TEACHERS NEED CHARTER SCHOOLS
By Robert Maranto
Mesa Tribune, April 4, 2000

        As a college sophomore back in 1978, I asked an education professor how I could become a certified social studies teacher. He explained that I would need twelve education classes, but only four in the social sciences. I would not need to understand the subject I taught since "the curriculum people will tell you what to teach." This convinced me that I was not suited to be a teacher, so I went to graduate school and became a college professor. Two friends got identical advice from other education professors, with tragic results -- they became attorneys.

        These episodes reflect the nature of public education. Public schools are bureaucracies and public school teachers are bureaucrats ruled by bosses rather than experts guided by professionalism. In our democracy, we don't want teachers and other bureaucrats to have power. Important decisions are not made by mere teachers, but by elected or appointed officials in Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, the state legislature, the state department of education, school boards, district offices, and principals' offices. At the very bottom of the hierarchy, just below the janitors, are the teachers.

        I was reminded of this by recent articles about teacher shortages. Lawmakers propose to increase pay to attract more and better teachers. Yet higher salaries might not make much difference. Intelligent, motivated professionals do not want to be cogs in the bureaucratic wheel, whether at $25,000 or $30,000. Good teachers want respect and autonomy -- exactly what charter school teachers tend to have and district school teachers tend to lack.

        In 1998 my research team surveyed Arizona charter and district elementary school teachers. We found that compared to charter teachers, district school teachers have little autonomy. While 62% of charter school teachers report having influence over school curricula, only 25% of district teachers do. 76% of charter teachers but only 44% of district teachers can select their instructional materials; 55% of charter teachers but only 17% of district school teachers determine class schedules. By small, but statistically significant margins charter teachers also have more influence over classroom discipline, and are more apt to agree that "I am treated as a valued employee."

        Charter schools are smaller and size does matter, but even so, teachers report having considerably more power in charter schools than in district schools of comparable size.

        Teachers who moved from district to charter schools praised the charters. One said that "charter schools are able to focus on issues of education" while "in districts, you have the elected board, the district office, the principals, and they are all focused on political issues and not on the kids." Another told me that "there's a lot more inertia in the district...A great strength of this school is that if we come up with an idea, almost exclusively they will say 'try it, give it a shot.'" 

        Similarly, a charter operator who formerly taught in district schools boasted that when a child had a reading problem, rather than wait for weeks "you can put a corrective action plan into work the next day." Another charter operator who had been a district administrator bragged that when his charter teachers requested software he provided it within three days, compared to months of procurement steps back in the district. His teachers "never expected it so soon. They thought they needed to go through the curriculum committee to the vice principal to the principal to the board" as in a traditional school, but "that is precisely why a charter school is a little different." 

        Not all the news is positive. Some charter teachers who used to teach in district schools miss the security of tenure and salary schedules, and a few charter operators do not treat their teachers fairly. Still, both interviews and more systematic surveys find that on the whole, charter teachers are valued as professionals while district teachers are managed as bureaucrats. 

        Given these findings, it seems odd that teachers unions want to erode the independence of charter schools, to make them more like district schools. If we want great teachers, perhaps it is time to do exactly the opposite and give district schools more autonomy, to make them more like charter schools. Don't all public school teachers deserve to be professionals?

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