When I was in school, a wise teacher once told me “it’s funny how often the hardest thing to do, and the right thing to do, are the same thing” (I believe she was quoting a movie). I think of this little proverb often these days when I listen to our politicians on the TV and radio. So often, all our politicians, even ones I happen to like, try to sell solutions to our problems as if they’re so simple; “just do this, and everything will be wonderful!” Sometimes I wish we would all just stop with this nonsense; political problems are complicated, messy and hard to solve. Even the best solution to a political problem is going to have unforeseen consequences, and entail certain sacrifices. When we forget this, we get stuck into a rhetoric of shallow promises of quick and easy fixes; and when we get so stuck, we’re more vulnerable to being taken advantage of.
Charter schools are a perfect example of this ‘quick-fix’ exploitation at work. Faced with the extraordinarily complex realities of trying to educate millions of children across 50 states, as well as the historically entrenched legacy of racism and inequality in our public education system, Charter proponents promised quick fixes and miraculous, market-driven solutions. Even now, with rhetoric dressed up in the trappings of Civil Rights and egalitarianism, they try to push these unaccountable, parasitic institutions on vulnerable communities as a cost saving bandage slapped across gaping wounds of injustice and oppression. But what we’ve found, and are continuing to find, is that Charter schools are bullshit. They’ve always been bullshit. We don’t even need to look at all the specific examples of ways in which they’ve failed, we just need to consider the following:
If we accept the principle that American children have a civil right to be educated, then any argument that would seek to legitimize the existence of Charter schools instead serves only to demonstrate why we should increase our investment in public education. If we sincerely believe that having an educated youth is an intrinsic good, then for any ‘troubled’ school district where the youth is not adequately educated, we have an obligation to realize the intrinsic good of education to the greatest extent possible. Since Charter schools are always less accountable than public schools (because they have no democratic oversight), they can never realize the intrinsic good of education to the greatest extent possible. So, Charter schools necessarily fail to achieve the civil right owed to all American children to be educated.
What’s demonstrated by this slightly abstract line of thinking, which many of us here on DK already recognize, is that Charter schools necessarily represent an abandonment of the sacred American ideal that all children ought to be educated. Even if there are positive examples here and there, it’s no surprise that by and large they turn out to be shitty, because by resorting to them, we’re already giving up on trying to solve the hard problem of providing the best possible education to every American child. We’re already saying that the inequity of funding, and the failure to integrate urban and suburban school districts, is “just the way it is”. Or said another way, if we resort to Charter schools, then we’re really trying to take the easy way out.
One more note on easiness versus hardship- the easy thing to do, for a Presidential candidate, is not to make any enemies by coming out with strong pronouncements and unequivocal positions. This is particularly true with unequivocal positions about Charter schools, who have some exceptionally wealthy backers that have often been as friendly to Democrats as to Republicans. But as we’ve just seen, tolerating Charter schools ultimately means tolerating the abandonment of what was, until fairly recently, considered a hard-won and non-negotiable right, for every American: the right to a free public education. We should be skeptical of Presidential candidates who have supported the Charter school movement; their commitment to Progressive causes may not be as die-hard as they would like us to think. And if a Presidential candidate will not renounce the Charter movement, we should understand them to be fraudulent, whoever they are, and however pleasant their trappings of Progressivism might appear.