The backlash against charter
schools is a relatively recent phenomenon and has been fueled by the sudden
interest in opening charter schools in some of our State’s more successful
school districts like West Windsor, Princeton, and East Brunswick. These are
districts with no real need for reform, and many of these proposed charters-
schools I have termed “boutique” charters- are designed to offer “innovations”
such as immersion in Mandarin or Hebrew, to cite two examples. They offer “alternatives,”
but they do not offer anything that I can see as discernible improvement in the
quality of education being provided in the existing public schools. They are a
luxury, not a need, and I can understand the public’s discomfort with the
disruption these schools can cause and the objection to tax money being
redirected to these charters.
The legislation, however,
does not limit voter referendum to just these high performing school districts,
but to all school districts, including those in communities where the need for
innovation and new initiatives to improve the quality of education is immediate
and profound. Passage of this legislation threatens efforts to reform education in our inner cities, and
that would be a real tragedy.
Referendums in general are
very expensive undertakings to stakeholders with an interest in the outcome,
and this will not only draw important financial and human resources into a
political contest, but it exposes our real need for reform to the influence of
interest groups with a personal stake in the outcome. Moreover, a public
referendum demands that the populace be educated and aware of the issues, and I
find it highly unlikely that people will take the time to learn the educational
philosophy and mission of the proposed charters, and even those that do take
the time to gather information probably don’t have the background to fully
understand the educational objectives on which these charters are founded. This
is an issue best decided by professionals in the field.
In one important respect I
totally agree with residents in these high performing suburban districts;
charter schools do not belong in their communities. If you read the original
legislation, and followed the original debate, it would be clear that the
intent of the charter school reform bill was to improve the deplorable state of
education in the inner city. The idea was to create schools that would serve as
“laboratories,” bringing innovative and original ideas on teaching and learning
into our inner cities as a means of improving the quality of education received
by all inner city students. It was an initiative rooted in a belief that
collaboration, not competition, would help produce fundamental change.
New Jersey’s inner cities
NEED charter schools, our suburban communities do not. As an alternative to
this legislation, I propose that some legislator propose a bill that simply
limits new charter schools to certain geographic areas, rather than place all
charter schools to a public vote. This would refocus the charter school
movement to those areas where these schools were originally intended, while
also leaving approval of these schools in the hands of professionals that are
better equipped to assess these proposed schools for their educational validity
and potential for success.
The blending of education and
politics is messy, complicated, and too prone to influence by people that do
not always have the best interest of our children in mind. As charter schools
gravitate to our wealthier communities, a backlash was to be expected. To me
these “boutique” charters are ego driven initiatives undertaken by individuals
with personal agendas that may or may not have the best interest of all New
Jersey children in mind. It is a shame that the charter school community doesn’t
have a “self-regulating” feature that could have stopped this emerging problem
before it took hold. Let’s hope that a better solution can be found. Voter
referendum is not the way to go.
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