The Romney campaign has recently turned its gaze to education and made statements regarding the role of public charter schools in America’s current educational landscape (see more at EdWeek’s Charters & Choice and Politics K-12 blogs). The views of Romney and Obama on this role are actually quite similar: the expansion of high quality public charter schools will increase innovation and student achievement.
Mitt Romney supports higher expectations for students, more accountability for teachers, and increased parental choice through increased access to public charter schools. During his time as Governor, Romney fought to eliminate the Massachusetts state cap on charter schools, vetoed a budget line item that would have imposed a moratorium on additional public charter schools and suspended the 5 charter schools granted in 2004, and approved a 2005 state budget that dedicated $37.7 million to ensuring proper transitional funding for public school districts that send students in charter schools. In recent debates, Romney has repeatedly mentioned school choice as a key principle of successful public education. During the, CNN Arizona Republican Presidential Debate in February 2012, Romney specifically named charter schools as important to educational achievements in Massachusetts: “My legislature tried to say no more charter schools. I vetoed that, we overturned that…With school choice, testing our kids, giving our best teachers opportunities for advancement, these kinds of principles drove our schools to be pretty successful.” So how does Romney’s charter focus stack up against President Obama’s? As we’ve seen, Barack Obama has largely recognized public charter schools in terms of their innovation and has therefore supported their expansion. Soon after his inauguration in March of 2009, President Obama gave a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in which he called on states to “reform their charter rules, and lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools.” The President acted on the message of this speech in July of 2009, when he introduced his signature education reform plan “Race to the Top,” which rewards innovative plans for teacher quality and student achievement, and encourages states to lift limits on charter schools. In addition, much of President Obama’s reform of “No Child Left Behind” in 2011 mirrored the language of “Race to the Top” by focusing on innovation and flexibility to produce student achievement, qualities important to the success of the charter sector. The support of charter school expansion provided by “Race to the Top” and the reform of “No Child Left Behind” has been important to the current Obama campaign in responding to criticisms around education reform. We are glad that both candidates support the growth of high quality charter schools and are keeping this important topic at the forefront of their campaigns.
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