CER In the News

CHARTER SCHOOLS' RIPPLE EFFECT: Competition Pushes Regular Schools To Improve
By Anna Bray Duff
Investors Business Daily, August 31, 1999

When education reformers launched the charter school movement just under a decade ago, they promised the examples set would serve as laboratories for improvement in all public schools.

Can a small dose of competition help cure what ails America's schools?

Evidence from around the country suggests that it can - and it is. Spurred by the examples provided by charter schools, many public school systems are changing the way they do business. They're offering different curricula, more specialty schools, differently structured school days - and an attitude of accountability to the public.

Some of this change may be more marketing than substance, though. And it's often hard to tell which changes come as the direct result of charter schools, and which are simply in vogue with educators.

What's more, many educators insist the ripple effect created by charter schools does more harm than good.

Still, only 1,200- odd charter schools are open today. To really influence the tens of thousands of public schools nationwide, there will have to be a lot more charters. The ripple effect may be real, but for now it's small.

''Our charters created a different climate of accountability,'' said Libia Gil, superintendent of Chula Vista Elementary School District, a district near San Diego with 36 schools, five of which are charters.

Parents and school principals ''can shop elsewhere for whatever we provide, so it made us recognize more seriously that we needed to provide better support and services to our schools,'' Gil said.

The wake-up call was a charter school that contracted with a private company to do its landscaping services so it could get noisy and distracting work done outside of school hours -and more quickly, she says.

''It's brought an attitude that there are other ways to do things,'' Gil said.

A recent report from the Center for Education Reform - a group that supports school choice - culled examples of this ripple effect from states and districts with lots of charter schools.

Charter schools are doing more than influencing how traditional public schools teach and how they're run. They're also forcing traditional public schools to treat parents differently: as customers.

''One of the main roles of charter schools is to improve traditional public schools,'' said Jeanne Allen, president of the center. ''A small number of charter schools is having a huge impact on traditional schools.''

Examples:

Curriculum.

• In Arizona, the Queen Creek School District saw nearly a third of its students switch to the Benjamin Franklin Charter School, which uses phonics to teach kids to read. Soon after, the district started to offer teacher training and classroom instruction in phonics.
• In Colorado, the Pueblo School District drew on the experience of a charter school in a neighboring district to launch its own experimental school, Pueblo School for the Arts and Sciences. That school uses the Paideia model, a school-reform package that stresses progressive education methods and a liberal arts curriculum.
• In Michigan, the Saugutuck Public Schools saw three charter schools open nearby. In response, Superintendent Tom Nowak launched an effort to offer an enriched elementary-school curriculum, with Spanish, music, art and computer classes.
• In Minnesota, competition spurred school boards in Duluth and Rochester to start schools that offer the Core Knowledge curriculum. Another school board, in Forest Lake, responded by starting a Montessori school.

School structure.

• In New Jersey, a Camden art institute had spent nearly 10 years pushing its school district to open a high school focusing on the fine arts. The institute applied to open a charter high school devoted to arts, spurring the district into action. It now plans to open a public magnet school with that specialty.
• Because they face fewer regulations than traditional schools, charters can more quickly respond to parents' wishes for new programs.
• In several states, for example, charter schools offering full-day kindergarten pushed traditional schools to do so, too. Lansing, Mich., and Mesa, Ariz., are two large school districts that have all-day programs, thanks in part to the competitive nudge of charters.
• In Minnesota, the St. Paul school district saw the popularity of its 14 charter schools as a signal that parents wanted their kids in smaller, more personal schools. So it's looking to start smaller secondary schools.

School and district management.

• In Michigan, the Hartland school superintendent wrote all the parents who had enrolled their children in charter schools and asked them for ideas to improve the rest of the public schools.
• In California, the Los Angeles Unified School District took notice when charter-school Principal Yvonne Chan publicized her ability to get her classrooms equipped with computers in six days - and more cheaply than the district. The district, where red tape used to delay putting in new computers for up to a year, revamped its purchasing system.
• In Massachusetts, a burgeoning charter-school movement caused the Boston Public Schools to take its project for ''pilot'' schools off the back burner.
• Since charter schools were first allowed in the Bay State, Boston has opened more than a dozen such specialty schools, each with a different focus - like the arts, health sciences and dropout prevention.

But are these just isolated examples from states with strong charter movements?

Without a doubt, charters have the biggest ripple effect where they're the largest drops in the pond, says Eric Rofes, professor of education at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif. And the charter movement is still young and small.

''How much impact is opening a charter of 100 students in Denver with its 60,000 students going to have?'' Rofes asked.

In his study of 25 randomly selected districts, Rofes found that just a quarter had made substantive changes to their schools in response. That's a big effect for so small a movement, he points out.

More commonly, districts stepped up their marketing campaigns, hiring public-relations officers and kicking off advertising campaigns, Rofes found.

''Urban districts responded hardly at all,'' he said. ''It's like an elephant that is so cumbersome it's hard to turn around.''

Even stepped-up marketing, CER's Allen argues, suggests a changing attitude - that parents and students are customers to be wooed. ''They have to have some substance behind the hype if it's going to have a long-term impact, though,'' she said.

The difference between districts that responded to charter schools and those that didn't? Leadership, Rofes says.

Districts that responded energetically to competition from charter schools tended to have leaders already looking for ways to improve.

Chula Vista's Gil agrees. For charters to have an impact on other public schools, ''they have to be willing to look outside of themselves,'' she said. ''If you're content with what you're doing, there's no incentive to look for ways to change.''

A common criticism of charter schools is that they siphon off money from their school districts - money that could have been used to improve existing schools.

Rofes' study found less than half the districts saw a major financial impact from charters. Typically, those were small or rural districts that suffered when charters lured away a measurable share of their students - and the funding for them.

But the majority of districts saw little impact. Many districts sprouting charters have to accommodate growing student populations. Charters don't siphon money away from the district; they often help it absorb growth.

New charter schools tend to be small - and larger ones are typically ''converted'' from existing public schools.

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For more on charter schools' ripple effect, see CER's Charter Schools Progress Report III, THE RIPPLE EFFECT: A Cresting Wave on CER's page About Charter Schools.

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