Teacher Asks: Is School Choice A Form Of 'Segregation'

(Patch columnist Jerry Heverly teaches in San Leandro.)

I’d like to assign you, readers, some homework about two schools.

First, watch some of a six-minute video (click here) about the Nashville charter school Nashville Prep. 

Next watch a few minutes of a recent PBS documentary about Washington Metropolitan High School.

First the similarities.

Both schools serve inner city, minority students.

In both schools students sit at desks facing the teacher.

I’d be hard pressed to find any more resemblances.

The contrasts are, of course, where the interest lies.

One school has enthusiastic students who are, literally, jumping out of their seats; the other has students who, more often than not, have their heads down on their desks.

One school has kids in uniforms; the other has students who listen to iPods in class (while the teacher is talking!).

One school has young teachers who appear to be passionate about their jobs (the school website says approximately 90% of the staff came into teaching via Teach For America); the other has teachers who seem beleaguered and overwhelmed by the difficulties they face.

Let’s assume, without any statistical evidence, that Nashville Prep is very successful; the other probably has a few successes but judged by the total result, Washington Metropolitan appears to be a relative failure.

There is one more difference that needs to be added at this point.

It concerns the families of the students.

I’m going to stick my neck out and assert, without any proof, that the parents of Nashville Prep are of a different kind than those of Washington Met.

That is, to many folks, of course, the crucial factor.

To get your child into a charter school like Nashville Prep you must do something, take an affirmative step to put your offspring into a better situation.

To be truthful, the first time I saw the Nashville film I was appalled. Visions of Nazi Germany came to mind.

The cloying, manipulative praise (“Great job Lakeesha!”); the drawn shades (can’t have kids looking outside); the specter of a White woman so thoroughly orchestrating the behavior of Black and Brown children; the hand gestures so reminiscent of fascist society; all these things bother me.

Yet I understand why Bill Gates and his plutocrat friends think that this is the way to save American education.

And I understand why a Nashville parent would want their child in such a school.

I wouldn’t blame any reader for dismissing anything I might say about charter schools. I am, after all, a public school employee.

Yet I find myself in complete sympathy with the notion that parents should have more choices in education: vouchers, charters, et. al.

After thinking long and hard about these two schools a question occurs to me, which I’d like to pose to you, my readers.

Suppose you took the kids at Washington Metropolitan High School and enrolled them in a D.C. equivalent of Nashville Prep.

Would they stand and clap their hands above their heads and chant about Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington?

Would they lift their heads off those desks, cast aside those iPods, and march off to a brighter future full of college degrees and happy families?

And if that is not what you think would happen what does that mean about the ability of school choice to change kids?

Is Nashville Prep a success not because it is better at educating its students but because of the way it gets its students?

And are we as a society better off by allowing this new variety of segregation?

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