Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
CHARTER SCHOOLS FREE EDUCATORS TO TEACH AND BRING BACK THE PRINCIPLE
OF ACCOUNTABILITY
By William J. Bennett
The Times Union (Albany, NY), February 9, 1997
The report cards recently issued by New York's education commissioner clearly highlight that all is not well in the state's public schools.
For example, at numerous public schools in the Capital Region, 20 percent or more of the students fail to meet the state's modest minimum standards for reading. At Giffen Memorial Elementary School in Albany's South End, more than half of the student body fails to meet the state's minimum reading standards.
The problem today in the Capital Region and across the nation is not only that some schools fail parents' expectations, but also that such schools cannot be held accountable by those they are supposed to serve. Today, there are greater, more certain and more immediate penalties in this country for serving up a single rotten hamburger than for furnishing a thousand schoolchildren with a rotten education.
Accountability could be improved if parents were able to choose another school -- a better school. Unfortunately, the majority of American parents do not have the freedom to make this choice. Some do. The affluent can buy the school of their choice by buying a house in the neighborhood of their choice. But the great majority of Americans are not wealthy, though they too are the heirs to a great promise -- American public education's promise that it will provide the education parents wish for their children.
Gov. George Pataki has taken an important step toward providing such choices by proposing strong charter-school legislation. Under his proposal, charters would be granted to teachers, parents and others to establish new public schools. These schools would be held accountable through student testing, strict financial procedures and performance contracts, but free of the many onerous state and local rules and regulations that hamper public schools today. Charter school laws already have been signed into law by Republican and Democrat governors in 25 other states.
Governor Pataki's proposal responds to widespread parental frustration with existing public schools. Many parents realize their children are not learning enough. Or, more disheartening, they discover that their children are unlearning in school lessons they have been taught at home. In some schools parents are simply not taken seriously.
For parental choice to be real, the proposed charter schools need to be free to innovate, be different and be better. Right now, New York's public schools are handcuffed by thousands of pages of rules, regulations and laws.
Some of these mandates are downright silly. For example, even though many New York students can't even read or write, every school must offer mandated instruction on the Irish potato famine, cigarette smoking and ''the humane treatment and protection of animals and birds and the importance of the part they play in the economy of nature.''
A school principal who asks male teachers to wear a tie and jacket can be cited for labor practice violations. State regulations also protect teachers convicted of crimes from automatically losing their right to teach young children.
Other state mandates have a broader and deeper impact. For example, in New York, state certification is required for anyone who holds a position in a public school as a school administrator, teacher, teaching assistant, school librarian, or even as a high school basketball coach.
Under New York's inane teacher certification rules, it would be illegal for Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, to teach a computer class in a New York public school. Similarly, George Fisher, the chairman and CEO of Kodak, could not teach a business class -- or for that matter a photography class. George Pataki, New York's governor, a former state legislator and mayor, and a graduate of Yale and Columbia, could not teach a high school civics class.
New York also mandates the identical curriculum, the identical hiring and firing policies and the identical discipline procedures for each of the state's more than 700 public school districts. The same rules that apply in Guilderland apply in Bedford Stuyvesant and in Penn Yan.
Pockets of innovation do exist, however. For example, in inner-city public schools within District 4 in East Harlem, an amazing transformation has occurred through teacher-driven innovations. But these new public schools -- in a sense, unauthorized charter schools -- excel because they largely ignore all of the dumb laws and regulations imposed on them by bureaucrats in Albany.
We should give superintendents greater authority to run their districts; principals greater autonomy to run their schools; and teachers greater authority to run their classrooms -- and then hold them all accountable for the results they achieve. That is exactly what charter-schools laws have achieved in other states like Arizona, Michigan, and Massachusetts.
Ultimately, though, we need to go even further and allow parents in New York -- like parents in Milwaukee and Cleveland -- to choose not just among public schools, but also among public and private schools. It is ironic that the American system of higher education, with generous taxpayer support, provides such choice in the selection of colleges, while in elementary and secondary education, which is compulsory for all, there is choice for so few.
The seeds for private school choice already have been planted with privately funded initiatives such as the A Better Choice (ABC) scholarship program in Albany, the Bison Fund in Buffalo and the School Choice Scholarship program in New York City.
The movement for greater choices in education is growing every day, and will not be stopped. Few things motivate parents as much as their heartfelt desire to make sure their children get the first-rate education they deserve. Charter schools are a good first step toward responding to these concerns.
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William J. Bennett served as secretary of education during the Reagan administration. He now is co-director of Empower America and a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, both conservative think tanks in Washington.