Quite an Education

One of the most dramatic things about the education debate shaping up in this country is the way it transcends the usual ideological divides. This week's report from the National Center on Education and the Economy, "Tough Choices for Tough Times," was touted on one of the most conservative newspaper opinion pages in the nation, that of the Wall Street Journal, by one of the most centrist mayors in the country, Michael Bloomberg. One of the most conservative observers of the education scene, Reagan aide Chester Finn Jr. of the Thomas Fordham Foundation, hailed the report as "astute" and "brave." It was produced by a commission that included a labor leader, Morton Bahr of the Communications Workers of America; President Clinton's education secretary, Richard Riley, and Joel Klein, who served in the Clinton Justice Department and is now New York's schools chancellor. It was produced with backing from, among others, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which distributes the fortune of the richest man in America.

The report contains some good ideas and some bad ones. In the good category we would include the idea of having schools, as the report puts it,"operated by independent contractors, many of them limited-liability corporations owned and run by teachers." The report says that the schools "would have complete discretion over the way their funds are spent, their organization and management, their schedule, and their program, as long as they provided the curriculum and met the testing and other accountability requirements imposed by the state." It sounds a lot to us like what are now called charter schools, and the report speaks of establishing a "competitive, data-based market" in which schools constantly seek to improve their performance. Also sensible is the report's recommendation of "salary increments for especially effective teachers"— what a less cautious group might call merit pay — and of bringing the health and pension benefits of teachers, now unusually generous, more in line with those of private-sector workers.

In the category of bad ideas we would place the idea of ending public school for most students at 10th-grade. It strikes us as a cynical way of solving the dropout problem — if there are no 11th- or 12th-grades, doubtless more students would complete public school. But it doesn't mean they will have learned more. Further, the report produced by the group calling itself the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce is, as the name of the panel suggests, a bit too focused on producing skilled American "workers" to compete with those in India and China, a bit inattentive to other tasks for which Americans might be educated, such as citizenship.

Whatever the shortcomings, though, the report is an admirable bipartisan attempt at bold, market-oriented thinking to shake up the education system. Mr. Bloomberg, writing in the Journal, likened the education system to the American auto industry in the 1970s — "stuck in a flabby, inefficient, outdated production model driven by the needs of employees rather than consumers." That bipartisan boldness seems, at least on the face of it, a sharp contrast to the stale thinking in Albany when it comes to education.

Albany's old-think was on display this week when the state Legislature, in a highly anticipated lame duck session, failed to lift the 100-school cap on the number of charter schools in the state. While the "Tough Choices" report suggests, in essence, converting all public schools to charter or "contract" schools, for the Albany troglodytes even 101 of the state's 4,000 schools –– or 2.5% — are too many to allow to operate outside the bounds of the bureaucracy. It's a grim picture, both for the state's parents, for whom too many of their children are trapped in underperforming government monopoly schools, and for the state's taxpayers, who are left underwriting an expensive, yet poorly performing, system. Other places, such as Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Washington, D.C., have moved beyond the charter debate and adopted school vouchers. In New York the debate appears to be way behind the rest of the country — we aren't talking vouchers, we can barely even get a few charters approved.

Look beyond the surface, however, and there is a bipartisan openness to charter schools in the state that offers hope that the cap will eventually be lifted. The Democrat who was chairman of the education committee of New York's City Council, Eva Moskowitz, is now running a charter school in Harlem. Mr. Klein, the former Clinton administration official, is one of the state's most outspoken proponents of lifting the cap. Mr. Bloomberg, who was re-elected with a wide margin in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, has made lifting the cap one of his top priorities in Albany.

Even the immovable object and irresistible force of Albany, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, agreed to the 1998 law establishing the first 100 charter schools in the state. And the United Federation of Teachers, the powerful Democratic-leaning labor union, has overcome its skepticism of charters to open two of its own schools under the law. The governor-elect, Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, has said he favors lifting the cap and tackling the issue early next year, though questions remain about whether he would require the schools to adhere to collective bargaining agreements that would hamper their ability to innovate. In the absence of a last-minute surprise by Governor Pataki that perhaps links an increase in the number of charter schools to a pay raise next year for legislators, it will be up to Mr. Spitzer to forge a coalition that can lift the cap. It will be a test of his abilities that will both educate him about the challenges he faces and educate the voters about how much he will be able to achieve.