Editor’s Note: Washington State Wire commentator Melvin G. Ashton is responding to a recent attack on his last posting regarding charter schools, from the Seattle Community Schools blog. Mr. Ashton says he is recovering nicely from a bout of umbrage.

For those of you reading this because you thought the headline was about the political power of the WEA, you should stop right here.

No, this is actually about my argument in favor of charter schools. I recently wrote an opinion piece that referenced charter schools, but was in fact blasting people who push public policies that do not affect themselves, such as childless advocates of public schools suggesting that parents who can afford to send their children to private schools should be taxed until, well, until they can’t send their kids to private schools anymore.

I didn’t really intend to promote the charter schools initiative that is, once again, making its way through the gauntlet of teacher’s-union opposition to face the crucible of a public vote this fall. Personally, I think the effort is a bit timid. The idea that, as a parent of modest means, I would be forced to cross my fingers and hope that luck smiled on me (meaning I would win a lottery drawing) in order to be permitted to act in my child’s best interest (meaning send them to a charter school) is, in a word, sadistic. But then, it’s better than what we have today.

But an interesting thing happened after I wrote that piece. Those who are defensive about the public school system construed my remarks as being derogatory toward all public schools, and that nothing short of perfection is acceptable to me. Even more interestingly, some people out there can apparently peer into my soul and know that when I refer to “feeling the urge to kill,” I literally mean that I’m going to kill somebody. Glad they pointed that out so I can calm down before I hurt someone. But what tickled me most is that, in some cases, the mischaracterizations of my piece weren’t even being thrown back at me, but rather at people who had appreciated my writing, which was a venting of my personal frustrations as a parent of school age children for whom I am forced to pay twice in order to fulfill what I consider to be my “paramount duty” as a parent.

So let me be clear. Public schools aren’t all bad. No school is perfect. I’m not going to actually kill anyone.

Now, let me restate the salient points of my first piece in a way that is perhaps a bit more difficult (although not impossible) to intentionally misconstrue. The most powerful force in the universe is life itself, and the parental instinct to nurture and protect one’s child is a potent manifestation of that force. There is a way that we can harness this force for the betterment of all, and that is through the mechanism of parental choice of schools. It is impossible to create the perfect school. But it is simple to choose between two schools. No two parents will evaluate schools exactly the same, because no two children are exactly the same. Parents who send their children to a public school because they believe that school is the best choice for their children are good people. People who send their children to a school that they suspect to be less capable (the word ‘inferior’ is apparently ‘incendiary’) for any reason, or who refuse to compare schools for fear that they might come to suspect their public school option as being less capable, are displaying the worst kind of selfishness.

Can we embark on a 10-year mission to “innovate” in our public schools? Sure. We might even have some success. But the motivation felt by an administrator or teacher to improve the delivery of primary education pales in comparison to the motivation of a loving parent. I would lay down my life for my kids. The “urge to kill” I referred to was the protective instinct that kicks in when someone else attempts to harm your child (harm being a very broad term, not restricted to physical threats, such as keeping my child in an educational environment that I know to be inadequate). It is that level of commitment that we can bring to bear on our education system through the use of parental choice. Charter schools would be a small step in the right direction. Will they all succeed? No. Will charter schools (which are public schools) all be better than traditional public schools? No. Will they all be inferior to private schools? No.

But I’ve spoken to people who send their children to charter schools just across the state line in Portland, and they gushed about their good fortune to have that option because they couldn’t afford private school tuition. I’ve spoken to parents of home schooled children, inquiring as to why they would take on such a challenge. I assumed the answer would be religious in nature, but in fact they simply couldn’t in good conscience send their children to the public school in Tacoma to which they are assigned, nor could they afford to move (not uncommon in the last 5 years), nor could they afford private school tuition. Since private school tuition was more than the second parent could make working, home schooling was the best educational option within their financial reach. I admire those people – that is the kind of take-charge attitude that I like to associate with being an American. But I am embarrassed as an American that we would not provide a money-back guarantee to such consumers of primary education who, at great inconvenience to themselves, have made the hard choice with their children’s best interest at heart.

So, if you thought that I was saying that putting your child in a “less than perfect” school is selfish, I’ll be kind and assume that your misreading was accidental. All schools are “less than perfect”. What is selfish is thinking that a first grader (or his/her parent) cares about the latest compromise that the teacher’s union reached with the governor’s office that may result in the next generation a better educational product. Give me a choice, even if it’s between a “C” school and a “B” school. Only then will we see improvement in ALL schools, public and private.

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