Abstract

Excerpted From: Julie Mendoza, Racial Capitalism and the Proliferation of Charter Schools in Oakland, 22 UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice 183 (January, 2025) (224 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Historical theories of racial capitalism collectively recognize that the existence of race has been central to the economic development of America and that the accumulation of American wealth is inextricably tied to racial inequality. Race as an instrument of capitalism was wielded by those who, through displacement and capture, created an abhorrent and oppressive means of production known as chattel slavery. Capitalist systems of violent dispossession and unequal distribution rested on the logic that racial inequities were natural and rational if they served an economic purpose.

Under a racial capitalism framework, the commodity of Black bodies and free labor was not the result of racism, but the reverse. The capitalist economic market required the creation and enforcement of racism to thrive. Encapsulated within this premise, that conceptions of race were solidified to justify the social dynamics of capitalism, is the idea that values of racial justice are fundamentally antithetical to systems of capitalism. Even where communities of color attempt to remedy harm from exclusion by embracing capitalism as a “sword” to achieve upward mobility and a “shield” to protect themselves against the racialized consequences of urban decline, the capitalist extraction of wealth inevitably results in the preservation of racial inequality.

Although the U.S Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in 1864, the racial and economic calculus that justified slavery sheltered itself in the free market. In Racial Capitalism and Black Philosophies of History, Justin Leroy discussed an editorial written by James McCune Smith following the amendment that poignantly stated, “[t]here is neither in the political, nor religious, nor philanthropic worlds of the American people, any agency at work that can encompass the entire abolishment of slavery .... In slave society, labor lies prostrate, and capital dictates its own terms which are perpetual subjugation; in other words, perpetual slavery.” The devaluation of Black lives in existing economic modalities of capitalism thus functions as a product of the racialization system of valuation originally created by the American development of slavery, colonialism, and capitalistic hierarchies.

Although public education is sometimes viewed as a socialist feature of American democracy, grounded in principles of equality, it is also materially connected to the national economy and therefore entrenched with capitalist values. Early expressions of racial capitalism in American education include the “legally enforced denial of education to both free and enslaved Black people, forced attendance by Indigenous and Native American children at abusive settler colonial residential schools, the placement of eugenics into education policy, and decades of formal racial segregation buttressed by a complex web of interlocking Jim Crow laws.” Critical scholars of education and anti-apartheid movements have identified exclusion and segregation as a marker of racial capitalism.

The entrenchment of anti-Blackness is also inextricably interwoven into ableist education policies that encumber students with disabilities. In capitalist hierarchies, high productivity is awarded and associated with superiority, whereas requiring accommodations or greater support indicates unworthiness. This system of valuation often leads to inequitable learning conditions and an inadequate means of seeking recourse. Consequently, students who are Black and who have a disability face an even greater likelihood of punishment and exclusion.

The free market has avoided accountability for the discriminatory harm it causes because economic-based decisions are widely considered race neutral. Seventy years after Brown, the racialized impact of capital motivated policies is seemingly innocuous in comparison to America's history of overt and state enforced racial segregation in schools. However, in practice, facially neutral legislation permitting the authorization and expansion of charter schools has proven to be consistently harmful for Black students and students with disabilities. Although California became the second state in the nation to adopt charter school legislation with the intention of addressing displeasures families had with the traditional public school system, the Charter Schools Act of 1992 also facilitated the implementation of the free market system into public education. The free market of “school choice” requires traditional district schools, many of which serve higher proportions of high-need students, to compete with privately run charter schools for public funding and facilities.

Today, there are over 1,300 publicly funded and privately run charter schools in operation in California, serving nearly twelve percent of the student population or over three million students, with more being approved each year. The first charter school in Oakland, the Oakland Charter Academy (formerly Jingletown Charter School), opened in the Fruitvale neighborhood in 1993. By 2019, there were forty-five charter schools operating in Oakland and serving thirty percent of the city's K-12 students attending a publicly funded school.

Two reasons for the increase in charter school enrollment over the last thirty years include the inadequate resources at district schools and the notion that charter schools yield higher state test scores than district schools. Yet, as will be discussed below, charter schools largely contribute to the divestment of resources at district schools. Moreover, parallel to capitalist norms that measure success by profit maximization, state standardized test scores are a primary metric used to elicit funding and justify charter school renewal. Therefore, many charter schools are considerably motivated to “teach to the test” and prioritize state test outcomes above all other educational goals. Furthermore, while some charter schools have reportedly succeeded in improving test scores, studies have also found that performance across charter schools varies significantly from school to school.

Nonetheless, since 2000, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) has lost more than 17,000 students in enrollment to privately operated charter schools. As a result of budget deficits caused by decreasing enrollment between 2004 and 2022, the Oakland Unified School Board closed over twenty district schools, disproportionately affecting Black students. In addition, most of the subsequently vacant campuses were, under Proposition 39 (hereafter Prop. 39), later offered to charter schools that enrolled fewer Black students and students with disabilities than their district counterparts. Reallocating campus facilities to charter schools, thus exacerbated the district's under enrollment problem and led to the discriminatory displacement of affected students. Additionally, an analysis of census and school closure data by researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Education found that closing district schools also facilitates the dispossession of affordable housing in Black neighborhoods.

Notwithstanding the pervasive harm district school closures perpetuate on Black families, district leaders insisted that the facially neutral economic justification provided was adequate grounds to enforce the closures. Former Oakland Unified School Board President Gary Yee doubled down on the decision to close district schools stating, “To be honest, there has just been a clear path of declining enrollment, and, in my view, I'm not convinced that resisting gentrification is enough reason to keep a school open.” Paradoxically, the problem of declining enrollment and inadequate funding only worsens when district schools close and privately operated charter schools take their place.

By operating independently from the district, charter schools also reap the benefit of being funded by school districts, while eluding leadership accountability and public oversight when it comes to enrollment and spending practices. Therefore, despite being marketed to improve student learning and create school choice opportunities for low-income communities, students within school choice free market systems often face racial subjugation and exclusion. Specifically, district budget deficits caused by charter schools result in the racially inequitable closure of neighborhood district schools and affected students are not guaranteed enrollment at nearby charter schools.

Contrary to the lived experiences of affected students, past presidents and political leaders have touted charter schools as the answer to education equity. Billionaire businessmen like Mike Bloomberg and the late Eli Broad spent millions of dollars promoting charter schools nationally, including to ensure pro-charter school candidates were elected to the school board in Oakland. As mayor, Bloomberg opened a record number of charter schools in New York. Under the leadership of former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a staunch advocate for “school choice,” the Department of Education, albeit unsuccessfully, proposed investing $400 million in charter school expansion. As a cautionary tale to proponents of further charter school expansion, this Article seeks to demonstrate that intermingling private enterprise and public education, in reality, comes at a detrimental cost to school district resources, Black families, and students with disabilities.

Following a brief history of charter school development in Oakland, California, the impact of charter schools in Oakland will be discussed through a racial capitalism framework in four interwoven components. The first will examine the chronic divestment and insurmountable budget deficits that result from the establishment of charter school networks. Second, the Article will describe the ways in which charter schools reallocate essential resources away from district schools that serve high-need students. Third, the Article will assess OUSD's efforts to mitigate district budget deficits caused by charter school enrollment by disproportionately closing schools that serve the greatest number of Black students and students with disabilities as well as the exclusion the same students face from charter school enrollment. Lastly, the Article will analyze how, based on patterns of gentrification that emerge when district schools are subject to closure, racial capitalism in education induces the dispossession of Black neighborhoods.

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Racial capitalism in public education has, by design, resulted in indelible harm for Black students and families in Oakland. The free market system of public education can no longer claim to operate under a framework of neutrality where decades of closures have consistently demonstrated a pervasive and disparate impact on Black students and their communities. Irrespective of the economic justifications, the disproportionate elimination of access to public schools in Black neighborhoods results in the systematic removal of educational opportunities for Black students and the displacement of Black families. This outcome is parallel to the discrimination and racialized disenfranchisement that has entrenched American institutions since slavery and Jim Crow.

Moreover, closing a school is more than permanently locking the doors to a classroom. Not only do schools provide educational opportunities and facilities for community engagement, but they are also home to wrap-around services such as health centers, counselors, and food pantries. Publicly available wrap-around services are essential in neighborhoods that have faced historic divestment. Yet such neighborhoods continue to be where school closures are most likely to take place. According to Keith Brown, former OEA President who led the week-long teacher strike in 2019, “[t]hey are choosing to destabilize communities and take away critical resources from our children at a time when they need resources the most.”

As a modality for racial capitalism, inequitable school closures are the inevitable result of expanding privately-run charter schools that divert public resources away from public oversight and rely on free market systems of school choice. Like past economic modalities that were used to accumulate capital, the racial inequities amplified by school closures illustrate exactly how free market systems of school choice were intended to operate. Shifts in the market are exploited to justify violating the rights of those with limited resources to defend themselves. Oakland Unified School Board's reluctance to protect Black families from the disproportionate harm of the school closures serves to perpetuate the racial subjugation that has defined racial capitalism throughout history.

On balance, the improved standardized test scores professed to take place at charter schools pale in comparison to the societal impact of dispossessing Black students and students with disabilities of access to education and Black residents of access to affordable housing. Regardless of the legal requirement that charter schools be open to all students, Black students and students with disabilities face exclusion, preventing their ability to participate in any purported improvements to education that charter schools might offer. In contrast, district schools, notwithstanding perpetual underfunding, enroll students with the highest needs and provide educational opportunities to those with the fewest resources.

Milton Friedman, author of Capitalism and Freedom, believed that if market forces, rather than the government, shaped public education, failing schools would close and successful schools would thrive. But failure, as defined by capitalism, is all but guaranteed by the historic and ongoing denial of essential resources. In OUSD's own words, their “analysis of assets and capacities demonstrate significant variation across communities that coincide with patterns of racial segregation and systemic community divestment.” Thus, employing capitalism to dictate education policies only results in the punishment of students with the fewest resources.

At the behest of affected communities, lawmakers are beginning to respond to the discriminatory consequences of charter school expansion and free market systems on under-resourced school communities. For instance, in 2018, operating for-profit charter schools became unlawful. In addition, teacher unions across the country have had greater success advocating for district caps and comprehensive regulations for charter schools. Further, following the 2022 proposed school closures in Oakland, Assemblywoman Mia Bonta introduced AB 1912 to the California legislature, which requires “a school district under financial stress, as defined, before approving the closure or consolidation of a school, to conduct an equity impact analysis in its consideration of school closures or consolidations.” As the inherent racial subjugation of capitalism becomes more evident, the ability to disregard the harm of charter schools is increasingly difficult to ignore.

While the aforementioned procedural protections are undoubtedly necessary to prevent further inequitable and discriminatory displacement, they do little to achieve the promise of equal access to education. A cap on charter school expansion merely slows divestment from public resources and fails to provide an adequate means of making up for lost funding. Just as ending Jim Crow did not change the inability of rights to equalize or deracinate capitalism, changes in procedure fail to rectify the material harms of past closures on Oakland communities or eliminate the risk of future closures.

As inequitable school closures remain afoot, critical scholars must continue to investigate ways to protect Black families and students with disabilities from the effects of racial capitalism. The economic calculus that privatization has imposed on school districts will otherwise keep the promise of equal access to education enshrined in the California constitution, unfulfilled. Moreover, Black students will perpetually bear the burden of sacrificing their educational opportunities to balance a budget that fails to invest in their potential. School district leaders moving forward should heed the words of Oakland parent Rochelle Jenkins who, through the fight to keep her children's school open, became the face of hope and resistance in Oakland: “Our children are worth more than any of the money that you think you're trying to save.”

Julie Mendoza is a 3L JD Candidate at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, President and Founder of the Education and Law Society, and Symposium Chair of the UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice.