Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate gave voters the deepest dive yet into education policy in the 2020 campaign season. The conversation revealed a lot about which candidates knew what they were talking about, and which ones just wanted to throw red meat to the Democratic base.
Almost every candidate had a union-pleasing soundbite about raising teacher pay, and that’s fine. But the issue that inspired actual disagreement among the candidates was public charter schools. The Obama administration was largely tolerant of these independently run but government-funded schools, to the chagrin of his teachers union allies. But with the party racing to the intolerant left as fast as it can, will the next Democratic administration be so open-minded?
Andrew Yang had perhaps the best answer of the bunch: “I am pro-good school.”
Cory Booker, who was once mayor of Newark, New Jersey, gave an OK answer too: “Even though I had no formal authority as mayor to run a school system, I stepped up and took responsibility for our schools, and we produced results. … We closed poor-performing charter schools, but dagnabit, we expanded high-performing charter schools. We were a city that said, ‘We need to find local solutions that work for our community.’”
It’s not clear how much credit (or blame) Booker deserves for Newark schools, but charter school advocates, such as Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, had nice things to say. “We praise Sen. Cory Booker’s commitment to keeping public schools accountable and his support for expanding high performing charter schools,” Rees said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
After Pete Buttigieg wasted his answer to take a cheap shot at Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, it was Elizabeth Warren’s turn. She declared, “Money for public schools should stay in public schools, not go anywhere else.” It’s a nice-sounding line that intentionally lacks detail. Charter schools, after all, are public schools. They’re publicly funded, and though they’re operated independently, they are tuition-free and open to all students. Warren didn’t explicitly say that the money should all stay in “traditional public schools, not charter schools,” but the teachers unions knew what she meant.
YES @ewarren!! “Money for public schools should stay in public schools!” #DemDebate #AFTvotes
— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) September 13, 2019
Warren has long opposed charters, in fact. She came out against a 2016 Massachusetts ballot initiative that would have allowed the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to authorize up to 12 new charter schools or expansions per year — not many in a state with nearly 1 million K-12 students.
Kamala Harris did not specifically address charter schools but instead moved to new ground for the debate: “If a black child has a black teacher before the end of third grade, they’re 13% more likely to go to college. If that child has had two black teachers before the end of third grade, they’re 32% more likely to go to college.”
As Rees told the Washington Examiner, “Charter schools not only serve a higher percentage of students of color than district schools but also employ a higher percentage of teachers of color than district schools, and candidates can’t ignore that.”
After an unsurprisingly radical answer from Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden’s viral “record player” comment about black parenting, it was Julián Castro’s turn to totally miss the mark on charter schools.
“It is a myth that charter schools are better than public schools,” Castro said. “They’re not.” He at least added some nuance: “While I’m not categorically against charter schools, I would require more transparency and accountability from them than is required right now.”
On the quality of public charter schools versus traditional district schools, Rees points to Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, which has found that, on average, low-income and urban charter school students outperform their district school peers. This has certainly been the case in Washington, D.C., where, without government help and based solely on parental demand, charter schools have come from nowhere to educate half of all public school students. And the waitlists for charter schools in D.C. are still very long, reflecting the fact the fact that charters outperform their traditional district rivals, especially in poorer and less-white neighborhoods.
As for accountability, what’s better than parental choice to hold schools accountable? When charter schools don’t do well, families can go elsewhere — including regular public schools, if they’re so much better. And in Washington and other cities with a strong charter presence, there exist accountability boards that shut down poorly performing charter schools. This is a key part of the system, squelching educational failure before it becomes generational and entrenched. Charter schools either shape up quickly or ship out. Traditional schools, in contrast, almost never close, no matter how bad they get.
We hope the candidates get more questions on this critical topic, because unlike all the others, this is an area where there is a genuine war for the soul of their party. Will they put schoolchildren first by embracing the Obama administration’s tolerance and progress in this area, or will they throw the children aside out of obedience to their teachers union masters?
