Schools: Compete for customers

King Kong and Godzilla.

Sonny and Cher.

Some things just go together.

Public education and Pepto-Bismol.

That's not a slam; it's an observation. Public education has held course, at times stubbornly, through decades of challenges from private schools and from religiously motivated proponents of school vouchers. Change is coming with hurricane force, but damage is often a matter of perspective.

The cry for vouchers has been somewhat muted by the tidal wave of public schools of choice, led by charter schools both in Idaho and throughout the rest of the nation. For more than a decade, Coeur d'Alene Charter Academy has provided a blueprint for local public education success. North Idaho STEM Charter Academy in Rathdrum is posting very positive results in a short amount of time, and throughout Coeur d'Alene School District, designating elementary and middle school facilities as schools of choice is proving popular and productive.

Options like these represent a threat to some who have adamantly clung to models that either no longer work or work insufficiently as competition increases. Proof that change can be very, very good is abundant - even in some areas where the tide is turning on former failure.

In New Orleans just before Hurricane Katrina, two thirds of the city's public schools were failing to meet state education standards. In the aftermath of Katrina, education officials decided they would be better off shutting down schools and basically starting over with the city's education system. They fired about 7,000 teachers and other public school employees, multiple sources have reported, and theycreated charter schools and filled them with battalions of new teachers.

While not everybody's happy about the course that dramatic change has taken, only 6 percent of the schools are still failing, Louisiana education officials report. Some charter critics point to high expulsion rates of students in the new charter schools, but the point is that one of the nation's public school sinkholes is showing signs of life. If it can happen there, imagine the possibilities in other places that don't face the poverty and other dire challenges of inner cities.

Locally, district administrators and their teachers' unions are in various stages of contract negotiations. While they're busy arm wrestling, some people in our communities are working enthusiastically to undermine public education. Home schooling and private religious schools should always be options, and they'll remain favored educational alternatives for some no matter how good public schools become. Fair enough. But we believe the best way to strengthen the institution of public education is by specializing where it makes the most sense and by competing head-to-head for customers - in this case, students and their parents. Change is good. Competition is better.