I am offering my blog to Angel Worth, a Metro teacher who DID attend the School Choice Summit last week. Many educators were refused admittance, with their tickets for the event in their hands. Dr. Rick Cobb, Superintendent of Mid-Del Schools and his wife were turned away with flimsy excuses. Aaron Baker DID get in, and his report of the experience is here...
I found Angel's insights chilling, and I thank her for attending, for asking questions, and for sharing the words of the participants...this gives us a better idea of what the proponents of 'choice' (vouchers) really want.
After looking over the itinerary I had picked up at the
check-in table, I picked the three breakout sessions I was interested in attending,
and I made my way to the adjacent building.
I found Angel's insights chilling, and I thank her for attending, for asking questions, and for sharing the words of the participants...this gives us a better idea of what the proponents of 'choice' (vouchers) really want.
Into the Lions’ Den
Angel Worth | January 29, 2017
This past Thursday, the Oklahoma School Choice Summit and
Expo was held at Oklahoma City Community College. The summit began at 4:00, and
after ushering straggling students out of my classroom, grading a handful of
late papers, and prepping the next day’s lesson plan, I strode out of the high
school brimming with both fire and fear.
Upon arriving at OCCC, I sat in my car for a full fifteen
minutes, staring through the windshield at the signs directing the public to
the Performing Arts Center. I’m a first year teacher, so feeling out of my
depth is no rarity for me. However, the feeling that gripped me as I walked up
the sidewalk and into the summit was a different kind of displacement. I’d
never really considered the phrase, “into the lion’s den,” until I stumbled
over my name at the check-in table and allowed a young, smiling woman to slip a
yellow band around my wrist. Dozens of people stood across the lobby. Most were
dressed in tailored business suits and dresses, and nearly all wore a yellow
scarf draped around their necks. The scarves were handed out as people checked
in, but because I did not register in advance, I was not offered one.
After looking over the itinerary I had picked up at the
check-in table, I picked the three breakout sessions I was interested in attending,
and I made my way to the adjacent building.
Charter School “101”
Brent Bushey, the Executive Director of Oklahoma Public
Resource Center, facilitated the “Charter School 101” session. Bushey is a
tall, but soft spoken man. He wore a wrinkled navy blue suit, and he shuffled
from one foot to the other while clasping and unclasping his hands throughout
his presentation. Using charter school jargon, Bushey explained the process for
how charter schools are opened, and in the last twenty minutes of the session,
Bushey opened the floor to questions.
I searched the room for a friendly face, trying to identify
if there was a Public Education ally in the room, but I was alone. The slogan
on the banner at the back of the room caught my eye, “Every Child. Every
Choice. Every Chance.” I took a shaky breath and raised my hand to ask for
clarification on concerns I’ve heard echoed throughout the Public Education
community.
“How is the money that charter schools are allocated by the
state budgeted, and how transparent is that budget?” I asked. I could hear my
own voice quavering. After stating that charter schools are tracked the same
way public schools are, Bushey shared a surprising statistic.
“50-70% of charter schools that are closed are closed due to
financial problems,” he said.
“So charter schools close most often due to financial
mismanagement?” The words had left my mouth before I could bring them back.
Bushey shuffled, “It’s less an issue of mismanagement, and
more so financial incompetence.”
Perhaps to Bushey incompetence sounds better than
mismanagement, but, as an English teacher, I couldn’t help but be appalled at
the connotation associated with a word like incompetence. Is it supposed to be
comforting that charter schools across the nation are shut down because they’re
too incompetent to properly write a budget? Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, public
schools across the state continue to function as their budgets are slashed and
their funds are bleeding because of the “incompetence” of our state legislature
to do the same thing. That’s a difference between public and private schools
that’s worth noting: public schools have the resilience and commitment to their
students to keep their doors open, in the face of anything.
Emboldened, I asked another question, “When comparing
public, charter, and private schools, the concept of attrition is almost never
acknowledged on behalf of charter and public schools. As a public school
teacher,” I glanced around the room, “I feel like there are several steps taken
before a student is removed from school. Charter schools have much higher
attrition rates, which makes me wonder what process do charter schools follow
to have students removed from their programs? And what liberties do charter
schools take in admitting students with learning disabilities and disciplinary
issues?”
Pivoting away from the topic of attrition, Bushey instead
decided to address the latter half of the question. Bushey identified himself
as a past teacher of students with disabilities and also as a father of a daughter
with Down Syndrome. He shared an anecdote of his experience when he first moved
to Oklahoma. He called a charter school to see if they would accept his
daughter, and they said yes. He then asked them if they had a Special Education
program, to which they said no.
“This is where it becomes a matter of school choice,” Bushey
said. “I could have sent my daughter to that charter school, but instead I
chose a school that was the best fit for her.”
What I got out of Bushey’s story was that a charter school
was willing to accept his daughter despite not having the necessary program to
ensure her success, which begs the question: what are IEP and 504 programs like
at charter and public schools? Are these schools in compliance with IDEA? Do
these schools know what IDEA is? *cough cough DeVos*
Advocacy for School
Leaders
Before I could ask anymore, the session was over, and I was
on my way to a session called “Advocacy for School Leaders.” The session was
facilitated by Matt Ball of CMA Strategies and former Representative Hopper
Smith of Strategic Resource Consulting. The goal was to teach those present how
to elevate those in favor of school choice from “passive stakeholders” to
“active advocates.”
Outside of Matt Ball referencing Waiting for Superman as an informative source on charter schools, the
thing that caught my attention most took the form of an older man named Charlie
Daniels, who I later found out is the Vice President of the Opportunity
Scholarship Fund. With both Senator Pederson (District 19) and Senator Rader
(District 39) in attendance, Daniels provided scathing criticism of local
school boards.
“The school board is the captive of administration,” Daniels
said. “Most of them are sinkers; you cannot change their mind with a bomb.”
A few moments later, Daniels went on to say, “You’ve gotta
go beyond the local school board. They’re going to be your enemy.”
It was at this point that Hopper Smith became visibly
uncomfortable as he nervously laughed and claimed that “enemy is a strong word.”
Daniels went on to tell about a time that he spent a day at the Capitol going
from office to office of elected officials. He said that one time, he stopped
in at a legislator’s office whose district Daniels was not a part of. Daniels
told the legislator that he should vote in favor whatever school choice bill
was on the docket that session, and the legislator responded by saying, “Thank
God. I’ve been getting hundreds of phone calls from Public Education
people all day, and now if I vote for this I can say I’ve got some cover.”
It’s good to know that our legislators will disregard the voices
of hundreds of constituents in favor of one person’s opinion if it serves the
legislator’s own self-interest. In case the legislator has forgotten, their
jobs exist to serve use. Their jobs do not exist to serve themselves.
Moving on.
Communities
of Color Panel
The next session on the list was one called “Communities of Color
Panel.” Before entering the room, however, I had an informative mini-session in
the form of a conversation I overheard between former State Superintendent of
Education Janet Barresi and keynote speaker Dr. Steve Perry.
I initially became aware of the conversation when the words “Betsy
DeVos could be good for us,” came out of Barresi’s mouth, but my favorite part
of the conversation was when Barresi complained about the “quality of educators
that colleges of education are producing.”
Dr. Perry guffawed loudly and replied, “That whole sentence is an
oxymoron.”
It took everything in me not to step forward and identify myself
as a public school teacher. Instead, I took deep breaths, pictured the goddess
of education that is current Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, and followed
Barresi into the next session.
The communities of color panel was comprised of Dr. Steve Perry,
Phillip Gover of Sovereign Schools Project, and Marilinda Garcia of the Libre
Initiative. I most looked forward to this session because I wanted to see how
the panel addressed the research that suggests charter and private schools
compound the issue of systemic racism. Instead, Dr. Perry said in his opening
statement, “We are taking a system that was designed in 1635 that was designed
to keep certain communities apart...and has so effectively done it, that it
almost seems natural.”
Dr. Perry went on to suggest that teachers are the hostages of
unions to which we pay our ransom (union dues), and that the public school
system is too traditional and racist.
Now, I acknowledge that there is inequity in the public school
system. Schools that are located in areas of dense poverty are
attended by predominately students of color, and these schools often have lower
graduation rates. However, the solution is not to open up charter schools so
that portions of the student bodies in lower-income schools are pulled out.
What about the students who are left behind? The students who don’t make it off
the wait list? They’re left to attend a school that has even less funding. In
Oklahoma City, in particular, these students would be left in classrooms that
are filled with unqualified and uncertified teachers because of a massive
teacher shortage. The solution to this problem is not to open more schools,
it’s to fund the school that stands, starting with teacher salaries, to ensure
quality teachers are present to provide a quality education. As much as the
summit reiterated that the student is the most important part of education,
they must recognize that students’ education starts with their teacher.
Before the last session dismissed, the room was notified that a
protestor, allegedly, pulled the fire alarm in the theater to prevent the
second part of the program from happening. Dr. Perry laughed joyously at this.
“I’ve been to a lot of cities, man,” he said. “And ain’t no city
where they’re pulling fire alarms. To those protestors: you showed us that we
hurt you by hollering. Keep hollering because we’re going to hurt you some
more.”
This was met with whoops and hollers as those in the room stood to
begin their walk back to the Performing Arts Center.
Main
Program
It
just so happened that I was behind Janet Barresi on the way back to the
Performing Arts Center, so I was lucky enough to see her reaction when we
reached the doors to find dozens of pro-Public Education people standing in
line, waiting to be admitted to the summit.
Barresi
rolled her eyes and shared a look with the woman who had been accompanying her,
and they pushed their way through the line to get into the lobby. As I had
already checked in, I followed.
When
I reached the front of the line I realized that those who were waiting to
check-in were being turned away. Most of them clutched EventBrite registration
confirmation tickets in their hands, and one man at the front of line began to
get irate.
I
asked one of the summit event’s coordinators why the group of people waiting to
get in were being denied access to the public event. He claimed that those
organizing the summit had caught wind of a protest group on Facebook, and so
they cross referenced the list of people who were associated with the Facebook
group and the people who had registered for the event, and the summit’s
organizers canceled the group’s tickets.
I
found out later, however, that several pro-Public Education people were turned
away who had no affiliation with the protest group on Facebook, which leads one
to wonder what sources the summit organizers were using to decide who could and
who could not attend a “public forum”?
I
did not stay for the entirety of the main program that was held in the
Performing Arts Center’s theater because I needed to go to the store to buy
supplies for the project my students were doing the following day. I did,
however, stay long enough to hear Rep. Jason Nelson moderate a panel comprised
of Sen. Stanislawski, Sen. Loveless, Rep. Chuck Strohm, and Rep. Calvey.
The
panel was essentially five men tossing around school choice buzzwords to incite
applause from the audience. I’m currently teaching rhetoric to my freshman, and
I was almost tempted to start recording the panel in order to have my students
analyze and identify the heavy use of pathos and the noticeable lack of ethos
and logos in each of the legislator’s arguments for school choice.
As
I drove away from the Oklahoma School Choice summit Thursday night, I reflected
on what it means to be a public school teacher in the current political
climate. Oklahoma teachers have been fighting the state legislator for many years
to protect Public Education, and now that fight might find itself carried to
the national level with the nomination of Betsy DeVos.
With
every anti-Public Ed proposed legislative bill that I read, I feel my faith in
the future of Oklahoma public school’s diminish. After leaving an environment
where public school teachers like myself were categorized as union thugs,
racist, selfish, and inept, my passion for public school teaching was
reignited. Since Thursday, I’ve thought back to Dr. Perry’s words again and
again, “You showed us that we hurt you by hollering. Keep hollering
because we’re going to hurt you some more.”
Dr. Perry and many of the other speakers at the summit are not from Oklahoma, so
perhaps they won’t understand. However, I feel it necessary to warn them not to
mistake determination for being “hurt.” Don’t be so foolish as to misinterpret
grit for fear. The war on Public Education has been waging in Oklahoma for many
years now, and though it’s been trying and adverse, public schools and their
teachers have persevered—and we will keep on persevering.
Angel
Worth is a graduate of The University of Oklahoma. She is in her first year as
a freshman English teacher, and she decided to attend the Summit to engage in
meaningful dialogue and better understand those who support “school choice.”
