Education reform overcoming obstacles
By Charles D. Chieppo

    The Supreme Judicial Court's dismissal of the Hancock school finance case is the latest indication that real education reform is beginning to take hold in Massachusetts. And supporters of the status quo, who for so long succeeded at demanding more money in return for no accountability, are beside themselves.

     A long road still lies ahead. The passing grade on the MCAS exam must be raised, school leaders need more management flexibility and the state should intervene more aggressively in underperforming schools. But it's clear that accountability and standards-based reform are gaining wider acceptance.

   Chronically underperforming schools were the topic last week at a Pioneer Institute forum that became a battleground in the fight between a tired status quo and real reform.

 Harvard professor Paul Peterson described the importance of tying teacher pay to student performance, differential pay for teachers in hard-to-find subjects like science, holding schools accountable, and - most terrifying to the status quo - the success of Milwaukee's policy of giving vouchers to poor and working-class students that can be used at the public, private or parochial school of their choice.

  Peterson made a compelling case for the corrosive impact that decades of treating everyone the same, regardless of performance, has had on public education.

     Some 30 years ago, 24 percent of female public school teachers scored in the top 10th on achievement tests. By 2000, the number was down to 11 percent. That comes as no surprise when you learn that in 1963 women who entered teaching from a selective college were paid about twice as much as those from a bottom-tier college. Today each is paid the same.

   Another panelist, Boston Teachers Union head Richard Stutman, must have felt the education establishment's power slipping. How else to explain why he would resort to making things up.

     First he made the absurd claim that half the charter public school students in Boston had transferred from private or parochial schools, meaning taxpayers were now footing the bill for students who were previously at private schools. Aside from the fact that we have long bemoaned the loss of students to private schools, the Department of Education doesn't compile this data.

 Next, he proudly noted that his daughter attends Boston's Washington Irving Middle School and disagreed with its status as ``underperforming'' school. He said 30 Washington Irving students had been accepted to Boston Latin School.

 The percentage of Washington Irving students scoring in the advanced category on MCAS was less than a third of the state average and the percentage scoring proficient was less than half. The school is on the federal restructuring list. Best of all was when he claimed Boston Collegiate Charter School had no special ed students. As the only non-exam school in the city at which every student passed the 10th-grade MCAS exam each of the last two years, Boston Collegiate is particularly threatening to the education establishment.

In fact, 17 percent of Boston Collegiate students receive special ed services. About 12 percent have individualized education plans; another 5 percent are less severe, but still receive services.

Stutman is not alone in the hall of shame. Arlington School Committee chairman and past president of the Mass. Association of School Committees Paul Schlictman unveiled a Web site devoted to charter school bashing. The address: gravysuckingpigs.org. His parents must be so proud. These tactics are unfortunate, but every cloud has a silver lining. Becoming increasingly shrill and making things up out of thin air are sure signs that reform opponents' control over state education policy is slipping away. It's about time.