Limiting options for parents is wrong
Especially when they are deliberately being withheld from those who have been failed by the system and can't afford to buy an escape hatch
I write a monthly column in my local paper, The Valley Breeze, and here is my latest for those outside of my area who might find it interesting. It first ran here last week.
While state legislatures around the country move toward funding students instead of systems, the Rhode Island legislature is working to further limit educational options for the state’s families. Charter schools are the only form of educational freedom that low income parents have in our state and by passing a three year moratorium, our senate just greased the skids to severely limit access to them. Not only does the moratorium prohibit any new charters from opening, but it retroactively puts the brakes on new schools and expansions that have already been approved by the state board of education.
Rhode Island Democrats, with few exceptions, oppose all forms of school choice for low income families. They throw around words ‘like’ privatization in their attempts to vilify any attempt to disentangle a child’s education from their residential address. Providence Teachers’ Union president Maribeth Calabro used the word repeatedly this past Monday in an effort to impugn the integrity of our Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green.
But charter schools are public schools.
I think we are seeing the Ocean State’s version of the iconic scene in the Princess Bride when Inigo Montoya tells the evil Vizzini, “you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Are the Providence Schools “privatized” because they have contracts with private textbook companies and food service providers?
But let’s talk about this privatization boogie man that our virtuous public servants find so very problematic because, as it turns out, they actually have no problem with it. The Rhode Island legislature allows public dollars to be spent on private (and religious!) Pre-K. And I have never heard them get up on a soapbox to condemn the use of Pell Grants to private (and religious) universities. They even support allowing people with housing vouchers to choose where to live and those on food assistance to decide whether to shop at Stop & Shop, Market Basket, or Price Rite or wherever else they may choose.
All examples of public money flowing to private entities.
But, due to obvious cognitive dissonance and union influence, these same public servants oppose low-income constituents having any agency or autonomy when it comes to the education of their children between kindergarten and 12th grade. They do not believe that parents deserve the self-determination that comes with having options (unless they have money to pick schools via the real estate market or send their children to private school on their on dime.) The vast majority of Rhode Island residents cannot afford to do either of those things.
So it is pretty grotesque that charter schools—the only schooling alternative available to low income families in Rhode Island—are now under attack.
Remember that Johns Hopkins report on the Providence schools that sent shockwaves through the national media showing it to be, arguably, the worst and most dysfunctional school system in the country? The charter schools that the legislature hopes to block from opening and/or expanding would largely serve Providence students. The senator on the committee who represents Providence predictably opted out of the public system for her own children and put them in one of the most expensive private schools in the state. But, like so many “choice for me, not for thee” types, she does not believe that the low income parents in the city she represents deserve to have any options.
At the end of the day, the majority of the RI General Assembly believe that school districts, regardless of performance, are entitled to other people’s children because of the dollars that attach to those children.
They want a monopoly. Parents don’t.
One saving grace is that Governor McKee (D) testified against the bill and has said he’ll likely veto it if it comes across his desk.
Thank God for that.