Today's Seattle Times has an op-ed by Washington Education Association president Charles Hasse, where he calls charter schools "An underperforming distraction". Hasse repeats some of the WEA's familiar objections to charter schools, such as:
Experience more staff turnoverand
Evidence greater racial segregationAs I noted the other day, this only highlights the benefits of charter schools relative to traditional union dominated public schools: namely they can actually fire incompetent teachers, and they also step up to the plate to do a better job of serving low-income minority communities.
Naturally, Charles Hasse doesn't mention the real reason why the WEA hates charter schools: it would stand to lose $744 a year in mandatory union dues from every teacher that chooses to leave the WEA in order to work in a charter school. And that might jeopardize Hasse's own extravagant salary and benefits.
Meanwhile, the Times' Susan Byrnes has a more realistic column about the benefits of charter schools.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 04, 2004 12:04 PMHey, Shark, couldn't you do a more thorough job of fisking this column? I thought the most important point he left out was that charter schools that fail can be replaced. Ones that succeed could be duplicated and may even have their ideas taken up by regular public schools. At least that is how I hope the system would work, even with the watered down version being discussed by the Legislature. It would be just as bad as the current situation if once started, a charter school would be funded even if it has worse results than the school it replaces.
Posted by: wilinsky on February 4, 2004 02:32 PM