Evie Hudak Colorado State Board of Education

a strong voice for kids 2nd Congressional District

CHOICE -- FOR WHOSE SAKE?

I’m beginning to feel sick every time I hear the word “choice.”

It’s not just the dizzy feeling I get when I walk down the supermarket aisle trying to pick out some frozen potatoes and can’t decide if I want French fries, tater tots, corn fries, hash browns, etc. It’s not just the endless list of menu items I get when I make a phone call and hear “if you want [A], press 1; for [B], press 2; etc. It’s not just the early morning agony of looking in my closet at all the dresses, skirts, slacks, blouses, and sweaters (don’t even mention the shoes!) and trying to decide what to wear.

And it isn’t what I heard the other day as I sat in the House Education Committee, although that might have put me over the edge. I was listening to state legislators discussing a bill which would eliminate (yes, eliminate) the requirement that a teacher who had served in an administrative position and was reassigned to a teaching position receive a salary reflecting the time spent in the administrative position. Notwithstanding the egregious nature of the bill, what really struck me was the argument given for changing the word “shall” in an amendment to the word “may”: “It will give the school district a choice. Everybody wants a choice, right?”

Well, I’m beginning to wonder if everybody really does always want a choice. I remember a long, long time ago reading the book Future Shock, which said that people are becoming over-stressed (like post-traumatic stress disorder) from our society having too many choices. I wonder if the parents of our school children are going into future shock with all the accountability systems to choose from in determining how good their schools are – Adequate Yearly Progress, academic performance ratings on the School Accountability Reports, improvement ratings on the School Accountability Reports, and Accreditation reports. I wonder if our school system is going into future shock with all the school choice – open enrollment, magnet schools, charter schools, big schools operating as several small schools, cyberschools, and (depending on the next court decision) vouchers for private schools.

All the issues of choice that I’ve had to deal with on the State Board of Education have caused me to wonder when choice is appropriate and whose sake it is for. One example was the request the Ignacio School District made of the State Board of Education for waivers of all teacher due process laws (“tenure”). The district had decided to ask its voters for a mill levy override to pay for an optional pay-for-performance program, in which the participating teachers would receive much higher pay than those on the salary schedule, at the cost of their due process rights. The State Board granted the waivers (by a vote of 4:3*) contingent upon the passage of the mill levy override. Choice was the argument given by the district in favor the waivers themselves and by the State Board members favoring their approval: Teachers would have a choice whether to be in the pay-for-performance program, and the community would have a choice whether it wanted to pay for the program. Notwithstanding the egregiousness of a precedent-setting proposal to waive “tenure” laws, the situation raises the question of whether a small number of people have a right to benefit from a choice that would likely hurt many others. (By the way, the Ignacio voters defeated the mill levy override by a large majority.)

Another example is the now well-known Steamboat Springs Montessori Charter School. A small group of parents in the Steamboat Springs school district wanted a Montessori school for their children. The district felt it couldn’t afford financially to provide that choice for a small portion of the students, because the much greater number of students in the regular district schools would suffer if the funding were diverted for the special program (it is a very small school district). When the State Board of Education decided (by a vote of 5:3*) to remand the charter school back to the district, the school board decided that it still couldn’t in good conscience allow the school. The charter school appealed again to the State Board of Education, and again the State Board remanded it back to the district; after that, the Steamboat Springs school board passed a resolution refusing to open the school. Although the case has gone to court and a decision will be made about whether the district is legally required to open the charter school, the decision will not answer the question of who has higher priority in school choice. However, the issue has been settled in the “court” of public opinion in Steamboat Springs – the school district put a ballot question to its voters asking whether they supported its decision to deny the charter school, and the voters resoundingly said yes.

Nearly every charter school appeal that I have seen during my time on the State Board had at its core the question of whether the district should be compelled to allow “the needs of the few to outweigh the needs of the many” (these, in fact, are the exact words used by the St. Vrain Valley School District in the appeal of the Flagstaff Academy Charter School). I hear some people who support school choice say that it is needed to provide kids with a school environment that best suits their needs. I hear other people say that its purpose is to allow parents to select the kind of school environment that they want their kids to be in. Then of course, people who oppose school choice complain that it’s just “choice for the sake of choice.” Are we providing choice to benefit student achievement, to cater to parental whims, or just to provide a broad menu? Which of these reasons is right? fair? reasonable? best?

At the time of this writing, there are three bills in the State Legislature proposing to give authority for a statewide entity to create charter schools in districts where the school board does not want them. With these bills, if a small group of people want a charter school, and the citizens elected by the local community to make decisions about what is best for their community (the school board) decide that the school is not appropriate, a board at the state level would force the community to have it anyway. The legislator sponsoring one of these bills has said that the parents proposing a charter school have a “right” to have it. I’m not sure I agree that choice is a right. If we open up that issue, we have to consider the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs. the Board of Education and the argument of “separate but equal.” A study on choice in the Boulder Valley School District showed inequity along racial and socio-economic lines, and I have heard people say that there ought to be a lawsuit in this matter.

As the debate about school choice continues, I predict that I will not be the only one with a queasy stomach.

[* In both cases, I voted in the minority.]