The State - News from July 3, 1988

Blaming shortfalls in American education on the current teaching system and its “assembly-line mentality,” Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said radical changes are needed. Shanker recommended support of an experiment in education called “charter schools” in his keynote address to the group’s 70th convention in San Francisco. As he described it, the charter school system would enable any group of six or more teachers to propose establishing a school within a school, where they could experiment with various education methods and submit reports on their successes and failures. He said if convention delegates support the suggestion, charters could be granted jointly by the teachers’ union and boards of education.