Houston, You Have a Problem

Houston is showing us how not to run a teacher performance pay program. When 92 percent of the teachers qualify for the bonuses, something is wrong. This type of incentive pay system is just a phony and cynical way of boosting everyone's salary.

Bad News from the District of Precambria

Just as it seemed on the verge of gaining real momentum, Michelle Rhee's courageous effort to reinvent the abysmally-bad D.C. school system faces a major setback, and possibly reversal, following the ouster of pro-reform Mayor Adrian Fenty. Mayor-to-be Vincent Gray pledged that reform would go on, in the wake of his upset win over Fenty. But Rhee isn't buying it, judging from the unvarnished opinions she shared with The Washington Post.

Rhee's detractors -- starting with local and national teacher unions -- will gloat and applaud, as hard-won improvements are rolled-back. But it's D.C.'s school kids who will suffer most for this untimely and unfortunate turn of events.

Somehow I see a think tank in Rhee's future.

In Defense of the "D"

I may be a little biased on the subject, having "earned" a few "D"s back in the day, but I can't help suspect that the push to banish the "D" from school report cards represents yet another attempt to water-down standards, all in the name of inflating GPAs and boosting student self-esteem. The fact that it's under consideration in the warm-and-fuzzy Boulder Valley only deepens my suspicions.

The "D" isn't the meaningless grade critics claim it is, in my opinion. Just as there needs to be an interim step between excellent (A) and average (C), it's necessary to have a way station between average (C) and abysmal (E or F). A "D" reminds a student that he or she is flirting with failure, while preventing the complete parental meltdown that accompanies an "F" or an "E." Thus, the "D" has probably helped motivate some students to do better, while preventing child abuse in households -- like the one in which I grew up -- where an "E" would call down more fire and brimstone.

It's the yellow light of the academic world, which you blow through at great risk; a sort of intellectual Purgatory, where redemption is still possible. And given the contemporary educator's reluctance to flunk students, for fear of shattering their fragile self-esteem, doing away with the "D" most likely will push borderline cases into the "C" category, so "average" will also lose its meaning. More grade inflation would seem the inevitable result.

The educrat's fondness for tinkering with the tried and true, and eagerness to embrace new fads, is symptomatic of a "system" in disarray and decay, which, instead of raising the bar high and insisting that students make the grade, keeps searching for gimmicky new ways to fake progress and evade accountability.

Agent of Influence

The American Spectator has a thorough write-up on the recently-released FBI dossier on Howard Zinn, whose textbook, "A People's History of the United States," was widely used in many schools and undoubtedly left a lasting impression (the wrong impression, in many cases) on many a malleable young mind.

That Zinn appears to have been an active member of the Communist Party, or, at the very least, a fellow traveler and "agent of influence," shouldn't have disqualified him as a writer of books, in my opinion. In a truly free country, even Communists have the right to teach, write and propagandize to their heart's content. And academia is full of people like Zinn. Singling him out as an aberration is sort of silly. And I'm sure his advocates will use the files to paint Zinn as the victim of anti-Red hysteria and witch-hunting.

The really damning element of the Zinn saga isn't that he wrote books, but that these became textbooks, which were warmly and uncritically received by the public school establishment. That so many school administrators so enthusiastically inflicted his hard left interpretation of American history, which highlighted all the warts while downplaying the virtues, on so many young people, without blinking an eye, suggests that they shared his dark and distorted view of the American experiment -- that his view conformed with their own.

Then some wonder why so many kids coming out of public schools, if they know any history at all, need so much deprogramming.

The Imperial Educrat

Does a U.S. Secretary of Education really need a siren-wailing motorcade to clear away the rabble as he rushes to a media interview in Washington, D.C.? That's the first of many indicators in this New York Times profile that the man in charge at the department, Obama basketball buddy Arne Duncan, might be a little out of control, a little too intoxicated with a sense of power and self-importance. And that, as the story indicates, means he poses an unprecedented threat to the independence of local schools.

"Mr. Duncan is a man in a hurry. He has far more money to dole out than any previous secretary of education, and he is using it in ways that extend the federal government’s reach into virtually every area of education, from pre-kindergarten to college.

“This is the most assertive secretary of education we’ve ever had,” said Carl Kaestle, an education historian at Brown University who has studied the federal role in 20th-century American schooling.

Mr. Duncan has run a $4 billion school-improvement competition that led many states to change education laws to reflect his prescriptions. This month, the department is distributing $3.5 billion for the overhaul of thousands of failing schools. Mr. Duncan has been shuttling frequently to Capitol Hill to outline plans for a rewriting of the main federal law on public schools.

In March, Congress terminated a huge, bank-based college loan program, replacing it with one run out of the Education Department, and redirecting $36 billion in bank subsidies into Pell grants for low-income students.

Now the administration has begun writing rules to ensure that students will not assume burdensome tuition debt for career training that is unlikely to land them well-paying jobs.

“This administration’s education vision is a very activist, expansive role for the federal government,” said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, who has watched education policies evolve in Washington for nearly 30 years. “We’re never going to be like France, where the education minister can look at his watch and tell you what every fourth grader is doing. But inevitably, with more federal education initiatives, more federal money, comes more strings, more federal control.”

Not everything Duncan has done as Ed-Sec is bad; in fact, on many issues, he convincingly mouths the rhetoric of a reformer. And federal encroachment into the formerly-off limits realm of local public schools really got a boost from Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, with No Child Left Behind. But even a self-styled reformer is something to be wary of if his goal is total federal hegemony over local schools -- since such powers, once granted, are unlikely ever to be rolled back.

We've heard warnings for years about the rise of the "Imperial President." In Barack Obama, this idea takes on its most tangible form yet. Maybe, in Duncan, we have our first "Imperial Educrat."

Post Goes Postal on Teacher Unions

Say what you will about The Washington Post -- and most conservatives say it's a left-leaning piece of fish wrap -- but the paper's editorial page in recent years has become a strong and consistent voice for school choice and school reform. Some on the paper's news side still shill for the teacher unions and other anti-reform reactionaries. But the editorial page has seen the light.

Today's editorial, which comes to the defense of a successful Baltimore charter school that's been the target of "outlandish demands" by the city's teachers union, isn't an aberration. The Post has been a fairly reliable ally of D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, in her epic struggles to turn that school system around. And the paper's oft-repeated mantra of "put children first" is helping bring slow but perceptible change to some public school systems that need it most.

Now, if only the Post would incorporate that pro-freedom, pro-reform ethos into all its editorials.

But then there would be no reason for The Washington Times.

Voting with Their Feet for Charter Schools

Debate about the effectiveness of charter schools, vis-a-vis their conventional public school counterparts, seems never-ending. Some studies suggest they're superior; others say that's a myth. Both camps point to the anecdotes and analyses that bolster their case. The waters remain murky.

But by one oft-overlooked but critically-important measure, parental demand, charters seem to be making the grade. Just look at today's Denver Post:

"Alma Meraz's eyes welled when her daughter's name was pulled from a cookie jar during an enrollment lottery for the high-performing West Denver Prep charter school.

"I'm so happy," said Meraz, who cleans houses for a living. "I need her to go to this school for better opportunities. For a better life."

West Denver Prep — which some parents have come to view as a first step toward college and possibly a lifeline out of poverty — is rated the second-best school in Denver.
The school's college-preparatory curriculum and swift interventions for struggling students have been touted for helping at- risk kids beat the academic odds. West Denver Prep now posts some of the best academic growth in the state.

The middle school also draws nearly double the number of applicants it can seat, meaning waiting lists are long and disappointments high during the annual school- choice enrollment period.

It's a scenario played out across the state each winter, as parents battle to get their kids into popular, high-performing schools during the choice period.

The Colorado Department of Education estimates about 38,000 children are waiting to get into Colorado charter schools. One such school, Classical Academy in Colorado Springs, has 7,800 students on its wait list."

While the so-called experts duel and debate, education consumers are speaking loud and clear. More and more Americans, if given the choice, are voting with their feet for charter schools. And that's a good enough measure of success for me.

The "Historian" Who Hated America

I take no personal delight in the death of histrionic "historian" Howard Zinn, despite the unhealthy and warping influence his revisionist, left-leaning text books have had on an untold number of school kids. I only wish his "People's History of the United States" could so easily be expunged from school bookshelves.

The propaganda will outlive the propagandist, unfortunately. That's what I'm grieving over.

So far out of the mainstream was Zinn's interpretation of U.S. history that even the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. -- no slouch as a liberal -- called Zinn a "polemicist, not a historian." Yet that never prevented Zinn's texts from winning wide acceptance among educrats, who inflicted his politically-motivated distortions on impressionable young minds. He also developing a cult following among the fashionably left wing, including fellow revisionist Oliver Stone, as the following write-up indicates.

From the Associated Press:

"Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A People's History of the United States" sold millions of copies to become an alternative to mainstream texts and a favorite of such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck, died Wednesday. He was 87.
Zinn died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif., daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said.

Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, "A People's History" was — fittingly — a people's bestseller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1 million sales in 2003. Although Zinn was writing for a general readership, his book was taught in high schools and colleges throughout the country, and numerous companion editions were published, including "Voices of a People's History" and a volume for young people.

At a time when few politicians dared even call themselves liberal, "A People's History" told an openly left-wing story. Zinn charged Christopher Columbus and other explorers with genocide, picked apart presidents from Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and celebrated workers, feminists and war resisters.

Even liberal historians were uneasy with Zinn. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once said: "I know he regards me as a dangerous reactionary. And I don't take him very seriously. He's a polemicist, not a historian."

In a 1998 interview with The Associated Press, Zinn acknowledged he was not trying to write an objective history, or a complete one. He called his book a response to traditional works, the first chapter — not the last — of a new kind of history.

"There's no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete," Zinn said. "My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times."

"A People's History" had some famous admirers, including Matt Damon and Affleck. The two grew up near Zinn, were family friends and gave the book a plug in their Academy Award-winning screenplay for "Good Will Hunting." When Affleck nearly married Jennifer Lopez, Zinn was on the guest list.

Oliver Stone was a fan, as well as Springsteen, whose bleak "Nebraska" album was inspired in part by "A People's History." The book also inspired a 2007 documentary, "Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind." It even showed up on "The Sopranos," in the hand of Tony's son, A.J.

Zinn himself was an impressive-looking man, tall and rugged with wavy silver-gray hair. An experienced public speaker, he was modest and engaging in person, more interested in persuasion than in confrontation."

That Zinn became the teacher of so many American students is another indictment of a system that often seems more interested in political indoctrination than real education.

Left Wing Lesson Plan

Wackos, weirdos and radicals of all stripes find welcoming and eager ears on American college campuses (some even burrow in and earn tenure); it's almost as if parents, taxpayers and tuition-payers feel obligated to expose impressionable minds to both the best and the worst of ideas, assuming students can tell the difference. But many students can't tell the difference -- which is why activist-turned-"educator" Annie Leonard received a warm reception at last week's appearance at Colorado College.

Leonard's popular video, The Story of Stuff, "details in a simplistic, almost childlike way, the linear journey that stuff takes to get to our homes and the journey it takes when we toss the stuff out," reports The Gazette. But the film's "childlike" style is designed to deceive. It actually delivers a much more adult message, leveling a wide-ranging critique of capitalism, consumerism, industrialism and Americanism, tied-up in a bright green ribbon to lower a viewer's guard.

Leonard once worked for Greenpeace. The group's extremist ethos permeates the film. "Stuff" was bankrolled in part by The Tides Foundation, which gives generously to radical causes. A quick read of the transcript, or viewing of the film, reveals that "Stuff" is much more than just a primer on resource extraction and mass consumption. It's a context-free broadside against the American way of life, full of fear-mongering distortions and political editorializing. Many of the "facts" presented are debatable. The transcript has footnotes, but most lead back to dubious, ideologically-loaded sources.

If The Story of Stuff were confined to YouTube, and it's creator to the college lecture circuit, it couldn't do too much harm. But the film is being shown in many U.S. schools, where captive and unwitting audiences are clueless about its hard-left subtext. The New York Times reported in May that the film is jumping from the Internet into the classroom, with very little resistance. It's something parents and school administrators need to be wary of.

The Times:

"More than 7,000 schools, churches and others have ordered a DVD version, and hundreds of teachers have written Ms. Leonard to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web. It has also won support from independent groups that advise teachers on curriculum choices. Facing the Future, a curriculum developer for schools in all 50 states, is drafting lesson plans based on the video."

One Montana school district banned the film, following complaints from an alert parent, according to the Times. But the public school establishment seems to be embracing the film as a legitimate teaching tool.

"In January, a school board in Missoula County, Mont., decided that screening the video treaded on academic freedom after a parent complained that its message was anticapitalist. But many educators say the video is a boon to teachers as they struggle to address the gap in what textbooks say about the environment and what science has revealed in recent years.

“Frankly, a lot of the textbooks are awful on the subject of the environment,” said Bill Bigelow, the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, a quarterly magazine that has promoted “The Story of Stuff” to its subscribers and on its Web site, which reaches about 600,000 educators a month. “The one used out here in Oregon for global studies — it’s required — has only three paragraphs on climate change. So, yes, teachers are looking for alternative resources.”

Environmental education is still a young and variable field, according to Frank Niepold, the climate education coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are few state or local school mandates on how to teach the subject.

The agency is seeking to change that, but in the interim many teachers are developing their own lesson plans on climate change, taking some elements from established sources like the National Wildlife Federation and others from less conventional ones like “The Story of Stuff.”

Whether endorsed by curriculum committees, or infiltrating our classrooms one DVD at a time, courtesy of teachers who don't recognize it's political overtones, The Story of Stuff is mind pollution of a toxic kind. Parents need to learn whether their kids are seeing it in school. They should demand that schools stop showing it, unless balance, context and counter-arguments are offered in response. It's left-wing indoctrination, not education -- something as out of place in the classroom as Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, which many U.S. schools passed off as a serious lesson in climate science.

Peddling this kind of "stuff" to college students is one thing; imposing it on K-12 kids is quite another.

It's the Schools, Stupid.

Is it the school? Or is it the student? That's a frequently-heard debate when we talk about the failures of public education.

No one's simplistic enough to say it's all one or all the other. But this recent story in the Denver Post may help shine a little more light on the subject. It strongly suggests that freeing kids from failing schools can boost their performance, which doesn't exonerate lazy parents but does point an accusing finger back in the direction of lousy schools.

Here's the Post:

"Students from schools in Denver that were closed two years ago in a reform effort are performing better academically in their new schools, according to a district analysis.
In 2007, Denver Public Schools shut down eight elementary schools and announced the revamping of programs at five schools in a sweeping reform meant to reduce facility costs and improve student achievement.

The analysis of individual student scores from the 2008-09 Colorado Student Assessment Program shows that, at least initially, the effort is working.

The 2,000 affected students made more academic growth in their new schools in reading, writing and math than they did in the schools they left behind, according to DPS."

"Closing and reconfiguring schools is very difficult and a very painful process; we must keep our focus on what is best for the students," DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg told the Post. "Here, it is very clear that the students benefited from these changes."

This won't end the schools vs. students (and parents) debate, of course. But it does mean that the public education establishment can't convincingly argue that they are blameless when children fall through the cracks. The quality of the school obviously matters. And we're doing kids a great disservice when we don't ruthlessly eliminate those schools that aren't making the grade.

Giving the Devil its Due

It's fashionable in right wing circles to slam the Washington Post for being a left-wing rag. On most days, it lives up to that reputation. But the paper's editorial page has broken ranks with the hard left on at least one important issue, school choice. And it deserves credit for that.

The Post has lent rhetorical support to controversial D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, in her epic battles to turn around one of the worst systems in the country -- a national disgrace unfolding right in the shadow of the capitol dome. And the paper has come to embrace school choice, including charter schools and voucher programs, as important options for urban students trapped in failing systems.

Tomorrow's Post editorial touts the now-demonstrated benefits of charter schools for underprivileged kids, while slamming teachers unions for their hidebound opposition to this public school innovation. It's almost like reading The Washington Times, but better -- since it will be read, and hopefully taken to heart, by tens of thousands of hard core liberals over a cup of coffee tomorrow morning.

The Speech

The speech Obama will give American school kids later today is a decent one, as you can see for yourself: link. It's not overtly political. It's only mildly self-serving. Anything smacking too much of either would have been purged from early drafts by the time it was made public yesterday, given the controversy. It says many of the things most American parents already have said to their kids, ad nauseum, if they're any kind of parent at all.

Obama's speech might inspire some young Americans to take their studies more seriously; to not sass their teachers, to set lofty goals, to shoot for the stars, etc. It will do the most good, arguably, for those kids who never hear their parents deliver such pep talks, or demand higher standards. But I still believe it's inappropriate, for the reasons presented in an earlier post.

Most of what this annoyingly-verbose president says in a 20-minute speech could have been said, probably with more impact, in a series of 30- or 60-second Ad Council PSAs, which could be aired on networks where young people tune in. That would have been a much more effective means of delivering the message, with no need to disrupt school days or stir dissension in the ranks. This sort of 20-minute soliloquy might work well in the U.S. Senate, and will probably have many left-leaning teachers spellbound. But it will probably have many students tuning-out or nodding-off half way through.

This president loves to hear himself talk -- he's "intoxicated with his own verbosity," as my dad used to say. And he can blather on with the best of them. But it's arrogant and presumptuous of him (or any president of either party) to ask American public schools to furnish him with a captive audience, on demand. I think it sets a bad precedent that invites future mischief.

Will the Presidential Pep Talk to Students become an annual ritual, ala the State of the Union Address? Obama did it, so the next president, and the president after her, will want to do it, too. And why shouldn't the president also give an annual Presidential Address to High School Graduates, or a National Presidential Commencement Speech? And how long before more politics creeps into such messages? You can see the slippery slope that beckons.

This is nothing but an ego trip -- another opportunity for the imperial president to pose and preen and lecture Americans. And if a president isn't willing to respect any boundaries, in terms of invading the lives of supposedly sovereign-citizens, the citizens will have to tell the president that there are certain lines he or she shouldn't cross -- starting at the school house door. We didn't do that in this case. We'll come to regret it in the long-run.

Americans (including school kids) already are bombarded by the images, words and actions of the president, making that person appear god-like in stature. But he's simply supposed to serve as chief executive, in a system of divided powers and checks and balances. His powers are limited. He's just a cog in a machine that works for "we the people." And that's what young Americans should be learning in school.

Instead, they're required to assemble like sheep, to hear from our glorious leader, lecturer-in-chief Barack Obama. The office of president is taking on the attributes of a personality cult. This sort of thing doesn't help.

Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts

George W. Bush cracked open the door to a federal takeover of American public schools with the unfunded mandates imposed on states through his No Child Left Behind program. Barack Obama is tearing that door off its hinges, and driving a truck through the gaping hole, by using stimulus funds to force state compliance with his own education agenda, as the New York Times reports today.

"Holding out billions of dollars as a potential windfall, the Obama administration is persuading state after state to rewrite education laws to open the door to more charter schools and expand the use of student test scores for judging teachers.

That aggressive use of economic stimulus money by Education Secretary Arne Duncan is provoking heated debates over the uses of standardized testing and the proper federal role in education, issues that flared frequently during President George W. Bush’s enforcement of his signature education law, called No Child Left Behind."

Both the Bush and Obama efforts travel under the guise of "reform." Both efforts include elements that many backers of improving education support in principle (higher testing standards and more accountability in the case of NCLB, for instance, and more charter schools in the case of Obama's No Taxpayer Left Alone program). But neither initiative serves the long-term interests of American public education, since both are unprecedented assaults on state and local control of schools.

No sector of American society that falls under federal dominance has flourished as a result. Almost everything Washington touches turns to shit, as we all know. That's reason enough to be wary of Uncle Sam's growing involvement in public education under Bush and Obama. And because federal involvement never comes without strings attached, and a hefty price tag attached, it's better in the long-run that such matters remain under state and local control.

I would like to see more charter school-averse states change their attitudes toward the alternative schools, so I might be inclined, at first blush, to applaud the Obama administration's use of stimulus funds as leverage against charter-resistant states. But because I try to think 2 or 3 moves ahead, I also anticipate that the Obama administration and its teacher union allies will eventually use this same leverage to force the unionization of charter schools, and to impose federal standards upon them, effectively robbing charter schools of the very things that make them unique, independent, effective and appealing.

Here's a hint of things to come in a related story from the Associated Press:

"Unions and their members do not oppose all charter schools, but they do want more say in how teachers are chosen. The American Federation of Teachers is actively seeking a bigger role in charter schools and has helped to unionize several."

Barack Obama's support for charter schools at first glance seems at odds with his political alliance with anti-charter school teachers' unions -- until one realizes that this administration intends to facilitate a union takeover of these schools through passage of the so-called card check law, which will make organizing the American workplace as easy as collecting enough signatures. Obama's support for charter schools is tolerated by teachers' unions because they understand that their chances of co-opting these schools will get a big boost from this union-friendly president.

That's why this backer of charter schools is skeptical of Obama actions that seem, on the surface, to be pro-school choice and pro-school reform. Beware Greeks bearing gifts. Charter schools have a better chance of remaining genuine charter schools if they are free of the federal government's -- and Barack Obama's -- smothering embrace.

Charter School Double Standard

Because charter schools are seen as a threat to conventional public schools; because charter schools tend to outperform conventional schools; because charter schools offer an avenue out for families trapped in failing conventional schools; because charter schools break with public education convention; because there are lists of families waiting to get into the best of them. These are just a few reasons why charter schools have so many enemies in the public school establishment. And it explains why these enemies are so quick to pounce at the slightest evidence that a charter school is faltering or falling down on the job.

A dozen conventional public schools can be failing their students, and performing below standards. A dozen conventional schools can suffer from discipline problems, lousy teacher morale and poor financial management. But nobody says a word about those schools, because it's business as usual. But if one charter school fouls up, falls short or draws complaints, it suddenly becomes big news, generating the sort of coverage we've seen lately about The Classical Academy in Colorado Springs and the Cesar Chavez charter schools in Pueblo and the Springs. The sharks start circling, hoping to drag one of these charters off their pedestals. Doing so shows that they aren't really very different, they aren't really a cut above, after all.

We've seen a spate of stories in recent months, for instance, about some racially-tinged incidents at The Classical Academy, a well-regarded charter school in Colorado Springs. The school took quick action to address the situation. But I kept wondering, when reading the stories, whether similar incidents go on all the time at conventional public schools, without generating a peep from the media. Bullying incidents happen, racial incidents happen, sexual incidents happen and discipline cases occur regularly at conventional public schools, I'm sure, but it's unnoticed beyond school walls. But when The Classical Academy is involved, it becomes big local news. The double standard is in full effect.

Now we see a similar pattern with the Cesar Chavez charter school network in Pueblo and Colorado Springs.

From today's Pueblo Chieftain:

"The superintendent of Pueblo City Schools wants Colorado’s commissioner of education to launch an audit of the finances and testing practices at the Cesar Chavez School Network.John Covington sent the letter to Commissioner Dwight Jones last week, enclosing clippings from various newspapers regarding the salaries paid to network executives and issues surrounding state achievement tests . . .

. . .Pueblo City Schools charters Cesar Chavez Academy and Dolores Huerta Preparatory High in Pueblo, are under contracts expiring in 2012 and 2014, respectively. The charter school network operates two elementary schools in Colorado Springs and an online program under the Colorado State Charter Institute and plans to open a school in Denver later this year under a charter from Denver Public Schools.News reports, instigated by a growing number of parents and former employees, recently reported on the salaries paid to Chief Executive Officer Lawrence Hernandez, his wife and Chief Operating Officer Annette Hernandez, and Jason Guerrero, the school's chief financial officer.

IRS filings pegged Hernandez’s compensation at more than $261,732, his wife at nearly $135,000 and Guerrero’s pay at just under $248,000.Another story, in the Colorado Springs Independent last week, resurrected cheating allegations dating back to 2005. At that time, according to stories in The Pueblo Chieftain, the school district’s director of assessment charged that answers on Colorado Student Achievement Program tests given at Cesar Chavez Academy had been erased but district officials did not follow up on the charges and the tests were not thrown out. Had they been, the district’s overall scores would have dropped."

I'm not objecting to the scrutiny these schools are getting. I'm not apologizing for any shortcomings, irregularities or misdeeds that such examinations bring to light. I'm fully aware that some charter schools are in deeper trouble than many conventional schools are.

I'm simply asking whether a double standard isn't at work in how this scrutiny is applied. All I'm arguing is that public education would be a lot better off, across the board, if that same level of skepticism -- that same eagerness to highlight deficiencies and problems -- applied to all public schools, equally, not just schools that the public education establishment wants to discredit or destroy.

Charter Schools at Risk

The New York Times on Monday offered a compelling portrait of Kashi Nelson, who teaches at a Brooklyn charter school targeted for takeover by teachers unions. Nelson first opposed and then embraced and then opposed unionization again, personifying a struggle for the heart and soul of charter schools taking place across the country.

Explains the Times:

"Ms. Nelson’s shift from union skeptic to supporter and back again provides a glimpse of the complicated and tense dance between charter schools and unions unfolding across the country.

As the number of charter schools in New York City and elsewhere swells, unions have become increasingly aggressive in trying to organize their teachers. These two major forces in education politics, having long faced off in ideological opposition, have begun in some places to enter tentative and cautious partnerships, and in others to engage in fierce combat. New York City’s teachers’ union now runs two charter schools in Brooklyn and workers have organized at many more, including more than a dozen across New York State.

Some of the most adamant supporters of charter schools say that the teachers’ union is simply trying to stymie their growth by increasing the regulations on their operation; union leaders, on the other hand, say they are just trying to ensure that teachers are given fair pay and clear guidelines for how and why they could be dismissed."

Having largely lost the battle to stop the schools, unions have adopted a new strategy -- of destroying them from within by infiltrating and organizing their staffs. And with legislation pending before Congress that would make unionizing the workplace as simple as gathering enough signatures -- the so-called card check bill -- this assault on the independence of charter schools is only likely to spread and escalate.

Freedom from union influence is one of the distinguishing characteristics of charter schools; indeed, it's one of the secrets to their success. It's what leaves the teachers free to teach, without constant reference to what's "in the contract." It's what leaves school administrators free to manage, without butting heads with obstructionists within. Absent is the adversarial relationship between "management" and "workers" that unions feed upon. These schools put the interest of students first and teachers second. And that's why unions want to obliterate that distinction.

Teachers have a choice of working at a charter school or a conventional public school. They're intelligent enough to understand the trade-offs involved. Many choose the former over the latter because of the apathy and antipathy unions frequently bring to the workplace. Thus, the idea that unions are coming to the rescue of beleaguered charter school teachers is ridiculous.

Many of these teachers have fled to charters to escape the unhealthy and unproductive influence of unions, as Nelson was when she took the job in Brooklyn. But the unions refuse to let charter schools and charter school teachers (not to mention charter school students and parents) go their own way, insisting that uniformity, conformity, lethargy and mediocrity permeate public education in America, without exception.

If allowed to go unchecked, the union takeover of charters schools threatens to undermine and eventually destroy one of the few real innovations American public education has enjoyed in recent times.

But a more practical, bottom-line motivation also lurks behind the takeovers. The popularity of charters has the tide turning decisively against unions. It represents a steady drain on union membership, union dues and union power -- which is all most unions care about anyway. Unless they find a way to co-opt charters, not only will unions experience a continuing decline in membership and money, but America will before long have two public school systems existing side my side.

One system, free from union influence, will be succeeding, while the other, anchored down by union dominance, will be failing. And that will be the most glaring evidence yet of the cancerous influence these organizations have had on American public education.

There go the Charter Schools

The absence of teacher unions has long been one of the defining characteristics of charter schools.

It's what leaves the teachers free to teach, without constant reference to what's in "the contract." It's what leaves school administrators free to manage, without butting heads with obstructionists within. Absent is the adversarial relationship between "management" and "workers" that unions feed on. These schools put the interest of students first, and teachers second. It's one of the secrets of their success.

Yet of late I've seen a number of stories about teacher unions infiltrating charter schools, including, in just the last few days, this story in the New York Times, about the tensions caused by one attempted takeover in New York City, and this article in the Los Angeles Times, with an eerily similar storyline.

The N.Y. Times:

"Perhaps the standoff should not be a surprise. Charter schools, which are publicly financed but operate independently, were founded in opposition to teachers’ unions; many of the movement’s supporters view union contracts as a fundamental flaw in public education that keeps ineffective teachers on the job. And KIPP, like many charters, has hired teachers without traditional training and requires long hours and weekend work, usually for extra pay.

Teachers’ unions initially ignored charter schools or viewed them as the enemy, but as the charters grew in size and influence, the unions’ feelings warmed somewhat. Green Dot, a Los Angeles-based charter network, has unions at each of its schools, including one that opened with the teachers’ union’s cooperation last fall in the Bronx.

In New York, 18 of the state’s 115 charter schools are unionized, including two in Brooklyn operated by the teachers’ union. What happens to the unionization effort at KIPP AMP is being closely watched nationally as a test of whether two powerful forces in education will cooperate, coexist or devolve into protracted battles."

Clearly, the unions, having failed to thwart the charter school movement, are adopting a new strategy, of trying to infiltrate the schools and destroy them from within, by turning them into conventional public schools, where unions, not administrators, call the shots. The unions portray these takeovers as signaling their willingness to be part of the solution, not the problem, and as proof they aren't the obstacles to innovation and excellence they obviously are. Thus the lead in the Times story (my italics added):

"With its stellar test scores and connection to a national network, the KIPP AMP charter school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, presented a ripe opportunity for the city’s teachers’ union to prove that it, too, could embrace innovation that fuels rapid improvement for students."

But a more practical, bottom-line motivation lurks behind the takeovers. The wild popularity of charters has the tide turning decisively against unions. It represents a steady drain on union membership, union dues and union power -- which is all most unions care about. Unless they find a way to co-opt charters, not only will unions experience a continuing decline in membership and money, but America will before long have two public school systems existing side my side.

One system, free from union influence, will be succeeding, while the other, anchored down by union dominance, will be failing. And that will be the most glaring evidence yet of the cancerous influence these organizations have had on American public education.