Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
LEARNING IN CHARTER SCHOOLS
By Bruno V. Manno
Journal Of Commerce, May 5, 1997
Charter schools may be the most vibrant force in American education today.
This is the conclusion my colleagues and I made after visiting almost 80 of these schools in nine states, conducting over 1,000 interviews and surveying parents, teachers and students on behalf of Hudson Institute's Charter Schools in Action Project.
These (mostly) independent public schools of choice, which are financed entirely by tax dollars but are not subject to day-to-day control of local school districts, now number nearly 500, with an additional 700 to be open this fall.
Charter schools enjoy freedom from many of the rules and red tape that nearly all conventional public schools must obey. In return for this freedom, they pledge to produce specific results, defined in terms of academic standards and student achievement measured by various tests.
Since nobody is forced to attend, the school is accountable to its students and parents through the marketplace. And since the charter-issuing body (typically a state or local school board, sometimes a university) is not obliged to renew its charter, to remain in existence, the school must deliver the promised results.
The charter concept is simple but powerful: public schools need not be run in uniform fashion by government bureaucracies and must be accountable for the results. This approach is helping the nation reinvent public education. It is creating a community-based, bottom-up, flexible approach to delivering education and providing a genuine alternative to the conventional, top-down, rule-based resource-focused, bureaucratic model.
The most remarkable finding is that these schools aren't havens for the "" best and brightest'' students. They serve large numbers of needy, troubled and minority children. According to our first year report, 63 percent of students are minorities (compared with one-third in public schools), 55 percent are poor, 19 percent have limited English proficiency, 19 percent have disabilities and 14 percent wouldn't otherwise be attending any kind of public school.
The finding that a high proportion of charter students are "square peg'' kids who don't fit the round holes of conventional public schools contradicts doomsayers who predicted that only the fortunate will choose charter schools for their children.
Both Republicans and Democrats, led by President Clinton, hail charter schools as a promising education alternative. That's because charter school founders engage in what former U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander called ""old-fashioned horse-trading,'' swapping rules and regulations for results.
Being directly accountable for results and free to achieve them as one sees fit is a rare combination in public schools. Much of the appeal and promise of charter schools lies in this combination.
Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia have charter laws, though some barely qualify as true charter laws. Some are ""Potemkin laws'' displaying the facade but not the reality of charter legislation and creating make-believe schools bearing the charter label but little true autonomy. Our report identifies some key components that help distinguish these approaches.
""Weak'' laws typically feature no or inadequate charter-approving authorities other than local school boards and impose tight limits on who may apply for a charter and how many charters are issued. They also impose constraints on charter operations that lead to insufficient autonomy from districts, and provide contractual provisions similar to those that burden conventional schools - e.g., provisions that charter schools must hire only certified teachers or comply with collective bargaining agreements.
""Strong'' laws include a non-local sponsorship option or a strong appeals process for charter seekers and allow any individual or group to submit a charter proposal. They also grant automatic exemptions from many state and local rules, fiscal and legal autonomy,and contain no (or very high) limits on the number of charter schools. They permit non-certified individuals to teach at charter schools.
Charter schools are helping the nation reinvent public education. They are open to all; meet fundamental health, safety, and nondiscrimination requirements; are paid for by tax dollars, with no tuition charges; and are accountable to the public for their results. In this context, the school board's job is to ensure the public has the broadest range of choices available to it and every child has a school to attend.
Not every charter school is terrific just because it bears the charter label. They're not immune to human frailties, slipshod planning, unanticipated crises, and reversals of fortune. Neither are they a panacea for all that ails public education.
But the schools we came to know are heaven-sent options for their students, welcome professional opportunities for their teachers, bona fide educational assets for their communities, and - as a group - a genuinely promising reform development for the states and the nation.
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Bruno V. Manno is senior fellow in the Washington office of the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute and co-author of "Charter Schools in Action: What Have We Learned?"