More Red Tape for Virtual Charter Schools
The Oregon legislature is once again increasing the web of red tape for Oregon’s virtual charter schools via House Bill 3660. Last year, the legislature passed a two-year moratorium on virtual schools. It capped enrollment and temporarily forbade future waivers from a misguided regulation requiring half of charter school students to live in the school’s home district. The regulation limits the power of virtual education to help students everywhere.House Bill 3660 feels a bit like extortion for parents who support school choice. On one hand, the bill holds some essential provisions that will allow virtual schools to plan for the future by applying for waivers prior to the moratorium’s expiration. It also protects the Oregon Virtual Academy from losing a significant portion of its enrollment due to poor wording in last year’s bill.
However, the bill heaps new, substantial burdens on all virtual charter schools, needlessly increasing reporting and licensure requirements, among other things. What have these charter schools done to deserve such treatment? They have grown quickly and excelled.
While the legislature has squabbled about which new burdens to heap onto Oregon’s successful charter schools, many parents have had their choice of a charter school denied or delayed, as current schools have reached their enrollment cap for certain grades. Why is the legislature continuing to limit parents’ educational options for their children?
Christina Martin is a policy analyst for the School Choice Project at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon's free market public policy research organization.
While the legislature has squabbled about which new burdens to heap onto Oregon’s successful charter schools, many parents have had their choice of a charter school denied or delayed, as current schools have reached their enrollment cap for certain grades. Why is the legislature continuing to limit parents’ educational options for their children?
Christina Martin is a policy analyst for the School Choice Project at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon's free market public policy research organization.
Can you say OEA ?? It doesn't matter what's good for the kids as long as the membership is protected.
It's a sickening abuse of power by the unions and a sickening act of cowardice by the legislature.
This regulation is hardly misguided.
Assigning students to a school by virtue of where they live, rather than where they would wish to attend is the lynchpin of teachers union power.
If the pen is mightier than the sword, then people voting with their feet is the nuclear option. If students are allowed to attend the school they want then it becomes a non debatable point which schools, and more importantly which teachers, are the weak link in the chain.
No one joins a union because they want to stand out, be accountable or love responsibility. Indeed the opposite of those motivations is exactly the reason for a unions existence. Unions are not instituted because those who excel are worried about pay and job security. Unions are formed to protect the lesser talented, the mediocre and the incompetent through group action. Likewise no employer fears loss of the incompetant in a job action, but rather the few who are worth something walking off the job with them.
Having students able to vote with their feet eliminates this concern. Once that happens the incompetent become easily distinguishable from the able. Their empty schools would be testament to it and parents wouldn't stand for them being reassigned based on seniority when they had already screwed up one school.
"I didn't do it" is the refrain young children often give when something goes wrong. It begins to become trying in young adult hood and most give it up. It it, however, the key to unionization. Responsibility is assigned by seniority competence and responsibility, the antithesis of "I didn't do it", never enter the picture. In short, union seniority is gained by effective use of "I didn't do it".
Thus we now see whole school districts scared to death of students voting with their feet. "I didn't do it" gave those teachers the seniority they needed to hold onto their schools with no accountability, no answering for the results.
There is only way to give the parents effective counter to the unions "I didn't do it", that counter being parents and children looking back over their shoulder as they walk away "I don't care anymore who did it"