Rather than asking why so many families attend charters or even more pay for private school in Oakland, there is a misguided effort at a charter moratorium. This is not only illegal, it’s counterproductive—which makes it stupid. Case in point: Unnamed Charter School, a school soundly denied by the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), was…
School Choice
The Spook Who Sat by the Charter School Door
I am the fly in the school reform buttermilk. An outsider, now marginally on the inside, trying to plot the revolution. Young, gifted and Black, I founded a charter school support organization in Oakland at the dawn of the movement in the ’90s, followed Katrina into New Orleans to help resuscitate the (charter) schools, and…
Here’s the Test for Charter Schools Under DeVos and Trump
As school choice advocate Betsy Devos assumes the role of secretary of education, charter school camps have formed for and against her. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools supported her, while the coalition of independent charter schools in New York City (representing over 100 schools) opposed her. And in California, while school leaders have almost…
Education Reform’s “Other People’s Children” Problem
We have a serious “Other People’s Children” problem in education reform. Many if not most of the spokespeople and decision makers, really don’t represent or often understand the communities they are “reforming.” This has a distorting effect on the reforms and also gives folks the often real impression that reforms are being done to them rather than…