DOUBLING DOWN ON RISKY EXPERIMENTS
BY JOHN THOMPSON
Oklahoma families and educators recently learned of Senate Bill 68 – the so-called “game changer” – which would empower the city of Oklahoma City to compete with the Oklahoma City Public Schools. This “under the radar” legislation would allow non-educators to authorize charter schools.
As OKCPS School Board member Phil Horning says, that would be like designating the school system to run fire stations.
SB 68 is an extreme version of choice that grew out of the claim by market-driven reformers that local school boards, teachers’ unions, and university education departments – i.e. the “status quo” – must be destroyed so that “disruptive innovation” can transform schools. In Oklahoma City, it could eventually become a mortal threat to the school system, as well as its teachers union.
If the majority of the City Council gains the power to compete with the OKCPS, SB 68 would allow them to set their own rules in doing so. Oklahoma City could then join the growing ranks of communities where traditional public schools are extinct or nearly all replaced by charters, including “virtual learning” online charters.
This extreme version of school choice is an example of how the contemporary school “reform” movement is in its death throes, and this desperation has led to a double-down on even more risky experiments. This accountability-driven reform movement may have produced the single biggest social policy debacle since Prohibition. Corporate reform failed by ignoring Harry Truman’s maxim, “Any jackass can kick down a barn. It takes a carpenter to build one.”
Perhaps the closest thing to a competition-driven “success” is New Orleans, a district that is now 90% charters. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan claimed that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that had happened to New Orleans schools.
In fact, this hugely expensive gamble has produced modest, possibly fleeting gains, while doing the seemingly impossible for that city – increasing racial and economic segregation even more.
And even if the New Orleans record was not terribly exaggerated by true believers in choice, it has no relevance to Oklahoma City. If reformers get their wish, and a man-made Katrina were to blow up the OKCPS, could we expect an influx from across the nation of the mega-millions of dollars it would take to replace our schools?
That being said, I do not question the sincerity of local market-driven reformers; rarely do I see in Doubling Down On Risky Experiments | Oklahoma Observer:
Big Education Ape: Virtual Schools Remain Unproven | National Education Policy Center http://bit.ly/1BMvlss
Big Education Ape: Ohio’s First Public School Hundred-Millionaire: ECOT Founder William Lagerhttp://bit.ly/1ETIoe3
Big Education Ape: Charter spent $2.27M on advertising | The Columbus Dispatch http://bit.ly/1ETD7mt
Big Education Ape: Report Slams Virtual Charter Schools That Graduate Just 36% Of Students - BuzzFeed Newshttp://bit.ly/1AVX7nl