Why the Racist History of the Charter School Movement Is Never Discussed

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/education/154425/why_the_racist_history_of_the_charter_school_movement_is_never_discussed/

As a parent I find it easy to understand the appeal of charter schools, especially for parents and students who feel that traditional public schools have failed them. As a historical sociologist who studies race and politics, however, I am disturbed both by the significant challenges that plague the contemporary charter school movement, and by the ugly history of segregationist tactics that link past educational practices to the troubling present.

The now-popular idea of offering public education dollars to private entrepreneurs has historical roots in white resistance to school desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The desired outcome was few or, better yet, no black students in white schools. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, one of the five cases decided in Brown, segregationist whites sought to outwit integration by directing taxpayer funds to segregated private schools.

Two years before a federal court set a final desegregation deadline for fall 1959, local newspaper publisher J. Barrye Wall shared white county leaders’ strategy of resistance with Congressman Watkins Abbitt: “We are working [on] a scheme in which we will abandon public schools, sell the buildings to our corporation, reopen as privately operated schools with tuition grants from [Virginia] and P.E. county as the basic financial program,” he wrote. “Those wishing to go to integrated schools can take their tuition grants and operate their own schools. To hell with 'em.”

Though the county ultimately refused to sell the public school buildings, public education in Prince Edward County was nevertheless abandoned for five years (1959-1964), as taxpayer dollars were funneled to the segregated white academies, which were housed in privately owned facilities such as churches and the local Moose Lodge. Federal courts struck down this use of taxpayer funds after a year. Still, whites won and blacks lost. Because there were no local taxes assessed to operate public schools during those years, whites could invest in private schools for their children, while blacks in the county—unable and unwilling to finance their own private, segregated schools—were left to fend for themselves, with many black children shut out of school for multiple years.

[DURHAM D]

1. Perhaps because our current President supports them.

[yurbud]

2. which I have yet to figure out why apart from pandering to the wealthy.

[Igel]

3. Lots of reasons.

But one is indifference to history. The history of an object or structure isn't its destiny. Neither can have intent. Neither can have motive. They are neither moral nor immoral. They can have uses. A use can be deemed morally good if it serves a morally good goal; a use can be deemed morally bad if it serves a morally bad goal. There are few objects that cannot have a morally acceptable goal; some objects don't lend themselves to one kind or goal or another, but that doesn't mean they can't have those uses.

People attribute motives and intents to objects. They attribute morality to objects and somehow believe that they carry some sort of aura or goal with them. People tend to be easily confused and superstitious. I put myself in this group sometimes, although I know better.

My kid's like this. If I'm using an old hatchet to chop wood he's okay with it. If I mentioned that it's the hatchet that I almost lopped off another kid's finger with when I was his age, he recoiled as though somehow the hatchet had agency. It needed to be disposed of--buried, tossed in the trash. Something. It's as though it's tainted by one single use 43 year's ago; perhaps it still has as it's goal the lopping off of a kid's fingers, perhaps his. Same hatchet. Still useful for chopping wood. Little Jimmy's blood wasn't holy; he didn't lose his finger.

Same for charter schools. They can be used for good or bad. Obama can recognize this and not let the history of how an abstract structure was used 60 years ago dictate their only possible use now. In Houston charter schools are mixed: They're often among the best and the worst. Most are minority-majority. The best charter schools are mostly black or brown. So are the worst.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

4. Well that was decisive.

Good writing though.