The publication of Charter Schools and Their Enemies comes at a time when charter schools are under intense scrutiny—with even their right to exist in question. Sowell consistently reminds readers of what’s at stake, to wit: the education of children … children whose futures hang in the balance. To counter adversaries of charter schools he asks and re-asks a penetrating question: “How, specifically, is this going to make the education of children better?”
Sowell writes with clarity and moral authority. He quickly dispels the notion that race and social justice issues such as housing, immigration, policing, and incarceration, are holding back children of color rather than second-rate schools in which they attend. To this end, he uses Dunbar High School, in Washington, D.C. as proof of concept. From 1870 to 1955, the school produced the first black federal judge, the first black general, the first black cabinet member, and America’s first three black women PhDs—all of it in the years before Brown v. Board of Education.
His tight focus on New York City charters that occupy classrooms in public-school facilities provides a solid basis for a comparative analysis. Sowell limits his comparisons to well-established networks, or charter management organizations with schools in five or more buildings. These are the KIPP, Success Academy, Explore Schools, Uncommon Schools, and Achievement First, with Explore is the negative outlier. The study demonstrates significantly better educational outcomes at the charters relative to public-school classes at the same facility. In the aggregate, the charter school students achieve proficiency in English language arts at a rate five times better than students in competing public schools in the same buildings. In math, the proficiency advantage swells to nearly seven to one. Seventy-two pages of tables are provided for the readers to make their own comparisons.
This educational success is most likely attributable not only to the value placed on education by the student’s sponsor (parent or guardian) for the charter school’s lottery, but also to the tight discipline and good student behavior characteristic of charter-school classrooms. Sowell notes: “The most fundamental fact about traditional public schools is that compulsory attendance laws guarantee that children of all sorts of dispositions and capabilities must attend. To assume that they all want to be there, and all are striving to achieve success there, is to ignore the most blatant realities.”
America’s charter schools have yet to produce a Dunbar High. It likely the charters never will unless the movement can successfully address threats from teachers unions, politicians, and regulators. Sowell describes these many and varied threats in detail. A particularly vicious threat are attempts to make the charter schools look more like the traditional schools, as for example by requiring the charters to adhere to less stringent rules and regulations re: student behavior. In many cases, families are generally seeking out charters because of better discipline.
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Sowell is dismissive of the charge that charters are “segregated” schools. They are “schools in predominantly minority communities, where minority parents/guardians, who value education and discipline, seek out charters for their children where they will be educated along with other minority students,” Sowell writes. “The successful track record of these charter schools, and the contrasting educational futility of racial ‘integration’ crusades, both demonstrate that white classmates are neither necessary nor sufficient for non-white students to achieve educational success.”
Sowell also counters the idea a that America’s educational failures are due to racism—not school culture or competence, or the ability to nurture student initiative—or that black excellence is not possible without inclusion.
This is a well written account of the significant educational achievements garnered by the New York City charters considered by Sowell, as well the threats these schools face. As Diane Ravitch, education historian, author, and public-school advocate, reveals in her 2020 book, Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools, not all charter schools and charter management organizations are of the caliber considered by Sowell. As a matter of fact, political and other forms of corruption can and do abound. As Sowell recognizes, oversight of charters is a definite requirement, possibly by the courts.
As with Slaying Goliath, this is a must read book for parents, teachers, government officials, and other concerned citizens as well.
To obtain a balanced view of this provocative subject, I recommend that both books be read, see my appended Amazon review of
Ravitch's book.
As an almost 90-year-old product of both public and private schools, I can see the advantages and disadvantages inherent in both educational venues. In the end, the choice of a school depends on prevailing circumstances and should be subject to due diligence
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An Educational Whodunit with a Happy Ending
For anyone still wondering about what happened to the highly touted education reform programs, such as Common Core, Race to the Top, and Value Added Measures, wonder no more. Diane Ravitch puts on her education historian hat once again—telling a page-turning story.
It’s a whodunit that begins by naming the villains (Goliaths), the millionaires and billionaires who targeted America's public schools—labeling these schools as poorly managed havens for bad teachers who are protected by their powerful unions.
The villains aimed to replace public schools with charter schools and/or voucher programs while ferreting out so-called bad teachers on the basis of student test scores. For some, public schools presented a rich marketing opportunity ripe for the taking. And take they did with the cooperation of federal, state, and local governments. At the federal level, the U.S. Department of Education under the administrations of President's George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, and Donald J. Trump have all been deeply complicit to varying degrees.
The heroes (Davids) in the story are the teachers, students, administrators, and parents who formed the ill-funded, passionate resistance to the privatization and corporatization of America's public school system. It was this passionate resistance that slayed Goliath.
I would also count Diane Ravitch among these heroes. She sees public education as a basic public responsibility—warning Americans not to be persuaded by a false crisis narrative to privatize it while urging parents, educators, and other concerned citizens to join together to strengthen our public schools and preserve them for future generations.
In this book, Ravitch has exposed the rampant corruption involved with the villain’s takeovers, the baseless notion of evaluating teacher via student test scores, as well as the damage done to communities, schools, students and teachers that will take years to heal, especially so while dealing with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although this is not another book about education reform per se, one is left to wonder where American public education would be today if the Goliaths respected the sound principle of giving to meet needs instead of giving to impose their ideas and take control of K-12 education in America.
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My thanks go to primary teachers Holly Rothstein Balk, Katianne Rothstein Olson, Chelsea Gabzdyl, and Margaret Zamzow Wenzelman, as well as high school teachers Margaret Mangan, (the late) Joseph Hafenscher and to retired Illinois State Board of Education staff member Michael Mangan, for their insights into the Common Core State Standards, Value Added Measures, and the impact of the standards and related over-the-top testing regimes on school administrators, teachers, and their students.
This is a must read book for parents, teachers, government officials, and other concerned citizens as well.
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| Social Justice Fallacies | Intellectuals and Race | Economic Facts and Fallacies | Discrimination and Disparities | A Conflict of Visions | Race and Culture | |
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| Explore the works of Thomas Sowell | In this instant New York Times bestseller, renowned economist Thomas Sowell demolishes the myths that underpin the social justice movement | Intellectuals and Race is a radical book in the original sense of one that goes to the root of the problem. The role of intellectuals in racial strife is explored in an international context that puts the American experience in a wholly new light. | Economic Facts and Fallacies exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues-and does so in a lively manner and without requiring any prior knowledge of economics by the reader. | Discrimination and Disparities gathers a wide array of empirical evidence to challenge the idea that different economic outcomes can be explained by any one factor, be it discrimination, exploitation, or genetics. | A Conflict of Visions offers a convincing case that ethical and policy disputes circle around the disparity between both outlooks. | Race and Culture shows that cultural capital has far more impact than politics, prejudice, or genetics on the social and economic fates of minorities, nations, and civilization. |
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Top reviews from other countries
briliantin
The book talks about the lobbying the public school system
Reviewed in Germany on August 3, 2020Patrick
Another factual, grounded and good read by Dr. Thomas Sowell
Reviewed in Canada on July 2, 2020
