Newsflash: Bob Braun, the columnist for the Star-Ledger, a staunch opponent of school choice, agrees with me. He just published a piece that castigates Gov. Christie for his bone-headed suggestion that NJ have a public vote on gay marriage. Braun labels it “hypocrisy” for the Governor to support a vote on a civil rights issue, a thinly-veiled political calculation based on the premise that because same-sex marriage affects a minority of voters, such a referendum won’t pass, while not supporting a controversial bill that would mandate votes on proposed charter schools.
The Governor’s stance is certainly inconsistent (nice Emerson quote from Braun as a bonus). How can you support a vote on one civil rights issue – same-sex marriage – but oppose the same strategy for another civil rights issue, access to a functional school system?
(My earlier takes here and here.)
Braun then quotes Carlos Perez, head of New Jersey Charter Schools Association, who explained to the State Assembly why the law would doom all charters, gratuitously slaps Sen. Teresa Ruiz (who just released an updated version of her tenure reform bill), and then segues to a compromise bill floating around the Statehouse that would mandate public votes only on charter schools in suburbs. Urban charters, i.e., non-traditional public schools in poor neighborhoods – would get a bye from public approval.
Such a compromise would probably satisfy the loudest supporters of a public vote on charters; their constituencies are primarily in the suburbs. And there’s a refreshing lack of pretense in such a differentiation between our largely successful suburban schools and our largely unsuccessful poor urban ones.
On the other hand, such a compromise would carve into law, as Trenton School Board President Rev. Toby Sanders explains, a return to “separate but equal,” a reversal of Brown vs. Board of Education. Sanders: “It would treat communities where the residents are brown and black differently from communities where most residents are white. It would set back civil rights.”
It’s also not clear how such a compromise bill would work. We already label our lowest-performing districts as “Abbotts,” so supposedly this bill would exempt these 31 districts from public votes on charter proposals. But what about non-Abbott districts that are also chronically underperforming?
One such category is the 16 “Bacon” districts – poor districts in South Jersey – which have joined in a lawsuit to challenge the NJ DOE for inadequate funding. (See here for details.) They’re the Abbotts of rural NJ. Are they also separated out from the rest of the state in matters of charter school votes?
What about districts that are neither Abbots nor Bacons, but are still poor and chronically failing? (Willingboro comes to mind.) Will they operate under separate rules?
The compromise bill offers more problems than solutions. And, in the end, Braun gets it right: civil rights issues, whether you’re talking same-sex marriage or access to a functional education system, don’t belong on ballots.
