More on the divide within Democrats on charters here:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brow...rters-diverge-by-race-as-2020-elections-loom/
Interesting stuff.
New poll results from Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy organization that supports charter schools, show a stark contrast between the attitudes of white Democrats on one side, and black and Hispanic Democrats, on the other. Among white Democratic voters, 26% expressed favorable opinions toward charters, while 62% had unfavorable opinions. The results were essentially flipped for black (58% favorable, 31% unfavorable) and Hispanic (52% favorable, 30% unfavorable) Democratic voters.
Charter schools have been featured prominently in the news lately, with new poll data showing a growing racial divide in Democrats’ support for charters and Sen. Bernie Sanders’ call for a moratorium on public funding for charter school expansion. The news has offered a glimpse of the potential consequences for American students when changes in public opinion toward charters collide with presidential politics.
Jon Valant
The Herman and George R. Brown Chair and Director - Brown Center on Education Policy Senior Fellow - Governance Studies
@JonValant
As one who studies charter schools, I see reason for concern—and maybe a little reason for optimism—in the developments. Charter schools educate disproportionately large shares of black and Hispanic children. Support for charters looks reasonably strong and stable among black and Hispanic Democrats, but it looks weak and is plummeting among white Democrats. The result, I argue, is a risk that growing ideological opposition to charters among white Democrats will have tangible, unwelcome consequences for families of color.
Education reform has an ugly tendency of being done “to and not with” communities of color. While it’s possible that growing skepticism from white Democrats—and pledges to act from candidates like Sanders—will help with cleaning up some of the problems with today’s charter schools and policies, the potential for harm is real.
EVIDENCE OF DIVERGING VIEWS BETWEEN WHITE AND NONWHITE DEMOCRATS
New poll results from Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy organization that supports charter schools, show a stark contrast between the attitudes of white Democrats on one side, and black and Hispanic Democrats, on the other. Among white Democratic voters, 26% expressed favorable opinions toward charters, while 62% had unfavorable opinions. The results were essentially flipped for black (58% favorable, 31% unfavorable) and Hispanic (52% favorable, 30% unfavorable) Democratic voters.
In response, EdNext examined its own data for an intraparty split. They, too, found such a split—along with evidence that it opened recently and quickly. Using EdNext data, Chalkbeat depicted an extraordinary drop in support from white Democrats from 2016 to 2018 without an accompanying drop from black or Hispanic Democrats:
support for charter schools
[Source:
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/05/14/charter-schools-democrats-race-polling-divide/]
As the Chalkbeat article explains, the precise cause of these patterns is unclear. One possibility is that charter schools have had a more personal and consistent presence in the lives of black and Hispanic Americans. A 2018 study from Public Agenda reports that 57% of charter schools, compared to only 25% of traditional public schools, operate in cities, and the charter school student population is disproportionately nonwhite (e.g., 33% white, 32% Hispanic, 27% black).
Among several fact-free smears against charters by the expert guessers on this thread is that charter schools are "all white."* They aren't, of course, as anyone who's put the slightest effort into the subject knows that NC charters are on a blind lottery. But the opposition to them sure seems to be.
* This is an interesting accusation to be made by a pool of Wake Forest grads, but that's another topic for another day.
