A lot has come to light about charter schools since the previous posts (9/9/09, 12/9/09, 1/29/10), none of which has made the choice clearer. In fact, each school, whether public, private, charter, or parochial, depends on what the parent and student like.
Does the student want the school closest to home? Does the parent want religion included in the curriculum? Is the parent anxious about lack of discipline at the local school? Does the student want to go where his friends are going? Is some special program, like theatre arts or music, a drawing card at the school?
The list of choice questions goes on and on.
Note, however, that test scores have not been mentioned yet. Except for the parents of high-achieving students that is not the first priority. Or parents who want high scores to improve the equity of their home.
But to educators, concerned about the lowest-performing students in poor inner city or isolated rural schools, student achievement on tests is the highest priority. And the prognosis is mixed about the best model to improve learning in such schools.
Many in the education world say that those failing schools should be closed and reopened as charter schools which might experiment with curriculum and employment rules since most are not organized with teacher’s unions on hand. However, studies keep appearing in the news with decidedly mixed results as to strong improvement in existing charter schools vs. local public schools.
At the first of May an evaluation by the School Choice Demonstration Project, comparing students in charter and public schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, found comparable performance, refuting one of the “pulls” of charter schools–that small schools allow more help to students and so better scores on state tests.
In April a charter school working with very low-performing children and run as a demonstration project by Stanford University had its charter rescinded by the public school district in which the school site was located. The university staff was surprised, but the Ravenswood School Board, willing to try any model to improve student achievement, wasn’t impressed by the analysis of the test statistics and certainly didn’t like the scores. The outcome was a ‘no’ vote with a condition to come back with another plan and maybe the New School would be funded once more.
A number of charter schools on both coasts have been caught with their hands in the funding pot or audited for finagling the dollar numbers or for pocketing money to finance trips that just didn’t go with the purpose of a school. Is that what happens when the school is animated by business models to provide incentives? The U.S. Department of Education has stated concern with the number of charter school fraud issues that have come to its attention.
Another problem comes up when a group of knowledgeable parents gets together to write up a charter proposal and insists on finding a way to get the public school district to find a site for the school and to provide the instructional funds per pupil. If, as in Los Angeles, the parents are from a neighborhood with a failing school, the school board may be sympathetic. If it is being set up in a high-achieving school district without a lot of extra money to spread around, the process can be combative, not collaborative.
This blog post is being written in California, filled with 6.3 million students, almost 1000 school districts, 10,000 public schools, and 715 charter schools (elementary to high school). Last month 188 California schools, mostly middle and high schools, were labeled persistently low-performing-including the New School mentioned above that had its charter rescinded.
If each of those schools were closed and reopened as charter schools, and every student chose those schools thinking change would happen, they would be surprised. It would still take relentless effort before the students showed consistent improvement in their reading and math abilities, science and social science knowledge base. KIPP (a for-profit charter system) regional leaders have already declined to take on the challenge.
Most students and parents won’t flee to another town or to a private or parochial school. Looks like those persistently low-performing schools will have to meet with their school communities and find their own model to transform their school.
