A dissenting voice muddies the charter school debate

yes Adam Emerson / February 2, 2012

Pedro Noguera’s departure from the State University of New York charter board isn’t entirely surprising, but it sends another mixed signal from a self-professed supporter of charter schools who is straining to contain their expansion.

Just four months ago, Noguera embraced the complexity of his position while enduring the jeers of a protest movement with whom he sorely wanted to find common ground. “I think we need ways to change and improve our schools, and if charters become one means to do that, I support it,” he once said. On Wednesday, he told The New York Times that the SUNY board has harbored a political agenda to increase the number of charter schools and has ultimately hastened inequities between charter and traditional schools.

Noguera has muddied a debate painfully in need of clarity.

Noguera didn’t contradict his earlier statements as much as he deserted the complexity of his convictions all too quickly. In doing so, he has muddied a debate painfully in need of clarity. His resignation highlights how support for charter school initiatives can weaken when advocates fail to agree on why school choice has value to begin with.

Similarly, Jay Mathews of the Washington Post, another self-professed charter school supporter, twisted this knot further by disparaging a consultant’s report for D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray that called for, among other things, investing in seats at higher performing charter schools with students from low performing traditional schools. “Regular schools and the people who work in them, with a few exceptions, would become a permanent education underclass,” Mathews writes.

Really? Besides distorting the recommendations from Gray’s consultant—who asserted that D.C.’s charter board and school district must work collaboratively to target ten priority neighborhood clusters—Mathews’ hyperbole assumes that investing in high-quality charter school seats in Washington would unravel a traditional neighborhood school system that is, as he writes, “still woven into the American education system and our culture.”

With friends like these, the growing coalition of support for charter schools will have a harder time coalescing around a common purpose. And those who oppose the expansion of charter schools with absolute conviction will enjoy the ambiguity.

Category: Charters & Choice