
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, December 24, 1994                   TAG: 9412270071
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GIVE CHARTER SCHOOLS A TRY

THE ROANOKE School Board's flip-flop on charter schools, from support to opposition, is a disappointment. It smacks of the turf protection and resistance to change that put at risk parents' and other taxpayers' confidence in public education.

We share some of the concerns expressed by Roanoke city's and other school boards and school officials about the charter-school concept. Alternative schools started by teachers, parents or others - taxpayer-funded but exempt from most state and local regulations - must be held accountable to publicly acceptable results, and set up to be a part of the local public systems, not a diversion or defection from them. No religious schools should get charter status, for instance, or private schools that charge tuition. Charter schools are justifiable only if they buttress rather than weaken public education.

That said, surely school boards' willingness to try different approaches - expanding opportunities for students and choice for parents - could help win support for public education. Indeed, it could help mute arguments in favor of a voucher system, wherein taxpayers' funds would flow away from public facilities to private ones.

Charter schools are no panacea for the ills, real and perceived, of public schooling. But educators would be both free from some of the top-down bureaucratic rules that stifle innovation, and accountable to the performance contracts that they sign. If they fail to produce promised results, they lose their charters. If they deliver the goods, their methods can be studied and adopted by other public schools.

At this point, the concept is still on the drawing board in Virginia. The state has an opportunity to design a better system than those tried in other states. To this design, local school boards, teachers and administrators ought to contribute. But they need to get over the notions that they have a monopoly on educational wisdom, and that only they should decide the pace of school reform.

If local boards insist on trying to protect the status quo, that's all the more reason to give charter schools - properly conceived and overseen - a try.

by CNB