A VIEW FROM OUTSIDE THE BOX
by CHRISTOPHER WHITTLE
Founder, The Edison Project

        I got a note from Jeanne Allen a couple of weeks back, and it was giving me my marching orders for today. It said, ‘Here’re a couple of things that I want you to do…It would be great if you could impress upon us, one, why we need change; two, why we in fact do have problems; and three, what the solutions are…’ And then she ended with this, in only the way Jeanne knows how: ‘You could also make the case that being for-profit doesn’t quite equate with leprosy.’

        So for the fun of it, I’m got to start with that. Here are some of the things that for-profits have brought you: Band-aids. Ben & Jerry's. Virtually all the books that your children read, in and out of schools. All the clothes you are wearing today. The computer you cannot do without, whether it's Apple or IBM. The Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today. Everything your house is made of. The World Series, both the Yankees and the Padres.

        The insurance you may one day desperately need. Prozac, Rogaine, and Viagra. So if for-profits can do that, I really rest my case. And maybe, just maybe, they can provide good schools.

        I make light of this because it’s an issue which honestly doesn’t merit grave debate. As Michael Joyce’s so well said this morning, education is the only sector in American society that doesn't benefit from the potential of free enterprise."

        Why do we need change in our schools? … Some say that our schools aren't nearly as bad as they're being made out to be, that all this talk of reform is this right-wing conspiracy that we all are participate in, and though I disagree with their line of argument, I actually do understand why they feel compelled to make it.

        They feel under enormous attack. They read newspapers in which various people overstate the case against public schools, and their reaction is to overstate the case for them. And they are right to say that we have some good public schools, but they are wrong to leave the impression that all is well. We have some big problems, and by analogy I'll give you my view of the extent of those problems.

        On your way home tonight to whatever city you came from, you'll go to the ticket counter and you will be asked the two most asked questions in the history of man: "Have your bags been in your possession at all times since you packed them?" And "Have any persons unknown to you given you any items to carry on board?" By the way, I remembered that. I didn't have to go look at that. If you hear that a thousand times, you begin to get it.

        Now let's say that instead of those questions you were asked the following: "Sir, the FAA has asked that we inform you that your chances of surviving this flight are good, about 80 percent. Only 20 percent of our flights don't make it. Would you like a window or an aisle?"

        Under those conditions there would be no air travel in the United States. No one would get on a flight. And yet in education we are submitting our children to odds very similar to those. Most American children get through reasonably good schools in reasonably good shape. But some meaningful percentage, and you pick it--15, 20, 25-- leave our schools, before or after graduation, unable to read satisfactorily, unable to do math at levels that success in our society absolutely requires, and unaware of critical cultural information that binds us together as a country.

        And in a sense, their educational flights went down, but because they went down quietly, because they went down over a period of years instead of one terrible, awful moment, because, as Howard said this morning, their parents may lack the power to effectively complain, and because children themselves can't really complain, for all these reasons, we let this go on. And we let not thousands but more than 10 million of our children start their lives with less than they deserve.

        And so until reading and writing and adding and subtracting becomes as dependable as a flight, as dependable as a phone call getting through, as dependable as having a baby safely for mother and child, then the answer to "Do we need change in our schools?" is we need lots of it and we shouldn't settle for less….

        "Why do we in fact have problems like this?" Well, let me start with this. It would be great if there were an evil empire out there that made this happen, but there isn't…It's not because of those kind of motivations on the part of some person or organization….I think there are three big anti-change characteristics to the school systems that we currently have.

        Number one…an inability to invest in change. It’s not that we don't spend a lot on our schools. We spend enormous amounts.

        But we don't spend to change them. To go back to Prozac, I don't know what Prozac cost to develop. But a typical drug is $100, $200, $500 million dollars just to create. When did we ever as a society spend anything approaching that to design our schools?

        There is virtually no research and development in the American school system. You go to any superintendent in the United States, and I know I've talked to a third of them at one time or another, and you say, "What's your R&D budget?" You'll get two reactions. You'll get a smile or you'll get a laugh.

        Reason number two that we have these kind of difficult problems is an inability to maintain leadership over long periods of time. Major change does not happen in two years. It doesn't even get started in two years.

        ...But the life of an average urban superintendent in the United States is less than that of a First Lieutenant in Vietnam. It's a couple of years.

        …I was so impressed today when I heard that what occurred in Milwaukee had taken 13 years. That's the kind of commitment that we need.

        And then the third reason that these systems have these problems is they have a certain bias towards one-size-fits-all education. A lot of people think that equity and one-size-fits-all is the same thing. It's not. Equity is making sure that all children get the same funds. It doesn't mean they get the same kind of education.

        You look at any city in America and we've got dozens of different hotels, we've got hundreds of different restaurants, but we've got the same kind of schools basically lined up one-by-one. And to say it another way, education is the last sector in the U.S. that has not embraced the idea that competition does lead to quality.

        If you add those three characteristics up -- an inability to invest in change, an inability to sustain leadership, and a propensity toward uniformity versus diversity … what you get is a system of schools that just hasn't kept pace with the rest of our society, that has been functioning in a completely different paradigm.

        "What are the solutions?" Well, I've got to tell you, I think most of them are right here in this room, because in this room you'll find many new choices for educational consumers. You'll find the first real seeds of competition in this world. You'll find new pools of investment, and you'll find people that really are looking at this in 10- and 15- and 20-year time frames, and all that adds up to the beginnings of a very different educational system in the United States.

        And for that, all of us really do have a lot to celebrate here at this fifth anniversary of the Center for Education Reform, and by the way owe a thanks to the work that you all have done over those five years.

        Our collective new ideas have a beachhead, but as Steven Spielberg graphically reminded us in "Saving Private Ryan," beachheads can be very unfriendly. If we are not careful, if we are not vigilant, all that we stand for today can be swept back into the sea. And if you doubt that, there is a well-filled graveyard of educational reform ideas that stands as a testament to how slowly and how resistant this paradigm is to change.

        …And I'd like to end my comments with some suggestions about how we avoid that fate:

        Suggestion number one, produce results…. Talking about good schools is not enough. We've got to make them happen, we've got to make them happen in large numbers, and we have to produce consistently better results, and that does not mean warm and fuzzy results.

        Suggestion number two. We have got to be our own best critics.... If we're going to succeed as a movement, we've got to be the first to admit to that, to say that we don't always get it right, and to understand that not every school spawned in the water of competition is a good one.

        And to do otherwise, …we begin to sound like a union that says every teacher in town is great. We know that's not true, and there should not be tenure in this club that we are all in. And to say it, as Howard said it best, we must tell no lies and claim no easy victories.

        Suggestion number three. Consolidate our victories.… It is very important to shore up the ground that you have taken before you move on to something else. And if you look at the ground that this room has taken and that this movement has taken, the big victory of this movement in the past decade is charter school legislation. Those new laws that many in this audience fought long and hard to make come about have paved the way for competition far beyond what the original creators of the law even anticipated… It has also allowed innovative districts to do charters and conversions with their own schools and their districts. It has also allowed local groups to work with national schooling companies like Edison and others to bring schools of those type to communities. But these laws are far from perfect and they are far from permanent.

        Suggestion number four, and this one I don't think many of you are going to like it…We should try to bring unions under this tent.… If our collective mission is to bring as many new great schools into existence for as many children as possible, then it would seem to me that we want to pursue the path of least resistance to do that, particularly if we don't have to compromise central premises in what we're doing. A pitched, head-on battle with America's teacher's unions does not strike me as the path of least resistance.

        And this is going to surprise you. I think to date the national unions have been somewhat measured in their resistance to what we stand for, not everything that we stand for but to a lot of what we stand for. And I want to say that another way. I don't think yet they are applying their full resources, their full organizations and their full cash to defeat what is happening in this room.

        Now why would that be? The first reason, which you might view as a slightly cynical one, is that just as it is convenient for Microsoft to have a little competition in something like Apple, so it may be in the world of schooling, and that a degree of support of us indicates no, we are not a monopoly. And I happen to believe that's part of what is going on.

        But there's a second thing that I believe that's going on… And that is, I think at the highest levels of both unions that there is a real debate at least beginning as to what the teacher's unions of this country should do relative to choice and competition. I do not think that decision has been made.

        And the reason I say that is, they have to know that there is something about what all of you are advocating that is utterly compelling to the American public, that you just hear it and you go, "That has to be." And if they know that, and if they real the polls which show that choice and vouchers and charters are rapidly advancing, they have a critical strategic junction and it is, "Get on board or get in the way in a big way."

        … I want to tell you, I think there is a Gorbachev in there somewhere...

        Suggestion number five. American philanthropy built many of our colleges and universities. Let's ask it to do the same with our schools. There are now more billionaires than there are States. There is one particular one that has a net worth greater than the annual budget of New York State. That's serious money, too. And many of these philanthropists are literally looking for ways to deploy their capital, and we need to reach out as a movement.

        And we don't need to reach out and say, "We want your funds for operational purposes." …Philanthropy cannot support the operations of America's schools but it can be the venture capital for this movement in many respects. Until we get a charter law that provides facilities, it can provide those facilities. Until charters get start-up funds, it can provide start-up funds. And most important, it can provide huge amounts of lobbying funds that are going to be required to make the legislation in this country the way it should be.

        Suggestion number six, let's not fight among ourselves. As I noted earlier, progress in American education has periodically been impaired by the belief that we should search for one right way to do things, and that results in these kind of holy wars.

        There are some in this room that believe charters are absolutely the best plan. There are others that believe contract schools are just the right way to go and better than anything else. There are others that believe private vouchers are it. Others think, no, public vouchers clearly are superior to any of those. Some believe that parents are the best people in the world to run charter schools. Others think, no, national schooling companies like Edison should be.

        Here is the point: There is not one best way. Broadly, all of those represent the same thing, and they represent new options for children, and that's what we are supposed to be for. And our strategy should be not to contrast our options to one another, but to contrast them to the old plan, and that's a critical part of us being a movement that really works. And if we do that, we support one another, and if we do that, we might see 1,000 or 2,000 schools grow to 20,000 or 30,000 schools in the two decades ahead.

        Thank you.

Chris Whittle is founder of The Edison Project. The entire text of his speech is available from the Center.

Return to the Monthly Letter Anniversary Issue Table of Contents.

MONTHLY LETTER MAILBOX: Register to receive the Monthly Letter by mail, send us your comments, questions or compliments about this or any other issue of the Monthly Letter, or let us know what's happening in your community and state for coverage in future Monthly Letters. We welcome your input!

CER Home Page CER Monthly Letter E-Mail CER CER Publications