Dear Commons Community,

On Tuesday, voters around the country will be fixated on following the outcome of the presidential election, however, in Massachusetts, a referendum on the expansion of charter schools is putting Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton on the back burner.  According to a New York Times article this morning:

“The television ads are relentless, fueled by a historic surge of campaign spending. Fliers are clogging mailboxes. Both sides are knocking on doors across the state. But in deep blue Massachusetts, the contentious campaigning is not for president but for a ballot question on whether to expand charter schools.

The pitched battle in this state, known as a bellwether on education policy, reflects the passions that charter schools arouse nationwide, particularly regarding a central part of the debate: If they offer children in lagging traditional public schools an alternative path to a quality education, do they also undermine those schools and the children in them?

Because Massachusetts’s charter schools rank among the nation’s best, advocates say a yes vote to allow more of them would send a strong signal that they have a crucial role to play in improving student learning and closing the achievement gap between white and black students.

But opponents say a no vote would show that even in a state where charter schools have been successful, most voters believe the schools — privately run but publicly financed — undermine traditional public schools, drain resources and perpetuate inequities, and should be curtailed.

“What happens in Massachusetts will send shock waves throughout the United States either way,” said Parag Pathak, a professor at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, who studies education.

“If the voters reject more urban charters here,” he said, “then it’s not clear what more the charter movement can do to convince opponents and skeptics.”

Question 2 on the ballot asks whether the state should be allowed to approve up to 12 new charter schools or larger enrollments at existing charters each year, not to exceed 1 percent of the statewide public school enrollment.

The measure would affect nine communities that have either reached their caps on charter enrollment or have room for only one more charter school: Boston, Chelsea, Everett, Fall River, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, Springfield and Worcester. All have long waiting lists.

It would not affect 96 percent of the state’s school districts, yet strategists say voters in those districts — largely in suburbs with good public schools — could determine the outcome Tuesday…

Opponents also cast the ballot measure as a goal of “out-of-state billionaires,” including the brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch and members of the Walton family, which controls Walmart. Their real intent, Question 2 opponents say, is to bust teachers’ unions and privatize public schools.

“We can’t let people demonize our schools, particularly those who never have and never will set foot in any of our schools in the city of Boston,” Mayor Walsh declared Tuesday at a raucous rally.

But supporters of expanding charter schools say the argument that they drain money from public schools is alarmist and misleading. The yes side points to a study by the nonpartisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation— the Boston Foundation, which supports charters, financed the study — which concluded that charters do not take more money than their fair share, since financing follows children when they switch schools. This year, the study reported, 3.9 percent of the state’s students attend charter schools, which are receiving 3.9 percent of education money.

Opponents counter that when students leave, public schools still have to pay overhead, teacher salaries and other costs, which can lead to closings.

Maurice T. Cunningham, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said he was shocked at how big this ballot fight had become. Mr. Cunningham, a member of a teachers’ union who said he had not taken a position on the ballot question or on charters, noted that the labor movement had turned the campaign into “a good old-fashioned union brawl,” which escalated the spending on both sides.

Because the unions had worked so hard to defeat this measure, he said, the outcome would show that “if you can’t stop the hidden billionaire money in Massachusetts, then you can’t stop it anywhere.”

Charter schools were and can still be a good idea if they can return to their roots as experimental public schools that free of bureaucratic interference would provide exemplary models for traditional public schools. They were to be partners and not competitors.  They also were not to be used as vehicles to bash traditional public schools or teachers unions but that is what they have become in some of our cities.

The Massachusetts referendum will be watched closely by education reformers.

Tony