Education also needs taste of competition

18 June 2004

We have too many restaurants in this city.

After all, food is food. McDonald's makes a decent hamburger. So why allow Wendy's or Burger King? Upscale, ethnic, fast food and other kinds of restaurants are everywhere, giving us too much choice and making life far too confusing. They wastefully compete against each other, all over something that is, after all, just a basic human need.

If I had my way, we'd permit just one kind of restaurant. No others would be allowed.

If that sounds foolish to you - and it should - then why are most of us loath to apply the same principle to another basic human need: education?

This year, in a number of significant ways, Massachusetts has begun to back off from an experiment it launched over a decade ago. That experiment, part of the 1993 Education Reform Act, sought to introduce competition into education, trying to change the most monopolistic of our state institutions into something that offered choice to all.

That idea sparked excitement and seemed to herald a new era for education. Now, it appears, that era is coming to a close.

Next year's state budget imposes a one-year moratorium on new charter schools. (Charter schools, part of the 1993 reforms, are public schools that exist free from local control and largely unfettered by traditional union work rules.) The moratorium, a seemingly mild proposal to explore improvements in the funding formula for charters, is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Its short-term effect is to shut down five schools - in North Adams, Salem, Lynn, Marlborough and Cambridge - that were slated to open in September. (Gov. Mitt Romney has promised a veto, but it appears there are enough votes for the Legislature to override him.) More broadly, though, the moratorium is the culmination of a fierce campaign to dismantle the state's charter law. Its passage signals a major defeat to supporters of competition.

So too does a recent and stunningly crass action by the Boston Teachers' Union.

As charter schools became popular statewide, the city of Boston responded by creating pilot schools. Like charter schools, pilots were substantially more independent of the school system. Many of the first pilots were brand new schools but, as the concept began to prove itself, teachers (especially younger teachers) at existing schools became intrigued and began exploring converting a traditional school into a pilot.

That came to a seemingly abrupt end last week. Teachers at the Gardner Elementary School in Allston had voted by a two-thirds majority to become a pilot school. The head of their union, Richard Stutman, vetoed the plan. Stutman's stated concern was that teachers at pilot schools didn't have sufficient seniority rights (never mind that the teachers apparently did not share that worry). The real issue, however, is that pilots have grown in popularity; there are now 15 of them. Once just an annoyance, they are now a genuine threat to the status quo.

What's going on here? Paul Grogan, the head of the Boston Foundation (which has encouraged the growth of pilot schools and would have given $100,000 to the Gardner to help it convert), blames the teachers unions. "Their vision of the future," he says, "is fighting everyone's good ideas for change." He's right. Competition is deeply threatening to unions' power and they have mobilized to stop it.

But that's always been true. Why are they now succeeding?

Part of the answer is that the reforms are becoming the victims of their own success. The sense of crisis that spurred the 1993 law has ebbed as dramatic rises in state spending, MCAS testing and innovations from competition have had a marked effect in improving many schools. True, many schools, particularly those in poor neighborhoods, are still failing. Yet education no longer dominates the front page, so the momentum for change has faltered.

There's another factor as well that abets the opponents of school choice: We here in Massachusetts don't really like competition.

I have a soft spot for charter schools and other efforts to promote competition in education. (In fact, I sit on the board of a national charter school management company, although one with no operations in New England.) But my sense is that most people in this state don't share the feeling. That's because, in general, we're uncomfortable with free markets. For many, capitalism and profits remain dirty words. This plays out in a host of ways, from the anti- privatization Pacheco law to our antipathy to for-profit hospitals and even to state laws that hamper the adoption of new technologies such as electronic pricing.

This is more than just about politics - it relates to our culture, a culture whose roots go back to the founding of the commonwealth (itself a term that bespeaks our discomfort with free markets). Schools really are like restaurants. In Massachusetts, though, that's an analogy we find hard to accept.

Talk back to Tom Keane at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.