Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
CHARTER FOR REFORM; NEW MOVEMENT REINVENTING NATION'S PUBLIC SCHOOL
SYSTEM
By Bruno V. Manno
The San Diego Union-Tribune, August 31, 1997
Since 1992 many California communities have been reinventing their public schools under the banner of the charter school movement. To date, the state board has issued nearly 130 charters.
What are charter schools like? What do the best of them have to offer?
My answers are based on a national research project conducted by Hudson Institute and supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Our research team has been to 14 states (including California), visited 60 schools, interviewed more than 1,300 individuals, and surveyed thousands of parents, teachers and students. I personally visited nearly 20 of California's charter schools, interviewing almost 400 Californians about this unprecedented effort.
The charter idea is simple but powerful: Sound school choices can be provided to families under the umbrella of public education without being run or regulated into conformity by government bureaucracies or staffed only by government employees. The genius of this concept is that it demands academic results -- the opposite of most district schools, with their rigid adherence to bureaucratic requirements and obliviousness to pupil achievement. As a California charter school principal told me, "The charter approach got many of the usual rules and regulations and bureaucracy off our backs."
Charter schools are public schools: They are open to all, paid for with tax dollars, accountable to public authorities for the results of student learning, and subject to basic health, safety and nondiscrimination requirements. Strong charter provisions -- found in about half of the 30 laws that now exist -- provide schools with decision-making authority over budget and program matters.
The California law has unleashed the educational imagination of a diverse band of individuals who are committed to recasting what a school can be -- and not tomorrow but today.
The Charter School of San Diego is one example of these new American public schools. It opened under the charter banner in 1994 and encompasses 20 sites around the city, covering 253 square miles. With a fall '97 enrollment of 1,200 students, 67 percent of whom are minorities, it has nearly total control of its $2.3 million budget. The school has a year-round calendar, spans grades 7-12 (though students aren't grouped in grades), and targets urban youth who aren't succeeding in conventional classrooms.
Its instructional methods consist mainly of group work, seminars, workshops and individual tutorials. Support services are also offered, including health, counseling and job placements. Students may earn a district high school diploma, prepare for the General Education Development diploma, or take the California Proficiency Exams to graduate. The school's sponsors are the San Diego Chamber of Commerce Business Roundtable for Education and Labor's Community Service Organization (AFL-CIO). An evaluation by the San Diego school district accountability division says, " ... the school has been successful in reversing the downward spiral of failure in student achievement. "
Three different groups start charter schools. The first group consists of educators who want to run a school and do things differently.
Guajome Park Academy in Vista is an example of a teacher-initiated charter. Opened in 1994, it spans grades 6-12 and serves around 700 students. It is affiliated with a museum and offers several educational programs, including independent study and the International Baccalaureate. It has a state-of-the-art technology center on campus and partnerships with Norstan Sound and Signal, Creative Learning Systems, and the Vista Redevelopment Commission for a new (off-campus) technology facility, to be used by charter students and adults for continuing education. Guajome fully controls its education program and nearly all of its finances.
The second group of founders is parents who seek something different and better for their children, not having found satisfaction in their school systems. Some are liberal, some conservative. All want their daughters and sons to get the best possible education.
An example of a parent-initiated start-up is Oakland (formerly Jingletown) Charter Academy. Parents in that Bay Area community whose children attended Lazear Elementary wanted their children to be able to go on to a middle school that was safe from the drugs and violence they saw in other local schools. They approached Clementina Duron, then principal of Lazear, to help them start a charter school. As one parent told me during a visit to the school, "We began to think we could do better for our kids than the district was doing. Sure as hell we couldn't do any worse. If we go belly up, at least we tried." Despite intense union and board opposition, the school was created. Eighty-five percent of its students are Latino. Although the bitter battles surrounding its founding left many scars, the Jingletown saga shows what can be accomplished when energized parents team up with sage and courageous educators.
The third group of founders comprises "third parties," people who want to start or operate their own schools: some non-profit organizations such as the Boys and Girls Club, some profit-seeking small businesses or large corporations, some community groups, even agencies such as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
If one looks out on the charter landscape, no one-size-fits-all model emerges.
Four types of schools illustrate this variety, though they don't cover the full range of innovations, either in instructional methods and curricula or in areas such as governance, financing, staffing and scheduling.
Schools for special or "at-risk" youngsters: A founder of one of these schools told me, "This school is for kids no one else wants. And even if they had them, they wouldn't know what to do with them." Many different individuals, groups, and institutions have come together to create such schools, including social-service and juvenile-correction agencies, neighborhood-based groups, post-secondary institutions, and private businesses. The Charter School of San Diego exemplifies this school type.
Distance-learning, home-based instruction, and "virtual" schools: Some of these schools lack any resemblance to traditional schools, being scarcely "places" at all. A "virtual" school student told me, "This on-line school follows me wherever I go. I don't have any excuse for not showing up."
Horizons Instructional Systems in Lincoln, Calif., enrolls 1,400 students and combines various approaches to using technology with home-based instruction, targeting those who want an alternative to classroom-based instruction. Its non-classroom approaches include home-based learning; the state's independent study program; the Electronically Assisted Student Teaching (EAST) Program, combining home-based computers, distance learning, and satellite technology; electronic video conference classes that are delivered via satellite to a site; and small group instruction -- contract classes -- for students who need tutoring or want enrichment courses.
Teacher cooperatives: The Minnesota New Country School in LeSueur is a school that has no employees as such. The governing board -- a majority must be teachers according to Minnesota's charter law -- has contracted with EdVisions Cooperative, a group of New Country School teachers (and others), for its educational and management services, making the teachers both employees and employers.
Contract schools: In these schools, firms manage major or all elements of a school's educational and business affairs. In California, the nonprofit Options for Youth, Inc., has contracted to operate five charter schools for dropouts, using independent study and home-based learning. An independent evaluation for 1995-96 showed that students' performance gains in reading, writing, and math approximated one month for each month of enrollment.
Contrary to charges by charter opponents, these schools aren't havens for the fortunate or the "best and brightest" students. According to a federal evaluation, half of charter school students are minority group members, vs. one-third in conventional public schools (data nearly identical to that from Hudson's research).
The Hudson study shows that teachers and families choose these schools for educational reasons -- high academic standards, small classes, a focus on teaching and learning, educational philosophies that are closer to their own, and innovative instructional approaches; that these schools are very popular with their students, parents, and teachers, especially on academic matters, and that many schools accomplish what they do for less money than conventional schools.
When a diverse band of individuals who are committed to recasting a school are allowed to innovate, the results can be astonishing. Consider Fenton Avenue Charter School, a preschool through sixth-grade conversion institution that "seceded" from the Los Angeles Unified School District in order to operate independently. Open year round, it offers an education to 1,300 students with a teaching staff of 63. Its enrollment is 75 percent Hispanic, over 97 percent minority, and nearly all the students are poor. It has gained control of almost its entire $7 million budget. The autonomy has allowed much that was impossible under the thumbs of the district and union: reducing class size; adding after-school and Saturday programs; managing the school's own food service; providing accident insurance for kids and long-term disability for employees; reducing administrative personnel by 25 percent; and restoring a 10 percent staff pay cut. It has created an on-site broadcasting studio (the first ever for a California elementary school), developed its own primary phonics instruction program (in both Spanish and English), and boosted pupil test scores more than 20 percent in two years.
These new American public schools thrive on decentralized control, entrepreneurial management, and grass-roots initiatives. School board members and other public officials should govern them by establishing academic performance goals and holding the schools accountable for meeting these goals. While officials retain the power to close a school for poor performance, they should not directly control what happens in each school. In this context, a school board's job is to ensure that the public has the broadest range of choices available to it; that every child has a school to attend, and that the terms of the charters or contracts that it issues are met.
Charter schools are not a panacea for all that ails public education. Moreover, not every charter law or school is terrific just because it bears the charter label: They aren't immune to human frailties, slipshod planning, unanticipated crises, and reversals of fortune. For example, the San Diego school district had difficulties with some of its charter schools: It transferred control of one school back to the district, closed a school for fiscal and safety reasons, and replaced the principal at another school.
But these new public charter schools being created today, on-by-one, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, in communities across California and the nation are heaven-sent options for their students, welcome professional opportunities for their teachers, educational assets for their communities, and a genuinely promising reform development for the states and the nation. They are helping to reinvent America's public schools.
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Bruno Manno is a senior fellow in the Washington, D.C. office of the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute. He and three colleagues are co-authors of several reports on charter schools, available by calling 1 800 HUDSON 0 or via the web at http://www.edexcellence.net