One Alison Stachniak, teacher wannabe, doesn't walk into a bar, but she tells an interesting, if long, story in Teacher about trying to find a job in Chicago and concluding that?Eureka!??charter schools just a few miles away from each other can be extremely different.?
Will that be Vodka straight up or a Shirley Temple?
I once worked on a story?about an organization that helped new immigrants adjust to American life and the director told me about the time she brought a Russian family?this was the 70s!?into a Portland, Oregon, supermarket and?everyone?froze as soon as they entered.?There was silence, then the father broke down in tears. ?Too much choice!? he cried.
Back to?Ms. Stachniak in Chicago. Her tale may not be very surprising, but it is disconcerting:?there remains a huge knowledge deficit about charters.?We have a country of educators who act like Russian immigrants.
And then there's the latest Newswire from the gurus of choice over at the?Center for Education Reform, about the?recently concluded NBC Education Nation Summit:
Your intrepid editors are just back from three jam-packed days of panels, discussions, presentations, conversations, one-on-ones, roundtables and cocktail parties [A guy walks into a bar...]. And that all adds up to a lot of talk. Talk about what's working (charters) and what's not (collective bargaining). Talk about who's helping (disrupters) and who's not (unions, school boards). NBC showed a tremendous commitment to fixing our broken education system, and they should be applauded, loudly.
Was anyone watching Education Nation??(I got a call from a noneducator friend, a parent with three kids, who was almost shouting, ?Colin Powell is on TV and he's saying the same thing you've been saying for years! Did you write his script???I was flattered ? and impressed that she was watching.)
But the folks at CER understand the challenges.?They naturally conclude that ?what's important is what happens next? and worry, as I do, that many anti-choice folks ?probably left [the Summit] more resolute in their convictions than ever.???More resolute in their desire to?recreate the old Soviet Union, perhaps?
And now this, from Rick Hess: Does School Choice ?Work?? Uh-oh.? Rick?starts off ominously enough??These would seem to be dark days for the school-choice movement, as several early champions of choice have publicly expressed their disillusionment??and concludes that ?choice alone could never work as well as many of its champions have expected, and promised.?
Sorry to give away?the ending, but anyone who has ever read a Hess essay knows that it's?a great ride even if you know where you're going. Hess's larger conclusion is the one that our Ms. Stachniak came to (whether she knew it or not):?charters are the result of choice and choice produces a marketplace and a marketplace, whether in Manhattan or Marrakesh, is a mixed bag.?But that's okay!?And he uses my favorite Uncle Miltie quote in reminding educators of the realities: the market ?is not a cow to be milked.??Get a grip!
And the good news for all you fearful sobbing immigrants: You can have your marketplace and a great education too.?I've cracked the code.?Stay tuned.
?Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
