Matthew Stewart, a stay-at-home dad in a wealthy New Jersey suburb, is leading a battle against the “boutique” charter schools that are being planned for his community.
“I’m in favor of a quality education for everyone,” Stewart told Winnie Hu of the New York Times. “In suburban areas like Millburn, there’s no evidence whatsoever that the local school district is not doing its job. So what’s the rationale for a charter school?”
Great question! With an easy answer: different parents define “quality education” differently. One person’s “good school” is another person’s “bad fit.” Stewart may love his public schools, which might do an excellent job providing a straight-down-the-middle education to its (mostly affluent) charges. But the parents developing a nearby charter school want something more. (Namely, a Mandarin-immersion experience for their kids.) For which Mr. Stewart labels them “selfish.”
“Public education is basically a social contract — we all pool our money, so I don’t think I should be able to custom-design it to my needs,” he said, noting that he pays $15,000 a year in property taxes. “With these charter schools, people are trying to say, ‘I want a custom-tailored education for my children, and I want you, as my neighbor, to pay for it.’ ”
So let me get this straight. As a parent, I’m “selfish” if I want to send my sons to a public school that meets their needs, and meshes with my values and my aspirations for them? The “selfless” thing to do is to send them to a school that’s not a good fit, or to write a check for private education?
What happens of course is that energized public school parents turn to advocacy to mold the one-size-fits-all offering into a school of their liking. The environmentally-minded parents push for eco-friendly cafeterias and lots of outdoor education. Numeracy hawks rally around Singapore math. Warm and fuzzy types push for more time for self-expression. And on and on it goes. Beleaguered school boards and administrators do their best to find the golden mean. And everybody settles for much less than their ideal.
That’s a “social contract” in frustration. Supporters of public education ought not make “hey parents, suck it up” their rallying cry.
- Mike Petrilli
I suspect that Stewart is an active, involved parent molding his neighborhood school on many of the ways you describe. That is entirely different than uprighting an entirely new school. What these parents seek are really more magnet schools or academies within neighborhood schools.
Stewart’s point is that these interests do not justify the charter school path. The charter rationale is a blurry line these days. In this case, it’s the shiny bright new thing, not necessarily the best or right thing.
John Stuart Mill saw this coming in On Liberty: “Were the duty of enforcing universal education once admitted, there would be no end to the difficulties about what the State should teach, and how it should teach, which now convert the subject into a mere battlefield for sects and parties, causing the time and labour which should have been spent in educating, to be wasted in quarrelling about education.”
His solution: “If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school fees.”
What’s also interesting about this mini-debate is how it relates to the concept of engaging the suburban parent in education reform.
Maybe it’s not just about leaving affluent schools alone (and then hoping that the parents, once their schools were free from external clutches, would rally behind improving low-quality schools). And maybe it’s not just about creating a more human branding of school choice.
Maybe it’s about showing wealthy parents that the reforms that we’re gunning for (and that have worked) in urban areas would have benefit for them too. Maybe that’s the way to brand the movement to get suburbanites involved en masse. — It wouldn’t be about ed reformers leaving their schools alone, but about engaging these parents to be the leaders in the fights to reform their schools (or their selection of school choices)… and thus the other schools in the system, and even the system itself.