Are Charter Schools Good for Public Education?

1. Are Charter Schools Good for Public Education? An Examination of the Current Debate about Charter Schools

2. What is a Charter School? • Accountability • A charter school is held to different accountability standards based on specific items that are in that particular schools’ charter. The charter sets goals that the school must attain in order to be considered for charter renewal. • Funding • Funding for public charter schools comes from a combination of public funds as well as private donations and grants. • Types of charter schools • District level • At the district level, some corporations are allowed to operate groups of charter schools. • State level • State level charter schools are often created by non-profit organizations. • Differences from Traditional Public Schools • Charter schools are created because they allow the school to be free of the restrictions that are placed on traditional public schools. • Charter schools have greater freedom in the length and structure of the school day and school year—structure referring to class length and student scheduling among other things—and much greater flexibility in creating and implementing curriculum.

3. The Debate • In 2004, a report published by the American Federation of Teachers, on the front page of the New York Times, brought the debate over the value of charter schools back to the forefront. • The report compared the performance of charter schools and traditional public schools using math and reading test score data from fourth and eight grade students. • The report authors concluded that charter achievement is lower, based on both average scaled scores and differences in proficiency levels. • The report received numerous heated responses from pro- school choice advocates. They even purchased and published a full page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, denouncing the methods and conclusions of the report (Buckley & Schneider, 2005).

4. The Pro Charter School Argument • The alternatives that charter schools may offer • including smaller class sizes, an academic focus, longer school days, longer school years, greater parental involvement, and curriculum flexibility • This translates into academic success for the students. • Charter schools can have their charters revoked if they fail to meet stated performance goals • This makes them more accountable to parents, students, and the public at large (Nathan 1996). • If the students believe that they attend a good school, they are less likely to drop out and more likely to succeed academically (Barrett, 2003). • A telephone survey conducted in DC Charter schools showed that parents and students were more satisfied with the charter schools than the traditional public schools (Schneider & Buckley, 2003). • Assessing data from Charter Schools versus Traditional Public Schools • The Secretary of Education, Ron Paige, stated that, "It is wrong to think of charter schools as a monolith. There are schools for dropouts, schools for students who've been expelled, schools serving the most economically disadvantaged families" (CER, 2004). • A study titled Are Charter School Students Harder to Educate? Evidence from Washington D.C. concluded that for the most part the charter schools are a mixed bag of students from numerous backgrounds and socio-economic levels (Buckley & Schneider, 2005).

5. Opponents of Charter Schools • Satisfaction? • Student and parent dissatisfaction in charter schools can be seen by the high student turnover rate that tends to exist in charter schools (Hsieh & Shen, 2001). • Skim the Cream • Charter schools with a specialized focus (i.e. engineering or technology) tend to attract high achieving students. • Families that are the most likely to look for alternative forms of education are often families of students who are some of the highest achieving students in these schools. • Charter schools “skim the cream”, meaning they attract and retain the top end students from the public school system. • Therefore should be held to the same if not higher standards as public schools (Buckley & Schneider, 2005). • Funding • The creation of charter schools are siphoning funds from already underfunded public schools. • In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Roger Brown, the president of the State University of New York at New Paltz said that “every dollar going to charter schools is a dollar not going to public schools” (Fusarelli 2002). • Not every student has the ability to move from one school to another because of family limitations due to finances, transportation or a host of other factors. • The fear is that the students left behind will suffer in poorly funded, dilapidated facilities.

6. Opponents of Charter Schools • Cause Larger Social Problems? • The creation of charter schools will lead to greater social stratification and segregation (Fusarelli 2002). • In 2005, two professors at the University of Georgia published a study titled School Choice, Charter Schools, and White Flight. • This study looks at the effect that the charter school movement has had on re-segregating our public schools. • Charter schools are giving white families another option as they are able to remove their children from urban public schools and place them in charter schools without having to move the entire family from its home. • The study concludes that charter schools left to their own devices may promote racial segregation in the public schools. (Renzulli & Evans, 2005) • Are Charter Schools even providing a greater education? • According to C. Lubienski, most charter schools deliver instruction that tends to be very similar to the instruction techniques used in the traditional public schools. • Competition between schools over the top level students should foster innovation inside of these schools but teaching practices and curriculum do not tend to differ much from traditional public schools to charter schools (Lubienski, 2003).