Charter schools for Maine?

Yesterday's public hearing on LD 1438, An Act to Permit Charter Schools, went about as well as charter school supporters could have hoped.

The committee began the hearings well behind schedule, so all testimony was limited to two minutes.  This did put a damper on some of the testimony, much of which revolved around personal stories of children struggling in conventional public school settings and/or succeeding in alternative settings of or kind or another.  Still, the fact that charter supporters were able to muster almost two-dozen people to testify on the bill's behalf meant that the public hearing was dominated by charter supporters.  Among the big guns testifying in support of the charter bill were the Maine PTA and the Maine State Board of Education.

I gave a very quick testimony, providing the committee with the two pieces of research we have done on charter schools.  The first was written in 2007 and serves as a quick primer on the concept of charter schools. The second, which we released yesterday, was, as I told the committee, inspired by President Obama's recent praise of charter schools as centers of innovation.  Our review of the literature on charter school innovation shows that Obama was right - charter schools do develop and integrate innovative educational approaches more often and more successfully than conventional public schools.

I told the committee that I anticipated the opponents of charter schools - the Maine Education Association, the Maine School Superintendents Association, and the Maine School Boards Association - would oppose the bill on the grounds that, given the budget crisis the state currently faces, now was not the time to redirect funding away from the conventional public schools.  I argued in response that the budget crisis we face meant that this was actually the perfect time to invest in charter schools, as the need for innovative approaches to controlling rising costs and increasing student achievement is greater now than ever.

As I anticipated, the opponents of the bill did indeed suggest that this was not the time  to experiment with charter schools, arguing for the most part that such schools would drain staff and resources away from existing schools that are underfunded already. How spending a state average of over $10,400 per pupil constitutes a dearth of funding for schools is beyond me, but that was the central argument of the charter opponents as it has been, frankly, for years.

Not a single parent, by the way, testified against the bill.

As for the Department of Education, Commissioner Gendron's testimony "Neither For Nor Against" the bill was somewhat confusing, as she appeared to suggest a need for more study of the idea or more models to investigate or something. She then clarified that a failure to enact some kind of charter school legislation would seriously compromise the state's ability to secure federal education funding available under the recently-passed stimulus bill.

She is not making it up. A Newsweek article published yesterday reported the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan "recently warned that he may withhold federal education stimulus money from states that limit the number of charter schools."

So what was learned yesterday?

We learned that a number of Maine's education reformers want charter schools, a number of parents across Maine want charter schools, the State Board of Education wants charter schools, the state PTA wants charter schools, the state Commissioner of Education wants charter schools as does the governor she works for, Sen. Dennis Damon (D-Hancock), the bill's sponsor and ranking Senate Democrat wants charter schools, Rep. John Pioti (D-Unity), a co-sponsor of the bill and the House Democratic Leader wants charter schools, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wants charter schools and President Barack Obama wants charter schools.

And we learned that if we don't enact charter school legislation, we may be ineligible to receive millions in federal education funding for the very schools that charter opponents claim are underfunded already.

We also heard that MEA, MSSA, and MSBA oppose charter schools, but I don't know that we necessarily "learned" that yesterday, as they have opposed every effort to enact charter schools that has come before the legislature in recent memory.

The work session on the bill, at which the committee will vote its recommendations for the bill,  has yet to be scheduled.