Tipping Point or Turning Point: A Civic Vision for Charter Schools
This year has been a momentous one for charter schools. The advent of the Obama administration, the convening of the 111th Congress, and the national fiscal crisis all have intensified attention to charter issues. It remains to be seen whether this confluence of events will lead to a shift in the relative importance of charter schools and school districts or signal a change in the relationship between them—or both.
Candidate Obama signaled strong support for charter schools, and President Obama’s administration is making good on those promises:
- His 2010 budget proposes $268 million for charter schools, a step on the path of doubling charter funding in four years.
- The proposed rules for dispensing $48.6 billion in federal stimulus education grants would require states to provide data on the number of charter schools they permitted, how many are currently operating, and how many closed in the past five years and why they closed.
- The proposed rules for $4.35 billion in Race to the Top (RTTT) grants will take into account the extent to which states have charter school laws that do not limit charter school growth or restrict student enrollment in charters. They also will consider whether states provide charters with equitable funding, including for facilities.
The administration emphasizes increased accountability whenever it voices support for charters overall. RTTT, for example, will also consider whether states have set guidelines for charter authorizing and renewal, as well as whether charter authorizers have a record of closing “ineffective” schools.
We are witnessing a maturing of charter policy, moving beyond the point where charters, by definition, equal reform. The administration’s posture on accountability and the fact that some states are removing charters caps may herald a realization that a focus on the number of charter schools misses the point. But focusing instead on the number of quality charters is incremental progress, at best.
The measure of success—and the real potential of the charter movement to create change in public education—lies in what effect charters are having on school districts.
Alternate visions
In the Winter 2008 issue of the journal Education Next, Andy Smarick, now a fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, zeroed in on district-charter relations. He identified two viewpoints in the charter movement. The first assumes charter schools provide value by offering more educational opportunities, especially to disadvantaged students, regardless of their impact on districts. The second, which Smarick associates with me among others, sees charters as a district-improvement strategy.
Both viewpoints are too timid, Smarick argues. Instead, he writes, dynamic systems of continual chartering should replace urban district-based systems altogether.
Smarick and others draw on thinkers like Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen to invoke a powerful argument for chartering schools: In some cases, it’s just easier to start afresh with a new organization designed to meet the latest challenges and opportunities than it is to try to retool an existing institution to fit them.
But in my view, it stretches this insight too far to suggest that districts, as opposed to particular schools, are the institutions that can and should be weeded out by new charters. While Smarick acknowledges that the charters-as-competition thing hasn’t worked out, he turns this into an indictment of a collaborative approach between charter and district. This critique presupposes that charter-district collaboration has been seriously attempted. Unfortunately, charter policy and rhetoric have doomed most attempts from the start.
The long-prevailing market competition model of charter schools has enjoyed limited successes that are far outweighed by its downsides. Instead, the time has come for a return to the civic vision of chartering. On the three biggest charter school issues today—authorizing and oversight, leaving no child behind, and cost—the civic vision has important advantages.
Authorization and oversight
The key oversight question for the civic vision of chartering is the extent to which a state allows entities other than school districts, like state agencies, universities, mayors, or even private entities, to authorize charter schools.
Commentators routinely declare districts to be terrible authorizers. This assertion pops up repeatedly in the 2005 book, Besieged: School Boards and the Future of Education Politics, edited by William G. Howell. In a 2007 Washington Post article on charters, the first of five recommendations that education columnist Jay Mathews made was “Stop letting the school board authorize charter schools.” In the pro-charter Center for Education Reform’s June 2009 “Race to the Top for Charter Schools” annual ranking and scorecard, the first factor used to grade state charter laws is whether the state allows multiple authorizers. An obliging Post editorial that month echoed the drumbeat.
There’s just one problem: If the data so far are to be believed, school board-authorized charters have outperformed those authorized by all other entities. While National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data show charter schools as a whole marginally underperform relative to traditional schools, those affiliated with districts achieve the best academic results among charters—even when controlling for student characteristics.
A June 2009 report on charter performance in 16 states by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University found that those with multiple authorizers experience significantly lower growth in academic achievement. The authors speculate that the availability of alternative authorizers invites a race to the bottom—i.e., forum shopping for lax accountability.
A more benign explanation could be that alternative authorizers are more likely than school boards to charter schools to serve the most disadvantaged students. But remember, the data purportedly are controlled for demographics, and some look specifically at the relative growth in achievement. So another explanation might be that people in school districts actually know a thing or two about running schools.
Similarly, when it comes to caution in granting charters, districts are well-positioned to ask the hardest questions of charter applicants, including questions about the impact the proposed school will have on the district as a whole. Having been dealt a situation that sets up charters not as a help or as an outsourcing tool but as competition, it’s little wonder some districts are less than wildly enthusiastic.
More and better research is needed, but whatever the cause, exploring this authorizing question should have at least one effect: It should put an end to the selective nuance that has characterized charter debates. If we insist on analytical subtlety on why district-authorized charters appear to do better than charters authorized by others, we ought not to settle for arguments that insist that charters are inherently and categorically superior to “failing traditional schools.”
Leaving no child behind
There’s a degree of tension in our education system between two things we desire of it: school choice and leaving no child behind. A civic approach to charters would help ensure that the first of these goals contributes to the second.
Do charters underserve students with special needs, especially those with disabilities or English language learners? Are they “cherry-picking” students who are relatively better off or relatively more motivated? There’s evidence of both phenomena, although some studies suggest that only the first problem is widespread.
Not all explanations are sinister. Many charters are small operations that have yet to figure out how to meet their legal obligation to serve all students. And “creaming” can result from the self-selection inherent in charter enrollment. It can also happen when, over time, struggling students return to traditional schools. But these issues raise questions about the effectiveness and role of charters and their relationship to districts.
What about charters that focus specifically on meeting the needs of disadvantaged children? Enshrined in education law and in the conscience of the nation is that “separate but equal” is inherently unequal. But does the inherent nature of that inequality derive not from any educational reality but from the political reality that the educational resources needed to compensate for the disadvantages seldom are forthcoming?
This issue echoes the debate over ability tracking within schools. There’s abundant research evidence supporting diverse learning environments. But in some cases might we actually be better able to deliver the most appropriately targeted services to disadvantaged students in what realistically amount to “segregated” schools specifically designed to meet their needs? This is perilous territory to be sure, but it’s a serious question.
Either way, if charter schools do not serve representative student populations, we arrive at a question central to the civic vision: Does charter school success require the traditional school district to be the final educational safety net for all children? If so, the competition model is seriously weakened.
One defense of the competition model might be that conditions in some traditional schools can’t get much worse, so we ought not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Another might be that broader charter systems could help break down an arbitrary district-based system in which zip code is educational destiny.
Certainly there are districts where things are bad enough that drastic measures are justified, but it would be an extreme case indeed where things really couldn’t be made worse. And if we’re in the business of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, one has to question how likely we are to jettison our school district system anytime soon.
These questions come down to an overarching issue: how much we really want private actors deciding these matters. The competition model is more comfortable with privatizing these decisions and relying on market dynamics to protect against the downsides. In the civic vision, the publicly accountable school district ultimately still bears responsibility for all children, and charters are one tool for district-wide change.
Follow the money
The bottom line on charters and districts also has a lot to do with, well, the bottom line. The current fiscal climate is raising issues that were easier to sidestep when money wasn’t so tight:
- The unsustainable cost of “parallel school systems” has come up for renewed discussion.
- Converting schools to charters that were slated for closing due to low enrollment as a last resort for keeping them open has major cost implications.
- Disputes over how the state provides for funding of students who attend a charter school intensify when there’s not enough money to go around in the first place.
Austerity also has implications for the notion of dynamic charter churn. The theory surely underestimates the costs of these ongoing openings and closings, especially where weak accountability rules may allow charter organizers to enrich themselves regardless of their academic results.
And the costs go beyond the financial. The problem with the market analogies is that we’re talking not about mere business concerns but about civic institutions that form an important part of the social fabric of their communities. Indeed, one of the worst things we could do is adopt policies that exacerbate educational instability for disadvantaged children.
Perhaps, from a cost perspective, the much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act has charter schools about right. Their best function may be as an intervention when less intense turnaround efforts have failed—or when public perception of local schools needs a dramatic boost. The recent move by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s board of education to embrace aggressive district chartering can be seen in this light, even as its form is hotly contested.
But the difference between NCLB’s current charter provision, grounded in the competition model, and a new provision true to the civic vision is this: Chartering no longer would be about privatization for its own sake.
Meeting halfway
Striving for the civic vision requires some charter supporters to think through how competitive notions and a jaundiced view of districts undermine the movement’s long-term potential.
Charter laws and advocates are not the only ones mired in the competition model, however. District officials and public school advocates still have a way to come, both to address the concerns manifested in support for charter schools, as well as to harness the potential of charters for systemic improvement.
Addressing the concerns will require district leaders to convey a much greater sense of urgency about raising the academic bar and closing achievement gaps. Even if we recognize that systemic reform is a long-term proposition, there’s no getting around this hard fact: Much of the public perceives many districts as tolerating mediocrity, making excuses, or simply lacking the capacity to get the job done.
Apart from perceptions, the charter movement presents a challenge to the institutional culture of school districts. That civic institutions are political and rule-bound is a given. That many, especially large ones, also are intensely hierarchical, beset by fiefdoms, and too driven by seniority is understandable, but not foreordained.
Many districts could benefit from the culture of autonomy, rigorous accountability, and youthful meritocracy that characterize the charter movement at its best. District chartering is one means. So is emulating aspects of charter school culture in traditional schools.
Still, when a school board considering a charter application thinks through what state rules based on the competition model mean for the district, it’s not showing a lack of educational vision. These are matters of public trust, fiduciary duty, and moral obligation to all of the community’s children.
This point is central to leaving no child behind. Only one type of charter authorizer—the school district—combines a sole focus on K-12 education with responsibility for serving every child in the community. Under the competition model, an alternative authorizer of six successful schools that leave the majority of children in the community worse off is doing its job. Under the civic vision, the school board doesn’t have that luxury.
Questions about district capacity are fair game. But in the civic vision, the answer to inadequate local capacity is to improve local capacity. This would have benefits not only for chartering but also for the governance and management of traditional schools—benefits lost when authorizing decisions are taken away from the community. Outside chartering entities might be put to more effective use augmenting and supporting the capacity of district authorizers.
There is a painful irony to the debate over school board authorizing. School boards associations teach that good governance is about the big picture, about setting broad expectations—providing accountability as to the what and why, but getting out of the business of the how. What does this sound most like? Charter authorizing.
A question of pragmatism
It may be too much to hope that the Obama administration fully embrace the civic vision of charters. And it probably isn’t necessary, which should come as a relief to an administration with a strong inclination toward the middle way. The same goes for state officials.
No, the proposition here is a modest one: In keeping with the administration’s “whatever works” refrain, policymakers must start to confront the limitations and costs of the competition model, take more careful stock of the considerations the civic vision puts forward, and squarely address both.
Surely federal and state policy should not presume that all, most, or even many school districts bear much similarity to the most dysfunctional among them. Nor should it presume that districts—even severely challenged urban ones—are oblivious or indifferent to the urgency of 21st century educational imperatives. And it cannot afford to equate charters with reform while continuing to avoid the question of their relationship to, and impact on, school districts.
For the charter movement, facing up to the likelihood that districts will continue to do the bulk of the heavy lifting could make for less contentious and more productive relations.
For districts, especially beleaguered systems suffering from weak public confidence, pragmatic if painful concessions to realities—some of them unfair—may be the order of the day. Chartering could play a vital role.
I am convinced that a majority of educators both in school districts and in charter schools would welcome a reorientation of charter policy more toward the civic vision. This approach sounds less visionary, less glamorous. So be it. Paradoxically, it could be the way charter schools end up having the biggest impact on public education.
A slightly different version of this article was published in the November 2009 issue of the American School Board Journal and in the Fall 2009 issue of The Bugle, the newsletter of the National Black Caucus of School Board Members. Thomas Hutton is a former National School Boards Associations attorney who at the time of the article's publication was en route to Seattle to join Patterson Buchanan Fobes Leitch & Kalzer, where he now practices school law. These opinions are his own.