The Projo’s Unintentionally Informative Juxtaposition of the Day

The online headline of Linda Borg’s article in today's Projo announces one community’s goal for education…

In Central Falls, the goal is getting pupils to read better.

…which, despite its seeming obviousness, is a goal that according to a companion article written by Jennifer D. Jordan is a bit different from what is emphasized by the National Education Association…

Charter schools are taxpayer-financed public schools that operate free of many of the restrictions of regular public schools. Charters often offer smaller class sizes, require students to wear uniforms, encourage parent involvement and provide a longer school day. State education officials say charters provide choice to low-income students, and can produce innovative approaches that school districts can replicate.

But the National Education Association of Rhode Island disagrees, saying charter schools siphon away badly needed resources from the public school system.

Got that? According to the NEA, providing money to “taxpayer-financed public schools” is taking money away from the “public school system”. Not all students in public schools are entitled to public funding according to the union’s logic, because only students in schools managed by a particular form of bureaucracy should be entitled to public money. This rationale unequivocally elevates the imposition of a particular bureaucratic form on Rhode Island students ahead of more fundamental educational goals of the kind mentioned in Linda Borg’s story, i.e. teaching students to read.

Fortunately, in a ray of hope for Rhode Island, State Education Commissioner Deborah Gist offers a clear statement on the absurdity of an educational philosophy that emphasizes funding bureaucracies instead of funding public-school students…

“Ideally, as a state, we will be working to implement a funding formula, so that taxpayer investment in a child’s education is based on the student, whatever public school that child attends — regular or charter,” Gist said.

One final note: Compared to prior Projo offerings on the same subject, Jennifer Jordan makes a little progress on properly explaining to the public the relationship between the “funding formula” and charter schools. Instead of the voice of the omniscient journalistic narrator telling us that Rhode Island’s lack of a “funding formula” implies that are taxpayers paying “extra” for public charter schools as occurred this past June, today's article attributes this idea only to the “critics of charters”. And the “critics of charters", of course, continue to be wrong on this issue, as they always have been, because…

You can direct money just as easily -- maybe more easily -- to charter schools through use a "funding formula" than you can without one. Or you could decide not to fund charters, without implementing a "funding formula". Either way, the decision by a state to fund or not fund charter schools precedes the creation of a "funding formula"; the formula only implements a policy decision that's already been made.