Do Charter Schools Threaten Public Education? Emerging Evidence from Fifteen Years of a Quasi-Market for Schooling

Supporters of public education have long feared that charter schools will threaten the public system, both by 1) creaming off the most advantaged students and 2) undermining political support for the public system. These fears have not been borne out. Blacks are disproportionately in charters, whites are disproportionately in traditional public schools, and Hispanics are fairly evenly distributed between the two. Looking at class measures, poor students are distributed fairly equally between the two types of schools. And turning to other measures of privilege, the evidence does not point strongly in either direction. My conclusions are not without qualification. The article identifies some domains in which cream-skimming might develop and others where more research is needed. Moreover, the evidence does not support the claims of some charter school advocates that charter schools serve an especially disadvantaged population of students. Regarding the question of public funding, privatization in the education context may have the effect of creating an additional constituency for increased overall education funding. Charter school advocates have moved away from claims that charters will cut costs and instead now focus on securing additional public funding. I argue that the structure of education funding means that charter school efforts to obtain greater public support will likely depend on increasing per pupil spending in all public schools

No Ordinary Success: The Boundaries of School Reform

How much can schools improve the life prospects of children growing up in poor neighborhoods? This question has divided the education community since at least the 1960s, when a group of researchers led by James Coleman attempted to quantify the extent to which segregation hurt black children. Coleman concluded that differences in family background had a greater impact on student achievement than did differences in school quality. Almost 40 years later, former New York Times education columnist Richard Rothstein revisited the question. In a series of lectures at Columbia University’s Teachers College that became the book Class and Schools (2004), Rothstein chronicled the ways in which out-of-school factors undermine low-income children. Poor kids arrive at school knowing fewer words; live in substandard (often lead-poisoned) housing; lack healthcare; spend afternoons, weekends, and summers in neighborhoods without decent parks or libraries; face discrimination in the workplace after they leave school; and so on. This part of Rothstein’s argument was not new to anyone familiar with the lives of poor children. But he made one additional claim that upset many educators. According to Rothstein, the challenges facing low-income students meant that they would always do worse, on average, than their higher-income peers. I devoured Class and Schools when it came out; it seemed an urgent call for our nation to address out-of-school factors holding poor children back. Others saw (and see) Rothstein as defeatist, apologizing for school failure and telling inner-city teachers and kids that they will never beat the odds. The argument erupted again last year when two groups of education reformers set out what were widely seen as competing agendas. The Education Equality Project—led by New York City schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Washington, D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and minister-activist Al Sharpton—emphasized school accountability, tough standards, and changes in how teachers are hired, fired, and paid. The other group, formed by the Economic Policy Institute (Rothstein’s home), called for a “Broader, Bolder Approach,” insisting that schools alone cannot be expected to successfully educate poor students. Schools need help, they said, in the form of expanded health care, afterschool and summer programs, quality early childhood initiatives, and the like. Although the rhetoric from the two camps does not always reflect it, the gap between them is narrowing. Two important new books on schools suggest it should narrow further still

The Rise and Fall of School Vouchers: A Story of Religion, Race, and Politics

This Article examines why school vouchers have failed to garner the support that so many assumed would follow the Court\u27s decision in Zelman. The explanation, I suggest, concerns religion, race, and politics. The original rationale for vouchers was what I call the values claim -vouchers protected the right of parents to send their child to a school that reinforced their values. Originally promoted by Catholics, the values claim was adopted by evangelical Christians concerned about the secularization of public schools after the 1960s. Although the values claim was central for most of the history of the voucher movement, in the decade leading up to Zelman, voucher advocates replaced the values claim with what I call the racial-justice claim. This rationale emphasized vouchers as part of a civil rights struggle to obtain academically rigorous private education for low-income and minority parents. Redefining vouchers in this manner had political and legal advantages, and paved the way for the Court\u27s decision in Zelman upholding vouchers. Since Zelman, however, two trends have emerged that spell trouble for the future of the voucher movement. First, there are tensions between the values and racial-justice claims for vouchers, as the two claims lead to very different types of voucher programs that appeal to divergent political constituencies. Second, the voucher movement has been hurt by the rise of the accountability movement in education. No Child Left Behind was enacted the same year that Zelman was decided, meaning that the Court gave the green light to the voucher movement at exactly the same time that state and national education policy began to demand greater oversight of all schools, including private schools accepting vouchers. For schools today, accountability means less local control, more tests, and stricter government standards. Conservative Christians, who once led the voucher movement, reject these intrusions into school autonomy. As a result, they are less likely to support modern voucher programs. My approach in this Article is historical, predictive, and normative. It is historical in that I trace the development of the values and racial-justice claims for school vouchers, exploring the tensions between the two claims. It is predictive because I suggest that the future of this educational reform is much less rosy than voucher supporters thought when Zelman was decided. Thus, I predict that Zelman may end up mattering much less than so many had thought it would. Finally, my approach is normative for I argue that it would be unfortunate if I am right about the demise of vouchers. While voucher defenders have vastly overstated the racial-justice claim, there is some prospect that vouchers might improve educational outcomes for low-income African American children. I argue that vouchers should be permitted at least until they can be more thoroughly evaluated to determine their impact on a group so in need of better educational opportunities

Community Policing and Youth as Assets

Over a decade after it was first introduced, community policing remains the most important innovation in American policing today. Called the most significant era in police organizational change since the introduction of the telephone, automobile, and two way radio, community policing has been supported by the past three Presidents, Congress, every major police organization, and much of the public. A broad cross-section of the legal academy also endorses community policing. Those who seek new ways for inner-city communities to mobilize against disorder and crime support it, as do others whose principal concern is reducing police abuse of minorities

Exporting Harshness: How the War on Crime Helped Make the War on Terror Possible

This Essay responds to a consensus that has formed among many opponents of the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war on terror. The consensus narrative goes like this: America has a long-standing commitment to human rights and due process, reflected in its domestic criminal justice system’s expansive protections. Since September 11, 2001, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and their allies have dishonored this tradition. It is too simple, I suggest, to assert that the Bush administration remade our justice system and betrayed American values. This Essay explores the ways in which our approach to the war on terror is an extension—sometimes a grotesque one—of what we do in the name of fighting the war on crime. By pursuing certain punitive policies domestically, I suggest, we have become desensitized to the harsh treatment of criminals. Revelations of abuse, therefore, are less likely to move us. In part for this reason, despite the mounting evidence regarding secret memos, inhumane prison conditions, coercive interrogations, and interference with defense lawyers, the Bush administration’s approach to the war on terror remains largely unchecked and unchanged. I pursue this thesis by focusing on five specific areas in which our domestic criminal system has influenced how we fight the war on terror: 1) the scope of our prison complex, 2) prison conditions and prisoner abuse, 3) our harsh treatment of juveniles, 4) attacks on judicial authority, and 5) undermining the role of defense counsel. I conclude by suggesting that the very metaphor of war—whether on crime, drugs or terror—helps explain our enthusiasm for harsh tactics