It's not the oldest libel against charter schools. The oldest may be the one
about how charter schools are just the latest version of seg academies -
that they siphon away white kids from public schools. (Never mind that
charter schools are pubic schools, too, just differently organized.)
Charter schools as some kind of racist plot? That's not true across the
country: Many charter schools turn out to have large numbers of black or
Hispanic kids whose families want to free them from failing public schools
so they'll become all they can be.
Many charter schools are all-black or close to it. See the KIPP school at
Helena, Ark., now officially Helena-West Helena. Nor does this accusation
against charter schools hold up here in Little Rock. The majority of the
students attending its three public charter schools here aren't white. (Last
time I checked, white kids make up 47 percent of those schools' students.)
Perhaps the second oldest charge against charter schools was echoed the
other day by a lawyer for the Little Rock School District before the state's
Board of Education, which was considering granting three additional charters
for new schools in Little Rock.
According to the lawyer, Khayyam Eddings, these charter schools - which
would offer an advanced curriculum in a number of disciplines, from math to
Latin - would just "cherry-pick" the highest-achieving students, leaving the
other public schools bereft of their best students.
How selfish of these students to want to learn as much as they can in the
academic environment best suited for them, rather than raise the average
test scores back in their regular schools! Have they no social conscience?
Kids who apply to charter schools don't seem to realize it's their solemn
duty to hold themselves back for the sake of the common good, or the school
district, or the collective welfare of all, or some such glittering
generality or other.
It's never been clear what good purpose is served by holding onto these kids
in the regular public schools. The educantists/social engineers have
produced various justifications for the practice, which always wind up
sounding like only rationalizations for this crime against young intellect,
talent, or just true grit.
Who knows whether the students who would apply for this latest charter
school are high, low or medium achieving? It's clear only that they're ready
to better themselves - much like the nine black kids who had the gumption to
apply for entrance to once white-only Central High School in Little Rock
back in 1957 - and found themselves in the middle of a national crisis.
We're told that giving kids like these a chance to better themselves (and
the rest of society, which is what well-educated people tend to do)
constitutes "cherry-picking," clearly a grievous sin in times that elevate
mediocrity.
But if encouraging the best or at least the most ambitious students is
wrong, why not not eliminate all those Advanced Placement courses in public
high schools rather than deprive regular classrooms of these kids' shining
presence?
By Mr. Eddings' flickering lights, wouldn't AP courses be a form of, heaven
forfend, "cherry-picking," too? Much like putting kids on separate academic
tracks depending on their ability. Should we really hobble promising
youngsters in the name of some deranged notion of democracy?
Of course no one serious about education would suggest such an unfair,
destructive course. At least let's hope not. Because every student ought to
be in a classroom that challenges the student, not holds him - or her -
back. That's not democracy; it's an iron egalitarianism. It would be like
putting weights on the shoes of our best high-school runners in the name of
equality.
What we have here is a contemporary manifestation of the old spirit of
leveling, which every democratic society since ancient Athens has recognized
as the sure forerunner of tyranny. A good education, like a good society,
ought to be about expanding horizons, not limiting them. It ought to be
about providing more opportunities, not fewer - even for the most promising
of our young. It ought to be about individual achievement, not collective
mediocrity.
But all this really isn't about what's best for the next generation. It's
not about education at all but about politics, power, money, and pride.
That's why Little Rock's school district is fighting one of the best ideas
to come along in American education since free public schools themselves.
Charter schools are designed to let teachers and principals work with kids
free of the bureaucracy, apathy and lack of accountability that characterize
our worst schools in this country.
Charter schools aren't just a promising experiment in themselves. They not
only have to live up to the aims spelled out in their charter or shut down,
but they also provide needed competition within the public school system.
But certain school districts and their teachers' unions would rather hold on
to unwilling students, and the state funds that go with them, rather than
tolerate healthy competition.
Nothing so well illustrates the blind status-quo-ism that marks entirely too
many American school systems as this vacuous talk about "cherry-picking"
from a legal representative of a school district that is only too willing to
do some cherry-picking itself (by offering AP courses) so long as it gets to
maintain a monopoly over public funds.
Some of us have always been fond of cherries, and of quality in education,
too. Both crops that should be encouraged, not plowed under. A good school
system should be concerned about producing more good students, not limiting
their choices.