Sign Up For Our Newsletter

by Robert G. Holland
Heartland.org

Lately, education scholars at Washington, D.C.-based, nominally conservative think tanks have spun themselves into a tizzy about the education reform movement’s splintering into quarreling factions.

Who knew such a monolithic movement existed? Even among strong advocates of parental choice, lively arguments have raged for decades over vouchers versus tax-credit scholarships, with each side arguing its proposal is the most powerful and/or practical way to empower families. Debate is healthy in a democracy, is it not?

Thinking in terms of a single, cohesive agenda is perhaps more common in Washington, where think-tankers attend each other’s seminars and flock to government briefings. Why should any of this matter to the folks back in Grapevine or Grand Forks? Because advocacy from think-alike think tanks may influence policy in their school districts.

Within these inner sanctums, there is concern about contrary ideologies intruding. In a May 25 essay, Thomas B. Fordham Institute Fellow Robert Pondiscio controversially observed, “Like the proverbial frog in a pot, education reformers on the political right find themselves coming to a slow boil in the cauldron of social justice activism.”

As an example, Pondiscio reported conservative reformers “feeling unwelcome, uncomfortable, and cowed into silence” at a recent meeting of the New Schools Venture Fund in San Francisco. He fretted about leftists aggressively promoting a new orthodoxy on issues of race, class, and gender within the context of education reform while excluding conservative ideas. But what is wrong with having the gumption to debate the reform newcomers instead of acting as though your side owns this turf?

Speaking of taking ownership, the long-time CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Education Reform, Jeanne Allen, issued a 22-page “manifesto” on June 15 — under her byline — seeking to reframe choice-based reform in terms of “innovation and opportunity,” as though those objectives are new. “This is a clarion call,” she announced in the opening sentence.

Much of the manifesto deals in great detail with the level of tolerance for semi-autonomous charter schools within government-controlled school systems over the years. There is nothing about the tremendous promise of the next-generation voucher, the education savings account, and there is little about a steady increase in states adopting private-choice programs and the phenomenal growth of homeschooling.

Allen’s manifesto expresses frustration that “our efforts to drive change have hit a wall. The reality is that more was accomplished in the first nine years of the education reform movement than in the past 16.”

That reference is to the pace of states adopting strong charter-school authorization laws since 1991. Some states and localities now seek to drag charters back under a regulatory umbrella, and that legitimately concerns advocates. (Of course, charter schools are far from constituting the entirety of the education reform movement.)

Charters have helped thousands of families find a tuition-free alternative to conventional public schools, and that is a good thing. However, because charter schools operate within the governmental system, the nature of the larger, controlling agenda becomes relevant.

In that connection, the manifesto actually laments the demise of the federal No Child Left Behind law because it helped set the bar for student proficiency and defined the terms of accountability. The manifesto goes further and hammers the debate over Common Core as a “distraction” that “has drained our collective energies and focus on students.”

Actually, the parents across the nation who have stood up against nationalized standards being imposed on their schools are entirely focused on students — their children and their neighbors’ children. And they see clearly that Common Core uniformity and true choice in education are incompatible. The manifesto is likely to deepen their suspicion that choice becomes problematic when linked to an agenda imposed from the top down.

So, what is the clear call for action, the clarion call? Its name is the New Opportunity Agenda, the tenets of which are to be “innovation, flexibility, opportunity, and transparency.” The ideas discussed include drawing on new educational technologies, starting new schools, allowing public funds to follow children to schools of choice, and reporting test data in ways that can show how schools and districts are performing.

The prospect of yet another agenda being developed by Washington insiders and passed down to the people may excite some who call themselves “education reformers,” but a different kind of reformer will argue for families having the freedom to pursue their own agendas for their children — with their individual decisions contributing to a vibrant marketplace that reshapes the face of U.S. education.

Even though there is not a single education reform movement, there are ideas on which agenda-driven and liberty-loving advocates may agree. They should be able to talk with each other — and even welcome social-justice warriors to the conversation.

[Originally published at the American Spectator]

by Marilyn Anderson Rhames
Education Post

I’m a Generation X-er, but don’t you dare call me old.

I’m fairly new to the fourth decade, but I am often mistaken as an early twenty-something.

It’s a dubious misconception. Sometimes I’m flattered and other times it’s offensive. When I want to be taken seriously, I drop hints about my age—my teenage daughter, my 16th wedding anniversary, and how I changed careers after 9/11, etc.

With age comes wisdom, right?

Education reform turns 25 this year. She’s a baby by institutional standards, and the 140-year-old traditional system of neighborhood schools and teachers unions are always trying to put her in her place.

Still, education reform keeps vying for respect, appearing wiser than her years when she pushes back with the tenacity of a young adult with a freshly minted college degree, loads of student loan debt, and a dream just big enough to save the world.

At 25, education reform is a quintessential millennial. Depending on who you talk to, that’s a positive or negative distinction. Some say millennials are self-absorbed, entitled brats who think technology will solve all of life’s problems. Others believe that millennials are an ultra-smart generation that aren’t afraid to revolutionize the false assumptions we have worked under for far too long.

While I’m attracted to reform’s bold, innovative stance on improving learning outcomes for low-income, urban children of color, I am often equally put off by its hubris, its white savior, I’m-smarter-than-you mentality that doesn’t engage the community or empower its homegrown leaders to lead.

According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, there are 6,700 charter schools in 42 states, educating nearly three million students. And while congratulations are in order to Ted Kolderie, the mastermind behind the passage of the nation’s first charter school law in Minnesota in 1991, the reform community might be its own worst enemy.

This fear has prompted the Center for Education Reform’s CEO Jeanne Allen to recently publish a manifesto on how to save this “movement at risk.”

Allen argues that choice and accountability, two major issues on reform’s platform, are cannibalizing innovation, another fundamental aspect of education reform. She writes:

The truth is, we have lost the change-forest for the choice-trees, too often pushing charters and vouchers as an end in and of themselves rather than a means to spur innovation and opportunity and ultimately deliver on the promise of a great education for all children.

We have spent so much time talking about what’s wrong with our schools, and fighting for alternatives to it, that we have understandably left too many parents with the impression that we have given up on public education—or even worse, their kids.

Personally, I see innovation in education without accountability as nothing more than an experiment, and no child deserves to be a guinea pig. We also don’t want rules and regulations to suck the life out of a school’s ability to be creative. These lofty goals pose a tension that serves to provide reformers with a healthy dose of checks and balances, lest the adults get all the checks and the kids get a zero balance.

But, yeah, reform is just 25 years old…what 25-year-old isn’t still trying to find herself?

Just a few weeks back, for example, I was caught in a firestorm of controversy stemming from my blog posts about the NewSchools Summit that put race at the center of the education reform debate. I argued that substandard education in America is rooted in racist policies and social norms, and if education leadership is afraid to address issues like #BlackLivesMatter then maybe they aren’t fit to lead.

Judging by the fallout, you would have thought I had started a charter school named Kardashian College Prep!

The American Prospect last week published an insightful piece about the many divisions that exist within education reform on her 25th birthday. It’s not just racial—it’s also sociopolitical, ideological, and philosophical all mixed in together.

Now that I’m on summer break, I can put my feet up and ponder these heady things. I’m questioning some of the reform values I’ve always held dear, and seeking to discover my true identity in this effort.

My posture has shifted, as well. Instead of entering debates with a defensive stance, I’m trying to understand the nuances of opposing ideas so I can appreciate them, and I just might change my mind.

So to all you the millennials, Gen X-ers, and even baby boomers out there: Your age is just a number. We don’t get wiser with time; we get wiser by thinking deeply and listening.

Happy 25th Birthday, education reform! It’s been a hoot watching you grow up.