The Choice We Face Read online

  23. Tony Bartelme, “Battles Await District EXPLOSIVE ISSUES: The Charleston County School Board Will Discuss Removing Racial Quotas and Hiring Private Management for the Alternative School,” Post and Courier, June 1, 1998; Jennifer Berry Hawes, “Challenges to Diversity: Buist Academy Loses Minorities After Lawsuit Forces Change,” Post and Courier, May 2, 2004.

  24. Courrégé, “Board Reviewing Buist Admissions Policy.”

  25. Bowers, “Odds of Getting into Buist Academy? On Porter-Gaud, see “Porter-Gaud School Ranking,” Niche, https://www.niche.com/k12/porter-gaud-school-charleston-sc/rankings.

  26. Jennifer Berry Hawes, “Challenges to Diversity: Buist Academy Loses Minorities After Lawsuit Forces Change,” Post and Courier, May 2, 2004; Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis, 2–4, 210–43.

  27. EdChoice, “What Are School Vouchers?,” https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/types-of-school-choice/what-are-school-vouchers-2.

  28. Jim Carl, Freedom of Choice: Vouchers in American Education (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2011), 23–33; “South Carolina,” Southern School News, April 7, 1955, May 4, 1955; John W. White, “Managed Compliance: White Resistance and Desegregation in South Carolina, 1950–1970” (PhD diss., University of Florida, 2006), 54–58, 389–91; “Byrnes Plans Study Before Commenting on Court Ruling” and “SC Leaders Adopt ‘Wait-See’ Attitude on Court Decision,” The State, May 18, 1954); “SC Candidates Accent Separate School Issue,” The State, May 19, 1954; “Virginia Lawmakers Overwhelmingly Approve Interposition,” Southern School News, March 1956, 14; “Georgia,” Southern School News, September 3, 1954, November 4, 1954; Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 105; Suitts, Overturning Brown, 12–17.

  29. Carl, Freedom of Choice, 61–63.

  30. Christopher Jencks, “Private Schools for Black Children,” New York Times November 3, 1968; Carl, Freedom of Choice, 65.

  31. Virgil Blum, Freedom of Choice in Education (New York: Macmillan, 1958); Carl, Freedom of Choice, 88–100.

  32. See Gross, Public vs. Private.

  33. Carl, Freedom of Choice, 100–102.

  34. Carl, Freedom of Choice, 135–52.

  35. Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002).

  36. Pierce v. Society of Sisters 268 U.S. 510 (1925); Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002).

  37. Valerie Straus, “Betsy DeVos–Founded Group Lobbies Congress for D.C. Voucher Program Extension,” Washington Post, May 2, 2017; Christopher Vondracek, “DeVos Backs Federal School Voucher Program,” Washington Times, January 23, 2019; Andy Kroll and Benjy Hansen-Bundy, “The Family That Gives Together,” Mother Jones, January 21, 2014, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/devos-family-foundations-heritage-americans-prosperity-Blackwater; Emily Deruy, “Betsy DeVos’s Misunderstood Alma Mater,” Atlantic, March 1, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/at-betsy-devoss-alma-mater-a-history-of-fierce-debate/518205; “Amway Reports 2015 Sales of $9.5 Billion USD,” Amway, press release, February 3, 2016, https://www.amwayglobal.com/newsroom/amway-reports-2015-sales-9–5-billion-usd.

  38. Bill Bennett and Karen Kussle, “Education Freedom Scholarships Will Create Opportunities,” Fox News, April 29, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/bennett-nussle-education-scholarships; “Sen. Cruz Introduces Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act,” Ted Cruz, press release, February 28, 2019, https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=4343.

  39. Ray Budde, “The Evolution of the Charter Concept,” Phi Delta Kappan 78, no. 1 (September 1996): 72–73.

  40. Albert Shanker, “National Press Club Speech,” March 31, 1988, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, http://reuther.wayne.edu/files/64.43.pdf.

  41. Richard D. Kahlenberg and Halley Potter, “Restoring Shanker’s Vision for Charter Schools,” American Educator (Winter 2014–2015), https://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/kahlenberg_potter; Albert Shanker, “Convention Plots New Course: A Charter for Change,” New York Times, July 10, 1988.

  42. Albert Shanker, “National Press Club Speech,” March 31, 1988.

  43. Kahlenberg and Potter, “Restoring Shanker’s Vision for Charter Schools.”

  44. Albert Shanker, “National Press Club Speech,” March 31, 1988; Kahlenberg and Potter, “Restoring Shanker’s Vision for Charter Schools,” 8–9.

  45. Citizens League, Chartered Schools = Choices for Educators + Quality for All Students (Minneapolis: Citizens League, 1988), 9–16, https://citizensleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/PolicyReportEducationNov-1988.pdf.

  46. Ted Kolderie, Beyond Choice to New Public Schools: Withdrawing the Exclusive Franchise in Public Education (Washington, DC: Progressive Policy Institute, 1990), 1; “Public Charter School Enrollment,” National Center for Education Statistics (Washington, DC) https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgb.asp.

  47. Kahlenberg and Potter, “Restoring Shanker’s Vision for Charter Schools,” 9.

  48. Kahlenberg and Potter, “Restoring Shanker’s Vision for Charter Schools,” 9.

  49. Ted Kolderie, Beyond Choice to New Public Schools: Withdrawing the Exclusive Franchise in Public Education (Washington, DC: Progressive Policy Institute, 1990).

  50. Budde, “The Evolution of the Charter Concept,” 73.

  51. Finn quoted in Kahlenberg and Potter, “Restoring Shanker’s Vision for Charter Schools,” 10; “Unions Consider Charter Schools of Their Own,” New York Times, September 22, 1996.

  52. Arianna Prothero, “Why More Charter Schools Aren’t Unionized,” Education Week, September 18, 2014, http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/charterschoice/2014/09/why_more_charter_schools_arent_unionized.html.

  53. Ravitch, Reign of Error, 168.

  54. Ravitch, Reign of Error, 16–18, 170–71; Julie Dunn, “Agassi Hopes Charter School Will Be a Model,” New York Times, April 21, 2004; Liz Dwyer, “Can Andre Agassi and a Team of Investment Bankers Improve Education (and Turn a Profit)?,” Good, June 4, 2011, https://www.good.is/articles/can-andre-agassi-and-a-team-of-investment-bankers-improve-education-and-turn-a-profit.

  55. Michael Fabricant and Michelle Fine, Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover of Public Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 2012), 69–73.

  56. Fabricant and Fine, Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover, 72; Matt Barnum, “Charter Networks KIPP and IDEA Win Big Federal Grants to Fund Ambitious Growth Plans,” Chalkbeat, April 22, 2019.

  57. Derek Black, Bruce Baker, and Preston Green III, “Charter Schools Exploit Lucrative Loophole that Would be Easy to Close,” The Conversation, February 19, 2019, https://theconversation.com/charter-schools-exploit-lucrative-loophole-that-would-be-easy-to-close-111792; Derek Black, “States Are Favoring School Choice at a Steep Cost to Public Education,” April 24, 2018, https://theconversation.com/states-are-favoring-school-choice-at-a-steep-cost-to-public-education-95395; Ravitch, Reign of Error, 171.

  58. Robin Shulman, “Harlem Program Singled Out as Model: Obama Administration to Replicate Plan in Other Cities to Boost Poor Children,” Washington Post, August 2, 2009.

  59. CREDO (Center for Research on Education Outcomes), National Charter School Study, 2013 (Stanford, CA: Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2013), http://credo.stanford.edu/documents/NCSS%202013%20Final%20Draft.pdf.

  60. Ravitch, Reign of Error, 101–2.

  61. James C. Carper and Thomas C. Hunt, “Homeschooling Redivivus: Accommodating the Anabaptists of American Education,” in The Dissenting Tradition in American Education (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 239–40; Snyder, de Brey, and Dillow, Digest of Education Statistics, 2017; Jessica Davis and Kurt Bauman, “School Enrollment in the United States: 2011,” US Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2013/demo/p20–571.pdf; Coalition for Responsible Home Education, “Homeschooling by the Numbers,” November 2017, https://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/homeschooling-101/homeschooling-numbers.

  62. See Shawn F. Peters, Homeschooling: The History and Philosophy of a Controversial Practice (Ch
icago: University of Chicago Press, 2019); Gaither, Homeschool; Carper and Hunt, “Homeschooling Redivivus: Accommodating the Anabaptists of American Education,” chap. 6 in The Dissenting Tradition in American Education; Gross, Public vs. Private.

  63. Gaither, Homeschool, 110–15.

  64. Patrick Farenga, “John Holt and the Origins of Contemporary Homeschooling,” Paths of Learning, 1999, http://mhla.org/information/resourcesarticles/holtorigins.htm.

  65. Holt quoted in Carper and Hunt, “Homeschooling Redivivus,“ 243.

  66. John Holt, Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling (New York: Delacorte Press, 1981).

  67. Carper and Hunt, “Homeschooling Redivivus,“ 244.

  68. See “Our Mission,” Home School Legal Defense Association,” 2020, https://hslda.org/content/about/mission.asp; National Homeschool Association, https://www.nationalhomeschoolassociation.com; Michael Farris, “Gimme That Old Time Education,” Home School Court Report (Summer 1988); Home School Legal Defense Association, pamphlet, People for the American Way Collection, Box 47, Folder 23, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

  69. Gaither, Homeschool, 196–200.

  70. Melinda D. Anderson, “The Radical Self-Reliance of Black Homeschooling,” Atlantic, May 17, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/05/Black-homeschooling/560636; Paula Penn-Nabrit, Morning by Morning: How We Home-Schooled Our African-American Sons to the Ivy League (New York: Villard, 2003).

  71. Ravitch, Reign of Error, 180–83; Rooks, Cutting School, 143–47; Benjamin Herold, “Online Classes for K-12 Students: An Overview,” Education Week, June 23, 2017, https://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/online-classes/index.html; Darren Samuelsohn, “Virtual Schools Are Booming. Who’s Paying Attention?” Politico, September 23, 2015, https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/09/virtual-schools-education-000227.

  72. Trevor Aaronson and John O’Connor, “In K12 Courses, 275 Students to a Single Teacher,” StateImpact, September 16, 2012, https://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2012/09/16/in-k12-courses-275-students-to-a-single-teacher; Samuelsohn, “Virtual Schools Are Booming.”

  73. Katie Ash, “Virtual Education Seen Lacking Accountability,” Education Week, May 22, 2012, https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/23/32nsba.h31.html; Karen Faucett, “Virtual Schoolteacher,” EducationNext (Summer 2011), https://www.educationnext.org/virtual-schoolteacher; Susan Dynarski, “Online Courses Are Harming the Students Who Need the Most Help,” New York Times, January 19, 2018; Nick Pandolfo, “The Teacher You’ve Never Met: Inside the World of Online Learning,” Hechinger Report, June 13, 2012, https://hechingerreport.org/the-teacher-youve-never-met-inside-the-world-of-online-learning; Monica Anderson and Andrew Perrin, “Nearly One-in-Five Teens Can’t Always Finish Their Homework Because of the Digital Divide,” Pew Research Center, October 26, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/26/nearly-one-in-five-teens-cant-always-finish-their-homework-because-of-the-digital-divide; Susan Dynarski, “The School Year Really Ended in March,” New York Times, May 7, 2020.

  74. “K12 Inc. Reports Full Year Fiscal 2018 Revenue Increases 3.3% to $917.7 Million,” Business Wire, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180807005078/en/K12-Reports-Full-Year-Fiscal-2018-Revenue; Ravitch, Reign of Error, 182.

  75. Rooks, Cutting School, 147–49.

  76. Kimberly Hefling, “DeVos Champions Online Charter Schools, but the Results Are Poor,” Politico, October 8, 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/08/education-betsy-devos-online-charter-schools-poor-results-243556; Rooks, Cutting School, 139–41.

  CHAPTER SIX: RACE AND A CIVIL RIGHTS CLAIM TO SCHOOL CHOICE

  1. Howard Fuller, interview with the author, June 26, 2019; Howard Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress: A Warrior’s Life from Black Power to Education Reform (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2014), 13–46; Jack Dougherty, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 172–76.

  2. Howard Fuller, interview with the author, June 26, 2019; Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 13–46; Dougherty, More Than One Struggle, 172–76.

  3. Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 83–120; Sarah Barber, “Never Stop Working: Examining the Life and Activism of Howard Fuller” (MA thesis, University of Milwaukee, 2012), 20–24; Richard D. Benson II, Fighting for Our Place in the Sun: Malcolm X and the Radicalization of the Black Student Movement, 1960–1973 (New York: Peter Lang, 2015), 85–96.

  4. Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 13–22, 51–59, 99–113, 121–46.

  5. Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 11.

  6. Kenneth R. Lamke, “Thompson Backs Inner City District,” Milwaukee Sentinel, September 2, 1987.

  7. Fuller, No Struggle, No Progress, 11.

  8. Thomas C. Pedroni, Market Movements: African American Involvement in Voucher Reform (New York: Routledge, 2007), 51–53; Michael Apple and Thomas Pedroni, “Conservative Alliance Building and African American Support of Vouchers: The End of Brown’s Promise or a New Beginning?,” Teachers College Record 107, no. 9 (September 2005): 2068–105.

  9. Charles Barone, Dana Laurens, and Nicholas Munyan-Penney, A Democratic Guide to Public Charter Schools: Public Opinion, 2nd ed. (New York: Democrats for Education Reform, 2019), http://dfer.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/A-Democratic-Guide-to-Public-Charter-Schools-Public-Opinion.pdf.

  10. Tommy Shultz, “National School Choice Poll Shows 67% of Voters Support School Choice,” American Federation for Children, January 17, 2019, https://www.federationforchildren.org/national-school-choice-poll-shows-67-of-voters-support-school-choice-2019; Emily Ekins, “Poll: 58% of Americans Favor Vouchers for K–12 Private School,” Cato Institute, October 3, 2019, https://www.cato.org/blog/poll-58-americans-favor-vouchers-k-12-private-school.

  11. Barone, Laurens, and Munyan-Penney, Democratic Guide to Public Charter Schools; Valerie Strauss, “There’s a Backlash Against Charter Schools. What’s Happening and Why,” Washington Post, February 11, 2019.

  12. Laura Fay, “End of an Era: After 17 Years on Front Lines of School Choice Battles, BAEO Calls It Quits,” 74, October 25, 2017, https://www.the74million.org/end-of-an-era-after-17-years-on-front-lines-of-school-choice-battles-baeo-calls-it-quits.

  13. Mary C. Bounds, A Light Shines in Harlem: New York’s First Charter School and the Movement It Led (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2014), xii, xiii.

  14. Derrick Bell, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 4.

  15. Chester E. Finn Jr., We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future (New York: Free Press, 1991), 35.

  16. Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 5.

  17. Kozol, Savage Inequalities, 83–91.

  18. Bounds, A Light Shines in Harlem, 2; Anemona Hartocollis, “Charter School Days Dawn in New York,” New York Times, September 8, 1999.

  19. Hartocollis, “Charter School Days Dawn in New York.”

  20. Bounds, A Light Shines in Harlem, 8.

  21. Janelle Scott, “School Choice as a Civil Right: The Political Construction of a Claim and Its Implications for School Desegregation,” in Integrating Schools in a Changing Society: New Policies and Legal Options for a Multiracial Generation, ed. Ericka Frankenberg and Elizabeth Debray (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 39.

  22. Barbara Miner, “Distorting the Civil Rights Legacy,” Rethinking Schools (Spring 2004), http://rethinkingschools.aidcvt.com/special_reports/voucher_report/v_kpsp183.shtml; Scott, “School Choice as a Civil Right,” 32–52.

  23. Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994), 311; Ibram X. Kendi, “Why the Academic Achievement Gap Is a Racist Idea,” Black Perspectives (October 20, 2016), https://www.aaihs.org/why-the-academic-achievement-gap-is-a-racist-idea.

  24. Bolick quo
ted in Keith Peters, “New Group Pushes for School Choice,” in Family News in Focus, in “Alliance for School Choice Organizational File,” Box 2, Folder 23, People for the American Way collection of political ephemera, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; “Interview: Clint Bolick,” Frontline, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/vouchers/interviews/bolick.html; “Hon. Clint Bolick,” Federalist Society, https://fedsoc.org/contributors/clint-bolick.

  25. “Freedom to Make America’s Schools the Best in the World for Our Children,” in “The American Alliance for Better Schools Organizational File,” Box 2, Folder 8, People for the American Way collection of political ephemera, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

  26. Citizens for Educational Freedom, “Tuition Tax Credits for Low-Income Families,” in “Americans for Educ. Choice Organizational File,” Box 8, Folder 22, People for the American Way collection of political ephemera, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

  27. Benson, “To the Black Education Reform Establishment, Be Real with Who You Are and Whose Interest You Represent”; Rachel Cohen, “Pro-charter School Democrats, Embattled in the Trump Era, Score a Win with Hakeem Jeffries,” The Intercept, November 30, 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/11/30/hakeem-jeffries-charter-schools; Beth Hawkins, “‘The Movement’s Been Hijacked’: A Black Lives Matter Leader Quits over Public School Platform,” 74, September 7, 2016, https://www.the74million.org/article/the-movements-been-hijacked-a-Black-lives-matter-leader-quits-over-public-school-platform.

  28. Williams quoted in Carl, Freedom of Choice, 87.

  29. Howard Fuller, interview with the author, June 26, 2019.

  30. James Forman Jr., “The Secret History of School Choice: How Progressives Got There First,” Georgetown Law Journal 93 (2005): 1289, https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4146&context=fss_papers.

  31. Charles T. Clotfelter, After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 55–56; Gary Orfield, Schools More Separate: Consequences of a Decade of Resegregation (Cambridge, MA: Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, 2001), 1–3, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED459217.pdf.