Charter schools are in for a slog. It doesn’t matter who wins in November. Joe Biden is not a fan. Donald Trump was lukewarm on the topic when he had his hands on the switch. Even the president’s potential replacements are bad on the issue. The broad bipartisan agreement that fueled the birth and growth of charter schools is a distant memory. Ironically, this comes as their academic results continue to shine. The fact of the matter is that charter schools are no longer the outpost for Democrats and the halfway house for Republicans that they were during the Clinton-Bush-Obama years.
Indeed, most Democrats now abhor anything outside the one best system and are all too eager to lump charter schools into the same bucket as vouchers, education savings accounts, and parochial schools. Although most charter advocates hold firm to the notion that charters are public schools, the loudest voices on the left have long insisted that they’re not—not really. For them, the push for a religious charter school in Oklahoma simply confirms their priors. (Last week’s state supreme court decision might help, but only until it’s likely overturned at the federal level.) On the other side of the ledger, Republicans have become more enamored with private and faith-based options. Louisiana just became the twelfth state to enact a universal voucher plan—an incredible feat considering there were none three years ago. As these programs become more established in red states, the right could be emboldened to come out swinging against charters as a weak-kneed alternative to the real thing.
The latest omen is a paper published by the Heritage Foundation titled “The Woke Capture of Charter Schools.” Authored by Jay Greene, Ian Kingsbury, and Jason Bedrick, the report claims that charters are more “woke” than their traditional neighborhood counterparts, as measured by the frequency of eight key words and phrases in publicly available parent-student handbooks: diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, restorative, social-emotional, gender identity, and culturally relevant/affirming. The report raises more questions than it answers, but the allegation alone is enough to antagonize the only party that can realistically embrace charter schools in today’s polarized, populist climate.
Methodologically speaking, the biggest concern is the paper’s small sample size, drawing from only 211 charter handbooks (there are nearly 8,000 charter schools nationwide). There’s also a question to be asked as to whether all eight of Heritage’s keywords are necessarily signs of wokeness. Are “diversity” or “inclusion” unalloyed evils? How about “justice” divorced from social justice? Plenty of dumb things have been done in the name of “equity,” but many still use it as shorthand for high expectations for all. The attacks on the Walton and Gates foundations, among others, read borderline conspiratorial. What’s more, there’s a huge gap between what’s printed in a handbook versus what actually happens in classrooms. Taken together, these wonky concerns serve to undercut the authors’ conclusion that charter schools have gone woke.
Still, it’s not a pretty picture—and Andy Rotherham presciently comments that charter schools might not have a chair when the music stops:
The Republicans are no picnic in general these days. Here, although they’re allergic to accountability in some of these [education savings accounts] programs, they are pretty good on school choice. That’s the awkward reality Democratic education reformers have to accept. What charters need to do is engage, maintain, and build on that Republican support while also organizing parents to actually pressure Democratic leaders to moderate their posture here and again make charters a default consensus position. That can’t be about partisan politics, it has to be about charter politics.
Can education reformers accept this “awkward reality?” Heritage is no picnic either nowadays, but setting aside the problems with its new paper, the Heritage education shop has some sharp minds with criticisms worth contemplating. For example, the embrace of restorative practices by schools might make for good partisan politics, but it stinks when it comes to the charter variety—especially at a moment when incidents of student misconduct are on the rise. Similarly, the repudiation of meritocracy is a lousy way to win over converts, to say nothing of the six in ten Americans who say most people can get ahead if they’re willing to work hard.
Heritage’s findings prompted me to go down memory lane and dig out the family handbook from the Connecticut charter school that I founded twenty years ago. None of the eight keywords identified by Greene, Kingsbury, and Bedrick made an appearance back then. Organized around “general information” and “student behavior,” the message to parents is staid by today’s standards:
We believe in teaching students to live up to [our core values], much the same way we teach them addition and subtraction in math. We correct any student, anywhere, anytime—but we do so in a way that requires them to practice the desired behavior. Most people think of discipline and think of controlling children. Discipline, however, is a means and not an end; discipline is also one of life’s great gifts. Disciplined people are far more likely to achieve their goals.
As you can probably tell, my school was unapologetically focused on two things: academic excellence and character development. There wasn’t enough time in the day for anything else, let alone political grandstanding or virtue signaling.
Rotherham is right that charter advocates would do well to “engage, maintain, and build” Republican support for charter schooling because trying to woo Democratic elites on the merits of charters feels like a lost cause. This means dialing down the progressive dogma, focusing less on politics and more on practice and pedagogy. It means paying more attention to whether kindergartners can read, do arithmetic, and embrace the Golden Rule.
The good news is that parents of all stripes remain strongly supportive of charter schools. In spite of assertions by Heritage, the idea that charter schools all went woke is far from reality. However, Heritage’s paper should be a clarion call for the charter community not to lose conservatives and Republicans, which includes pushing back against allegations that all charters have gone woke. Charter advocates must recognize the need to shore up their support on the right, even in blue states. And they should never shy away from advertising that they still embrace traditional values like “justice.”
