What's A Charter School If Not A Game Changer?

Claudio Sanchez:

At this year's charter school convention in Minneapolis, the birthplace of the movement, vendors sounded almost giddy about the millions of dollars charter schools spend every year. The vendors are selling everything from graphing calculators and playground equipment to packaged curricula and risk-management services.

Charter schools today are big business. The public and private money that's going into charter schools, though, is not the main reason for their remarkable growth, Ted Kolderie says.

Kolderie, considered by many as the "godfather" of the charter school movement, says charters have grown because of the need for real options for kids who haven't done well in traditional public schools.

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Kolderie, a former journalist turned academic, designed and helped pass the nation's first charter school laws. He began the work in Minnesota in 1991, despite formidable opposition -- and not just from teachers' unions.

"School boards' associations, superintendents' associations, principals' associations -- the whole array of organizations regarded in most states as the most powerful at the [state] capitol," he says. "So the opposition wasn't just something that the unions led."

Ironically, Kolderie says, it was a top union leader who first endorsed and promoted the concept of charter schools in the spring of 1988. Al Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, gave a supportive speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

"We're meeting here today because it's time to take a major step forward in trying to improve the schools of our nation," he said.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 6, 2012 5:14 AM
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