With all the one-sided think tank events in Washington, it was refreshing to attend an event Thursday at the Center for American Progress in which both sides of an issue had the chance to hash out their arguments in public.
The event wasn’t pitched as a debate, but that’s naturally what happened when people with diverse viewpoints were invited to speak. The focus was on school choice, specifically, public charter schools.
The largest points of disagreement came from David Osborne, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and Leo Casey, executive director of the Albert Shanker Institute, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers.
Shanker himself actually first proposed the idea of public charter schools in 1988. But many teachers’ union activists say charter schools haven’t turned out the way Shanker envisioned.
For example, Casey and Osborne sparred over teacher turnover in charter schools. “[Teach for America] sends the majority of its graduates into charter schools. Charter schools use a TFA model where they are churning novice teachers over and over.”
“That’s a generalization that is not true,” Osborne said. “I’ve spent the last few years in dozens of charter schools and you just can’t generalize that way. That’s true of some schools and it’s not true of a lot of others.”
Innovation was another point of contention. Casey said charter schools aren’t as innovative as they might seem. “Most charter schools use a very traditional curriculum, a very traditional pedagogy, rely upon discipline which is stringent and unfortunately, most charter schools don’t have real avenues for parent voice,” Casey said Thursday. He claimed the “no excuses” model of discipline was “dominant” among charters.
Shantelle Wright, the founder and CEO of Achievement Prep, which is one of the most highly-regarded charter schools in Washington, D.C., was quick to disagree with Casey. She argued that a school shouldn’t be awarded solely for what it does differently, but for its results. “There are these kinds of sweeping generalizations about charter schools,” Wright said. “The focus on innovation and that somehow doing something different gives you some sort of an extra award, at the end of the day what you want is for education to be able to change the lives of children.”
Unionization of charter school teachers was also a contentious issue. Given the Center for American Progress’ support for unions on most issues, and the Shanker Institute’s direct ties to a teachers’ union, it was no surprise to see those with less confidence in charter schools say more of them need to have unionized teachers. Most, but not all, charter schools are not unionized.
“I think what you’re going to see in the future is that teachers themselves in charter schools will say that ‘we need to have voice, and we need to be represented by unions,'” Casey said.
“It is unfair to state that the only way for charter school teachers to have a voice is through a union,” Wright said. “Teachers in charter schools have voices.”
“There’s a huge difference between unionization and teacher voice,” Osborne said. “I know a lot of union members who are teachers who don’t feel they have teacher voice.”
Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, expressed hope that a presidential candidate would come out and say charter schools should have an up or down vote on unionization when they open. “That might be a path for a candidate to bridge this divide that we’ve been seeing today.”
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
