Surge, Sweep and Hold?

Education Next currently features an essay on charter schools that might as well be a report from Iraq. In it, Andy Smarick, formerly with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, argues for a Baghdad-style surge in which “every urban public school [would] be a charter.” Somehow, simply doing more of the same will bring about the success that to date has been so elusive.

His case is reminiscent of Chubb and Moe’s hyperbolic claim that “choice is a panacea,” with a slight update to include charter-sponsor oversight. But the rest of the theory is all there: “the system is the issue” and the answer is “an entirely different delivery system” that “capitalizes on market forces largely absent from district systems, such as constant innovation, competition, and replication.” And Smarick follows in Chubb and Moe’s fine tradition of basing recommendations more on theory than evidence. For instance:

• Advocating for every school to have its “own governing board” ignores the challenge charters face in maintaining effective boards with sufficient expertise;
• Accepting that “charters handle their own transportation, facilities, staffing, and more” overlooks economies of scale that charters are attempting to gain through networks and cooperatives;
• Recommending that each school should have “significant control over its curriculum, methods, budget, staff, and calendar” belies the growing standardization within quasi-district charter management organizations;
• Calling for “constant innovation” contradicts the trend to replicate prototypes which narrows diversity.

Moreover, Smarick justifies his radical all-charter proposal on the thin grounds that charter achievement is “encouraging,” despite others seeing performance as decidedly mixed. This is not the record of achievement one would expect to find behind such a bold proposal.

I agree with Smarick that the charter movement requires “a radical change in tactics,” but for some reason he prescribes the same adversarial plan of attack. He calls for some central command of charter advocates and funders to “target” specific systems, “recruit” operators from other areas, and engage “allies” to supply manpower and resources until charters are the “dominant” system. Frankly, all that’s missing is General Patraeus.

Attempting a surge, sweep and hold strategy would only exacerbate the polarization that is the charter movement’s “greatest impediment.” If nothing else has been learned from the past fifteen years, it should be that the movement’s confrontational strategies and outsiders-know-best attitude have provoked unnecessary acrimony. The market metaphors and martial tactics are a cause of the charters’ broken policy framework—epitomized by caps on expansion, unequal funding, limited access to public buildings, and an inability to recruit from among the best educators.

A truly radical change in tactics would abandon ideology and return to the charter concept’s founding ideas. It would embrace the pragmatic notion that people—and not structures—make the critical difference in the lives of children. It would seek arrangements for educators to innovate and exercise professional judgment and would provide, in return for their risk, a guarantee of basic fairness. This change would draw from and build the capacity of the profession. It would recognize that education, as a public good competing with other worthy interests for limited resources, cannot dispense with collective action. It would aim to build the broad coalition of supporters necessary to repair charters’ policy framework and set a foundation for excellence.

This philosophy guides the UFT’s charter school work. In opening two charter schools, through our partnership with Green Dot, and by negotiating school-based contracts at Amber and (pending certification) Merrick charters, we’re advancing the notion that educators must be at the forefront of the charter movement. This is hardly radical, and the positive reaction from teachers, advocates and public officials suggests that they’ve had enough with fighting. They’re anxious to get to the work of creating and supporting great schools and finally wage peace.

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