Watch for the Reformers
By: Lydia Kulina
Tags: Education, Schools, Coronavirus

John F. Kennedy once observed, “when written in Chinese, crisis is composed of two characters. One represents disaster and the other opportunity.” Educational reformers have historically took advantage of crises to serve their capitalist aims. In a recent report, the Heritage Foundation observed, “sometimes it takes a natural disaster to catalyze meaningful education change. That’s what happened in New Orleans, where one of the nation’s most vibrant school choice districts has arisen from the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina.” In light of our current national reality, we must inquire how school reformers are positioning themselves to create lasting changes in the national educational landscape during the pandemic.

I wouldn’t call the New Orleans reform “vibrant” — perhaps chaotic or ruinous. When reformers dismantled the large school district, charter schools, mostly created by charter management organizations and out-of-towners, proliferated without oversight and accountability. Teacher-flood-victims returned home without jobs — emerging scholarship has blamed the restructuring on the dismantling of the black middle-class. In recent years, many of the charter schools have been criticized for their punitive disciplinary measures. The effects linger today, more than a decade after the natural disaster — without a centralized district and database, the whereabouts of student enrollment remains unknown. Scholarship has called the response to the natural disaster “Disaster Reformation”. A similar pattern is slowly emerging in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria.

Parents are enrolling students in cyber charter schools in record numbers this year. While enrollment may seem like an immediate solution during these uncertain times, we must weigh the long-term effects of these pursuits. Contemporary virtual charter schools were the vision of Ron Packard, formerly of K12 education. The so-called public schools profit by pocketing the “per pupil” expense cost determined by each district. Since the charter schools do not have to spend overhead expenses such as hiring certified teachers, maintaining a low teacher to student ratio, or paying for infrastructure expenses, they reap handsome monetary rewards — K12 has a market value well over a billion dollars. There is little data to support their academic gains and much-advertised individualized approach. At countless virtual charter schools, attendance was captured by a one-time login — not time logged in. A 2015 study by CREDO (Center for Research on Education Outcomes) at Stanford University, in collaboration with the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington and Mathematica Policy Research, found students made no mathematics academic gains while enrolled. Ironically, as the Wall Street Journal reported upon the study’s release, the study was funded by Walton Family Foundation, which supports a variety of school privatization efforts. Long-term, charter schools pose the risks of diverting funding from urban school districts, many of which are already burdened by an unfair funding formula. A Study by Bryan Mann and David Baker in the American Journal of Education found “With the large movement of students, the mean amount of public funds transferred from residential districts in 2014 was about $800,000 (standard deviation about $3,100,000). With dubious academic benefits, districts with the lowest tax base lost significant revenue to cyber charter providers.” All the while, countless virtual charter schools have been found guilty of fraud and mismanagement of public funds, closures, and data manipulation. Sound familiar?

There are bound to be long-term effects that emerge out of this year’s temporary educational decisions. If virtual charters with little demonstrated success have been able to profit during times of stability, imagine their potential to capitalize on our current crisis. As the new school year begins, we must be on the lookout for individuals who would co-opt this time to restructure schooling for their own financial gain and explore accountability practices that protect students and taxpayer’s hard-earned money.