There's been significant ink spillage over a hearing that the foremost critic of charter schools, NYS Senator Bill Perkins, put together last week to supposedly look into how charter schools are regulated.
As I sat through the hearing waiting to testify, I found myself in an odd position. I've always been a firm believer in oversight, regulation, transparency, and accountability for charter schools. As a charter school authorizer for seven years, I built a regulatory regimen that has been praised nationwide.
So why couldn't I muster any enthusiasm for this hearing on charter oversight? Probably because it was the legislative equivalent of a game of three-card monte.
Consider some of the tricks:
Consider some of the tricks:
• Senator Perkins personally walked his supporters into the hearing room hours before the so-called "public" hearing was to begin, ensuring the closest thing possible to a television clap-track.
• Senator Perkins then opened the hearing with a long statement and forbade other senators the courtesy to do the same.
• Stanford charter school researcher Margaret Raymond flew in from California at the Senator's invitation, only to be yanked from the witness list when he realized her testimony would not support his position. She sat in the hearing room for eight hours and was never called upon, even while Perkins-approved witnesses discussed her research.
The actual hearing wasn't much heavier on integrity. State officials in charge of actually overseeing charter schools were left to languish until the late afternoon, maybe the first time that a hearing on the adequacy of governmental oversight treated the actual overseers as an afterthought.
When they were finally called, the officials were confronted with general allegations that were