Oprah, I will not be silenced

I’ve said it from day one: Oprah Winfrey is a phony. That’s right, a phony.

Shame on you Oprah, for berating public education and supporting a system that’s no better off than public schools are. The “amazing” charter schools you chose to highlight are as good as those “special public schools” (as Bill Gates so eloquently put it), and are as few.

How dare she try to tell us to “save our time” in responding to her show if we’re “good” teachers. As though we have no right to respond to her propaganda for the Obama administration’s blind following of the upper class, right wing educational agenda. Well, I am not going to save it. I will not be silenced by you.

Charter schools are no better than our local public schools. As Dana Goldstein of The Nation put it (and Diane Ravitch reiterated tonight when I saw her speak live in person!): “Here's what you don't see: that four out of five charters that are no better, on average, than traditional neighborhood public schools (and are sometimes much worse).” What should we say to that, Ms. Winfrey?

“Well you don’t see other than special schools, uniformly good results. You’ll see the honor students, the high track students doing quite well,” Bill Gates said as some type of educational expert on Winfrey’s show. Gates is referencing public schools, but his statement can be easily applied to charter schools. The majority of charter schools in this country track students, and the moment they find students who do not make them look good, they kick them out. And where do those students end up? In the classrooms of their local public school. The majority of charter schools in this country do not serve students who have special educational needs. The majority of charter schools in this nation do not serve the ever-growing population of homeless children. The majority of charter schools that are well performing are “special schools,” as Oprah herself even admits later in her show: “…even though many of them [charter schools] don’t work, many of them do.” Those that do work were the few “highly performing charter schools” she used as the examples in her video montage. This statement seems to cancel itself out. If many of them don’t work, how can many of them work all at the same time?

We cannot even say the same about public schools. ONE out of every five charter schools is better than a public school. Twenty-percent. As stated earlier this evening at the Ravitch speaking event I attended: “If I knew my car was going to explode 20% of the time I planned to drive it, I would rather walk.”