It sounds like just what the state's Department of Education needed: a complete overhaul of its subdivision responsible for making decisions about which applicants for charter schools, the latest and greatest innovation in American education, will be approved. Three unadulterated cheers for Johnny Key, the state's commissioner of education, for giving the Department of Education the go-ahead to consider 10 pending applications for charter schools that hope to be ready for business by the next school year, that is, 2018-19.
Four of the applications for charter schools come from Little Rock and its exurbs, which already have about half of the state's couple of dozen charter schools open to all students. Other open-enrollment charter schools are proposed for Pine Bluff, Bentonville, McGehee and Weiner. No doubt a lot of lucky families can hardly wait.
The newly re-organized committee that's due to consider all these changes has been streamlined and is now headed by Ivy Pfeffer, who's been appointed a deputy commissioner. She'll be heading this group of seven, three of whom already work for the state's Education Department plus four who are to come free of any ties to the department and the habits of thought that come with being long-time bureaucrats. As in the stock phrase, "But this has always been our policy and can't be changed." As if the policy hadn't been made by real living people and can't be changed by the same. It's a mentality that makes policymakers instruments of policy when things ought to be the other way 'round: People make policies, not policies people, and in the course of human events, those people need to be free to unmake policies and replace them with new ones.
Happily, at least three of the four new members come with some experience in the charter-school movement. Like the one whose name will be familiar to fans of quality education: Naccaman Williams, once a member of the state's Board of Education who's now employed by the Walton Family Foundation, which has become known throughout the country for its good works, especially in education. Mr. Williams is a former math teacher who stepped down to become just another educational administrator. It happens in the best of faculties and shouldn't be held against him. Right now he's got a lot of influence as he manages grants made by members of the Walton family.
Scott Smith, executive director of the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, noted: "It's nice to see someone who has actually had charter experience be on the charter panel. It's also nice to see a majority-minority board in place to review a lot of these applications. These are all positive indicators as we move forward." It's remarkable how a natural balance will assert itself if government will refrain from setting arbitrary racial/ethnic/religious quotas.
This newly reorganized panel shows every promise of pleasing Arkansas' students and their families, too. Let's welcome this auspicious new beginning for education in Arkansas, and wish the state many happy returns.
Editorial on 08/11/2017