Why it matters who governs America’s public schools
Does it matter who operates America’s public schools?
That’s a central question in the national debate about education and the movement to find alternatives to school districts that are publicly funded and operated. While charter schools are publicly funded, they are privately operated and are not required in most places to be as transparent as publicly operated schools. The public also has no say in the operations of private and public schools that accept publicly funded vouchers.
This post, written by Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch, looks at the issue of governance and why it matters who is in charge.
Burris is a former New York high school principal who now serves as executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit advocacy group. She was named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, and in 2013, the National Association of Secondary School Principals named her the New York State High School Principal of the Year. Burris has been chronicling problems with modern school reform and school choice for years on this blog. She has previously written about problems with charter schools in California and a number of other states.
Ravitch, an education historian, became the titular leader of the movement against corporate school reform in 2010, when her book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” was published and became a best-seller. An assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush, she explains in the book that she dropped her support for No Child Left Behind, the chief education initiative of President George W. Bush and standardized-test-based school restructuring, after looking at evidence about how it was harming public schools.
By Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch
At a meeting of the California Charter Schools Association during the spring of 2014, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings told the audience that the problem with public schools is that they are run by elected school boards. He contrasted this style of school governance with that of charter schools, governed by private boards, which operate beyond the reach of the people. Hastings justified the movement of school governance from public to private hands by claiming that the private boards of charter schools are more stable. This is an odd claim considering that 33 percent of all charter schools that opened in 2000 were closed 10 years later later. By year 13, 40 percent were Continue reading: Why it matters who governs America’s public schools - The Washington Post
