Timidity, Reactionaries, and Reform

A Retired Tennis Player Leads By Example

A couple of years ago the NZ government launched a pilot programme of charter schools.  It was bold stuff.  A large number of charter schools easily counted on the fingers of one hand were run down the slipway into Lake Education. The education establishment erupted--in horror.  Its world was coming to an end.

The loudest accusation was that charter schools were far, far more expensive than state schools both to establish and run.  Wrong in both cases, but never let the facts get in the way of a good story, particular amidst a splenetic eruption.  (Incidentally, that particular canard has looked decidedly shonky in recent days when the latest government budgets costing for a new government school is over $20m--more than the entire budget for establishing a handful of charter schools.) 

The fact is the educational establishment is a reactionary beast.  There are only two planks which it does not oppose reflexively: anything that gives more money for teachers, on the one hand, and any policy which reduces teacher and school accountability, on the other.  Anything else is eeeeeevil.

The NZ government's foray into charter schools has been both timid and statist.
  It has put so many rules and regulations, compliance and inspection regimes in place that few would be bothered.  We consequently expect that charter schools in New Zealand will morph into just another state school variant.  Fundamentally successive New Zealand governments have failed to grasp that education is not a religious service.  It is an economic service, part of the service economy.  State controls, let alone monopoly ownership, is inimical to improvement and rising standards of quality under competitive pressure.  New Zealand governments just don't get it. Education, in their troglodyte mindset, is sacred and holy.  It must not be touched by dirty commerce. 

In the light of this background, it is somewhat pleasantly surprising that the NZ Herald carried a piece recently on the successful charter schools started in the US by Andre Agassi, retired tennis champion.

His campaign began 14 years ago, with the establishment of the Andre Agassi Preparatory Academy in a run-down part of Las Vegas, and is still expanding.  By the end of this year, Agassi hopes to have extended his tally of charter schools (which are similar in spirit to our own free schools) to more than 100, spread from Nevada to Tennessee.

"The USA has dropped to 29th in the world when it comes to educating our children," Agassi told The Daily Telegraph. "The demand for good schooling is huge, but the infrastructure is not there.  Rather than wait for the government to do the job, I wanted to create a model that would be scalable and sustainable.  The idea is to find partners on each job, investors who aren't looking to give their money away, but neither do they insist on having an annual return of 20 per cent.  I'm in an exciting place where I can raise $175 million of funding in 15 minutes of phone calls, and the total we have gathered so far is well north of $1 billion." . . .

The Agassi charter schools have been remarkably successful.  Let's hope similar philanthropy will emerge in New Zealand, to make the government more and more redundant in the education service sector.  We suspect that the current official approach to charter schools will fail to attract wealthy donors. Far too much of their money would be burnt up perpetually reporting to the Ministry of Education.