A Chevy at a Ford Appreciation Picnic

Washington, D.C.

My whitey sense informed me that you all needed some subversive thinking done.  So I got here as quick as I could, even though I don’t get around very quickly at all these days.  But, in as much as my semi-ambulatory legs and my wheelchair could let me, I went at top speed.

Andre Perry, writing in Hechinger Report, H/T AR:

Charter school leaders are complicit with segregation, and it’s hurting their movement

(snip)

A recent Associated Press analysis of national school enrollment data found that “as of school year 2014-2015, more than 1,000 of the nation’s 6,747 charter schools had minority enrollment of at least 99 percent, and the number has been rising steadily.”

I responded at AR:

You think that might be the case? Especially when, as an example, in my state, charter schools are only allowed to operate in St. Louis City and Kansas City proper, because the politics of charter school legislation invariably revolve around the educational “needs” of NAM (esp black) children, and the establishment of actual charter schools are done with NAM (esp black) children in mind. It would be like being outraged that there are no Chevys to be found at an event advertised and billed for months before the fact as a Ford Appreciation Picnic.

The subversive politics behind articles like these and the more pregnant political question have to do with teachers’ unions. The blogger Education Realist has pretty much proven to the smoking gun level that the charter movement is a stealth movement to bust teachers’ unions using the academic needs of NAMs esp blacks as a social justicey front. At the same time, articles like these are very likely the stealth weaponized pushback from teachers’ unions, again, using social justicey language (“segregation” blah blah) as a front. As it is with many things, two different selfish special interests are firing at each other with deliberately rhetorically confusing weapons, and we live in the middle of the free fire zone.

So it boils down to: Charters yes because zomg social justice lol vs charters no because zomg social justice lol. Neither side really gives a sheeyt about social justice, it’s just that they know that social justice tripe coming out of one’s mouth officially sounds good these days.