Charter Schools are not without their critics or cautionary arguments. Policymakers need to be sensitive to these often legitimate fears when they craft legislation or act on a charter request.
Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), was an early proponent in 1988 of the concept of charter schools:
"Districts could create joint school board-union panels that would review preliminary proposals and help find seed money for the teachers to develop final proposals. The panels would then issue charters to these groups and commit themselves to trying to waive for the charter schools certain regulations that legitimately stand in the way of implementing their proposal, if the faculty so argue. The faculty also would be allocated their share of the per pupil budget spent in other schools, as well as the space and resources they might ordinarily have. All of this would be voluntary. No teacher would have to participate, and parents would choose whether or not to send their children to a charter school."
Since then, numerous teachers' union members and their leaders have supported the charter concept or helped create charters, but their support often is restricted by questions about the definition of Charter Schools, which schools are involved, and regulations.
"Charter Schools drain state resources and attempt to duplicate the efforts that are currently under way in many existing districts." Robert E. Astrup
Many teachers' unions at state and national levels also fear that Charter Schools are just another covert attempt by enemies of public education to break up a system that is still the best in the world at educating students of diverse backgrounds and multiple needs. (This concern was noted earlier in the NEA's opposition to California's proposed voucher legislation).
The unions wonder whether the benefits of Charter Schools have been over-promised. And while some Minnesota Education Association (MEA) members have sponsored Charter School proposals, Robert E. Astrup, president of the MEA, warns that Charter Schools "may turn out to be the biggest boondoggle since New Coke."
Both NEA and AFT worry that charters will be used to reverse years of hard-earned gains for the millions of students and teachers who benefit from the tradition of universal public education. "Charters could be used as a tool to try to bust teacher unions," says Janet Bass, an American Federation of Teachers spokesperson who notes that the union's position on Charter Schools is still evolving.
Although charters promise certain forms of teacher empowerment, they also could lead to greater teacher impoverishment. Charter teacher salaries and benefits are not bound by previous collective bargaining agreements. Unions caution policymakers to resist any effort to make Charter Schools part of a tactic to reduce teacher pay to save money. Given the relative inequity that already exists between teacher pay and that of other professions, that scheme can only have negative long-term educational consequences.
Astrup also argues that a decade of school reform has already generated plenty of innovations that will eventually reach most students and teachers. He says that schools are changing and need more financial aid, not a fancy program that diverts money from under-funded schools and personnel. "Charter Schools drain state resources and attempt to duplicate the efforts that are currently under way in many existing districts," Astrup warns.
What would be the result if a state like California turned all of its schools into charters? Such a move would represent an instant and radical deregulation that could work against state efforts to improve schools in other ways. Complete deregulation could mark a loss of state accountability and could trap individual schools in funding inequities that deprive many poorer children of their educational right to equal access to quality learning.
Are charters on the leading edge of a back to greater local control movement? Can decentralization on the state level work without significant abuses of the public trust? These are issues that policymakers must study in detail as the first wave of Charter Schools rolls over the nation.
Posted on March 6, 1995
URL: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/go/93-2CAUT .HTM