SACRAMENTO, CA - Recall madness has obscured a David-versus-Goliath drama that has resulted in a victory for some of the neediest students in California. This victory should guide legislators and brighten the hopes of students statewide.

Former NBA star Kevin Johnson is a graduate of Sacramento High School, a low-performing school which the local board opted to close. Last December, Johnson headed a campaign by the non-profit St. Hope group, with strong community backing, to establish an innovative charter school at the site. The board approved the charter petition but the local teacher union, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the massive 335,000-member California Teachers Association (CTA), set out to block it.

The charter allowed St. Hope to select its own teachers, while the union wanted to keep in the classrooms the same teachers who had dragged the school to low-performing status. The union found a judge, Trena Burger-Plavan, who ruled that the charter was illegal and even composed a law in the process. She ruled that Sacramento High would have to be closed for one year, a figure she simply made up, before a new charter could begin. Former state senator Gary Hart, who wrote the state’s charter legislation in 1992, said in a Sacramento Bee op-ed that the St. Hope charter was entirely within the law.

With the school year approaching and 1,300 students enrolled, St. Hope appealed the ruling and drew up a second charter. The union charged that this placed St. Hope in contempt of court. On August 15, Burger-Plavan ruled that the charter opponents had not proved this contention, allowing St. Hope to continue enrolling students and open in September.

When Kevin Johnson, a six-footer, played for the Phoenix Suns he threw down a thunderous slam dunk over the seven-foot Akeem Olajuwon, the NBA’s premier shot-blocker. The victory of Johnson’s group over union reactionaries is a slam dunk for the students and the charter-school movement. It is also a lesson for legislators, educators, parents, and all who want to govern California.

As the Sacramento Bee editorialized, a teacher union that would attack a charter school and leave more than a thousand students without a school is not a group that cares what is best for kids. Teacher unions are about money, power, and preserving the status quo. It is unfortunate that current state superintendent Jack O’Connell, like his predecessor Delaine Eastin, is a CTA ally.

As this case shows, judicial activism is not a friend of students. But Burger-Plavan’s recent ruling shows that common sense sometimes prevails, even with activist judges. The test for any reform, meanwhile, is not whether teacher unions like it, but whether it works.

Charter schools, as recent research by Rand confirms, can outperform conventional public schools, sometimes at lower cost. There is no reason to limit these schools, which give latitude to reformers, opportunities to students, and some degree of choice to parents. The task now is to broaden that choice.

California should apply to the K-12 system the same principle that exists in higher education. Fund the student, not the institution, and allow students and parents to select a conventional government school, charter school, or a private school. That would be a true slam dunk for California’s children and the future of the state.