Tag:

teachers unions and school choice

It’s time for the Berlin Wall to fall in America’s public education system

Doug Tuthill May 29, 2012

Getting lost in the complexities of education reform is easy, so I use the following analogy to help me understand the daily ebb and flow of school reform issues.

School districts are East Germany.

School choice programs are refugee camps comprised of people who have left East Germany.

The promised land (i.e., a better public education system) is West Germany.

The promised land becomes attainable when the number of families in refugee camps becomes large enough to make a well-regulated, market-driven public education system viable.

I equate school districts with East Germany because they are command-and-control, politically run monopolies where teachers and parents have little decision-making power. School districts employ legal barriers (i.e., the Berlin Wall) to prevent families from leaving, although affluent families have always been able to buy their way out. Increasingly, lower-income families are accessing resources (i.e., tax credit scholarships and vouchers) which allow them to get out also.

While this analogy is not precise, it does help me understand the motivations, tensions and contradictions that permeate the current education reform movement. Today we have two parallel reform movements. One is attempting to improve productivity within East Germany, while the second is trying to knock down the Berlin Wall and turn all of public education into West Germany.

May 29, 2012 2 comments

Blog Administration Parental Choice School Choice Unionism

Romney: “I will expand parental choice in an unprecedented way”

Ron Matus May 23, 2012

Ron Matus

Mitt Romney is all in on school choice, at least according to the speech he delivered today at the Latino Coalition’s Annual Economic Summit. Here’s a piece of his prepared remarks:

First, I will expand parental choice in an unprecedented way. Too many of our kids are trapped in schools that are failing or simply don’t meet their needs. And for too long, we’ve merely talked about the virtues of school choice.

As President, I will give the parents of every low-income and special needs student the chance to choose where their child goes to school. For the first time in history, federal education funds will be linked to a student, so that parents can send their child to any public or charter school, or to a private school, where permitted. And I will make that choice meaningful by ensuring there are sufficient options to exercise it.

To receive the full complement of federal education dollars, states must provide students with ample school choice. In addition, digital learning options must not be prohibited. And charter schools or similar education choices must be scaled up to meet student demand.

Instead of eliminating the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program as President Obama has proposed, I will expand it to offer more students a chance to attend a better school. It will be a model for parental choice programs across the nation.

Romney came back to the D.C. program later in the speech. He used it as one of several examples where teachers unions blocked school choice programs and proposals.

May 23, 2012 1 comment

Florida Schools Roundup

redefinED roundup: charter school performance in Florida, school shopping in Michigan and more

Ron Matus April 16, 2012

Ron Matus

Florida: State report says charter school students perform better than peers in traditional public schools. (Florida Times Union) State task force will begin planning for digital learning. (Orlando Sentinel)

Washington, D.C.: President Obama should support the D.C. voucher program, which has shown good results and enjoys bipartisan support, the Washington Post editorializes.

Montana: Businessman gives $4.6 million to expand private school choice. (Bozeman Daily Chronicle)

New Hampshire: Lawmakers begin planning override of Gov. John Lynch’s potential veto of a bill to establish tax credit scholarships. (New Hampshire Union Leader)

April 16, 2012 0 comment

Blog Administration Charter Schools Customization Parent Empowerment Parental Choice School Choice Unionism

Michelle Rhee’s evolution on school choice

Doug Tuthill March 29, 2012

Doug Tuthill

Michelle Rhee and I are members of the same political tribe. We’re progressive Democrats. Throughout most of the 1800s and into the mid-1970s, our tribe supported school choice, including allowing parents to use public funds to help pay for private school tuition. Our group’s position began to change in the late 1960s as urban teachers, who are core tribal members, began to unionize. By the time Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976, the transition was complete. Progressive Democrats opposed school choice.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, school districts began using within-district school choice to promote voluntary desegregation, so our tribal position began to gradually evolve. I say gradually because in 1986, I led a floor fight at the annual National Education Association convention, on behalf of then-NEA President Mary Hatwood Futrell, for a resolution endorsing within-district magnet schools. The opposition argued that magnet schools were voucher programs which siphoned off money and the best students from neighborhood schools. The resolution failed.

As the number of unionized teachers working in magnet schools expanded, the NEA eventually embraced magnet schools and other within-district school choice programs, and progressive Democrats followed. Today most progressive Democrats support within-district school choice programs that employ unionized teachers, and they oppose publicly-funded private school choice. But this latter position is evolving. Increasingly, core progressive constituencies, such as African-Americans and Hispanics, are embracing full school choice, as are some progressive leaders.

At Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s annual education reform conference a few years ago, Michelle Rhee began her morning speech by saying she was hired in Washington D.C. to reverse the flow of students into charter schools. But in her new position as founder and CEO of StudentsFirst, Michelle is slowly becoming more open to school choice.

March 29, 2012 2 comments

Blog Administration Charter Schools Education and Public Policy Education Politics Parent Trigger Parental Choice Podcast

The redefinED podcast — An interview with Ben Austin of the Parent Revolution

Adam Emerson March 18, 2011

Adam Emerson

“We’re living in a revolutionary moment,” says Ben Austin, executive director of the Parent Revolution, as we begin our interview for redefinED’s inaugural podcast. And the moment to which he refers has been marked by California’s “parent trigger,” a law that has upended the status quo at one Compton school in a way that few education measures can do with such sweep. A majority of parents at McKinley Elementary wanted a charter operator to come and take over their struggling school, just as the parent-trigger law allows, and what Austin and the Parent Revolution fought for, and the Compton Unified School District has done everything possible to make their job harder. The struggle will be left to the courts to resolve, but Austin does see success in the very nature of what the law has sanctioned.

The trigger has allowed parents to essentially organize and effectuate change at a bargaining table that has been the exclusive province of school boards and teachers unions. Whatever the outcome at McKinley, the law has transformed relations between school boards and the parents at their failing schools, said Austin, a former member of the California State Board of Education, who also served Los Angeles as a deputy mayor from 2000-2001 as well a variety of roles in the Clinton White House. “Already there are parents across California that are organizing to get to 51 percent with no intention of at least initially turning the signatures in,” he said. “They’re organizing to bargain. They’re organizing to basically say, ‘You haven’t listened to us for years, but now we have the power to fire you, so you have to listen to us.'”

We talked with Austin about the launch of the Parent Revolution and how its role as a parent union might manifest itself at the bargaining table. What else did we ask?

Why the parent trigger, and not a more collaborative approach? “It’s people with power that want a collaborative approach … Power and Money is the language that the other side understands, and if you’re not speaking that language, they’re not going to listen to you.”

Can the PTA fulfill the role as a parent union? “We’ve had good experiences with the PTA, and we’ve had bad experiences with the PTA. We believe there needs to be a lot more “P” in the PTA.”

Click here to listen to the rest of the conversation, which runs about 24 minutes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

March 18, 2011 2 comments