Criticism of publicizing a charter school lottery and my reply (one of my all-time rants)

I was completely taken aback when two charter school leaders (they run AWESOME schools and I have nothing but affection and admiration for them) emailed me with major issues with Eva Moskowitz publicizing the Harlem Success charter school lottery.  I've included their full emails below, and here are excerpts:

I strongly disagree that we should be televising or otherwise publicizing our lotteries.  With all due respect to the great school leaders who do so, I just can't imagine showing crying mothers and their crying kids, despondent about the prospect of sending their kids back to district schools, just to make a political point.  Granted, it's a very important political point to make, and showing crying mothers would provide a powerful image, but there are other ways to achieve this goal.

And my other friend wrote:

we don’t have a public lottery because we don’t want to exploit people who have been exploited for far too long.

I understand where they're coming from and completely agree with some of their points about using the lotteries to advise parents "how to organize themselves to advocate for change...[and] advise them of what to do in the event that they don’t get accepted", but I couldn't disagree more with their general point what we in the charter school movement should not publicize the immense sadness/despair that takes place at our lotteries.  In fact, I'll go so far as to say (forgive me, my friends, but I need to say this!) that the attitudes in these two emails are naive and harmful to the very children whose lives are at stake.  Allow me to analogize/explain...

 

In my mind, there's little difference between the overwhelmingly poor and minority parents and children who suffer when they are turned away from charter school lotteries and the overwhelmingly poor, minority parents and children who were suffering in the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center after Katrina.  Both groups are/were marginalized, neglected and suffering greatly, in part due to outright racism, but mostly because our nation's leaders and the vast majority of Americans, who are decent, caring people, weren't aware of what was going on and the magnitude of the suffering.  The images of suffering people, living in squalor, were horrific and hard to watch, but does anyone think they would have been better off had the media turned off the television cameras because "I just can't imagine showing crying mothers and their crying kids" or "we don’t want to exploit people who have been exploited for far too long".  C'mon!  It was precisely these vivid images -- even though some of the people being filmed might have been embarassed to be seen in such a state -- that led to such an outcry that this administration was finally compelled to act!  (Recall that Bush was on vacation at his Texas ranch in the days after Katrina and it was only when one of his aides recorded what was on the news and forced Bush to watch it that he woke up to the magnitude of the disaster -- imagine if there had been no video!)

 

Here might be an even better analogy: can anyone forget the images of the desperate Vietnamese trying to climb aboard the helicopters on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon when we finally pulled out?

 

We in the school reform movement need images like this because the leaders of this country and most average Americans have no idea how bad things are in our failing schools and how desperate parents are to escape them.  Until this changes and this issue becomes universally known and acknowledged as the urgent crisis that it is, we will NEVER fix our broken public education system, nor will charter schools EVER gain enough traction and market share to make a major impact!

 

Anyone with a knowledge of media/marketing 101 will tell you that suffering people on TV make a BIG emotional impact -- the type of impact that leads to billions of dollars going to victims of Katrina, AIDS, African famines, etc.  We in the school reform movement need to do a MUCH better job of personalizing what's going on by showing the children who are being screwed by failing schools and the desperate parents who are trying to save them.  I've talked to enough politicians to know that NOTHING makes a bigger impact than suffering children and pissed off parents.  Charter schools, esp. at their lotteries, have them in spades, so why on EARTH would we hide them?!  These lotteries, in a powerful and emotional way, embody everything that is right about charter schools and everything that is wrong with the current system.  We shouldn't publicize them because the cameras might embarass someone who's overcome by emotion (either joy or despair)?  C'mon!

 

Let me be clear: we are in a PERMANENT battle against well-funded, well-organized, ruthless enemies who will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo.  And frankly, it drives me nuts to see that a lot of people in the charter school movement are politically naive and believe that if we just put our heads down and build and operate great schools, then the media and politicians (in whose hands charter schools lie) will see the light and we can all do our great work and sing Kumbaya. 

 

This widespread attitude is a contributor to us getting our asses kicked -- maybe not quite as hard and quite as often as in past (I AM optimistic that we are making progress), but it still feels pretty much the same.  If we keep this up, we are going to continue to get our asses kicked -- and I don't like getting my ass kicked!!!

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Comment #1:

I may have said this before, so forgive me if you've already heard this, but I strongly disagree that we should be televising or otherwise publicizing our lotteries.  With all due respect to the great school leaders who do so, I just can't imagine showing crying mothers and their crying kids, despondent about the prospect of sending their kids back to district schools, just to make a political point.  Granted, it's a very important political point to make, and showing crying mothers would provide a powerful image, but there are other ways to achieve this goal.

 

Imagine being a 10 year-old kid, coming out of public school, seeing your mother crying in public, or even on TV, because the school she has to send you back to is so terrible.  Imagine how that makes you feel about your life prospects.  The kids who don't win the lottery have to live with the school they've been assigned to for the rest of their lives.  That's bad enough without us broadcasting their misery and compounding their feeling of despair.

At our school, we do not widely publicize the lottery.  However, every year, parents whose kids lose the lottery call us, asking, begging, crying, threatening to sue, etc., to get their kids into our school.  They tell us about their kids getting beaten up, picked on, not getting help from their teachers, and we have to tell them there's nothing we can do.  I don't blame them for trying anything, but it is not a pretty sight, it is not something I would want on camera, and I don't believe that showing people at their most miserable is treating them with dignity.  Expose the district public schools for what they are - that's not hard.  Get testimony from parents who won the lottery and whose kids lives were changed - that's definitely easy.  But don't show the grieving on TV.

 

By the way, you'll love this:  one of the biggest charter opponents in our state's legislature (wants a cap on charters, wants to hamstring us in as many ways as possible, claims that charters select their kids and thus are damaging the public schools) has called me (both staffers and him personally) FIVE TIMES to try to get me to enroll one of his constituent's children.  He says he can help us politically, with funding, etc., and that we should accept this kid - who hates his district school - because he's a "good kid with two solid, professional parents."  This from a guy who hates charters because they supposedly take the best kids with the best parents out of the public schools.

Comment #2:

I’ve never understood why schools would want to hold a public lottery knowing that 80% of the people in the room are going to end up in tears. I can only hope that the organizers of this lottery are going to provide all of the rejected parents with materials detailing their other educational options. Perhaps they’re going to use this as an opportunity to focus on those people and rally for more educational options. I could be convinced of the legitimacy of this sort of an event if I were told that a ton of media were going to be there (the less important point) and all of the rejected parents were going to be advised how to organize themselves to advocate for change (the more important point). That should be the focus of the event. The focus should definitely not be on getting the best camera shots of crying parents. I would hope that Eva is not inviting you out to see how many people are going to be crying. I would guess that she’s not inviting you out for you to see how many people are looking for other options; you already know that. I am hopeful that she is inviting you out to show how she is going to teach the people who are not offered spots how to advocate for educational equity. More realistically, however, I am afraid that these sorts of lotteries serve to pad school’s egos about how wonderful they are. How uplifting it must be to see a sea of hundreds of people who show up praying for a spot in your school. Personally, we don’t have a public lottery because we don’t want to exploit people who have been exploited for far too long. Instead, when parents apply we let them know of their chances of getting in and we advise them of what to do in the event that they don’t get accepted.