Taking Its Customers for Granted

In 1990,Ted Kolderie, one of the designers of the country's first charter legislation, wrote a manuscript entitled The States Will Have to Withdraw. The following excerpt aptly describes the current state of Nebraska's K12 educational structure.

"The state does not deal with schools; it deals with districts. Legally schools do not exist: Districts exist. The district is defined by its boundaries. These create an area in which there is one and only one organization offering public education, to whose schools the kids who live in that area are assigned. Public education is organized as a pattern of territorial exclusive franchises."

"That exclusive franchise is the heart of the problem.

• It means the state agrees the district will have the final decision about improvement. Governors and legislators like to talk as if they control improvement. They don't. They can propose and promise, plead and threaten. They can give money. They can issue orders. And often the districts do respond. But whether they do or not in the end is up to them. If the district does not give the kids a good education the state does not send in another organization that will. It accepts the pace of improvement at which the district is able or willing to move.
• The state also agrees to accept whatever reasons the district has for it decision to change or not to change, even if those reasons have to do mainly with the private and personal interests of the adults involved, as they sometimes do.
• And the state agrees to accept those decisions and the reasons for them, whether or not the students learn. Within very broad limits the state assures the districts their material success--their existence, their students, their revenues, their security; everything except their annual increases--independent of the level of student success."

"Nobody should wonder why in public education "the cards are stacked against innovation." An organization with that kind of exclusive franchise feels no need to change. . ."

. . ."The risks are real. There is nothing countervailing: nothing that requires kids' interests to be put first; nothing very bad that will happen if the decision is to say 'no.' As things stand a 'no' is the end of the matter: The principal who wants to change has nowhere else to go; the teacher has nowhere else to go; parents and students have nowhere else to go."

"There is almost nothing anyone can change without getting someone else's permission. Yet almost everyone has the power to check everyone else."

"And practically nothing depends on making the improvements for which the public is pressing: clear objectives, measurement of performance, new technology or better learning methods."

"Unless something quite unusual happens the students and the revenues will be there anyway. Good educators tell their colleagues, 'We have to change.' But that is not true in any real sense. They do not have to."

"The kids get what altruism, courage and the random appearance of exceptional individuals provide in the way of improvement--which is often a lot. But the system puts them second. The system puts adults first. As Albert Shanker told the Itasca Seminar in Minnesota in 1988: 'This is a system that can take its customers for granted.'"

In 1991, Minnesota legislators chose to do something about their system, which took "its customers for granted." They passed charter school legislation, providing choice and accountability within the public school system. In the years since, nearly every other state in the country has made the same realization and made reforms that will put kids first and adults second. And yet, here in Nebraska, we still have a system that "can take its customers for granted."

In fact, in Lincoln, public school officials take this to an extreme by hiring "consultants" to insult and harass parents and citizens who express desires for the reform. To add insult to injury, these "consultants" are hired with our tax dollars: We pay people to harass us for wanting the educational options available to families across the country. This will continue as long as we allow it. Contact your state legislator and explain that school choice is long overdue in Nebraska. It's time to put children first.