Morning Shots

The vast majority of visions offered of the afterlife, whether that of Dante or the ordinary man on the street, figure that the fires of Hell will be reserved for murderers, thieves, rapists, and other malefactors, while a rather better fate awaits faithful saints, brave warriors, and the caretakers of children.  The Democratic education leadership of the Colorado state legislature apparently has greater insights into such matters than the rest of us.  Among them one will find the new Dante: State Representative Mike Merrifield, until a couple of weeks ago chairman of the House committee on education.  In a private e-mail to Sue Windels, the state Senate education chairwoman and long-time choice opponent, Merrifield proclaimed, “There must be a special place in Hell for these Privatizers, Charerizers and Voucherizers!”  Thus Merrifield condemns to their own circle in the Inferno parents and public spirited men and women who want to give children a chance to leave a failing public school system and enter schools in which they will actually learn to read, write, do math, and think about important things.  Due to public uproar, Merrifield resigned his position as chairman.  However satisfying that resignation may be for the moment, the legislator’s opinions are hardly unique to him.  Rather, they finally bring to light the true animosity and contempt the educational establishment has for school reform and not a little about the establishment’s methods as well.

     The venomous statement against school reformers was made in the context of Merrifield’s and Windels’s plans of abolishing the Charter School Institute, a board created under bipartisan leadership to authorize charter schools in the state, especially in districts hostile to the formation of charters.  Not surprisingly, the hostile districts constantly invoke the deceptively Federalist-sounding watchword “local control of schools.”  Translation: groups of

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I am tired of the voucher issue. You know what I mean—the pitched political battle over whether to let parents take the tax dollars spent on their kids in public schools and use them as scholarships to attend private schools.

I don’t see anything wrong with the idea itself. When I am faced with complicated political questions, I try to reduce them to conversations with the people most affected. In this case, I imagine what I would say to a single mother living in southeast DC and working as a house cleaner. I must persuade her that it would be a bad idea for the government to give her money so that she could transfer her child from his D.C. public school to a private school, like the Baptist-oriented Nannie Helen Burroughs School in Northeast DC.

I could not think of a single thing to say that would not leave me feeling guilty and deceitful. The usual argument against vouchers—that they drain needed funds from the public system—would make no sense to that mom. She was entitled to a good public education, but her local school was terrible, so the government had not kept its promise. I could not in good conscience argue that she should sacrifice her child’s education, and his future, so that DCPS could continue to spend its tax dollars on inadequate schools. And indeed, it seemed to me, if her child was no longer at the local school, that would reduce class size and perhaps give his teacher more time to focus on the other students.

So I am happy for that mom who gets to put her child in Nannie Burroughs, a well run school that charges far less than the maximum $7,500 a year under the DC voucher program. But

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I wish I could have taken parents and politician from around the nation to an awe inspiring event held last week in Forest Lake, Minnesota. More than 500 parents, grandparents, educators, kids, and community leaders packed a gym to dedicate the conversion of a former hospital and clinic into the beautiful home of Lakes International Language Academy – a three-year-old charter public school.

Parent Shannon Peterson, her coworkers, and Lakes International are a perfect example of what Minnesota legislators hoped would happen when they created the nation’s first charter public school law in 1991. Peterson, who mentioned that she was actually born in the room now serving as the school’s library, believed passionately in young children learning a second language (extensive research supports her opinion). She spent months on a task force trying to convince the district that a language-immersion option was a good idea. Ultimately, the district declined.

But Peterson won an ally in Cameron Hedlund, another task force member who had been a district teacher and administrator for more than 30 years. He joined her in her fight.  Now the school enrolls about 360 students with more than 450 students enrolled for next year.  I had the pleasure of meeting some of those amazing students and their families.

Forest Lake grandparent Shirley Hallberg proudly introduced me to her daughter and her granddaughter, a Lakes International student. Her oldest granddaughter, a bright youngster who loves math and history and is taking Spanish at a district middle school, smiled, explaining that her younger sister sometimes helps her with Spanish, which they both study.

Keith Berrier drives his youngster 12 miles from White Bear Lake because he says, “I’ve worked around the world, and learned how valuable a second language can be.”

Lakes International also enrolls

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