by Kristin Schall

As another school year draws to a close, schools in cities across the country will be shutting their doors permanently. This is one result of the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top Program.” The program offers education grants to states that meet a series of criteria. The criteria make clear the administration’s agenda of standardization and statistics based education. They include the implementation of data systems and quality assessments, but what is most revealing is the criteria that states “ensure successful conditions for high performing charter and other innovative schools.”

For many states this has meant making the decision to lift caps on charter schools, replacing low performing typical public schools with charters and instituting incentive pay for teachers whose students score high, or improve their standardized test scores. Because of massive budget deficits, many states have taken the bait and have begun to move to the public-private charter school model, arguing that charter schools give students the best possible chance at success. While states have acted on the economic incentive, well meaning parents have been propagandized into believing the charter school myth based on promises of educational choice and rigorous academic standards. But the charter school promises are far murkier than they first appear.

A series of recent studies suggest that charter schools do not provide any inherent advantage over their typical public school counterparts. One study found that only 17 percent of charter schools produce learning gains that are better than typical public schools, 37 percent of charter schools produced learning gains that were significantly worse than those of typical public schools and the rest produced almost identical results compared to typical public schools.

The proliferation of such negative research on charter schools has lead early staunch supporters of the privatization scheme, such as education historian Diane Ravitch, to waver. In a recent article for the Los Angeles Times, Ravitch writes that “Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levelers are not working.” She also points out that on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP), the federally administered exam that tests students in a wide range of subjects and provides a continuing assessment of education standards throughout the country, from 2003 through 2009 charter schools have never outperformed public schools.

Despite overwhelming data disproving any inherent charter school advantage, the Obama administration continues to push forward with the call for charter schools as the solution for the country’s education crisis. What the administration is supporting then is not enhanced education for students, but allowing the charter schools to continue undermining the egalitarian foundations of public schools in the US. The public school system operates with the belief that all children have a right to k-12 education regardless of their economic, social, or developmental background. Charter schools run counter to this assumption. Because they are privately administered, charters are allowed to cherry pick their students. Therefore, they tend to enroll students who need the smallest amount of educational support. They serve a disproportionately low number of english language learners (ELL), children with special needs, and children who come from unstable homes compared to typical public schools. Instead, they enroll the most motivated students with the most involved parents. Like Obama’s “choice and competition” solution to the healthcare crisis, the “choice and competition” solution to the education crisis serves to create a multi-tiered system that provides high quality education for a select few and educational warehousing in underfunded public schools for the rest.

The private administering of charter schools have another, more nefarious function that also fits well with Obama’s overall neoliberal vision-- a thinly veiled attempt at busting teachers’ unions. According to the 2009 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the education sector has a unionization rate of 38.1 percent, which is more than double the 12.3 percent overall unionization rate. Clearly, the long-term process of union busting has, thus far, been less effective in the education field. By increasing the number of privately administered charter schools, the vast majority of which are unorganized worksites and are openly hostile to unionization, charter schools are being wielded as a weapon to attack organized labor.

The attack on teachers will have serious consequences in the classroom. Charter school proponents typically describe teachers unions as playing a major part in the creation of the education crisis. They argue that the tenure policies of unionized schools allow bad teachers to remain in the classroom and that school administrators need to have the uninhibited power to hire and fire at will. However, the job security, pensions, health and other benefits offered by unionized schools are what attracts highly qualified people to the field. Union busting in the school systems will not only do damage to workers rights, it will put students at a disadvantage because the most qualified people will not be attracted to the insecure, hostile, and intellectually stifling work environment of charter schools.

Charter schools actively undermine what we have come to expect from public institutions. They replace universalism with selectivity, equality with exclusivity, and favor developing a handful of individual students over enhancing the quality of life of our communities. They are just one of a series of attacks on public services and fit perfectly into the overall neoliberal project of privatization and market driven values. Trade unions will undoubtedly play an important role in resisting these trends, but socialists also have something to contribute. We can move the conversation beyond just defending what are less than efficient public institutions and think about transforming education into an empowering experience that enhances the well-being of our communities.