It is standard practice for most charter school owners, operators, promoters, commentators, reporters, and even some “critics” of charter schools to habitually describe charter schools, word-for-word, as they are spelled out in state charter school laws (while often overlooking inconvenient or unflattering descriptions as well). Even those who try to be somewhat nuanced or grounded in their descriptions of charter schools engage in this pattern.
This is “paperism”—dogmatically repeating what appears on paper without deeply thinking about, let alone questioning, how charter schools actually operate in practice. Part of this stems from an ossified prejudice that says there is no gap between charter school rhetoric and charter school reality. Whatever appears on paper is automatically assumed to be correct and indisputable. One is supposed to instantly believe what they read in state charter school laws while ignoring how charter schools work in real life. In this way, words on paper are reified to the extreme, thereby fostering anti-consciousness.
Writers who enumerate the differences between charter schools, public schools, and private schools in order to “educate the public” about their “educational options” are one of the groups most guilty of paperism. Such writers pop up regularly and nonchalantly repeat all kinds of things that bear little resemblance to how charter schools really operate. More often than not, such forces promote a neoliberal view of phenomena, thereby undermining the public interest and a socially responsible path forward. Such a view distorts reality by mixing facts with myths, half-truths, omissions, and falsehoods.
In doing so, many charter school promoters and commentators present a distorted view of charter schools to the public, causing many to reach comclusions about charter schools that are different from the reality of countless charter schools. For example, charter school supporters and commentators consistently promote half-truths and disinformation about student admission and enrollment practices (including “lotteries”), tuition policies, teacher credentials and qualifications, funding sources, the nature and philosophy of high-stakes standardized tests, student achievement, the origin and rationale for charter schools, the “publicness” of charter schools, the condition, history, and programmatic offerings in traditional public schools, the nature of charter school accountability, the meaning of “choice” versus rights, so-called “innovation” in charter schools, and the factors common to all charter schools no matter how “different” they are said to be from each other.
Charter school supporters and commentators do not present the whole story so that people are properly informed and oriented. They regularly overlook many important facts and relationships. Coherence, context, connections, and correct conclusions become major casualties in this flawed scheme designed to wreck public opinion.
Importantly, charter school promoters and commentators fail to analyze, let alone reject, a fend-for-yourself, egocentric, consumerist, competitive, “free market” model of education. They do not see education as a modern social responsibility and basic right that must be guaranteed in practice. In their view, it is superb that parents are “customers,” not humans, who have to “shop” for a school the same way they shop for shoes and hope they find something good. A brutal dog-eat-dog world of competing consumers (”winners” and “losers”) is seen as the best of all worlds. In this outmoded set-up, all the pressure is put on parents to figure out everything. They have to ask a million questions, verify a million things, and hold tons of people accountable every day in an exhausting, never-ending, up-hill battle—all while trying to earn a living in an increasingly chaotic, expensive, and alienating world. The unspoken assumption is that zero social responsibility for basic needs like education in a modern society is somehow acceptable. You are entirely on your own in the name of “choice,” “freedom,” and “rugged individualism” in this arrangement that privileges private property over all else. There are no guarantees or certainty in this kind of world. Thus, if your charter school is one of the many that fail and close every year in America—oh well, better luck next time!
The racist and imperialist doctrine of Social Darwinism is taken to the extreme in this old set-up in which only “the fittest survive.” Meaningful accountability and redress are largely absent in this divisive context. This arrangement is also buttressed by a set of ideas that uncritically presupposes that all forms of government are inevitably bad, dangerous, undesirable; the risk-taking ego-centric consumer is the end-all and be-all, the center of the universe.
To be sure, these neoliberal forces do not possess, let alone defend, a modern definition of “public” or the “public interest.” They do not see charter schools as the privatized education arrangements that they are. They ignore or downplay the fact that charter schools differ from public schools in their structure, operation, governance, oversight, funding, philosophy, and aims. They casually treat deregulated, segregated, unaccountable, de-unionized charter schools operated by unelected private persons as if they were public schools. Despite dozens of differences between charter schools and public schools, many charter school supporters, researchers, and commentators continue to irresponsibly assert that both types of schools are public schools, as if “public” can mean anything one wants it to mean. Key differences between these two types of schools magically disappear in this ahistorical approach to phenomena.
The gap between charter school rhetoric and charter school reality has been wide for 34 years. Relentless top-down neoliberal disinformation about charter schools has left many rudderless and confused. This will not change until the pressure to not investigate phenomena is actively rejected. Disinformation and anticonsciousness can take hold, spread, intensify, and wreak havoc only when serious uninterrupted investigation disappears.
Special Note
On the question of the origin of charter schools as being schools that supposedly started out decades ago to empower teachers by giving them the “flexibility,” “freedom,” and “autonomy” to “innovate” and “think outside the box,” it is revealing that 34 years later, 95% of charter schools are not started, owned, or operated by teachers. “Innovate” is just a another way of undermining teachers unions and the institution of public education in a modern society. “Innovation” includes demonizing public schools and attacking collective bargaining agreements that enshrine the valid claims of workers.
About 90% of charter schools are deunionized. It is thus no accident that charter school teachers are less experienced and less credentialed than public school teachers, and they are also paid less while working longer days and years than their public school counterparts. Not surprisingly, the teacher turnover rate in charter schools is very high coast to coast. This constant upheaval invariably undermines learning, continuity, stability, and collegiality.
More charter schools equals more problems for education, society, and the economy. Charter schools on the whole do not solve any major problems, they just exacerbate them. Privatization makes everything worse. Fully fund public schools and keep all private interests out of public education at all times. No public wealth of any kind should be funneled to private entities.
The post Charter Schools and “Paperism” first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shawgi Tell.