Schools of Thought

The school choice movement is divided over tactics and faces enormous establishment resistance. But it may still get what it wants.

Rick Henderson from the January 1997 issue

(Page 4 of 5)

Milwaukee is not alone. In a policy study published in August, the Reason Foundation's Beales reported that more than 100,000 difficult-to-educate students obtain public money to attend private schools. At least 17 states provide tax funding to educate "at risk" students privately. "Where public schools lack specialization," writes Beales, "they have invited private providers to educate special-needs students."

Last year the Houston Independent School District had about 3,000 students who couldn't attend their neighborhood schools because of overcrowding. The district moved these "capped" students to public schools that had openings. This year the number of capped students exceeds 6,000. Just before the school year started, Superintendent Rod Paige proposed "contracting" the tuitions of those students to private schools. Initially, the tuitions of only about 100 students were privately contracted. In January, however, if private secular schools can provide enough openings, all 6,300 capped students could be educated privately.

Public schools are privately contracting dozens of services, from janitorial and food services to classroom teaching. Educational Alternatives Inc. (EAI) has had rocky experiences in its attempts to operate schools in Hartford, Connecticut, and Baltimore, primarily as a consequence of political and union meddling. But Chris Whittle's Edison Project, which originally intended to open commercial private schools, is operating public schools in four states and has applied to open charter schools in several others. The American Association of Educators in Private Practice, a trade association for freelance, or "private practice," teachers, has hundreds of members, ranging from individual teachers who might teach a single foreign-language class in several schools to corporations like EAI.

Voyager Expanded Learning operates after-school programs that teach art, economics, and science in 150 public schools nationwide. While these are after-school programs for which parents pay enrollment fees, Voyager provides a substantive curriculum, unlike traditional day care. It hopes to offer instruction programs during the school day starting next school year.

Since beginning in Minnesota five years ago, charter schools have spread to more than two dozen states. Charter school advocates talk about "weak" state systems--in which the schools are barely indistinguishable from the "magnet" schools set up in the 1980s--and "strong" systems. Like the one in Arizona.

Charter schools started operating in the Grand Canyon State last academic year. There is no limit on how many schools can locate in a school district. Any government body, private organization, or individual can apply for a charter; the schools have a blanket waiver from most state regulations; charter school teachers don't have to be certified; and the application for a charter takes up only one page. Forty-six charter schools opened in the fall of 1995; by last fall, that number had more than doubled, with additional applications pending for other schools. Around 15,000 students--about 2 percent of those who attend schools--are enrolled in charter programs.

Arizona easily has the most dynamic charter school system. A Hudson Institute survey of seven states with charter schools notes that in several locations, the education establishment has been able to hamstring the embryonic movement with regulations. For instance, some states place an absolute ceiling on the number of schools that can operate: 25 in Massachusetts, 40 in Minnesota, 60 in Colorado.

The Hudson study, co-authored by Checker Finn, found that charter schools did indeed introduce competitive forces into the education marketplace. Charter schools also encouraged much more parental involvement than traditional public schools. The study concluded that, despite facing differing regulatory burdens, "genuine educational innovation is occurring in charter schools," and "charter schools serve the public more like the voluntary institutions of 'civil society' than like conventional public schools."

Many of the sorts of innovations voucher advocates envision--especially those that go beyond traditional classroom settings--are already in place in some charter schools. In Perris, California, for instance, the charter school Choice 2000 On-line is a computer bulletin board offering instructional tools and software by fax and modem to 130 middle and high school students and adults. The City on a Hill Charter School in Boston teaches a college prep curriculum to 65 ninth- and 10th-grade students. The school, which is located in a YMCA, exposes its students to the arts by working with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Ballet. Livingston Technical Academy, located near Detroit, offers 100 11th and 12th graders a basic academic program along with technical training and 10-week apprenticeships.

It's possible that, as more states consider strong charter school laws, they could have much of the same impact as vouchers on conventional public schools. Consider Seattle, where one-third of the parents educate their children privately. Retired Army Major General John Stanford, the school superintendent, has tried to ease the union's hegemony over school management since being appointed in September 1995. One idea: Require principals to compete for teachers and give them the flexibility to contract for security, maintenance, and food service. This would require rewriting the union's contract with the school district. Negotiations have been tense.

One thing initially helping Stanford, however, was Initiative 177, a charter school initiative on the state ballot. Even though Stanford's employer, the Seattle school board, opposed 177, Stanford told Forbes, "It can be an effective tool. That's why you don't see me speaking out against it." Last summer, when the initiative appeared likely to pass, Stanford was able to get the union to agree to no more than a one-year extension of their existing contract. Had 177 passed, he would have had a lot of leverage to implement his vision of "principals as CEOs." But thanks to lots of money and "volunteers" provided by the NEA, Initiative 177 lost, 37 percent to 63 percent. The establishment can temporarily breathe a bit easier.

Changing the Culture

Aside from their instrumental value, charter schools also have a cultural impact. Says Martin Morse Wooster, author of the history of high schools Angry Classrooms, Vacant Minds, "School choice will only succeed when parents have schools to choose from." If charter schools indeed develop independent identities, they will let typical parents realize that every public school doesn't have to be the same. After all, despite the existence of FedEx, faxes, and e-mail, the U.S. Postal Service still delivers about 170 billion pieces of mail a year. Sure, the post office guarantees part of its volume because it retains a monopoly on some classes of mail. But much of its continuing appeal is little more than habit, tradition, and convenience. For most parents, sending their kids to the neighborhood government school is as natural as dropping a note in the nearest mailbox.

If charter schools become more widespread, however, new habits and traditions could develop. Over time, perhaps a generation or so, families might get accustomed to sending their children to tax-funded schools that specialize in the arts, vocational training, or in a more traditional curriculum. When specialty public schools become the norm, entrepreneurial education might not seem so foreign.

And Beales points out that a "strong" charter school law very closely resembles a Friedman- style universal voucher proposal, with two exceptions: No state lets charter schools charge tuitions (precluding Friedman's "Rolls Royce" schools), and religious organizations cannot sponsor charter schools. Even so, since charter schools can receive as much as the per-pupil expenditure, or twice the amount per student the Friedmans would recommend for vouchers, a charter school might be able to offer some of those "Rolls Royce" features. It's possible the Edison Project, or such critics of monopoly schooling as Steven Jobs, will use charter schools to create innovative commercial educational institutions.

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