What's Public About Public Schools?
Like just about everybody else, I’ve been trying to get my head around the proposed constitutional amendment, appearing on the November 6 ballot, that would resurrect the state Charter School Commission.
The rhetoric of many amendment supporters reflects a conviction that public education should operate more like a marketplace so consumer choice and creative destruction can better align public school offerings with what parents want for their children.
Our state constitution says, “The provision of an adequate public education for the citizens shall be a primary obligation of the State of Georgia.” But following former Florida Governor Jeb Bush who famously said that parents should enjoy the same freedom of choice among educational services that they do when shopping for milk at the supermarket, amendment advocates apparently believe that tax-supported public education provides a purely private benefit, not a basic public good.
For example, Virginia Galloway, State Director of Americans for Prosperity Georgia, writing recently in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, urged readers to “Vote for small government and getting government out of private decisions, like how to best educate your children.”
Some proponents of views like Galloway’s think they’re just embracing “Jeffersonian principles.” When the Wisconsin State Assembly enacted a piece of school choice legislation modeled on a similar Georgia law, Scott Suder, the legislature’s majority leader, told New York Times reporter Dan Kaufman that his core Jeffersonian philosophy was “getting government out of the way….”
I don’t know which Jefferson Representative Suder was talking about, maybe a Joe Jefferson he met in a bar. But Thomas Jefferson is on the record, regarding education, saying exactly the reverse of what Suder’s Jefferson believes.
In a letter to George Washington dated January 4, 1786, Jefferson wrote, “It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.” This clearly wasn’t a casual remark. Jefferson says it’s axiomatic—indisputable, absolutely certain—that self-government is impossible for citizens without “a certain degree of instruction.” And it’s the business of the state to provide it, not here and there as market vagaries may determine, but “on a general plan,” or as our constitution says, as a “primary obligation.”
What I’ve missed in the debate about the charter school amendment is even a glimmer of recognition of the critical public purpose that Jefferson assigned to state-supported public education. It’s not merely a private benefit, like free day care for working parents or college preparation for the able and ambitious. It’s an indispensable element of the architecture of a free society and the principle of self-government that sustains it. Whatever private benefits accrue to Georgians from their public school system, those benefits aren’t the reason that free public education is enshrined in our constitution as a primary state obligation. The private benefits, however valuable, are add-ons, not a substitute for the core public purpose of tax- supported education in a free society.
Some amendment supporters would have us believe that the people who administer our traditional public schools are just another interest group smothering innovation to protect sinecures they don’t deserve. But those people—school boards, superintendents, the state Board of Education—man the administrative structures to which Article VIII of our state constitution assigns the task of delivering the public benefit that the constitution singles out as a primary state obligation. They have a constitutional mandate to advocate for the “adequate public education” that the constitution promises every Georgia child.
But if you really want to see interest groups at work in the charter school movement, you need look no further than a recent Reuters report about tens of millions of dollars being invested in American charter schools by wealthy people from China, Nigeria, Russia and Australia all with the blessing of the United States government.
Under a federal program with the innocuous title of EB-5, since 1990 foreigners have been able to achieve permanent resident status here for themselves and their immediate families by investing at least $500,000 and creating at least ten jobs within a two-year period in government approved enterprises. Alert investment brokers, seeing a lucrative opportunity, have been busy matching up flush foreign investors with cash strapped charter schools. Although the report quotes an investor advisor as saying that the demand by both charter schools and foreign investors is “massive,” ratings agencies regard these investments as speculative and the IRS is said to be looking closely at the tax-exempt status of charter schools relying on for–profit management companies for physical facilities and academic programs.
So if, as Jefferson believed, the purpose of public education isn’t just to provide a private benefit, what’s the role of charter schools in furthering the great public purpose that Jefferson thought justified state support for education? What charter schools can do, within the framework of the constitution’s promised regime of “adequate public education,” is serve as laboratories for carefully crafted, conservative experiments designed to identify best practices that can be adopted by all schools. Since, as of last May when the Georgia Supreme Court struck down the state Charter School Commission, 160 charter schools had been approved by local school boards and only 16 by the former Charter School Commission, we already have a generous supply of such educational laboratories in place.
As Election Day nears, I hope the pursuit of private advantage won’t eclipse the great public purpose Thomas Jefferson called us to. Let there be experiments, by all means, but always guided by the knowledge that our experimental subjects aren’t mice or monkeys. Nor are they commodities to be served up to investors who neither know nor care about the indispensable role of public schools in a free society. They’re our children. That sobering realization should inspire us to deep respect for the educational equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath’s admonition to “First, do no harm.”
Dave Ballard
8:44 pm on Monday, October 15, 2012
Let us start by accepting the premise that government MUST provide for some level of education to its citizens.
1) Jefferson was similarly specific about which subjects he believed were most crucial, and our current government schools fail these without exception.
2) "State-sponsored instruction" at some undefined point progresses from being "instruction" to "indoctrination."
3) I believe that our current debate is primarily because most parents now believe that SOMETHING is fundamentally wrong with our current system, and that it primarily takes the form of numbers 1 &/or 2.
Does that mean we should dissolve the system entirely? Does it mean we should state fund education from ANY source? Does it mean that we should merely tweak the current chaos bit by bit until we get a different result? I honestly don't know for sure, but I bet the best answer is more radical than less.
Jefferson was right about the State benefiting from well-educated citizens, but he also believed that GOVERNMENT (as distinct from the State) was an inherent impediment to freedom, and that less of it was nearly always better. And most people will accept that Government tends to favor a LESS educated populace, rather than a better educated one.
So how do we address the failures of a government-run system - a system necessary to a strong State, the failures of which play into the hands of tyranny and the perpetuation of ignorance?
Athens Mama
10:44 pm on Monday, October 15, 2012
Herein lies the problem: Under great duress from federal and state requirements and changes, teachers and administrators in public schools must turn and twist, often quite uncomfortably, in order to provide education to students in public schools. In some schools, in some districts, customer service is not a priority. Therefore, a very SENSITIVE service, raising children (35 hours per week) and the shaping of their minds and human development, is left with those who may, or may not, prioritize the fundamentals of positive rigorous human development. In districts that establish neighborhood school zones shaped by real estate lines, consumers have one choice for the care and education of their children, unless they want to pay big dollars for private education or unless they can afford the time and commitment to home school. If an entity, of a public grassroots origin, or even foreign funded, initiates a charter CHOICE school in a district, then a higher standard of customer service is established, as the education marketplace for consumers (especially high performing) is competitive. Local BOEs are unlikely to approve and establish these initiatives, unless funds are abundant (they are not), even if it is to the benefit of the consumers of a district.
Athens Mama
10:46 pm on Monday, October 15, 2012
Therefore, voting YES on this amendment helps create new avenues for charter schools, which inevitably creates a higher standard for customer service in public schools. Therefore, the public good is uplifted, and more choices are created, even if federal AYP standards in individual schools are not the priority. VOTE YES ON THIS AMENDMENT.
Athens Mama
7:34 pm on Tuesday, October 16, 2012
For instance, a local charter schools advocate, one who has effectively established a successful charter school for over a decade, serving 98% low income students, worked a couple of years ago to organize a group, a mission statement, and a plan to develop a local charter school. Once the state entity that approved charter schools in GA was declared unconstitutional by a court ruling, the group disbanded and lost hope for establishing an independent charter school in Clarke. Only with the passage of this amendment will this hope be revived. I'm not clear on why the local BOE could override the commission's decision. ?? I thought the purpose of the amendment was to give the state agency the power to approve new charter schools. If you don't have school choices, such as charters or magnets, that allow for some freedom of consumer movement within a school district, you run the risk of creating a stagnant environment of poor customer service. Essentially, "we know we are the only ones who can provide you this service, so sit down, shutup, and eat your brussel sprouts."
Doctor DeKalb
3:11 am on Friday, November 2, 2012
The attitude of "we know we are the only ones ... " is hardly the issue and will not change no matter how many charter schools are out there. The attitude is more like, "we collect 70% of everyone's property taxes no matter what." There is no monopoly attitude because even in a monopoly, consumers always have a choice to abstain from the service completely. That's not possible when children are required to go to school and citizens are required to pay their taxes. The school system gets my tax dollars no matter what. I can choose to send my child to public school or I can choose a private school, but I still have to pay my taxes so they still get my money either way.
Too many choices are just a bad as no choice as it put parents in the mindset of looking for something better rather than making it happen in the school closest to home.
The assumption that the charter will somehow be better is a big mistake. The assumption that an appointed commission will do the right thing is laughable. These state legislators simply want to get their hands on some of these tax dollars. If they thought they were doing the right thing for the kids, they would have stopped reducing the funds they are giving the schools year after year. They nee to find solutions by working together, not finding new ways to approve things behind each others' backs!
Athens Mama
7:42 pm on Tuesday, October 16, 2012
I know that it will clear the way for charters. The only hope for a charter here in Clarke is through an outside entity. The local BOE will never split funds to open a magnet that could potentially draw high performers from local schools, which could affect schools' ability to meet AYP. It's checkmate for them. I care about that, but I care more about children. I would rather see the feds take over than see children and parents receive poor customer service. After what my family went through, it's interesting to gauge the responses from people in our district. It's like, "If you received poor customer service and you had to move to serve your child with the best services, then, we just want you to forget about it. We don't want to hear about how you have witnessed children being treated. We don't want to hear about how your family was treated. We don't want to know that your family had only positive things to say about the district until you were rezoned to another school. We want to bury our heads in the sand and forget that people are leaving the district, without a word, to send their kids to schools in other counties." That's a crisis that needs a voice and a solution, in my opinion. Choice schools would keep these families in the district. At least one choice school.
Doctor DeKalb
3:21 am on Friday, November 2, 2012
We already have charters, magnets, themes, online schools, home school, technical schools and schools for juvenile delinquents. You can enter a lottery, get an administrative transfer or simply get offered a chance to attend elsewhere when your school misses AYP.
And how exactly will these new schools afford anything with less than half the funds the schools have now? How will they be better? Will they find different teachers? If that is the problem, can't we fix it for all schools?
If there was a group that "gave up" then they shouldn't have been approved in the first place because they obviously weren't able to put the time into it to do what it takes. The others that did reapply after fixing the issues that got them denied in the first place were all able to bounce back and get approved. And that's without a commission of un-elected bureaucrats telling them how high to jump.
If you are planning to change the constitution, it had better be worth it and, sorry, this just isn't a clearly defined problem or solution for me. I'll vote no.
Athens Mama
9:23 pm on Tuesday, October 16, 2012
That makes sense. There is a checks and balances system in place to ensure that these schools are approved, in the best interest of the districts. Perhaps they will poll the districts of GA to find out where consumers want charters?
Robert Saunders
8:33 am on Saturday, October 20, 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/31/gallup-poll-results-show-_n_1844774.html
I encourage everyone to open this link which is a summary of the Gallup Poll on the satisfaction or not of public education in the United States. What it shows is that while the majority of parents or Americans are dissatisfied with public education, parents are very satisfied with the school that their child attends. What this does is show you why there is a push from State Government elected officials to find a way to disband public education even though locally they may like their school system. For me, I am very apprehensive with anything that our State and Federal Government proposes.
Rebecca McCarthy
10:14 am on Saturday, October 20, 2012
Thanks for posting, Robert.
Athens Mama
5:51 pm on Tuesday, October 23, 2012
This was posted on patch recently on another article regarding the Charter Amendment. I think this is definitely worth reading if you are undecided about how to vote on November 6 regarding Amendment One.
http://www.mattshultz.org/?p=1258