The right, be it the religious or corporate variant, is ever so good at making their positions sound like the opposite of what they are. They don’t oppose abortion and birth control; they are “pro-life”; they don’t pass anti-union laws; they pass “right to work” laws. The media, often enabled by people on the left who accept their terminology, lets them get away with it.
Here’s the latest example of Newspeak, from the Boston Globe:
The highly charged charter school debate, waged for years in the Legislature, could soon become a constitutional court fight, launched by three prominent lawyers who believe students in Boston and other urban districts are being denied their right to a quality education.
Paul F. Ware Jr., Michael B. Keating, and William F. Lee, who are partners at three top law firms, say the lawsuit they will file to overturn the state cap on the number of charter schools will break ground on two fronts.
…
“This is, frankly, an issue of civil rights, and this is an issue which the Legislature, for one reason or another, has failed to act on,” said Keating, a past president of the Boston Bar Association. “It is not inappropriate, in those circumstances, to seek judicial relief.”
via The Boston Globe
Yes, you read that right. This is a “civil rights” issue, having nothing whatsoever to do with advancing the interest of the charter school industry. The article says that the lawyers will be basing their case, in part, on an argument that charter schools provide better educations than public schools. It matters not that this is not so, or that there is every reason to believe that charter schools will get even worse as they approach their goal of privatizing public education. It is really hard to see how a business model based on using poorly paid disempowered teachers is likely to result in better educational outcomes, particularly after competing public school systems have been destroyed by the more generously funded, laxly regulated, and lobbyist protected charter schools.
But perhaps I’m overly cynical. Well, no. I smell more than one rat, for it looks like the newly minted governor of Massachusetts is ready to take a legal fall, which may, in fact, be the real motivation for this lawsuit:
The lawyers will name as defendants James A. Peyser, Governor Charlie Baker’s secretary of education, as well as the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. They are being targeted because, as of January, they are responsible for enforcing the law, even though they disagree with it.
Baker is a strong proponent of lifting the cap and Peyser is a nationally known charter school advocate who helped build the charter-school movement in Massachusetts.
Watch for some real vigorous defense of the statute from that duo. Okay, the state’s attorney general is a Democrat, and we might expect her to go her own way but as we’ve learned here in Connecticut, the push to destroy public schools is one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement. In fact, that’s one way of knowing, if you knew nothing more, that it must be a terrible idea. In any event, even if she wants to defend the law, it will be difficult without the cooperation of her client, who would, no doubt, subvert her at every turn.
This case is not about civil rights. It is about shoveling public money into private pockets.
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