Last week I discussed "charter schools," that is, issuing charters to teams of six or more teachers to set up small, autonomous public schools. The purpose of charter schools is to try out new or revitalize ideas and to look for ways to vastly improve students learning. Only students who chose to attend these schools would be enrolled - although the student body would be representative of the larger school.
There are two major sources of opposition to charter schools. The first is reflected by Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education Chester Finn, who attacked the proposal because it suggested that we didn't already know "what works in schools." Why experiment when the answers are known?
Of course, the trouble is that Mr. Finn and his boss, William Bennett, are not the only ones who know the TRUTH. The education world is full of fanatical believers. The only problem is that they can't agree on what the TRUTH is - and none of them has much evidence to support one or the other's version of it. Aside from that, Finn's approach is like the old-fashioned Soviet commissar's - authoritarian and top-down. "Just get those lazy peasants to do what I tell them and everything will be OK. ... "
That system didn't work in the USSR, nor does it work in any business. The smart management talk these days is about employee participation, teams, ""buying in," etc. We don't hear talk in American industry about returning to pre-war factory and managerial methods. Turning the clock back in our schools makes as little sense as it does in business and industry. The fact is that until the end of World War II we had the education system that Finn wants - and 70 to 80 percent of the kids dropped out.
Another serious obstacle to charter schools is the attitude of many principals and teachers. In the past, similar efforts were resented and opposed. First, most previous experiments were handed down from the top. Those who had to carry them out didn't necessarily understand or agree with the changes. Failure was the result.
But the major problem is that school people often feel that a group doing something very different from them represents an implicit criticism of what they are doing. In the past, many of those doing something different or new were arrogant. They proclaimed - like Chester Finn - that they had the "magic bullet" for education's ills. They implied that their colleagues who were engaged in business as usual were inferior or less dedicated. The "special group" let it be known that they knew more than the others and worked harder and cared more than the others. Is it any wonder that the others prayed for the experiment to fail - and sometimes even helped bring about failure?
Why won't this happen with charter schools? It will, of course, if the same mistakes are repeated. The key to a successful effort is a different point of view on the part of both those in the charter schools and those who are not.
Those in the charter schools will need to adopt attitudes common in other sectors. For example, there are medical researchers today looking for new and better ways to help people. The existence of doctors engaged in research does imply that practitioners do not yet know all the answers ( or even the questions), and that, in the future, there will likely be better ways of doing things.
But meanwhile, the practitioners must do the best with what is known. The effort to improve does not belittle current practice. If anything, the whole professions is evaluated by the public knowledge that there is an honest, ongoing effort to improve practice. The researcher does not put down the practitioner and visa versa.
In private business, also, teams are often established to develop a new and better mousetrap. That doesn't mean that those making and selling an inferior product. They're making and selling the best they have, and they hope the development team will find a new winner. And the team working on a new model doesn't dump on the current product, its makers or distributors.
Schools need to change in order to improve. Charter school teams will have some solid knowledge and sound ideas to begin with, but they won't start with the TRUTH. They will be trying to find new answers. They will need to respect those who are doing their best with what is not known. And those not in the charter schools must recognize that the whole profession will get greater support and respect if the public knows that we're doing the best we can with the current system and that we all support and honor the search for what is new and better.
In both medical research and in businesses looking for the better mousetrap, there are many failed experiments. Researchers and developers don't know how long it will take them to find something better - or if they ever will. Like their counterparts in medicine and business, many school experiments will not yield the desired results.
In medicine we honor doctors who conduct thoughtful experiments even if the experiment fails. A failed experiment adds to the body of knowledge so that no one ever need die from that same "cure" again. But, in education, we have had a different and disastrous tradition. Every teacher knows the old expression: "Every experiment is doomed to succeed." Because the politics of education, we're prone to adopt quick fixes and settle for cosmetic results that make for good PR We usually don't make honest results available, and we rarely have the will to spend the time and resources to give experiments a fair shot at success.
Millions of students fail because they are given educational "cures" that should have been labelled failures long ago. If schools are to improve, they'll have to support a constant inquiry and search for new and better ways to reach youngsters. If they don't, the public will look for something other than the public schools to educate our children.