So What's Wrong with Charter Schools?

Other than my general objection to privatizing important aspects of government, one of which I firmly believe is the education of its citizens (caveat*), I couldn't actually point to any actual failures of a charter school system. So I had to spend a little more time to be able to offer a look at the privatization desires of Trump and his administration's Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.

First of all, I needed to know how a charter school actually differs from a traditional public school.

Charter schools are publicly funded but not bound by many of the rules that constrain traditional public schools.

Charters, for example, can easily try new curriculums or teaching strategies, or choose to have a longer school day. They have more autonomy than traditional public schools in hiring and firing teachers, who have voted to form unions at only a handful of charters.

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[C]harters are required to run [admission lotteries] when they have more applicants than seats.

  NYT

Sounds good. Now, the reports.

Some schools are filled with students — say, the children of highly motivated parents — who would perform well in almost any setting. This could mislead us into thinking these schools provide an exemplary education, when the truth is they attract strong students.

This is so-called selection bias, the greatest challenge in evaluating the effectiveness of schools. Stuyvesant High School in New York City, to which entry is granted through a competitive exam, is filled with smart students who might succeed anywhere.

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A consistent pattern has emerged from this research. In urban areas, where students are overwhelmingly low-achieving, poor and nonwhite, charter schools tend to do better than other public schools in improving student achievement. By contrast, outside of urban areas, where students tend to be white and middle class, charters do no better and sometimes do worse than public schools.

  NYT

That's an interesting result. My immediate question is then why don't we study what changes are made in urban charter schools that make them work and that could be applied to urban public schools to make them work as well?

Or...is there something in the idea of being accepted into a charter school that makes the students themselves perform better, or is it simply that the better students are the ones who are attracted to and apply to the charter schools? What if you're a poor student and don't feel like you have any hope of doing any better anywhere? Or what if you really don't even want to be in school? Are you likely to apply to and attend a charter school?

Despite ever mounting evidence to the contrary, corporate media and corporate-bought politicians continue to proclaim the superiority of charter schools. Meanwhile, “nearly 2,500 charter schools closed their doors from 2001 to 2013, leaving over a quarter million kids temporarily without a school.” The New Orleans school privatization experiment has clearly failed, as has Detroit. Yet, the charter myth persists, backed by big money and lies.

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Corporate-controlled spokesgroups ALEC, US Chamber of Commerce, and Americans for Prosperity are drooling over school privatization and automated classrooms, with a formula described by The Nation: "Use standardized tests to declare dozens of poor schools ‘persistently failing’; put these under the control of a special unelected authority; and then have that authority replace the public schools with charters." But as aptly expressed by Jeff Bryant, "As a public school loses a percentage of its students to charters, the school can’t simply cut fixed costs for things like transportation and physical plant proportionally...So instead, the school cuts a program or support service."

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Urban charter schools primarily enroll low-income minority students. That seems admirable upon first reflection, but selective admissions of the best students from ANY community will make an individual school look good.

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Because of charters, Michigan cities have lost nearly half (46.5%) of their revenue over the past 10 years. Detroit, which is surpassed only by New Orleans in the number of charter students, half of the charter schools perform only as well as, or worse than, traditional public schools. A federal study found an "unreasonably high" number of charters among the lowest-rated public schools in the state.

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In Louisiana, according to the Center for Popular Democracy, "charter schools have experienced millions in known losses from fraud and financial mismanagement so far, which is likely just the tip of the iceberg."

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According to PR Watch, Florida "has one of the worst records in the nation when it comes to fraud and lack of charter school oversight." Texas has an unknown number of charters housed in churches. Nine charters in Washington remain open despite being declared unconstitutional by the state's Supreme Court.

Ohio might be worst of all. Since the 2006-07 school year, 37 percent of the state's charter schools receiving federal grants have either closed or never opened.

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As for technology-based schools, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools admits that "The well-documented, disturbingly low performance by too many full-time virtual charter public schools should serve as a call to action to state leaders and authorizers across the country."

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As private entities, they are unregulated and lacking in transparency, and, as concluded by the Center for Media and Democracy, they have become a "black hole" into which the federal government has dumped an outrageous $3.7 billion over two decades with little accountability to the public.

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At present, there are almost no restrictions on opening a charter school, and existing schools are restrictive in their enrollment policies.

  Paul Buchheit @ Black Agenda Report

No problem. Those other kids that get left behind are needed in the military, right? It's a pretty slick system when you think about it. At least it was until drones got to be the weapon of choice and the country became too averse to sending foot soldiers into battle. That change could shake things up in a big way, leaving a lot of unemployable poor with no military option. I like how presidents Bush and Obama kept harping on the necessity of getting an education, particularly a college degree, without doing anything to make that possible. We may not even have begun to see the fallout from the twin decreases in student and soldier financing. (Do I need to say I'm not advocating increases in soldier financing?)

A Google search of "failure of charter schools" leads to lots of similar stories to the one by Paul Buchheit above. If you're a charter-school proponent, your immediate reaction may be to note that these are coming from "liberal" news sources. To which, I might then note, "conservative" news sources aren't likely going to offer stories on the failure of one of their pet projects.

And on the other hand, if you Google "success of charter schools" you get one positive article (Forbes - and the point of that article is "some charter schools appear to do very well, and on average charters do better at educating poor students and black students"). After that article, there are a few asking the question of whether charter schools are successful, and then suddenly the headlines become "the myth of the success of charter schools."  (Yes, I know, there are other ways to phrase Google searches to get other reports.  Be my guest.  Let me know what you find.)

I think it's also worth noting that the studies that show a slight degree of improved performance in charter schools sound like charters are, if not great, then okay. But, in fact, they should be doing a far better job than the public schools because they are stripping off the best students. As Paul Buchheit says in the article above, "selective admissions of the best students from ANY community will make an individual school look good."

This US News article (found with the "successful" Google search) was written by someone who has "analyzed and participated in charter schooling for two decades now as an analyst, researcher, board member of a growing charter school, board member of nonprofits that work with charter schools and as a public official."  The Author, Andrew Rotherham, "is a cofounder and partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit organization working to support educational innovation and improve educational outcomes for high-need students." It concludes:

Even conservative estimates of charter school growth indicate that within two decades 1 in 5 American students will attend a charter school and some defensible estimates put that figure at more than a third. The United States already has one public education system with wildly varying outcomes and widespread mediocrity – we don't need another one.

So for charters the best path forward lies in education's messy middle – pairing growth with effective public oversight and policies promoting quality and equity. That's happening enough in the charter sector to establish proof of concept but not enough for charter advocates to declare victory. A lot is riding on what happens now.

  Andrew J. Rotherham

Not exactly a glowing report.

*At last, here's my caveat to my asterisk at the beginning of this post:

No, I don't think public schools do a good job. And here's why: beyond the issue of bureaucratic incompetence, public schools are not meant to educate children in our culture so much as they are meant to churn out a continual supply of labor, soldiers and obedient citizens. (And you could argue they're even failing at that.) But I don't believe the answer is private schools. I think it's a different aim and more dollars. Unfortunately, I don't think there's public support for either of those things.

I also don't think we know what the answers are. What are the best goals to get to a future where the maximum number of people are well educated and live in relative peace and prosperity? Is that even a goal we want to achieve as a country? At any rate, it's a safe bet that it's a different number from the "optimum" number of a good business plan (devoid of humanitarian concerns), but I don't see any evidence that anyone is even managing that angle.