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Friday, 03 August, 2012

It’s Time for Public Charter Schools in Washington State

The state that brought the world Starbucks, Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has not exactly been leading the charge on innovative educational practices. When it comes to education reform, Washington has basically been a status quo heaven state.

Fortunately, a broad and growing bi partisan coalition of education advocates in Washington State plans to change this picture on November 6th. They submitted over 357,000 signatures for Initiative 1240, a well-crafted charter school measure proposal that just qualified for the fall statewide ballot.

Washington is a large, smart state with a growing population (we got the congressional seat that Massachusetts lost) that has been too attached to the educational status quo. It has been too easy for us to import the labor force that our technology driven economy needs, and too hard for us to help our low income and minority students stay in school and succeed.  

Buoyed by the model law developed by NAPCS and a pile of research studies showing that public charter schools serving low income minority youth consistently outperform traditional public schools, advocates in Washington State have drafted a very strong law. We think it will be one of the strongest charter school laws in the country. 

But first, we have to get our messages out to voters, and make certain that a majority of them approve Initiative 1240 on November 6th. Because Washington voters have defeated other charter school measures (three times, actually), this ballot fight has high stakes, and it is one of national importance. If you want to help, please visit www.yeson1240.com.


Image: States with (blue) and without (gray) a public charter school law. Via National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Dashboard, http://dashboard.publiccharters.org/dashboard/schools/year/2012

Author Lisa Macfarlane is the Washington State Director of Democrats for Education Reform.

Posted by: Lisa Macfarlane, Washington State Director of Democrats for Education Reform at Friday, 03 August, 2012 12:00 AM


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1.  N/A (03 Aug 2012 12:07 PM)
This article is typical of the sorts of misrepresentations that foster distrust of charter schools in Washington State.

"status quo heaven"? Really? Charter schools are not the only innovation possible or the only source of innovation or even the best source of innovation. Innovation is happening every day in Washington State schools. The State has moved forward with innovation school laws, student accountability, teacher performance evaluation reform, and principal evaluation reform. The repetition of the lie that promotes a false dichotomy between charter schools and the status quo erodes the credibility of charter school advocates. There are lots of possible reforms that do not include charter schools.

The broad coalition of charter school advocates in Washington State consists almost entirely of a dozen millionaires and billionaires and their hired minion. There is no grassroots support - none at all - for charter schools in Washington. The campaign has only a handful of contributors and only one from an ordinary citizen. The initiative was put on the ballot with paid signature gatherers. There were no volunteers circulating petitions. There is no broad support for charter schools in Washington. The voters have rejected charter schools three times before.

The charter school initiative, I-1240, is badly written and extreme. It allows any school to be converted by either a parent trigger or a teacher trigger. The impact of a conversion would be so devastating to a school district that this law gives the teaching staff at every school a gun to point at the head of the district while making demands.

The initiative creates an un-elected commission of charter school advocates to approve and oversee the charters. There is no reason to expect these people to ever take action to close a school.

The citizens of Washington State know that there is nothing that a charter school can do for students that a public school cannot do. The people of Washington know that charter schools are not public schools. The people of Washington overwhelmingly like their schools and their teachers. It would be a shame if a small group of oligarchs bought this law for themselves by filling the airways with misleading ads.

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