I, for one, will be sticking with the charter schools.

Fred Hiatt did a column on Monday urging Barack Obama to do his utmost to help the school reform efforts in DC being spearheaded by Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee. I’d like to see that, too, but I think Hiatt overlooked one particular concrete way in which the administration will be involved. That’s via the DC Public Charter School Board which authorizes new charter schools (and revokes the charters from schools that are no good) and whose members are appointed by the mayor from a list of candidates drawn up by the Secretary of Education.

The system is a bit odd on a theoretical level, but it’s worked well throughout its lifetime. Several secretaries of education in a row have made responsible nominations, and the system has managed to insulate the board from the vagaries of municipal politics. It’s crucially important that the board not become an extension of patronage politics or be captured by the stakeholders in the status quo rather than preserving the charters as alternatives to DCPS. At the same time, it’s also important that the appointments be made with a real focus on the interests of DC and DC’s school students rather than suffering from total inattention. One assumes the Obama transition team isn’t going to get around to staffing the Department of Education for a while (top priority will rightly be on the White House staff, Treasury, Defense, and State) but this will be critically important to the city’s future when the time comes.

At weekend soccer games, parents wonder aloud which of the city’s exclusive private schools might win the presidential sweepstakes by enrolling Malia and Sasha. (The Obamas could, of course, go the Jimmy Carter route and enroll their daughters in public school; Michelle Obama has said privately that she did not intend to make a decision about school until after the election.)

Obviously, I’m not hear to tell the Obamas how to raise their children. But if you ask me, it would be nice to see them put their money (or, as it were, children) where their mouths are and enroll their children in one of the city’s charter schools, many of which are excellent. There are a few good choices, but Sara recommends Capital City Public Charter School, which has a location that would be more convenient to the White House than any of the fancy private schools, and achieves good results with an economically and racially diverse group of students.

Ben Smith blogs:

Somewhat undermining the claim that Obama’s support for charter schools poses a major challenge to the teachers unions, the National Education Association blasted out a post-debate press release praising him.

I think this is really neither here nor there. It’s true that Obama is a charter school supporter, and it’s also true that the major teachers unions are generally hostile to expanding charter schools. So if you want an example of Obama taking on an interest group that generally favors the Democratic Party, charter schools fits the bill. That the NEA is nonetheless strongly backing Obama, has a lot to do with the fact that there’s a second candidate in the race. That candidate’s proposed “spending freeze” would entail very large cuts in real per pupil spending on elementary and secondary education, while also cutting early childhood education and children’s health initiatives — saddling teachers with a tougher task and less money with which to get the job done. Under the circumstances, there’s nobody else for the NEA to support. The NEA backed Hillary Clinton during the primaries, in part because of Obama’s insistence on sticking with school reform rhetoric that didn’t help in courting their support.

CORRECTION: The NEA did not endorse during the primary. The AFT, the other national teachers union, did endorse Clinton as did the New Hampshire chapter of the NEA.

A couple of caveats. One is that I think he underplays the importance of the voucher/charter distinction here, but the fact that charter schools, unlike private schools, don’t get to choose their students is important. The second is that while bashing our system as “Soviet-style” makes for good rhetoric, primary and secondary education in the Soviet Union was fine. Indeed, Communism, if applied across the board in the United States, would probably do a lot to improve our public schools. There are just other good reasons to avoid it. Last, it’s important to understand that the charter schools that have shown the most impressive results get substantial additional funding from foundations and other charitable sources over and above their public funding. The evidence, in other words, suggests that structural reform in the direction of more charter schools is a necessary complement to more funding, but not a substitute for it.