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School choice moving center stage in Jefferson City

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 28, 2011 - What comes to mind when you hear the word "cartel"?

You may think first of oil barons or drug lords, but if you had been part of the audience at a screening of a documentary at the Tivoli Thursday night, a new image would be added: public school classrooms.

The showing of the movie "The Cartel" came during a week in which public education has been in the spotlight, from President Barack Obama's State of the Union address to the release of the latest lackluster national report card science grades to observance of National School Choice Week.

Greater choice for students and their parents in Missouri was the lesson plan for the screening, which was sponsored by the Show-Me Institute. After the movie, which concentrated on schools in New Jersey, two members of the Missouri House committee on elementary and secondary education tried to bring the lesson home.

"I think it's ludicrous that we even have a school district system," said Rep. Scott Dieckhaus, R-Washington, a former public school teacher who chairs the committee. "I think it's a backward-thinking system."

Rep. Tishaura Jones, D-St. Louis, didn't go quite that far, but she did say the basic structure of the school system and the school day need to be rethought and brought into the 21st century.

"I don't know why we can't start thinking out of the box and be innovative," she said, "like we have been in other areas."

Like other education documentaries released in recent months, such as "Waiting for Superman" and "The Lottery," "The Cartel" takes aim at what it considers to be the monopoly that public school districts have on education - and a poorly performing monopoly at that.

Reporter/director Bob Bowdon goes through a familiar litany - low test scores, high administrative costs, corruption, nepotism and the two topics that receive the most time and tend to most raise an audience's blood pressure, teachers' unions and the lack of choice.

Bowdon drives his point home with shots of luxury cars in school administrators' parking lots and animated graphics that wonder what it would be like if auto sales were handled like school assignments, so people in one neighborhood would get great rides and those in another would be stuck with Yugos (a reference he has to explain for younger viewers).

The questions he asks are increasingly dominating public discussion of education:

  • Why should families who want to pick a charter school have to hold their breath while lottery numbers determine their future?
  • Why is such a small percentage of teachers drummed out of the classroom?
  • Why does so much taxpayer money disappear "down a rat hole," with little accountability and poor student performance?
  • And the bottom line question: Why not open education to the same kind of competition that other industries face, so that good schools thrive and bad ones disappear?

Could the same kinds of problems depicted in New Jersey be found in Missouri? Jones and Dieckhaus said they probably could, and they came up with a number of solutions they expect the Legislature to consider this year to try to break the cartel and make better schools more available for more students.

Dieckhaus said he is aiming at ending social promotion, where students move up through the system regardless of how much they have learned. "We shouldn't be pushing kids through the process who can't perform at grade level," he said.

He also said he would favor removing teacher tenure, to make it easier to get rid of bad teachers; allowing open enrollment, so students could attend whatever public school they want to attend; and offering vouchers that could be used at public, private or parochial schools.

Dieckhaus further likes an idea now in use in California, called a "trigger," under which parents can force changes in low-performing schools if 51 percent of the parents whose children attend that school sign a petition seeking reforms. Rep. Tim Jones, R-Eureka, the House majority floor leader, says he will introduce legislation for a Missouri trigger provision next week.

Pointing out that Missourians have the choice of where to buy their gasoline or their groceries, and who will provide their cell phone service, Dieckhaus said similar options should be available for where they send their children to school. "Why don't we have that kind of choice in education?"

Tishaura Jones, who noted that she is a single mother with a 3-year-old son in private school, said she would introduce legislation to expand charter schools statewide; currently, Missouri allows charters only in St. Louis and Kansas City.

But along with the expansion, she said, Jones wants to make sure charters are more accountable. "Charter schools that are not doing what they should for our children should be closed," she said.

Dieckhaus said that the power of teachers' unions in Missouri has to be curbed.

"To get any work done," he said, "I sometimes have to leave my office because otherwise I have people coming by all day to tell me how horrible my ideas are.

"We need to look at what ultimately is best for kids. Are we doing what is best for kids, or are we doing what is best for teachers or superintendents?"

The ideas presented by "The Cartel" may not be new, but that doesn't mean they have lost their ability to stir emotions. Jones noted that the screening at the Tivoli was not the first time she had seen the film; Dieckhaus had given her a copy to view in advance, she said, so she wouldn't be shocked by what she saw.

"It didn't work," Jones added. "I was shocked again."

Dale Singer began his career in professional journalism in 1969 by talking his way into a summer vacation replacement job at the now-defunct United Press International bureau in St. Louis; he later joined UPI full-time in 1972. Eight years later, he moved to the Post-Dispatch, where for the next 28-plus years he was a business reporter and editor, a Metro reporter specializing in education, assistant editor of the Editorial Page for 10 years and finally news editor of the newspaper's website. In September of 2008, he joined the staff of the Beacon, where he reported primarily on education. In addition to practicing journalism, Dale has been an adjunct professor at University College at Washington U. He and his wife live in west St. Louis County with their spoiled Bichon, Teddy. They have two adult daughters, who have followed them into the word business as a communications manager and a website editor, and three grandchildren. Dale reported for St. Louis Public Radio from 2013 to 2016.