Third Way or the Highway
The future of education reform in Massachusetts requires mis-remembering its past…
Since 1635, Massachusetts has been known for its district public schools—the *first way.* Since 1993, Massachusetts’ charter schools have led the nation in pioneering a *second way.* It is time to recognize a Third Way – an emerging set of strategies that combine school-level autonomies and energetic innovation with a commitment to universal service and local voice…
Quick: what’s absent from this rather, um, selective account of the past 381 years of Bay State history? If you answered *that bit about 1993 seems to be a bit fact challenged,* you would be correct. As providence would have it, I happened to be acquainting myself with the history of Massachusetts’ bold experiment with school reform, circa 1993, at the very moment that the Third Way, brought to you by these guys, blazed into the Hub to blaze an optimistic path ahead in K-12 education. Which is how I happen to be in possession of such facts as that charter schools were a virtual after thought in Massachusetts’ actual second way success story. And that the Third Way, which is already well underway, appears to veer off markedly from the course set by its bold predecessor all those 23 years ago. Strap yourself in, reader: it’s time machine time.
Out with the oldThe year was 1993, reader, and my adopted home state found itself with a sticky wicket on its collective hands. How to ensure that the Commonwealth provided all of its children with an adequate education, not just those who lived in leafy suburbs with horses? The resulting process was messy. It was deliberative. It was astonishingly democratic, not to mention weirdly thrilling to read about. (Shout out to my friend, journalist Third Way or the Highway – EduShyster: