Gov. Patrick Backs Wrong Horse with Proposed Charter School Expansion Plan

Gov. Deval Patrick let his conservative side out to play again this week with his proposal to double the amount of state education money that can be spent on public charter schools. While the Massachusetts charter school model is not nearly as bad as the for-profit model in states like Michigan, charter schools still represent a highly questionable solution to long-standing problems in the public education system. Naturally, no one who has attended public schools anywhere other than the wealthiest communities (your faithful Editor/Publisher included) can say they are not in need of serious reform. Legions of Americans have suffered at the hands of outdated curricula, inadequate facilities, and - frankly - dead weight in the faculty. And while we staunchly defend workers' labor rights at Open Media Boston, education is one of those sectors where the defense of labor rights can sometimes result in unfortunate and unintended consequences. So the fact that teachers are still heavily unionized is great from a labor perspective - and we strongly support that. But the fact that union contracts often allow teachers to stay in their jobs even when they are doing terrible terrible things to their students is not so great. And I can attest to that from profoundly demoralizing personal experience.

Proponents have pushed charter schools as places where that sort of thing can't easily happen. They talk about them as sort of autonomous education laboratories - free to experiment with collaborative education methods of the type that are sometimes hindered by timid public school districts and, yes, by some union contracts. And there may be some merit to this position, but for fact that charter schools are virtually union free. An overreaction if ever there was one. Because aside from the obvious problem with encouraging the creation of yet another un-unionized employment sector in the U.S., charter school critics have maintained - and I agree - that un-unionized charter schools are harmful to students because of the constant turnover of underpaid teachers and staff. Which overall is a far worse problem than coddling some bad apples among the teachers and staff.

A less obvious problem is the assumption - widely held by conservative organizations and market evangelists - that teachers unions are the source of the problem with public education in the United States. Of course, many of these right-wing forces don't actually believe in public education at all. So they are perfectly happy to try to kill it by the death of a thousand cuts. Largely administered by attacks on the integrity of union educators - who are vilified as greedy and insensitive for attempting to make a living wage for the critical work they do in the service of the public good.

Conservatives also regularly argue that "you can't just throw money at a problem" like educating the nation's children. To which I would answer, well that's just stupid. In point of fact, the main problem facing America's public education system is a lack of funds. So we should take it seriously when the Mass. Association of School Superintendents says that Gov. Patrick shouldn't increase the amount of public money being given to charter schools because the calculation used to determine how a charter school gets per student is flawed and badly hurts the budgets of the school districts that can least afford it. And indeed, the areas where charter schools are most heavily pushed are generally poor neighborhoods where desperate parents leap at the opportunity to get their kids out of their underfunded public schools and into what will hopefully be (but often isn't) a better situation.

Patrick, for his part, is moving to expand funding for charter schools in part because President Barrack Obama's administration is pushing states in that direction - threatening to withhold much needed education monies if the state governments don't expand charter school "opportunities." Obama, as usual, is able to play to both his left and right by pushing charter schools - pushing them as innovative even while clearly cutting labor costs by pushing ununionized schools. But he is certainly trying to increase the amount of money that will be spent on education overall; so his moves are not entirely cynical on that front.

Still, none of this political maneuvering solves the problems faced by public schools or the threat posed to unionized teachers by the spread of charter schools in Massachusetts. And around the nation.

At this juncture, I can only say that I think the most obvious - pro-worker and pro-student - solution needs to be put on the table ... let's make every school, in essence, a unionized charter school. A fully funded center for educational innovation that has well-paid unionized teachers and staff. A more democratically-run system with plenty of parent and community involvement - and hopefully some enlightened pro-worker mechanisms for easing bad teachers away from students and into useful jobs elsewhere in the educational sector. Thus preserving both job security and student rights. A win-win situation from where I'm sitting.

Interestingly, there is an experiment along those very lines in the works right here in Boston that I'm watching with interest - the Boston Teachers Union School, slated to open in Jamaica Plain in September. The school, a partnership between the Boston School Committee, the Boston Teachers Union and Simmons College, aims to demonstrate that a unionized teacher-run public school that takes the best innovations from the charter school, pilot school and magnet school movements and provides "all students with a rigorous and wide-ranging liberal arts education in an inclusive, democratic, nurturing and safe environment that welcomes families and capitalizes on the expertise of excellent teachers."

If the BTU School succeeds in its mission then we'll have some solid proof here in Massachusetts that unionized public schools can beat any charter school at their own game - which will come as no surprise to charter school critics. The key then will be to take that success and translate it into a broad campaign for a revival of public education in the Bay State - and ideally nationally. A campaign which will challenge conservative dominance in educational reform circles for the last couple of decades and say, yes, if we "throw money at the problem," and if that money goes towards paying teachers and school staffs just wages and benefits under strong union contracts, and towards a vast campaign to rebuild America's educational infrastructure, then we will once again have a public education system that is the envy of the world. And maybe could help spark a revival in the fortunes of America's flagging democratic tradition. Perhaps that last is too much to hope for. And yet I hope nonetheless.

But for now, a movement toward the type of program I outline here would be a vast improvement over the direction Patrick and Obama are taking us as regards charter schools at the present time. This publication will happily back any social forces that move to operationalize this or related visions for a better educational future for America's children.

Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston