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Choices or Rights? Charter Schools and the Politics of Choice-Based Education Policy Reform

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In the last two decades, charter schools have had some extraordinary accomplishments. And yet, we all know that the dream of the charter movement is not yet a dream fulfilled.

Arne Duncan

[W]hen choice is glorified as the ultimate tool by which people can shape their private lives, very little is left over for social critique.

Salecl (2011)

Abstract

Simply put, charter schools have not lived up to their advocates’ promise of equity. Using examples of tangible civil rights gains of the twentieth century (e.g. Brown v. Board, Lau v. Nichols) and extending feminist theories of invisible labor to include the labor of democracy, the authors argue that the charter movement renders invisible the labor that secured civil protections for historically marginalized groups. The charter movement hangs a quality public education—previously recognized as a universal guarantee—on the education consumer’s ability to navigate a marketplace. The authors conclude that the neoliberal agenda of positioning choice as the best mechanism for securing an education rolls back the rights that were already secured through the labor of democracy.

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Notes

  1. See, for example, Devine (2004).

  2. Black (2013).

  3. See, for example, Saltman (2004).

  4. Watkins (2004).

  5. See, for example, Saltman (2012, 8).

  6. See, for example, Federici (1975), Vogel (2000); for analysis on a global scale, see Mies (1986) and Safri and Graham (2010).

  7. Dean (2009, 76).

  8. See “Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA),” American Psychological Association, http://www.apa.org/about/gr/issues/disability/idea.aspx.

  9. See Shuffelton, “Parental Involvement and Public Schools: Disappearing Mothers in Labor and Politics,” SPED, etc. This reference is to the single-spaced version of the paper, p. 2, first paragraph.

  10. For more on the history of neoliberalism, see Mirowski and Plehwe (2009).

  11. Keppel (1995, 179).

  12. Duncan, “Remarks by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on the 50th Anniversary of Congress Passing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.”

  13. This is not only seen in charter schools. With the growth of Eli Broad’s “leadership academy,” public school administrators are taught how to move public schools to charter schools. See English and Crowder (2012). Retrieved from http://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/vol20/iss2/. Accessed July 25, 2016.

  14. See, for example, Kohn (2004) and Ladson-Billings (2006).

  15. Bowles and Gintis (1976/2011, 5).

  16. See Santoro, “Cassandra in the Classroom: Teaching and Moral Violence,” SPED, etc. This reference is to the cloud version, p. 8.

  17. Manna and McGuinn (2013). See, also, Sidorkin, “Education for Jobless Security,” SPED. This is in reference to the cloud version, bottom of p. 4 where Sasha uses school as “a place where we learn to read, write, and understand math in order to become…” The point is that schools are already privatized in their preparatory aims toward neoliberal globalization. We are not defending this encroachment of corporatization, but a more democratically radical alternative to both what is and what is represented by the vast majority of charter schools in the U.S.

  18. Harvey (2005, 33).

  19. Orfield (2013, 47–48).

  20. Saltman, The Failure of Corporate School Reform, (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 7).

  21. Villavicencio (2013, 16).

  22. Pearson et al. (2015).

  23. Here, we wish to underscore that we are not suggesting that parents of English Language Learners or other recently arrived families are somehow deficient, or otherwise incapable of making appropriate school choices. Rather, we wish to highlight the barriers that are created when public education is no longer understood as a guaranteed social service, but instead as a commodity that one must seek out. Linguistically diverse families are inherently at a disadvantage when navigating complex systems of school choice.

  24. Buckley and Sattin-Bajaj (2011).

  25. de Sousa (2012).

  26. Buras (2015, 175).

  27. Ibid., 179.

  28. Ibid., 180.

  29. Saltman and Damage (2000, 39). This, of course, extends beyond merely making the ‘wrong’ choice. In many cases, parents are in the position to choose one of many failing schools—a perversion of choice at best.

  30. Scott (2013, 6).

  31. Ibid., 8.

  32. Frankenberg and Lee (2003).

  33. Ibid.

  34. Gary Miron, Jessica L. Urschel, William J. Mathis, and Elana Tornquist, “Schools without Diversity: Education Management Organizations, Charter Schools, and the Demographic Stratification of the American School System,” EPIC/EPRU: 15. Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/EMO-Seg.pdf (Accessed May 28, 2015); and Danzig and Matthis (2015). See also, Frankenberg et al. (2011).

  35. Again, the irony of this logic is that U.S. economic hegemony is a form of monopoly power. Were those who make these arguments truly committed to their free market ideals, they would see the value in other countries competing more evenly with the U.S. in the global marketplace.

  36. Market logic and accountability measures certainly already existed in public schools. Our argument is that charters have been instrumental in furthering the privatization agenda.

  37. Saltman, The Failure of Corporate School Reform, 10.

  38. Frankenberg and Siegel-Hawley (2013, 129).

  39. Duncan, “The Charter Mindset Shift: From Conflict to Co-Conspirators”.

  40. Duncan (2010).

  41. Buras, Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space, 176–177.

  42. Crutchfield (2015).

  43. Ibid., 33.

  44. See, for example, Miron, Urschel, Mathis, and Tornquist.

  45. Winters (2015).

  46. Heilman (2013, 366).

  47. Ibid., 375–379.

  48. Duncan, “Remarks by Secretary Arne Duncan to the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools”.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Duncan, “Remarks by Secretary Arne Duncan to the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools,” USDOE. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/remarks-secretary-arne-duncan-national-alliance-public-charter-schools (Accessed July 15, 2015).

  51. See, for example, Lipman (2011) and Ball and Junemann (2012).

  52. Saltman, The Failure of Corporate School Reform, 58–73.

  53. Norris (2011, 6).

  54. DeBray et al. (2014, 177).

  55. Stulberg (2015).

  56. Ibid., 40.

  57. Stern and Hussain (2015, 67).

  58. For full treatment of these issues, see Buras, Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space.

  59. Stern and Hussain, 82.

  60. Eckes (2015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Nicholas J. Eastman, Morgan Anderson & Deron Boyles

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Correspondence to Nicholas J. Eastman.

Additional information

Duncan (2013) “The Charter Mindset Shift: From Conflict to Co-Conspirators,” USDOE, accessed July 14, 2015, http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/charter-mindset-shift-conflict-co-conspirators. Duncan delivered this speech on July 2, 2013 at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ annual conference, the theme of which was “Delivering on the Dream.” For a more recent example of how Duncan co-opts the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement and links its aims to family and individual empowerment through market-based school reforms, see Duncan (2015a) “Asserting Your Right to a Great Education for Your Child,” USDOE, http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/asserting-your-right-great-education-your-child; and Duncan (2015b) “Remarks by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on the 50th Anniversary of Congress Passing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/remarks-us-secretary-education-arne-duncan-50th-anniversary-congress-passing-elementary-and-secondary-education-act. Here Duncan links contemporary school reforms with those of the Civil Rights Movement and praises the pro-privatization former Secretary of Education and current chair of the Senate education subcommittee, Lamar Alexander, for his lifelong commitment to fighting racial discrimination and increasing educational opportunities.

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Eastman, N.J., Anderson, M. & Boyles, D. Choices or Rights? Charter Schools and the Politics of Choice-Based Education Policy Reform. Stud Philos Educ 36, 61–81 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9541-4

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