On Charter Schools and Swimming Pools: A Changing Tide in School Choice
Summer is a time when I am reminded that the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who, when confronted with a cold swimming pool, enter one toe at a time and those who dive right in.
In the world of education, there exists a similar divide: those who are taking their time to warm up to education reform, and those who just dive in.
I was reminded of this analogy earlier this month when I attended the Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s K-12 Education Reform Summit. There an unprecedented collection of Virginia’s education stakeholders gathered in Richmond to dissect, praise, question, and challenge all aspects of education reform. Virtually every education role in the Commonwealth was represented, from university presidents to classroom teachers and principals, union leaders to state board members.
The whole time I was amazed by educators’ changing views about school choice. It seems more and more are simply diving in.
Charter schools, for instance, no longer seem be the feared, misunderstood pariahs that they once were. Issues that at one time would have caused vigorous debate—for example that public charters are public schools—have shifted toward universal acceptance. Perhaps aided by the creation and continued success of a number of charter efforts in DC (think, the SEED school), Virginia educators are beginning to embrace the charter concept.
Despite this regional warming to the charter movement, presenters were careful to point out that they should not be seen as a panacea for all of education’s woes. There are, after all, terribly ineffective charter schools. But educators I met acknowledged that the charter model itself, if done correctly, offers parents a choice when it comes to their children’s education, and with more choices come more opportunities for success. This was the mantra of speaker after speaker who was handed a microphone.
While at the Summit, I was able to share a few meals with Eric Welch, a J.E.B. Stuart High School teacher in Fairfax County who is in the process of bringing the first public charter to the Northern Virginia area, Fairfax Leadership Academy. Eric lamented the county’s recent actions, caused by budget constraints, to eliminate a few of Stuart’s longstanding services that were really working for students, including an effective summer program. For him, creating a new charter offered a way to deliver many of these educational services that were being taken away.
Eric no longer fears the charter movement, and many of Virginia’s educators seem to be jumping right in with him.
Mike Humphreys is a 2012-2013 Classroom Teaching Ambassador Fellow who teaches physical education in Arlington, Va.
James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart (February 6, 1833 – May 12, 1864) was a U.S. Army officer from Virginia and a Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War. He was known to his friends as "Jeb", from the initials of his given names. Stuart was acavalry commander known for his mastery of reconnaissance and the use of cavalry in support of offensive operations. While he cultivated a cavalier image (red-lined gray cape, yellow sash, hat cocked to the side with an ostrich plume, red flower in his lapel, often sporting cologne), his serious work made him the trusted eyes and ears of Robert E. Lee's army and inspired Southern morale.
Stuart graduated from West Point in 1854 and served in Texas and Kansas with the U.S. Army, a veteran of the frontier conflicts with Native Americans and the violence of Bleeding Kansas. He participated in the capture of John Brown at Harpers Ferry. Resigning when his home state of Virginia seceded, he served first under Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, but then in increasingly important cavalry commands of the Army of Northern Virginia, playing a role in all of that army's campaigns until his death. He established a reputation as an audacious cavalry commander and on two occasions (during the Peninsula Campaign and the Maryland Campaign) circumnavigated the Union Army of the Potomac, bringing fame to himself and embarrassment to the North. At the Battle of Chancellorsville, he distinguished himself as a temporary commander of the wounded Stonewall Jackson's infantry corps.
Arguably Stuart's most famous campaign, Gettysburg, was marred when he was surprised by a Union cavalry attack at the Battle of Brandy Station and by his separation from Lee's army for an extended period, leaving Lee unaware of Union troop movements and arguably contributing to the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg. Stuart received significant criticism from the Southern press as well as the postbellum proponents of the Lost Cause movement, but historians have failed to agree on whether Stuart's exploit was entirely the fault of his judgment or simply bad luck and Lee's less-than-explicit orders.
During the 1864 Overland Campaign, Union Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's cavalry launched an offensive to defeat Stuart, who was mortally wounded at the Battle of Yellow Tavern.
