This is the fourth in a series of blog posts called EduFacts: The SOS March in Context.
If you monitor education topics on Twitter you will quickly get the impression that huge numbers of American public schools are being replaced with charter schools. And you will also pick up lot of antipathy toward the schools from some of the most visible promoters of this week’s SOS Marches.
But the numbers show that, in most places, charter schools are insignificant.
Charters are not allowed in nine states (Alabama, Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia) and they make up fewer than 3 percent of all schools in 12 other states. More than 10 percent of schools are charters in only three states—Arizona, Florida, Hawaii. Charters in Washington, D.C. get a lot of attention, as they should, because they constitute 45 percent of the schools. New Orleans, where 70 percent of students attend charters, is another hot spot. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has a handy map that profiles the charter school situation in each state, going back to 1999.
So, what’s the source of the concern? Teachers College professors Jeffrey Henig and Luis Huerta say one factor is the “pressure from the Obama administration to remove charter caps, and to intervene more aggressively to hold failing schools and teachers to account, [is raising] the general level of anxiety about charters taking over.”
Other factors? Most charters are not unionized, so attacks on teacher unions in some states stoke fear. Budget cuts add to the sense that any dollar that goes to a charter school is a dollar not available for the school district. Charter critic Diane Ravitch contends that charter schools “in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system.” Others, of course, point out that in most places charter schools get less public money per pupil than do school district schools.
The guiding principles of the Save Our Schools organizers do not address charters directly. But they do call for an end to the resegregation of schools. As my colleague Forrest Hinton pointed out yesterday, that’s code for halting the spread of charter schools because they often enroll large numbers of low-income African American and Hispanic students. It’s true that 52 percent of students attending the nation’s 5,000 charter schools are non-white and it’s also true that more than 60 percent of the students at a majority of those schools are poor. But it is low-income parents of color who are the most dissatisfied with their schools and are choosing to send their kids to charters instead. The average charter school has a waiting list of over 200 students. Also, in many large cities the school systems themselves are almost entirely made up of children of color. So it’s no surprise that charters reflect neighborhood demographics.
Critics love to pick out bad apples—those charter schools where the founders are siphoning off huge amounts of money or getting rid of students who are discipline problems, or where students are not performing well. And it’s true that the most comprehensive study of charter schools found that only 17 percent of them are out-performing and 37 percent are under-performing comparable public schools.
The education discourse is full of broad generalizations from all perspectives, but there is no sweeping conclusion to make about charters because they are so decentralized and diverse. Many charter schools need to improve their performance, just as many public schools do. But they’re not going away. They’re too popular. According to the 2010 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll, support for charters has risen from 42 percent in 2000 to 68 percent last year. Support is even stronger among African Americans, 64 percent, and Hispanics, 47 percent. (This came from a 2010 poll by Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance/Education Next)
So, it would be interesting to hear from the participants in this week’s SOS March how they would improve charter schools. My guess is they would say that the schools should be unionized, an idea that most charter advocates would oppose, and they shouldn’t pay teachers based on performance. Those two changes are big. But other than that I bet that their solutions for how to improve charter school performance would be pretty similar to what would work in any school.
Education Sector intern Marley Zeno co-wrote this post and did much of the research.
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{ 15 comments }
I’m late to this discussion but I notice, Richard, that you only addressed one of Caroline’s statements. You responded to her argument that charter schools skim off the best students. You did not respond to the argument that charters are skimming off money, resources, and political support–which is visibly happening in multiple districts. In numerous instances, charter schools have stayed in the same building, because they’ve demanded that the remaining public school leave. If an innovation championed by a teachers’ union had as poor a track record as charters–where the best their proponents can say is it’s no worse than those purportedly failing public schools–that innovation would be the subject of unending scorn.
As one who has worked in both traditional public schools and charter public schools, I have noticed some things that I wish these schools didn’t do.
Let’s start with charters:
- The lottery skims students/parents who have already done some sort of research / filled out an application to attend a charter. This differentiates them compared to the traditional public school student. Yes, they’ll have the same low scores as other students in the neighborhood, but no, they are not the same as they are. They already took a proactive step.
- Transferring Out. “This school isn’t a match for you…it’s best if you return to your neighborhood school.” These students tend to have the most difficulty responding to the many demands that charters place on student and family.
- Fewer Special Ed students. I observed this at one school. If the administrator found out that a lottery winning student had a massive IEP, he would highly suggest that the student stay in their local school, where they can provide those services well. Many times, the lottery winning student will read between the lines, and never step foot for one day in the charter. That’s partly why there’s a waiting list.
So, I wish charters would educate the same population as a traditional public school. That way, we could really compare apples to apples and see if charters are innovating, and not 1) rejecting complicated special ed students 2) transferring out difficult students 3) selecting students who took a proactive step towards their education. So of course, a charter’s test scores would be higher than its neighboring school. How about this idea: Get a charter operator to educate the exact same population of students, with the same number of disabled students, English learners, etc…and see how they do. I believe Green Dot in Los Angeles is trying this with one high school, and I applaud them for trying.
Now to the traditional schools:
- I wish more would change the status quo. Many charters are doing very innovative things. Yes, there are many traditional public schools doing innovative things too, but it’s not quite to the extent that charters do.
- The salary schedule needs to change. Read “Teachers Have it Easy: The Large Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers” We need to improve the salaries of America’s teachers, and the only way the public would ever agree to this if they hear the phrase “merit based,” whatever merit is defined as. That’s a separate topic. For the average Joe public, a step and column salary schedule simply doesn’t make sense to them.
All my writing is based on observation and conversations with colleagues, teachers, and administrators at both traditional public schools and charter schools. I like reading ed reform blogs, but I don’t read many studies, so all of the above is just where I’m at with the experiences I’ve had thus far.
More teachers should vote to convert their schools to charters – as most state laws encourage them to do. There would be more dollars per class, more control, and – if unions encourage the conversions – a more empowered and engaged union membership. Charters should be a union weapon against layoffs, not a whipping post.
“Any time a charter school boasts of its ‘long waiting list,’ call up their office undercover and ask if they have room for your child.”
The one elementary charter school in my area (a Montessori program) receives more than 3 applications for each available slot. They maintain a long waiting list of those unsuccessful in the lottery from which any slots that open up are filled.
As a parent and student of the charter school debate, I keep coming back to a few single points that sway me. If charter schools are so mediocre, as some studies suggest, why do most of them have such long waiting lists? If they aren’t living up to their hype, why are they graduating so many more students and sending them onto college than traditional public schools? All things being equal, I’d push to send my child to a charter school rather than a traditional inner city school simply because they are safer. Most parents want to see their children get a good education, but all want their kids to survive the process.
John, thanks for that further explanation. The needs of students with mental or emotional problems must be addressed with expertise, thoughtfulness and dollars, no matter where they attend school.
Richard,
Just to be clear, your phrase about “generally” are not “skimming the cream,” is no contradiction to what l wrote. Test scores reflect achievement. To address the exclusion of troubled kids, you have to do what the Times is doing now, and conduct qualitative research. The 5 to 10% who can’t make it in schools as they are now constituted, and who charters don’t take en mass, are not the sum of their test scores.
Even when my school hit bottom in the state, I’d still get kids (who usually had tried charters, suburban schools, and magnet schools) who read at college levels. Every single one was mentally ill or had severe gang-banging diversions. Its the critical mass of the poorest and most troubled kids who can’t take advantage of the proliferation of choice that are the problem. And charters are only one part of the problem.
The big problem is that our society that turned our jails and prisons into the biggest mental illness provider is turning neighborhood schools into the biggest mental illness and juvie jail feeder warehouse. (at least jailers, unlike teachers, are allowed to know who has been diagnosed as mentally ill and who is off their meds) The rationale that charters do it so neighborhood schools could do it is just the lie we tell ourselves to assauge our guilt, If charters didn’t exist, “reformers” would find another sound bite to claim they aren’t flushing our most troubled kids down the toilet.
So Caroline is using the “keep poor kids in bad schools so as to benefit others” argument. Try that argument again after you and Leonie Haimson (whose child, according to publicly-filed court papers, attends “School of the Future”) send your own children to a gang-ridden public school with a dropout rate of 60% for the sole benefit of the other children there.
It helps everyone when false miracles are debunked, Richard. And if I used bland language, you’d blast me for being boring.
This, of course, isn’t what the charter people claim: “Students entering charter schools generally have prior achievement levels that are comparable to those of their peers in traditional public schools.” — they usually claim that they get the worst students.
And even that is complicated, for a number of reasons. The students entering charters ARE likely to be struggling students, since if they weren’t, there’d be little reason for them to switch schools (at least this would be the case if they’re not entering the charter in a transitional year, or are in a system where there’s an obvious feeder school). But it’s also important to note that what charters skim (in the case of charters that serve disadvantaged communities) are the higher-functioning families, the ones with the motivation and ability to care about their kids’ education enough to seek out and apply to a school. And with charters like KIPP, we’re also talking about the compliant kids — kids who are willing to sit for the tests that KIPP requires during the application process and to sign on to the multitude of KIPP requirements down to their gestures and posture.
Hi Caroline, we’ve been writing these posts to add some context and data during a week that will likely shed more heat than light. We’re avoiding the kind of rhetorical flourishes you employ in your comment. You’ve always been a good writer and I admire skilled propaganda, such as when you describe charter schools as a “malevant force, self-serving to the powerful and harmful to the weak and downtrodden.” I’m not sure how that helps kids but it does stir folks up.
In response to your points, a 2009 RAND study of charters in five cities and three states concluded that: “Across seven locations examined, charter schools are generally not “skimming the cream” in recruiting students: Students entering charter schools generally have prior achievement levels that are comparable to those of their peers in traditional public schools.” The big 2010 study by the CREDO center at Stanford found the same thing on average, but did note differences by states. By the way, the RAND study also concluded that: “charter schools do not appear to produce effects that substantially help or harm student achievement in nearby traditional public schools.”
If you were to search our educationsector.org site for “charter schools” and read our work I think you’ll find that while ES is not at all opposed to charter schools, we also don’t cheerlead for them or think of them as a panacea. Much of our work argues that charter schools need to get serious about improving their results and authorizers need to get serious about making sure they do.
Personally, I have no beef with charters per se. My complaint is their demonstrably fale claim that they keep “the same kids in the same building.” I’ve never see a charter try to do that, and succeed. Have you?
My complaint is the refusal to provide services for that 5-10% of poor kids who aren’t emotionally capable of functioning in schools as constituted. When districts claim that KIPP or whatever schools show that neighborhood schools could serve those kids – even though KIPP doesn’t serve many of them – as an excuse to dump the most troubled kids on neighborhood schools. My beef is with Duncan repeating the aburd claims like the OKC KIPP, serving 120 kids, kept “the same kids” as the 800 student middle school that had been in its building.
My other complaint is that Duncan forced us to abandon some imperfect, but good, checks and balances. The caps on charter laws, and the firewall between individual teachers and test scores should have remained in place until concrete protections were in place.
I think our big complaint on charters is that they are being misused as one of many weapons to destroy the “status quo” i.e. teachers and their unions. Alone, “reforms” (with the exception of this standardized testing for evaluations and for accountability) are not mortal threats. Toegether, in this time of scorch and burn politics where “reformers” will throw anything at us, charters are just the kitchen sink. To “reformers” with hammers, we are just nails, and SOS marchers know it.
(And Richard, I know you know all that. Are you really comfortable flacking for the charters in this dishonest and unsavory manner?)
By the way, in my previous comment I typed “great public school system” when I actually meant to write “greater public school system,” meaning “public school system overall.”
Marley Z., the situation is more complex than that.
One problem is that charter schools harm public schools by siphoning off money, resources, political support and higher-functioning students. In those few charter schools that are successful — shockingly few given the advantages they enjoy — that’s a boon to the students who remain in them.
But those charter schools don’t solve any problems in education beyond their walls, because they do harm to the great public school system, and they don’t serve the students who pose the greatest challenge to public schools.
So the issue isn’t specifically how to improve charter schools. It’s the fact that charter schools do harm to public education overall.
But I would also say that your speculation about what charter critics would call for doesn’t capture it. I would call for charter schools to fulfill the role that those who (naively) conceived them to begin with envisioned for them — schools with more flexibility, schools that served the most challenged children, schools that worked cooperatively with traditional public schools instead of becoming hostile enemies and trying to crush and loot traditional public schools.
My own view is that charter schools are sort of like communism. The idea was an effort to solve a real problem, and it sounds very good on paper (which is why people in polls like charter schools, of course — communism was really popular when it was new too) — but human nature simply, inevitably corrupts them into a malevolent force, self-serving to the powerful and harmful to the weak and downtrodden.
I don’t think superficial popularity based on polls of the general populace will be able to sustain charter schools in the long run. They’ve held up this long because they have such a vast amount of wealth and power behind them. But the problems that inevitably come with charter schools will sink them in the end, once the wealthy and powerful give up on them as a pet project (as is bound to happen sooner or later). Charter schools, obviously, offer low-hanging fruit for looters, scammers, abusers, exploiters and other crooks. They’re also subject to being launched by innocent, well-meaning but overly ambitious types who simply can’t keep them going, because it’s really hard to run a school.
And also, by the way, I challenge the claim that charter schools average waiting lists of 200. There’s no possible way that you or the charter school industry can back that up; and it’s not sound journalism to make that flat statement without a source or backup — it’s known as “check it and lose it” journalism. (There are other adjectives too, but I’ll leave it at that.)
“Long waiting list” lies are a hallmark of the charter school industry — charter schools everywhere are boasting of their “long waiting lists” while simultaneously desperately trying to recruit students. Any time a charter school boasts of its “long waiting list,” call up their office undercover and ask if they have room for your child. I know, I know, we saw the heartrending lottery scenes in “Waiting for Superman” — but if you look at the attrition rates of the schools shown, you’ll see that they’ll have room for all those sobbing applicants as the current students start streaming, or getting pushed, out the door.
That’s charter schools in the real world, not the version in the press releases from the charter school industry.
Thanks for this Richard (and Marley). Some level-headed facts help all of us sift through all the spin.
In calling for an end to “re-segregated” charter schools, these people are really arguing to keep more black kids in bad schools where they learn less* and are less likely to graduate from high school.** Ignorance and ideology is probably more to blame than outright racism, but these people still bear the responsibility for trying to harm urban black students.
* The Mathematica study for IES found that charter schools had a positive impact on black urban students.
** The RAND study of Florida and Chicago charter high schools found a 7 to 10 percentage point increase in the likelihood of going to college.
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