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Indiana's choice: weak or strong charter school bill
Commentary by Jeanne Allen
Indianapolis Star,
April 4, 2001
Indiana has a chance to become the 38th state to permit the creation of charter schools, and with important and positive effects. Currently, a bill is pending that would make Indiana a national leader.
Charter schools help relieve overcrowded traditional public schools and offer parents new opportunities to ensure their child is taught in a way he or she will learn best. They give teachers the chance to dedicate themselves to education free of bureaucratic rules and regulations.
These schools offer hope to children on the verge of failing, and challenges to children bored by the one-size-fits-all mentality of a school system.
A strong charter law, like the one passed in the Indiana Senate, fosters the development of numerous independent charter schools. A weak law provides few opportunities or incentives for charter school development.
The bill sponsored by Rep. Gregory Porter is weak because it would restrict charters in precisely those areas where they need maximum flexibility, limiting the number of schools that could form. The bill sponsored by Sen. Teresa Lubbers is strong because it provides flexibility.
Historically, where charter laws are weak, few such schools have been formed. In Nevada, the 12th weakest of 37 charter laws, only a handful of residents have explored the charter option. According to the Las Vegas-Review Journal, "the poor response is a result primarily of roadblocks built into the law and the regulations that must be followed."
Contrast that with Michigan, which has the second strongest law in the nation. It has produced more than 184 schools that are changing how communities and school districts effectively educate children.
Unfortunately, the bill that passed in the Indiana House would build in Nevada-style roadblocks, ensuring that options for Indiana parents would remain severely limited.
When local school boards are the sole chartering body (instead of including, say, universities), the record shows these boards go out of their way to throw roadblocks into charters' paths, ranging from dozens of lawsuits around the country to cases such as San Francisco, where local board members are trying to yank the charter of a school that raised reading scores by 36 percentile points because they no longer like working with the school's operators..
Nor does it make sense to limit charters to only "licensed" teachers. Licensure doesn't mean a teacher has a background in the necessary subject matter, only that he took enough education courses.
Charters should be an opportunity to utilize teachers with varying backgrounds to expand educational options for children, not maintain a limitation that would deny an Albert Einstein from teaching advanced placement courses. Licensed teachers are not necessary for private schools, most of which do quite well. Why should they be required for charter schools?
Finally, it's bad policy to impose collective bargaining agreements on teachers in charter schools, as the House bill does. Yet, most teachers who choose to work at charters do so because they want to escape such agreements. When the California legislature attempted to impose such agreements on charters there, charter school teachers agitated to block it, arguing that such restrictions would lock them into unnecessary work rules and prohibit them from doing what was necessary to teach the children in their classes.
So what is wrong with making charter schools more like regular schools?
Simple: Not all children are alike. Some, who may lack basic skills, need a rigorous and structured environment focusing on the legendary three R's. Others, perhaps more gifted and talented, need to break out of the mold imposed on them by a school's bureaucratic rules. Still others, perhaps students with disabilities, need to receive the kind of special attention too often lacking in a school "system."
Whatever the case, parents are more likely to find different opportunities for their children if schools are allowed to be different.
Taking the charter school concept that celebrates those differences and attempting to make them "more like regular schools" defeats the very reason for creating them. It would stifle yet another weapon in the effort to educate Indiana's children and prepare them for the world ahead of them.
Jeanne Allen is president of The Center for Education Reform, a national, independent, nonprofit advocacy organization based in Washington, DC and a mother of four school-aged children. Founded in 1993, the Center provides support and guidance to individuals, community and civic groups, policy-makers and others who are working to bring fundamental reforms to their schools.