Guest Commentary on the NC Premiere of The Lottery, Cap on Charter Schools

The following is the unedited version of my editorial, invited by the newspaper, that appeared in the print version of today's Asheville Citizen-Times.

When I was growing up in Hayesville, I took it for granted that my teachers (many of whom were my own relatives) were teaching me what I needed to know and be able to do to go on to college and a career. It never occurred to me that some other children in my state and country may not have enjoyed the high quality of education that I was receiving. I just thought that was what schools did. It was only after I grew up, graduated from Western Carolina University, and entered the teaching and administration force in public schools in Atlanta, and later, Massachusetts and Connecticut, before returning to my home state, that I realized just how mistaken I was.

In the United States today, 58% of African-American 4th grade children test as functionally illiterate. About one-third of all high school students who start ninth grade in this country drop out before graduation. No one can argue that the American public education system serves all students equally. Families who can afford to move to “better” ZIP codes are able to secure excellence for their children in the public schools. Those who cannot afford are held hostage by their local school district, regardless of the level of achievement there. This is a situation that has to change if this country is going to reclaim its position as the foremost nation in the world in educating its citizens.

On June 8, across the country, theaters showed the documentary film The Lottery by Madeleine Sackler. This film demonstrates how hundreds of thousands of American parents, many of them poor and minority, attempt to flee failing traditional public school systems every year. The Lottery follows four families from Harlem and the Bronx who have entered their children in a charter school lottery. The North Carolina Alliance for Public Charter Schools hosted the NC premiere of the documentary in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham, Greensboro, Charlotte, and Asheville.

North Carolina is becoming a battleground for the right of families to choose the best educational option for their children without having to resort to homeschooling or paying for private education. The recent “education reform” legislation passed hastily by the state senate is a thinly veiled attempt by Governor Beverly Perdue for North Carolina to qualify for the second round of Race to the Top grants by the U.S. Department of Education. North Carolina’s application in the first round was passed over, largely because of the cap of 100 charter schools in this state and the open hostility to charter schools by school boards and superintendents.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have made it clear that only those states where public school choice, including charter schools, is supported and welcomed will be awarded those funds. Lifting the cap on charter schools is one of the steps that must be taken to qualify. Tennessee, our next-door neighbor, won $400 million for its K-12 schools in the first round. That’s right. Tennessee.

At a time when state and local education budgets are stripped to the bone, it is astounding that North Carolina’s elected officials in the Democratic Party are refusing to abandon their traditional support of the public education machine, which includes the school boards association, the school superintendents, and the NC Association of Educators, which is an affiliate of the National Education Association union. Another Race to the Top requirement is that to be eligible to receive funds, those groups must be on board with the state’s application. None of these groups are willing to agree to the requirement that the charter cap be lifted. As a result, Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson and Gov. Perdue crafted the compromise legislation to “allow” districts to create “charter-like” schools that would still be under the control of the local boards of education. The bill passed without a single Republican vote in favor of it, but the school boards, superintendents, and NCEA all enthusiastically backed it.

There is nothing in the new law that school districts were not already empowered to do before its passage. It is simple smoke and mirrors, designed to try to fool the Race to the Top selection team into thinking that North Carolina is a progressive, reform-minded state when it comes to education choice, when in fact the complete opposite is true. The “charter-like” schools (and the per-pupil funding they generate) will still be under the control of the same boards of education, superintendents, principals, and teachers that allowed them to fail in the first place. The recent dismal performance of the Halifax, NC school district on state testing after a year of being taken over by the Department of Public Instruction shows how unrealistic the expectation is that the current system can repair itself.

It is a shame and a disgrace that our governor and other elected representatives are willing to forego millions of dollars in education funding in order to maintain the status quo. North Carolina has more National Board Certified Teachers than any other state in this country. We invented the term “education governor” when we first elected James B. Hunt, Jr., who is also a founding member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. We still have some great public school districts that don’t need to fear that a charter school will open in their backyard--because they are already doing a top-notch job. Hayesville High School has the third-highest graduation rate in the entire state, for example.

I never in my life thought I would see the day when Tennessee is rightfully deemed an educationally progressive state, while North Carolina is not. It’s a $400 million gamble that our school children will lose, again, while our governor “wins” by hanging onto the votes of those who populate the education machine. The Lottery exposes the truth that in many districts in this country, the public education system places the interests and preferences of adults far above the best interests of children. North Carolina is, shamefully, one of those places.

Dr. Monica Henson Bomengen is a native of Hayesville who now lives in Highlands. She established Schools21, an educational consulting company, in 2008, and works with school districts, charter schools, and state departments of education on school turnaround issues. A member of Democrats for Education Reform, the NC Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and the Georgia Charter School Association, Dr. Bomengen is a regional and national speaker and writer on education reform issues. She introduced The Lottery at its Asheville premiere and will speak at the NC Alliance’s first annual conference in July. She will speak at the National Dropout Prevention Network’s annual conference in Philadelphia in November.

Gov. Bev Perdue Fiddles with "Charter-like Schools" as NC's Educational Rome Burns

The equation is so simple: Lift the cap on charter schools = Qualify for Race to the Top funding. Yet the NC education establishment (school boards, school superintendents, and teacher "union") will NOT agree to support that. And our governor and most of the Democrats in the state legislature continue to kowtow to those directly responsible for the horrendous graduation rates in our state, making sure that they maintain their incompetent monopoly on children's lives. Meanwhile, our next-door neighbor, Tennessee, received $400 million in the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top first round of competition. (You read that correctly: TENNESSEE.)

Instead, according to the Raleigh News & Observer, the North Carolina Senate approved a bill to allow local school boards to convert 135 low-performing schools into "charter-like" schools. The bill does not raise the statewide cap of 100 charter schools. Every Republican present in the Senate voted against the bill because the new schools would be under the control of the same local school boards that allowed them to fail in the first place.

This maneuver by Perdue, State Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson, and the Democrats in the state House and Senate is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. There was NOTHING preventing school districts from already doing everything in the "charter-like" schools legislation. This "compromise" is designed to pacify the school boards, superintendents, and the NC Association of Educators, all of whom oppose charter schools. When a charter school opens, the children who enroll in it are removed from the local school district monopoly. The BOE and superintendent have zero control over the school's mission, vision, hiring practices, and, most importantly, funding. A secondary reason for the legislation is to try to position NC to qualify for Race to the Top. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education have already passed over NC because of its historical hostility to charter schools and, one might reasonably speculate, the state government's close relationship with NCAE, the School Boards Association, and the NC Association of School Administrators.

Gov. Perdue, a former teacher and a Democrat, supported the Senate bill, which the House had already passed. “This is about doing what's right for our kids," Perdue said in a statement. "It will strengthen North Carolina's goal for making all schools successful and making sure all students receive a quality education." This is a lie, pure and simple. What this bill is actually designed to do is lock up the education establishment's support for Perdue's re-election bid.

Perdue is in the pocket of the school boards and school superintendents associations. "Charter-like" = local BOE and superintendents retain the money and the control. This is not true reform, but an effort to perpetuate the failing public school district monopoly. The BOEs and the superintendents are the very people who are responsible for the horrendous graduation rates in school districts with low student achievement outcomes. How on earth can a logical person say with a straight face that giving those snarling foxes the only key to the public school henhouse is "reform"?

John Hood of the John Locke Foundation says it best: Perdue's statement would be true "if [the education lobbies'] true goals were to satisfy parental preferences, increase student achievement, and boost the state’s woeful graduation rate. Because their goal was really to protect the powers and jobs of the education establishment, however, then adopting the pretense rather than the reality of reform was required."

North Carolina has more National Board Certified Teachers than all the rest of the U.S. states combined. We invented the term "education governor" when we elected James B. Hunt, Jr. Yet we did not qualify for the first round of Race to the Top funding. We sat on our thumbs and lied to the interview committee from the U.S. Department of Education. Both Gov. Perdue and State Supt. Atkinson answered "Yes" when asked if NC treats charter schools equally to district schools, even as the state Attorney General's office drags its feet on issuing funding that charter schools had to sue for.

This Democrat for Education Reform will NEVER cast a vote for Bev Perdue! Lift the cap on charter schools, and lift it now. Get our public schools' neck out from under the boot of the school boards, superintendents, and NCAE.