Comment Rescue from Kevin Ohlandt, the Vigilante Blogger at https://exceptionaldelaware.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/christina-moves-ahead-with-6-12-rigor-academy-at-christiana-high-school/comment-page-1/#comment-32277
The following comment is rescued in its entirety. Use the link above to follow the context. It's been quite a boxing match over at Kevin's blog as Christina's yet-to-be-created new 6-8 honors program tries to morph from conception to actualization. The pro: Choice. The con: Choice leaves kids behind. Who will triumph? I have no idea. But, the comment below caught my attention and reminded me of life before choice. Except, there was a never a "before" choice time in Delaware. Well, read the comment. Red is my emphasis, and we'll discuss the ins and outs after the comment further down.
"Why are we ONLY focusing on gifted and talented? This argument to only help them has not helped Delaware public education. Gifted and talented students used to always be integrated with their peers and they did just fine. They are todays millionaires and success stories. Unless they went to private schools. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that choice became a thing. And the long-term results, especially in Delaware, show it hasn’t worked for the benefit of ALL students. That is what I care about. I watch kids like my own get shuffled around because schools don’t know how to accommodate students with special needs because they have their heads up their ass trying to make these great programs. They cast kids like mine off to the side and justify it. It is unacceptable."Choice has always been a thing, a two headed thing. There was never a before-time. Only ever an ever after. And for decades the various formulations of districts across the state benefitted immensely, especially financially, from one choice option. You see, we collect school taxes from everyone. However, for as long as we have had schools, we have had private schools, and as long as we've had private schools, we've had parents choicing out of public education. In fact, in the 1990s we had thousands of students in Delaware who had never set foot in a public education building (except perhaps to compete in sports.) Yet, the school districts received and used school taxes from these student's families. The point being that the funds have never followed the students to Catholic or Private schools (special education placement being the exception.) Each district collected tuition taxes. Some districts were more affluent than others which required commensurate contributions to the education equalization fund. For the longest time, the Colonial School District has been the biggest beneficiary of this fund. Since Markell's been cutting school funding, essentially from the beginning of his 1st term, this fund has been frozen.
The other story - which really deserves a sidebar and not so much a paragraph - has roots in DeSeg, the court rulings that bused city students into the suburbs and suburban students into the city. Around 2000 the deseg ruling expired and Delaware moved to implement community schools. Bush took office and announced that no child would be left behind. So, CSD committed to busing students who used intra-district choice to flee their "failing" (Bush's language not mine) schools and attain their education at one that was more successful. Few grumbled about that choice. And almost no one complained when NCLB became RTTT and the students were remanded back to their neighborhood feeder school. Remember, that was Bush's idea of choice.
So let's go back to the other choice story - the more scintillating one. Tis a bit more fascinating because private school choice had benefitted the districts 100% for decades. So, the 90s came along and the charter movement was catching on. Looking at the waitlists of students whose parents were choicing to private schools, some of the state's most cunning legislative and educational minds engineered a law to appeal to private education parents tempting them to participate a public education experiment - Charter Schools. I can remember the letters to the editor in the News Journal explaining that charter schools were designed to be public schools that utilized the private school model. Imagine getting a private school education for free? And Charter School of Wilmington was born, followed by NCS, and whole slew of others.
The marketing of the original charter laws was remarkable. These were steam engines. The economy was booming in the 90s, jobs were abundant, Delaware still had manufacturing and MBNA was the largest employer in the state. It was a hop on the train or get run-over endeavour. Blinded by the glee and the gleam, few thought about the unintended consequences, especially the financial one. Even districts missed it, it happened so quickly. The mass exodus of private school children (the Diocese of Wilmington has felt this loss tremendously resulting in closing several schools) - at that moment when the housing and job crises hit - into charter schools meant that money the districts had collected for decades and never spent on private school kids was suddenly being sent out of the districts and into the charters. And the sum result was that suddenly, as suddenly as Charter School of Wilmington became a smashing success, districts decided that choice was an evil that needed to be repealed and many doubled down in their hate when they realized that their own students were now fleeing into the charters.
Red Clay was the exception (it's choice diversity has gained a lot of attention on Exceptional Delaware in recent debates) in that it authorized CSW, then Odyssey, and finally College Prep. CSW had a killer lease for a portion of the defunct Wilmington High School building for years. Odyssey transferred its charter to the state to allow it to expand outside of Red Clay. And Red Clay shuttered College Prep last year. And through-out the 90s and the 2000s the children of many a state legislator graduated from CSW. Eventually Red Clay would re-negotiate the lease at Wilmington High and turn it into a profit generating center that was reinvested in the remainder of the building as the district opened Cab Calloway as one of it's two magnet schools.
Yeah, now that districts have to send the money after the child, choice has a bad rap. Parents who utilize the option are villianised for wanting a" private school education at the cost of the public schools." Actually, I think parents use choice to find the right fit for their children as well as for convenience. In terms of reality orientation - very few charter schools are offering private school level educations. A uniform does not a private school make. Heck, one charter school completely eliminated its uniforms this year. And the now closed College Prep, Moyer, and Pencader never rivaled Archmere or Tower Hill. And I get the sense that Reach would not have out-educated Padua or Ursaline just as the now-closing Prestige never even came close to Sallies' record.
The question remains: was choice engineered to benefit all students? If you go back to taxation and private schools, it did indeed benefit all. You either benefitted b/c you could send your child to private school and get the private school education you choose. The kind where you bought into the rules, signed contracts, and realized that if your kid didn't play by the games, they were getting kicked to the curb. Or you benefitted because your district taxed private school parents and got to keep the proceeds.
But, can choice continue to benefit all? Absolutely, but it's a sticky widget. Choice can create pockets of success that can be replicated. Choice can force districts to adopt creativity that leads to stratification of options for each sub-group. And CSD has the petition to prove it. It's a petition of tax payers and parents who want to ensure the sustainability of the district's schools long after WEIC comes and goes whatever the outcome may be. Choice doesn't always mean leaving the district, often it means staying right here at home or in some cases coming home when the charter experiment has produced a personal failure.
If I hear one more time that charters and magnets are taking any particular district's funds, my head may spin because the districts had no problem collecting, keeping, and spending tax dollars paid by private school parents for decades. There is a mindset that it was okay when the districts were the only beneficiaries of choice and now its not.
That's a biased double standard.
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