The Hidebound Will Be Bypassed

If I find myself slowly morphing into a supporter of charter schools or vouchers, it isn’t because I harbor any illusions that there’s something magical about these alternatives. It is because I am increasingly doubtful that the public schools can do (or at any rate will do) what is necessary to educate poor minority children.

I hasten to say that a lot of public schools do manage to educate these youngsters - sometimes with extraordinary success. But most don’t. And the people who run the schools and school systems can’t seem to figure out why.

Oh, I hear what they say. They need more money or more parental involvement, or newer facilities. And while they are saying it, the involved parents of the children they are failing are doing whatever they can to transfer their kids to schools with less money, shabbier facilities - and markedly better success rates.

It’s not anti-public education to support the escape attempts of these frustrated parents. In fact, though, I’d rather support the efforts of the public schools to be more successful. The problem is, so few of them seem to be making a consistent effort to improve.

Is it because they don’t know what to do?

A year ago, I talked to Sandra Feldman, Al Shanker’s successor as president of the American Federation of Teachers. Feldman, then a newcomer to Washington, made this extraordinary offer: She was so certain that she knew how to improve the schools - and how to enlist the cooperation of parents and teachers in the process - that she would take over a floundering public school and set it on a solid academic course. No extra money, no new facilities - only the permission of the local union, the willingness of the local staff to try and the benign support of Gen. Julius Becton, then de facto superintendent of the D.C. schools.

I called Becton to make sure he was aboard. He was, and would convey the offer to a meeting of school principals. And sure enough, he did. He told the principals that any one of them who wanted to take Feldman up on her offer was free to do so. It was at that same meeting that he announced his new administrative policy: Any principal found to be failing would be fired. Naturally, nobody volunteered.

Becton himself has been replaced, as unsuccessful.

Feldman won’t like this, but her proposal, and the self-confidence behind it, echoes the conclusion that is driving the growing support of charter schools and vouchers: If the public schools aren’t getting it done, many parents are saying, then give us the authority (charters) or the money (vouchers) to do it ourselves.

Charters and vouchers are not the only alternatives. Much of what these devices might accomplish could be done by giving local principals broad new power to hire, fire, organize and set curricula - subject only to per-pupil budget restraints and academic testing for effectiveness. But wouldn’t the unions object?

It would be enormously helpful if local principals could enforce pupil discipline by bouncing unruly youngsters as easily as their private or parochial counterparts. But wouldn’t parents’ groups object?

Didn’t the public schools used to teach poor and minority children? The answer is yes, and it’s no trouble at all to find retired teachers who are certain they could teach their frustrated young successors how to do it. But for that to work, it would have to be possible for teachers to ask for help without setting themselves up as losers. Besides, some of the present teachers will say, their predecessors may have had to deal with poor kids, but seldom with children born to unwed mothers who are themselves children with little understanding of discipline.

Something else has changed from those old days: A generation or two ago, it was enough to do OK in school - to learn to read, write and do sums - and be willing to work hard. With no more qualification than that, young people could find work, support their families and live a reasonably good life. Now, when it takes a good deal more than that to be successful, thousands of our children are getting a good deal less.

Nor am I hopeful that the hot new alternatives of vouchers and charter schools will reach enough of the children who are most in need of help. My hope is that the public school leadership, instead of just opposing vouchers and charters, will figure out what they need to make the public schools work.

And if a part of the answer is that they need the rest of us, we’ll just have to be ready to step up.