The reading assigned to our LC which we would make a current connection to was titled “How education turns school choice into a commodity” by Blake Lively. The article focused mainly on the concept of school choice and creating our education system into a market system. Market systems inherently favor the wealthy, therefore it is the poorer communities which are suffering. The article was very recent and specifically described how Donald Trump and his secretary of education, Betsy Devos have been proponents of this neoliberalism policy. With these themes in mind, I found an article titled, “Charter Schools Fail to Eradicate the Achievement Gap”. This article focused mainly on Charter schools with a required background knowledge of school choice vouchers mentioned in the original article. This was an aptly strongly worded article describing the current failings of the education system. The article started off by mentioning the market system that school vouchers perpetuate as stated in the previous article. If these themes were not already prevalent enough in today’s modern day I compared this sentiment of “the majority produce the wealth but only a handful own it ” to the French Revolution which had obviously detrimental consequences. The article outlines charter school’s main goals which were to close the achievement gap and rescue kids from failing schools, empowering parents with the choice to send their kids to a better performing school. However, research has shown that charter schools have not even slimmed the achievement gap they were so focused on eradicating. Charter schools have been doomed since their beginning with at least 3,000 closing in that time. This creates an endless cycle for students who went to public school, had their school shut down on the grounds of them being “underperforming”, moved to a charter school via voucher, then had the charter school shut down. Research has already shown the negative effects on academic performance for kids who are forced to move around due to a parents job change or other reasons, now the school system is giving more possibilities for students being forcibly relocated. Even so, charter schools have not been shown to strengthen academic performance in any subject. Keeping in mind all of these problematic issues, charter schools have been known for corruption and deception. During class discussion there was one student who attended a charter school, they gave input on this topic of corruption by stating that their charter school claimed to have higher attendance records then in actuality, therefore they received more funds, which they did with as they pleased. 

The most troubling part of all of this to me was a section in the article that stated, “people do not think education should be for sale. They want an end to the neoliberal wrecking of public education.” It still stuns me how undemocratic our country can be sometimes. This example of people wanting an end to neoliberalism, while neoliberalism continues to take over, reminds me of other unpopular legislation that still gets passed; for example most of the population, despite political party, can agree there should be some sort of gun control. And yet no action has been taken. This is because politicians are making money from lobbyists such as the NRA and benefit from guns not being regulated. Just as rich politicians make money from lobbyists, so do the rich in this school system. Our society already runs in such a way that the rich have everything and the poor have nothing, our school system should not run this way. 

Charter schools claim to provide “parental choice” and “parental power” however the choice is not truly there. They have a choice between a public school predetermined to fail by the rich people offering vouchers to get students out as soon as they get in or they have the choice of a problematic, corrupt, and unstable charter school. The biggest problem is summarized well by the article, “the rich are obsessed mainly with maximizing profit with impunity”, meaning they know they will not face retribution, because money is power. 

I asked the class for some suggestions on what should be done about the corruption of these schools. There were a wide range of answers, one that stuck out is that charter schools should have some sort of regulation to hold them accountable. While this is very true it poses the age old dilemma of the government cannot interfere with private institutions. A parallel exists here with other corrupt private organizations such as private prisons making profit off of their prisoners. Especially when the prisoners are forced to do work with little to no pay. I believe the problem exists in the institution itself. Even when public schools are “held accountable for their actions” it is not done it the proper way. That leads to legislation such as “no child left behind” where school funding gets cut when schools most need it. I believe there needs to be people who are actually teachers or educators mandating the school policy, not politicians who only see money and success without caring about any individual students future lives. 

Source: Tell, S. (2020, February 8). Charter Schools Fail to Eradicate the Achievement Gap. Retrieved from https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/02/charter-schools-fail-to-eradicate-the-achievement-gap/#footnote_ 0_101238 

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