By Liam Kerr, DFER Massachusetts State Director
Politician [pol-i-tish-uh n] noun: The only animal that can sit on a fence and keep both ears on the ground.*
This definition fit Massachusetts’ politicians straddling both sides of the charter school debate just a few years ago. In our state, which is home to the nation’s second-oldest charter school system, a common fence-straddling approach was to offer the rhetorical question: “Weren’t charter schools just experiments to find effective practices for regular schools?”
This position had many advantages. It avoided a reactionary, self-preservation response: “Charter schools take from the local pot of money we control”; or ideological conspiracy theories: “Those liberal charter fans have been brainwashed into a right-wing takeover of public education.”
It also projected an air of change while averting the need to support any politically challenging reforms. If public charter schools are just experiments, it is easy to justify limiting their number without any regard to the quality of education provided – as the official platform of the Massachusetts State Democratic Party stated until 2009.
Massachusetts Democrats took a strong step away from this line of thinking in 2010. The Act Relative to the Achievement Gap, a piece of legislation related to the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top competition, doubled the number of charter schools in the lowest-performing cities – not to experiment, but as fully legitimate schools for effectively educating children.
Why have some Massachusetts Democrats begun to evolve from viewing high-performing charter schools as small scale experiments to viewing them as part of a multi-faceted solution?
Two reasons.
First, over the last two decades many charter schools emerged from their “experiment” with incredible results. These successes drew the attention of parents, community leaders, and policymakers.