Skip to main content

Education Vs. Capitalism: Charter Schools



Guest Blogger: Steven Waddy

Steven Waddy is a real estate agent and lawyer in Baltimore, MD. A student of civil rights, Steven works with communities to promote economic wealth, through ownership and education.  


I have long been an advocate for robust funding and care, given to public schools for several reasons.  First, they are publicly owned and therefore, more subject to democratic forms of governance.  There are levels of accountability to public schools that can be exerted by the constituents of the school system and not controlled by one private entity not subject to any open record of laws.  If a decision is made by a governor, mayor, legislature, or school board regarding the funding of the school system or the treatment of students, teachers, parents, administrators or faculty, then those decisions can be exposed without having to resort to clandestine measures. Within the parameters of a public school board, members of the community can be chosen to govern, if they find that the school is not functioning as it should. There have been recent examples of charter school operators that are stealing funds, using them for personal expenses, and believing that they won't be held accountable for their theft. The only reason these individuals were caught is because of proper oversight by those that authorize charters. Those in authority have jurisdiction over the school to shut it down if need be.  Imagine the corruption that goes on behind the scenes of private schools from the laundering of stolen wealth through endowments and donations to private institutions, to the hidden disciplinary actions that are taken against students.  

 Second, as seen in the recent study released in North Carolina, charters are a method of re-segregating urban school districts and redirecting the discussion of wealth redistribution and the racial wealth gap by making urban public schools compete with urban charter schools.  The schools that are dealing with the highest rate of poverty and racial isolation are given paltry resources and limited time frames to address the twin burdens of racial and economic bias.  By under-funding them and ignoring the neighborhoods where they reside, developers and city planners have sought to decrease the value of the property in those neighborhoods, many of which are already crime ridden and therefore heavily policed.  Which is ironic since the police are generally given the better technology, better pay, better benefits, better work hours, better staffing options, and better work conditions than the teachers and administrators who are doing the real work of educator, social worker, mediator, parent, and psychologist.   The developers and urban politicians are not carrying out this same strategy in their own neighborhoods and towns. There are no massive charter school operations sprouting up in wealthy suburbs seeking to privatize the operations of the school district.  You don't see this in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the suburbs of Detroit, the suburbs of Washington D.C.  You only see it where the wealthy have decided that they will no longer invest and they only do it as a means to redirect the conversation away from their wealth hoarding and their belief that the lower middle class and lower class families in the urban centers deserve their lot in life.  

 I hate that it has come to this.  I hate that black people are pitted against each other because they see the benefits of going to a certain charter school as opposed to a neighborhood public school.  I have friends who are KIPP graduates or are starting their own charter schools with the hopes of helping to nurture the Black students who they deem "most worthy".  They always couch their support for charters as a benevolent mission for the kids who are doing what they're "supposed to do" and shouldn't have to suffer as a result of knucklehead behaviors, at the lower achieving schools.  It appears that with the push to develop and promote charter schools, our local governments are comfortable with the idea of selling our children to the highest bidder, and therefore removing the community from the school. Children are seen as stock options, and once the school is unable to perform, the stock is sold, and the school closes, leaving the fledgling  neighborhood school with the task of picking up the pieces, yet again. It's sad, but this is where we are.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Deliberate Cycle

There seems to be this “crisis” in Baltimore City, according Project Baltimore. For those unfamiliar, there are students in Baltimore City, who are being “pushed through” the school system, and are graduating. With diplomas. And are essentially, illiterate. In 2017. I am not surprised. And, as readers, you should not be either. The “School to Prison” Pipeline has been the topic of immense discussion for decades, even with allegations of special education class rosters being used to predict the number of future prisoners. The United States Department of Justice publishes demographics of state and national prison populations, where on both levels, there are high percentages of prisoners with learning disabilities and mental health illnesses. In other words: This is nothing new. I know a young man, who did not receive an IEP until he was in the fifth grade. At this time, the young man was not able to read on a second grade level, but was in the fifth grade. I remember sitting at the c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Complexion Complexes: Does Representation Really Matter?

   A few days ago, one of my friends requested that I speak with her daughter, in reference to her skin complexion. Her concern was that her daughter did not find the inherent beauty in her skin, and viewed her skin as "ugly" and "unattractive". I can only imagine the inner turmoil a thirteen year old must endure, as she attempts to navigate not only puberty, but the fact that regardless of who she is, people will only know her as the skin she's in.     When I was growing up, I was the person in my house with the darkest complexion. And I wore it with a badge of honor. With coarse, thick, kinky hair, and the complexion to match, I knew that I was beautiful. I had to be, because my mom and dad told me so. My mother would shower my sister and I with how beautiful our complexions were, regardless of the polarity of our skin tones. My father, a typical Black man from West Baltimore, highlighted the differences in our complexions, with nicknames like "Chocolate...
2 comments
Read more

The Talented Tenth Predicament: College Ain't For Everybody

The Talented Tenth Predicament "The tenth man, with superior natural endowments, symmetrically trained and highly developed, may become a mightier influence, a greater inspiration to others than all the other nine, or nine times nine like them.”       - Henry Lyman Morehouse We are all familiar with the “Talented Tenth”, a term that describes the top ten percent of the Black population, men more specifically. These were the Black men who, after slavery, were going to spearhead an educational movement. These men were going to help propel the Black race beyond the mental shackles of slavery, and create sustainable communities, all by acquiring formal education. The men of the Talented Tenth were supposed to be the leaders, organize the other 90%, and use all of our mental and financial resources to create a foundation for the future. What happened? Where did the disconnect occur? Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Two men, two dif...
Post a Comment
Read more