Using “reform” to push charters
ON THE surface, school politics in Houston looks much like the rest of urban America. Houston's superintendent and school board are pushing more accountability for teachers, and charter schools are growing in number.
But Houston business leaders, now that George W. Bush is out of office, are preparing to hoist a second wave of "school reform" on the nation. The first wave was making former Houston Superintendent Rod Paige the Secretary of Education and passing No Child Left Behind.
While current Superintendent Terry Grier--fresh from San Diego, where his supporters on that school board lost seats to union-backed candidates--has launched Apollo 20, a turnaround strategy to improve 20 of the worst performing public schools, public school reform is really a sideshow here to charter school expansion.
The business elite has rallied around two charter networks: Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and YES Prep, which are led by two former roommates. They plan to recruit 20,000 students out of the public schools.
By contrast with other cities where charter schools are popping up, in Houston, KIPP and YES Prep are seeking to establish an oligopoly, rather than an open marketplace with competing small providers. KIPP and YES Prep will form, in effect, rival public school systems run by private boards. The long-term goal is for KIPP/YES Prep to form a powerful political bloc.
Charter backers are creating an education marketplace in Houston that looks a lot like the industries from which they draw support: oil, natural gas, and politically influential big construction firms.
Given all of KIPP's advantages--getting the best students, more time in class and higher per pupil spending--its actual performance seems lackluster. Only 24 percent of its Houston students passed Advanced Placement exams last year, if Spanish language isn't counted.
But this is really about politics, not education, and represents, from the sponsors' perspective, an effort to strip public employees of any rights, the way they have done previously to our workers in the private sector.
Given KIPP's model and the kind of kids they recruit, their students will inevitably score better than average in the public schools on state minimum skills tests. When the Houston experiment is concluded, and once Republicans are returned to power, Houston businessmen will want to take this show on the road the way they did after manufacturing a phony "Houston Miracle" under Rod Paige.
Perhaps Mike Fineberg, the KIPP CEO who endorsed Bush at the 2000 Republican Convention, will become Secretary of Education in a Sarah Palin administration.
Embroiled in a wrestling match with Superintendent Grier, dubbed "Rocket Man" here locally, the Houston Federation of Teachers and its President Gayle Fallon aren't saying a lot publicly about charter schools, perhaps because the union can't do much about the issue. This city is a plutocracy, and while it's not hard to fight city hall, what businessmen say here goes.
Since KIPP's sponsors helped two candidates win seats on the school board last year, adding to the two already linked to the charters, KIPP has hired away five highly regarded Houston Independent School District principals.
Houston's far-right business leaders are like an infection on the national polity that will not go away. As if two wars and exploding deficits were not enough of a contribution, the right is preparing for a comeback with an educational model that makes our nation's public-school teachers vulnerable, shuts down neighborhood schools and supplants democratically elected school leaders with private-sector power blocs.
Jesse Alred, Houston
