It looks like my favorite retired college professors are back. Back in 2005, I posted a rant about an LA Daily News opinion piece by Ralph E. Shaffer and Walter P. Coombs, retired Cal Poly Pomona professors. In their opinion piece, Ralph and Walter cited examples of teachers being mistreated from the 1800's and early 1900's as justification for the need for tenure. I felt their examples were simply too old to have merit. Walter posted a comment and called me a "wilfully [sic] uninformed political hack."

This exchange was brought to my memory today when I saw this LA Times opinion piece by Ralph and Walter regarding charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. As you'd expect, we don't agree on this issue.

In the piece, they describe huge problems with a few charter schools. Regarding those specific schools, I agree with them. I agree with their opinion regarding the Academia Semillas del Pueblo charter school. I agree with Ralph and Walter that there is no way the charter for this school, which has shown no academic improvement in 5 years, should have been renewed. It was particularly odd given that in the same meeting they rejected proposals from Green Dot Public Schools who actually had some data to show improvement. I share their concerns regarding Accelerated School's use of Yoga Education and defaulting on a loan, as well as the accusations that the Gorman Charter had significant financial issues.

They conclude with this:

Charter mania won't end soon. Too many advocates benefit from the system. Leftists see charters as a way to promote their agenda. Right-wingers use them to advance 19th century educational theories.

But in our zeal to try something new, we've created a competing educational system that is largely unregulated and potentially disastrous. Turning over our schools to self-proclaimed reformers and for-profit business is a sure-fire way to end California's proud history of free, universal public education.

I find it amusing that Ralph and Walter complained in 2005 that I was attacking all teachers with my suggestion that there are bad teachers. Yet, they appear to draw the conclusion that all charter schools are bad based on the problems with a few bad apples. There are good successful charter schools and there are badly managed charters with terrible curricula which repeatedly fail their students. The same can be said of traditional public schools.

The LAUSD board's appalling decision to renew the charter of a failing school shouldn't be used to indict the entire charter school system. That should be an indictment of the LAUSD board. The solution to this problem isn't to stop creating new charter schools. The solution is to give schools consequences for failure.

All public schools, charter or traditional, should face consequences, including closure for repeatedly failing to show significant academic progress. The students at these failing schools deserve an adequate education. How can they receive that when their schools fail to educate them year after year without any intervention from the California Department of Education or the US Department of Education. These failing schools have no incentive to improve. In fact, they actually have incentives to continue their poor performance in order to be eligible for programs which provide additional funding to low-performing schools.

Eliminating charter schools isn't going to improve public education. Charter schools aren't responsible for ending "California's proud history of free, universal public education". That damage is being done by teacher unions who protect bad teachers from termination and by a bureaucracy which protects consistently failing schools from real consequences or reform.