I know you have all seen that new movie about the charter schools, but charter schools do not necessarily perform better than public schools. Most often, the drive for charter schools has little to do with academics or improving student learning. In Zhang’s "What Drives Charter School Diffusion at the Local Level: Educational Needs or Political and Institutional Forces?" (2008), it is concluded that, "Based on a data set that consists of Florida's 67 school districts across a six-year time period, the results suggest that charter school diffusion is more heavily driven by political and institutional factors than by educational needs."
I have been in education for a long time, and before that, I was the son, nephew, cousin, and grandson of educators. Let me tell you what happens.
Every few years, someone gets elected to some new position, and he uses education as a whipping boy. He says, "Oh, look at this travesty!" And he gathers around him a group of "business leaders" with no education experience who figure out that if they can get into the schools somehow they will make a boatload of money, and then they tell the newly elected official about how great they will make everything (in some ways this is the educational version of Confessions of an Economic Hitman), and away we go!
Immediately it is decided that all the teachers have to take these new courses to be better teachers, and the textbooks we have to buy are written by the people who are in bed with the new official. (surprise surprise) So we jump through the hoops to keep our jobs, and all of us are bored and offended, because we realize that everything being said is stuff we already know, just called by some catchy, new name. We implement the changes, anyway, and nothing happens. So that politician moves on to some national stage where he can repeat his policy failures with higher stakes, and some new guy comes in promising to fix our failing educational system. Because really, what could possibly be worse than destroying the dreams of the future? (Or something like that, apropos of nothing, and impossible to argue against without sounding like the embodiment of evil.)
He gathers around him a group of business leaders who tell him that we all need to be accountable to jobs, jobs, jobs, and not just any jobs, but the jobs of the future. And by now the city/state/nation/world is hopelessly in debt, and the best way to get the money back (so they can give more tax breaks or start more wars or subsidize more billionaire banking executives) is to cut public spending on schools and mental health facilities. So they come up with a whole new list of directives that looks a lot like the old list, except this time they more explicitly blame it on unions and teachers, because hey, who needs a middle class anyway? Then the spying begins! They start trying to find out who at the school is not pulling his weight (read: making too much money because of career ladder or seniority) and they put us into task forces and try to get us to play [rat on] your buddy. Some of us bite, and some of us are canned, and after a few years nothing has really improved.
So they bring in a new guy who decides that teachers who have failing students are unacceptable! This cycle of tragedy must end! And everyone cheers for the students who deserve so much better than these lousy teachers who are so lazy and privileged! And so they rename the directives again, the campaign contributors invest in the company that makes the standardized tests, and the governor mandates that the tests will be the final indicator of student success. Some of us keep teaching about real world stuff, but there is no time to cram all that in with review sessions for the bi-weekly statewide tests we all have to administer regularly as breathing. Someone gets smart and realizes that all he has to do is sit at the front desk and read the answers to the test out loud day after day, and some of it will sink in through osmosis. Miracle of miracles, his kids jump through the right hoops like trained rats navigating a maze, and he is honored as the best teacher in the district.
And yesterday some guy just stood up in class and said to me, "Man, you are a great teacher!" And a month ago I spent about 30 minutes explaining the recursive process of research and essay writing, and one of the students came up to me after class, all glassy-eyed and said, "It's weird...but you made that seem cool somehow." And a couple of years ago on the street about 2AM I heard someone yell, "Hey, library dude!" And this guy ran up to me and said, "Hey, you probably don't remember me, but you totally saved my ass last semester. I just wanted to say thanks." And it almost makes it right.