Learning Curve: Charter love fest lingers

By Maureen Downey

Atlanta Democrat Kathy Ashe, the grand dame of education reform and longtime state House member, sprang a surprise last week at a panel of influential legislators on the House Education Committee:

“I would vote for a voucher bill if the receiving school is willing to give their students the assessments that students are required to take in public schools. If you agree to take the public dollars, you are going to have to take the tests.”

Now, Ashe may feel quite safe in making that statement — which contradicts the position of most Democrats on vouchers — because she knows that private schools have resisted attempts to impose state accountability testing on them. Most don’t want to give the state’s Criterion Referenced Competency Tests to students because they feel it would put them under the thumb of the state curriculum and undermine their independence.

Seated next to Ashe on the panel was fellow Democrat Alisha Thomas Morgan of Austell, who also endorses both school choice and school vouchers.

“Your ZIP code determines where you go to school,” she said. “All of us here in this room have choices where we send our children to school. Many parents do not have that choice because they cannot afford it.”

As the lone Republican on the dais, state Rep. Fran Millar of Dunwoody was not to be left out of what was becoming a school-choice rally. “The money needs to follow the child, ” he said.

Personally, I’m not convinced. For example, I still contend that the money that underwrites my children’s public school education does not “belong” to me to be spent as I wish. I don’t pay nearly enough taxes to cover my children’s schooling. The money that pays for their schooling represents a collective commitment of my community to public education, and that community should have a say in how it is spent. Furthermore, that commitment to public education is as important to our country’s foundation and future as freedom of speech and religion.

And while Georgia continues to debate this divisive issue, the more educationally successful states have moved beyond it, turning their attention to strategies that are producing results: a better-trained teacher, targeted resources, intense interventions.

In the wake of the wide-ranging panel discussion, I had a few questions I still wanted to ask the trio of education power brokers.

For example, Morgan took aim at criticism that the Legislature has spent the last three years in a charter school love fest, passing laws to expand charters without any real attempt to address the challenges of the 1.6 million Georgia children attending traditional schools. A champion of charters and co-author of the law creating a state commission to approve charters over the objections of local school boards, Morgan said she has not forgotten about regular public schools.

“It is not an either/or situation,” she said. “We have to improve education for all children.”

Who could disagree? But what major legislation has Morgan sponsored that improves education for all children? The diversion of attention to charters has led to little reform of overall education in Georgia. For example, there has been virtually no attention to teacher quality, which seems to be the single best driver of student success.

In response to a question about more state investment in after-school programs, Millar was blunt: There is no money. In fact, schools have to brace for more “painful cuts,” he warned. When the skies clear and the state budget rebounds, Millar and Ashe both said they would be glad to consider more investment in after-school, summer and Saturday programs.

But what about spending existing resources more wisely? Research coming out of North Carolina says money spent in the regular classroom produced far greater achievement than money spent on after-school programs, summer school or Saturday classes.

Millar talked a lot about his BRIDGE bill, which Gov. Sonny Perdue vetoed last year.

Contending that all kids aren’t college material, Millar wanted ninth-grade students to choose a focus of job-related study and be given the option to earn both a diploma and a Certificate of Advanced Study indicating readiness in their chosen job field.

Plumbers and mechanics, he reminded the audience, can easily earn $60,000 a year. But he also admitted parents remain wary. “They say, ‘That sounds good, Fran, but not for my kids. My kids are going to college.’ ”

Maybe those parents have read the unemployment statistics.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for college graduates was 4.7 percent in July, compared to 9.4 percent for people with a high school diploma. The numbers here in Georgia may be even more stark. Before we start to steer high schoolers to technical certifications rather than college, shouldn’t we amass hard data on their economic futures to see if there really are enough $60,000 jobs out there waiting for them?