No victory, subtle or otherwise. Bottom line: as I read the NEA decision, it is a "strategic retreat." But I am of the "Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories" school, so I would call a strategic retreat a strategic retreat.
On general principles, no private for profit entity should have access to public education, school operation funds. Education is a public good, and public schools should be accountable to the public; public support for education should not be diverted, in any way, to private hands. [You have to purchase textbooks from private for profit companies, but this and similar matters are really ancillary to the main educational function of schools, and don't impact on the general principle.] Thus, I would argue that there is no principled reason why public education could not include charter schools, provided that they were run by not-for-profit entities and that there were clear mechanisms of accountability to the public. This is not "kneejerk" policy, in my book.
But public education advocates, with teacher unions being the most prominent organized presence in this camp, are not now in a strategic position to ensure that those principles are a matter of law. The question is how do we arrive at that point. That is a fairly complicated issue, and I could discuss it at considerable length. A few points may provide some sense of the lay of the land.
The 'achilles heel' of public education lies in the failure to provide a quality education to urban and rural schools serving poor and working class communities and communities of color. A very significant and predominant reason for this is the underfunding of such schools, but it is not the total story. Until this disparity is addressed in a convincing way, the threat of privatization will not completely disappear. This has to be a priority long term strategic objective of public education advocates and teacher unions.
At a different level, there is a compelling logic to a strategic approach that focuses less on trying to establish a Maginot line against any private management of failing schools where the balance of forces indicate that such an approach is likely to be unsuccessful, and more on ensuring (1) that the decision to go that route is one that the parents, teachers and local community have ultimate control over, (2) that basic union and due process protections remain in place and (3) that there are clear and strict evaluation protocols and standards in place regarding the progress of the school. Since for profits have, in general, a rather poor record of actual progress on the educational front, and since most are very speculative ventures which will soon fail of their own weight, the ultimate goal of keeping them from establishing much of a beachhead in public education could well be better served by this approach. You can see hints of this strategic orientation between the lines of the WSJ article.
For profits have a real economic problem in that the real money in public education is in the suburban school districts, but they are now in no position to break into those districts, so they are left trying to make a go of it in the low revenue, high cost urban school districts. They are thus going to face the same challenges that inner city schools do. And since they have an extraordinary rate of staff turnover in a field where two of three years of actual experience is required to become proficient, it is very hard to see how they could accumulate the type of professional expertise they would need to have much of an impact.
In this regard, it is also important to distinguish between different for profits. Edison is by far the most politically savvy of the bunch, and has made a point of both making it clear that they are prepared to work out ententes with teacher unions, and of making fairly sophisticated approaches to communities of color -- they have not only Floyd Flake, former Democratic congressman and African-American preacher on their staff, but also the former Milwaukee Superintendent of Schools, Howard Fuller, one-time Marxist-Leninist and pan-Africanist. They have been the most successful in terms of sheer number of public schools they now manage, and have seen their stock soar through the roof, although they are very much like an Amazon.com in that it is unclear that they will ever make a profit. I think that a straight out war of maneuver may work with other, lesser for profits, but that a war of position is required to deal with Edison.
The situation in NYC illustrates the complexity of the problem. Levy, the NYC Chancellor, agreed to turn 5 failing schools into charter schools run by Edison largely as part of a deal with Guiliani to keep him from pushing for his more ambitious voucher plan. The state law, however, requires that 50% plus 1 of all the parents in a public school vote to convert it to a charter school, and all sorts of machinations have been going on to try to get that vote. The most offensive of these is the clause in the contract that would have the Board pay Edison half a million dollars to sell itself to the parents in these schools. There is a lot of community resistance, led by groups like ACORN and progressive politicians in the African-American and Latino community. The UFT has a good relationship with these groups, and decided that it was best that they take the lead, and the union support them around issues like having a fair vote which really reflected their sentiment. This was a sound approach, in my opinion, and has avoided the usual attempts to make the union the issue. But in at least two of the five schools, parents are facing a choice between having the school closed down and allowing it to continue under Edison management. With this gun at their heads, it is hard to know how they will go.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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