School choice enemies hide motives behind rhetorical masks

Initiatives are blunt instruments, but they sometimes are necessary to get the attention of the establishment. If the common sense of the people had been heard earlier on the issue of mandatory bussing, it would not have taken five years to reverse that misguided policy. Washington state residents soon will vote on two initiatives to give parents real choices in schools and free public education from throttling regulation. Once again, however, the education establishment is fiercely resistant. Dressed up as harmless trick-or-treaters this Halloween season, its arguments disguise a strong bias against school choice.

There at your door, for example, is someone dressed as “Mr. Holland,” the dedicated teacher in the film “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” Well, the opponents of Initiatives 173, the voucher proposal, and 177, the charter school plan, would like you to believe that the contest is between him and school choice. Not the case. Behind the Mr. Holland mask stand the concerns of the teacher’s union–the Washington Education Association. One of the biggest obstacles to better education today is the severe difficulty of rewarding good teachers and removing bad teachers, and the reason is that the union puts job security above almost everything. It’s an understandable position, but not responsible when all others in society have to compete.

More to the point, WEA dogma puts any eager new “Mr. Holland” at a disadvantage and leaves the well-being of students well down the priority list. Either a voucher program or charter schools would place power back in the hands of parents and communities. This is why, while you do not see the WEA or the smaller American Federation of Teachers listed in the voters’ pamphlet, the public–

–either reform from passing and counted on a big spending campaign this fall to turn around public opinion. In plain fact, if there are creditable objections to the initiatives (and if there are, they are minor, the Legislature, under law, can fix them.

Coming up the steps next, isn’t that “The Wild Man of Borneo?” No, it’s just a mask that leads us to think that the two reform initiatives are out of control and “not accountable.” What vouchers and charters schools accomplish, however, is the height of accountability, the competitive discipline that develops when parents of all incomes can determine which schools are best for their children. Start healthy and safety requirements, meanwhile, continue. And, in the case of I-177, the charter initiative, a “yes” vote this November only sets the stage for a subsequent authorizing vote in individual districts to see if charter schools are right for them.

Much of the confusion over the two reform initiatives springs from the next trick-or-treater, “Humpty Dumpty” of “Alice in Wonderland” fame. “When I use a word,” says Humpty, “it means just what I choose ti to mean.” Just so, when opponents say the initiatives would “lower standards,” you cannot be sure what they choose to mean, for academies in the era of psychologized education does not translate easily to plain English. For example, school theorists say they want to shape “behavior,” and you probably think, approvingly, that student conduct is their concern. But, as Beverly K. Eakman of the National Education Consortium writes in National Review, what “modifying behavior” actually means in academies is altering children’s beliefs.

Then comes the “Frankenstein’s Monster” mask, which is supposed to make you think that Initiatives 173 and 177 were horribly flawed at their creation. This argument disguised the history of last spring, when these initiatives were before the Legislature. Critics then had the opportunity to correct any perceived flaws, but instead they prevented–

–disclosure forms show that they have contributed nearly $500,000 to the “NO” campaigns so far, fully two-thirds of the “NO” budget.

You might think that “outcomes” means standards as the layman understand them, but no. “in the jargon of psychology,” writes Eakman, “outcomes” are the automatic, subconscious response a child is supposed to have when he leaves school It is with such cant that true standards have eroded and academic achievement has declined.

Last on your porch is the unctuous “Uriah Heep.” For those who went to school after 1970, this Uriah Heep is not from the rock band of that name, but a character from a dead European male writer named Charles Dickens. This book was “David Copperfield,” not to be confused with the magician on TV. Anyhow, Uriah Heep is wringing his hands and assuring us that the education establishment has nothing at all against school choice, in principle, mind you, and merely opposes “extreme” and “radical” measures. But in practice, there is very little real choice in a monolithic system weighed down with regulatory and administrative requirements. And there is nothing extreme about giving parents–not the district–final decision as to what a good choice might be for their child.

So bid the little disguised arguments a Happy Halloween and then go back and study the actual language of Initiatives 173 and 177 in the Voters Pamphlet. It is likely that if these propositions pass the education establishment will wake up and accommodate to reform realities. Even if voters in some districts decide later not to “renew” their school systems with charter schools, for example, they will have allowed other districts desperate for reform the right to have it.

But if school reform is voted down, it is possible that nothing recognizable will replace it for many a year. And a new trick-or treater will quickly appear, “Little Mary Sunshin,” the argument that voters obviously like things just the way they are.