Pass HB 859-Charter Schools, Richard Falknor, 3-6-03

Maryland Taxpayers Association, Inc.
"Building an Opportunity Society for Every Marylander"

"PASS HB 859"
URGES THE MARYLAND TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION:
EMPOWER PARENTS TO BRING PERFORMANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY
INTO THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYTEM THROUGH CHARTER SCHOOLS

Testimony submitted for the record by
MTA Vice President Richard Falknor to the
Maryland House of Delegates Ways and Means Committee
March 6, 2003

Chairman Hixson, Sponsor Redmer, and members of the committee, I am Richard Falknor, vice president of the Maryland Taxpayers Association http://www.mdtaxes.org/ I am also a member of the Maryland Charter School Network.

The Maryland Taxpayers Association, our statewide non-partisan grass-roots volunteer organization, strongly supports this courageous Ehrlich-Steele initiative that carries the promise of transforming our weakly performing school system into avenues of hope and achievement for Maryland families.

The Baltimore Sun's Gregory Kane said it best a year ago when he wrote:

"Charter schools are public schools liberated from the pedagogical bureaucracy that passes for effective administration in most places."

Last year the Heritage Foundation's Krista Kafer testified to the General Assembly:

"Maryland's children deserve access to schools of excellence. Yet, not all of Maryland's children attend a quality school. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, almost three quarters of Maryland's fourth and eighth graders were not proficient on the most recent math, science, and reading tests. The news is even bleaker for low-income children, over half of whom cannot read or perform mathematics at even a basic level."

While the poor are most vulnerable to indifferent schools where learning and a stimulating classroom invariably come in second place to administration and employee convenience, too many Maryland public school students from all walks of life suffer from the failure of their schools to transmit our priceless heritage of freedom and self-government.

Restore Civic Education

A serious knowledge of our history and of the details of our government and how it really works are keys to maintaining our freedom and our prosperity. Many public school teachers themselves are apparently unable to teach students to write about factual history and government in a systematic way that gives students the research and writing tools that they can take with them throughout life.

Historian Victor Hanson Davis wrote in City Journal last summer:

"The victories of World War II, the reconstruction of Europe, the containment of communism, and the painful effort to ensure racial and sexual equality of opportunity here at home would have been impossible without a united America sure of what it was and aware of what it must do. Yet that self-confidence has largely vanished from our primary schools, and civic education has declined in tandem, as we sense from the national discourse since September 11. It is not just that millions of Americans do not fully understand the brilliantly crafted mechanics of their own government or the seminal events of their history-57 percent of American high school students are now deemed "not proficient" in basic history; worse, they have little idea of what it means to be an American."

Existing public schools burdened with union and school-board imperatives are far removed from the concerns of public charter school parents.

Put Teaching, Not Union Organizing First

The growing home-school system and the kind of scholarships for poor families made available by the Children's Scholarship Fund are other vital ingredients in a citizen-controlled partnership of Maryland schools that puts teaching and learning before all else.

This emerging partnership is one we should try to foster.

Don't Hamstring the Program

But first, Chairman Hixson and Maryland delegates, your committee should move to the House floor a strong bill with these essentials for charter schools

legal and operational autonomy;
full funding and fiscal autonomy;
no limits on the number of schools that may be formed;
allowing new schools, as well as existing public school conversions; and
exempting charters from collective bargaining agreements and district work rules.

We would also want to ensure that charter schools could, in their sole discretion and judgment, hire part or full-time teachers having substantial academic achievement or experience or both:

a lawyer with a long record of court-room litigation in constitutional and administrative law issues should be "allowed" to teach high school civics and history in Maryland public charter schools;
a retired or serving military officer with an electrical engineering degree and a long record of training junior officers and enlisted men and women in complex technical skills should be "allowed" to teach high school science in Maryland public charter schools;
a summa or a magna in classics or humanities from Harvard or Berkeley who had taught college freshman as a teaching assistant should be "allowed" to teach English in Maryland public charter schools.

Again, Gregory Kane said it over a year ago:

Maryland's parents may continue to wait -- unless they form a union of their own and visit Annapolis during the first four months of each year to show senators their voting power.

The Maryland Taxpayers Association, with its goal of an "opportunity society" through low taxes and regulatory rollback, pledges to be in the forefront of helping this Union of Maryland Parents.

The Maryland Taxpayers Association http://www.mdtaxes.org/ is the Free State's non-profit, non-partisan, state-wide, grass-roots voice for Maryland taxpayers.

MTA asks Maryland elected officials for their pledge not to raise taxes, and acts to make Maryland government more efficient.