Editors, The Nation.
Charter-school advocates and others who claim the mantle of
education reform have now seen their ideas put into practice in a number of
areas—from high-stakes testing to digital learning to the takeover of
struggling public schools. The results are in. How are they doing? Suffice it
to say, if this were a high-stakes test, they’d fail.
As the articles in this issue illustrate, the strategies pursued
by education reformers frequently dovetail with those of austerity hawks. The
latter burnish their conservative credentials by cutting budgets and defunding
schools. The reformers sweep in to capitalize on the situation, introducing
charter chains like Rocketship and K12, which produce real no benefits for
students. The chains do, however, generate cash for investors, as a new trove
of public money is directed to private coffers. Far too many poor kids,
meanwhile, are consigned to schools like Philadelphia’s Bartram High: buffeted
by violence, wracked by relentless budget cuts and choked by the “white noose”
of wealthy suburbs (in the evocative phrase of former Mayor Richardson
Dilworth) that soak up a disproportionate share of resources.
