"PASS SB 388"
URGES THE MARYLAND TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION;
EMPOWER PARENTS TO BRING PERFORMANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY
INTO THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM THROUGH CHARTER SCHOOLS

Prepared Testimony of
MTA President Dee Hodges
to the
Maryland Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee
February 6, 2003

Chairman Hollinger, Senator Greenip, and members of the committee, I am Dee Hodges, president of the Maryland Taxpayers Association http://www.mdtaxes.org/

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 suffer from the failure of their schools to transmit our priceless heritage of freedom and self-government.

A serious knowledge of our history and of the details of our government and how it really works is essential 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.

Public charter schools will not cure all school problems, but they will give parents and community groups the power to take remedial steps immediately to bring children traditional academic skills in a safe, pleasant environment.

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

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.

But first, Chairman Hollinger and Maryland senators, your committee should move to the Senate floor a strong charter school bill with these essentials:
· 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 regulatory rollback, pledges to be in the forefront of helping this union of Maryland parents.