| What might work in my state |
6/7/04 11:25 AM |
| Author:
Anthony Pina
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Jim,
You are right about what needs to be done and what can't be done. In California, the charter voice is weak and the unions' voice is massive. Attempts to sway the legislature with good data and high charter school performance has succeeded only in mobilizing the unions against charters. The result has been an onslaught of anti-charter legislation that has effectively crippled (if not destroyed) the charter movement in my state.
In 1998, the running of three simultaneous initiatives nearly brought the NEA to its knees and nearly caused significant education reform in California. One of the initiatives was a strong voucher initiative, another was a strong charter initiative and the third was an initiative that would require unions to get written annual permission from their members in order to use union dues for political purposes.
Naturally, the union was most concerned about the last initiative, but could not fight all three at the same time. If the initiative backers would have held their ground, something tremendous could have been done. But the union bosses persuaded the voucher backers to drop their initiative, so that they could "work together" on a "strong charter law". The result was that the union only had to spend its attention and money on defeating one initiative and helped to draft the fatally flawed California charter law that put charter schools squarely under the operational and fiscal control of the system in which they were supposed to compete.
In California, charter schools are being assimilated into the regular school system to the point that many charter schools are indistiguishible from the non-charter schools in their districts. The concept of charter schools is in the process of being re-defined into simply magnet schools with the name "charter". I am of the opinion that that a scenario similar to 1998 (except without the backing down) may be the only way for significant reform to occur in California.
Posted as a reply to:
What we can do. by Jim Cowardin
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