Aaron Regunberg: Achievement First has Little Support in Providence
Friday, December 02, 2011
Last Monday, a broad-based coalition of Providence community groups sent a letter to Governor Chafee announcing their opposition to the implantation of a network of Achievement First Mayoral Academies in Providence. It’s a pretty long letter, but it’s effectively summed upin the last paragraph, which reads:
“Our repudiation of Achievement First is not an affirmation of the status quo nor is it a condemnation of all charter schools. The persistent achievement gaps that exist in our schools must be addressed, but no organization or methodology should claim to close those gaps while posting mixed academic results and undermining democratic processes. We implore your help in creating education policies, developed in conjunction with parents, teachers, students, and other local stakeholders, that help all young people enrolled in our public schools.”
These sentiments are followed by a list of signatories, whichI think represents a pretty broad swathe of Providence’s incredibly diverse community:
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Bryan Principe, Providence City Councilman Ward 13
Carmen Castillo, Providence City Councilwoman Ward 9
Davian Sanchez, Providence City Councilman Ward 11
Kevin Jackson, Providence City Councilman Ward 3
Luis Aponte, Providence City Councilman Ward 10
Michael Correia, Providence City Councilman Ward 6
Nicholas Narducci, Providence City Councilman Ward 4
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School Parent Teacher Organization
West Side Public Education Coalition
Hope United, Hope High School’s Student Union
Margarita Arentsen, Hope High School PTO organizer
Kathy Crain, former Providence School Board President
Olneyville Neighborhood Association
West Broadway Neighborhood Association
Congregation of the Victory Outreach Center
D.A.R.E. (Direct Action for Rights and Equality)
Rhode Island Progressive Democrats
It’s On Us
Project FUTURE
Occupy Providence
Rhode Island People’s Assembly
Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island
Brown University Student-Labor Alliance
Save Our Schools Coalition
Coalition to Defend Public Education
UNITE HERE Local 217
Rhode Island Unemployed Council
District 1199 New England SEIU
Rhode Island Jobs with Justice
More Than Just Union Opposition
I wanted to post the list because much of the pro-AF rhetoric I’ve heard lately has attempted toframe all opposition to Achievement First as coming from the teachers union and as being against educational change in general (as if this one particular charter-management organization had a monopoly on change or choice). But reading this letter and looking at the signatories shows, on the contrary, that a significant chunk of the Providence community has a series of specific reasons for believing that bringing Achievement First into their city will be harmful to the public school system they want so badly to improve.
That’s a very different picture than you get from examining the side that has been at work for the past six or so months advocating in favor of bringing Achievement First into Providence. I attended AF’s presentation during last Tuesday’s Providence City Council Education Subcommittee hearing, and was struck as I looked around the room at the sheer number of people who are being paid to work full-time on this issue. There were two lobbyists from the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies, two lobbyists from RI-CAN, a couple folks from Democrats For Education Reform, and Achievement First’s own “Senior Director of Rhode Island Expansion” (yes, an organization that claimsto always put kids first uses its resources for positions like “Senior Director of Rhode Island Expansion”).
Do the math and you’ve got eight or nine full-time lobbyists; I don’t know how much they each get paid, but if it’s anywhere close to RI-CAN’s wages (according to their website, RI-CAN paid $782,000 in salaries this year), that’s literally millions of dollars worth of capacity going into this effort, much of it fromconservative-backed entities like Broad or Wal-Mart’s foundations.
That rankles me for two reasons. First of all, given their incredible resources, I find it crazy that the pro-AF side hasn’t been able to rally more support for their cause than they have thus far. I mean, I worked on Angel Taveras’ mayoral campaign, and we had fewer than eight people on staff up until a couple weeks before the election! Of course, the Achievement First forces have shown that they can turn out certain folks to speak on their behalf, and I’m sure they will do so again during the public hearings next week. But with as many paid staff as they have, these people should have the resources to pull out every AF-supporter in the city, meaning that if there truly were a significant grassroots call for this specific charter-management organization, we should be seeing an absolutely massive outpouring of support for Achievement First. But I haven’t seen that.
On the contrary, what I’ve seen has been a series of rallies, protests, and actions organized by community members in opposition to Achievement First, and that’s with a big old staff of zero. (As far as I know, even PTU hasn’t committed anyone to organize on this issue.) With eight or nine people working full time to oppose AF, I can’t even imagine the kind of mobilization we’d see.
Expensive Lobbying
The second reason this resource investment rankles me, however, is that it seems like a whole lot of money to bespending on lobbying, particularly in the middle of a district that’s closing schools and slashing services because of its financial situation. I can’t help but rememberthe protest that students at Hope High initiated two years ago against the elimination of a number of programs at their school. Students were told that these programs had to be cut because they were too costly—but those programs cost less money than is being spent right now to lobby in favor of Achievement First.
Thinking back on the Hope High School protests makes it even harder for me to understand the priorities of our current policymakers. I mean,in that instance there were hundreds of students begging the city not to eliminate a program that had improved their school (and that had, in addition, added to school choice in Providence by creating in Hope a distinct community with an arts- and technology-focus), and this grassroots cry was ignored. The cuts were made anyway to save a negligible amount of money—sound familiar? It’s a story that’s played itself out all over our city; again and again, successful programs in Providence have been eliminated because, supposedly, there hasn’t been enough money to maintain them.
But now we can afford to bring in a corporate-backed, out-of-state charter-management organization that will drain off millions of dollars from the rest of the district? Seriously, where are our priorities?
But I guess that’s what all the lobbyists are for.
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