Teachers' unions should get out of the way

You can still sometimes find sensible opinion pieces in the New York Times. For example, education policy expert Andrew Rotherham's op-ed in today's paper begins:

A Wisconsin court rejected a high-profile lawsuit by the state's largest teachers' union last month seeking to close a public charter school that offers all its courses online on the ground that it violated state law by depending on parents rather than on certified teachers to educate children.

The case is part of a national trend that goes well beyond virtual schooling: teachers' unions are turning to the courts to fight virtually any deviation from uniformity in public schools.

Unfortunately, this stance not only hinders efforts to provide more customized schooling for needy students, it is also relegating teachers to the sidelines of the national debate about expanding choice in public education. …

Rotherham describes circumstances in which virtual schools, only a tiny fraction of the charter school movement, can be especially important for certain students:

For example, a student in a rural community with few schooling options who finds the curriculum in her school too limiting might be better served through an online program that allows her to learn at her own pace.

So, too, might a ninth grader who finds unbearable the jock-and-popularity culture that still largely prevails in our high schools.

And some parents may want to be more involved in their child's education than is possible in traditional public schools but don't have the time or resources to do fully independent home schooling.

So why not some school choice? We’re allowed choice in our medical treatments. Why not some parental choice, and as appropriate, some student choice?

If medicine worked the way public education works, I could wake up some morning, go to the doctor and be told: “Sorry, you have no say in the matter. The medical board’s already decided to remove your prostate.

You’ll be bused to a hospital across town. Your doctor’s been assigned. I hear she’s new and very eager to meet her patients and start operating. She’s got great training plus some ideas of her own she wants to try out.

You seem worried. Are you thinking about last year’s hospital achievement results?

Don’t pay attention to them. They don’t measure the really important things like patient socialization in pre-op and stuff like that. They only measure recovery and survival rates. That’s no way to judge a hospital.

Charter hospitals? No we don’t allow anything like that.

Take a look at Rotherham’s op-ed which ends with this warning to the teachers’ unions

An industry cannot survive by rushing to court every time a new idea threatens even a small slice of its market share. Instead, maintaining, and even broadening, support for public schools means embracing more diversity in how we provide public education and who provides it

Amen.