SIG Grants and the Charter School Bargain

Continuing our week-long look at who is getting federal School Improvement Grants and what they’re doing with the money, the map below shows all of the charter schools across the country that are receiving federal SIG grants:

Hold on a minute…charter schools are receiving SIG dollars? Indeed.

Of the 843 schools currently chosen to receive federal School Improvement Grants, 58—almost 7 percent—are charter schools.* And the vast majority, 76 percent, are using the ‘transformation’ model, which requires changes that one would hope to see these charter schools (given their operational flexibility) doing anyway, such as extending the school day or instituting rigorous staff evaluations. Only three of the charter school SIG grants are for closure (all in Milwaukee, WI).

For many observers, this is a striking contradiction: the original charter school ‘bargain’ promises more freedom and flexibility to charter schools in exchange for more rigorous accountability, including closure if a school is persistently under-performing. That so many charter schools would be receiving federal funds for improvement calls into question the validity of this bargain.

It also calls into question the basic premise that closure is the best response to persistently low-performing schools. While the charter school movement needs to continue its efforts to get serious about accountability, it may also need to start getting serious about turnaround too.

It’s hard to close a school—charter or not. Take Texas for example, where 38 percent of the charter school SIG grantees are located. In the early years of chartering, the state Department of Education embraced a ‘thousand flowers blooming’ strategy for authorizing schools, but then faced serious legal hurdles in trying to close some of the low performers.

And in some cases closure may not be the best option for students. Some of the charter school SIG recipients are schools that serve special populations or are in rural areas. While this status shouldn’t exempt them from accountability, it also means that the students they serve (like a juvenile justice population in rural Texas) may not have many alternatives available. Closing one of these schools and hoping that something better opens up is likely not the best strategy for improving educational options overall.

An interesting twist to the SIG story is that charter schools are on both sides of the turnaround equation—58 schools are getting grants to improve while 16 charter management organizations, including Mastery Charter Schools in Philadelphia, are getting grants to restart other public schools. But absent from this list of turnaround partners are some of the best known and most successful charter organizations, like KIPP and Achievement First.

Many of these groups attribute their high achievement to being able to start from scratch, rather than taking over an existing school with a dysfunctional culture. But considering that only 2 percent of SIG grantees are being closed, there’s only limited space for fresh, new schools and a seemingly unlimited need for improved existing ones. Perhaps a new part of the charter school bargain should be getting more of the most successful charter organizations to take on the challenge of turnaround, along with advocating for closure.

*Thanks to Karen Francisco from The Journal Gazette for alerting us to two charter schools in Indiana that we missed in our original count.

Tagged as: Charter Schools, School Improvement Grants