Is it too reductionist to wonder about how/if the racism was used as a means to the classism?
Here’s what I mean:
There’s civil rights legislation and busing. There’s white flight. Then there’s a property tax revolt (e.g. Prop. 13 et al. in CA).
Esp. after the summer of 1965, the Dems split worse than before over civil rights. More conservative Dems vote conservative GOP . . . for Nixon . . . for Reagan.
Race becomes a more effective wedge issue against Dems, and they lose their national coalition (though not the U.S. House of Reps right away).
Meanwhile, after the state property tax revolts, the counties with lower real property values are forced to cut their education programs.
The counties with higher real property values spend some of their new surplus on their education programs.
Unequal educational opportunity increases. Because the GOP “Reagan Coalition” is now the national governing majority, the proposed remedies to inequality include decreased standards, more charter schools, union busting, etc.
Dem opposition to those bad, dumb ideas loses because racism.
And yes, the effect and some of the cause is also classism because real property values.
That doesn’t at all strike me as reductionist. I’d even say it goes back way further than that, with the limitation of lifelong servitude – slavery – to people of African descent. That gave poor whites an extra “wage” in the form of suddenly-more-valuable whiteness, as well as an illusory sense that they had more in common with white elites than with their black comrades-in-labor. Which is of course still happening. So yes, using race as a wedge or tool to divide n conquer certainly is a grand old American tradition.
Read the article and think for yourself. Do charter schools issue government backed debt? Do charter schools pose a risk to the banking industry? Do charter schools issue collateralized debt obligations, re-insurance, or derivatives? Can you tell me a safe debt to equity ratio for charter schools?
The article talks about “authorizers” and cites 1045 of them, the financial markets had 3 ratings agencies.
The entire housing market is based on mortgages, charter schools represent less than 5% of public school students.
I could go on and on, but it really shouldn’t be necessary. It’s like comparing apples and whales.
Are you being willfully ignorant because you have an agenda to promote? If you really don’t understand the article, that’s a shame, but it’s not exactly a refutation. I understood it, and I expect a lot of readers found it not difficult at all. However, it’s starting to look like you’re trolling. We frown upon that here.
EDIT: Never mind. I hadn’t noticed your initial post. Agenda noted.
The only agenda being pressed here is by Charter opponents. I’m not advocating for or against Charters - I’m saying that the headline grabbing analogy to the subprime mortgage crisis in nonsense.
I’m really saying that I read the article that this post is based on and the core argument that there is a bubble forming that poses a threat to society is nonsense. It ignores the role of schools, it ignore the tiny fraction of schools that are charters, it ignores that there are limits set on the number of charters, it ignores that there are public schools present as a safety valve, it ignores that families don’t take on debt in choosing a charter, it ignores that there is no cost in leaving a charter.
Sure some charters are sub-par. Sure some charters will fail. What does that mean? Will there be some authorizers who will authorize sub-par schools for the fee? Sure, but they will not cause systemic failure because there are 1,000 of them competing, not 3. It is a healthy market and it is not a market mandated by the SEC. If states don’t like the results from an authorizer, they can stop accepting it’s recommendations.
The differences so greatly outweigh the similarities that the analogy is nonsense.
But really, aren’t all schools just a plot to indoctrinate the children of America into communism…? Isn’t this what they all look like now, in Obummer’s Amurica?
I guess that’s true insofar as both major parties are rife with politicians willing to take huge campaign contributions from those seeking to suck profit from the gradual privatization of yet another public service, ultimately lowering its quality and raising its costs. As for choice, I don’t think it’s a good choice when it’s between crap and even smellier crap.
In what way is a community coming together to form a non-profit to provide their kids with a satisfactory education a “bad idea?”
I mean, I understand that it can and has been executed badly, but it’s also been executed very successfully, as well. It seems to me that the “idea” isn’t bad. It’s just not easy to pull off.
