Reform News, June 3, 1999

Just as they begin to prove themselves, charter schools—deregulated public schools—are coming under attack from the defenders of the educational status quo. And the governor and the press are turning a blind eye.

Charter schools are the only truly accountable public schools because if they fail to meet the goals outlined in their charter, they are shut down. They thrive in California because of their freedom to innovate, but Assembly Bill 842, authored by Carol Migden (D-San Francisco), now threatens that autonomy.

The measure, which is sailing through the legislature, mandates that all charter school staff be represented by the collective bargaining unit of the charter’s sponsoring district. In Fresno, this bill would directly affect a charter school making great strides in educational innovation.

The School of Unlimited Learning (SOUL), under the Economic Opportunities Commission, has focused its mission on Fresno youth by working with those at risk of dropping out of school and recovering those who have done so already.

Under Principal Linda Washington, the school has developed individualized learning plans with the cooperation of the teacher, counselor, student and administration. This year, the school has enabled thirteen at-risk students to earn their high school diplomas. But if the teachers and staff of SOUL were forced into the collective bargaining unit of the Fresno Unified School District, much of this innovation would be reversed.

Washington fears that they would be forced to comply with the FUSD’s tenure regulations, which make it practically impossible to remove a teacher who not only fails to meet the standards of the school, but more important fails the child. Furthermore, because of the clear distinction between staff and administrators within the collective bargaining agreement, the SOUL staff would no longer enjoy a cooperative arrangement of shared governance, where teachers and administrators work together for the good of the school.

Charter school innovators statewide share these concerns.

“If this passes, it will be the districts and the unions that run charter schools,” said Yvonne Chan, the nationally-recognized principal of the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, praised by First Lady Hillary Clinton and members of Congress.

California Governor Gray Davis has hailed charter schools as “laboratories of innovation” but his education reforms failed to include expansion of the charter concept. The Governor has remained silent on 842, and so has Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, a former teachers’ union organizer.

Also failing to take a stand is Gary Hart, Governor Davis’ education secretary and author of California’s charter school legislation. That legislation was passed in 1993 over the objections of the California Teachers Association, heavy financial contributors to Gray Davis’ campaign.

On May 14, Bob Chase, president of the powerful National Education Association, testified to the California State Board of Education in favor of regulating charter schools. The event went unreported in the press, in a shocking lapse for an institution that supposedly believes in the public’s right to know.

On May 24, hundreds of members of the California Network of Educational Charters (CANEC), demonstrated at the capitol in Sacramento. Though covered by National Public Radio and the Los Angeles Daily News, this event went unreported by the only major newspaper in the state capitol. The lack of coverage is strange because this is the kind of undisguised Goliath-versus-David story journalists love.

A powerful and reactionary establishment is marshaling political power to quash the efforts of a bold group of reformers. The NEA and its wholly-owned state subsidiary, the CTA, seek to turn back the clock to the days when the education bureaucracy got its way, whatever the results in the classroom.

In hearings, Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Glendale), a former organizer with United Teachers of Los Angeles, candidly stated that AB 842 “will bring the charter school movement into the regular educational process.”

That is precisely the problem. The regular educational process is a bureaucratic quagmire of mediocrity and failure. Even its defenders concede that the system is failing California’s students. Charter schools are one hope for improvement within the system, but freedom and autonomy are the keys to their success.

By their silence and inaction, the state’s educational power brokers show themselves willing to sacrifice this hope to the interests of political power.

K. Gwynne Coburn, who hails from Fresno, is a Public Policy Fellow at Pacific Research Institute’s Center for School Reform in Sacramento.