Today, I watched the House Education & Labor Committee hold a hearing to discuss charter school education, discussing best practices and what more can be done. The hearing was progressing very nicely, with the various panelists describing the programs they support and the charter schools they work with. Eventually, some Democratic members began barraging the panelists with accusatory questions.
Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) and others began questioning the panelists as to why they have chosen to implement these innovative practices in institutions that serve 2%-6% of the student population, rather than implementing the same policies in the public school system. Many panelists did what they could to try and explain the situations, noting that they have more freedom and more room to move free of the bureaucratic nonsense that accompanies the public education system here in the United States. Finally, Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) made it clear that these members of the Committee were simply not interested in anything the witnesses had to say.
Tierney called out every member of the panel by acknowledging the good they have done, but accusing them of abandoning public school children by limiting their work to charter schools. Tierney claimed that these witnesses were taking the easy way out by refusing to work in public schools. My general outrage of the hypocrisy involved in his statements began to boil. He kept asking that if these policies worked in charter schools, why weren't the panelists working to implement them in the public schools? Finally, logic and reason entered into the equation from the least likely source.
Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) finally stood up for the panel, telling Tierney and the others that to assume that individuals could cut through the bureaucratic red tape that plagues public school systems, and implement these practices in a timely manner only went to show the members' lack of understanding about our public education system. Any attempt to implement these policies would take years of debate and nonsense, with no guarantee of success. If the U.S. Congress wants to see these kinds of practices in public schools, they have to give those schools the freedom to embrace innovative tendencies. With the rigid guidelines and requirements of federal education law, such as No Child Left Behind, public schools cannot afford to take risks and try new ideas, for fear of failing to meet the arbitrary benchmarks set by Congress.
Congress needs to pull itself out of the classroom, and give teachers and administrators the freedom to decide what works best for their students. It is the teacher in the classroom that can best decide what works when it comes to teaching her students, not a politician in Washington. So, Rep. Tierney and his colleagues in Congress will have to get out of the way before public schools can even hope to move forward. Just another example of how Politicians in Washington spend too much time pointing fingers, and not enough time helping to solve the problem.
