Norman Leahy

In spite of an organized, if not exactly coherent and sometimes deeply bizarre, opposition, the Patrick Henry charter school won tentative approval from the Richmond school board.

And with that, the number of charter schools in Virginia rises to…four.

Only four. In the whole state.

What does this say about the long-term possibilities for additional educational reforms like Patrick Henry? That we have much farther to go than anyone is willing to admit. If anything, the Patrick Henry experience should serve as a warning to anyone who believes in fundamental educational reform: The forces arrayed against you remain potent, and unless and until the law is changed to allow for wide-ranging school choice that encompasses all children, everywhere, even the most incremental and innocuous of reforms will be very hard to achieve.

Part of that stems from Virginia's existing charter school law. As a report from the Center for Education Reform finds, Virginia's charter school law is among the weakest in the nation, fettered with collective bargaining rules, local school board oversight and a provision that the schools must still meet both SOL and SOQ requirements. Oh, and at least half of such schools must cater to "at risk" youth. Given these constraints, it's little wonder that charters are as rare as hen's teeth in the commonwealth.

But the problem goes far deeper than merely a weak law. As the opposition to Patrick Henry showed, there are other issues -- some possibly legitimate and some beyond goofy -- standing in the metaphorical school house doorway. It's not just the fear that charters will weaken public schools or somehow undermine the integrity of the existing system (which is laughable). As with so many things in Richmond, and Virginia, the matter of educational reform is framed by the bloody shirt of racism…that somehow, charters or school choice are merely code words for the creation of posh, white-flight schools that will coddle the few at the expense of the many.

There is no rational argument that can counter, let alone change, this thinking. Those who believe the government schools we have now -- regardless of their ability to teach kids effectively -- are the best of all possible worlds are beyond reasoning.

But I'll give it a try by doing something that's not very Richmond: Looking elsewhere to see what's happening with education reform.

Here's a good example: New Orleans.

New Orleans has completely revamped its school system since Hurricane Katrina and how those changes are paying off. The biggest change? Getting rid of the old teacher corps (and breaking the union) while creating charter schools throughout the city. As the New York Times reported:

Since Hurricane Katrina, most of the schools here have been taken over by the state… [or by] citizen-controlled charter schools. The local school board and administration -- long notorious for corruption and political interference -- have been neutered.

 

Classes are smaller, many of the teachers are youthful imports brought in by groups like Teach for America, principals have been reshuffled or removed, school-hours remedial programs have been intensified, and after-school programs to help students increased.

Clear out the deadwood and corruption and what happens? Measurable progress. In a school system where student achievement was an unreachable goal, test scores under the new system are already rising. Do they have father to go? Absolutely. But the progress has been real and the effects will be long-lasting.

Building upon this example, Gov. Bobby Jindal won approval of a wide-ranging school choice bill that offers tax credits for families who wish to send their kids to better, or more suitable, schools. Georgia followed suit not long ago. And Florida has expanded its statewide program as well.

Where else is choice taking root? In the notoriously decrepit D.C. school system, where even former Mayor Marion Barry has come out in favor of continuing the District's limited voucher program. And to show just how much the idea is catching on up north, the Washington Post had good things to say about it in an editorial warning to congressional foes of the effort:

Of all the arguments against vouchers, the most pernicious is that they hurt public schools. Never mind that D.C. public schools benefit financially from the funding formula. Public schools failed long before vouchers were even conceived of, and no less an authority than D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee dismisses that argument out of hand. As she told the Wall Street Journal, "I would never, as long as I am in this role, do anything to limit another parent's ability to make a choice for their child. Ever." Let's hope Congress feels that same compunction.

That some would go out of their way to limit parents' ability to choose the educational environment what they think is best for their children is deeply troubling. There is no more fundamental, parental responsibility than doing whatever is necessary to ensure that their kids don't merely attend school, but get the best education they possibly can. There is no legitimate or rational reason to believe that geography alone should determine where a child goes to school. That's the mindset of serfdom.

Only when Virginia comes to the realization that education is too important to be left solely in the hands of bureaucrats, lobbyists, union organizers and full-time grievance mongers will real achievement be possible.

And I can't think of a better time than now for the awakening to begin. There's a gubernatorial race coming next year. It would behoove those who have declared their candidacies to make it clear that they stand with parents and children on education…and that they will work to give those families the opportunities and choices in education they deserve.

Norman Leahy is vice president for public affairs at Tertium Quids, a statewide, free market advocacy organization. He is a contributor to several Virginia political blogs, including Bacon's Rebellion, Sic Semper Tyrannis, Bearing Drift and NBC 12's Decision Virginia. A 2006 graduate of the Sorensen Institute, Norman and his family live in Henrico County.

Thad Williamson

Monday's approval by the Richmond School Board of the Patrick Henry charter school proposal has been welcomed by advocates of more educational alternatives in Richmond, yet met with equal disdain among prominent constituencies, including two school board members and the Virginia NAACP.

The controversy over the charter school initiative has the potential to explode into a classic highly racialized fissure between primarily white parents and primarily African-American opponents.

Before wading into the treacherous waters of that debate, however, some background context is in order. Nationally, charter schools have been trumpeted in many quarters as the promised land of urban educational reform, a magical mechanism for improving educational outcomes not just for charter school students but all urban schoolchildren.

The bulk of scholarly research to date, however, indicates that charter schools as a whole have only a limited effect on educational achievement, controlling for crucial background factors such as students' race and income and level of parental involvement. Charter schools in urban areas typically cherry-pick those students who have more engaged parents, making it difficult to sort out whether subsequent student achievements are the result of a "selection effect" or the impact of the school itself.

Importantly, however, neither is there strong evidence that charter schools have significant negative effects, either on the students enrolled in them or on public schoolchildren at large. Moreover, to say that charter schools in general don't have a marked positive effect on educational outcomes is not to say that particular charter schools are not and cannot be successful. It is to say that each charter school and each charter school proposal must be judged on its merits.

Here the Patrick Henry proposal for designing a curriculum based on engagement with the surrounding natural environment deserves solid marks. It's a worthy proposal that has potential for creating another strong elementary school in Richmond.

Why then isn't everyone on board? For starters, the constituency that is perceived as having the most to gain from the new school is white middle-class parents who may send their children to private schools or move to the suburbs if not satisfied with the educational quality in the public schools.

In many ways this is indeed a crucial constituency for the city's health, but there is something untoward about Richmond's most prominent educational reform disproportionately benefiting the middle class and not the worst off children in the city.

The issue is not the worst off children would be hurt in any significant way by a single charter school. The Patrick Henry school will admit students by lottery in case there is greater demand than supply for slots, giving African-American children whose parents enroll them for the school an equal shot at being admitted, and the school will receive 80 percent of the funding per capita of other elementary schools. Arguably students in the regular schools might be hurt by having 350 students with particularly involved parents move to Patrick Henry, but in a city the size of Richmond the size of that effect is likely to be small.

The real issue is that the worst off children won't likely be helped by Patrick Henry. Admission is open to all, and proponents of the plan have made clear that they intend to enroll large numbers of disadvantaged African-American children. But the worst off children -- those whose parents won't sign them up for Patrick Henry, or who would like to but don't have time for as much involvement as the school charter mandates -- will be left out. And if Patrick Henry is a spectacular success, that will simply fuel the perceived gap in the quality of education available to middle-class children with highly involved parents compared to poorer children from less favorable family backgrounds.

Thus, advocates of charter schools need to do more to persuade the skeptics that devolving power to operate schools to civic groups is a good idea with potential for helping all of Richmond's children. The best way to make that argument is precisely to extend the logic of a charter school -- high parental involvement, significant autonomy from the school board -- to all Richmond Public Schools.

This may seem far-fetched, but just such a reform strategy has already been adopted by a major American city -- Chicago. Harvard public policy scholar Archon Fung has written extensively about Chicago's efforts beginning in the late 1980s to implement a system of what he terms "accountable autonomy." (See his book "Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy.") Local school councils consisting of parents, teachers, community members and the principal were created for each public school, and these councils were given substantial power over budgeting and improvement programming. Importantly, the Chicago model is not one of "local control"; rather, the performance of each school is monitored by a citywide agency.

This reform, while far-reaching, in itself does not guarantee improved school results. What it does do is create a structure by which parents and community members can have not just a voice but real power in shaping local schools, and in which individual schools have the freedom to experiment. In Richmond (as has happened in Chicago), we might expect an elementary school with a 95-plus percent African-American student population to use this structure to implement an Afro-centric curriculum with heavy stress on learning African-American culture and history as important for its own sake and as a way to spark student interest in the full range of academic subjects.

While charter schools are not an elixir for urban educational problems, it would be wrong to reject the principle of extending substantial (not total) autonomy to local schools. "Accountable autonomy" is not privatization; rather it's about empowering citizens to participate in the work of governance. An intelligently structured plan to increase genuine civic engagement in improving all of Richmond's schools has the potential to make a lasting impact on the city schools in a way a single charter school cannot.

Thad Williamson is an assistant professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. After growing up in Chapel Hill, N.C., he earned his bachelor's degree at Brown University, a master's degree in theology from Union Theological Seminary (New York) and a doctorate in political science from Harvard University. He is the author of three books and has written on public affairs for numerous national publications.

LAST TIME OUT: The race for the Richmond mayor's office.