The charter schools legislation under consideration by the Washington legislature is close to having all the votes lined up, but some important compromise might be needed to ensure passage.
Rep. Gigi Talcott, the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee and one of the strongest advocates of school choice in the legislature, is offering one compromise to help address the concerns of some Democrats.
The version of the bill that passed the Senate last June allows for charter schools to be sponsored either by a School District -OR- by a state university. Some conservatives in the legislature are uncomfortable with university sponsorship because of the prospect of the loopy Evergreen State "College" organizing a school. The teacher unions and their Democratic allies, on the other hand, are scared of university-sponsored schools because that would open the door to school reformers such as Paul Hill and the U.W. Center on Reinventing Public Education, and they cloak their objections by citing "lack of accountability to elected officials"
Talcott's proposal is to replace the option of university sponsorship with sponsorship by, and accountability to, elected officials such as city or county councils and/or mayors and county executives.
I personally think this would be an unfortunate dilution of charter schools, since the main objective is to create schools that are accountable mainly to the parents who send their kids there, instead of to politicians who have to appeal to outside interest groups. On the other hand, empowering multiple elected officials to sponsor alternative schools would be a vast improvement over the existing concentration of all power in the hands of school boards, which are inevitably dominated by teacher unions. [Read this post for a brief explanation why it is inevitable that school boards come to be dominated by teacher unions]
I hope this compromise isn't politically necessary to pass the bill, but if it is, then we should support it. In either case, the compromise proposal demonstrates that the supporters of charter schools are flexible in addressing the skeptics' concerns. Meanwhile, those Democrats who still oppose school choice will find it increasingly difficult to explain why they refuse to compromise on their defense of the teacher unions' failed monopoly on public education.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 07, 2004 01:44 PM