Michelle Rhee and I are members of the same political tribe. We’re progressive Democrats. Throughout most of the 1800s and into the mid-1970s, our tribe supported school choice, including allowing parents to use public funds to help pay for private school tuition. Our group’s position began to change in the late 1960s as urban teachers, who are core tribal members, began to unionize. By the time Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976, the transition was complete. Progressive Democrats opposed school choice.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, school districts began using within-district school choice to promote voluntary desegregation, so our tribal position began to gradually evolve. I say gradually because in 1986, I led a floor fight at the annual National Education Association convention, on behalf of then-NEA President Mary Hatwood Futrell, for a resolution endorsing within-district magnet schools. The opposition argued that magnet schools were voucher programs which siphoned off money and the best students from neighborhood schools. The resolution failed.
As the number of unionized teachers working in magnet schools expanded, the NEA eventually embraced magnet schools and other within-district school choice programs, and progressive Democrats followed. Today most progressive Democrats support within-district school choice programs that employ unionized teachers, and they oppose publicly-funded private school choice. But this latter position is evolving. Increasingly, core progressive constituencies, such as African-Americans and Hispanics, are embracing full school choice, as are some progressive leaders.
At Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s annual education reform conference a few years ago, Michelle Rhee began her morning speech by saying she was hired in Washington D.C. to reverse the flow of students into charter schools. But in her new position as founder and CEO of StudentsFirst, Michelle is slowly becoming more open to school choice. (more…)
Editor's note: Vouchers, charters, tax-credit scholarships - all part of the right-wing conspiracy to privatize education, right? Doug Tuthill argues that it's the political left that should champion choice - because it's the only path to equal opportunity in education.
For progressives who believe in equal educational opportunity, the current state of school choice is problematic. As the movie "Waiting for Superman" illustrated, limited access to school choice is exacerbating inequalities. Parents who win lotteries, have the right political connections or have the money to buy homes where they want have schooling options less fortunate or less wealthy parents don’t have.
To resolve these inequities, progressives can advocate eliminating all parental choice - and force every child to attend their assigned neighborhood district school - or they can support making school choice ubiquitous.
Leveling the playing field by eliminating all parental choice is not a viable option. This solution would mean closing down all within-district choice programs such as magnet schools, alternative schools, open enrollment programs and career academies, and choice programs that occur outside school districts, including charter schools, online learning programs, homeschooling and private schools. This approach would also require eliminating the most common form of school choice: parents buying homes in their preferred school zone. To stop this practice the government would need to assign families to school zones and then require them to purchase homes in their zones. Of course, this is never going to happen. (more…)
The Obama administration’s refusal to embrace parental choice in education is difficult to understand given its health care stance and the overall public policy direction that Democrats have advocated and embraced for decades. The most recent example is the controversy over the access to contraception under Obamacare.
Initially, the administration asserted that a woman’s and family’s right to choose to use contraception trumped whatever objections religious affiliated employers had to its use. Churches themselves were exempt, but not hospitals they operate. These religious employers would have had to honor the family’s right to choose contraceptives and at zero cost for all their employees. The White House backed off somewhat from the directive in the face of an uproar, but instead ordered that insurance companies have to offer and pay for such coverage separately when the religiously affiliated organization opts not to offer it.
This recognition of the family’s rights on such a personal and potentially life changing decision as contraception oddly does not carry over to education, which in the 21st century is more life changing than ever. Education once was third behind a good work ethic and a strong back for many middle class jobs. Today, education is a must for a middle-class standard of living. (more…)
Four prominent elected Democrats in Colorado - Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia, Denver Mayor Mike Hancock, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis and state senator Michael Johnston - felt strongly enough about the power of school choice to pen an op-ed this week for The Hill's Congress blog. Here's a taste:
In Colorado, school choice has appropriately always enjoyed support from both Democrats and Republicans. Nationally, choice has too often been divisive, with some Republicans using choice as a wedge issue to deconstruct the Federal role in education, while other Democrats have resisted change in any form in an attempt to preserve the status quo. But in Colorado, the emergence of elected Democrats independent from legacy policies and willing to form broad coalitions has reframed the debate on education reform.
School choice appeals to the best instincts of both political parties. It allows Democrats to adhere to their core principals of equality and opportunity – so that a student’s zip code does not determine the quality of their education. It allows Republicans to introduce moderate – and managed – market dynamics and the beginnings of limited competition in the public school sector.
"We're living in a revolutionary moment," says Ben Austin, executive director of the Parent Revolution, as we begin our interview for redefinED's inaugural podcast. And the moment to which he refers has been marked by California's "parent trigger," a law that has upended the status quo at one Compton school in a way that few education measures can do with such sweep. A majority of parents at McKinley Elementary wanted a charter operator to come and take over their struggling school, just as the parent-trigger law allows, and what Austin and the Parent Revolution fought for, and the Compton Unified School District has done everything possible to make their job harder. The struggle will be left to the courts to resolve, but Austin does see success in the very nature of what the law has sanctioned.
The trigger has allowed parents to essentially organize and effectuate change at a bargaining table that has been the exclusive province of school boards and teachers unions. Whatever the outcome at McKinley, the law has transformed relations between school boards and the parents at their failing schools, said Austin, a former member of the California State Board of Education, who also served Los Angeles as a deputy mayor from 2000-2001 as well a variety of roles in the Clinton White House. "Already there are parents across California that are organizing to get to 51 percent with no intention of at least initially turning the signatures in," he said. "They're organizing to bargain. They're organizing to basically say, 'You haven't listened to us for years, but now we have the power to fire you, so you have to listen to us.'"
We talked with Austin about the launch of the Parent Revolution and how its role as a parent union might manifest itself at the bargaining table. What else did we ask?
Why the parent trigger, and not a more collaborative approach? "It's people with power that want a collaborative approach ... Power and Money is the language that the other side understands, and if you're not speaking that language, they're not going to listen to you."
Can the PTA fulfill the role as a parent union? "We've had good experiences with the PTA, and we've had bad experiences with the PTA. We believe there needs to be a lot more "P" in the PTA."
Click here to listen to the rest of the conversation, which runs about 24 minutes.
