Charter Schools
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CER and Education In The News
UNIONS VS. UNITY
Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2000
It's amazing how innovative educrats can be when they want to. In looking at the Unity Charter School in Morristown, New Jersey, for example, most people would likely be struck by a variety of things: the handsome brick building, the gazebo and permaculture garden off to the side, the enthusiasm of the parents and teachers, maybe even the student-built Native American teepee beside the playground. But when local school officials took a look, what they focused on was a locked liquor cabinet in a locked basement room used once a week by the Italian-American social club that owns the building. Bad for kids, they said.
This kind of difficulty is by no means unique to Unity, according to the Washington-based Center for Education Reform. In Kansas City, Missouri, the Southwest Charter School had its lease to an old high school building challenged on procedural grounds by attorneys for the school district. In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia School District filed suit to block tuition payments to, and to challenge the charter of, the Mosaica Academy Charter School in Bensalem. In Tucson, opponents of a charter school successfully used the zoning board to run Basis School out of the neighborhood. Apart from expense involved in contesting these challenges -- money the fledgling charters can ill afford -- the time and energy devoted to these harassments means less time and effort devoted to what the charters really want to focus on: children and curricula.
Remember, we are not talking about private or parochial schools here. Take Unity. Its own charter speaks of an education that cultivates an appreciation for sustainable development, a mission that might be taken straight from "Earth in the Balance." And its principal and board members make clear that theirs is not an effort directed against the public schools -- in wealthy Morristown, they say, the local public schools are pretty good. Their argument is simply that the one-size-fits-all formula doesn't serve all students, and that they provide a valuable niche. Thus the handsome blue-and-gold wood sign that advertises Unity as "A public school of choice."
Clearly there is a growing appetite for the kind of alternative that charters like Unity represent. Despite the hassles and the poll data suggesting Americans are satisfied with their own public schools, this fall some 2,069 charters will open their doors. That's a remarkable figure, given that two-thirds of these charters are under four years old, that their funding typically is based on a fraction of what their public counterparts get, and that what monies they do get most often include nothing for rent or construction.
In his acceptance speech to the Democratic convention last week, Vice President Al Gore won thunderous applause from an audience thick with teachers' union delegates when he vowed to oppose "any plan that would drain taxpayer money away from our public schools and give it to private schools in the form of vouchers." You might think that charters would be a good alternative. Certainly some of the charter parents do. But the hurdles thrown in their way are giving them their own education. Back in May the New Republic's John Judis -- no champion of vouchers -- chronicled the trials and tribulations he and other parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, faced when trying to set up their own charter. "I've always considered myself a strong supporter of the public schools," Mr. Judis wrote, "but, after seeing promising efforts like this repulsed, I'm beginning to reconsider."
Make no mistake about it: charters are a threat. Not to public education, of course. But by tying money to performance, charters threaten to shake up the status quo. In so doing they are already showing that the real battle today is not between private and public schools. It's between the public monopoly we have today, where parents are hostages to politicians and teachers' unions, and the public education system we could have tomorrow, where teachers and schools are accountable to parents and their children.
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