Education for citizenship in for-profit charter schools?

Abstract

Most Americans and many residents of other democratic countries hold public schools to the social and political goal of preparing children to be good citizens. This goal is being challenged by some new forms of schooling promoted through popular education reform movements, especially in the US. This article reveals potentially insurmountable conflicts between the beliefs and practices of one of those forms of schools, for-profit charter schools, and their public task of educating for citizenship. This study begins by exploring the public nature and purposes of public schools, especially their role in creating particular types of citizens. This understanding of public schooling and good citizenship, then, becomes the theoretical lens for analysing the practices of for-profit charter schools. A critical discourse analysis was conducted of school materials such as websites, curricula, investor relation materials, proposals for new charter schools, and interviews with charter school founders. That analysis was used to indicate aspects of support for and incompatibility with quality citizenship education and to assess the overall likelihood that for-profit schools can educate citizens well.

Keywords:

• Education Management Organizations
• citizenship education
• for-profit schools

Notes

^1. Available online at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mogkk7EeVeA and http://edisonlearning.com/el-blog, accessed 12 January 2012.

^2. I borrow this from Higgins and Knight Abowitz, (2011).

^3. Boyles (2011: 434) recently made a persuasive argument that even the notion of the public good has become so usurped that it ‘(1) convolutes and conceals the role of private interests that are increasingly pervading public schools; and (2) it functionally and materially furthers market conditions that support an oligarchic versus a democratic republic’.

^4. While many scholars have documented this, it is the moving personal accounts of Jonathan Kozol that have been perhaps the most powerful. For example, see Kozol (2005).

^5. Levine (2007) describes different types of citizen education and their connections to notions of democracy across time.

^6. Brighouse (2006) draws upon Amy Gutmann and others to provide a convincing account of the necessity of not teaching children to unquestionally align themselves with their nation.

^7. Obviously, US public schools are also concerned with the performance of individual students given the current emphasis on high-stakes testing. However, those schools also consider larger aggregated data geared toward ensuring equality of opportunity. Moreover, many public schools express in their mission statements and philosophies that they focus on developing children who work well together and who are integrated with their communities.

^8. Davies and Bansel (2007) describe the neoliberal notion of the individual expertly.

^9. I thank Bryan Warnick for reminding me of the distinction between selfishness and self-interestedness.

^10. Signal Tree Academy South charter school proposal, page 6. Available online at http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2012/01/18/read-white-hat%E2%80%99s-applications-to-open-new-ohio-charter-schools/, accessed 12 January 2012.

^11. Note how ‘bureaucratic’ operates as common sense within neoliberal ideology. Bureaucracies are seen as systems of people who serve to constrain and are themselves constrained by regulations. These are necessarily bad because they are believed to be inefficient and limiting on individuals or corporations.

^12. Available online at: http://www.nhaschools.com/Pages/default.aspx and http://www.edisonlearning.com/, accessed 12 January 2012.

^13. For a discussion of Friedman’s views see Henig (1994: 60).

^14. PBS interview with David Brennan. Available online at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/vouchers/interviews/brennan.html, accessed 12 January 2012.

^15. Forbes 2008 interview with Chris Whittle. Available online at: http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/22/solutions-education-whittle-oped-cx_sli_0123whittle.html, accessed 12 January 2012.

^16. Bryan Warnick rightly pointed out to me that most parents in public schools seem to desire civic education in the abstract, but have much more pressing concerns when it comes to their own children. They don’t create a market that would incentivize schools of any type to emphasize civic education. Relatedly, I would add here that the market that is constructed and perpetuated in the EMO context may be even less likely to identify civic education and its markers as worthy of careful measurement and comparison.

^17. Apple (2000), drawing on Roger Dale, expertly explains how markets behave in this way. Brown (2005: 41) further adds to this account.

^18. Available online at: http://www.whitehatmgmt.com/, accessed 12 January 2012.

^19. PBS interview.

^20. This open, democratic process is certainly not universal across all public schools. Mayoral control in some areas and the presence of corporate interests on school boards in others has limited the influence of the general public on school practice and policy.

^21. Ohio, for example, introduced such legislation as part of its proposed budget in May 2011.

^22. Signal Tree Academy South charter school proposal. Available online at: http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2012/01/18/read-white-hat%E2%80%99s-applications-to-open-new-ohio-charter-schools/, accessed12 January 2012.

^23. For more on this weakened sense of the public, see Henig (1994).

^24. To be fair to other EMOs, the Leona Group’s website suggests that their schools may do a better job, with the community aspects of their teaching extending beyond personal benefits. Interestingly, the head of Leona, William Coats, is one of the few EMO leaders who actually has a background in education; he was a superintendent and education professor.

^25. Available online at: http://www.nhaschools.com/, accessed 12 January 2012.

^26. I’m following Cuban (2004) in this train of thought.

^27. For more along these lines see Biesta (2004: 237–238).

^28. Signal Tree Academy Northeast Charter School Proposal, 2011, page 10. Available online at: http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2012/01/18/read-white-hat%E2%80%99s-applications-to-open-new-ohio-charter-schools/, accessed 12 January 2012.

^29. See Wilson (2008: 8).

^30. For more along these lines see Wells et al. (2002)).

^31. It is important to note at the outset of this section that very little empirical work has been done to analyse the differences in content and delivery of civics education in EMO schools vs other charter or traditional public schools. The closest relevant studies are those of Buckley and Schneider (2007) in the US and Campbell (2001), Campbell (2004) in Canada. Clearly much more empirical work needs to be done to determine whether students from EMOs are more or less civically competent and engaged than their peers in other settings.

^32. Signal Tree Academy charter school proposal, page 360. Available online at: http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2012/01/18/read-white-hat%E2%80%99s-applications-to-open-new-ohio-charter-schools/, accessed 12 January 2012. See also Garcia et al. (2009).