LESSONS FROM THE STATES:
Uncovering the Challenges of Enacting Strong Education Laws
On June 2, 2008, The Center for Education Reform (CER) brought together seven leading education experts from across the country to Washington, D.C., for a bipartisan forum on education reform.
The discussion uncovered common obstacles to advancing strong charter school laws throughout the United States and provided a framework of best practices for others to deal successfully with those hurdles.
Jeanne Allen
President, The Center for Education Reform
"Our Leaders Forum, Lessons from the States, is not a new thing. Over the years, we have held various forums like this to bring people together to help them cross pollinate and expose people who don't normally get to roll up their sleeves a chance to see what really works, and because each of the people here are folks that we have worked in their States, either with them or around them and seen firsthand the challenges and lessons that they have had to learn and doing, we asked them to join us and help us be a little candid about their experiences in the legislative arena."
"(Charter schools) are an essential tool to reforming dysfunctional school systems wherever they happen to be. Baltimore's is fairly infamous. Charters were an important part of our plan to take back literally the 11 worst dysfunctional public schools in the State of Maryland."
Kevin P. Chavous
Distinguished Fellow, The Center for Education Reform
"I frankly believe that we are on the cusp of a revolution in education, and I think it is going to occur almost like to the chipping away of the Berlin Wall. When it falls, it is going to fall hard, and charters will be one of the landing places because it does offer quality schools, which is what the public is clamoring for all over the country."
Rep. Amy Edmonds (R-Cheyenne)
Wyoming House of Representatives
"I started looking at charter schools, was approached by our association in Wyoming, and started to read more and learn more about charters and realized that really in Wyoming, this is obviously something that we could institute, I thought fairly easily, to really solve what is going to be and continues to be a train wreck, and we're headed toward some serious problems in Wyoming."
Eugene Hickok
Former Pennsylvania Secretary of Education
"I have found that most departments of education feel their primary constituency is the education establishment. I think that is crazy. Your primary constituency is the people of your State. They are the ones who have the kids in school. They are the ones you ought to be working with, and when we started talking with them, they began to become very interested and energetic about the possibility of charter schools."
Rep. Rodney Hubbard (D-St. Louis)
Missouri House of Representatives
"So one of the things we did was to make sure we empowered those individuals, made sure that members who wanted to support choice were handling priority legislation, they were getting bills on the calendars, they were getting bills passed, and they saw that if you continue to work in a bipartisan manner and you start supporting the issues that you believe in, then you would be successful."
Rep. John Legg (R-Port Richey)
Florida House of Representatives
"I believe it is our job and your job, or those who advocate for charter school reform, to make sure the legislators know the truth because when the truth is - as my father, a Baptist minister, says, when the truth is presented to them, it doesn't just set you free, it makes you free, and they will see that the reforms that charter school brings - they just can't compare it to the traditional school. It is absolutely phenomenal."
