: Sarah Tantillo
: Hit the Drum An Insider's Account of How the Charter School Idea Became a National Movement
: BookBaby
: 9781543967456
: 1
: CHF 4.20
:
: Geschichte
: English
: 340
: kein Kopierschutz
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: ePUB
The first state charter school law was passed in Minnesota in 1991. The idea that teachers, parents, and other community members could launch these independent public schools of choice proceeded to spread rapidly across the country. Within two decades, many charter schools had long waiting lists and parents willing to march on their behalf. By 2017, more than 6,900 charter schools were operating in 44 states plus DC, serving 3.2 million children. In spite of the controversy that often swirls around them, charter schools have dropped strong roots into the field of education. HIT THE DRUM is a page-turning narrative that gives an insider's perspective to explain how this transformation happened. It tells the engaging stories of several dozen unsung heroes and heroines-many of them classroom teachers-who decided to change their lives in order to join this grassroots movement which has dramatically altered the landscape of public education in America. If you are interested in education reform or how social movements grow and spread-or if you want to understand more about why we have the kinds of schools we do and how schools might look in the future-this book is a must-read.

CHAPTER3

Where Did theIdea
of Chartering ComeFrom?

Al Shanker, the AFT leader who was probably best known for helping American teachers win the right to bargain collectively, was one of the earliest proponents of chartering.27 (To be clear, I would add: “to a point.”28 Shanker’s notion of chartering was in fact somewhat different from that of others who stepped up to carry the concept forward.)

Shanker was relentless about the need for teachers to be treated as professionals, and he saw school restructuring as a way to achieve “differentiated staffing, in which certain highly talented teachers took on greater responsibilities and were paid more, accordingly.”29 He became captivated by the idea of chartering when he read Ray Budde’s 1988 bookEducation by Charter: Restructuring School Districts,30 which suggested that “districts [should] be reorganized and innovative teachers should be given explicit permission by the school board to create innovative new programs, and like explorers hundreds of years earlier, report back about their discoveries.”31 In fact, Shanker thought this idea should be extended even further, to includeentire new schools.32

It should be noted that around the same time, a policy researcher named Joseph Loftus was also pushing the idea of chartering in Chicago. In 1987, not long after the Chicago Teachers Union had struck for theninth time since 1969,33 US Secretary of Education William Bennett called Chicago’s public schools “the worst in the nation.” He pointed to the 43 percent dropout rate and abysmal ACT (American College Test) scores, adding, “How can anyone who feels about children not feel terrible about Chicago schools? You have an educational meltdown.”34 Mayor Harold Washington appointed a 50-member citizens group to hear proposals for reform and develop a strategy to tackle the problem(s). Joe Loftus’s paper “Charter Schools: A Potential Solution to the Riddle of Reform,” emerged in 1989 as part of that work.35 But in the debate about what to do, the winner was “parent-run schools.” So Loftus put his paperaway.

Unaware of the work that Loftus was doing in Chicago, Al Shanker became intrigued by Ray Budde’s ideas and began to pitch thempublicly.

On March 31, 1988, Shanker gave a speech at the National Press Club in which he reflected on the reforms that had taken hold in the five years since the release ofA Nation at Risk. The way he saw it, “so many things have happened as a result of reform that we are at a point where there is now more than one reform movement in this country. There are really two.”36

The first was a push for a higher standards. Henoted:

These reforms are very good for kids who are able to learn in a traditional system, who are able to sit still, who are able to keep quiet, who are able to remember after they listen to someone else talk for five hours, who are able to