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In 2010 my children were in high school. They attended a magnet high school in Raleigh, North Carolina. William G. Enloe High School. There were a lot of excellent things about that high school that benefited both of them in different ways. Raleigh is part of the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS). One of the largest districts in the country, and I think currently the biggest district in the state. Currently 160,000 students and continuing to rise. My children attended a charter school through upper elementary and then magnet schools in Wake County until they graduated in 2011. But I digress.
One particular morning in 2010, they were on their way to school. At that point they were both licensed drivers. School started at 7:30 am, and was over 30 minutes away by car. If they wanted to take a bus they could, but they had to catch it at our base high school at 6:00 am. We had an extra car, so they drove instead. Out the door at 6:40, they made it to school by 7:10. They liked being early. Up to this point, having been attending Enloe since fall of 2007, they had never had an unexcused tardy. Dr. appointment, ill, whatever if they came late, but always excused. As they were driving this particular morning, however, there was a pile of razor wire on I 440. They ran over it, and quickly joined the other cars on the shoulder with popped tires. They called their Dad, and he called Triple A. He drove to where they were stuck, got a receipt from Triple AAA, had the car towed, and took them to school. He walked in with them so he could explain why they were late, and show them the receipt from the driver.
It turned out that running over razor wire on the way to school - even with written proof - was not considered a legitimate excuse for being tardy. Since "the bus was available" (attendance lady's explanation) and my children chose to drive, they would have to attend Saturday school - the consequence for an unexcused tardy. Asked what would happen if the bus hit the razor wire, my husband was told that it would be considered excused because WCPSS was providing the transportation. So there you are. Line in the sand. So my kids sat in Saturday school.
Now of course we thought the whole thing was stupid. But we all also understood that in a district as large as WCPSS, you have to make policy that applies as broadly and fairly as possible. That's the way most public things work. It's the needs of the many that outweigh the needs of the few. We accepted that and moved on......
........although my son is probably still angry about that and several other one-size-fits-all public school things that never really fit him. Which brings me to the next part, and two particular forms of hypocrisy regarding the Charter School movement that irritate me to no end.
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I work at a charter school. I happened to help found this particular charter school, but that becomes less and less important as time goes on and the school grows and develops. In North Carolina, charters run the spectrum in terms of educational model, governance, student demographics, profit model, etc. If you like statistics, you will understand that comparing charters in North Carolina to traditional schools in North Carolina, you will probably find more diversity within groups than between groups. I don't know what it is like in other states, but that's what it is here. I've been involved with the charter school movement since 1997, and I follow it closely.
So here is the hypocrisy I see from both sides. On the first side. There is no circumstance under which I believe corporations should benefit directly from the operation of public schools. I also don't believe that any school accepting taxpayer money should discriminate against any child regardless of their means, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation/gender identity, or any other factor. I also believe very strongly that while charters should be operated by a diverse board of directors that represent the larger community, they should not be controlled or operated solely by parents who have children currently enrolled at the school. I don't believe that schools who operate with any of these aspects should be considered public schools. This should irritate folks on the conservative end of the spectrum. Some of those (not all of them) feel that privatization of public institutions provides more fiscal efficiency. I would argue vociferously that it also brings overt and covert discrimination of all different kinds. So if you love for-profit charter models that just happen to keep "certain kids and families" out, we probably don't have too much to talk about.
On the other side, we have the liberal All Charters Are Evil folks. Ms. Ravitch has a prominent voice in that discussion. The hypocrisy there stems from the fact that people who are more liberal minded (like me and most of my fellow faculty members) believe in working hard to accommodate the rights and differences of under served groups within the general population. My school does that. Last year at my school we had a population that self-identified as 40% white, 33% Latino, 15% African American, and the remainder Asian or Multi-ethnic. 36% of our children qualified for free or reduced lunch. We had children last year who met the qualifications for the McKinney-Vento Act. Ten percent of our population were served with IEPs, another group with 504 plans, and several more through a student support team. We operate according to all state and federal guidelines that govern North Carolina Public Schools. We enroll any child who comes through our lottery - and it's not based on where they live, or our current demographic makeup as the local schools within WCPSS are. We serve all categories of IEPs. We feed children who need assistance. Help with uniforms when needed. We assess children according to the requirements of the NC Department of Public Instruction. Why must our school and other schools like us be painted with the same broad brush as schools that seek to filter children, and operate with a profit margin? Our school serves the needs of families who may not have children who will thrive in a situation where you need to sit in Saturday school because you ran over barbed wire. Because some children need to have flexibility with the code of discipline in a district because of a disability. Because some children who bring a pocket knife to school in 1st grade to show it to their friends do not need to be automatically suspended. Because some children will thrive better when they are in a school that is small enough so that everyone knows their name. Because some children need many people in the building who speak the same language as their parents. Why can't we receive acknowledgement that even though we are a charter, we are also a good public school? Isn't meeting the individual needs of any population to the greatest extent possible the basic philosophy of a liberal mind?
I'm sorry Ms. Ravitch. It is not a zero sum game, and as long as both sides pretend it is, the more power those who truly want to dismantle public education have over all. Because if given the choice, many parents will choose a school where their children don't have to sit in Saturday school because of district policy. Whether it's a good school or not. Betsy DeVos and her ilk are counting on that.
