Charter schools are often among the most successful schools in their respective communities, as was just reported in Colorado, for example. At the very least, charter schools offer parents more choices than do the failing government-monopoly public schools. So who could possibly object to charter schools? The keys to the success of charter schools are: (a) independence from the government monopoly school administrators and the teacher unions, along with (b) parental choice and competition. Therefore exactly three groups of people object to charter schools:
[1] Incompetent and/or power-hungry public school teachers and bureaucrats, who feel threatened and/or offended by the thought of independent schools succeeding where government-monopoly schools have failed.
[2] Teacher union officials and their lackey politicians who see the unions' revenues and political power declining as the best teachers opt out of the stultifying govenment-monopoly / teacher union schools for more satisfying careers in independently-run schools.
[3] Lunatic-fringe ideologues who cling to the Stalinist fantasy that government monopolies can deliver services more successfully than can independent organizations that are accountable to consumers.
Today's Seattle Times published 3 letters to the editor from people who are opposed to charter schools. The three letter writers personified categories [2] and [3] above: Deanna Chew-Freidenberg, who believes that privatization and consumer choice are morally wrong. Trevor Griffey, erstwhile campaign manager of Green Party congressional candidate Joe Szwaja ( ran against Jim McDermott from the left). And Catherine Ahl, a teacher union lackey school board member from Kitsap County.
These people are all entitled to their opinions, of course. It just strikes me as creepy that they would spend their free time writing letters to newspapers in order to prevent other people from winning the freedom to make important choices for their children.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 27, 2003 03:22 PM The arrogance of the state and local departments of education is almost beyond belief. Public schools are beginning to look more and more like Pakistani madrasas. They make the IRS look positively angelic.
I do not have children, but if I did I am certain I would be in jail. It would be beyond my power of self-restraint to submit to the new totalitarians that run the schools these days. I would have run amok after being told my son needed to take Ritlain or that my daughter was suspended for taking a butter knife to school.
To tell these Stalinist bureaucrats that education is not a right but a commodity, to be sold and bought on a free market, drives them crazy. True they fear the loss of their jobs but more important they feel the loss of control over children's minds.
Well, since I'm not a union official or a lackey politician, I guess you're accusing me of being a lunatic-fringe ideologue who clings to Stalinist fantasies.
What's ironic in all of this is that it's more Stalinist/ totalitarian to attack people instead of responding to their specific arguments, and to demand that your views be enacted by the state no matter how small a minority you may represent. Washington state voters have rejected charters schools multiple times at the polls. Maybe your beef is with voters, and not a few newspaper letter writers? But then you would have to do more than stereotype people to explain why people disagree with you. And you'd have to come up with a plan for imposing charter schools on people who don't want them. Is that like forcing them to be free?