Life between a rock and a hard place…An Alternative Vision for School Choicers: Part 1

The Children Charters Choose to Leave Behind

By Robert Yarnall

A continuing series of Providence Journal editorials encouraging the state legislature to turn a deaf ear to the concerns of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns about “public” charter school financing turns a blind eye to the reality of life in a “traditional” public school classroom for students and teachers alike.

Charter school proponents claim that charter schools do the same job as public schools at a cost savings to the taxpayer. However, unlike traditional public schools, public charter schools are not required to take all comers, so those tax savings (assuming they materialize) come at a huge cost to the children they leave behind.

Whether the “public” charter school movement qualifies as progressively visionary or regressively irresponsible deserves a more thorough discussion than the state’s only major publication seems willing, or is able, to provide.

This year marks the golden anniversary of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a comprehensive statute that funds primary and secondary education and followed closely on the heels of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Johnson’s trademark War on Poverty. LBJ believed that "full educational opportunity" should be "our first national goal.”

The most highly trumpeted component of the 1965 ESEA was neatly tagged as  “Title I,” a basic academic skills program that provided “…financial assistance to local educational agencies (LEA’s) and schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards.”

It just so happened that, also in 1965, an impressive young African American social worker named Hubert “Hubie” Jones had been hired as the Director of the Roxbury Multi-Service Center. Under Jones’ watchful demeanor, “…RMC became a national model for neighborhood based social services for low-income city residents.”

 As Title I became operational over the next two years, Jones networked with his counterparts around the city. It became increasingly apparent that there were significant numbers of children who had been excluded from the city’s public schools because of physical or mental disabilities, behavioral problems, medical issues, or simply because they could not speak English.

The Massachusetts Department of Health and the Boston Public Schools denied any such policies or practices existed. They did agree, however, to join a task force convened by Jones to address the burgeoning issue. The findings of the Task Force on Children out of School were summarized in The Way We Go to School: Children Excluded in Boston. 

State government had nowhere left to hide. In 1972 Massachusetts enacted Chapter 766, the country’s first law guaranteeing the educational rights of special needs students, ages 3-22. Three years later, 1975, the federal government followed suit with PL 94-142, “The Education for all Handicapped Children Act.” Students with special needs could no longer be denied access to constitutionally guaranteed educational opportunities.

The implications of PL 94-142 were obvious: to comply with the law, public school districts would need to provide full educational programs to a wide range of special needs students. The additional programming would require specialized teachers, specialized instructional materials, and physical plant modifications for students with vision, mobility, or health related limitations.

Rhode Island communities were able to successfully meet the early challenges of the implementation of PL94-142 thanks to the core mission of Rhode Island College as the state’s teacher preparation school. Additionally, RIC had a long history of advocacy for handicapped people linked to support from more than one influential Rhode Island political family with children in residency at the former Ladd School in Exeter.

RIC seemed to have anticipated the long term implications of Title I early on, so when Massachusetts enacted Chapter 766 in 1972, the college was able to adjust its special education programs accordingly and provided the bulk of additional special education staff to the state’s public schools. 

The newest instructional methods, materials and assistive devices were explained and demonstrated, even loaned out if requested. Overviews of trending building accessibility modifications and transportation logistics were presented.

The initial implementation of PL94-142 (1976-80) took place concurrently with the Carter Administration and substantive start-up funding was made available to the states. Rhode Island cities and towns were able to access federal monies to hire new special education teachers and support staff, equip classrooms, retrain teachers, and initiate other related efforts to begin compliance with federal mandates.

In 1981, under the Reagan Administration, spending priorities changed. Block grants for community-based social services were slashed. Assistance to families with children who depended on the guidance, intervention, and advocacy of community social workers for access to food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and other essentials, was dramatically curtailed or simply shut off.

Neighborhood schools were left to pick up the pieces and solve a homemade jigsaw puzzle-style school model that still paid homage to the American standard crafted by Horace Mann. Mann identified teaching as the key component to maintain and improve public schools, to benefit society as a whole. Could he have envisioned the current state of affairs, wherein the federal government’s willful abandonment of social services led to their forced adoption by public schools? Welcome to compassionate conservatism, Horace.

No branch of social services defunding compromised the instructional mission of public education more than the gutting of community-based support systems for children with serious behavioral problems. There remains a skeleton network of comprehensive counseling agencies, such as The Providence Center, trying to bridge the gap, but the muddied waters run wide and deep.

A select few students (who can blame them?) hope to escape the dystopian remnants of Hubert Jones’ and Horace Mann’s combined legacy by learning how to play and win the taxpayer-subsidized charter boat lottery. But they will be leaving their friends behind.

For the Wall Street pirates who are busy hijacking state governments, it is a small price to pay to restructure the War on Poverty as an investment opportunity.

John Arnold will be happy.