VOL. 23, NO. 7	OCTOBER 24, 1997

By Chris Cage

  The panelists are: Joe Nathan, a leading advocate of charter schools; Tony Rollins, assistant executive director of the National Education Association, which opposes school vouchers; Annette Polly Williams, a state legislator who wrote Wisconsin's school voucher law, and Christopher Whittle, whose for-profit company has won contracts to manage public schools.

  To critics, Rollins represents the status quo in education. But the National Education Association says that teachers unions are leading the fight for innovation in the classroom. Since 1983, the NEA has spent more than $70 million on research and field projects designed to improve teaching and learning.

  Nathan, who is the director of the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota, says: "School choice is a lot like electricity. It is a good idea but it has to be used wisely."

  But Williams says that parents need vouchers so that they can send their child to the best school—public or private. "As a legislature, it is our job to educate every child in Wisconsin," she says.

  "Middle-class parents already have the option of sending their children to private schools. We're only trying to make the playing field equal.

  Whittle is trying to prove that school reform can be profitable. He is the founder of the Edison Project, which contracts with districts to manage public schools.

  Whittle says: "Edison is about important new linkages—the merging of public education and entrepreneurism, the convergence of caring and capital, and the coming together or local control and national resources."