Speaking against charter schools in 'Rhetoric and Public Education' address

NOVEMBER 2018 — Inextricably tied, rhetoric and education have grown alongside one another since the days of Aristotle. In an address to a local Texas school board, my message drew on these to counter the faulty logic of for-profit charter schools.

With an increasing number of charter schools in Central Texas, the pressure to adopt for-profit models of schooling touches many suburban areas like Pflugerville, Georgetown, and Leander.

One doesn't have to rack up too many frequent flyer miles to go where for-profit schools, or for-profit schools by proxy, have wrecked havoc.

The issue is so widespread that ProPublica has a news beat on the matter, covering cases where charter schools dangerously waver in areas of "profits and public transparency." Reportage sheds light on funding abuses from North Carolina to New York and Ohio, where schools have been accused of collecting funding for faulty attendance reports.

At a regular evening meeting of Pflugerville Independent School District (PfISD), I addressed the school board to dissuade members from adopting charter schools and alternative for-profit models.

Pressure to Provide: Rhetoric as an Educational Odyssey

Wide-eyed strangers, we would often kneel together on the floor of our dorm room and spin yarns. Those late nights, someone would tell of an entire day stained by a faulty morning alarm. Someone else would promise that she saw the Teaching Assistant pick his nose. Breaking news developments in unrequited love usually elicited the most response, a human mixture of comfort and pity.

But no matter the events, humor, and heartbreaks of the day, our conversations, during which I often imagined the building’s world-famous Chilean architect, Alejandro Aravena, leaning in from the ceiling and listening to us, often ended the same way. University freshman, our yarns turned to stories of home.

Cleveland to Katy, I heard the names of my new friends’ favorite hometown streets, the desserts they liked, the public buildings for which they had loving distaste. In exchange, I gave them pecan street, pecan pie, and Hawaiian Falls.

As I accept a Fulbright ETA Award to Malaysia and prepare to embark on a journey 9,000 miles from Pecan Street, 9,000 miles from y’all, I find my yarn again turning again to stories of home as my January 1 departure date nears.

Friends, family, teachers, educators, worthy opponents in the classroom, collaborators; I accept this award with great emotion in two-parts. The first is a sense of communal joy. Tonight, my hands are full of proverbial gifts like those found in literature, wild fruit, green laurels, and frankincense. Feeling supported and loved, I offer these to you, my homeland.

With the joy and celebration, the second emotion I take seriously. A genuine warning and instruction to protect something that all of us in this room share: Pflugerville’s public education.

The Murchison Elementary, Kelly Lane Middle School, and Hendrickson High School that sheltered me (as the architect Alejandro Aravena’s building did in my baccalaureate years) were public-serving, non-profit institutions.

The separation of profit and education protected me and so many of my classmates those developmental years. In an imperfect society, we were viewed educationally as equals. We were not dollar signs.

As I move to Malaysia to teach English as a cultural representative and ambassador to the U.S., I ask those in this room to preserve public education in our education-as-a-commodity culture where pressures to embrace charters and for-profit schools continue to rise. Sleek, attractive education models boast of public transparency and a constant revenue stream, but this is sadly a trail of misleading rhetoric that falsely equivocates high profit margins with world-class book smarts.

A well-rounded education cannot be bought, or bought-out, it must be earned. As enticing as it may be, the alternative school model is not public education, but a hollow misappropriation of public funds.

Tonight, I thank the U.S. Government, Fulbright Committee, and Pflugerville Public School system for seeing in me a potential to advocate on behalf of others. As I educate students abroad, I trust that those in this room will remain committed to publicly educating the next generation’s leaders who as we speak, might be gathered in dorm rooms not 100 miles from here, swapping stories of their hometowns, and planning great adventures for times ahead.