Classroom warfare

Page 2

by Michael Crowley

Renaissance is the bomb, reads the hip-hop boast of a student-made banner hanging in a hallway of the Boston Renaissance school. Charter-school supporters agree, deeming the Renaissance the flagship of the movement and a model for its ideals of innovation and enthusiasm.

At Renaissance, students are placed in mixed-grade "houses," which allow for reading groups based on individual ability instead of age. Every student is given a CD-ROM-equipped Macintosh computer, with which they can dial into the school's media center from home. Classrooms and hallways are lined with inspirational slogans and student projects, as well as stern reminders of school rules. Teachers here wield a deft personal touch. On a recent afternoon, after one black middle-school student shyly described his project on Jackie Robinson to a visitor, his teacher squeezed his shoulders and cooed, "Someday you're going to be famous like that."

All signs suggest that schools like the Renaissance are the wave of the future in Massachusetts. According to polling by the UMass McCormack Institute of Public Affairs, charter schools enjoy wide public support across the political and socioeconomic spectrum. About two-thirds of the general public is familiar with the schools, and within that group, charters have a favorability rating of eight-to-one. And waiting lists to get into them are endless; 4000 kids are in line across the state. Pols don't miss numbers like that.

"The citizens of the Commonwealth are articulating their choice with their feet," says Finneran.

"For the first time, the movement has a constituency," adds State Senator Stephen Lynch (D-Boston), who has filed his own bill to raise the cap.

And the charters, with considerable minority and low-income enrollment, have so far defied many of their opponents' direst claims -- for instance, that they would siphon off only the brightest, wealthiest, and whitest students from the public-school system. According to a March report by the Pioneer Institute, 47 percent of charter-school students are minorities, compared to just 21 percent of the state's total public-school student population.

This diversity helps to explain the varied ideological stripes of charter-school supporters on Beacon Hill. What Bill Weld calls libertarian "entrepreneurial government," Tom Birmingham calls a liberal social policy for frustrated low-income and minority Democrats. Even Boston's longtime black liberal activist Mel King, it's worth noting, supports making every school in the city a charter school. (When was the last time Bill Weld was outflanked on the right by Mel King?)

All this cheerleading, however, does not mean that charter schools have proven themselves as the solution to the state's public-education crisis. In fact, they've proven next to nothing, since none of them has been in operation for more than two years. And so many of the MTA's warnings cannot be dismissed out of hand. For instance, in a time of tight budgets, the MTA argues, millions of public dollars are being sent to experimental institutions with almost no supervision; and special-education students have reportedly been discouraged from applying to charter schools.

Perhaps the MTA's strongest argument is the charge that charter schools are draining needed money from public schools, making reform even more difficult. When a student enrolls in a charter school, a per-pupil chunk of his or her school district's funding transfers to that school. Although a public school will have one fewer student to pay for, the MTA argues, its fixed costs -- such as heat and maintenance -- will not shrink. State funding for charter schools also reduces long-term aid distributed under the 1993 education-reform act that was designed to beef up public-school budgets.

"The intent of the 1993 education-reform law was not to make charter schools the center of everything," says the MTA's Wollmer. "They've taken an incredible amount of attention and energy from a lot of people."

That case is finding a sympathetic reception on the education committee, which is about to complete a charter-school bill. The committee's House chair, Representative Harold Lane (D-Holden), is himself a former teacher, and Paleologos describes one member of the committee -- whom he declines to name -- as "a wholly owned subsidiary of the MTA." Any bill the committee produces will bestow modest gifts at best on the charter schools. Lane seems inclined to focus on converting existing public schools into charters -- something charter-school backers consider a half-solution.

"I support raising the cap moderately if we can include public schools," Lane says, adding that he sees little support among the House rank-and-file for boosting the cap. That may be in part because the extent of Tom Finneran's support remains uncertain. (In an interview last month, Finneran called raising the cap to 75 "too much too fast.")

But the Senate, where the president, Tom Birmingham, is gung ho for 50 additional schools, is more open to the idea of a higher cap. If the issue comes up during the Senate's budget debate, as now seems likely, the result would probably be a high cap with few new restrictions. And that would give charter-school backers new leverage when the House and Senate go to conference to negotiate a final budget this summer.

As the issue starts to play out, undecided legislators nervously eyeing the 1998 elections confront a tough decision. On the one hand, polls suggest the public is falling firmly behind charter schools. But the specter of losing an endorsement from the MTA might be enough to persuade legislators to take a "Let's wait and see" line.

If the popularity of charters continues to grow, the MTA's resistance could backfire badly. Winding up on the losing side of a popular issue would inflict serious damage on the union's long-term credibility and clout.

"It's classic Democratic stupidity -- staying in a hole long after the public's left and defending something," says Lou DiNatale of the McCormack Institute.

In the meantime, the two sides have developed a special antagonism, pushing aside the policy debate to go after each other with searing rhetoric that promises to heat up in coming weeks.

Paleologos charges that the MTA lobbies legislators by "filling their heads with misinformation," including the occasional "flat-out lie."

Charter backers, in turn, "play fast and loose with the facts all the time," says Wollmer.

Now, is that any kind of example to set for the kids?

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.