NOLIWE ROOKS: The thing
I find interesting is
the first charter
schools actually
were founded in the South in
a direct reaction to Brown
v. Board and Southern parents
who did not want integration.
And the regulations that the
contemporary charter industry
are able to draw on only
exist because of that.
KENDRA BISCHOFF: We
don't get integration
through charter schools
without an explicit focus
on, for instance,
racial integration
or socioeconomic integration.
That doesn't seem to
just be happening.
NOLIWE ROOKS: I
don't understand why
we're working so hard to
reinvent schools and reinvent
education.
The kind of education
that wealthy kids get
and have been getting seems
to be working really well.
Why is it consistently,
we want something else
for somebody else's kids?
KENDRA BISCHOFF: So if we
value equality in schools
and we value desegregation
or integration in schools,
there has to be policies
and practices in place
to incentivize that goal.
NOLIWE ROOKS: Parents
have this idea
of what they want
for their kids,
and they're willing to decimate
public education in order
to ensure that there's a
path, if you know the code.
And we know that in the
history of the United States,
it is so very rare that you
have white parents, or non-black
or Latinx parents,
or non-poor parents,
advocating for integration.
Like, that's really the issue.
White parents do not follow laws
when it comes to integration.
They do not vote their
supposed ideology
when it comes to this issue.
If you can pay more,
you just get more.
