Diane Ravitch, strong proponent of school privatization when she worked in Bush’s Department of Education, has since changed her mind and travels the country speaking out against it. Here’s her take on “Waiting for Superman,” the cinematic love letter to charter schools, in the New York Review of Books:
Guggenheim didn’t bother to take a close look at the heroes of his documentary. Geoffrey Canada is justly celebrated for the creation of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which not only runs two charter schools but surrounds children and their families with a broad array of social and medical services. Canada has a board of wealthy philanthropists and a very successful fund-raising apparatus. With assets of more than $200 million, his organization has no shortage of funds. Canada himself is currently paid $400,000 annually. For Guggenheim to praise Canada while also claiming that public schools don’t need any more money is bizarre. Canada’s charter schools get better results than nearby public schools serving impoverished students. If all inner-city schools had the same resources as his, they might get the same good results.
But contrary to the myth that Guggenheim propounds about “amazing results,” even Geoffrey Canada’s schools have many students who are not proficient. On the 2010 state tests, 60 percent of the fourth-grade students in one of his charter schools were not proficient in reading, nor were 50 percent in the other. It should be noted—and Guggenheim didn’t note it—that Canada kicked out his entire first class of middle school students when they didn’t get good enough test scores to satisfy his board of trustees. This sad event was documented by Paul Tough in his laudatory account of Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, Whatever It Takes (2009). Contrary to Guggenheim’s mythology, even the best-funded charters, with the finest services, can’t completely negate the effects of poverty.
I knew that many if not most charters routinely push out students they don’t want for whatever reason — low test scores, challenging behaviors, etc. — but I didn’t know the sainted Mr. Canada of the Children’s Zone did so as well.
Where do those kids go? Back to their public schools, where everyone is admitted, and no one can be dismissed without very good cause and a lengthy, detailed procedure, because as PUBLIC institutions they must treat everyone the same and provide everyone with due process. I keep writing this, and I know Susie gets it, but for anyone else reading this comment, the charter school movement is not only bad for kids, it’s a direct threat to one of the ways our democracy is maintained and expressed.