History of Arizona charter schools: 'I don’t think we realized what we’d done'
IN 1994, LEGISLATORS CAME TOGETHER TO PASS A HISTORIC BILL THAT ALLOWED CHARTER SCHOOLS IN ARIZONA.
The charter gamble: In this series, we examine how Arizona committed 25 years ago to the then-untested concept of charter schools, and what the program has meant for the state. Today, Part 1, how it all began.
Fife Symington sounded defiant.
He had run for governor on a promise to overhaul Arizona's sluggish public education system. But by April 1994, three years into his administration, nothing significant had changed.
Now he felt pressure from all sides. The public demanded change. His re-election was in doubt. His personal entanglements were beginning to make news.
His best hope was to do something dramatic.
So the governor called an ally.
Lisa Graham, a Republican state representative and chairwoman of the House Education Committee, answered the phone. Graham felt defeated. She had poured years of work into an education-reform bill Symington had supported, and then watched from the Senate gallery as it died.
Let's go back, the governor told her. He would call a special session, and they would run the bill again. But this time without its most controversial component.
We'll take out the vouchers.
Symington was convinced the bill's small voucher program — which allowed families to use public money to send their children to private schools — had doomed the legislation. Without it, Symington said, their reforms would sail through.
The rest of the bill seemed tame by comparison. It allowed "open enrollment," letting children go to schools outside their district boundaries. It created school report cards and expanded preschool for at-risk children. And it established a new breed of public schools designed to operate independently, with fewer rules and looser oversight than their district counterparts. They would fuel competition and parent choice.
They were called charter schools.
It was more of an idea than a movement. Only a handful of states had passed charter laws, and in those, only a few schools had opened.
Neither Symington nor Graham had ever visited one.
Graham had doubts about the timing of a special session. She respected Symington's instincts, but worried it was too soon to try again. She tried to be tactful.
"I don't know if you know this: People hate you right now. And they don't like me either," she recalled telling him. "I'm not sure if you want me to run this thing."
Symington was undeterred. The November election was six months away. Education reform could spark a rebound in his popularity and give fellow Republicans a talking point for their own campaigns.
Their recent defeat, Symington assured Graham, was just part of the process. Though he wasn't exactly sure what charter schools were, he knew they would change everything.
We're coming back, he told her. I'm not asking you. We're coming back.
Changing the system deemed 'impossible'
The push for better schools was a nationwide concern.
In a 1993 report to Congress, the National Center for Education Statistics concluded that the country's lagging schools "continue to have serious implications." It detailed high dropout rates, stagnant test scores and wide racial gaps in American education. CONTINUE READING: Arizona charter school history: How leaders got the votes
