Why is my neighborhood school a charter?
A lot of my friends in Philly have kids. The kids are toddlers now, but soon they'll be going to school. So we're all thinking about where to send them to kindergarten. It's a tough decision for those of us that want to do the best thing for the kids, community, and city. These things can conflict with our values because the school district in this city is so complicated.
A quick overview of the situation facing parents right now. First, there are traditional public schools operated by the school district. These schools have catchment areas. They’re obligated by law to accept all students in the catchment. Families living in those boundaries can send their kids to that school, more or less (some very intense catchments can actually be competitive for families living in the catchment).
Second, we have the special admit and magnet processes, where families can apply to send their kids to a different catchment's traditional public school. If you don't want to send your kid to the school you're zoned for, but you want to send them to a traditional public school, you can apply. There's no guarantee you'll get a spot and they're changing the criteria they use to make these decisions. It's not quite a random lottery. It's now more of a weighted lottery I think. (Once you get beyond elementary schools, there's another application process for magnet schools too.)
Third are the charter schools. These schools get public school money from the district but are not run by or administered by the district. The district gives them money but doesn't operate them. Charter school teachers aren't in the teachers union. Charter school boards aren't subject to the same state or local regulations that traditional schools are. A third of schools in Philadelphia are charter schools. These schools for the most part don't have catchments or zones (except for Renaissance schools, which we’ll talk more about later), but rather accept students based on a variety of criteria and protocols.
Fourth are the private schools where you have to pay tuition, whether Montessori, Waldorf, Catholic, Friends, or Free Schools.
The whole thing is supposed to be about choice, or as the district puts it, "finding your fit." The gambit back in the heady days of neoliberalism was that parents should be able to choose their kids' schools and the power of market competition would force bad schools to close or catch up rather than just let them keep on keeping on and miseducating students. The subtext of this process in big cities suffering from the wake of deindustrialization, is a real estate grab, of which charter schools are a part. But what's emerged is a system where not every school gets enough of what they need, or what they think they need, since there was only so much money to spend on them to begin with--like preparing a dinner party for ten guests and then seven of them bring friends but don't tell you--leaving many people confused and frustrated and under-served.
The whole thing leaves a lot to parents. You have to make your choice. It's individualized, competitive, and intense. It can be a difficult and overwhelming conversation to have between caregivers and friends because people want their kids to go to a great school and they want to support social structures they value, like social democracy, transparency, and the public good. But the school district itself doesn't easily permit everyone to make a choice they're happy with.
If you send your kid to a charter school, you might get better facilities, unique-seeming programs, and marginally better instruction, but you have to give up a lot of those aforementioned values since they're privately operated and take money from the traditional public schools. If you send your kid to a traditional public school, you might be helping to support the public system and unions (and it'll probably be easier to get to), but--unless you live in very specific wealthy catchments--it might not be the 'best' school if you ask your friends, neighbors, websites, family, etc. Even though the principals and teachers can be great despite the bad rap they get from the largely racist messaging around them, their building may be falling apart. Maybe there's no air conditioning or there's mold in the library or an asbestos scare. If you send your kid to a private school you have to pay both your property taxes and the tuition.
These decisions then pile up and make a big difference in society. As parents decide, they shift the structure of both school and the larger city landscape, since enrollments can influence which schools close, stay open, get the facilities work they need, and other aspects of the urban landscape. Property values go up when a school is perceived as being 'good' and stay down when the opposite is the case. Increasing property values draw further positive attention to a catchment and vice versa. Charter schools can also influence development, since they can independently purchase and renovate or build new construction as part of larger city plans to change neighborhoods. If more people go to a charter school, the company running that school gets more revenue to spend as it pleases (and can be quite difficult to track). In a previous post, I've called this dynamic the cell structure of American racial capitalism.
Because it's so fraught and fascinating, I start a lot of conversations about this stuff with our friends at playdates, the playground, and daycare. I probably do this too much. In one recent conversation, I got a question I couldn't answer.
Some friends of mine live in the Huey catchment of West Philadelphia. When they looked at their catchment school, the traditional public school that they're zoned for, they were surprised to see that it was a charter school. They want to support the traditional public system, but the school that they're zoned for is a charter. It's kind of a contradiction. They don't get a choice even though the whole system is about choice. If they wanted a catchment school they'd have to go to the district for a spot somewhere else, either through a special program or applying to the school selection process and try to get a spot at another catchment school.
They asked me: what's going on here? How did this happen? Even though I'm a professor of education policy I didn't actually know the answer to this question. So I looked it up.
Race to the...
Here's the big-picture story in very broad strokes. Rewind to 2002. The arch-neoliberal education policies enacted by the Bush II administration, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, had been endorsed by both political parties, with progressive-ish names like Ted Kennedy associated with it. Charter schools were at the center of this policy. Why?
Conservatives wanted more virulent voucher programs which would give parents checks to send their kids to whatever private school they wanted. Neoliberals had taken charge of the Democrats and agreed that schools were failing (even though they actually weren’t, as I’ve written about), didn't feel particularly attached to them, and agreed with conservatives that something should be done about it. But the Democrats didn't want vouchers since they were supposed to be nominally aligned with teachers unions. Also, vouchers were extremely unpopular (though they're gaining steam now nationally).
A decade before, in the early 90s, progressive educators, including the president of the biggest teachers union, had developed the concept of the charter school, which was supposed to let teachers and community members participate more in schooling and create a pathway for changes to an otherwise hard-to-change structure.
Instead of their progressive vision, charter policy emerged as a kind of compromise between the voucher-hungry right and the neoliberal squishy center, the latter of whom were basically Reaganites but nicer and happy to abandon teacher unions because they were the only political game in town for anyone to the left of New Gingrich given the two-party system. The right wanted to take down the public system. The center was ambivalent about the public system. Charters were something a lot of powerful people didn’t hate.
No Child Left Behind, known for its punitively high-stakes standardized tests, was thus a very pro-charter policy and became the law of the land in 2002, taking hold over the next five years as the Bush administration's flagship domestic policy. Meanwhile, that administration (and many Democrats too) committed the atrocity of the Iraq invasion and let the financial crisis explode under their noses.
As the market tanked and the war on terror became a toxic absurdity, Obama got elected President. While so much seemed different about him, his administration's education policy was basically the same as Bush's and in a way favored the charter school intervention more. As part of the new administration's attempt to not let American capitalism fall apart, they created a $3 billion fund for education. It was called Race to the Top (RTTP).
RTTP included funds for "turning around" schools that had underperformed on the new high stakes standardized tests put in place by No Child Left Behind and other assessments. But the money to turn these schools around encouraged shifts in governance and financing of the schools themselves. It wasn't just more money to help the hurting school. It was money to change the constitution of the hurting school.
One of the methods to change schools was to turn them over to charter operators. This was called the federal restart model.
Philadelphia, under the direction of leaders trained in neoliberal education policy at Eli Broad Foundation-funded programs--first Arlene Ackerman and then William Hite--was overseen by the conservative state-appointed School Reform Commission. These were the people in charge of Philly's schools and they went all in on the neoliberal approach at the federal level.
This arrangement of state power shouldn't be under-stated. The federal government was pro-charter. The state government was pro-charter. The city government, taking its cues from the local business elite, was pro-charter. The school district was pro-charter. There were people throughout these levels of government that were against the changes, and there was actually a huge groundswell led by parents, teachers, and organizers that prevented the full characterization of the district. First they fought off Edison, Inc’s efforts and then later won school by school fights, preventing takeovers (which is how socialist city councilmember Kendra Brooks came to prominence. But it was a tough fight, particularly because certain traditional ways that communities might push back again district policy--like voting out the school board--weren't open to Philadelphians. The district's 'board' was the state-appointed commission.
So the district 'raced to the top' with what they called the Renaissance Charters program, which turned traditional public schools over to charters following the federal restart model. According to the district's website there are currently 18 such schools still operating in the city, including my friends' zoned school, one of the last to be transformed in this way: Global Leadership Academy Southwest (GLA) in the old Huey Elementary School Catchment.
"Still a problem"
The story about Huey and GLA at the local level has some spicy twists. WHYY's coverage tells it in brief. GLA got its first charter for a school on West Girard Avenue in 2000. It's one of the oldest charter operators in the city. In 2006, a veteran teacher from the district, Dr.Naomi Johnson-Booker--who'd founded the operator originally--became the charter's CEO. According to non-profit disclosure data, she probably makes around $400,000 a year, which is quite high. After a big fire at their new construction project in 2011 on West Girard they finished that school. In 2017, Huey was made their second campus in addition to being the takeover to charters in the Renaissance program. Some called it a hostile takeover based on how GLA lobbied for it, but that’s where things get tense.
The spicy part came in 2019. It turns out Johnson-Booker and GLA never wanted to take over Huey. According to crack education reporter (and great organizer) Greg Windle, Johnson-Booker called out the school board at a meeting, saying that the district had asked her to take Huey Elementary with a wink and nod: what she really wanted was a high school for GLA middle school students to attend. She said that the district had promised that if GLA took over Huey, then a high school would come next. That never happened. WHYY quotes her as saying:
the Huey takeover was a “horrendous situation” that hurt her charter organization financially.
“We sunk a million bucks, over a million bucks, in the school to try and make it safe,” said Johnson-Booker. “And it’s still a problem.”
Indeed, it does seem like a problem. First, this maybe answers a question I have that I couldn't find a ton of information about: why were certain schools in certain areas (none in the northeast of the city, eg) turned over to charters? According to what criteria and process did the 18 schools in the Renaissance program get picked? Specifically, why Huey? There are general answers like the NCLB test scores criteria in the federal restart program, which furnished standards according to which certain interventions were recommended by the SRC and superintendent, like the "intervene" category (read: make the school into a charter). But I want more details.
One route to finding the story might be through this Dale Mezzacappa article from 2016 (always read her on Philly education!) describing how Hite wanted to turn Wister elementary to a charter school, then changed his mind because he saw some progress on test scores, but was then overruled at the last minute by the School Reform Commission, who gave the charter to Mastery Charter schools. Mastery admitted it had been illegally lobbying and organizing parents to support the turnover.
If Johnson-Booker is right, which many doubt, then there are closed door meetings that happen in negotiations. That's a transparency problem.
Second, the school itself isn't doing great apparently, at least to the reigning ways we make these evaluations. Watchdog group Alliance for Philadelphia's Public Schools (APPS) has detailed coverage of GLA and charter school politics and finance in the city. Coleman Poses, using public data, found that certain K-8 Renaissance schools have lost the same number of catchment students as traditional public schools during 2017-2020.
So parents didn't pick the zoned charter school more than traditional catchment schools, they sent their kids elsewhere. And scores haven't gone up. The real estate education-washing website Niche gives the school a D+, which isn't a good sign. But that's a racist website. The school and its community will take issue with all this, of course. Some of current my students work at this school, which is making me take a broader view of it.
There's recent research showing some marginal benefits to turnaround programs nationally, but even more recent research claims that there's not really even a theoretical framework for figuring out whether it works (which shows you how evidenced-based criteria are ideological to say the least). The school has newer facilities at Girard (not necessarily at Huey), a program that lets students travel, and they can make their own rules separate from the district. There hasn't been a lot of time for them to 'turn things around', but the charter restart concept might have been a solution looking for a problem from the beginning: is the way to turn things around to essentially reconstitute the institution?
The question of how
In the charter school debate, the two prominent sides will have you believe the situation is simple. One side says that charter schools are great opportunities for students--particularly working class students of color--to get a better education, stricter behavior norms, cleaner/newer facilities, and safer environment than neighborhood public schools. Charters do this by using public money to finance independently-operated governance and administration, that have difficulties themselves with special education designations. The public schools weren't great before charters, so at least this is a slightly better option. They're good!
The other side says charter schools are parasitic on the public good. They're neoliberal. They weaken unions. They make things more unequal. They don't make much of a difference academically and it's harder to know what's actually happening in them. Are they kicking kids out unfairly? Are they complying with special education regulations? Who's actually in charge of them? By continually funneling money to charters, all schools suffer--including the charters--because no one gets what they need in terms of enrollments and resources. They're bad!
The next most obvious insight is that neither party is fully correct here. No matter how pro-charter school you are, you have to admit that the distribution of resources in a district like Philadelphia negatively impacts everyone involved (the dinner party situation I described). You're probably also aware that it's hard to know who's making the decisions, it's hard to make changes in governance structures, and it's hard to follow the money in the charter school world.
At the same time, no matter how anti-charter you are, you have to admit that there are a lot of these schools to which many families of color are deeply attached. These schools have stuff the public schools don't (like air conditioning), and they're free. You also have to admit that the school district itself and the teachers union aren't bastions of social justice, excellent management and governance either. One hot take//question I have on this score is whether the Paul Prescod campaign for State Senate last cycle--which was staunchly (correctly, I'd say) against charters-- lost support from working class communities of color; parents and grandparents who like and want and support and are attached to charter schools don't want to hear this kind of critique.
I don't have too much to add beyond these scattered thoughts. To put it plainly, I don't see a way socialists can or should support charter schools. But that doesn't answer the question of how exactly to organize around them given the terrain above. One thought-provoking left analysis of the situation worth reading is a recent essay by Black critical theorist Quentin Wheeler-Bell called "Black Support of Neoliberal School Choice and the Politics of Black Empowerment." It's helpful in thinking through why Black communities might support neoliberal policies like charters and how to think about countering that support. He writes that:
Deep disagreements exist within the African American community over why Blacks are oppressed and how to understand their oppression, the nature of their disadvantages, and the remedies to such problems. And these disagreements affect why Blacks might support neoliberal school choice policies...domination has distorted and repressed debates within the Black public sphere, thus lending support to neoliberal choice policies. [Wheeler-Bell] recovers and reconstructs four Black philosophical perspectives — (1) disillusioned Black liberals, (2) modern Black nationalists, (3) Black Marxists, and (4) Black egalitarians [to help understand the situation].
Wheeler-Bell calls for Black democratic empowerment in an education for liberation, focusing on how Black communities form their understandings of neoliberal policies in the face of racial capitalist oppression. (If you're interested in this line, also check out Lester Spence's book Knocking the Hustle.) I think if those organizing against charters took this perspective into account strategically and tactically, the struggle to re-democratize and improve actually existing public schools could garner more support.
In the meantime, after all this, I'm not sure how to advise my friends who live in the Huey catchment. I've written about the perils of choosing a school in neoliberal times. I still don't know what we'll do with our kid for sure. At the very least, given what I found for this post, I can explain why the Huey catchment school is a charter school from the socialist perspective.