Over 20 years ago, Minnesota created the first charter school law in the nation, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Minnesota, especially Minneapolis and St. Paul, are the targets of corporate reforms from across the nation and our own home-grown privatizers. They are looking to enrich themselves and are destroying our system of public schools in the process.
Valerie Rittler, an active member of PEJAM, a Minneapolis teacher and parent, sums up the assault in the following commentary. This was originally published on the MN2020 webpage on March 26, 2013.
Education Reform Industry Targets Twin Cities
March 26, 2013
By
Valerie Rittler, Guest Commentary
Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul owner of Fox News and dozens of other
companies around the world, recently announced he was moving into the
“education” business. He said, "When it comes to K through 12 education,
we see a $500 billion sector in the US alone.”
Murdoch is part of a growing list of corporate executives who see
schools as profit centers. The education reform industry and their
privatization efforts that have virtually destroyed the public education
systems in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans have been quietly, and
not so quietly, targeting the Twin Cities.
Since 1995, budget cuts and poor policy decisions have closed at least
two dozen public elementary schools in Minneapolis, according to Eric
Myott, research fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on
Metropolitan Opportunity (IMO). The impact has been larger class sizes
and fewer neighborhood schools.
At the same time, the number of taxpayer funded charter school slots in
Minneapolis has skyrocketed by over 600 percent from 1,529 in 2000 to
10,895 in 2010. In St. Paul, the increase in public funded charter seats
has grown from 3,721 to 8,339, a 124 percent increase, according to
school enrolment data compiled by IMO.
As our public schools deal with insufficient resources and increasing challenges, they need more support, not less.
But a group of unelected, corporate oriented, “education reform
leaders” have announced that they are pushing to develop 20 more charter
schools in Minneapolis. Last year,
Charter School Partners,
a pro-charter school lobbying and advocacy group rolled out their
“Charters 2.0” initiative, in which they will use public funds to
finance “the creation and growth” of charter schools and fast-track the
approval process for new charter schools.
As part of their coordinated “Education Reform” effort, organizations
from around the country are pouring money into an aggressive lobbying
and public relations efforts to promote the expansion of charters.
According to recent lobbying reports, StudentsFirst, Inc., the
controversial Sacramento-based education reform group headed by Michele
Rhee,
spent $99,122
over the past two years on media advertising to “influence legislative
action” and other lobbying efforts. Meanwhile, the New York City-based
50CAN, Inc.
spent $144,396
to lobby here. The chair of 50-CAN, Minnesota’s own Matthew Kramer, is
also the CEO of Teach for America, a group that has also been spending
money in Minnesota to impact legislation and campaigns.
What the national and state charter school proponents fail to reveal is
that their “solution” to the challenges facing public education in
America is failing.
For example, charter schools in the Twin Cities are even
more racially isolated
than our public schools. As of 2011, fewer than one in five Twin
Cities’ charter schools qualified as “integrated.” As our cities grapple
with the negative effects of segregation, charter schools in
Minneapolis are making the problem significantly worse.
Just as troubling is the fact that studies continue to prove that
charter schools are not “high achieving.” A major study conducted by the
University of Minnesota School of Law’s non-profit; non-partisan
Institute on Race & Poverty determined that “traditional schools
outperformed charter schools after controlling for student poverty,
race, special education needs, limited language abilities, student
mobility rates and school size.”
The greatest threat of all is that charter schools are undermining the
fundamental American principle that public schools should be governed by
the communities they were built to serve. But one need only look at the
Board of Directors of these various charter schools to see where
education reform is taking us.
Hiawatha Academies,
for example, has a board of executives from major corporate entities
such as United Health, Best Buy, Standard Health, and U.S. Bank. Similar
evidence can be found with dozens of other charters. In some cases, the
charter chain headquarters are not even located in Minnesota.
It is time for our elected leaders to put a stop to this attack on
public education and re-dedicate themselves to rebuilding and renewing
the public schools of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Valerie Rittler is a Minneapolis Public High School teacher and parent of three children in Minneapolis Public Schools.
