There are many diversionary dichotomies within the unscrupulous web of charter school disinformation that have long distorted social consciousness and undermined the fight for social progress and high quality education for all. Some include the following:
- regulated verses unregulated charter schools
- for-profit verses nonprofit charter schools
- good verses bad charter schools
- high-performing verses low-performing charter schools
- mom-and-pop verses corporate charter schools
- school district-approved verses “totally autonomous” charter schools
- well-funded verses poorly-funded charter schools
- no-excuses verses regular charter schools
- urban verses suburban charter schools
- small verses large charter schools
- online verses brick-and-mortar charter schools
These and other misleading contrasts are designed to maximize confusion and abolish the consciousness and outlook that the core underlying issue with all charter schools is their privatized, marketized, and corporatized character. All other considerations are generally secondary, superficial, diversionary, or false in comparison to this key issue.
The privatized, marketized, and corporatized character of all charter schools is the central issue regardless of the different forms of charter schools. Form and content are not the same. Appearance and essence are not identical. It is important to look past the diversity of charter schools and appreciate their internal state; i.e., what is common and central to all of them. This will provide a much deeper understanding of charter schools. Forms and appearances are often misleading and superficial.
The privatized, marketized, and corporatized character of all charter schools is the reason why all charter schools have nothing to do with public right and instead embrace the outmoded ideologies and practices of the “free market,” private property, consumerism, competition, and possessive individualism.
The privatized, marketized, corporatized character of nonprofit and for-profit charter schools is also the reason why more than 95% of charter schools have never been started, owned, operated, or controlled by teachers since their inception 28 years ago in Minnesota. It is why charter schools are deregulated, deunionized, segregated, non-transparent, and poorly supervised. It is why charter schools close frequently, are plagued by high teacher turnover rates, dodge public standards of governance, often underperform, cherry pick their students, and are rife with fraud, corruption, patronage, nepotism, waste, arrests, scandals, investigations, and racketeering. The situation in the charter school sector is surreal, ruthless, insane, and miserable. It makes most other dysfunctionalities and crimes in society look normal, healthy, and trivial. Most aspects of the charter school sector are unethical and offensive.
Thirty years ago when democrats were actively and energetically leading the nefarious plot to deprive public schools of their “exclusive franchise” over education, deregulation and contracting became the main buzzwords to frame and drive the vicious neoliberal attack on public schools in the name of “improving schools,” “helping the kids,” “empowering parents,” and closing the “achievement gap.”
In this context, it is important to appreciate that contract law is part of private law, not public law. Private law is distinct from public law. They are not the same. They differ in significant ways. Private law governs relations between independent individuals and the exchange of goods and services. It accepts the premise that society is based on commodity exchange and possessive individualism. Public law, on the other hand, governs relations between individuals and the state, and is concerned with the common good. With private law, the government is largely out of the picture and the focus is on private, individual, personal affairs. Pubic law deals with issues that affect the society as a whole. This point cannot be emphasized enough. The difference between the motives, outlook, preoccupations, and implications of both types of laws is remarkable and often overlooked. To be clear, charter schools fall in the first category (private law), whereas public schools belong in the second domain (public law). One significant implication of this critical difference is that the relationship of students and parents to charter schools differs legally and politically from the relationship of students and parents to public schools. It also means that charter schools operate according to much different criteria and governance protocols and standards than those governing public schools. This is why calling charter schools “public” schools is erroneous, self-serving, and maximizes confusion instead of clarifying matters.
Charter actually means contract. Charter and contract are synonyms. Contract is the quintessential market category. Contracts make markets possible and rest on the ideologies of private property, possessive individualism, and commodity exchange. Social contract theory emerged in the 15-19th centuries in opposition to the feudal and medieval outlook and arrangements. “Free market,” by definition, means “laissez-faire”—no rules, no regulations, let it be, hands off! The “free market” means free reign for all major owners of capital to do as they please at any cost to students, society, and the environment. The “free market” celebrates inequality and the violent dictum that “might makes right.” It treats anarchy and violence as good and normal things.
Privatizing education through the mechanism of contracting and outsourcing requires eliminating long-standing highly-valued public governance arrangements (e.g., public school boards, public standards and regulations of governance, teacher unions, collective bargaining agreements, etc.) and moving into the deregulated, private, competitive, hierarchical, do-as-you-please, fend-for-yourself sphere of the “free market” where winning and losing, carrots and sticks, and “might makes right” are the name of the cruel game. Privatization means valorizing and celebrating the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism and denigrating the public interest. Privatization is how public education, which has served 90% of all students for more than 150 years, becomes depublicized, defunded, vilified, humiliated, scapegoated, commodified, commercialized, and subject to the chaos, anarchy, and violence of the “free market”—and all of it is cynically portrayed as being socially responsible.
Privatization is retrogressive and irresponsible. It is an attack on society and its members. Privatization violates the public interest and concentrates wealth and power in fewer hands. Privatization reduces the social wealth available to workers and the government and funnels it into the hands of private sector actors determined to enrich themselves at any cost to society. Privatization essentially increases opportunities for the rich to get even richer at the expense of the public. This is why so-called “public-private-partnerships” are a joke from the perspective of the public and society as a whole. Such “partnerships” always privilege major owners of capital and deprive workers of the value they produce. Privatization does not strengthen the social fabric in any way. Privatization drags society backward.
It is critical for the polity and education advocates in particular to make a clean break from the neoliberal ideas, categories, outlook, politics, and practices fueling the relentless violent disinformation on charter schools and instead give serious consideration to investigating, discussing, and opposing charter schools without the diversionary and misleading language of “regulated verses unregulated,” “good verses bad,” etc. A serious and disciplined focus on the meaning, role, and significance of the public and private sectors, as well as issues having to do with governance and who decides the affairs of society, that is, the issue of political power and where it lies, are urgently needed. This is hard to do in a culture that is intensely anti-investigation and where attention, focus, thinking, and discipline are being rapidly eroded by the digital invasion, but it must be done.
Diversionary dichotomies such as “regulated verses unregulated,” “good verses bad,” and “for-profit verses nonprofit” cripple perception, cognition, and consciousness. They assault the senses and violate thinking and understanding. They mystify reality, engender confusion, increase doubt, and undermine confidence. They perpetuate an anti-intellectual atmosphere and prevent people from appreciating the core issues at stake. Misleading contrasts block people from seeing how their interests are being regularly violated by a handful of major owners of capital who are not concerned about anything except their own egocentric needs. Diversionary dichotomies ultimately sabotage action with analysis that favors the public. The rich know that many are easily fooled by their manipulative rhetoric and spin, especially when repeated over and over again. They are experts at duping people to get their own selfish way.
The aim of maximizing profit as fast as possible directly contradicts and sabotages the aim of social responsibility and a society fit for all. Maximizing profit for the wealthy few has absolutely nothing to do with serving society and its members. High quality, fully-funded, locally-controlled, world class, free public schools open to all cannot and will not be guaranteed by major owners of capital. The rich are not interested in improving schools or society. They have not solved a single major problem over the last 100 years and always operate with impunity and arrogance.
If a “school” can do whatever it wants whenever it wants, flout all kinds of public standards of governance while still being called “public,” treat the “law of the jungle” as a virtue, loot millions of dollars from real public schools with a straight face, oppose and eliminate unions, avoid publicly elected school boards, selectively enroll students, increase segregation, engage in extensive fraud and waste, underpay and overwork teachers, suddenly shutdown without caring about what happens to parents and students, continually engage in shady real estate deals, and also have unimpressive test results on top of everything else, then what is the justification for the existence, let alone expansion, of such schools in the first place? Is this how society is going to move forward? With more destructive pay-the-rich schemes masquerading as solutions for families, students, and education? What is the justification for allowing billions in public dollars that belong to the public to flow to huge private interests who have no claim to this social wealth and whose main aim is to maximize profit at any cost to society? Is this what a “good” school and “good” society look like?
Good schools can be created and developed when education is recognized and affirmed as a vital social responsibility that all modern societies must carry out on an organized pro-social basis that ensures full funding for all schools, local democratic control, and high quality curriculum, instruction, technology, facilities, and personnel. Society cannot move forward without organizing education on a mass, universal, public basis. Leaving education to the chaos, anarchy, and violence of the “free market” or the private choice of “consumers” who fend for themselves like animals is backward, irrational, and avoidable.
The rich and their political and media cheerleaders are more determined than ever to wreck public education and to cynically convince the public that this is in their interest. They desperately want people to believe that charter schools exist to serve “the kids” and not to make the rich richer. Fortunately, the tide is turning against the mass looting of America’s public schools by charter schools. The devastation that charter schools cause and multiply is becoming more visible and offensive to more people more rapidly. Charter school havoc and destruction can no longer be prettified or concealed. Many now see right through the violent disinformation long promoted by charter school promoters. As a result, pressure is mounting nationally on state and local governments to curb the growth of charter schools. It certainly is not the best time to be a charter school promoter. People have had enough of the criminal ruthlessness of the rich and realize that private greed has never served the public good or students.
Public schools, even in their under-funded, over-tested, and scapegoated condition, still do a much better job of meeting the needs of all students than for-profit and nonprofit charter schools. The tired claim that charter schools represent a better alternative to the 100,000 public schools that serve over 45 million youth is intended to dupe the naive. Charter school supporters are in the forefront of destroying public education and offering lower quality schools.
Each year that passes with no new charter schools in a city or state is a good year for society, education, and the economy. Charter schools introduce the worst kind of “innovation” in education, society, and the economy. Far from solving anything, they multiply serious problems.
Six states currently do not allow charter schools: Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia. Striking public school teachers in West Virginia recently played a big role in averting charter schools in their state. Striking public school teachers in Los Angeles and striking charter school teachers in Chicago have also lately played a positive role in opposing charter school crimes.
The momentum against charter schools is building and it will keep growing because charter schools will keep wreaking havoc on education and society. People are saying enough is enough and calling on all to defend public education.