A friend's comments

Another friend with some interesting comments -- I especially love the lunch counter analogy!

The school reform issue is a huge problem for the Democratic Party. However, I believe that there is still a strong possibility that the party will be able to finesse the issue. Hillary is already doing it—praising charter schools but bashing vouchers. As you know, I am militantly pro-charter (as well as pro-public magnet school, open enrollment, etc.). However, to deny poor parents the ability to use an existing private/parochial school on their block and tell them to wait (perhaps years) for a charter to show up is criminal. Imagine if the civil rights movement had taken the same approach and said: “We will build new lunch counters that you can sit at, but you can’t sit at the existing ones right there in your town. Just be patient.”

There is a very real possibility that the Hillary approach wins the day. Then you will see tepid, often symbolic support of charters—enough to buy politicians a “Sister Soulja” moment with the unions—but ten years from now, there will be very little progress. Ten years from now we will still be spending $20,000 per kid in Newark and graduating 40% of its minority students. There will be little islands of success, such as the number of KIPPs you can open in that time, but systemic, fundamental, market-driven reforms will still not have occurred. In the meantime, many private/parochial schools in the inner city will have shut down because the parents in the nearby neighborhoods wanting to use them can’t scrape together the tuition.

How do we change that? I don’t know. I think it might take the combination of Powell and Oprah to change the terms of the debate. Maybe more. But don’t kid yourselves---there is a very real and scary possibility that when we are in our 60’s things will be worse. I always say to myself, “when things get bad enough, then things will improve.” Right now Florida graduates 38% of its black males from high school. That’s not enough for people to demand radical change. Must it go to 0%? Would even that be enough?

I am open to all ideas on this. I worry about it every day. I have since 1997.