The Choice We Face

by John N. Hale

  Civil rights organizers like Howard Fuller, Wyatt Tee Walker, and more recently Sarah Carpenter illustrate a direct link between the civil rights movement and school choice, an intersection that makes or could make many liberal reformers uneasy. The rhetoric too closely aligned with the unscrupulous privatization agenda and zealous ethos of Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos.

  Yet Howard Fuller’s work illustrates how the term “school choice” is mostly rhetorical and without clear political alliance. Black support for school choice shows how choice is connected to more than one agenda. As Howard Fuller noted to me: “‘Freedom of choice,’ ‘integration’ . . . all of these terms have different meaning dependent upon who’s using it and the context . . . and so concepts or terms like ‘choice’ [are] sort of neutral in a certain sense. But it’s all in how people use them and for what purposes. And what [is] clear is that . . . two people who have diametrically different ideas for what they’re doing can use the same terms to define it.”106

  For many Black choice advocates, other people of color, and their allies, choice represents community control, autonomy, and the best means given the reality of public education in the twenty-first century. Though articulated in a wildly different context—post-Brown, post-MLK, and “post-racial”—such arguments support the essence of W. E. B. Du Bois’s assertion that Black education is best left in the hands of Black educators.

  This is a far cry from the maligned agendas of Donald Trump and billionaire education reformers, however. Trump and Betsy DeVos never had to rely on the public schools in this country and do not inherit the same history as Howard Fuller, yet they still refer to school choice as the pressing civil rights issue of our time. The paradox behind a simple or narrow definition of “choice” obfuscates the complexity of the term and how it has failed to meet the ideals of those who need it the most.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Sinking Ship of Public Education and the Failure of Choice

  MILTON FRIEDMAN HAS WON, even beyond the economic theory that earned him a Nobel Prize. His greatest legacy is advancing school choice and inspiring one of the most comprehensive reform movements in educational history. For the last ten years of his life, he and his wife, Rose, committed themselves to privatization and school choice. As he noted in their joint autobiography, “Rose and I feel so strongly about the importance of privatizing the school system that we have established the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation with the sole mission of promoting public understanding and support of the measures necessary to achieve that objective.”1 With their foundation—now called EdChoice—the Friedmans worked to steer the school choice movement into the safe harbor we know today. As the conservative pundit Cal Thomas opined after Friedman’s passing in 2006, “If school choice becomes the norm in America, it will be Milton Friedman’s real legacy and every poor child who is liberated from a failed government school will owe him a lasting debt of gratitude.”2 The choice movement is forever indebted to its savior.

  Friedman’s ideas have eclipsed and surpassed in popularity the desegregation movement that defined the era of his first foray into school reform politics in the 1950s. Yet his ideas remain supported by an unchanging systemic racism that undercuts the righteous demands of advocates connected to a longer struggle like Howard Fuller and Sarah Carpenter. A structurally racist system will never give real power to historically marginalized communities and, therefore, a fair chance at success.

  Millions of families of color, as well as poor Whites, stand to lose, as they truly have no choice but to enroll their children in underfunded, segregated schools—public, private, or charter. Choice has provided a safety net for some, but the majority are in peril. Dave Dennis, a civil rights activist who led CORE in Mississippi during the 1960s, mobilizes communities to demand quality education as a constitutional right today. He employs the apt analogy that school choice provides a life raft for the few who can escape the sinking ship of public education. The remaining families—majority-Black, -Brown, and poor—are left on the ship as the nation watches, critiques, and largely refuses to extend a helping hand.

  The theoretical edifice of school choice crumbles under the crushing weight of racism in the United States. Race is the key to understanding how school choice has failed to deliver its promises in any equitable way. The forces of racism, which Friedman relegated to a footnote in his seminal essay, now dominate the implementation of school choice. Choice is essentially all about race. Historically, all of American public education has been shaped by race. In the antebellum era, since education for slaves was explicitly forbidden, Whites excluded Africans and African Americans at the advent of public education during the mid-nineteenth century.3 After the Civil War, education was racially segregated by law in the South through the 1950s. The tumultuous period of desegregation from the 1950s to the 1980s then shaped education policy, affecting the experiences of millions of students since then. If choice works according to Friedman’s economic theory, then race is not supposed to motivate decision-making. Yet it does. It also illustrates the toxicity of the very culture around choice.

  W. E. B. Du Bois’s argument from 1935—that our society does not permit the genuine integration necessary for a democratic education of all students, particularly Black students—remains painfully true. His observation that “race prejudice in the United States today is such that most Negroes cannot receive proper education in White institutions” is still experienced daily. Such institutional racism precludes what DuBois called “that sort of public education which will create the intelligent basis of a real democracy.”4

  The strict economic argument for choice is that competition, the market, and the “invisible hand” will improve schools, but one cannot assume that corporate interests seek to empower Black communities, communities of color, and people living in poverty. If society cannot integrate its schools, it cannot integrate the very institutions of capitalism founded on the backs of enslaved people and their descendants. Nor will the individual advocates and captains of industry willingly share decision-making power and wealth generated by that same system. A few families of color or families in poverty may benefit, to be sure. However, the masses of those dependent on public education will not be integrated into the for-profit governing system.

  Reports on resegregation in choice districts and schools illustrate the depths to which the system remains controlled by wealth and White supremacy. In essence, BIPOC families and families living in poverty remain segregated and excluded from the genuine privileges and benefits that choice is supposed to provide. In New York City, over 13 percent of the student population is enrolled in a charter school. Of this number over 90 percent are Black or Latinx students as compared to their being 68 percent of the total public school population. Washington, DC—one of the first cities ordered to desegregate after the Brown decision—enrolls nearly 50 percent of its total student population in a charter school. At the same time, 70 percent of students of color attend segregated schools in which 90 to 100 percent of the student body is Black or Latinx. Chicago, the ideological birthplace of school choice, shows similar trends. Studies have reported that only 20 percent of traditional public schools and only 7 percent of charter schools are racially diverse.5 As education scholars Erica Frankenberg, Gary Orfield, and other researchers at the Civil Rights Project at UCLA concluded, “Charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation.”6

  There are situations where choice has in fact reversed desegregation trends. Duke University researchers found that North Carolina, after rolling back the busing mandate and implementing choice in the early 2000s, showed signs of White flight and resegregation. After fifteen years of choice, public schools became nearly 15 percent less White while the state’s charter enrollment grew to over 62 percent White.7 In Indianapolis, a city that embraced choice under Mike Pence’s 2013–17 tenure as Indiana governor, 80 percent of the student population is Bla
ck or Latinx, yet magnet schools there are over 80 percent White.8 In cases such as these, when choice is available, it is largely driven by the interests of White parents, not by Black demand. As Nikole Hannah-Jones noted, “White communities want neighborhood schools if their neighborhood school is White. . . . If their neighborhood school is Black, they want choice.”9

  The inherent racism of the system is apparent in cases where choice has been leveraged as a way to improve public education, like in Memphis. Federal education officials and choice advocates alike viewed the city as a model site for reform. The ambitious plans to turn around schools in the Achievement School District there entailed many of the factors that attracted parents to choice—not just the right to choose a school but also new management, innovative ideas, and a promise of quick, transformative change.

  Whites, however, wanted nothing to do with it. In 2014, not even five years after Tennessee launched its ambitious takeover through choice policies—with hefty federal support under President Obama as well as investment from philanthropists like Bill and Melinda Gates—six outlying suburban towns seceded from the Memphis school district. With assistance from the state legislature, the suburban districts had begun to talk of secession at the same moment that the state merged the city school district with the surrounding suburbs. They seceded one year later.10 The move was clearly driven by race and class. The city district served a population that was overwhelmingly Black—over 90 percent of the students were people of color. Nearly one-third of families served by the city district lived below the poverty line, compared to only 11 percent of the areas that seceded. Segregation persisted, and economic fissures deepened. Memphis schools were forced to cut their budgets—a reported $90 million the first year after secession—as they lost tax revenue from the districts that seceded. They were also pressured to close dozens of schools, and they laid off or pushed out more than five hundred teachers. At the same time, one of the new suburban districts, Collierville, began charging tuition to families from outside the attendance zones to maintain a “neighborhood school.” The same district also approved $95 million in bonds to fund a new high school and athletic facilities.11

  Just as it had at the height of desegregation and the civil rights movement, secession occurred across Dixie. The most glaring example occurred in 2010 in Jefferson County, Alabama, where one town, Gardendale City, proposed to separate itself from the majority-Black district. A group of suburban parents organized to achieve this aim. They called themselves FOCUS (Future of Our Community Utilizing Schools). Incidentally, it was the same acronym used in Mississippi over forty years earlier for Freedom of Choice in the United States—the segregationist, pro–school choice group founded in Jackson.12 In both cases, parents for secession used coded race-neutral language to stoke fear. Addressing a small crowd, David Salters, one of the founders of FOCUS, said, “It likely will not turn out well for Gardendale if we don’t do this. We don’t want to become what [Center Point] has.”13 The reference was clear. Center Point, a formerly all-White town outside Birmingham, Alabama, had become majority-Black after desegregation occurred in the 1970s. The federal courts denied the city’s motion to secede.14

  Dating from 2000, 128 communities across the country have attempted to secede from their public school districts. Of these attempts, 73 have been successful, 27—including the case in Gardendale—have been defeated, 17 are ongoing, and 11 have become inactive.15 Though small in number, such attempts indicate dissatisfaction with education reform and also validate Du Bois’s assertion from a century ago: the system does not provide the equity and support needed for Black children and other children of color. The wave of attempts to secede from majority-Black and -Latinx school districts merely reifies the sanctity of the “suburban veto.”16

  Some Black advocates like Howard Fuller have continued to argue that persistent segregation does not matter or it does not matter enough to shape educational reform initiatives—that it merely conforms to a racist, unchanging history. Yet, to many, integration is important. We know that integration promotes Black achievement, particularly if it is consciously incorporated into education policy. Despite fierce resistance to it, desegregation after the 1954 Brown decision cut the “achievement gap” by half across the nation, boosting the test scores of millions of students. Particularly when placed in a wider historical context that measures scores over time and through an intergenerational perspective, integration and the federal policies supporting it were effective in improving education for all students.17

  The problem of race and school choice is confounded by the assertation that we are not supposed to see color. Our Constitution, we are told, is color-blind. As Justice John Harlan expressed in dissent to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 that is often praised: “Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.” This color-blind lens continues to filter the way we see education policy. Particularly after the election of President Barack Obama, many Americans subscribed to the notion that race no longer determined educational destiny or the access children have to good schools—and that race should not determine one’s destiny. The latter idea was enshrined in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. According to prevailing legal and popular opinion, to not see color is the ultimate goal, and by the turn of the twenty-first century, the courts had determined that we were there.

  A color-blind ideology drives racism deeper below the surface of a society that wants a quick fix to broken schools. Color-blindness allows school choice to function in menacing ways that mask the persistence of historic racial inequality. Choice gives all Americans the rhetoric to safely distance themselves from racist policy even as they support it. White families use race-neutral rhetoric to defend their avoidance of all-Black schools—much like Whites in the 1960s who claimed a right to choose and avoided discussions of racial segregation. They point to failing test scores, the “achievement gap,” or the lack of foreign language and college preparatory courses. On the surface, race is not a factor.

  Color-blind ideology and the craving for quantifiable data muddy some of the more comprehensive findings about school choice. Take, for instance, the 2013 and 2015 studies published by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University. All sides of the choice debate reference this comprehensive study, which reported that less than 30 percent of charter schools on average outperformed traditional public schools in 2013. The follow-up report two years later found higher performance in math and reading in urban charters when compared to the overall charter sample. Funded by the Walton Family Foundation, this study touts that—when looking at racial and class-based subgroups of charter school students—poor families and parents of color benefit from choice and, to an extent, this is true. Several of the highest-performing charter schools across the nation are majority-Black or -Latinx, such as the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). Charter schools and voucher programs often target poor families and students of color. Therefore, when choice programs do excel, underserved students do too.

  However, the claims put forth by charter school skeptics are equally valid. The same report shows us that most students do not benefit from choice: 70 percent of students in choice schools perform similarly to or worse than their traditional public school counterparts. Statistics are pliable, but facts are stubborn things. Race and racism cannot be quantified.

  Race is not the only determining factor in the implementation of school choice, to be sure. Class and wealth operate stealthily in a system that theoretically does not see color. Given that choice is grounded in an economic theory that eschews governmental “interference,” individuals, corporations, and other organized entities can all participate in the education market, but individuals do not have equal means. Corporate interests—not the public or elected officials—are providing the options on the school choice menu, shaping public education with undue influence. Wealthy donors can red
esign the system in their own favor according to the logic of a free market. Since the 1990s, the Walton Family Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Los Angeles–based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and others garnered influence in the federal government through unprecedented donations to school choice. These exclusively White benefactors invested nearly $2 billion through grants and direct donations to school reform initiatives that emphasized school choice and charter schools, including the campaigns of choice advocates.18 The Gates and Broad Foundations—sometimes in partnership and often in overlapping initiatives—invested more than $60 million in the 2008 presidential election–with large donations to both major parties–to push issues such as national standards and merit pay to improve teaching. They promised $1.7 billion more in the next five years.19 With their connections to the school choice movement, they bought significant federal influence.

  Choice advocates have been explicit in how they connect school choice advocacy and charter school development to profit. At the Harvard Club in Manhattan, the Walton Family Foundation, in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, hosted a symposium in 2015 entitled “Bonds and Blackboards: Investing in Charter Schools.” Tailored to hedge fund investors interested in broadening their portfolios, the meeting was intended to inform investors about the new, growing revenue stream fed by state and federal investment in schools that on the surface operated like public schools but were not regulated like them. With terms such as “very stable business, very recession resistant” and “high demand product,” the language and rhetoric of schools for profit could not be more clear.20 The posh New York meeting fit into what education researchers Michael Fabricant and Michelle Fine identified as “layers of interlocking powers [that] have dedicated a substantial part of their economic and political capital to building a charter movement.”21