ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 6, 1996 TAG: 9609060026
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
GRADUALLY, America's teacher unions are beginning to realize they're out of step with the public when it comes to school reform. They're beginning to show signs of understanding that, unless they accommodate quicker and more significant change in outmoded school systems, they could face politically imposed changes far more radical and risky than the ones they've been resisting.
As a new school year opens, teacher associations are murmuring about accepting reforms they have fought for years - school choice, charter schools, easier procedures for removing incompetent teachers. But their accommodation remains slow and grudging. And the pace of change needs to pick up. The associations would do better, for themselves and for public education, if they helped shape the change rather than tried to slow it.
The National Education Association, the country's biggest teacher union, is dipping its toe into the charter-school pond. Charter schools are a natural extension of school choice. That is, in addition to allowing students to attend any public school, states and school districts can expand the range of choice by allowing creation of innovative schools responsible for their own administration, staffing, curriculum and teaching methods.
Charter schools receive funding so long as they attract students and meet the goals written into their charters. Not only do they trade regulation for results, bureaucracy for accountability. The schools also can act as a stimulus and model for more widespread reform.
The NEA is now sponsoring six charter schools of its own - a welcome gesture. But as the experience in Virginia and elsewhere makes clear, the education association still has a way to go in encouraging development of these schools. In Virginia, the Democrat-controlled legislature so far has suppressed the charter-school movement.
The smaller American Federation of Teachers, meantime, has sponsored a peer-review evaluation system in Toledo, Ohio, that has reportedly sped the removal of poor teachers. But in most places, Virginia included, dismissal of a tenured teacher can still require direct evidence of gross misbehavior or a protracted court battle, never mind whether the teacher is any good at teaching.
The teacher unions have taken care to nurture their political influence. Indeed, no group claimed as many delegates to this year's Democratic National Convention as did the NEA. Its political clout will count for little, however, if disenchantment with public education continues to grow. And that is a likely consequence if increasing investment in schools fails to result in greater advances in outcomes.
The alternative to accelerated, meaningful reform of public education isn't a continuation of the status quo. It's the abandonment of public schools and diversion of tax dollars to private education. That outcome would serve neither teachers' interest in the success of their employers nor democracy's interest in strong public education.
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