Charlotte voters must support candidates who value funding public schools over pushing more charters

Two weeks ago, Anna Maria Della Costa and Gavin Off wrote an article using state testing data that showed that traditional Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools public schools outperform Mecklenburg County charter schools in both proficiency and growth scores.

The article noted that even with CMS’s higher proficiency in most cases, 83% of CMS schools met or exceeded growth on end of grade tests in comparison to just 55% of charter schools.

What made this data stand out more, according to Nicole Price of the N.C. Association of Educators, was that “according to the state’s own data, charter schools serve a smaller percentage of English language learners, students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students.” Further, they are outperforming them despite the reality that “traditional public schools do not have the same flexibility with school structures and accountability measures as charters.”

Put in plain language, our charter schools have fewer children facing poverty, fewer children learning English for the first time, fewer children with disabilities and IEP’s, have greater flexibility, and are producing worse numbers. Furthermore, there is bipartisan support for weighing growth higher in evaluating schools (83% CMS vs 55% charter).

Despite all that information, Republican lawmakers at the state level continue to fight to hoard a $6 billion surplus of taxpayer money and are literally fighting as a united front to underfund N.C. public schools and push for more charter schools.

In full transparency, some of local Democratic politicians have also been swept up in the smoke and mirrors of marketing and salesmanship, adopting the same thinking — that charters are better. It’s troubling because in a manufactured battle of charters versus traditional public schools, too many of our local officials and members of the corporate, and philanthropic community are ignoring a clear and present war on public education, pairing Tea Party-esque groups like Moms for Liberty with a broader privatization movement.

A few years ago, I was a part of a group that brought Anand Giridharadas, author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” to Charlotte to speak at the Community Building Initiative Stakeholder’s breakfast.

The book’s premise is that that over the past four-plus decades, we’ve sold a myth: that we can defund the public institutions that built America and the market and charity (nonprofits) will cover all gaps in response.

During his talk, Giridharadas spoke about the way many of the same institutions that extract resources and cause chaos for regular people, then present themselves as the heroes to the harmed via philanthropy that falls short of scale but produces great photo-ops.

He also spoke specifically about North Carolina where political figures were steadily reducing funding and support for public schools, then naming them as failing — all while subsequently promoting charters, vouchers, and privatizing education.

At a state level, I’m challenging folks to support candidates who want this state to be a place that once again values public education. Hint: Their main talking point will be Leandro funding over “choice.”

In Mecklenburg County, we have school board and county commission candidates who actively sit on charter school boards. Some of them have led efforts to reduce funding for CMS despite the Leandro ruling, all while their charters haven’t even produced numbers that match those of CMS schools with similar demographics.

Our children are more than a test, and your choice of where to support your child is your choice. However, when voting I challenge voters to listen to a group we normally ignore in these discussions: Educators.

This story was originally published October 3, 2022 at 9:27 AM.