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Charter schools are privately owned and operated schools funded with public tax dollars. That tension between private interests and public education has been at the heart of much debate about charter school policy. In a policy paper released today by the National Education Policy Center, Helen Ladd (Duke University) argues that there are four ways in which modern charter schools are at odds with good education policy.
Establishing coherent education systems
Recent research shows that, when it comes to education, money does matter. At the same time, Ladd argues, money must be used “productively and efficiently to promote good educational outcomes.” Since tax dollars are used, it seems appropriate that the use of that funding should be coordinated by local elected officials.
Charters, by design, “operate outside state and local education systems,” to varying degrees depending on which state we’re talking about. Ladd observes that this creates several challenges.
One is simple planning, since local districts must not only guess how many students will opt for charters, but must also provide space for those students should they return to public school. They must do this with fewer financial resources, and while tax dollars may follow the students, costs do not necessarily do so.
All of this points to huge inefficiencies, including a great deal of excess capacity maintained across the whole educational ecosystem. This is not rocket science; trying to run multiple school systems with the money originally set aside to run one is bound to be inefficient. And because modern charter policy is based on the premise that all of these systems must compete, attempts to create “compacts” that help charters cooperate with each other and with public systems to share resources and reduce waste and duplication are rare, and rarely successful. Charter proponents, in fact, reacted strongly against any call for cooperation when it was included in federal grant rule changes.
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Addressing the educational challenges of child poverty and disadvantage
Charters have often been sold as a way for poor and disadvantaged children to “escape failing public schools.” Those who argued that perhaps we should look at getting those public schools the resources they needed were accused of making excuses. A popular theory for policymakers was that by raising expectations, we could just educate children out of poverty. That turned out to have little basis in reality; fixing poverty requires far more than getting children to earn higher scores on the Big Standardized Test.
Ladd points out that the charter record on raising those test scores is mixed at best, with many charter schools doing no better or even worse than public schools. For those charters that are successful, the high scores come at a cost, starting with exclusion of students and families that might not help achieve the goal. Ladd also cites the “no excuses” approach which, while sometimes successful at increasing scores, “is characterized by high behavioral expectations, extensive tutoring, and strict disciplinary codes of conduct” and “not only takes the joy out of learning but also can lead to high rates of suspension and expulsion.”
Charters have not proven to be a solution to address the educational challenges of poverty and disadvantage for all students who face them, and as Ladd points out, can distract policymakers from “efforts to address that challenge in meaningful ways.”
Racial segregation and isolation
Charter schools could certainly help battle what Ladd calls the “persistent and pernicious issue” of segregation in U.S. schools, and arguments can be made about how the issue would play out in a charter system.
Ladd looks at the research about what has actually happened. What she finds is that “charter schools do indeed contribute to the racial segregation and racial isolation of U.S. schools.”
Appropriate accountability for use of public funds
Ladd’s position here is clear.
Given that we fund schooling with publicly raised revenue, the public has both a right and a responsibility to ensure that the money is used wisely and with financial transparency. Further, schools were established to promote not just the interests of enrolled students and their families but also the public or collective interests of the broader community that justify the public funding of education in the first place.
Transparency has been an issue with charter schools, which drop the “public” and start presenting themselves as private businesses when states ask to see the books. Nor does the prevailing “non profit” status of charters in virtually states a guarantee that they are not instruments of profit for someone.
Modern charter schools are businesses, and act as such. The information they provide parents may be more about marketing than providing full disclosure. Inevitably, every dollar they spend on the students is a dollar they don’t get to bank. And because they are granted autonomy, including the freedom to experiment, it is hard to know, in the absence of meaningful oversight, whether or not they are accomplishing the mission of public education.
The record shows that huge amounts of tax dollars have been lost to waste and fraud in the charter sector. It is long past time to provide taxpayers with a meaningful level of oversight and accountability for charter schools.
After several decades, it’s clear that charter schools are not merely an experiment or a passing educational fad, but are now a part of the public education landscape. Their presence moving forward should be accompanied by a policy discussion about whether charters should share the mission of the public education system as well, as well as considering how they can be held accountable for the spending of public tax dollars.
