Magna charter? A report card on school reform in 1995

Policy Review, Fall 1995 by Finn, Chester E Jr, Ravitch, Diane

Two competing paradigms of education reform have emerged in the United States in recent years, and the differences between them are growing sharper. One, commonly termed "systemic reform," assumes that reform efforts should be led by government and imposed from the top down. Its advocates believe that state (or federal) authorities must set standards not only for student learning, but also for teacher training, pupil assessments, textbooks, and school resources. Though undertaken in pursuit of higher standards and better results, systemic reform relies on uniform strategies to ensure that "inputs" everywhere are equal and all schools undertake similar activities. Government resources and bureaucratic regulation are, of course, its preferred mechanism for making this happen. Much of Goals 2000 embodies this approach.

The second reform paradigm, which we call "reinventing education," embraces decentralized control, entrepreneurial management, and grassroots initiatives, ail within a framework of publicly defined standards and accountability. Under this approach, public officials establish standards, make assessments, and hold schools accountable for meeting performance goals but do not themselves run the schools. Public officials also retain the power to cancel charters and school-management contracts on grounds of consistently poor performance, but they do not directly supervise or control the means by which schools pursue those ends.

Under this paradigm, education may be delivered through charter schools (licensed by public authorities such as a state, city, or local school district), "opt out" schools that secede from their local education agencies and run themselves with what amounts to a "block grant" of public funds, "contract schools" (in which a performance contract is negotiated between private educational managers and a public agency), and "choice" programs (in which students use scholarships or publicly-funded vouchers to attend the schools of their choice). In all such situations, the continuing responsibility of public authorities is to establish standards for educational and fiscal performance and monitor progress in relation to those standards. (Those who reject this degree of public accountability may, of course, turn to wholly private schools or home schooling.)

The "reinvention" approach welcomes diverse strategies and schools organized and run by various entities such as teacher cooperatives, parent associations, private corporations, religious institutions, and community-based organizations. It assumes that students and families are different and should be free to match themselves to the schools that suit them best. It requires little bureaucracy and few regulations because it rejects the proposition that schools must be centrally managed according to a single formula.

We strongly favor the "reinvention" paradigm, provided that it contains one key element borrowed from the "systemic" approach: standards and accountability. It is our conviction that only clear and high standards for performance will ensure accountability, both to the marketplace (that is, to families making informed choices among schools) and to whatever public body authorizes the schools to operate.

These standards need not be national, they need not be highly detailed, they should not prescribe pedagogy or resource use, and they need not cover the entire curriculum. (Indeed, the ability of schools to add their own features to the "core" described in the standards is part of what will make them different from one another.) But only when such standards are in place--and accompanied by good tests and a steady flow of performance information--can parents make informed choices among schools and public authorities determine which schools deserve to retain their "charters," contracts, or accreditations.

These two approaches are now competing with each other, not only in Washington, D.C., but also in the states. Systemic reform remains the favored strategy of the Clinton administration and of some educators (especially in state departments of education and teachers unions), but the "reinvention" alternative is preferred in many other quarters--including by many elected officials, business leaders, and parents, as well as by teachers and principals who welcome the possibility of breaking free from the stifling grip of bureaucracy.

The reinvention impulse has even reached Capitol Hill, where the past year saw stirrings of the first major push in memory to "devolve" centralized activities to states, communities, and families and to lift restrictions on the use of federal aid. This impulse arises partly from the quest for better education, but also from a reaction against the regulatory burden of federal regulations and unfunded mandates.

This is the motive behind recent congressional activity concerning "block grants" in areas as diverse as welfare, school lunches, and job training, as well as education aid. To be sure, turning categorical programs into block grants and devolving control to states and communities will not automatically foster reinvention. Indeed, recipients may not do much of anything. But doing away with "Washington-knows-best" approaches and removing strings from federal dollars at least permits reform-minded states and communities to experiment with new strategies for education and other public services--and closes the easy route of blaming Uncle Sam for poor results.