by John N. Hale
School choice is open for business, and no one person illustrates this more than the curiously unqualified, laughably incompetent, unabashedly wealthy, and unequivocally evangelist Betsy DeVos. Chosen by Donald Trump, DeVos was the first secretary of education whose background and ideology stood wholly counter to public education. Her rise to lead US public schools was not inevitable, but she stands out among her predecessors. Indeed, much of the nation seems to have enjoyed casting harsh judgment on her nomination, and the media rightfully made a spectacle of her public gaffes. A conservative billionaire who has liberally funded school vouchers, she has never attended, much less taught in, a public school. Her own children were either homeschooled or attended private Christian academies.
Despite the controversy of her appointment as secretary of education, DeVos was poised to carry the choice movement to new heights. Fitting neatly with Trump’s “drain the swamp” mentality, she explicitly promised school choice and privatization as a solution to failing public schools. She reinvigorated the debate around choice and carried unprecedented fervor for it. She possessed the networks, wealth, and the faith to push the choice movement forward in unprecedented ways.
By far the wealthiest member of a wealthy cabinet, DeVos inherited the money and networks it takes to shape policy in the United States. Her father, Edgar Prince, was a billionaire businessman who founded the Prince Corporation, a supplier of automobile parts. After his death, the family sold his business for over $1 billion, catapulting DeVos beyond the “one percent”—a tremendously influential, seemingly untouchable network of wealthy stakeholders—to the top .01 percent of Americans in terms of wealth.22 In addition to this wealth, which put her in the same league as Bill and Melinda Gates and Eli Broad—comprising a collectively well-funded network that paved the way for choice—DeVos was deeply entrenched in the GOP. She served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party and as the Republican National Committee representative for Michigan. Her husband ran for governor in 2006.23 Though unsuccessful, his run paved the way for additional Republican connections. These relationships helped the Devos family deliver the state’s electoral votes to the Republican Party in 2016, a crucial win on Trump’s path to the White House.
Though choice was never a critical issue in the presidential campaign—in fact, it was a rare point of commonality between Trump and his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton—DeVos’s presence in the cabinet provided a national platform to expand it. With her roots in Michigan, she was a vocal partner outside the South to work with states like Mississippi and South Carolina that had fiercely advocated for choice since the 1960s.
Another barrier to the equitable implementation of choice is the budget shortfall it perpetuates. The greatest peril schools face today is the staggering financial toll triggered by choice. Many view the capital investment of major philanthropists as helpful. Money is needed, after all, and such a capital infusion is nothing short of a godsend to cash-strapped districts across the nation. However, the money is not dispersed equally. Much of a school budget is based on student expenditures, so that each school receives funding based on the number of students it has. For instance, when approximately fourteen million parents opted out of traditional public schools in 2010 for charters, voucher programs, or other publicly funded schools of choice—a number that has subsequently increased each year—they triggered a shortfall of approximately $171 billion for students still enrolled in those public schools.24 The money that would have gone into traditional public schools followed students into other schools instead. One study highlighted school funding in California, which has more charter schools than any other state and nearly 20 percent of all charters in the country. California faced a crisis after legislation defunded traditional public schools in the wake of the charter movement. In Oakland, charter schools precipitated a loss of over $57 million for traditional public schools, and in San Diego the loss climbed to over $65 million. As the report found, the fiscal pressure mounted by charter schools in California “intensifies fiscal pressure to cut core services like counseling, libraries, and special education, and increase class sizes at neighborhood schools.”25
Beyond the siphoning of school funds, there is the direct economic exploitation and profit generated by this grand educational experiment. Questionable business practices allow charter operators to profit within a “nonprofit” framework. Some charter operators sign contracts with their subsidiaries in order to turn a profit. These subsidiaries are on paper separate and distinct from the board that manages the day-to-day operations, but they work with charter management companies to provide services. In the process they charge exorbitant prices for land purchases and leasing school facilities. These unseemly tabs are paid by the charter operators that are, in turn, paid by state and local taxpayer money.26 One of the most egregious cases was revealed in a report from Ohio that a charter operator in Cincinnati paid $867,000 to lease its school buildings. Another in Cleveland paid over $500,000 above market value to retain its facilities.27 Due to the largely unregulated nature of charter school operation, many of these dealings go undetected. The “nonprofit” façade of charter schools covers their connection to for-profit initiatives. Keith Benson, the president of the Camden Education Association, a teachers’ union in New Jersey, on the front lines against privatization of schools, notes that such audacious profiteering is nothing more than a “land grab.”28
These scams steal from taxpayers and families who depend on public schools. A report jointly authored by the Center for Public Democracy and Integrity for Education—a coalition of grassroots organizations, organizing alliances, and progressive unions in New York—found and tallied reports of fraud, waste, and abuse that extended across corporate charter networks in fifteen states and amounted to more than $100 million. The malfeasance was so extensive that the report broke down the different categories of crimes: public funds used for personal gain; public revenue used for charter mismanagement that endangered children; and misreporting enrollment numbers for increased revenue.29 Comedian John Oliver put it in these terms:
The problem with letting the free market decide when it comes to kids is that kids change faster than the market. And by the time it’s obvious the school is failing, futures may have been ruined. So if we are going to treat charter schools like pizza shops, we should monitor them at least as well as we do pizzerias. It’s like the old saying, “Give a kid a [shit] pizza, you’ve [fucked] up their day. Treat a kid like a [shit] pizza, you could [fuck] up their entire life.”30
The scandal fits into the larger scheme of what African American studies scholar Noliwe Rooks calls “segrenomics,” defining it as “the business of profiting specifically from high levels of racial and economic segregation.” There is a long history of White philanthropists and business owners who saw opportunity in the education of Black students and people of color through vocational education to shape a workforce they desired to maximize profit.31 With charter schools, this maligned form of economics has continued by ensuring that corporate, largely White interests control or significantly shape the choice movement. It is the inverse of what Howard Fuller, Sarah Carpenter, and other grassroots choice advocates have demanded—full control of their own schools.
Since school choice theory as enshrined in economic arguments since Milton Friedman dictates direct governmental subsidies to families so that they may choose charter or private schools, traditional public schools are seriously shortchanged, if not financially exploited. Providing more options has depleted the coffers of public schools still operating, siphoned off by new schools of choice. With fewer resources at hand, failing public schools that lose students due to competition are forced to make difficult budget cuts. This, in turn, makes it nearly impossible to compete.
School choice is based on an exclusionary foundation of free market logic, color-blind rhetoric, and a blatant denial of systemic inequality. As millions of parents celebrate school choice, the traditional public school system is a shadow of
its former self. Public schools are essentially as segregated as they were in the 1950s and 1960s. They are regularly cited as failing in a never-ending public education crisis. Billions of dollars raised for public education through taxation have been diverted to schools of choice. Though highly popular and lauded as an inherent right, school choice presents a grave threat to the very existence of public education.
Choice and traditional school advocates alike will reference a failure of public education as the reason why all options are needed. However, without the equitable funding that choice precludes, traditional public schools are continually slashing services and jettisoning quality to pay the bills.
Somehow, traditional public schools are expected to compete for students, or at least maintain a sizable enough enrollment to better serve students left behind. They must educate those who have no other school to attend or do not have the means to take advantage of choice. According to Friedman’s free market logic, bad businesses simply close to make way for stronger, better ones. Likewise bad schools will close, good schools will thrive, and the overall educational market will improve as a result—in theory. But schools that take in disadvantaged students are not businesses. They are not run for profit. They are tasked with educating, protecting, and in many instances, supporting children who may be displaced, disabled, or marginalized. Public schools cannot shut their doors because our laws compel all children to attend.
Unfortunately, school choice does not require corporate entities to address the systemic issues of racial segregation, poverty, and inequitable funding. No matter how well-intentioned corporate reformers may be, the Institute on Race and Policy found that the most desirable choice schools use sorting mechanisms such as interviews, required contracts for parental involvement, or zero-tolerance disciplinary policies to selectively enroll or handpick elite students. When choice advocates point to a few Black or Latinx students who manage to excel in the choice environment, their exemplars are far from representative of the larger populations still in need of a quality education.
Those motivated by profit in the United States will not concede to those seeking genuine community empowerment. Scraps will be shared, but there is no genuine, widespread empowerment. Simply providing more choice or removing the barriers to equal school choice does not help those dependent on the public education system. In theory, choice relies on competition, which is supposed to drive traditional public schools to excel or at least improve. But many American politicians, capitalists, scholars, and educators invested in choice are unwilling to invest the resources that these public schools need in order to make improvements. They would rather invest in the “solution” of choice. Public schools are caught in a perpetual vicious cycle.
Even if local and state governments expanded options for everyone, taking advantage of choice requires social and economic capital that poor and working-class families do not possess. They must overcome a multitude of barriers to make choice work. Transportation is needed to take kids to school outside of your neighborhood. Understanding the convoluted choice procedures requires that parents do an abundance of research, which is very difficult for those struggling to make ends meet. Additionally, getting into some charter programs requires self-selection and active application—one has to consciously do the work of enrolling in an alternative program beyond the traditional neighborhood public schools. This separates parents who are able from others who do not have the ability or capital to apply or maintain contractual obligations to the school. If parents do make it over these hurdles, choice schools are not required by law to accept their children. Enrollment in some schools requires parents to enter contracts that mandate regular meetings and other obligations that, if not met, can result in their children’s dismissal. Even then, it is a gamble as to whether that school will outperform the traditional public school. The charter and magnet schools that effectively provide exemplary education have waiting lists. Many Whites and middle- to upper-class families of color can fly over the hurdles. Poor and working-class families do not find the going so easy.
Poor families and students of color that do benefit from school choice are the exception yet often touted as evidence that school choice works for all. Choice advocates are quick to highlight that some students of color do succeed—just as “freedom of choice” advocates in the South pointed to the fact that a token number of Black students desegregated White schools.
School choice is also predicated on the assumption that “consumers” have equal access to all schools in their area, including the information needed to identify and apply to them. Such access is rarely equal, however.
Twenty years after the founding of the KIPP charter school network in 1992, after nearly one hundred charter schools were founded across the United States, serious concerns were raised about the schools and the sorting mechanisms that excluded some families. Admission to premier choice schools is determined by the social or cultural capital that parents possess. Social capital consists of the networks of relationships one has established, the knowledge one has accumulated, and the skills one has acquired over time. Though acquired and expended individually, social capital is structurally determined through race and class. The networks formed, knowledge accumulated, and skills developed by poor Latinx families will be very different from those of wealthy Whites, for example. To be expected, the capital acquired by wealthy Whites is more likely to lead to the knowledge and relationships needed to gain entry into the best schools of choice.32 Forms of capital that mediate a family’s access may also involve language barriers, access to technology, or transportation. One’s previous educational history and experience shape one’s choice as well.33
The process itself is convoluted, cumbersome, and stressful to those unfamiliar with the system. Aiko Kojima was raised in Japan and came to the United States for graduate school. It was not until her son was ready for school that she confronted the labyrinth of school choice in Chicago. It was a process that she referred to as “shopping for a school”—an intricate procedure that required visiting schools and meeting principals, who, feeling pressure to attract students sold a bill of goods that was unrealistic. It required filling out applications, taking a test, and waiting. Her sheer intellect was not enough to provide for an education she felt comfortable with, but, luckily for Kojima, she acquired the social capital through relationships forged while attending the University of Chicago.34
Many others are not so lucky. The system of choice is stacked against those without the social capital to successfully navigate the system. Moreover, students who bring special needs or require extra resources are discouraged from shopping for choice schools.
Beneath the promising veneer of school choice is an unsettling truth that, in spite of its purported objectivity, promised neutrality, and popular appeal, it is anything but equitable in its application. School choice continues to benefit a select few as it jeopardizes the entire public school system.
Choice undermines community empowerment—the very thing demanded by Black activists like Howard Fuller. Memphis school board member Stephanie Love noted that a “Wild, Wild West” atmosphere pervaded the city after the onslaught of school choice entrepreneurs. School choice led to a lot of paternalism and condescension. From her perspective, the situation was tantamount to Whites telling communities of color what was best for their children. There was no cultural sensitivity, no connection to the area, no sense of history among outsiders who moved into Memphis to set up charter schools. There was also no genuine inclusiveness in the decision-making processes. In Memphis, many charters that were part of a corporate chain replaced the single-site or mom-and-pop charters that were controlled by local people of color. As Love laments, “No one asked us.” Love and others view the increase in charters as a hostile takeover instead of a process of building on what was already there. It was akin to an “experiment [with] guinea pigs,” she says. “Our children lost.”35 The ideas pushed in Memphis and across the nation—vouchers, charters, onl
ine programs—amounted to a huge experiment on poor communities and many families of color. Yet these solutions, as Noliwe Rooks points out, are “rarely if ever prescribed as an educational panacea for White students, or for those with wealth.”36
As school choice advocates gained or, rather, purchased entrée at the federal level, corporate interests at the local level became emboldened to influence and at times directly control public education policy. Scores of for-profit organizations such as Charter Schools USA, Connections Academy, and K12 Inc. manage charter schools across the nation. Though for-profits account for less than 20 percent of all charter schools, their ongoing presence perpetuates a favorable climate for choice. When families, irrespective of race and class, accept that private business models are better than public schools, they implicitly trust that for-profit endeavors have their best interests in mind. Within this environment, private interests ultimately control our options.
Terrenda White, a scholar-activist in New York, noted that the corporatization of charters has transferred power and control away from mom-and-pop charters to massive chains. Though the choice movement appropriated the rhetoric of the freedom struggle and involved a few of its stalwart leaders, like Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker—the battle has shifted away from genuine empowerment for those without it. There are no “formidable battles against a charter sector that offered hope and the promise of change but instead has taught bitter lessons,” writes education scholar and activist David Stovall. There is an inherent “contradiction of capital.” Successfully managing a charter school requires forms of capital that alienate families or engender a “politics of desperation” where the silver bullet of school choice reform attracts people of color to the ranks of the movement.37
