Every School A Charter

Freeing people to do their own thing is no guarantee of educational excellence or of permanent change.

The charter school movement is the latest in a long line of educational panaceas, and right now there is a lot of impetus behind it. But it is no more likely to be a cure-all than any of its predecessors.

What exactly is a charter school? The laws that establish charter schools vary from state to state, but all of them encourage interested groups of people -- teachers, parents, community members and even private businesses -- to start a school or take an existing school out of the regular system and remake it. Charter schools are financed with state and local money, just like other public schools, but they are cut loose from bureaucratic rules and regulations. And depending on the state, people who run them may be free to establish their own curriculums and procedures, hire the staff they want and handle their own finances. In other words, they have the power to do their own thing and, presumably, to make their school what they think it ought to be -- without interference from the central office or the school board.

This sounds very appealing, and supporters of charter schools are convinced that giving people a chance to exercise their creativity will result in large numbers of schools that are as excellent as they are varied. They also believe that charter schools will be engines for long-term change: By attracting serious students and good teachers, they will exert pressure on regular schools to improve themselves by doing similar things.

The trouble is, freeing people to do their own thing is no guarantee of educational excellence or indeed of permanent change. We've already had charter schools in this country, in the sense of schools that were experimental and largely put together and supported by parents and teachers. If you look at newspaper clippings from the 1960s and 1970s, you'll see many enthusiastic stories about alternative schools -- as they were called then. Like today's charter schools, they broke away from tradition and school bureaucracy and tried all kinds of new and exciting things. But few of them endured, and they had no impact on education in general.

For the most part, schools that are based on the "vision" of a small group of people don't last very long. Those who are involved work very hard at creating their school and then -- well, maybe the leader who inspired them gets hired away to a different school or leaves to write a book. Or the teachers get burned out or the fads change. And the whole thing self-destructs.

But suppose the charter school movement were to achieve exactly what its supporters hope for? Suppose it led to a string of excellent schools that reflected the idiosyncratic visions of their creators and became local institutions? Charter schools would still be a recipe or chaos.

We live in a society where families are very mobile, and kids are likely to go to several different schools before they graduate. The fact that individual school districts have a good deal of control over curriculum already creates serious problems. Even though most districts use text series, which have similarities in the materials covered, teachers can never be sure what kids who are new in class learned last semester. Usually, they play it safe by repeating a lot of the material.

With a system of charter schools, commonalities would disappear. Some schools might base their program of study on community service and internships while others might use local museums and libraries and computer labs as their classrooms. We would see schools centered around gender or ethnic studies -- there would undoubtedly be Afrocentric charters, for example - but there would also be charters with traditional, book-centered curriculums. What would happen when a student transferred from one to another?

With a non-system like this, it would also be impossible to know which schools are doing well with their students and which are not. Schools claim that graduation rates tell you, but graduating from high school is no guarantee that a student knows anything. And given the current low standards, being admitted to college isn't either.

The charter schools that we are hearing about are a terrific way for people to exercise their ingenuity and creativity - but they won't solve our educational problems.

What we really need -- at the very least -- are statewide curriculum frameworks and statewide assessment systems. Then, students and teachers in every school will know what kids are responsible for learning and whether or not they have learned it. And we should add statewide incentive systems that link getting into college or getting a job with achievement in high school. Once those things are in place, why limit charter schools to five or ten or a hundred? Why shouldn't every school be a charter and enjoy the kind of autonomy now being offered to only a few?