Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte and David Randall, director of communications for the National Association of Scholars. To read their full exchange, please visit .
Dear Harry and friends,
I need help thinking through the issue of choice in public education. It affects my views about charters, of course, but after all most of the schools I鈥檝e had a large influence on have been schools of choice. Naturally I鈥檓 exaggerating a little since I was deeply involved in my own three children鈥檚 neighborhood elementary and middle school, and then on my local school board. And for two years I worked with clusters of teachers in Manhattan neighborhood schools who, with support of a sort from their principals, were interested in changing their practice鈥攂oth inside their classrooms and with their colleagues. It was called the Open Corridor program, under Lillian Weber鈥檚 leadership. It had an impact on many schools although usually it didn鈥檛 have long term impact on most鈥攁nd was usually limited to a few corridors of practitioners.
It was in frustration that I leaped at the chance to start a school from scratch with some colleagues connected with Lillian Weber鈥檚 City College Workshop Center. Tony Alvarado鈥檚 invitation to come to East Harlem and to be one of two starting efforts to change the district by introducing new schools of choice to add to the existing neighborhood schools. This was during NYC鈥檚 short-lived decentralization period (which didn鈥檛 include any high schools), so Alvarado had a lot of freedom.
The school, Central Park East, was followed by many more, including two more CPE鈥檚. I was untroubled about choice鈥攁lthough Lillian Weber was concerned about it. It enabled us to show what could be done with almost entirely low-income Black and Latino children whose families chose us for many reasons, least of all because of their knowledge about and support for what we then called 鈥渙pen education鈥�. When Alvarado wanted us to add white children鈥攑artly for fiscal reasons and partly to fill up more space鈥攚e did so and were pleased by that too. It seemed useful to demonstrate that a school with a wide range of social class, racial, ethnic and academic skill could work well together and each feel they were being well served. District 4鈥檚 example spread throughout the city, and was adopted by most NYC reformers. Small schools of choice popped up everywhere. My ventures in Boston鈥攚ith the Pilot program鈥攚as in many ways a continuation of this same work.
It was the proliferation of charters that made me pause and worry about how choice could work against the values I was presumably promoting. Small schools of choice soon became a way of resegregating where integration had begun to be practiced. It also pitted teachers and parents against each other as they were asked to share limited space. And, soon it began to seem as though it was also a way of dividing a community鈥檚 efforts at improving all their schools. Bus trips to Albany were conducted by competing groups with competing external sponsors鈥攕erving however the same community. And, of course, sometimes families were attending schools in districts where they didn鈥檛 live and in the process, some districts lost valuable parent leaders and activists who solved their personal interests without tackling the larger dilemmas facing their neighbors.
Yet, it was this chance to do 鈥渙ur own thing鈥� that opened up to the larger world some evidence about what could work for all children, not just for 鈥渢hose鈥� vs 鈥渢hese鈥� ones. It brought progressive education into communities that had not otherwise known that it was an alternative possibility. And of course, it was a learning experience not only for parents and students but for the teachers and student teachers and all the others who came into our school communities.
Now that the wave of progressive alternatives has waned, and the charters that seemed at first to be simply another version of our work, have become chains with a self-interest in replacing, not improving public education鈥擨鈥檓 rethinking the whole issue.
Is there a way to have the best of both? Is here a way that choice can be a catalyst for community organizing, not a distraction?
So I鈥檝e come to you, Harry, for helping me sort out these issues.
Deb