a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University. However, this does little to refute this criticism and nothing to explain why the state should expand charter schools at the cost of the resources and funding of public schools.

Charter schools are funded by the school districts that send the students. The idea is that however much the school district would have spent on this student is the amount that they will now pay the charter school, which is taking over the student’s education.

It seems simple, but those differences add up. According to the Massachussetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MDESE), Boston Public Schools are projected to divert approximately $137 million to charter schools next year; Somerville Public Schools will pay a little over $7 million.

The loss of funding is felt deeply amongst public schools in the area. They must still pay the fixed costs of operating the school, such as running after-school programs, paying teachers and providing resources to students, but with less funding as families buy into the promises of charter schools. Each public school student feels the shift of funding from their school to charter schools.

Recognizing the massive strain this places on schools, the state is legally obligated to fully reimburse schools for the first year they see an increased amount in their payouts to charter schools, and then smaller amounts for five years after.

In Fiscal Year 2016 alone, schools across the state lost $29 million to reimbursement shortfalls, and in the last three budget cycles, the state has underfunded  local schools’ reimbursements by a combined $142 million according to MDESE and Save Our Public Schools. In the coming years, as charter school enrollment increases and public figures continue to glorify the test results they produce, we will surely see these numbers skyrocket into millions of more dollars lost for our public schools.

There is no attempt to explain or justify this massive financial blow to our public schools and the thousands of students they teach, but instead the author moves to argue against the idea that taking students from public schools to charter schools is a “brain drain,” so to speak.

The author claims this argument is a common criticism, which is simply not true. The most common criticisms are funding and the abandonment of our entire public school system, which I will soon address. Either way, the author makes a weak comparison between charter schools and AP classes, stating that putting students in AP or honors classes is a diversion of funding, yet no one denounces those classes.

However, there is a difference between shifting funding within a school to create an AP class in order to give students the chance to earn college credit, and losing millions of dollars in the operating budget with no reimbursement. Public schools in Massachusetts will lose $450 million this year in funding to charter schools, which is incomparable to the effects of AP or honors classes.

Next, the author cites yet another study to prove the broad point that charter schools in Boston are more “effective” than local public schools and charter schools nationwide.

The study, out of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, concludes that Massachusetts’ charter schools report significant gains in math and reading test scores compared to students enrolled in public schools.

Now we have reached the last and strongest argument against charter schools.

Yes, charter schools in Massachusetts have recently demonstrated that they can boost the test scores of the students they take in. If education were simply the sum of excellent test scores and graduating, then there would be no reason to deny the expansion of charter schools.

However, we know that this is not the case. Education is a human experience, a relationship between student, teacher, school, family and community, comprised of the interactions inside those circles and the intersection of identities and culture.

Thus, if the issue were solely that “some” students are not learning reading and math, it would then make sense to create separate charter schools for these students and implement the rigorous “no excuses” curricula that charter schools typically employ.

However, it is not “some” students, but a specific group of students. Massachusetts’ charter schools enroll significantly more economically disadvantaged students than traditional public schools, around three times as many black students and 1.5 times as many Hispanic students. Consistently, it is the same students from the same backgrounds.

These are the students the author is referring to when they say the “underprivileged” students of Massachusetts: students of color. Students living in urban areas. Economically disadvantaged students.

I want to challenge this. Why are black or Hispanic students more likely to fail the reading and math tests in the first place? Why does a student’s household income serve to closely predict their test scores? If school is supposed to be an equalizer, why do we see such unequal outcomes?

These are the real questions we should be asking; not, how can we get these kids to test well so that we can graduate them and perpetuate the cycle of inequality?

Charter schools serve as an excuse for not examining inequality in this country, and instead allow us to make students of color or students from low-income families the problem. By saying the fault lies with the student for failing — and not the system for failing the student — charter school proponents suggest that the problem can then be solved simply by taking a small percentage of these students and placing them in separate charter schools.

Problematizing these students for failing to succeed in our public school systems, rather than examining the forces acting on these students that make academic achievement more difficult, must end. Until then, there can be no real progress in eradicating racism, classism and oppression in our education system as it operates on low-income/urban/students of color in Greater Boston and Massachusetts.

We must cease patting ourselves on the back for creating these charter schools to help poor, “underprivileged” students, while many of us are complicit in the systems that make it nearly impossible for them to succeed. Until we decide to recognize the oppression that still exists in this country, instead of blaming it on bad teachers or oversized classrooms, charter schools will do nothing.

We can take the black, Hispanic and low-income students in our public schools and put them in new schools, but racism will still exist. Classism will still exist. They may graduate with better reading and math scores, but they will surely still enter a world that would see them incarcerated, impoverished or killed.

We do not need quick-fix, easily digestible solutions. We must recognize oppression as it is carried out in this country and resolve to end it through our policies, actions, words and listening, beginning with this referendum in November. Vote NO on Petition 15-31 and NO on creating more charter schools.

 

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