Yesterday Rep. Carl Rollins (D-Midway), Chair of the Kentucky House Education Committee, announced that he will allow proposed charter school legislation to come up for debate, tentatively next Tuesday. In the past Rollins has prevented any charter school bills from even coming up for a vote. Kentucky is one of only nine states in the U.S. that still don't allow charter schools.
Hal Heiner, leader of Kentuckians Advocating for Reforms in Education, and Dr. Wayne Lewis, professor of education administration at the University of Kentucky, offered an excellent op-ed in yesterday's Courier-Journal explaining the charter school concept and arguing that the state should allow parents the choice of public charter schools in Kentucky.
Meanwhile, KET's Kentucky Tonight program featured a rambling debate on charter schools last night, featuring Heiner, Rollins, Senator Ken Winters, and Kentucky Education Association President Sharron Oxendine. With a little help from Sen. Winters, Heiner spent the entire program trying to gracefully parry a string of misleading, unsupported allegations from Rollins and especially Oxendine about the evils of charter schools.
Rollins made a case for his own proposal for "schools of innovation," a plan that would give a handful of traditional schools the privilege of operating with more flexibility and autonomy. Rollins believes this proposal eliminates the need for charters. Oxendine, meanwhile, believes that if we just pump more money into public schools, all our problems will be solved.
I have no problem with Rollin's "schools of innovation" plan, but it is not a substitute for charter schools. The bottom line (which Heiner must have been reluctant to note) is that charter schools that fail will be shut down, whereas public schools that fail (whether or not they are "schools of innovation" or have more money as Oxendine suggests) will continue to suck up taxpayer money indefinitely, and students from poor families will remain stuck there.
On a partially related note, see this recent study from Teachers College Record comparing teacher working conditions in charter and traditional schools. The researcher found that working conditions were similar in most ways, but charter school teachers reported higher levels of involvement in decision-making (and heavier workloads).
Dr. Sam Evans, dean of WKU's College of Education and Behavioral Sciences, will be discussing charter schools with me on the WKYU-PBS program Outlook with Barbara Deeb on February 16 at 9:30 p.m. Central time, with encores on February 19 at 8:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. Central time. More details soon.
Comments