Charter schools are not the solution: The widow of famed UFT leader Albert Shanker blasts ‘reformers’
They are unwilling to work within the system
Monday, December 26 2011, 3:50 AM
Legendary teachers union leader Al Shanker would not have supported the current charter school movement.
Are charter schools the answer for public education? If what you know about charters comes from last year’s ballyhooed film “Waiting for Superman,” you probably think so. But the answer is, in fact, much more complex.
My late husband, Albert Shanker, was one of the first education leaders to advocate for the concept in 1988, as president of the American Federation of Teachers. Al envisioned charter schools as teacher-led laboratories for reform within public schooling, tasked with developing innovative strategies to “produce more learning for more students.” He saw them operating with a high level of autonomy from bureaucracy, yet remaining an integral part of our public education system.
Although most charter schools get their basic funding from the same education allotments as regular public schools, they tout their independence as a major source of their superiority. But Al believed that even the best charter schools couldn’t generate sweeping change if they were disconnected from regular public schools. As he wrote in 1994, “Charter schools must have autonomy to get where they want to go, but they must also be part of a system that has a central purpose — and that means a system that has decided what kids need to know and be able to do. Otherwise, they will end up like all those alternative schools of the 1960s — relevant only to themselves and useless to the system as a whole.”
Al became increasingly critical of charter schools as they moved further from their original intent. He warned that without well-crafted legislation and public oversight, business
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/charter-schools-solution-widow-famed-uft-leader-albert-shanker-blasts-reformers-article-1.996247#ixzz1heLXOoNd