In the hagiography of the charter school movement, we often hear that Albert Shanker was one of the original proponents of the idea. Shanker was president of the American Federation of Teachers, and his imprimatur is supposed to persuade people that charters have a progressive patina.
This is ironic, because 90% of the nation’s 6,000 charters are non-union and oppose collective bargaining. Some charters have even insisted in federal court and to the National Labor Relations Board that they are private schools to avoid complying with state labor laws that would allow teachers to join a union.
Shanker never intended that charters would be non-union, nor that they would compete with public schools. He thought they would be formed by teachers to create a “school within a school,” and eventually autonomous schools whose purpose was to enroll the students who were bored or disengaged in regular school. He thought that charter teachers would belong to the union and would collaborate–not compete–with public schools.
Here is his 1988 speech describing his new idea at the National Press Club.
By 1993, he had reached the conclusion that he was terribly wrong. He wrote column after column describing charters as a new form of privatization, no different from vouchers.
Corporate reformers should not take his name in vain. He would never have approved of non-union schools and for-profit schools. He denounced privatization in all its forms. As early as1993, he recognized that charters were a back door way to turn public dollars over to entrepreneurs and to attack the foundations of public education.
AMEN!
Nothing like a ‘little’ misappropriation.. If he could, Al as anger would rightly reach out from his grave and grab Cerf by the neck and say, ” Not with my name” !
As strong u ion person fro NYC, I appreciate your. posting..
Diane, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Kevin Drum at Mother Jones and Bob Somerby (who has his own blog) have been going back and forth for more than a year debunking some of the media and reform myths on public ed.
It’s a really interesting collaboration, because one will bring up a myth and debunk with test scores, etc. and the other will elaborate or correct the first post. Somerby has corrected Drum on how to read test scores, for example.
What’s amazing to me about this is no one else is doing this. The debate has been so dominated by reform advocates and politicians these two are literally the ONLY two doing this outside of ed blogs.
Again, OUTSIDE of ed blogs, which is an important point in my view, because while I really enjoy the public school advocacy blogs, they’re not widely read outside ed circles.
Drum is a wonderful researcher and writer and he and Somerby are doing a real public service. Sadly, The Daily Howler and Mother Jones have a limited reach.
This is a back and forth they’ve been having on Amanda Ripley’s book, which as you know is being parroted all over. They actually took it apart and looked at it, critically, with an eye towards accuracy, not sentimentality or narrative:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/10/how-smart-are-american-kids
This is the only real debate or discussion I’m aware of that isn’t being conducted WITHIN ed circles, which is a sad state of affairs all by itself. But! It’s a start!
Shanker shouldn’t be let off the hook, however. The fact he even came up with such an unworkable, bird-brained idea in the first place speaks volumes about his naivete. Never in the history of public education are teachers EVER allowed to do something that would allow them “autonomy” away from administrators. It just doesn’t work that way.
The fact the privatizers took of advantage of those remarks and perverted them in a move to destroy public education doesn’t mean Shanker should get a pass.
He shouldn’t.
Charters strike me as being like a kid wishing every day was his birthday.
Well before Shanker’s 1988 speech, some public schools permitted (in a few cases, such as Eugene, Oregon and East Harlem, NYC, public school teachers were not only encouraged, but helped to create new options. Shanker gave this a new name but it had been happening a lot.
Shanker noted that in many places, teachers were NOT encouraged to do this. He accurately described that many teachers who tried to create new options within districts were “treated like traitors or outlaws for daring to move outside the lockstep.” He accurately noted that if they somehow managed to create new options within districts, they could “look forward to insecurity, obscurity and outright hostility.”
Those negative attitudes within many (not all but many) districts helped create the charter public school movement.
Shanker did criticize this in later years. Some public school teachers who tried to create these options encountered resistance from teacher unions when they tried to create options outside traditional districts.
Lots of credit should go to the Boston Teachers Union, which successfully proposed Pilot Schools, as part of the district. But the local school board only accepted this idea after the Mass legislature adopted the charter idea – which gave teachers an opportunity to create new public schools outside districts.
The term “charter” came from Shanker, who picked it up from a New England educator who first proposed the term But Shanker knew that what he was proposing was already happening in some districts, including NYC.
I met Al Shanker when I was a union president and he was as great a man as the educational union segment has ever produced. These reformist assholes shouldn’t use his name at all as they can’t form a self-serving sentence with his name in it unless they lie (by comission or omission).
simply put and verily so.
I have never and will never support charter schools in any form, because I have long recognized how charters have the potential for increasing segregation and destroying our entire system of public education. And now we are witnessing exactly that, especially in our urban areas where school districts are under tight political control by mayors or states.
It is no coincidence that while politicians have promoted unregulated charter schools across the country, at the same time, those very same politicians have doubled down on increasing regulations for public schools. Anytime politicians promote a double standard, something is very wrong and that must be seriously challenged. We cannot afford to let public education be run anymore by these non-educator politicians who see our children as fodder for their pet agendas and targets of social engineering, because, at bottom, they think that “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”
“You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!”
From South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein