If you believe in American meritocracy, here's some depressing news.
Even poor kids who do everything right don't do much better than rich kids who do everything wrong. Advantages and disadvantages, in other words, tend to perpetuate themselves. You can see that in the above chart, based on a new paper from Richard Reeves and Isabel Sawhill, presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's annual conference, which is underway.
Specifically, rich high school dropouts remain in the top about as much as poor college grads stay stuck in the bottom — 14 versus 16 percent, respectively. Not only that, but these low-income strivers are just as likely to end up in the bottom as these wealthy ne'er-do-wells. Some meritocracy.
Here's an urban superintendent who wants to do something about it:
Superintendent Antwan Wilson delivered his annual State of the Schools speech at Oakland High School Tuesday night. In it, he highlighted the Oakland Unified School District’s recent successes as well as challenges ahead, and called on Oakland to come together to break the “sorting machine,” or the historic system Wilson said was “specifically designed to sort those who needed a real education from those who didn’t.”
“The sorting has always been done in a way … that hurts children of color, children whose families are poor or don’t speak English,” said Wilson.
Mass. Hysteria
Charters in Boston used to enjoy broad bipartisan support; now the debate is becoming increasingly polarized. The Democratic state House speaker supports lifting the cap. Boston's mayor opposes doing so.
Teachers unions account for a whopping 99.4 percent of campaign contributions aimed at keeping Massachusetts' charter school cap in place.
A parent explains her "very private choice" to enroll her child in a charter, and then later to withdraw.
Both sides do it: Clearing up two widely distorted aspects of Massachusetts' charter school debate.
Meanwhile...
Forget last week's headlines. A local NAACP affiliate goes to bat for charter schools facing closure:
The Greater Hartford branch of the NAACP is calling on city leaders to reject proposals that would close North End schools, saying the plans violate the civil rights of black and Latino students in the city.
But the chairman of the Hartford Board of Education says the group's concerns are premature and that school officials are far from a decision on school consolidation.
In a strongly worded letter to Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez, NAACP branch President Imam Abdul-Shahid Muhammad Ansari wrote that recommendations to close schools named for Martin Luther King, former Hartford Mayor Thirman Milner, civil rights pioneer Frank T. Simpson and John C. Clark Jr., the first African-American elected to public office in Hartford, represent a "total disregard for Black and Latino culture and heritage" and are part of a larger pattern of neglect toward neighborhood schools.
Some worthwhile responses to the NAACP's recent anti-charter resolution, on both sides of the debate, in the New York Times' letters. See also: "NAACP's anti-charter mythmaking."
Can equal educational opportunity be achieved through the courts?
In what is likely to be the opening chapter in a long legal saga, a federal district judge in Michigan must determine if a state can constitutionally provide a vast majority of its students with an excellent or at least adequate education while a minority of students receive an education that denies them the chance to acquire the minimum skills the court spoke of 43 years ago in [San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, a divisive 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision].
Even if a state is not constitutionally obligated to provide all of its children with an equal education, it should surely be constitutionally required to provide them with at least an education that gives them the chance to learn the most basic skills to succeed.
The obvious reason, as the court itself pointed out in 1982 in Plyler v. Doe, is that “illiteracy is an enduring disability” that will “handicap” children “each and every day” of their lives and take “an inestimable toll” on their “social, economic, intellectual and psychological well-being” for the rest of their lives.
The L.A. school board rejects petitions and revokes contracts from multiple charter schools, even some that outperformed their district counterparts, prompting charter leaders in the city to call for increased transparency in decision-making.
How education savings accounts changed the life of a Florida child with Down Syndrome.
How the stress of racism affects learning.
Richard Whitmire v. EduShyster on elite charter schools.
AltSchool — the Silicon Valley startup that aims to provide a personalized learning platform for schools — announces its first three "pilot" schools.
New evidence from New Orleans sheds light on when school closures and takeovers work, and when they don't. Key education leaders in the city want to keep doing better.
The new charter school cap in Chicago is part of a larger push by teachers unions to make their presence felt in charter authorizing decisions. Could the tactic spread?
Where Trump and Clinton stand on education (according to their surrogates):
A surrogate for Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump told a group of urban school superintendents on Friday that Trump would seek to do away with “corrupted, incompetent” public school systems in America’s cities, replacing them with charter schools and vouchers for private schools.
Such an approach would “encourage competition in the marketplace and eventually dismantle the corrupted, incompetent urban school districts that we have in America today,” said Carl Paladino, Trump’s New York State co-chairman, drawing audible boos from an audience composed largely of people who run the school districts Paladino criticized.
For conservatives, school choice might offer hope for a post-Trump political landscape:
At a time when Donald Trump has tempted the Republican party and conservatism towards an embrace of statism, strong central leadership, and bellicose certainty, charter schooling represents a textbook case of the opposite: how individual empowerment, an enlivened civil society, and a modest skepticism about complex, centralized solutions can change lives for the better. Indeed, the story of charter schooling, a national movement that grew from an early-1990s Minnesotan pilot program, could serve as an inspiration for conservative policy leaders in the months and years ahead.
How personalized learning helps students get outside — and come to school more regularly.
Both of this year's economics Nobel winners (Bengt Holmstrom, Olver Hart) have valuable lessons for education policy.
Kentucky policymakers will study the possibility of allowing charter schools in one of the last remaining holdout states.
Time to get over private-school "stereotypes."
Bond investors want charter schools to disclose details on their academic performance.
School improvement efforts are like the New England Patriots.
It reminds me of Bill Belichick. His ideas work! When he does them. In an organization that embraces them whole-heartedly.
But when his assistant coaches try those ideas elsewhere, with an inherited base of players, scouts, owners, and other staff that do not fully buy-in, it hasn’t worked so well.
High-dosage tutoring remains my favorite intervention (trying a version now with older kids helping younger kids), but I increasingly believe it’s like….all the other interventions, where even “decent” implementation doesn’t help kids.
A noble goal for ed reformers: Working themselves out of a job.
Quotes of the Week
It hurts me every time I think about it. I don’t get to choose ... Parents like that have choices. They get to choose. Parents like me can’t afford to send kids to a private school.
- Shellina Semexant, who sends two of her children to KIPP Academy and one child to Boston Public Schools, on the class dynamics of the charter school debate.
I don’t need anybody to tell me what I want.
- Boston parent Janelle Smith, on suburbanites who oppose opening more charter schools in her city.
Tweet of the Week
Ed Tax Credit would strengthen NY's #Catholic Schools by expanding scholarship programs https://t.co/SWEbeRIYzb
— Invest In Ed (@Invest_InEd) October 22, 2016
The Week in School Choice is our weekly compendium of news and notes from around the country. Sign up here to get it in your inbox, and send links, tips, pushback or feedback to tpillow[at]sufs[dot]org.
