WE’RE ABOUT to see a crucial test on education reform.
We’ll learn what’s truly important to the Massachusetts Legislature: offering families more choices, catalyzing educational innovation, and tackling underperforming schools - or placating the teachers unions.
Setting the stage for that battle is sweeping legislation just unveiled by Representative Marty Walz and Senator Rob O’Leary, the House and Senate chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Education.
Building on Governor Deval Patrick’s education proposal, the two have produced an impressive reform bill, one that would put Massachusetts squarely in the hunt for several hundred million in federal Race to the Top dollars.
“It is a very positive development,’’ says Secretary of Education Paul Reville. “This would enable us to be competitive for Race to the Top both on the grounds of charter schools and on innovation.’’
“It is a great piece of work,’’ agrees Paul Grogan, who as president of the Boston Foundation has pushed hard to improve urban education.
In broad strokes, the bill would do three things.
It would authorize new “innovation’’ schools, whose mission plans could free them from many of the bureaucratic encumbrances that limit traditional schools, and establish a predictable process for creating those schools from scratch or by converting existing schools.
It would give superintendents and the state commissioner of education broad powers to reform up to 92 of the worst-performing schools in the state at any one time.
It would eliminate or loosen most of the caps that now restrict charter schools. The overall limit of 72 Commonwealth (initially nonunionized) charter schools and 48 Horace Mann (unionized) charters would be eliminated. Also nixed would be the stricture that no more than 4 percent of students statewide can be enrolled in charters. In the state’s 29 worst-performing districts, the amount of school spending that could go to charters would gradually double, from 9 to 18 percent.
Over time, that would mean thousands of new charter-school slots, and not just in poorly performing districts.
Indeed, the hope is to usher in a competitive dynamic in education. A host of new charters would offer families many more education options. But innovation schools would give the traditional system more flexibility to respond to charter competition.
“We have to drive districts to innovate more so the mediocre schools can become good schools and the good schools can become even better,’’ says Walz.
Where unions lose significant power is in underperforming and chronically underperforming schools. Superintendents or the state education commissioner would have enhanced ability to force the modification of contracts and to replace teachers, principals, and staff there. Teachers not retained at those schools would have a year to improve their skills and find a new position elsewhere, but would lose bumping rights, which let them take the job of a less-senior instructor.
“In those schools that are failing over a long period, we have to address the needs of the children first and foremost, even if it means some dramatic changes,’’ says O’Leary.
The bill isn’t perfect. In particular, the Legislature needs to be careful about tinkering too much with a successful charter-school model. Overall though, the measure is very good.
But the unions, whose principal mission is to protect their members rather than to improve education, are already taking aim at the legislation, mobilizing their troops with urgent e-mail alerts, replete with talking points for lobbying legislators. They are particularly concerned with protecting the jobs and bumping rights of teachers at poorly performing schools. And, of course, they are taking aim at the lifting of the charter caps.
An October poll done for the public-policy consulting group MassInsight shows that by strong majorities Massachusetts residents want the state to do more to turn around failing schools and want proven charter school operators to open more academies in communities with failing traditional schools.
As this crucial bill goes forward, lawmakers need to bear in mind that their obligation lies with the public interest in quality education - and not with those who would scuttle reform to protect their own narrow interests.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. 
